This is the era of Mao n'e-Tung, the era f~{ the black freedom struggle in an international world revolution and the Afro-American's context. In a song simply called "Dig It" struggle for liberation is a part of an invinci­ ( 1993 ), the Coup refers to its members as ble world-wide movement. Chairman Mao was the first world leader to elevate our peo­ "the wretched of the earth," tells listeners to ple's struggle to the fold of the world revolu­ read The Communist Manifesto, and conjures tion. up revolutionary icons such as Mao Zedong, -Robert Williams, 1967' Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, H. Rap Brown, Kenya's Mau Mau movement, and It seems as if Chairman Mao, at least in the Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt. In classical Maoist symbolic realm, has been enjoying a resur­ fashion, the group seizes on Mao's most fa­ gence in popularity among the youth. His im­ mous quote and makes it its own: "We realize age and ideas consistently tum up in a myriad that power [is] nickel plated."2 Even though of cultural and political contexts. The Coup, a members of the Coup were not even born popular San Francisco Bay Area hip-hop during the heyday of Black Maoism, "Dig It" group, restored Mao Zedong to the pantheon captures the spirit of Mao in relation to the of black radical heroes and in so doing placed larger colonial world-a world that included

6 Souls • Fall 1999 Political Propaganda of the Chinese Revolution. International Visions & Mao.

African Americans. In Harlem in the late life black folk calling for revolution in the 1960s and early 1970s, it seemed as though name of Mao as well as Marx and Lenin. everyone had a copy of Quotations from Countless black radicals of that era regarded Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, 1 better known as China, not unlike Cuba or Ghana or even the "little red book." From time to time sup­ Paris, as the land where true freedom might porters of the Black Panther Party would be be had. China was not perfect, but it was seen selling the little red book on street cor­ much better than living in the belly of the ners as a fund-raiser for the party. And it was beast. When the Black Panther leader Elaine not unheard of to see some young black radi­ Brown visited Beijing in the fall of 1970. she cal strolling down the street dressed like a was pleasantly surprised by what the Chinese Chinese peasant-except for the Afro and revolution achieved in improving peoples' sunglasses, of course. lives. "Old and young would 'pontaneously Like Africa, China was on the move and give emotional testirnonie~. like Baptist con­ there was a general sensibility that the Chi­ verts, to the glories of socialism."' A year nese supported the black struggle. Actually, it later, she returned with one of the Panther was more than a sensibility: There were real- founders, Huey Newton, who described his

Souls • Fall1999 7 Black Like Mao experience in China as a "sensation of free­ Republic of China more generally, had on dom-as if a great weight had been lifted black radical movements from the 1950s from my soul and I was able to be myself, through at least the mid-1970s. We also ex­ without defense or pretense or the need for plore how radical black nationalism has explanation. I felt absolutely free for the first shaped debates within Maoist or "antirevi- time in my life-com- sionist" organizations in the pletely free among my fel- United States. It is our con­ low men." 5 Black radicals came to tention that China offered More than a decade be­ see China as the beacon black radicals a "colored," fore Brown and Newton or Third World, Marxist set foot on Chinese soil, of Third world revolution model that enabled them to W.E.B. Du Bois regarded and Mao Zedong thought challenge a white and West­ China as the other sleep­ as the guidepost. ern vision of class strug­ ing giant poised to lead the gle-a model they shaped colored races in the world- and reshaped to suit their wide struggle against im- own cultural and political perialism. He had first traveled there in realities. Although China's role was contra­ 1936-before the war and the revolution- dictory and problematic in many respects, the during an extended visit to the Soviet Union. fact that Chinese peasants, as opposed to the Returning in 1959, when it was illegal to European proletariat, made a socialist revolu­ travel to China, Du Bois discovered a new tion and carved out a position in world poli­ country. He was struck by the transformation tics distinct from the Soviet and U.S. camps of the Chinese, in particular what he per­ endowed black radicals with a deeper sense ceived as the emancipation of women, and of revolutionary importance and power. Fi­ left convinced that China would lead the un­ nally, Mao not only proved to black folks the derdeveloped nations on the road toward so­ world over that they need not wait for "objec­ cialism. "China after long centuries," he told tive conditions" to make revolution, but his an audience of Chinese Communists attend­ elevation of the cultural struggle profoundly ing his ninety-first birthday celebration, "has shaped debates surrounding black arts and arisen to her feet and leapt forward. Africa politics. arise, and stand straight, speak and think! Act! Turn from the West and your slavery and The Long March humiliation for the last 500 years and face the rising sun."6 Anyone familiar with Maoism knows that it How black radicals came to see China as was never a full-blown ideology meant to re­ the beacon of Third World revolution and place Marxism-Leninism. On the contrary, if Mao Zedong thought as the guidepost is a anything, it marked a turn against the "revi­ complicated and fascinating story involving sionism" of the post-Stalin Soviet model. literally dozens of organizations and covering What Mao did contribute to Marxist thought much of the world-from the ghettos of grew directly out of the Chinese Revolution North America to the African countryside. of 1949. Mao's insistence that the revolution­ The following account, therefore, does not ary capacity of the peasantry was not depen­ pretend to be comprehensive.7 Nevertheless, dent on the urban proletariat was particularly we have set out in this article to explore the attractive to black radicals skeptical of the impact that Maoist thought, and the People's idea that they must wait for the objective con-

8 Souls • Fall1999 Black Like Mao ditions to launch their revolution. Central to toric Bandung meeting of nonaligned na­ Maoism is the idea that Marxism can be tions, China formed the Afro-Asian People's (must be) reshaped to the requirements of Solidarity Organization. Mao not only invited time and place and that practical work, ideas, W.E.B. DuBois to spend his ninetieth birth­ and leadership stem from the masses in day in China after he had been declared a movement not from a theory created in the public enemy by the U.S. state, but three abstract or produced out of other struggles. 8 weeks prior to the great March on Washing­ In practice, this meant that true revolutionar­ ton in 1963, Mao issued a statement criticiz­ ies must possess revolutionary will to win. ing American racism and casting the African­ The notion of revolutionary will cannot be American freedom movement as part of the underestimated, especially for those in move­ worldwide struggle against imperialism. ments that were isolated and attacked on all "The evil system of colonialism and imperi­ sides. Armed with the proper theory, the alism," Mao stated, "arose and throve with proper ethical behavior, and the will, revolu­ the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in tionaries, in Mao's words, can "move moun­ Negroes, and it will surely come to its end tains."9 Perhaps this is why the Chinese Com­ with the complete emancipation of the black munist leader Lin Biao could write in the people." 11 A decade later, the novelist John foreword to the Quotations, "Once Mao Tse­ Oliver Killens was impressed by the fact that Tung's thought is grasped by the broad several of his own books, as well as works by masses, it becomes an inexhaustible source other black writers, had been translated into of strength and a spiritual atom bomb of infi­ Chinese and were widely read by students. nite power." 10 Everywhere he went, it seemed, Killens met Both Mao and Lin Biao recognized that the young intellectuals and workers "tremen­ source of this "atomic bomb" could be found dously interested in the Black movement and in the struggles of Third World nationalists. in how the art and literature of Black folks re­ In an age when the Cold War helped usher in flected that movement." 12 the nonaligned move- Their status as people ment, with leaders of of color served as a pow­ the "colored" world China offered black radicals a erful political tool in converging in Ban­ "colored," or Third World, Marx­ mobilizing support from dung, Indonesia, in Africans and African­ 1955 to try to chart an ist model that enabled them to descended people. In independent path to­ challenge a white and Western 1963, for example, Chi­ ward development, nese delegates in Moshi, vision of class struggle-a the Chinese hoped to Tanzania, proclaimed lead the former colo­ model thev shaped and re­ that the Russians had no nies on the road to shaped to suit their own cul­ business in Africa be­ socialism. The Chi­ cause they were white. nese (backed by Lin tural and political realities. The Chinese, on the Biao's theory of the other hand, were under­ "new democratic rev- stood as being not only olution") not only endowed nationalist strug­ part of the colored world but also not com­ gles with revolutionary value, but they plicit in the slave trade. Of course, most of reached out specifically to Africa and people these claims serve to facilitate alliance build­ of African descent. Two years after the his- ing. The fact is, African slaves could be

Souls • Fall1999 9 Black Like Mao

"Chairmen Mao." Mixed media image by Zhang Hong tu. Courtesy of the artist.

found in Guangzhou during the twelfth cen­ mately undermined its standing with certain tury, and some African students in Commu­ African liberation movements. In southern nist China complained of racism. (Indeed, af­ Africa, for example, the Chinese backed ter Mao's death, racial clashes on college movements that also received support from campuses occurred more frequently, notably the apartheid regime of South Africa. 14 in Shanghai in 1979, Nanjing in 1980, and Yet, Mao's ideas still gained an audience Tianjin in 1986.)" Furthem1ore, Chinese for­ among black radicals. Although Maoist proj­ eign policy toward the black world was ects in the United States never achieved the driven more by strategic considerations than kind of following enjoyed by Soviet-identi­ by a commitment to Third World revolution­ fied Communist parties in the 1930s, they did ary movements, especially after the Sino­ take root in this country. And like a hundred Soviet split. China's anti-Soviet position re­ flowers, they bloomed as a confusing mosaic sulted in foreign policy decisions that ulti- of radical voices all seemingly at war with

10 Souls • Fall1999 Black Like Mao

each other. Not surprising, at the center of push the Communists back into the Stalinist their debate over the character of class strug­ camp, including the Provisional Organizing gle in the United States was the "Negro Committee (POC, 1958), Hammer and Steel Question": What role will black folk play in ( 1960), and the Progressive Labor Party world revolution? (PLP, 1965). 17 The PLP, an outgrowth of the Progressive The World Black Revolution Labor movement founded three years earlier, was initially led by ex-Communists who be­ lieved the Chinese had the correct position. People of' the world, unite and defeat the Insisting that black workers were the "key U.S. aggressors und all their running dogs.' revolutionary force" in the proletarian revo­ People fd the tror/d he courageous. dare to lution, the PLP attracted a few outstanding fight, def'y difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will be­ black activists such as John Harris in Los An­ ion?, to the people. Monsters of all kinds geles and Bill Epton in Harlem. Epton had shall be destroyed. become somewhat of a cause celebre after he -Mao Tse-Tung, had been arrested for "criminal anarchy" dur­ 18 "Statement Supporting the People of the ing the 1964 riots. Two years later, the PLP Congo Against U.S. Aggression" (1964)" helped organize a student strike to establish a black studies program at San Francisco State All over Africa, Asia, South, Afro and Cen­ University and its Black Liberation Commis­ tral America a revolution is haunting and sion published a pamphlet titled Black Liber­ sweeping. ation Now! that attempted to place all of -Revolutionary Action Movement, these urban rebellions in a global context. The World Black Revolution" But by 1968, the PLP abandoned its support for "revolutionary" nationalism and con­ Maoism in the United States was not ex­ cluded that all forms of nationalism are reac­ ported from China. If anything, for those tionary. As a result of its staunch antinational­ Maoists schooled in the Old Left, its source ism, the PLP opposed affirmative action and can be found in Khrushchev's revelations at black and Latino trade union caucuses~posi­ the Twentieth Congress of the Communist tions that undermined the PLP's relationship Party Soviet Union in 1956, which prompted with black community activists. In fact, the an antirevisionist movement throughout the PLP's connections to the New Left in general pro-Stalinist left. Out of the debates within were damaged in part because of its attack on the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) the Black Panther Party and the black student emerged several organizations pledging to movement. PLP members were thrown out of

Souls • Fall1999 11 Black Like Mao

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Malcolm X, they dared to look the white 1969 with the help of several radical nation­ community in the face and say: "We don't alist groups, including the Panthers, the think your civilization is worth the effort of Young Lords, and the Brown Berets. 19 any black man to try to integrate into." This Nevertheless, predominantly white Marx­ to many Afro-Americans is an act of defi­ ist-Leninist-Maoist parties were not the pri­ ance that is truly revolutionary." mary vehicle for the Maoist-inspired black left. Most black radicals of the late 1950s and In another essay, which appeared in Stud­ early 1960s discovered China by way of anti­ ies on the Left in 1962, Cruse was even more colonial struggles in Africa and the Cuban explicit about the global character of revolu­ Revolution. Ghana's independence in 1957 tionary nationalism. He argued that black was cause to celebrate, and the CIA-spon­ people in the United States were living under sored assassination of Patrice Lumumba in domestic colonialism and that their struggles the Congo inspired protest from all black ac­ must be seen as part of the worldwide anti­ tivist circles. The Cuban Revolution and Fi­ colonial movement. "The failure of American del Castro's infamous residency at Harlem's Marxists," he wrote, "to understand the bond Hotel Theresa during his visit to the U.N. between the Negro and the colonial peoples brought black people face-to-face with an of the world has led to their failure to develop avowed socialist who extended a hand of sol­ theories that would be of value to Negroes in idarity to people of color the world over. In­ the United States." In his view, the former deed, dozens of black radicals not only pub­ colonies were the vanguard of the revolution, licly defended the Cuban revolution but and at the forefront of this new socialist revo­ visited Cuba with groups like the Fair Play lution were Cuba and China.22 for Cuba Committee. 20 One of these visitors Revolutions in Cuba, Africa, and China was Harold Cruse, himself an ex-Communist had a similar effect on Amiri Baraka, who a still committed to Marxism. He believed the decade and a half later would found the Cuban, Chinese, and African revolutions Maoist-inspired Revolutionary Communist could revitalize radical thought because they League (RCL). Touched by his visit to Cuba demonstrated the revolutionary potential of and the assassination of Lumumba, Baraka nationalism. In a provocative essay published began contributing essays to a new magazine in the New Leader in 1962, Cruse wrote that called African Revolution, edited by the Al­ the new generation is looking to the former gerian nationalist leader Ben Bella. As colonial world for its leaders and insights, Baraka explained it, and among its heroes are Mao: India and China had gotten their formal inde­ Already they have a pantheon of modem he­ pendence before the coming of the 50s, and roes-Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou by the time the 50s had ended, there were Toure in Africa; Fidel Castro in Latin Amer­ many independent African nations (though ica; Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, in New with varying degrees of neocolonialism). York; Robert Williams in the South; and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah had hoisted the Mao Tse-Tung in China. These men seem black star over the statehouse in Accra, and heroic to the Afro-Americans not because of Nkrumah's pronouncements and word of his their political philosophy, but because they deeds were glowing encouragement to col­ were either former colonials who achieved ored people all over the world. When the complete independence, or because, like Chinese exploded their first A-bomb I wrote

12 Souls • Fall1999 Black Like Mao

a poem saying, in effect, that time for the col­ Chinese diplomatic core in Ghana, she ored peoples had rebegun.23 would have had difficulty not developing a deep internationalist outlook. Conversations The Ghana-China matrix is perhaps best with Du Bois during his last days in Ghana embodied in the career of Vicki Garvin, a only reinforced her internationalism and kin­ stalwart radical who traveled in Harlem's dled her interest in the Chinese revolution. black left circles during the postwar period. Indeed, through Du Bois Garvin got a job as Raised in a black working-class family in a "polisher" for the English translations of New York, Garvin spent her summers work­ the Peking Review and a teaching position at ing in the garment industry to supplement the Shanghai Foreign Language Institute. her family's income. As early as her high She remained in China from 1964 to 1970, school years, she became active in black building bridges be­ protest politics, supporting efforts by Adam tween the black free­ Clayton Powell Jr. to obtain better paying dom struggle, African jobs for African Americans in Harlem and independence move­ creating black history clubs dedicated to ments, and the Chi­ building library resources. After earning her nese Revolution. 25 B.A. in political science from Hunter Col­ For Huey Newton, a lege and M.A. in economics from Smith Col­ future founder of the lege in Northhampton, she spent the war Black Panther Party, years working for the National War Labor the African revolution Board and continued on as an organizer for seemed even less cru­ the United Office and Professional Workers cial than events in of America (UOPWA)-CIO and national re­ Cuba and China. As a search director and cochair of the Fair Em­ student at Merritt Col­ ployment Practices Committee. During the lege in the early 1960s, postwar purges of the left in the CIO, Garvin he read a little existentialism, began attend­ was a strong voice of protest and a sharp ing meetings sponsored by the Progressive critic of the CIO's failure to organize in the Labor Party, and supported the Cuban Revo­ South. As executive secretary of the New lution. Not surprising, Newton began to read York chapter of the National Negro Labor Marxist literature voraciously. Mao, in partic­ Council and vice president of the national or­ ular, left a lasting impression: "My conver­ ganization, Garvin established close ties to sion was complete when I read the four vol­ Malcolm X and helped him arrange part of umes of Mao Tse-Tung to learn more about his tour of Africa. 24 the Chinese Revolution. "26 Thus, well before Garvin joined the black intellectual exo­ the founding of the Black Panther Party, dus to Nkrumah's Ghana, where she initially Newton was steeped in Mao Zedong thought roomed with the poet Maya Angelou and as well as the writings of Che Guevara and eventually moved into a house next door to Frantz Fanon. "Mao and Fanon and Guevara Du Bois. She spent two years in Accra, sur­ all saw clearly that the people had been rounded by several key black intellectuals stripped of their birthright and their dignity, and artists, including Julian Mayfield, the not by a philosophy or mere words, but at artist Tom Feelings, and the cartoonist Ollie gunpoint. They had suffered a holdup by Harrington. As a radical who taught conver­ gangsters, and rape; for them, the only way to sational English to the Cuban, Algerian, and win freedom was to meet force with force.""

Souls • Fall1999 13 Black Like Mao

The Chinese and Cubans' willingness "to Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) meet force with force" also made these revo­ and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) lutions attractive to black radicals in the age met in a small group to discuss the signifi­ of nonviolent passive resistance. Of course, cance of Williams's work in Monroe and his the era had its share of armed struggle in the subsequent exile. Led by Donald Freeman, a South, with groups like the Deacons for De­ black student at Case Western Reserve in fense and Justice and Gloria Richardson's Cleveland, the group's main core consisted of Cambridge movement defending nonviolent a newly formed organization made up of protesters when necessary. But the figure Central State College students at Wilberforce who best embodied black traditions of armed calling themselves Challenge. Members of self-defense was Robert Williams, a hero to Challenge were especially taken with Harold the new wave of black internationalists Cruse's essay, "Revolutionary Nationalism 2 whose importance almost rivaled that of Mal­ and the Afro-American," ' which was circu­ cohn X.'" A former U.S. Marine with exten­ lated widely among young black militants. sive military training, Williams earned noto­ Inspired by Cruse's interpretation of the riety in 1957 for forming armed self-defense global importance of the black freedom groups in Monroe, North Carolina, to fight struggle, Freeman hoped to turn Challenge the Ku Klux Klan. Two years later, into a revolutionary nationalist movement Williams's statement that black people must akin to the Nation of Islam but using the di­ "meet violence with violence" as the only rect action tactics of SNCC. After a lengthy way to end injustice in an uncivilized South debate, Challenge members decided to dis­ led to his suspension as president of the Mon­ solve the organization in the spring of 1962 roe Chapter of the NAACP. and form the Revolutionary Action Commit­ Williams's break with the NAACP and his tee (RAM, originally called the "Reform" open advocacy of armed self-defense pushed Action Movement so as not to scare the uni­ him further left, into the orbit of the Socialist versity administration), with its primary lead­ Workers Party, the Workers World Party, and ers being Freeman, Max Stanford, and Wanda some members of the old CPUSA. By 1961, Marshall. A few months later they moved as a result of trumped-up kidnapping charges their base to Philadelphia; began publishing a and a federal warrant for his arrest, Williams bimonthly paper called Black America and a and his family were forced to flee the country one-page newsletter called RAM Speaks; and seek political asylum in Cuba. During the made plans to build a national movement ori­ next four years, Cuba became Williams's ented toward revolutionary nationalism. base for promoting black world revolution youth organizing, and armed self-defense; and elaborating an internationalist ideology and recruited several Philadelphia activists to that embraced black nationalism and Third the group, including Ethel Johnson (who had World solidarity. worked with Robert Williams in Monroe), Stan Daniels, and Playthell Benjamin.") The Revolutionary Action Movement RAM represented the first serious and sus­ tained attempt in the postwar period to wed Williams's flight to Cuba partly inspired the Marxism, black nationalism, and Third World creation of the Revolutionary Action Move­ internationalism into a coherent revolution­ ment (RAM). In Ohio around 1961, black ary program. In Max Stanford's view, RAM members of Students for a Democratic Soci­ "attempted to apply Marxism-Leninism Mao ety (SDS) as well as activists in the Student Tse-Tung thought" to the conditions of black

14 Souls • Fall 1999 people and "advanced the theory that the had founded the African-American Party of Black liberation movement in the U.S. was National Liberation in 1963, which formed a part of the vanguard of the world socialist provisional government and elected Robert 3 revolution." 11 Besides looking to Robert Williams as premier in exile. ' RAM mem­ Williams, young RAM militants sought polit­ bers also turned to Detroit's legendary ex­ ical guidance from a number of black former Trotskyists James and Grace Lee Boggs, for­ Communists who had either been expelled mer comrades of C.L.R. James, whose for "ultraleftism'' or ''bourgeois national ism" Marxist and Pan-Africanist writings greatly or bolted the party because of its "revision­ int1uenccd RAM members as well as other ism." Among this group of elders were New Left activists. 11 Harold Cruse, Harry Haywood, Abner Berry, As RAM grew, it developed a following in and "Queen Mother" Audley Moore. Moore other parts of the country, though it continued would go on to become one of RAM's most to remain semi-underground and very loosely important mentors on the East Coast. offering organized. Much like the African Blood members training in black nationalist thought Brotherhood of the 1920s or the group of rad­ and Marxism. The Queen Mother's home, ical intellectuals who published Studies 011 which she affectionately called Mount Addis the Left, RAM made a contribution to the Ababa, practically served as a school for a struggle that remained largely at the level of new generation of young black radicals. She theory rather than practice. In the South,

Souls • Fall1999 15 Black Like Mao

RAM built a small but significant following lent passive resistance drew them closer to at Fisk University, the training ground for Malcolm X and Third World liberation many leading SNCC activists. In May 1964, movements. Not surprising, through his trip for example, RAM members held the first to Cuba in 1964 Allen discovered RAM. Afro-American Student Conference on Black Allen's travel companions included a contin­ Nationalism on Fisk's campus.'4 In Northern gent of black militants from Detroit: Luke California, RAM grew primarily out of the Tripp, Charles ("Mao") Johnson, Charles Afro-American Association. Founded by Simmons, and General Baker. All were Donald Warden in 1962, the Afro-American members of the student group Uhuru, and all Association consisted of students from the went on to play key roles in the formation of University of California at Berkeley and the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement Merritt College-many of whom, such as (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Leslie and Jim Lacy, Cedric Robinson, Ernest Black Workers. Incredibly, Max Stanford Allen, and Huey Newton, would go on to was already on the island visiting Robert play important roles as radical activists/intel­ Williams. When it was time to go back to the lectuals. In Los Angeles, the president of the states, Allen and the Detroit group were Afro-American Association was a young man committed to building RAM. Allen stopped named Ron Everett, who later changed his in Cleveland to meet with RAM members on name to Ron Karenga and went on to found his cross-country bus trip back to Oakland. US Organization. The Afro-American Asso­ Armed with copies of Robert Williams's ciation quickly developed a reputation as a Crusader magazine and related RAM mate­ group of militant intellectuals willing to de­ rial, Allen returned to Oakland intent on es­ bate anyone. By challenging professors, de­ tablishing RAM's presence in the East Bay. bating groups such as the Young Socialist Al­ Never more than a handful of people-folks liance, and giving public lectures on black such as Isaac Moore, Kenn Freeman (Ma­ history and culture, these young men left a madou Lumumba), Bobby Seale (a future deep impression on fellow students as well as founder of the Black Panther Party), and the black community. In the East Bay, where Doug Allen (Ernie's brother)-the group es­ the tradition of soapbox speakers had died in tablished a base at Merritt College through the 1930s, except for individual campaigns the Soul Students Advisory Council. The led by the Communist-led Civil Rights Con­ group's intellectual and cultural presence, gress during the early 1950s, the Afro-Ameri­ however, was broadly felt. Allen, Freeman, can Association was walking and talking and others founded a journal called Soul­ proof that a vibrant, highly visible militant book: The Revolutionary Journal of the intellectual culture could exist. Black World, which published prose and po­ Meanwhile, Progressive Labor (PL) had etry that is best described as left black na­ begun sponsoring trips to Cuba and recruited tionalist in orientation. Freeman, in particu­ several radical black students in the East Bay lar, was highly respected among RAM to go along. Among them was Ernest Allen, a activists and widely read. He constantly U.C. Berkeley transfer from Merritt College pushed RAM members to think about black who had been forced out of the Afro-Ameri­ struggle in a global context. The editors of can Association. A working-class kid from Sou/book also developed ties with Old Left Oakland, Allen was part of a generation of black radicals, most notably the former black radicals whose dissatisfaction with the Communist Harry Haywood, whose work Civil Rights movement's strategy of nonvio- they published in an early issue. 35

16 Souls • Fall 1999 Black Like Mao

Although RAM as a movement never re­ in the cities, knocking out the electrical ceived the glory or publicity bestowed on power first, then transportation and guerrilla groups like the Black Panther Party, its influ­ warfare in the countryside in the South. With ence far exceeded its numbers-not unlike the cities powerless, the oppressor will be the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB) four helpless.'7 decades earlier. Indeed, like the ABB, RAM remained largely an underground organiza­ The revolution was clearly seen as a man's tion that devoted more time to agitprop work job, since women barely figured in the equa­ than actual organizing. Leaders such as Max tion. Indeed, one of the striking facts about Stanford identified with the Chinese peasant the history of the antirevisionist left is how rebels who led the Communist Party to vic­ male dominated it remained. Although tory. They seized on Mao's famous line: "The Wanda Marshall had been one of the found­ enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy ing members of RAM, she did not hold a na­ camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; tional leadership post in 1964. Aside from the enemy retreats, we pursue."36 And they promoting the creation of "women's took Mao quite literally, advocating armed leagues," the purpose of which would be "to insurrection and drawing inspiration and organize black women who work in white ideas directly from Robert Williams's theory homes," RAM remained relatively silent on of guerrilla warfare in the urban United women's liberation. States. RAM leaders actually believed such a RAM's masculinist orientation has a lot to war was not only possible but could be won do with the fact that its leaders saw them­ in ninety days. The combination of mass selves as urban guerrillas, members of an all­ chaos and revolutionary discipline was the black version of Mao's Red Army. Not all key to victory. The fall 1964 issue of Black RAM members saw themselves this way, but America predicted Armageddon: those who did were deeply committed to a set of revolutionary ethics Mao laid down for his Black men and women in the Armed Forces own party cadres and members of the Peo­ will defect and come over to join the Black ple's Army. We see this very clearly in Liberation forces. Whites who claim they RAM's "Code of Cadres," a set of highly di­ want to help the revolution will be sent into dactic rules of conduct members were ex­ the white communities to divide them, fight pected to live by. Here are some examples: the fascists and frustrate the efforts of the counter-revolutionary forces. Chaos will be A Revolutionary nationalist maintains everywhere and with the breakdown of mass the highest respect for all authority communications, mutiny will occur in great within the party. numbers in all facets of the oppressors' gov­ A Revolutionary nationalist cannot be ernment. The stock market will fall; Wall corrupted by money, honors or any Street will stop functioning; Washington, other personal gains. D.C. will be torn apart by riots. Officials A Revolutionary nationalist will unhesi­ everywhere will run-run for their lives. The tatingly subordinate his personal in­ George Lincoln Rockefellers, Kennedys, terest to those of the vanguard [with­ Vanderbilts, Hunts, Johnsons, Wallaces, Bar­ out] hesitation. netts, etc., will be the first to go. The revolu­ A Revolutionary nationalist will main­ tion will "strike by night and spare none." tain the highest level of morality and ... The Black Revolution will use sabotage will never take as much as a needle or

Souls • Fall1999 17 Black Like Mao

single piece of thread, from the ness."4° For black revolutionaries, the moral masses-Brothers and Sisters will and ethical dimension of Mao's thought cen­ maintain the utmost respect for one tered on the notion of personal transforma­ another and will never misuse or take tion. It was a familiar lesson, embodied in the advantage of one another for personal lives of Malcolm X and (later) George Jack­ gain~-and will never misinterpret the son: the idea that one possesses the revolu­ doctrine of revolutionary nationalism tionary will to transform himself. (These nar­ for any reason.'' ratives are almost exclusively male despite the growing number of memoirs by radical The similarities with Quotations from black women). Whether or not RAM mem­ Chairman Mao Ts·e- Tung are striking. The bers lived by the "Code of Cadres," Maoist last example comes straight out of one of ethics ultimately served to reinforce Mal­ Mao's 'Three Main Rules of Discipline," cohn's status as a revolutionary role model. which urges cadres to "not take a single nee­ RAM's twelve-point program called for dle or piece of thread from the masses." Self­ the development of freedom schools, national lessness and total commitment to the masses black student organizations, rit1e clubs, black is another theme that dominates the Quota­ farmer cooperatives-not just for economic tions. Again, the comparisons are notewor­ development but to keep "community and thy: "At no time and in no circumstances," guerrilla forces going for a while"-and a said Mao, "should a Communist place his liberation guerrilla army made up of youth personal interests first; he should subordinate and unemployed. RAM placed special em­ them to the interests of the nation and of the phasis on internationalism, pledging support masses. Hence. selfishness. slacking:. cotTup­ for national liberation movements in Africa. tion, seeking the limelight, and so on are Asia, and Latin America as well as the adop­ most contemptible, while selflessness, work­ tion of "Pan-African socialism." In line with ing with all one's energy, whole-hearted de­ Cruse's seminal essay, "Revolutionary Na­ votion to public duty, and quiet hard work tionalism and the Afro-American," RAM will command respect. " 19 members saw themselves as colonial subjects Maoism's emphasis on revolutionary fighting a "colonial war at home." As Stan­ ethics and moral transformation, in theory at ford wrote in an internal document, titled least, resonated with black religious tradi­ "Projects and Problems of the Revolutionary tions (as well as American Protestantism Movement" (1964), "RAM's position is that more generally), and like the Nation of Islam, the Afro-American is not a citizen of the black Maoists preached self-restraint, order, U.S.A., denied his rights, but rather he is a and discipline. It is quite possible that in the colonial subject enslaved. This position says midst of a counterculture that embodied ele­ that the Black people in the U.S.A. are a cap­ ments of hedonism and drug use, a new wave tive nation suppressed and that their fight is of student and working-class radicals found not for integration into the white community Maoist ethics attractive. On his return from but one of nationalliberation."41 China, Robert Williams-in many respects As colonial subjects with a right to self­ RAM's founding father-insisted that all determination, RAM saw Afro-America as a young black activists "undergo personal and de facto member of the nonaligned nations. moral transformation. There is a need for a RAM members even identified themselves as stringent revolutionary code of moral ethics. part of the "Bandung world," going so far as Revolutionaries are instruments of righteous- to hold a conference in November 1964 in

18 Souls + Fall1999 Black Like Mao

Nashville called "The Black Revolution's ing the idea that socialist revolution will arise Relationship to the Bandung World." In a in the developed countries of the West, RAM !965 article published in RAM's journal insisted that the only true revolutionary solu­ Black America, members started to develop a tion is the "dictatorship of the world by the theory of "Bandung Humanism" or "Revolu­ Black Underclass through World Black Rev­ tionary Black Internationalism," which ar­ olution." Of course, the authors were not gued that the battle between Western imperi­ woriGng from today's definitions; RAM used ;lism and the Third World-more than the "underclass" to encompass all peoples of battle between labor and capital-repre­ color in Asia, Latin American, Africa, and sented the most fundamental contradiction in elsewhere; the "Black Underclass" was our time. They linked the African-American merely a synonym for the colonial world. freedom struggle with what was happening in China was in a bitter fight to defend its own China, Zanzibar, Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, freedom. Now the rest of the "black" world and Algeria, and they characterized their must follow suit: work as part of Mao's international strategy of encircling Western capitalist countries and The Black Underclass has only one alterna­ challenging imperialism. After 1966, the term tive to free itself of colonialism, imperialism, "Bandung Humanism" was dropped entirely capitalism and neo-colonialism; that is to and replaced with "Black Internationalism." completely destroy Western (bourgeois) civi­ Precisely what "Black Internationalism" lization (the cities of the world) through a meant was laid out in an incredibly bold World Black Revolution and establishing a thirty-six-page pamphlet published by RAM Revolutionary World Black Dictatorship can in 1966, titled The World Black Revolution. bring about the end of exploitation of man by Loosely patterned on the Communist Mani­ mankind and the new revolutionary world be festo, the pamphlet identified strongly with created." China against both the capitalist West and the Soviet empire. The "emergence of Revolu­ To coordinate this revolution, RAM called tionary China began to polarize caste and for the creation of a Black International and class contradictions within the world, in both the creation of a "People's Liberation Army the bourgeoisie {sic j imperialist camp and on a world scale." also in the European bourgeois communist­ For all of its strident nationalism, The socialist camp."" In other words, China was World Black Revolution concludes that black the wedge that sharpened contradictions be­ nationalism "is really intemationalism." Only tween colonial peoples and the West. Reject- by demolishing white nationalism/white

Souls • Fall1999 19 Black Like Mao

power can liberation be achieved for every­ publicized articles were followed by a series one. Not only will national boundaries be of police raids on the homes of RAM mem­ eliminated with the "dictatorship of the Black bers in Philadelphia and New York City. In Underclass," but "the need for nationalism in June 1967, RAM members were rounded up its aggressive form will be eliminated."44 and charged with conspiracy to instigate a This is a pretty remarkable statement given riot, poison police officers with potassium RAM's social and ideological roots. But cyanide, and assassinate Roy Wilkins and rather than representing a unified position, Whitney Young. A year later, under the re­ the statement reflects various tensions that pressive atmosphere of the FBI's Counter In­ persisted throughout RAM's history. On one telligence Program (COINTELPRO), RAM side were nationalists who felt that revolu­ transformed itself into the Black Liberation tionaries should fight for the black nation Party, or the African American Party of Na­ first and build socialism separate from the tional Liberation. By 1969, RAM had pretty rest of the United States. On the other side much dissolved, though its members opted to were socialists like James and Grace Boggs "melt back into the community and infiltrate who wanted to know who would rule the existing Black organizations," continue to "white" nation and what such a presence push the twelve-point program, and develop would mean for black freedom. They also re­ study groups that focused on the "Science of jected efforts to resurrect the "Black Nation" Black Internationalism, and the thought of thesis-the old Communist line that people Chairman Rob [Robert] Williams."48 in black-majority counties of the South (the COINTELPRO operations only partly ex­ "black belt") have a right to secede from the plain the dissolution of RAM. Some of its union. The Boggses contended that the real members moved on to other organizations, source of power lies in the cities, not the such as the Republic of New Africa and the rural black belt. In January 1965, James Black Panther Party. But RAM's declining Boggs resigned from his post as Ideological membership and ultimate demise can be Chairman. partly attributed to strategic errors on its part. After years as an underground organiza­ Indeed, its members' understanding of the tion, RAM was identified in a series of "ex­ current situation in the ghettos and their spe­ poses" in Life magazine45 and Esquire<~{, as cific strategies of mobilization suggest that one of the leading extremist groups "plotting they were not very good Maoists after all. a War on 'Whitey."' The "Peking-backed" Mao's insistence on the protracted nature of group was considered not only armed and revolution was not taken to heart; at one point dangerous but "impressively well read in rev­ RAM suggested that the war for liberation olutionary literature-from Marat and Lenin would probably take only ninety days. And to Mao, Che Guevara and Frantz Fanon." because RAM leaders focused on confronting (The Harlem Branch of the Progressive La­ the state head-on and attacking black leaders bor Party responded to the articles with a they deemed reformists, they failed to build a pamphlet titled The Plot Against Black Amer­ strong base in black urban communities. Fur­ ica, which argued that China was not financ­ thermore, despite their staunch international­ ing revolution, just setting a revolutionary ism, they did not reach out to other oppressed example by its staunch anti-imperialism. The "nationalities" in the United States. Never­ real causes of black rebellion, the pamphlet theless, what RAM and Robert Williams did insisted, can be found in the conditions of do was to elevate revolutionary black nation­ ghetto life.)47 Not surprising, these highly alism to a position of critical theoretical im-

20 Souls • Fall1999 Black Like Mao portance for the antirevisionist left in general. dence to this view in his widely circulated They provided an organizational and practi­ April 1968 statement "In Support of the Afro­ cal example of what Harold Cruse, Frantz American Struggle Against Violent Repres­ Fanon, and Malcolm X were trying to ad­ sion." The statement was delivered during a vance in their writings and speeches. More massive demonstration in China protesting important, they found theoretical justification the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., at for revolutionary black nationalism in Mao which Robert Williams and Vicki Garvin Zedong thought, especially after the launch­ were among the featured speakers. According ing of the Cultural Revolution in China. to Garvin, "millions of Chinese demonstra­ tors" marched in the pouring rain to de­ Return of the Black Belt nounce American racism. 5° Responding to the rebellions touched off by King's assassina­ No matter what one may think of the Cultural tion, Mao characterized these urban uprisings Revolution, it projected to the world-partic­ as "a new clarion call to all the exploited and ularly to those sympathetic to China and to oppressed people of the United States to fight revolutionary movements generally-a vi­ against the barbarous rule of the monopoly sion of society where divisions between the capitalist class."51 Even more than his 1963 powerful and powerless are blurred, where statement, Mao's words endowed the urban status and privilege do not necessarily distin­ riots with historic importance in the world of guish leaders from the led. The socialists Paul revolutionary upheaval. Sweezey and Leo Huberman, editors of the independent socialist journal Monthly Re­ The Black Panther Party view, recognized the huge implications such a revolution had for the urban poor in the It was in the context of the urban rebellions United States: "Just imagine what would hap­ that several streams of black radicalism, in­ pen in the United States if a President were to cluding RAM, converged and gave birth to invite the poor in this country, with special the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in emphasis on the blacks in the urban ghettos, Oakland, California. Perhaps the most visible to win the war on poverty for themselves, black organization promoting Mao Zedong promising them the protection of the army thought, by some accounts the Panthers were against reprisals !"49 Of course, black people probably the least serious about reading in the United States were not regarded by the Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist writings and de­ state as "the people." Their problems were a veloping a revolutionary ideology. Founded drain on society and their ungrateful rioting by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, a former and the proliferation of revolutionary organi­ RAM member, the party went well beyond zations did not elicit much sympathy for the the boundaries of Merritt College and re­ black poor. cruited the "lumpen proletariat." Much of the For many in the New Left, African Ameri­ rank and file engaged more in sloganeering cans were not only "the people" but the most than anything else, and their Bible was the revolutionary sector of the working class. "little red book." The Cultural Revolution's emphasis on elimi­ That the Panthers were, at least in rhetoric nating hierarchies and empowering the op­ and program, Marxist was one of the sources pressed reinforced the idea that black Libera­ of their dispute with Ron Karenga's US Or­ tion lay at the heart of the new American ganization and other groups they derisively Revolution. Mao Zedong himself gave ere- dismissed as cultural nationalists. Of course,

Souls • Fall1999 21 Black Like Mao

Malcolm X, 1963. Ed Druck!lmpact Visuals.

not only did the Panthers have their own cul­ ishly and say there is no possibility of align­ tural nationalist agenda but the so-called cul­ ing with some righteous white revolutionar­ tural nationalists were not a monolith or uni­ ies, or other poor and oppressed peoples in formly procapitalist. And the divisions this country who might come to see the light between these groups were exacerbated by about the fact that it's the capitalist system COINTELPRO. Still, there was a fundamen­ they must get rid of." tal difference between the Panthers' evolving ideology of socialism and class struggle and How the Panthers arrived at this position that of black nationalist groups, even on the and the divisions within the party over their left. As Bobby Seale explained in a March stance is a long and complicated story that we 1969 interview, cannot address here. For our purposes, we want to make a few brief points about the We're talking about socialism. The cultural party's embrace of Mao Zedong thought and nationalists say that socialism won't do any­ its position vis-a-vis black self-determina­ thing for us. There's the contradiction be­ tion. For Huey Newton, whose contribution tween the old and the new. Black people to the party's ideology rivals that of Eldridge have no time to practice black racism and the Cleaver and George Jackson, the source of masses of black people do not hate white the Panther's Marxism was the Chinese and people just because of the color of their Cuban revolutions precisely because their skin .... [W]e're not going to go out fool- analysis grew out of their respective histories

22 Souls • Fall1999 Black Like Mao rather than from the pages of Capital. The colony with an inherent right to self-determi­ Chinese and Cuban examples, according to nation. Yet, unlike many other black or inter­ Newton, empowered the Panthers to develop racial Maoist groups, they never advocated their own unique program and to discard the­ secession or the creation of a separate state. oretical insights from Marx and Lenin that Rather, describing black people as colonial have little or no application to black reality. 53 subjects was a way of characterizing the ma­ Indeed, Malcolm X clearly exerted a strong terialist nature of racism; it was more of a ideological influence on the Panthers. metaphor than an analytical concept. Self­ Eldridge Cleaver was a little more explicit determination was understood to mean com­ about the role of Maoism and the thought of munity control within the urban environ­ the Korean Communist leader Kim li Sung in ment, not necessarily the establishment of a reshaping Marxism-Leninism for the benefit black nation.'' In a paper delivered at the of national liberation struggles of Third Peace and Freedom Party's founding con­ World peoples. In a 1968 pamphlet titled, On vention in March 1968, Cleaver tried to clar­ the Ideology of the Black Panther Party (Part ify the relationship between interracial unity 1), Cleaver made clear that the Panthers were in the U.S. revolution and "National Libera­ a Marxist-Leninist party but added that nei­ tion in the Black Colony." He essentially ther Marx, Engels, Lenin, nor any of their called for a dual approach in which, on the contemporary followers offered much insight one hand, black and white radicals worked with regard to understanding and fighting together to create coalitions of revolutionary racism. The lesson here was to adopt and al­ organizations and develop that political and ter what was useful and reject what was not. military machinery that could overthrow "With the founding of the Democratic Peo­ capitalism and imperialism. On the other ple's Republic of Korea in 1948 and the Peo­ hand, he called for a U.N.-sponsored pleb­ ple's Republic of China in 1949," Cleaver iscite that would allow black people to deter­ wrote, mine whether they wished to integrate or separate. Such a plebiscite, he argued, would something new was interjected into Marx­ bring clarity to black people on the question ism-Leninism, and it ceased to be just a nar­ of self-determination, just as first-wave inde­ row, exclusively European phenomenon. pendence movements in Africa had to decide Comrade Kim II Sung and Comrade Mao whether they wanted to maintain some Tse-Tung applied the classical principles of altereddominion status or achieve complete Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of their independence." own countries and thereby made the ideol­ Cleaver represented a wing of the party ogy into something useful for their people. more interested in guerrilla warfare than re­ But they rejected that part of the analysis that building society or doing the hard work of was not beneficial to them and had only to grassroots organizing. The attraction to Mao, do with the welfare of Europe." Kim 11 Sung, Guevara, and for that matter Fanon were their writings on revolutionary In Cleaver's view, the sharpest critique of violence and people's wars. Many self-styled Western Marxism's blindness with regard to Panther theoreticians focused so much on de­ race came from Frantz Fanon. veloping tactics to sustain the immanent rev­ Seeing themselves as part of a global na­ olution that they skipped over a good deal of tional liberation movement, the Panthers Mao's writings. Recognizing the problem, also spoke of the black community as a Newton sought to move the party away from

Souls • Fall1999 23 Black Like Mao

an emphasis on guerrilla warfare and vio­ eluded Mao's Four Essays on Philosophy and lence to a deeper, richer discussion of what lengthy passages from Lenin's selected the party's vision for the future might entail. works, turned out to be too much and they Shortly after his release from prison in Au­ eventually left the group amid a stormy de­ gust 1970, he proposed the creation of an bate.59 "Ideological Institute" where participants ac­ Perhaps the least read section of Quota­ tually read and taught what he regarded as the tions from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, at least "classics"-Marx, Mao, and Lenin, as well by men, was the five-page chapter on as Aristotle, Plato, Rousseau, Kant, Kierke­ women. At a time when the metaphors for gaard, and Nietzsche. Unfortunately, the Ide­ black liberation were increasingly masculin­ ological Institute did not amount to much; ized and black men in the movement not only few party members saw the use of abstract ignored the struggle for women's liberation theorizing or the relevance of some of these but perpetuated gender oppression, even the writings to revolution. The fact that Quota­ most Marxist of the black nationalist move­ tions from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung read ments belittled the "woman question." The more or less like a handbook for guerrillas Black Panther Party was certainly no excep­ did not help matters much. Even Fanon was tion. Indeed, it was during the same historic read pretty selectively, his chapter "Concern­ meeting of the SDS in 1969, where the Pan­ ing Violence" being a perpetual favorite thers invoked Marx, Lenin, and Mao to expel among militants. George Jackson contributed the PLP for its position on the national ques­ to the Panther's theoretical emphasis on war, tion, that Panther Minister of Information since much of his own writings, from Rufus Walls gave his infamous speech about Soledad Brother57 to Blood in My Eye, 58 drew the need to have women in the movement be­ on Mao primarily to discuss armed resistance cause they possessed "pussy power." Clearly under fascism. Efforts to read the works of a vernacular takeoff from Mao's line that Marx, Lenin, or Mao beyond issues related to "China's women are a vast reserve of labour armed rebellion did not always find a willing power [that] ... should be tapped in the audience among the Panthers. Sid Lemelle, struggle to build a great socialist country,"60 then a radical activist at California State Uni­ Walls's statement turned out to be a pro­ versity in Los Angeles, recalls being in con­ foundly antifeminist defense of women's par­ tact with a few Panthers who had joined a ticipation. study group sponsored by the California Although China's own history on the Communist League. The reading, which in- woman question is pretty dismal, Mao's

24 Souls · •• Fall 1999 Black Like Mao dictum that "women hold up half the sky" as formations. One obvious example is the well as his brief writings on women's equal­ Black Vanguard Party, another Bay Area ity and participation in the revolutionary Maoist group active in the mid to late 1970s; process endowed women's liberation with its publication Juche! maintained a consistent some revolutionary legitimacy on the left. Of socialist-feminist perspective. Michelle course, Maoism did not make the movement: Gibbs (also known as Michelle Russell, her The fact is, women's struggles within the married name at the time) promoted a black New Left played the most important role in feminist ideology as a Detroit supporter of reshaping left movements toward a feminist the League of Revolutionary Black Workers agenda or at least putting feminism on the and a member of the Black Workers Con­ table. But for black women in the Panthers gress. A red diaper baby whose father, Ted suspicious of "white feminism," Mao's lan­ Gibbs, fought in the Spanish Civil War and guage on women's equality provided space who grew up in a household where Paul within the party to develop an incipient black Robeson and the artist Elizabeth Catlett were feminist agenda. As the newly appointed occasional guests, Gibbs's black socialist­ Minister of Information, Panther Elaine feminist perspective flowed from her politi­ Brown announced to a press conference soon cal experience; from the writings of black after returning from China in 1971, "The feminist writers; and from a panoply of radi­ Black Panther Party acknowledges the pro­ cal thinkers ranging from Malcolm, Fanon, gressive leadership of our Chinese comrades and Amilcar Cabral to Marx, Lenin, and in all areas of revolution. Specifically, we Mao.62 Conversely, the predominantly white embrace China's correct recognition of the radical feminist organization Redstockings proper status of women as equal to that of was not only influenced by Mao's writings men." 61 but modeled itself somewhat on the Black Even beyond the rhetoric, black women Power movement, particularly the move­ Panthers such as Lynn French, Kathleen ment's separatist strategies and identification Cleaver, Erica Huggins, Akua Njere, and As­ with the Third WorldY sata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) Ironically, the Black Panther Party's great­ sustained the tradition of carving out free est identification with China occurred at the spaces within existing male-dominated orga­ very moment when China's status among the nizations to challenge the multiple forms of left began to decline worldwide. Mao's will­ exploitation black working-class women ingness to host President Nixon and China's faced daily. Through the Panther's free support of the repressive governments of breakfast and educational programs, for ex­ Pakistan and Sri Lanka left many Maoists in ample, black women devised strategies that, the United States and elsewhere disillu­ in varying degrees, challenged capitalism, sioned. Nevertheless, Newton and Elaine racism, and patriarchy. Some African-Ameri­ Brown not only visited China on the eve of can women radicals rose to positions of Nixon's trip but announced that their entry prominence and sometimes by sheer example into electoral politics was inspired by China's contributed toward developing a militant, entry into the United Nations. Newton argued class-conscious black feminist perspective. that the Black Panthers' shift toward re­ In some instances, the growing strength of formist, electoral politics did not contradict a black left feminist perspective, buttressed "China's goal of toppling U.S. imperialism by certain Maoist slogans on the so-called nor [was it] an abnegation of revolutionary woman question, shaped future black Maoist principles. It was a tactic of socialist revolu-

Souls • Fall1999 25 Black Like Mao tion."64 Even more incredible was Newton's complete abandonment of black self-detenni­ The Black Nation nation, which he explained in terms of devel­ On the issue of black liberation, however, opments in the world economy. In 1971, he most U.S. Maoist organizations founded in concluded quite presciently that the global­ the early to mid-1970s took their lead from ization of capital rendered the idea of na­ Stalin, not Mao. Black people in the United tional sovereignty obsolete, even among the States were not simply proletarians in black socialist countries. Thus, black demands for skin but a nation, or as Stalin put it, "a histor­ self-determination were no longer relevant; ically evolved, stable community of lan­ the only viable strategy was global revolu­ guage, territory. economic life, and psycho­ tion. "Blacks in the U.S. have a special duty logical make-up manifested in a community to give up any claim to nationhood now more of culture.""" Antirevisionist groups that em­ than ever. The U.S. has never been our coun­ braced Stalin's definition of a nation, such as try; and realistically there's no territory for us the Communist Labor Party (CLP) and the to claim. Of all the oppressed people in the October League, also resurrected the old world, we are in the best position to inspire Communist Party's position that African global revolution. "65 Americans in the black-belt counties of the In many respects, Newton's position on the South constitute a nation and have a right to national question was closer to Mao's than secede if they wish. On the other hand, most of the self-prc,claimed Maoist organiza­ groups like Progressive Labor-once an ad­ tions that popped up in the early to late 1970s. vocate of "revolutionary nationalism"­ Despite his own statements in support of na­ moved to a position repudiating all forms of tional liberation movements and Lin Biao's nationalism by the start of the Cultural Revo­ "theory of democratic revolutions." Mao did lution. not support independent organizations along The CLP was perhaps the most consistent nationalist lines. To him, black nationalism advocate of black self-determination among looked like ethnic/racial particularism. He the antirevisionist movements. Founded in was, after all, a Chinese nationalist attempting 1968 largely by African Americans and Lati­ to unify peasants and proletarians and elimi­ nos, the CLP's roots can be traced to the old nate ethnic divisions within his own country. Provisional Organizing Committee (POC)­ We might recall his 1957 statement in which itself an outgrowth of the 1956 split in the he demanded that progressives in China "help CPUSA that led to the creation of Hammer unite the people of our various nationalities and Steel and the Progressive Labor move­ ... not divide them.""" Thus, although recog­ ment. Ravaged by a decade of internal splits, nizing that racism is a product of colonialism the POC had becom~ a predominantly black and imperialism, his 1968 statement insisted and Puerto Rican organization divided be­ that the "contradiction between the black tween New York and Los Angeles. In 1968, masses in the United States and U.S. ruling the New York leadership expelled their L.A. circles is a class contradiction .... The black comrades for, among other things, refusing to masses and the masses of white working peo­ denounce Stalin and Mao. In turn, the L.A. ple in the United States share common inter­ group, largely under the guidance of the ests and have common objectives to struggle veteran black Marxist Nelson Peery, founded for." 67 In other words, the black struggle is the California Communist League that same bound to merge with the working class move­ year and began recruiting young black and ment and overthrow capitalism. Chicano radical workers and intellectuals.

26 Souls • Fall1999 Black Like Mao

Peery's home in south central Los Angeles African roots manifest in the form of slave had already become somewhat of a hangout folktales and female head wraps. Peery cited for young black radicals after the Watts upris­ Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone, ing; he organized informal groups to study as well as the white imitators AI Jolson, history, political economy, and classic works Elvis Presley, and Tom Jones as examples of in Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought a shared culture. He even saw "soul" culture and entertained all sorts of activists, from embedded in "the custom of eating pigs' feet, Black Panthers to student activists from Cal neck bones, black eyed peas, greens, yams, State Los Angeles and L.A. Community Col­ and chitterlings [which] are all associated lege. The California Communist League sub­ with the region of the South, particularly the 7 sequently merged with a group of SDS mili­ Negro Nation." ' tants calling themselves the Marxist-Leninist Peery's positioning of Southern whites as Workers Association and formed the Com­ part of the Negro nation was a stroke of ge­ munist League in 1970. Two years later the nius, particularly since one of his intentions group changed its name again to the Commu­ was to destabilize racial categories. His com­ nist Labor Party."9 mitment to Stalin's definition of a nation Except for perhaps Harry Haywood's long weakened his argument, however. At the very essay, "Toward a Revolutionary Position on moment when mass migration and urbaniza­ the Negro Question" (first circulated in 1957 tion depleted the rural South of its black pop­ and kept in circulation throughout the 1960s ulation, Peery insisted that the black belt was and 1970s),'" Nelson Peery's pamphlet The the natural homeland of Negroes. He even at­ Negro National Colonial Question ( 1972) tempted to prove that a black peasantry and was probably the most widely read defense stable rural proletariat still existed in the of black self-determination in Marxist­ black belt. Because the land question was the Leninist-Maoist circles at ~he time. Peery foundation on which his understanding of was sharply criticized for his defense of the self-determination was built, he wound up term "Negro," a difficult position to maintain saying very little about the nationalization of in the midst of the Black Power movement. industry or socialized production. Thus, he But Peery had a point: National identity was could write in 1972, "the Negro national not about color. For him, the Negro nation colonial question can only be solved by a re­ was a historically evolved, stable community turn of the land to the people who have toiled with its own unique culture, language (or over it for centuries. In the Negro Nation this rather, dialect), and territory-the black-belt land redistribution will demand a combina­ counties and their surrounding areas, or es­ tion of state farms and cooperative enter­ sentially the thirteen states of the Old Con­ prises in order to best meet the needs of the federacy. Because Southern whites shared people under the conditions of modem mech­ with African Americans a common territory anized agriculture."" and by his account a common language and The Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) culture, they were also considered part of the (CP[ML]) also promoted a version of the "Negro nation." More precisely, Southern black-belt thesis, which it inherited from its whites composed the "Anglo-American mi­ earlier incarnation as the October League. The nority" within the Negro nation. As evi­ CP(ML) formed out of a merger between the denced in soul music, spirituals, and rock­ October League, based mainly in Los Ange­ and-roll, what emerged in the South, Peery les, and the Georgia Communist League in insisted, was a hybrid culture with strong 1972. 73 Many of its founding members came

Souls • Fall1999 27 Black Like Mao

out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement II Black people to return to claim their home­ (a faction within SDS), and a handful were land."76 Not surprising, these two contradic­ Old Left renegades like Harry Haywood and tory lines created confusion, compelling RCP Otis Hyde. Haywood's presence in the leaders to adopt an untenable position of de­ CP(ML) is significant, since he is considered fending the right of self-determination with­ one of the architects of the original black-belt out advocating it. Two years later, they thesis formulated at the Sixth Congress of the dropped the right of self-determination alto­ Communist International in 1928. According gether and, like the PLP, waged war on all to the updated CP(ML) formulation, Afro­ forms of "narrow" nationalism. Americans had the right to secede "to their Unlike any of the Maoist-oriented organi­ historic homeland in the Black Belt South."'• zations mentioned above, the Revolutionary But the document added the caveat that recog­ Communist League (RCL)-founded and nition of the right of self-determination did led by Amiri Baraka-grew directly out of not mean the group believed separation was the cultural nationalist movements of the late the most appropriate solution. It also intro­ 1960s. To understand the shifting positions duced the idea of regional autonomy (i.e., that of the RCL (and its precursors) with regard urban concentrations of African Americans to black liberation, we need to go back to can also exercise self-determination in their 1966, when Baraka founded Spirit House in own communities) and extended the slogan of Newark, New Jersey, with the help of local self-determination to Chicanos, Puerto Ri­ activists as well as folks he had worked with cans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, in Harlem's Black Arts Repertory Theater. and indigenous people in U.S. colonies (Pa­ Although Spirit House artists were involved cific Islands, Hawaii, Alaska, etc.). They were in local political organizing from the begin­ selective as to what sort of nationalist move­ ning, the police beating of Baraka and sev­ ments they would support, promising to back eral other activists during the Newark upris­ only revolutionary nationalism as opposed to ing in 1967 politicized them even further. reactionary nationalism. They helped organize a Black Power confer­ The Revolutionary Union, an outgrowth of ence in Newark after the uprising that at­ the Bay Area Revolutionary Union (BARU) tracted several national black leaders, in­ founded in 1969 with support from ex­ cluding Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, CPUSA members who had visited China, Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party, took the position that black people consti­ and Imari Obadele of the newly formed Re­ tuted "an oppressed nation of a new type."75 public of New Africa (partly an outgrowth of Because black people were primarily workers RAM). Shortly thereafter, Spirit House be­ concentrated in urban, industrial areas (what came the base for the Committee for a Uni­ BARU called a "deformed class structure"), fied Newark (CFUN), a new organization the group believed that self-determination made up of United Brothers, Black Commu­ should not take the form of secession. In­ nity Defense and Development, and Sisters stead, it should be realized through the fight of Black Culture. In addition to attracting against discrimination, exploitation, and po­ black nationalists, Muslims, and even a few lice repression in the urban centers. In 197 5, Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, CFUN bore the when the Revolutionary Union transformed mark of Ron Karenga's US Organization. itself into the Revolutionary Communist CFUN adopted Karenga's version of cultural Party (RCP), it continued to embrace the idea nationalism and worked closely with him. that black people constituted a nation of a Although tensions arose between Karenga new type but began to uphold "the right of and some of the Newark activists over his

28 Souls • Fal11999 Black Like Mao treatment of women and the overly central­ he had come to appreciate Marxism-Lenin­ ized leadership structure CFUN had im­ ism-Mao Zedong thought, he was not ready ported from the US Organization, the move­ to join a multiracial organization. The black ment continued to grow. In 1970, Baraka struggle was first and foremost. 79 renamed CFUN the Congress of African It is fitting that the most important source Peoples (CAP), transformed it into a national of Baraka's radicalization came out of Africa. organization, and at its founding convention Just as his first left turn after 1960 was broke with Karenga. CAP leaders sharply spurred on by the Cuban Revolution, the criticized Karenga's cultural nationalism and struggle in southern Africa prompted his passed resolutions that reflected a tum to the post-1970 turn to the left. The key event was left-including a proposal to raise funds to the creation of the African Liberation Support help build the Tanzania-Zambia railroad.77 Committee in 1971. It originated with a Several factors contributed to Baraka's left group of black nationalists led by Owusu turn in this period. One has to do with the Sadaukai, director of Malcolm X Liberation painful lesson he learned about the limita­ University in Greensboro, North Carolina, tions of black "petty bourgeois" politicians. who traveled to Mozambique under the aegis After playing a pivotal role in the 1970 elec­ of the Front for the Liberation of Mozam­ tion of Kenneth Gibson, Newark's first black bique (FRELIMO). FRELIMO's president, mayor, Baraka witnessed an increase in po­ Samora Machel (who, coincidentally, had lice repression (including attacks on CAP been in China the same time as Huey New­ demonstrators) and a failure on the part of ton), and other militants persuaded Sadaukai Gibson to deliver what he had promised the and his colleagues that the most useful role African-American community. Feeling be­ African Americans could play in support of trayed and disillusioned, Baraka broke with anticolonialism was to challenge U.S. capi­ Gibson in 1974, though he did not give up talism from within and let the world know the entirely on the electoral process. His role in truth about FRELIMO's just war against Por­ organizing the first National Black Political tuguese domination. Assembly in 1972 reinforced in his mind the The African Liberation Support Committee power of black independent politics and the (ALSC) reflected the radical orientation of the potential strength of a black united front. 78 liberation movements in Portuguese Africa. An important influence on Baraka was the On May 27, 1972 (the anniversary of the CLP East Coast regional coordinator William founding of the Organization of African Watkins. Harlem born and raised, Watkins Unity), the ALSC held the first African Liber­ was among a group of radical black students ation Day (ALD) demonstration, drawing ap­ at Cal State Los Angeles who helped found proximately 30,000 protesters in Washington, the Communist League. In 1974, he got to D.C., alone, and an estimated 30,000 more know Baraka. "We'd spend hours in his of­ across the United States. The ALD Coordinat­ fice," Watkins recalled, "discussing the ba­ ing Committee consisted of representatives sics-like surplus value." For about three from several nationalist and black left organi­ months, Baraka met regularly with Watkins, zations, including the Youth Organization for who taught him the fundamentals of political Black Unity (YOBU); the All-African Peo­ economy and tried to expose the limitations ple's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP), headed of cultural nationalism. These meetings cer­ by Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Toure]; the tainly influenced Baraka's leftward tum but Pan-African People's Organization; and the When Watkins and Nelson Peery a~ked Maoist-influenced Black Workers Congress.80 Baraka to join the CLP, he refused. Although Because the ALSC brought together such a

Souls • Fall1999 29 Black Like Mao broad range of black activists, it became an ment. Perhaps as a way to establish its ideo­ arena for debate over the creation of a black logical moorings as an antirevisionist move­ radical agenda. Although most ALSC organiz­ ment, the RCL followed in the noble tradition ers were actively anti-imperialist, the number of resurrecting the black-belt thesis. In 1977, of black Marxists in leadership positions the RCL published a paper titled ''The Black turned out to be a point of contention. Aside Nation"" that analyzed black liberation from Sadaukai, who would go on to play a movements from a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist major role in the Maoist-oriented Revolution­ perspective and concluded that black people ary Workers League (RWL), the ALSC's main in the South and in large cities constitute a leaders included Nelson Johnson (future nation with an inherent right to self-determi­ leader in the Communist Workers Party) and nation. Although rejecting "bourgeois inte­ Abdul Alkalimat (a brilliant writer and found­ gration," the essay argued that the struggle ing member of the Revolutionary Union). for black political power was central to the As early as 1973, splits occurred in the fight for self-determination. ALSC. Internal squabbling and sectarianism As a dyed-in-the-wool artist with deep proved too much for the ALSC to handle, and roots in the black arts movement, Baraka per­ Chinese foreign policy struck the final blow. sistently set his cultural and political sights China's support for UNITA during the 1975 on the contradictions of black life under capi­ Angola civil war and Vice-Premier Li Xian­ talism, imperialism, and racism. For Baraka, nian's suggestion that dialogue with white as for many of the persons discussed here, South Africa was better than armed insurrec­ this was not a simple matter of narrow na­ tion placed black Maoists in the ALSC in a tionalism. On the contrary, understanding the difficult position. Within three years the place of racist oppression and black revolu­ ALSC had utterly collapsed, bringing to an tion in the context of capitalism and imperial­ inau:;picious close perhaps the most dynamic ism was fundamental to the future of human­ anti-imperialist organization of the decade. ity. In the tradition of Du Bois, Fanon, and Nevertheless, Baraka's experience in the Cruse, Baraka insisted that the black (hence ALSC profoundly altered his thinking. As he colonial) proletariat is the vanguard of world recalls in his autobiography, by the time of revolution "not because of some mystic chau­ the first African Liberation Day demonstra­ vinism but because of our place in objective tion in 1972, he was "going left, I was read­ history.... We are the vanguard because we ing Nkrumah and Cabral and Mao." Within are at the bottom, and when we raise to stand two years he was calling on CAP members to up straight everything stacked upon us top­ examine "the international revolutionary ex­ ples."'' Moreover, despite his immersion in perience [namely the Russian and Chinese Marxist-Leninist-Maoist literature, his own Revolutions] and integrate it with the practice cultural work suggests that he knew, as did 8 of the Afrikan revolution." ' Their study lists most black radicals, that the question of expanded to include works such as Mao Ze­ whether black people constituted a nation dong's Four Essays on Philosophy, Stalin's was not going to be settled through reading Foundations of Leninism, and History of the Lenin or Stalin or resurrecting M. N. Roy. If Communist Party Soviet Union (Short it ever could be settled, the battles would take Course)." By 1976, CAP had dispensed with place, for better or for worse, on the terrain of all vestiges of nationalism, changed its name culture. Although the black arts movement to the Revolutionary Communist League was the primary vehicle for black cultural (RCL), and sought to remake itself into a revolution in the United States, it is hard to multiracial Marxist-Leninist-Maoist move- imagine what that revolution would have

30 Souls • Fall1999 Black Like Mao looked like without China. Black radicals RAM leaders concurred. An internal RAM seized the Great Proletarian Revolution by document circulated in 1967, titled Some the horns and reshaped it in their own image. Questions Concerning the Present Period, called for a full-scale black cultural revolu­ The Great (Black) tion in the United States, the purpose of Proletarian Cultural Revolution which would be to destroy the conditioned white oppressive mores, attitudes, ways, cus­ toms, philosophies, habits, and so on. This There is in fact no such thing as art for art:1· meant a new revolutionary culture. It also sake, art that stands above classes, art that is meant an end to processed hair, skin lighten­ detached from or independent(){ politics. ers, and other vestiges of the dominant cul­ -Mao Zedong, "Talks at the Yena11 Forum on ture. Indeed, the revolution targeted not only Literature and Art" (May 1942)"' assimilated bourgeois Negroes but barbers and beauticians. Less than a year into the Cultural Revolution, The conscious promotion of art as a weapon Robert Williams published an article in the in black liberation is nothing new; we can go Crusader titled ''Reconstitute Afro-American back at least to the left wing of the Harlem Re­ Art to Remold Black Souls." Whereas Mao's naissance, if not earlier. And the black arts call for a cultural revolution meant getting rid movement in the United States, not to mention of the vestiges (cultural and otherwise) of the virtually every contemporary national libera­ old order, Williams-not unlike the black arts tion movement, took this idea very seriously. movement in the United States-was talking Fanon says as much in The Wretched of the about purging hlack culture of a "'slave men­ Earth, the English translation of which was tality." Although adopting some of the lan­ making the rounds like wildfire during this pe­ guage of the Chinese Communist Party's riod." Still, the Cultural Revolution in China (CCP) manifesto (the "Decision of the Cen­ loomed large. After all, many if not most black tral Committee of the Chinese Communist nationalists were familiar with China and had Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cul­ read Mao, and even if they did not acknowl­ tural Revolution," published August 12, edge or make explicit the influence of Maoist 1966, in the Peking Review), Williams sought ideas on the need for revolutionary art or the in his essay to build on the idea rather than on protracted nature of cultural revolution, the the ideology of the Cultural Revolution. Like parallels are striking nonetheless. Consider Mao, he called on black artists to cast off the Ron [Maulana] Karenga's 1968 manifesto, shackles of the old traditions and only make "Black Cultural Nationalism." First published art in the service of revolution: in Negro Digest, the essay derived many of its ideas from Mao's "Talks at the Yenan Forum The Afro-American artist must make a res­ on Literature and Art." Like Mao, Karenga in­ olute and conscious effort to reconstitute our sisted that all art must be judged by two crite­ art tonus to remold new proud black and rev­ ria-"artistic" and "social" ("political"); that olutionary soul. ... It must create a new the­ revolutionary art must be for the masses; and ory and direction and prepare our people for a that, in Karenga's own words, art "must be more bitter, bloody and protracted struggle functional, that is useful, as we cannot accept against racist tyranny and exploitation. Black the false doctrine of 'art for art's sake."' One art must serve the best interest of black peo­ can definitely see the influence of Maoism on ple. It must become a powerful weapon in the Karenga's efforts to create an alternative revo­ arsenal of the Black Revolution.'" lutionary culture. Indeed, the seven principles

Souls • Fall1999 31 Black Like Mao

of Kwanzaa (the African-American holiday The Black Book, edited by Earl Ofari Karenga invented and first celebrated in Hutchinson (with assistance from Judy 1967), namely unity, self-determination, col­ Davis) is a case in point. 90 Published by the lective work and responsibility, collective eco­ Radical Education Project (circa 1970), The nomics (socialism), creativity, purpose, and Black Book includes a compilation of brief even faith, are about as consonant with Mao's quotes from W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, ideas as with "traditional" African culture. 88 and Frantz Fanon that address a range of is­ And it is not a coincidence, perhaps, that these sues related to domestic and world revolu­ seven principles were the basis of Tanzania's tion. The resemblance to Quotations from famous Arusha Declaration in I 964 under Chairman Mao Tse- Tung is striking: Chapter President Julius Nyerere-Tanzania being titles include "Black Culture and Art," "Poli­ China's earliest and most important ally in tics," "Imperialism," "Socialism," "Capital­ Africa. ism," "Youth," "The Third World," "Africa," Although Karenga's debt to Mao went un­ "On America," and "Black Unity." Ofari's acknowledged, the Progressive Labor Party introduction placed black struggle in a global took note. The PLP's newspaper, The Chal­ context and called for revolutionary ethics lenge, ran a scathing attack on the whole and "spiritual as well as physical unification black arts movement and its theoreticians, of the Third World." "True blackness," he titled "[LeRoiJ Jones-Karenga Hustle: Cul­ added, "is a collective life-style, a collective tural 'Rebels' Foul Us Up," which charac­ set of values and a common world perspec­ terized Karenga as a "pseudo-intellectual" tive" that grows out of our distinct experi­ who "has thoroughly read Mao's Talks on ences in the West. The Black Book was not Literature and Art. '"Cultural nationalism,"' written as a defense of black nationalism the article continues, "is not only worship­ against the encroachments of Maoism. On ping the most reactionary aspects of African the contrary, Ofari closed by telling "freedom history. It even goes so far as measuring fighters everywhere, continue to read your one's revolutionary commitment by the red book, but place alongside of it the revolu­ clothes that are being worn! This is part of tionary BLACK BOOK. To win the coming the 'Black awareness.'"89 battle, both are necessary." Of course, revolution did become a kind of Another popular text in this tradition was art, or more precisely, a distinct style. the Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah: Freedom Whether it was Afros and dashikis or leather Fighters Edition, which appeared in 1969-a jackets and berets, most black revolutionaries year after China's Foreign Languages Press in the United States developed their own aes­ put out the first English edition of Quotations thetic criteria. In the publishing world, Mao's from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. 91 Bound in "little red book" made a tremendous impact black leather with gold type, it opens with a on literary styles in black radical circles. The line in the frontispiece underscoring the im­ idea that a pocket-sized book of pithy quotes portance of revolutionary will: "The secret of and aphorisms could address a range of sub­ life is to have no fear." And with the exception jects, including ethical behavior, revolution­ of its African focus, the chapters were virtually ary thought and practice, economic develop­ indistinguishable from the "little red book." ment, and philosophy, appealed to many Topics included "African Revolution," black activists, irrespective of political alle­ "Army," "Black Power," "Capitalism," "Impe­ giance. The "little red book" prompted a cot­ rialism," "People's Militia," "The People," tage industry of miniature books of quota­ "Propaganda," "Socialism," and "Women." tions compiled expressly for black militants. Most of the quotes are vague or fail to

32 Souls + fall1999 Black Like Mao

Political Art. Ph ow In Anlonio Gan'fa. transcend obvious sloganeering ("The foulest capitalists' role in promoting drug use in the intellectual rubbish ever invented by man is black community. "Looking around at all the that of racial superiority and inferiority," or "A people overdosing on drugs, getting killed in revolutionary fails only if he surrenders.")92 gun fights among themselves, and getting Many of Nkrumah's insights, however, could shredded up in industrial accidents while have come straight from Mao's pen, particu­ stoned on the job, it's clear that dope is as big larly those quotations dealing with the need a killer as any armed cop." Why would a film for popular mobilization, the dialectical rela­ marketed to black people glorify the drug tionship between thought and action, and is­ culture? Because "the imperialists know the sues related to war and peace and imperialism. plain truth-if you're hooked on dope, you On the question of culture, most Maoist won't have time to think about revolution­ and antirevisionist groups in the United you're too busy worrying about where the States were less concerned with creating a next shot is coming from!" The review also new, revolutionary culture than with destroy­ introduced a bit of Chinese history: ing the vestiges of the old or attacking what they regarded as a retrograde, bourgeois com­ The British did everything they could to get mercial culture. In this respect, they were in the Chinese people strung out [on opium]. It step with the Great Proletarian Cultural Rev­ was common for workers to get part of their olution. In a fascinating review of the film wages in opium, turning them into addicts Supeifly published in the CP (ML) newspaper even quicker. It was only revolution that got The Call, the writer seized the opportunity to rid of the cause of this misery. By taking criticize the counterculture's as well as the their countries back, and turning their society

Souls • Fall1999 33 Black like Mao

into one that really served the people, there fact, he ostensibly went to China to find out was no more need to escape into drugs."' why the Chinese revolution succeeded "while our own Black cultural revolution, that Maoist attacks were not limited to the most bloomed so brightly during the Sixties, seems reactionary aspects of mass commercial cul­ to be dying on the vine?"96 By the time he ture. The black arts movement-a movement was ready to return to the United States, he that, ironically, included figures very much had reached several conclusions regarding inspired by developments in China and the limitations of the black cultural revolu­ Cuba-came under intense scrutiny by the tion and the strength of the Maoist model. antirevisionist left. Groups like the PLP and First, he recognized that all successful revo­ the CP (ML), despite their many disagree­ lutions must be continuous-permanent and ments over the national question, did agree protracted. Second, cultural activism and po­ that the black arts movement and its attrac­ litical activism are not two different strate­ tion to African culture was misguided, if not gies for liberation but two sides of the same downright counterrevolutionary. The PLP coin. The cultural revolution and the political dismissed black cultural nationalists as petty revolution go hand in hand. Third, a revolu­ bourgeois businessmen who sold the most tionary movement must be self-reliant; it retrograde aspects of African culture to the must create self-sustaining cultural institu­ masses and "exploit[ed] Black women-all tions. Of course, most radical nationalists in in the name of 'African culture' and in the the black arts movement figured most of this name of 'revolution."' The same PLP editor­ out independently and Killens's article ial castigated the black arts movement for merely reinforced these lessons. But China "teaching about African Kings and Queens, taught Killens one other lesson that few male African 'empires.' There is no class ap­ movement activists paid attention to at the proach-no notice that these Kings, etc., time: "'Women hold up one-half of the were oppressing the mass of African world."' "In some very vital and militant fac­ people."94 Likewise, a 1973 editorial in The tions of the Black cultural revolution, women Call sharply criticized the black arts move­ were required to metaphorically 'sit in the ment for "delegitimizing the genuine national back of the bus.' ... This is backward think­ aspirations of Black people in the U.S. and ing and divisive. Many women voted with ... substituting African counter-culture for their feet and went into Women's Lib. And anti-imperialist struggle."95 some of the brothers seemed upset and sur­ Although these attacks were generally un­ prised. We drove them to it."97 fair, particularly in the way they lumped to­ The other major black critic of the black arts gether a wide array of artists, a handful of movement's cultural nationalism who ended black artists had come to similar conclusions up embracing Maoism was Amiri Baraka, about the direction of the black arts move­ himself a central figure in the black cultural ment. For the novelist John Oliver Killens, revolution and an early target for Maoist the Chinese Cultural Revolution offered a abuse. As the founder and leader of CAP and model for transforming black cultural nation­ later the RCL, Baraka offered more than a cri­ alism into a revolutionary force. As a result tique; he built a movement that attempted to of his travels to China during the early 1970s, synthesize the stylistic and aesthetic innova­ Killens published an important essay in The tions of the black arts movement with Marx­ Black World praising the Cultural Revolution ism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought and prac­ for being, in his view, a stunning success. In tice. Just as Baraka's odyssey from the world

34 Souls • Fall1999 Black Like Mao of the Beats to the Bandung world provides in­ By 1976, the year CAP reemerged as the sight into Mao's impact on black radicalism in Revolutionary Communist League, Baraka the United States, so does Baraka's transition had come a long way since his alliance with from a cultural nationalist to committed Com­ Ron Karenga. In a poem in his collection munist. More than any other Maoist or antire­ Hard Facts titled "Today," Baraka's position visionist, Baraka and the RCL epitomized the on cultural nationalism vis-a-vis class strug­ most conscious and sustained effort to bring gle is unequivocal: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to the inner cities of the United States and to Frauds in leopard skin, turbaned transform it in a manner that spoke to the hustlers wlskin black working class. type rackets, colored capitalists, negro Having come out of the black arts move­ exploiters, Afro-American Embassy ment in Harlem and Spirit House in Newark, gamers Baraka was above all else a cultural worker. who lurk about Afrikan embassies As he and the Congress of African Peoples fightinfor moved from cultural nationalism to Marx­ airline tickets, reception guerrillas, ism, this profound ideological shift mani­ whose fested itself through changes in cultural prac­ only connection w!a party is the Frankie tice. Dismissing the "Black petty bourgeois Crocker kind. primitive cultural nationalist" as unscientific Where is the revolution brothers and and metaphysical, Baraka warned his com­ sisters? rades against "the cultural bias that might Where is the mobilization of the make us think that we c:an return to pre-slave masses led trade Afrika, and the romance of feudal­ by the advanced section of the working ism."9' CAP changed the name of its publica­ class? tion from Black Newark to Unity and Strug­ Where is the unity criticism unity. gle to reflect its transition from a cultural The self criticism nationalist perspective to a deeper under­ & criticism? Where is the work & standing of "the dialectical requirements of study. The revolution.""'~ The Spirit House Movers (the ideological clarity? Why only poses & organization's theater troupe) were now postures & subjective one sided non­ called the Afrikan Revolutionary Movers theories (ARM), and a group of cultural workers as­ describing only yr petty bourgeois sociated with Spirit House formed a singing upbringing group called the Anti-Imperialist Singers. Black saying might get you a lecture They abandoned African dress as well as gig, "wise "male chauvinist practices that had been car­ man." but will not alone bring ried out as part of its 'African traditionalism' revolution. 102 such as holding separate political education classes for men and women.""x' And CAP's One might argue that Hard Facts was writ­ official holiday, known as "Leo Baraka" for ten as a kind ofMarxist-Leninist-Maoist mani­ Baraka's birthday, became a day devoted en­ festo on revolutionary art. Like his former tirely to studying Marxism-Leninism-Mao mentor Ron Karenga, Baraka built on Mao's Zedong thought, the "woman question," and oft-cited "Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and the problems of cadre development. 101 Literature," though to very different ends. In

Souls • Fall1999 35 Black Like Mao his introduction to the book Baraka insists that History and S-1, that perhaps represent the revolutionary artists must study Marxism­ clearest expression of his shift, in his words, Leninism; produce work that serves the people, "from petty bourgeois radicalism (and its low not the exploiters; jettison petty bourgeois atti­ point of bourgeois cultural nationalism) on tudes and learn from the people, taking ideas through to finally grasping the science of rev­ and experiences and reformulating them olution, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-Tung through Marxism-Leninism. No artist, he as­ Thought."'04 serts, is above study or should produce his or The Motion of History is a long epic play her opinions unconnected to the struggle for that touches on just about everything under socialism. As Mao put it, "Through the creative the sun, from slavery and slave revolts, indus­ labour of revolutionary artists and writers the trial capitalism, civil rights and Black Power, raw material of art and literature in the life of to Irish immigration and white racism. And the people becomes art and literature in an ide­ practically every revolutionary or reformist ological form in the service of the people." 103 having something to do with the struggle for Baraka tried to put this manifesto in prac­ black freedom makes an appearance, includ­ tice through intense community-based cul­ ing John Brown, H. Rap Brown, Lenin, tural work. One of the RCL's most success­ Karenga, Harriet Tubman, Denmark Vesey, ful projects was the Anti-Imperialist Cultural and Nat Turner. Through scenes of workers Union (AICU), a New York-based multina­ discussing politics on the shop floor or in tional cultural workers' organization founded Marxist study groups, the audience learns in the late I 970s. In November 1978, the about the history of slavery, the rise of indus­ AICU sponsored the Festival of People's trial capitalism, imperialism, surplus value, Culture, which drew some five hundred peo­ relative overproduction, and the day-to-day ple to listen to poetry read by Askia Toure, racist brutality to which African Americans Miguel Algarin, and Sylvia Jones and musi­ and Latinos are subjected. In the spirit of pro­ cal performances by an RCL-created group letarian literature, The Motion of History calling itself the Proletarian Ensemble. closes on an upbeat with a rousing meeting at Through groups like the Proletarian Ensem­ which those present pledge their commitment ble and the Advanced Workers (another mu­ to building a revolutionary multiracial, multi­ sical ensemble formed by the RCL), RCL ethnic, working-class party based on Marx­ spread its message of proletarian revolution ist-Leninist-Mao Zedong thought. and black self-determination and its critique S-1 shares many similarities with The Mo­ of capitalism to community groups and tion of History, although it focuses primarily schoolchildren throughout black Newark, on what Baraka and the RCL saw as the rise New York, and other cities on the Eastern of fascism in the United States. A play about a seaboard. Marxist-Leninist-Maoist group fighting anti­ Theater seemed to be Baraka's main av­ sedition legislation, it was written by Baraka enue for the Black Proletarian Cultural Revo­ in response to the Senate bill Criminal Justice lution. Among the AICU's many projects, the Codification, Revision and Reform Act, Yenan Theater Workshop clearly projected known as S-1, which would enable the state to Mao's vision of revolutionary art. The Yenan adopt extremely repressive measures to com­ Theater produced a number of Baraka's plays, bat radical movements. S-1 gave police and including a memorable performance of What the FBI greater freedom to search and seize Was the Lone Ranger's Relationship to the materials from radical groups, as well as per­ Means of Production? In 1975 to 1976, mission to wiretap suspects for forty-eight Baraka wrote two new plays, The Motion of hours without court approval; it proposed

36 Souls • fall 1999 Black Like Mao

mandatory executions for certain crimes; and ing to draft the Bloods and Crips' post-L.A. it revived the Smith Act, subjecting any group rebellion manifesto, "Give Us the Hammer or person advocating the "destruction of the and the Nails and We Will Rebuild the City." government" to a possible fifteen-year prison The former CLP, now called the League of sentence and fines up to $100,000. The most Revolutionaries, has a strong following in notorious aspect of the bill was the "Leading a Chicago and includes the longtime radicals Riot" provision, which allowed courts to sen­ General Baker and Abdul Alkalimat. More tence anyone promoting the assembly of five important, even if we acknowledge that their people with the intention of creating "a grave numbers have dwindled substantially since danger to Property" to three years in prison the mid-1970s, the activists who stayed in and a $100,000 fine. 105 those movements remained committed to We do not know how activists and work­ black liberation, even if their strategies and ing people responded to Baraka's plays dur­ tactics proved insensitive or wrongheaded. ing the ultra-radical period of the AICU and Anyone who knows anything about politics the RCL, and most cultural critics act as if knows that Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential these works are not worthy of comment. No campaign was overrun by a rainbow coalition matter what one might think about these of Maoists and that a variety of Maoist orga­ works as art, as propaganda, or as both, it is nizations were represented in the National remarkable to think that in the late 1970s a Black Independent Political Party. In other handful of inner-city kids in Newark could words, now that so many American liberals watch performances that advocated revolu­ are joining the backlash against poor black tion in the United States and tried to expose people and affirmative action, either by their the rapaciousness of capitalism. And all this active participation or by their silence, some was going on in the midst of the so-called of these self-proclaimed revolutionaries are me generation, when allegedly there was no still willing to "move mountains" in the ser­ radical left to speak of. (Indeed, Reagan's vice of black folk. The most tragic and heroic election in 1980 is cited as evidence of the example comes from Greensboro, North Car­ lack of a left political challenge as well as olina, where five members of the Communist the reason for the brief resurrection of Workers Party (formerly the Workers View­ Marxist parties in the United States between point Organization) were murdered by Klans­ 1980 and 1985.) men and Nazis during an anti-Klan demon­ stration on November 3, 1979. Farewell for Mao, the Party's Over? The fact remains, however, that the heyday of black Maoism has passed. The reasons are Depending on where you stand politically, varied, having to do with the overall decline of and with whom, you could easily conclude black radicalism, the self-destructive nature of that U.S. Maoism died when Mao did in sectarian politics, and China's disastrous for­ 1976. But to say that Maoism somehow died eign policy decisions vis-a-vis Africa and the on the vine is to overstate the case. Maoist or­ Third World. Besides, most of the self-de­ ganizations still exist in the United States. scribed black Maoists in our story-at least The Maoist Internationalist Movement main­ the most honest ones-probably owe their tains a web site, as does the Progressive La­ greatest intellectual debt to Du Bois, Fanon, bor Party (though it can hardly be called Malcolm X, Guevara, and Cruse. But Mao Ze­ "Maoist" today), and the RCP is as ubiqui­ dong and the Chinese Revolution left an in­ tous as ever. Indeed, there is some evidence delible imprint on black radical politics-an to suggest that the RCP played a role in help- imprint whose impact we have only begun to

Souls • Fall1999 37 Black Like Mao

Worker, Peasant, and Soldier. "The People's Art"-Chinese Revolution explore in this article. At a nwnH.:nt when a new revolution. there stood China-the most group of nonaligned countries sought to chal­ powe1tul "colored'' nation on earth. lenge the political binaries created by Cold Mao's China, along with the Cuban Revo­ War politics, when African nationalists tried to lution and African nationalism. internation­ plan for a postcolonial future. when Fidel Cas­ alized the black revolution in profound tro and a handful of fatigue-clad militants did ways. Mao gave black radicals a non-West­ the impossible, when Southem lunch counters ern model of Marxism that placed greater and Northern ghettos became theaters for a emphasis on local conditions and historical

38 Souls • Fa111999 Black Like Mao circumstances than canonical texts. China's Notes Great Leap Forward challenged the idea that The authors would like to thank Henry Louis Gates Jr. the march to socialism must take place in for proposing this article in the first place and Ernest Allen, Harold Cruse, Vicki Garvin, Michael Goldfield, stages or that one must wait patiently for the Marc Higbee, Geoffrey Jacques, Sid Lemelle, Josh proper objective conditions to move ahead. Lyons, Eric and Liann Mann, David Roediger, Tim For many young radicals schooled in stu­ Schermerhorn, Akinyele Umoja, Alan Wald, Billy dent-based social democracy, in antiracist Watkins, Komozi Woodard, and Marilyn Young for their insights, recollections, and/or advice. Finally, we wish politics, in feminism, or in all of these, "con­ to express our deepest gratitude to the staff at the Tami­ sciousness raising" in the Maoist style of ment Library at NYU, especially Andrew Lee and Jane criticism/self-criticism was a powerful alter­ Latour.

native to bourgeois democracy. But con­ I. Crusader9, no.!, July 1967, p. I. sciousness raising was more than propa­ 2. The Coup, "Dig It," Kill My Landlord (Wild Pitch ganda work; it was intellectual labor in the Records, l 993). 3. Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao context of revolutionary practice. "All gen­ T.~e-Tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1966). uine knowledge originates in direct experi­ 4. Elaine Brown, A Taste of Freedom (New York: ence," Mao said in his widely read essay Doubleday Books, 1992), 231-232. "On Practice" (l937).'"6 The idea that knowl­ 5. Huey Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), 110. edge derives from a dialectics of practice and 6. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du theory empowered radicals to question the Bois, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York: International expertise of sociologists, psychologists, Publishers, 1968), 404. 7. In fact, several organizations (e.g., Ray 0. Light, economists, and others whose grand pro­ the Communist Workers Party, the Black Vanguard nouncements on the causes of poverty and Party, the Maoist Internationalist Movement, ad infini­ racism often went unchallenged. Thus. in an tum) are only mentioned in passing or omitted altogether for lack of information. We recognize that only a book age of liberal technocrats, Maoists-from can do justice to this story. black radical circles to the women's libera­ 8. A. Belden Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory tion movement-sought to overturn bour­ and Practice in France and the United States (New geois notions of expertise. They developed York: Praeger, 1988), 16-19. 9. The allegory in Quotations from Chairman Mao analyses; debated; and published journals, Tse- Tung, "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the newspapers, position papers, pamphlets, and Mountains," instilled a missionary zeal in many radicals even books, and although they rarely agreed that enabled them to jump quickly to the question of guerrilla war, as if revolution were imminent. Of course. with one another, they saw themselves as chapters of the "little red book" such as "People's War," producers of new knowledge. They believed, 'The People's Army,"' "Education and the Training of as Mao put it, that "these ideas turn into a Troops," and "Revolutionary Heroism" certainly helped promote the idea that "political power grows out of the material force which changes society and barrel of a gun," despite the fact that efforts to apply changes the world.""" China's experience to the United States contradicts Ideas alone do not change the world, how­ Mao's own argument that each revolution must grow out of its own specific circumstances. ever. People do. And having the willingness 10. Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations, iv. and energy to change the world requires more 11. Mao Tse-Tung, Statement Supporting the Ameri· than the correct analysis and direct engage­ can Negroes in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Dis­ crimination in the United States (Peking: Foreign Lan­ ment with the masses: It takes faith and will. guages Press, 1963 ), 2. Here Maoists have much in common with 12. John Oliver Killens, Black Man in the New China some very old black biblical traditions. After (Los Angeles: U.S.-China People's Friendship Associa­ all, if little David can take Goliath with just a tion, 1976), I 0. 13. Philip Snow, "'China and Africa: Consensus and slingshot, certainly a "single spark can start a Camout1age," in Chinese Foreign Policy: Theory and prairie fire.""" Practice, Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh,

Souls • Fall 1999 39 Black Like Mao eds. (New York and Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, C. Barksdale, "Robert Williams and the Indigenous Civil 1994), 285-299. Rights Movement in Monroe, North Carolina, 1961," 14. Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism, p. 213. Silber Journal of Negro History 69, Spring 1984, pp. 73-89. criticized Chinese policy in Angola where the Chinese 29. Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution? pp. 74-95. were on the same side as the South African apartheid 30. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Movement," regime and the United States. Chinese foreign policy pp. 75-80. was a hindrance to American Maoists in a variety of 31. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Movement," contexts, not just southern Africa: China's reception of p. 197. Nixon while U.S. bombs still dropped on Vietnam and 32. Interview with Tim Schcrrnerhorm, conducted by support for Pinochet in Chile are two particularly strik­ Betsy Esch. ing examples. 33. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Movement," 15. Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations, p. 82. p. 40. 16. Revolutionary Action Movement, The World 34. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Movement," Black Revolution, pamphlet, 1966. p. 91. 17. Vertical files on the Provisional Organizing Com­ 35. Interview with Ernest Allen, conducted by Robin mittee, Hammer and Steel, and the Progressive Labor D.G. Kelley. Party, Tamiment Collection, Bobst Library, New York 36. Quoted in Stanford, "Revolutionary Action University. Movement," p. 92. 18. Amiri Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi 37. Cited in Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Move­ Jones!Amiri Baraka (New York: Freundlich Books, ment," p.79. 1984), 220. Also, Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism, p. 185. 38. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Movement," 19. Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism, pp. 185-197. p. 110. Also, Jim O'Brien, American Leninism in the 1970s 39. Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations, pp. 256, 269. (Somerville, MA: New England Free Press, n.d.). 40. "Interview: Robert Williams," The Black Scholar 20. Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War 1, no. 7, May 1970, p. 14. America and the Making of a New Left (London: Verso, 41. "Revolutionary Action Movement,'' General 1993), 147-148. File, Tamiment Collection, Bobst Library, New York 21. Harold Cruse, "Negro Nationalism's New Wave," University. New Leader ( 1962); reprinted in his Rebellion or Revolu­ 42. RAM, The World Black Revolution, p. 5. Echoing tion? (New York: Morrow, 1968), 73. the Communist Manifesto, the pamphlet begins, "All 22. Harold Cruse, "Revolutionary Nationalism and over Africa, Asia, South, Afro and Central America a the Afro-American," Studies on the Left (1962); revolution is haunting and sweeping." reprinted in his Rebellion or Revolution? pp. 74-75. 43. Harlem Branch of the Progressive Labor Party, 23. Baraka, The Autobiography, p. 184; and see Ko­ The Plot Against Black America, pamphlet, 1965, p. 147. mozi Woodard, A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka 44. RAM, The World Black Revolution, p. 9. (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill: 45. R. Sackett, "Plotting a War on Whitey: Extrem­ University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 52-63; LeRoi ists Set for Violence," Life 60, June 10, 1966, pp. Jones, "Cuba Libre," in his Home: Social Essays (1966; 100-IOOB. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 1998), 11-62. 46. D. MacDonald, "Politics: Black Power," Esquire 24. Interview with Vicki Garvin, conducted by the au­ 65, October 1967, p.38; and G. Willis, "Second Civil thors. Unpublished speech by Garvin in authors' posses­ War," Esquire 69, March, 1968, pp. 71-78. sion. 47. Harlem Branch of the Progressive Labor Party, 25. Vertical file on Vicki Garvin, Tamiment Collec- The Plot Against Black America, Vertical File, Tamiment tion, Bobst Library, New York University. Collection. 26. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, p. 70 48. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action Movement," 27. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, p. 111. p. 215. 28. Sources on Robert Williams used are Robert F. 49. Paul Sweezey and Leo Huberman, "The Cultural Williams, Negroes with Guns (New York: Marzani and Revolution in China, "Monthly Review, January 1967, Munsell, 1962); Robert Williams, Listen, Brother (New p. 17. York: World View Publishers, 1968); "Interview: Robert 50. Interview with Vicki Garvin, conducted by the au­ Williams," Black Scholar I, no. 7, May 1970; Kalamu ya thors. Salaam, "Robert Williams: Crusader for International Sol­ 51. Mao Tse-Tung, Statement by Comrade Mao Tse­ idarity," The Black Collegian 8, no. 3, January-February Tung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Com­ 1978; and Maxwell C. Stanford, "Revolutionary Action munist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Movement: A Case Study of an Urban Revolutionary Struggle Against Violent Repression, April 16, 1968 Movement in Western Capitalist Society," M.A. thesis, At­ (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1968). lanta University, 1986; Timothy B. Tyson, "Robert F. 52. Interview with Bobby Seale from Radical Edu­ Williams, 'Black Power,' and the Roots of the African cation Project, "An Introduction to the Black Panther ~merican Freedom Struggle," Journal of American His­ Party," (Ann Arbor, MI: Radical Education Project, tory 85, no. 2, September 1998, pp. 540-570; Marcellus !969), pp. 26.

40 Souls • Fal11999 Black Like Mao

53. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, p. 70. 79. Interview with William Watkins, conducted by 54. Eldridge Cleaver, On the Ideology of the Black Robin D.G. Kelley. Panther Party, pamphlet, 1968, Black Panther Party, Or­ 80. Forward, pp. 80-81; Rod Bush, We Are Not What ganizational File, Tamiment Collection, Bobst Library, We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the New York University. American Century (New York: New York University 55. Radical Education Project, "An Introduction to Press, 1999), 211-213; Woodard, A Nation Within aNa­ the Black Panther Party," (Ann Arbor, MI: Radical Edu­ tion, pp. 173-180. cation Project, 1969), pp. 19, 26. 81. Baraka, The Autobiography, p. 298; Imamu Amiri 56. Eldridge Cleaver, "National Liberation in the Black Baraka, "Revolutionary Party: Revolutionary Ideology" Colony," Black Panther Party, Organizational File, Tami­ (speech delivered at the Congress of Afrikan People ment Collection, Bobst Library, New York University. Midwestern Conference, March 31, 1974 ), Vertical Files, 57. George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Tamiment Collection, Bobst Library, New York Letters of George Jackson (New York: Coward-McCann, University. 1970). 82. Interview with Komozi Woodard, conducted by 58. George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (New York: Robin D.O. Kelley; Forward, p. 100. Random House, 1972). 83. Forward, p. 121. 59. Interview with Sid Lemelle, conducted by Robin 84. Baraka, "Revolutionary Party," p. 5. D.O. Kelley. 85. Quoted in Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations, p. 299. 60. Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations, p. 298. 86. Robert Williams, "Reconstitute Afro-American 61. Brown, A Taste of Freedom p. 304. Art to Remold Black Souls," Crusader 9, no. I, July 62. Interview with Michelle Gibbs, conducted by 1967. Robin D.O. Kelley. 87. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New 63. For this insight we are grateful to Rosalyn Baxan- York: Grove Press, 1963). dall. 88. Ron Karenga, "Black Cultural Nationalism," in 64. Quoted in Brown, A Taste of Freedom, p. 313. Addison Gayle, ed., The Black Aesthetic (Garden City, 65. Brown, A Taste of Freedom, p. 281. NY: Anchor Books, l 97 I), 32. 66. Mao Tse-Tung, Mao Tse-Tung on Art and Litera­ 89. "Jones-Karenga Hustle: Cultural 'Rebels' Foul Us ture (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1960), p. 144. Up," lilack Lihcrutioll (Articles by the Progressive La­ 67. Mao Tse-Tung, Statement by Comrade Mao Tse­ bor Party), pamphlet, 1969, p. 47. Tung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Com­ 90. Radical Education Project, The Black Book (Ann munist Parry of China, in Support of the Afro-American Arbor, MI: Radical Education Project, ca. 1970). Struggle Against Violent Repression, p. 2. 91. Kwame Nkrumah, Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah: 68. J. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question Freedom Fighters Edition (New York: International Pub­ (Calcutta: New Book Centre, 1975), 11. lishers, 1969). 69. Interview with Sid Lemelle. Interview with 92. Kwame Nkrumah, Axioms, p. 114. William Watkins, conducted by Robin D.O. Kelley. 93. The Call, September 1972, p. 6. 70. Harry Haywood, "Toward a Revolutionary Posi­ 94. "Jones-Karenga Hustle." tion on the Negro Question" (mimeo, Provisional Orga­ 95. The Call, September 1973, p. 3. nizing Committee for the Reconstruction of a Marxist­ 96. Killens, Black Man in the New China, p. 18. Leninist Party, 1959). 97. Killens, Black Man in the New China, p. 19. 71. Nelson Peery, The Negro National Colonial Ques­ 98. Baraka, "Revolutionary Party," p. 2. tion, pamphlet, 1972. 99. Forward, p. 94. 72. Peery, The Negro National Colonial Question. 100. Forward, pp. 94-95; Baraka, The Autobiogra­ 73. The Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) and the phy, p. 301. October League, Vertical Files, Tamiment Collection, 101. Baraka, The Autobiography, pp. 89-94, Bobst Library, New York University. 298. 74. "The Negro National Question," founding docu­ 102. Amiri Baraka, Hard Facts (New York: Morrow, ment from the Communist Party-Marxist-Leninist Verti­ 1976), 15. cal File, Tamiment Collection, Bobst Library, New York J 03. Mao Tse-Tung, "Talks at the Yenan Forum on University. Art and Literature," in his Art and Literature (Foreign 75. The Revolutionary Union, Vertical File, Tami­ Languages Press, Peking, 1960), 100. ment Collection, Bobst Library, New York University. J 04. Amiri Baraka, The Motion of History and 76. Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism, p. 222. Other Plays (New York: William Morrow, 1978), pp. 77. Forward: Journal of Marxism-Leninism-Mao­ 13-14. Zedong Thought 3, January 1980, pp. 29-38; Woodard, J05. Baraka, The Motion of History and Other Plays. A Nation Within a Nation, pp. 63-254. 106. Reprinted in Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations. 78. Forward, pp. 89-90; Woodard, A Nation Within a 107. Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations. Nation, pp. 219-254. 108. Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations.

Souls • Fall1999 41