◆ SpookStack

agrees, the aN AL The first part of our task ig to bui Communist organizations, but other piri rir 2 well, above all mass organizations syropathizing with our aims and able to aid us for special purposes We must create a whole solar System of organizatio, ; and smaller committees around the Communist Par so to speak, smaller organizations working actuah under the influence of our Party (not under mechan} cal leadership). (p. 409-423; emphasis in original) The satellite or sputnik organizations which the Com- munist Party in the United States has launched es: cially for Negroes are far too numerous to name all of them. Brief sketches of the principal sputniks in this category will, however, serve to illuminate the aims and tactics of the American Communist Party with respect io the Negroes of the United States. Soe A partial list of the Communist sputniks for Negroes follows: African Blood Brotherhood Alabama Peoples Educational Association Citizens Emergency Conference for Interracial Unity Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor League of Struggle for Negro Rights Negro Labor Victory Committee Southern Negro Youth Congress United Negro and Allied Veterans of Abolish Peonage Committee American Negro Labor Congress Almerican Negro Labor Council Commaitiee iv Defend Angelo Herndon Committee for the Negro in the Arts Committee 10 Aid the Fighting South Frederick Douglass Educational Center Martinsville Seven Committee Nationa] Negro Congress Negro People’s Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy Southern Conference for Human Welfare ° Southern Conference Educational Fund Of these, only the Southern Conference Educational Fund is still in existence. America African Blood Brotherhood _ The African Blood Brotherhood was the first sputnik in the Communist Party's system of satellites. It was penetrated and captured, not originally launched, by the Communists, Joseph Zack Kornfeder, then a leading member of the Communist Party, has told the following story of ihe penetration and capture of the African Blood Broth- wise, - . +» the Communist Party activities amongst the Negroes here in the United States started about 1921, and were prompted by a letter sent to the American Party by Nikelai Lenin . . . Well, so, of course, the uldn't ignore a letter from Nikolai Lenin . . . was “thea the junior member of the Central Com- mittee .. . Well, when I looked around in found that as simply no Negro mem p e Com- eerist Party ? 7 I knew from the Socialist Party that there were some Negroes in Harlem in a branch of the Socialist Party which was mostly Negroes, al- though there were also whites in the same branch, and J looked up one of them and he advised me to see an individual by the name of Cyril Briggs. Well, I looked up this individual, and he was the editor of a paper called The Crusader, which was the official organ of a Negre organization called the African Blood Brotherhood. Well, I put in quite an effort on this fellow Briggs, to see whether I could work him over ideologically, and as I got acquainted with him, I noticed that he was having his financial troubles publishing the paper. I didn’t tell him that I repre- sented the Communist Party, of course. I just posed as a liberal uncle, who had his sympathies on the Negro side, and was willing to he : he ran into some trouble about paying the printer, well, I always obliged with a few hundred dollars. This way I became friends with this Briggs and I worked bim over ideologically, and the cant of the ornal changed. And of course, in due time I got journas Saletipk. saath, course, i cue mic at some of his friends who were on the Board of Directors, and, well, it took only about a year before the controlling influence in that organization upon top was exerted through me, and they pretty nearly would do, although they weren't yet in the party, what I wanted them to do. Well, and later on I signed him up into the Communist Party as a member. So that was the first Negro organization that the party got hold of ideologically, at least—later on organiza- tionally. That’s how the thing started. (Subversion in Racial Unrest, Baton Rouge, La., March 6-9, 1957, p. 37) Cyril Briggs went on to become one of the most prominent Negro jeaders in the history of the Cam- munist Party in the United States. American Negro Labor Congress The American Negro Labor Congress was organized in Chicago in October, 1925. It was a Communist united front maneuver and the successor to the African Blood Brotherhood. In his book entitled The Negro People in American History, William Z. Foster writes concerning the ANLC as follows: The American Negro Labor Congress was organ- ized in Chicago in November 1925, mainly upon the initiative of the Communists... The Jeader of the tovement was Lovett Fort-Whiteman, and its journal was The Champion. Outstanding Communist Negro 29