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Triple Oppression” to “Freedom Dreams” by Alan Wald Black Internationalist Variations: for Truth and Justice in 1951

Triple Oppression” to “Freedom Dreams” by Alan Wald Black Internationalist Variations: for Truth and Justice in 1951

REVIEW “Triple ” to “Freedom Dreams” By Alan Wald Black Internationalist variations: for Truth and Justice in 1951. The first was : 1) All three reject the declension formed around the political defense case Women Writers of the Black Left, narrative of the as a move- of Rosa Lee Ingram (convicted in 1947 for 1945-1995 ment destroyed or rendered impotent killing a white in self-defense), and the By Cheryl Higashida in the post-World War II years; they for- second protested Cold War . Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011, ward an anticipatory narrative of linking Higashida and McDuffie find a further 250pages, hardback $50. ’s hard-fought battles to the manifestation of the “” Radicalism at the Crossroads: coming political upsurge of the 1960s and argument in the statement of the Combahee African American Women Activists after. In this sense they enrich Jacqueline River Collective (1974-80), a Black feminist in the Cold War Dowd Hall’s 2005 thesis of “The Long Civil organization, while all three point 3 to its presence in the pages of Freedomways By Dayo F. Gore Rights Movement” by revising what Dayo magazine (1961-85), an African-American New York: New York University Press, 2011, Gore describes as “the historical periodiza- political and cultural journal supported by 229 pages, paper $23. tion that ignores Cold War black radicalism [in order to] uncover its connections to but broader than the . Sojourning for Freedom: later decades of , including African Higashida alone pursues the evolution , American Communism, American civil rights activism after 1955.”4 and transformation of this thinking in works and the Making of Black Left Feminism More specifically, the three reinforce the of imaginative literature published through By Erik S. McDuffie argument of Nikhil Pal Singh’s 2005 Black 1995, tracking the interaction between a Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011, is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle sympathy for national liberation movements 311 pages, paper $23.95. for on behalf of the existence and a growing critique of . , THE former slave of “a more or less consistent tradition of While her most brilliant chapter address- turned Abolitionist, once said: “Every great radical dissent” from the Great Depression es Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs, she also dream begins with a dreamer.”1 The con- forward.5 provides impressively original readings of current publication of three evocative and 2) All regard the paramount intellectual Alice Childress’s A Short Walk (1979), Rosa absorbing studies of the “freedom dreams” bridge between Black women activists of Guy’s The Sun, The Sea, a Touch of the Wind of African-American women associated with the Old Left and later developments to be a (1995), ’s later poetry, and Maya the mid-20th century Communist move- hitherto hidden of “,” Angelou’s last three volumes of autobiog- ment is something of an event.2 today’s preeminent sociological method in raphy. Through an examination of the archi- feminist studies. 3) Through their examination of val record, combined with numerous oral Intersectionality, first fully elaborated in the biographies of several dozen Black and close readings of political and the late 1980s, refers to the examination of pro-Communist women, overlapping in a literary texts, Black Internationalist Feminism, interactions among manifold dimensions and few instances, the authors confirm the intel- Radicalism at the Crossroads and Sojourning modalities of social relationships and social lectual shallowness of over-arching applica- for Freedom provide at their very best some formations that contribute to social inequal- tions of the political category of “Stalinism.” compelling history with engaging portraits. ity.6 Higashida et al argue that the post- Despite its clarifying potential when used All are indispensable reading for the project World War II Communist Party’s concept in a sophisticated manner to treat an ideol- of intellectual decolonization of the Cold of the “triple oppression” of Black women ogy, social system or political organization, War era, a subject still marred by historical workers (that is, by race, class, and , “Stalinism” can be an oversimplifying lens obfuscations traceable to the polarized all of which must be addressed) was a deci- through which to evaluate the thinking, per- thinking of the time. sive anticipation of intersectionality. sonalities and life activities of diverse indi- As an ensemble, these books tell a Higashida and McDuffie also observe, viduals, not to mention works of the artistic hugely ambitious, wide-ranging story, one with somewhat differing emphases, that the imagination. that is almost always a delight to read. The term “triple oppression” initially emerged in A few of the names in these books will remarkably detailed chronicles are dense- Party circles in the 1930s, although all three be familiar from earlier studies — obviously with-thinking in the elaboration of at least are unanimous that the formulation achieved Party leader (1915-64) and three themes held in common, with some a pre-eminent expression in a 1949 Political playwright Lorraine Hansberry (1930-65), Alan Wald, an editor of Against the Current, Affairs essay by Claudia Jones, “An End to outstanding Communist revolutionaries recently contributed essays on Marxists Willard the of the Problems of the Negro who died painfully young. But some of the Motley and Theodore Ward to Writers of the .” fascinating key players have hitherto Black Chicago Renaissance (University of The concept was subsequently articulat- appeared in historical studies and oral his- Illinois Press, 2011), and wrote the Foreword to ed through activism, especially the Women’s tories as human jigsaw puzzles, the pieces of Lloyd Brown’s Communist novel Iron City in the Committee for Equal Justice (an offshoot of their lives and activities scattered over time Northeastern University Press Library of Black the Communist-led Civil Rights Congress), and nearly lost. Literature. and the brief organization of Sojourners The list of protagonists begins with 24  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2013 Grace Campell (1883-1943), perhaps the become increasingly comfortable as she is ponent of their struggle against heterosex- first Black woman Communist; Williana largely concerned with creative writing after ism and . Burroughs (1882-1945), a teacher who the 1960s and 1970s. But there is a snag in worked frequently in the ; that the “internationalism” of the pro-Com- A Janus-Faced Legacy Audley Moore (1898-1966), a Harlem munist tradition was originally circumscribed The effort to find a balance in judging Communist leader who became an initiator by Soviet foreign policy. It is always a mis- the Janus-faced legacy of Communism is of the of New Afrika; take to confuse more often than not a thankless task. Pro- and Esther Jackson (b.1917), a well-meaning Soviet Communism in the founding editor of Freedomways. political aspirations was a courageous vanguard against racism, These and dozens of oth- with the realities and class exploitation that simul- ers constituted a tradition of of actual practice; taneously lauded a police state regime under 9 pro-Communist Black women, one’s analysis Stalin. even as the authors emphatically morphs into hagi- Faced with the palpable McCarthyite teach us that each activist and ography. repression of the 1950s, non-Communist Party political activists at the time should writer held membership in multi- Regrettably, have prioritized civil rights and liberties ple communities, some unspoken. for the pro-Com- especially in relation to the persecuted This is demonstrated by munist tradition, minority of “Reds.” indicating their different routes “Internationalism” But 50 years later, a radical scholar has into and in some cases their tra- in 1936 in Spain the different task of finding some means to jectories out of the Communist meant following the treat these mostly-deceased pro-Communist movement; their contrasting orga- Soviet orientation protagonists with proper respect while not nizational roles and commitments; of crushing the being afraid to identify embellishments, flaws and their various personal lives, indigenous social and self-delusions in some of their diagno- in a few instances recalling the revolution; in 1939 ses. Every effort to tell this story seems to early 20th century “New Woman” in East Central Claudia Jones wrote about “triple be off-balance in its own ways. (a term for independent career Europe, endorsing oppression” in her 1949 essay. To be sure, the authors of these three women who pushed the limits of the USSR’s subju- books show once again that the Communist male dominated society), or even suggestive gation of the population of half of Poland Party was not politically seamless or its of a lesbian-feminism avant la lettre. and then moving north to attack Finland; interventions entirely stage-managed; to say in World War II, subordinating the colonial Problems of Political Terminology its members were wrong in their judgments revolution (such as in India) and the rights One of the most vexing challenges faced is not to declare them malleable instruments of the internally-colonized (most obviously by the authors of these books is to identify or dupes. McDuffie, for example, argues Japanese-Americans) to the racism of the the appropriate political terminology for that the Southern Negro Youth Congress, Grand Alliance; and so on. describing the protagonists during the 1930s, led by Communists such as Esther Jackson, 1940s and 1950s. One can understand the Although pro-Communists after World in effect supported the Pittsburgh Courier’s desire to use familiar and currently fashion- War II were usually on the mark in their campaign for “Double V” (victory against able language to render a subject pertinent exposés of Western colonialism, a kind of international and domestic racism) to a present-day readership, but an anach- “selective internationalism” persisted in the in opposition to the Party’s national line ronistic vocabulary can diminish distinctions 1950s and 1960s through the perpetration which held that “Double V” was detrimental of the misconception that certain self-pro- in historical periods marked by dissimilar to national unity.10 strategic options and kinds of conscious- claimed “socialist” regimes (China, North Gore shows that the all-Black wom- ness about one’s identity. Over-reliance on Korea) and affiliated political parties objec- en’s organization Sojourners for Truth and modern expressions can also make it seem tively represented the long-term interests of Justice, which had a strong Party presence, as if one is writing backwards through con- all the oppressed. was itself controversial in the Communist temporary definitions or treating the past as Dayo Gore manages to avoid many of movement.11 By introducing the voices of simply a future waiting to happen. the tripwires of the terminology quandary Black Communist women, these scholars set McDuffie opts for “Black Left Feminists,” by frequently using plainer phrases such as a new agenda for understanding the move- a formula he borrows from literary scholar “CP-affiliated black women activists.”7 ment, demonstrating the presence of a kind Mary Helen Washington and which he finds On the other hand, it is Higashida who of dissenting in the domestic arena superior to the paradigm of the “radical puts forward the most thought-provoking of practical Party work. black subject” used by Carole Boyce divergence of opinion in these books by However, when it comes to adherence Davis in her Left of : The Political Life centering her argument around the dialec- to Soviet foreign policy and the view of the of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008). tic of gender and national liberation as it USSR and its “Dear Leader” Stalin as the Prior to the 1960s, however, none of the evolved to the end of the 20th century. In chief agent of world peace and justice, the women would have called themselves “fem- her outlook, the strength of Jones’ “triple books show us only conformity, whether inists” (a politics they associated with mid- oppression” argument is that it was rooted one looks to institutional policy, rank-and- dle-class white women, often seen as racist in a revival of the Communists’ “Black Belt” file practice, or these same voices. Even and even anti-Semitic), or “Black” (judged thesis following the 1946 expulsion of Party among those who depart- to be offensive and as a rule replaced by leader Earl Browder.8 ed the Party, in 1956 if not earlier, the hor- “Negro”). Politically they described them- Higashida regards this theory as a foun- rible facts of Stalinist oppression are never selves as “Communists” or “Progressives,” a dation, more apparent in Freedomways than cited as a reason for the separation — the controversial component of but hardly syn- in the anti-nationalist Combahee River books report only grievances around lack of onymous with the “Left.” Collective statement, for the freedom attention to anti-racism or personal gripes. Higashida refers to the women in her dreams of a “nationalist internationalism.” One would like to see some sympa- study as “Black Internationalist Feminists,” Her group of Black women writers would thetic speculation about this phenomenon and her first and third terms-of-choice increasingly foreground this ideal as a com- in regard to the of at least a AGAINST THE CURRENT  25 sometimes supporting policies that were once brought young people under the spell indefensible.”14 Yet it is hard to figure out of Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or what the “contradictions” and “indefensible Peru’s Shining Path are today as deserted as positions” actually were, and the degree to Checkpoint Charlie. which these are admissions that fully face up Critical-minded readers will sense that to the truly distressing historical issues. part of the story is missing and will be The contrast is dramatic in regard to forced to go elsewhere in search of the the candor of Marxist historian Robin D. facts, which may come packaged with the G. Kelley in his 2002 Freedom Dreams: The anti-communist clichés of jaded liberalism. Black Radical Imagination. Here is how Kelley My own view is that Kelley’s candor can addresses the politics of the two most actually be consistent with the central thrust of the scholarship in these books. After all, the fundamental idea of “triple oppression” emerged from both revolutionary activism and critical-minded theory. In Claudia Jones’ writing, it represented a willingness to challenge one’s own allies and comrades in the movement. Moreover, Three African-American women Communists its modern descendant “intersectionality” is who explored the dynamics of race, class and a method that comes from thinking through gender: Audley “Queen ” Moore, Alice Childress and Lorraine Hansberry (left to right). the multiple axes of oppression. These approaches are perfect for eradicating the few individuals, the kind that produced the legacy of Cold War bipolar thinking in favor heart-felt, richly textured explorations of of casting a caustic, unsentimental eye on the Communist experience available in the liberationist claims of all political camps. George Charney’s A Long Journey (1968) and Junius Irving Scales’ Cause at Heart (1987). Perhaps the truth was too upsetting to be fully registered; former Communists, like others, are prone to self-redacting, editing and erasing memories. prominent Black males associated with the women featured in these three studies:“Un- “Not Without Contradictions” fortunately, neither [W. E. B.] Du Bois nor Like all of us who have felt passionate [Paul] Robeson or anyone else with a con- commitments at certain points, the fascinat- tinuing connection to the [pro-Communist] ing activists and writers featured in these Left had anything to say about Stalin’s atroci- books were handcuffed to history. But writ- ties — the political assassinations, the , ing in the new millennium, the three authors the Soviet state’s hidden war against political are least rewarding when they replicate too dissidents and Russian Jews.”15 closely the potentially explainable blind- Kelley is also worth quoting as a balance spots of those protagonists who remained to Higashida’s unnuanced, sunny perspective loyal to the Communist worldview. on “Third Worldist national liberation move- McDuffie provides necessary critical ments,” which are only to be criticized for distance when he skeptically scrutinizes their “often virulent ….”16 the oral history of Audley “Queen Mother” In reference to his own survey of move- The Limits of Tolerable Politics Moore in relation to her bolting the Party ments in the United States, Africa, Asia and Jamaican-born cultural theorist Stuart during the Cold War; he claims that her Latin America, Kelley observes: “Some of Hall wrote precisely on this matter just move to Black was actually the radical movements I write about in the two years ago, addressing the importance prompted due to fear of Red-baiting and pages that follow have done awful things of the “first” that was born in repression.12 Yet he seems unshakably under in the name of liberation, often under the 1956: “a conjuncture — not just a year — the spell of the charismatic Esther Jackson, premise that the ends justifies the means. bounded on one side by the suppression of not even raising an eyebrow when she Communists, black nationalists, Third World the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet tanks boasts (in 2002!) of her life-long uncritical liberation movements — all left us stimulat- and on the other by the British and French idolization of Dolores Ibárruri (1895-1989).13 ing and even visionary sketches of what the invasion of the Suez Canal zone. These Where awkward political questions are future should be, but they have also been two events, whose dramatic impact was at issue, the response is silence or to resort complicit in acts of and oppression, heightened by the fact that they occurred to euphemisms and evasion. Scholars hoping through either their actions or their silence. within days of each other, unmasked the to foment a Marxism appropriate to our No one’s hands are completely clean.”17 underlying violence and aggression latent own time should at least occasionally ask It may be that the three authors think in the two systems that dominated political the question of whether even the most that engaging this history, even in a para- life at the time — Western imperialism and admirable of the people trapped in the graph, will muddy the waters. Yet by ignor- Stalinism…In a deeper sense, they defined ambiguities of an earlier time allowed them- ing it, or gliding too fast over problematic for people of my generation the boundaries selves to become fully conscious of reality. aspects, they make it seem as if there were and limits of tolerable politics.”18 McDuffie states that “black women rad- something here that needs to be hidden. These were also the “boundaries” of icals were not without contradictions” and This results in a Zero Sum Game inasmuch “tolerable politics” at least since the early that “they regularly followed Party directives, as the organizations and publications that 1930s, when the stories in these books 26  JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2013 mostly begin, but then they were harder to ventions are Right-wing accounts of Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, “The ‘Long Freedom see, and it was much harder to know what Communists as Soviet agents, and Left-wing Movement’ as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies,” Journal of African to do about Western democratic imperi- perceptions of as a reaction American History 92, #2 (Spring 2007): 265-89. alism once virulent fascism emerged as a to the 1965 Moynihan Report on “The 4. Dayo Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads (New York: force that could be halted only by taking up Negro Family” and the excesses of mascu- New York University Press, 2011), 8. 5. Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country: Race and the arms. To embrace the perspectives of Kelley linist . Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard and Hall, it is true, requires a resolute will- Gore’ writing especially transforms this University Press, 2005), 252-3. ingness to enter places of contradiction and Cold War moment into a conjuncture of 6. The primary theorists associated with intersectionality are Kimberly Crenshaw and . deep disturbance, and to resist pressure to dissonance, a multiplicity and variety of tra- 7. Dayo Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads, 11. construct narratives that resolve anxieties. jectories. To understand such “non-contem- 8. This was the view that African Americans constitute a But that is where revolutionary internation- porary contemporaneities” may necessitate nation with the “right of self-determination” in regions of alists must go. a Marxist theory of compound historical the Deep South where they were a majority. 9. Marxists have traditionally distinguished the Soviet The research in these books, all of which time, a project suggested recently in a bril- social and economic system from the totalitarianism of are gutsy in affirming the “missing link” of liant essay by Alex Callinicos about the work fascism, although the violence and Communism, can only benefit from such an of French Marxist Daniel Bensaïd.19 can seem similar. Of course, the exact figures for Stalin’s victims are wildly in dispute, since it is can be difficult enrichment and involvedness of perspective. Finally, one must endorse an observation to separate the number of deaths intentionally inflicted In particular, the books’ mention of the of Cheryl Higashida: “I see my study not as from unavoidable collateral damage, not to mention mur- Party’s abandonment of the Black Belt thesis the final word on Black feminist radicalism, ders for which Stalin can be held directly accountable as distinct from the crimes initiated by henchmen in his and the wartime retreat from anti-racist but as part of a broader conversation that regime. However, even the major revisionist scholar in struggle, and the occasional allusions to must continue to excavate but also look Soviet studies, J. Arch Getty, acknowledges that “From atrocities that occurred in the USSR, will beyond the Communist Party.”20 From the 1921 to Stalin’s death, in 1953, around 800,000 people were sentenced to death and shot, 85 percent of them become more understandable. point of view of reconstructing a revolution- in the years of the Great Terror of 1937-1938. From At present these episodes are account- ary internationalist framework that includes 1934 to Stalin’s death, more than a million perished in ed for mainly through the of aspects of the Communist legacy, a small the camps. A few years ago these figures were confirmed by KGB archivists and published in the Yeltsin individual leaders, Earl Browder and Joseph if indispensable part of the conversation Administration’s official gazetteer.” See J. Arch Getty, “The Stalin. But a clarification really requires a should include various components of the Future Did Not Work,” Atlantic Monthly 285, no. 3 (March Marxist conceptual perspective on the con- much-fragmented Trotskyist movement. 2000): 113-166, available on line at: http://www.theatlantic. tradictions of the Popular Front strategy and Of course, this political current itself is com/issues/2000/03/getty.htm. For a much higher figure by a leading historian, see Robert Conquest, The Great evolution of the Russian Revolution. long past, and in the midst of its ruins in Terror: A Reassessment: 40th Anniversary Edition (New York: dogmatic one is unlikely to dis- Oxford University Press, 2007). A Tricky Category cover a body of achievement regarding Black 10. Erik McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom, 129. Higadisha Although I lack the qualifications to mentions the opposition to “Double V” in passing as women that is remotely comparable to the a flaw attributed to Earl Browder, but Gore gives the provide a comprehensive commentary on rich Communist heritage. On the other impression that the Party supported it. all aspects of these books, three concluding hand, among ’s genuine monu- 11. Dayo Gore, 87-88. 12. McDuffie, 190. observations will suggest supplementary ments one finds revolutionary alternatives reasons why they merit notice. 13. The Spanish Communist Ibárruri was an archetypal in theory and practice to both Stalinism figure of the Comintern, blending heroic anti-fascism First, the intellectual argument about and Cold War liberalism, both permanently with a whole-hearted collaboration in murderous Soviet the influence of “triple oppression” think- marred by non-biodegradable stains of com- repression. She should be understood as one of those ing and activism that paved the way to the people who combined powerful commitment with ter- plicity with the “two systems” repudiated by rible errors, morally and politically correct on many key Combahee River Collective and “inter- Stuart Hall.21 issues but wrong on others — often at the same time. sectionality” is an enormous achievement. Inasmuch as Cheryl Higashida, Dayo All that Jackson has to say about her in 2002 is that “She “Influence,” however, is a tricky category of was a leader…of women. She was the revolution.” See Gore and Erik McDuffie are radical scholars McDuffie, 101. evaluation in intellectual history; the word whose reader-friendly work is informed by 14. McDuffie, 217-18. can suggest anything from a loose connec- path-breaking research in political and per- 15. Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical tion to a one-to-one transmission. Imagination, 57. sonal biography, these and many more areas 16. Higashida, Black Internationalist Feminism, 9. A common argument for recovery of inquiry are now squarely before us. 17. Kelley, Freedom Dreams, xi. of an earlier text or episode is that it As authors of first books who are writ- 18. Stuart Hall, “The Life and Times of the First New is vital because it was “influential” on a ing in pioneer country, somewhat beyond Left,” New Left Review 61 (January-Febuary 2010), available distinguished later development. But the at: http://newleftreview.org/II/61/stuart-hall-life-and-times- fixed laws, they are to be particularly of-the-first-new-left. follow-up of wide-ranging and rigorous applauded for a skill in conveying complex 19. See Alex Callinos, “Daniel Bensaïd and the Broken investigations can sometimes conclude that ideas in an accessible and convincing way, Time of Marxism,” International 135, available at: a later occurrence is the product of a more http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=828&issue=135. and for providing three eye-opening guides 20. Higashida, 178. intricate story, or stories, or affinities in to the interplay of voices and ideas rarely 21. The names of anti-Stalinist Marxist male writers common, pre-existing needs, selective adap- heard in earlier studies of the Left. The addressing U.S. racism and colonialism are well known tations, and out-and-out misinterpretation. — C. L. R. James, James Boggs, Conrad Lynn, George result is a treasure trove for academics and Breitman and Sidney Lens — and much useful informa- I anticipate that much further research on activists alike. § tion can be found in C. L. R. James, George Breitman, and the genealogy of intersectionality will be Edgar Keemer, Fighting Racism in World War II (New York: inspired by the preliminary mapping inaugu- Notes Monad Press, 1982) and Christopher Phelps, Race and 1. Quoted in Zachary Martin, Martyr to Freedom: The Revolution (London: Verso, 2003). But the local history rated by McDuffie and the others. Life and Death of Captain Daniel Drayton (Lanham, Md: approach exemplified by Gore and McDuffie has been A second area of fascination is the Rowman and Littlefield, 2011), v. rarely invoked. It should be applied to specific sites, such authors’ establishing a longer trajectory of 2. Robin D. G. Kelley memorably used the phrase “free- as the Detroit branch of the Socialist Workers Party Communist commitment in a way that forc- dom dreams” to designate the liberatory desires of during the 1940s, which attracted a substantial number “those marginalized black activists who proposed a dif- of African Americans. Many nearly-forgotten Black es the reader to recontextualize other pow- ferent way out of our contradictions” in Freedom Dreams: Marxist cadres were trained, such as Ernie Dillard (“Ernie erful narratives of the mid-20th century Left. The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon, 2002), xii. Drake”), Jessie Dillard and Edgar Keemer, as well as nota- The result is a freshly-conceived Cold War 3. See Jacqueline Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights ble proletarian militants more briefly in the organization Movement,” Journal of American History 91 (March 2005): such as Horace Sheffield. One important effort in the historical moment of dissonant trajectories. 1233-54. The argument, however, has not gone with- direction of such local history is Joe Allen, People Wasn’t Among the most destabilized con- out some strong criticism from the Left; see Sundiata Made to Burn (Chicago: Haymarket, 2011). AGAINST THE CURRENT  27