◆ SpookStack

the subject of the Party’s past, turns to the Communigs Party’s present and writes: As the advance guard of the American working class the Cammunist Party muiet nantlesse 4. 1 SS, Se OPUS! Samy Must CGnlinue io make jt, contributions to the fight for Negro rights, under the changed conditions of today, as effectively, as hon- orably, as it did in previous periods of strugele. The fight for Negro rights needs the contribution which Communists, guided by Marxist-Leninist theory, ate in a position to make, (p. 34) ° On February 21, 1956, after the bus boycott ip Montgomery had run for 11 weeks, the Negro leaders of the boycott were arrested and charged with violation of Alabama's anti-boycott statute. The Rev. Martin Luther King was among those arrested. On March 22, he was found puilty and fined $500. The case is on appeal. it is interesting to note that the proponents of public school integration in the South make a great to-do about the U. S$. Supreme Court’s decision of May 17, 1954, by claiming with unparalleled vehemence that the de cision is “the Jaw of the land.” On the other hand, they ignore with complete unanimity the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision of 1908 declaring the organized boy- cout of the Danbury Hatters to te ia violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, the principle of which de c’sion is reflected in Alabama’s anti-boycott statute. Mrs. Rosa Parks It goes almost without saying that Mrs. Rosa Parks was in attendance at the Highlander Folk School semi- nar, It was Mrs. Parks who started the Montgomery bus boycott. On December 1, 1955, when she refused to sit in a seat in the rear of a bus, she was arrested and fined $14. Shortly prior to her dramatic defiance of the segregation ordinance, Mrs. Parks had taken a course at Highlander Folk School. Mrs. Parks promptly became a heroine to the Com- munists. The Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, § Communist front, arranged meetinos for her in New York City, including one at the home of Mr. and Mr. Corliss Lamont. Charles G. Gomillion Charles G. Gomillion, dean of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, was one of the prominent participants in the ” "sr Day conference at the Highlander Folk School. As president of the Tuskegee Civic Association, Go- million received a considerable amount of publicity in the nation’s press in the summer of 1957, in connection with his leadership of a Negro boycoitt against the white merchants of the town of Tuskegee. This was ont of the recent militant activities of Southern Negroes. On August 15, 1957, an injunction was issued against the P| “Tr t boycott on the ground that it was a violation of Ala- hama’s apti-boycott statute. (New York Times, Aug. 17, 1957) ' Gomillion’s organized boycott began on June 26, after a mass meeting of the Tuskegee Civic Association in protest against the Alabama legislature’s proposed re- vision of Tuskegee’s city limits. Gornullion did not even allege that the white merchants were in any way respon- sible for the initiation of the revision. ; Dean Gomiilion’s pro-Communist connections have been significant. In testimony before the House Com- mittee on Un-American Activities on July 21, 1947, he was identified as a current member and secretary of the advisory board of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, an outright Communist organization (see below). In a press release dated April 21, 1947, Gomillion was listed as a signer of a manifesto of Negro leaders against the outlawing of the Communist Party. The manifesto was released from 23 West 26th Street, New York City, which is now the national headquarters of the Communist Party, and which, in 1947, was head- quarters of a dozen Communist organizations including the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born. Co-signers of the manifesto included such Com- munist stalwarts as Paul Robeson, W. E. B. DuBois, Benjamin J. Davis, and Doxey A. Wilkerson. The sign- ers called upon the President and Congress “to repudi- ate decisively the fascist-like proposal . . . to illegalize the Communist Party,” and deciared: “We will resist with all our power every step taken in that direction.” ann en ee ak August 29, 1948, carried a full-page advertisement of an enterprise called The First Line of Defense. It was another manifesto in defense of the Communist Party, opening with the following words addressed to the Presi- dent and the Attorney General: “We, the undersigned Negro Americans, strongly condemn your hysteria- breeding arrests of the Negro leaders of the Communist Party, and call upon you to take positive action to pro- tect civil rights instead of persecuting political minon- ties.” This manifesto, too, was signed by Charles G. Gomillion. Co-signers included the following notorious Communist Party leaders of the Negro race: Louis E. Burnham, Ernest Thompson, Abner W. Berry (one of the participants in the Highlander Folk School confer- ence), James W. Ford, Harry Haywood, W. A. Hunton, Richard B. Moore, 3. ©. Patterson, and Doxey Wilxer- son. Gomillion sponsored a testimonial dinner for W. E. B. DuBois whose services to the Communist cause have been enormous. The dinner was given at Essex House, New York City, on February 23, 1951. Prominent Communists who co-sponsored this DuBois testimonial dinner included the following: Herbert Aptheker, Mrs. Louise Berman, Howard Fast, Frederick V. Field, Ben 9€ ~~