B-Side: Black List New York
The original vision for this project was simply a map entitled Black List: New York.
From the outset, the map would act as a vehicle by which I (and others) could trace and re-trace the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) surveillance of black radicals during the Cold War
(primarily between the 1940s through the late 1950s). By creating the map on Google Maps, I hoped to expose the FBI’s relentless tracking of black radicals while simultaneously, though not explicitly, placing the past (FBI surveillance) in dialog with the present (current-day addresses and landmarks on Google Maps). The idea was to bring to the fore what Simone Browne describes in her book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, as "the absented presence of blackness” and specifically, the absented presence of the black radical woman during this period in time (Browne 13).
Limited by how much I information I could include in Black List: New York, I began to write this B-side essay as a complement and companion to the map. The map itself examines the
FBI Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) files of three black radical women: Claudia Jones,
Gwendolyn Bennett, and Alice Childress. Black List: New York includes their known and/or suspected residences as well as any public events in which the women are shown by their file to be present. Furthermore, interactions with between the women are included (when possible) as well as with any of the arms of the U.S. government.
What follows is thus a companion of sorts to my unfinished map. Similar to how Mary
Helen Washington employs a “portrait” methodology to illustrate and “piece together the traces of the Left in the lives of each of [her] subjects” in her book The Other Blacklist: The African
American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s¸ I employ a similar tactic in this text, only instead utilizing a truncated portrait in the style of a vignette (Washington 24).
I describe this map as unfinished because it is not comprehensive within a national
context. I have mapped out New York City-specific locations with respect to the activities of all
five women and yet their FBI files demonstrate that the government agency’s was, without a doubt, actively monitoring their activities outside of New York City. A (re-)tracing of the FBI’s national surveillance with respect to these women would be a tremendous feat and unfortunately one which I did not have the opportunity to fully delve into.
1947
Before delving into the vignettes that follow, it should be noted that in my examination of
the FBI FOIA files for these five women but also for many other black figures of the time, the year 1947 has proven to be a pivotal year. I have attempted to map and associate these events to
Jones, Bennett, and Childress when they occur in the FBI files and when there is an address
available; however, for some of the events, the links to these people are not as evident. On a
national level, McCarthyism was on the rise and in 1945, the infamous House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) became a standing (i.e. permanent) committee in Congress.1
In my investigation, the following events have been noted:
• 1947: After the success of her 1946 novel, The Street, Ann Petry moves out of
New York City to Old Saybrook, Connecticut “as the specter of a second Red
Scare began to rise” (Griffin 2014).
• September 17, 1947: The George Washington Carver School closes and around
this period in time, Gwendolyn Bennett suffers a nervous breakdown and shuts
herself off from society.
1 http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-permanent-standing-House-Committee-on-Un- American-Activities/
• September 25, 1947 through November 4, 1947: The FBI increases its assault
on Claudia Jones by referring her case to Immigration and Naturalization Service
(INS). On October 27, 1947, the INS issued a warrant for Claudia Jones’s arrest.
• October 1947: The FBI opens a file on Ebony Magazine after it publishes its
October 1947 “Negro FBI Agents in Action” piece.2
• December 1947: Barney Josephson’s Café Society Uptown, located at 128 E. 58th
Street in New York City, closes amidst HUAC investigations against Josephson’s
brother Leon Josephson. Josephson’s Café Society Downtown, opened in
December 1938 and located at 2 Sheridan Square in New York City, was the New
York City’s first integrated club, closes in 1948 after negative press from the
Leon Josephson HUAC investigations.3 Black performers such as Pearl Primus,
Hazel Scott (both investigated by HUAC) and Lena Horne were among those who
performed at Café Society.
Alice Childress
Alice Childress has a shorter FBI file than her contemporaries. That said though, her 28-
page file4 is just as illuminating as those of her peers given the sheer amount of information that
the FBI was able to amass in the six years it surveilled her. Her file reveals the FBI’s acute
knowledge of her residences as well as her non-theatrical activities, particularly those in relation to Paul Robeson. The file also reveals that it had extensive knowledge of the groups,
2 From FBI file no. 94-36997. File retrieved by William J. Maxwell http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/files/original/3c07cf22aed4db1e8c7ee742155a89ac.pdf
3 From Barney Josephson and Terry Trilling-Josephson’s Cafe Society: The wrong place for the Right people
4 http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/fbeyes/childress
organizations, and committees associated with her. For instance, the infamous Jefferson School of Social Services is mentioned twice in her file as she taught classes at this school. The Daily
Worker’s address is included as well as that of the Civil Rights Congress and the Frederick
Douglass School in Harlem.
Furthermore, Childress is frequently tied back to both Paul Robeson and Claudia Jones.
In the latter case, Jones’s articles are associated with Childress and in turn, Childress debuts a new play in honor of Claudia Jones, one of four women defendants in the New York Smith Act
Trial. In the former case, her time at Robeson’s Freedom newspaper is cited and she is also depicted as a vocal organizer in the “left’s” attempt to reinstate his passport. Although mundane to laymen, connections mean the world to the FBI and frequent are the mentions of their friendship. Indeed, after 6 years of investigating, the short file ends with an April 9, 1957 entry stating that she was “present at a birthday party for Paul Robeson, Sr.”
Gwendolyn Bennett
Gwendolyn Bennett is perhaps best known by the FBI as the director of the George
Washington Carver School. Part 15 of the FBI file (100-56529) begins with a report made on
March 23rd, 1944. The report states that Bennett is the “Director of George Washington Carver
School, colored Communist front organization… and is very active in Communist Party matters in NYC. The report continues to state that she is “considered a key figure in the New York Field
Division.” It is remarkable how much information the FBI has managed to accumulate for they already have not only her residence history, but also her work, education, and marital history down to a T. This first part of her FBI summarizes in detail and continues to amass information on Bennett’s activities throughout the 1940s.
5 http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/files/original/5f6a0b1ff2122e325d842e5cd6109fc8.pdf
Part 26 continues on a similar vein until she suffers a nervous breakdown in 1947. After
this breakdown, it is noted that “it is unknown whether or not the Carver School would ever
reopen.” The report continues to say that Bennett’s “name is being removed from the Key Figure
List in the New York Office” and the case itself closed “should the subject again become active
in the Communist Party.” Despite this however, reports continued to be filed and a little more information was recovered. It was noted by the FBI that on September 17, 1947, the George
Washington Carver School had “discontinued operation,” that it had been “deeply in debt,” and that between December 1947 and October 1949, routine checks were conducted on the school’s operations, the results of which being confirmation that the school was “definitely out of existence and [would] not be reopened.”
The file remains active past Bennett’s 1947 breakdown and the school’s closure. On
October 27, 1943, Bennett is “interviewed” by the FBI on "the corner of Second Avenue and
First Street" in New York City, under seemingly "safe and secure conditions." This encounter does not last long, based on how the FBI agents’ file entry describes Bennett as “evasive to questions asked,” stating that she “was sure she had no information that is not already in the possession of the FBI,” and that she “terminated the interview by leaving interviewing agents.”
Subsequent entries between the years of 1955 and 1959 note that Bennett continues to teach at the Jefferson School of Social Sciences (by 1959, the Jefferson School is considerable
“admissible” by the FBI and no longer considered a Communist front). The second-to-last page in Bennett’s file (see below) is a physical description of Bennett (dated November 21, 1958).
6 http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/files/original/28fabcf291bd7891f34c9b743c8276fc.pdf
7
Claudia Jones
I began with Claudia Jones and was captivated by her lengthy – 300-plus pages – FBI file.8 The FBI was just as intrigued as I was, it seems. What hooked me was the length of the file
rather how Claudia Jones managed to evade direct surveillance to herself for so long. While her
file began February 21st, 1942, surveillance began a month earlier on January 13th, 1942, and for
approximately four years, Jones’s immigrant status in the United States was unknown. This is
partly because Claudia Jones had adequately protected her identity.
Jones’s birth name was Claudia Vera Cumberbatch, and her nom de plume in the United
States was Claudia Jones. As evidenced in her file, without knowledge of her legal name, the
FBI could not track her residence history in the U.S. and much less her birth information. It did
not help the FBI that Jones often listed her work address at the Daily Worker and New Age
Publishers Inc. as her residence. The assumption by the FBI was thus that Claudia Jones was a
“native born” citizen of the United States, as noted in the 07/26/1943 entry in her file. Less than
7 http://omeka.wustl.edu/omeka/files/original/28fabcf291bd7891f34c9b743c8276fc.pdf
8 https://vault.fbi.gov/Claudia%20Jones%20
a year later however, after it is revealed that she is married to a Mr. Abraham Scholnick, her
name undergoes scrutiny and so too does her immigration status.
Between 12/14/45 and 09/24/46 there is a lull in reporting on surveillance over Jones.
Between these dates, the FBI sends the FBI agent(s) tailing Jones two letters (dated March and
September 1946) asking that Jones’s file be updated because a “review of the Bureau’s file
[failed] to reveal that [the agent] [had] exhausted any investigation into this matter.” Sure
enough, the 09/24/46 entry in her file summarizes the agent’s investigation into Jones’s life,
including Jones’s work, family, and immigration history, revealing that Jones was born in
“Trinidad, British West Indies”9 and in response, the FBI recommended that the agent(s) acquire
more information regarding her Communist Party affiliation.
On September 25th, 1947, the FBI refers Jones’s case to the INS. As stated previously,
between September 25th, 1947 and November 1947, the FBI repeatedly refers Jones’s case to the
INS, in each instance stating that Jones is “engaged full time in the work of the Communist
Party” and that it is in the FBI’s “thought that [the INS] may desire to consider deportation
proceedings against [Jones].”10 Finally, on October 27, 1947, the INS issued a warrant for
Claudia Jones’s arrest and on January 19, 1948 she is arrested in her Harlem home by INS
representatives and FBI agents and sent to Ellis Island. For the next seven years, Claudia Jones is
arrested several times and released several more times before she is deported in 1955.
9 Part 1b of Claudia Jones’s FBI file report: https://vault.fbi.gov/Claudia%20Jones%20/Claudia%20Jones%20Part%202%20of%2010/view
10 Part 1b of Claudia Jones’s FBI file report: https://vault.fbi.gov/Claudia%20Jones%20/Claudia%20Jones%20Part%203%20of%2010/view
Conclusion
“In the logic of the Cold War, being black equaled being Red” and yet, as Mary Helen
Washington writes, “1950s…creative black struggle has disappeared or been omitted from most histories… and the terms “U.S. radicalism,” “left-wing,” “Old Left,” “New Left,” and
“Communist” have come to signify white history and black absence” (Washington 183, 185).
Black absence is the key term; though perhaps it was calculated to a degree. Simone Browne defines dark sousveillance as plotting “imaginaries that are oppositional and that are hopeful for another way of being…. Dark sousveillance speaks not only to observing those in authority… but also to the use of a keen and experiential insight of plantation surveillance in order to resist it” (Browne 21, 22).
A possible reason why the FBI file on Alice Childress is so short is because perhaps the rumors that she rarely exited a building the same way she entered were true and she was erasing any trace of her movements throughout New York City (and elsewhere). Gwendolyn Bennett shrugged off the gaze of the FBI, intentionally or not, by escaping into the private sphere away from public scrutiny and while still teaching at the Jefferson School of Social Science. Claudia
Jones managed to evade daily surveillance and immigration consequences for so long because she so ably masked her identity. Childress, Bennett, and Jones can be seen as utilizing dark sousveillance because in some shape or form, they found a way to render themselves “out of sight” in their respective “[flights] to freedom” (Browne 21).
Despite a relentless, anti-black, Cold War assault by the FBI on their black womanhood,
Claudia Jones, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Alice Childress persevered and resisted FBI surveillance to the best of their abilities and yet their stories have been wiped clean from the history books.
For the past decade, Washington, along with Carole Boyce Davies, Connie Johnson, Farah
Jasmine Griffin, and countless others, have been reclaiming the black radical female of the 1940s
and 50s. Their pursuits have not been in vein and their re-tracings have brought back to the fore the experiences of figures like Claudia Jones, Alice Childress, Gwendolyn Bennett, as well as
Lorraine Hansberry, Ann Petry, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and more. The Black List: New York map wishes to add another voice, if not just a signal boost of sorts, to the already impressive scholars in the mix shining a light on the absented presence of these significant black figures.
Works Cited
Browne, Simone. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Duke University Press, 2015.
Griffin, Farrah Jasmine. “Ann Petry: Brief Life of a Celebrity-Averse Novelist: 1908-1997.” Harvard Magazine, 2014, harvardmagazine.com/2014/01/ann-petry.
Josephson, Barney, and Terry Trilling-Josephson. Cafe Society: The Wrong Place for the Right People. University of Illinois Press, 2016.
United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Alice Childress file obtained under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Assorted documents dated April 11, 1951– April 9, 1957. File no. 100- 104258.
United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Gwendolyn Bennett file obtained under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Assorted documents dated June 24, 1941– January 15, 1959. File no. 100- 56529.
United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Claudia Jones file obtained under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Assorted documents dated February 2, 1942– February 25, 1965. File no. 100-18676.
Washington, Mary Helen. The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s. Columbia University Press, 2015.
Washington, Mary Helen. “Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, and Claudia Jones: Black Women Write the Popular Front.” Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism, and Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States, edited by Bill V. Mullen and James Smethurst, University of North Carolina Press, 2003, pp. 183–204. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9780807882399_mullen.12.