THE PROGRESSIVE LEGACIES FROM THE 1948 PROGRESSIVE PARTY AND THE 1968

PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

By

Robert W. Bates

Professors Kittiya Lee/Christopher Endy

History 5940

May 14, 2018

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I.

INTRODUCTION

During the second half of the Cold War two leftist parties came into existence to challenge the

traditional two‐party American political system promising peace and extensive expansion

of government beyond that achieved during the New Deal or the Great Society programs. The

Progressive Party in 19481 and the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968 provided a new political

space for younger and non‐traditional political activists and voters – most notably women,

blacks, and Latinos – through the electoral process to promote an expansion of civil rights,

new economic rights for women and families, and greater educational access. The rise and fall

of the appeal of these two political parties as an alternative to the Democratic Party nominees

in 1948 and 1968 has created scholarship to date focused on voter rejection of either, or both,

their proposed peace initiatives seeking to end the Cold War with the Soviet Union or further

American involvement in Vietnam as well as domestic policy reforms labelled as either

Communist or Socialist by their opponents.

Many of these non‐traditional party leaders would develop skill sets allowing them to have

greater future success in becoming recognized political champions for the issues that

1 Formed and known as the Independent Progressive Party in California and shared the American Labor Party ballot line in New York state.; California Statement of Voter Registration, November 1948; Thomas W. Devine, Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 2012)

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the traditional parties had ignored or feared to pursue thus fulfilling a traditionally recognized

role of third parties in American politics of proposing political changes that transform the

country once they are coopted by at least one, if not both, of the dominant parties. A review

of the available primary sources from each of these campaigns and the activists who

participated in them demonstrates how the description of being liberal or “radical” changed

dramatically within twenty years as the country gradually adopted many of the progressive

ideas from 1948 as to civil rights and women’s rights.

I.

THE 1948 CAMPAIGH PROGRESSIVE NARRATIVE: NEW DEAL OPTIMISM AND PEACEFUL

INTERNATIONALISM REJECTED DUE TO SOVIET EXPANSION AND FEAR OF COMMUNISM

In 1948 the “New Party” was created in early 1947 to support former Vice President Henry A.

Wallace’s challenge at perceived time of national turbulence with the initiation of the Cold War

and a perceived retreat from New Deal policies as the country experienced labor unrest, a

housing shortage, and high inflation as returning veterans demobilized from the military and

began their search for work. Most older supporters were those from more liberal and strident unions within the CIO tradition. Many of these unions had leaders with membership also in the

Communist party. This had been tolerated during the Depression and World War II period as a

“Popular Front” alliance with New Deal Democrats. These more left union members in addition to many of the more liberal New Deal Democrats shared Henry Wallace’s conviction that

President Truman had taken the Democratic Party too far to the right in response of the

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election of a Republican Congress in 1946. These activists were concerned as to issues involving

labor (particularly the Taft‐Hartley Act with its anti‐Communist provisions), repeal of New Deal

wage protection laws, and the Truman decision to initiate a policy of containment against the

Soviet Union rather than mediating disputes through the auspices of the United Nations.

One of the outstanding features of the mood of this convention compared to that of the

Republicans and Democrats who had met in the same Philadelphia convention hall only weeks

earlier was delegates with their average age of 30, large numbers of African‐Americans, and the

fact that 40% were women. Many of the West Coast delegates were students who had hitchhiked

across the country.2 It was a crowd that responded well to popular entertainment between the

policial enjoyed the singing of liberal Pete Seeger and their new Vice Presidential nominee and

Cowboy “entertainer” Idaho Senator Glenn Taylor.3

As Helen Fuller described in her New Republic opinion article covering the convention, the new Progressive Party appeared to be “rooted in discontent and frustration” over the fear of possible war and the need to secure domestic tranquility at home through the rebirth of the

New Deal style agenda promising socialization of key industries and the peaceful approach to the

Soviet Union. She also found a certain impatience within the Progressive Party platform and delegates compared to those attending the conventions of the opposing parties – the desire, perhaps unrealistic – in dealing with a new set of post‐War economic and foreign affairs complications.4 The youthful tone described about the Wallace convention also created the

2 Helen Fuller, “For A Better World Now,” New Republic, August 2, 1948, Vol. 119, Issue 5, p. 11‐13; New York Times, July 23, 1948; 3 William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America: 1932‐1972 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973) p. 456‐458; David McCulloch, Truman (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1992) p. 645‐646 4 Helen Fuller, “For A Better World Now,”, p. 11‐13

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charge that their younger delegates lacked the necessary experience to conduct a national

campaign and were thus susceptible to undue Communist influence. This concept was implied in

the Time magazine cover depicting Wallace leading a number of youth behind him like the pied piper with the less than flattering subtle question asked: “Liberal ‐or Lollipop.”5 Other press was

more favorable, particularly in the African‐American community noting the number of black and

women delegates as well as both white and black candidates running on the Progressive ticket

around the country for various state and federal offices.6

As discussed below, the Wallace Campaign even before the convention was beset by

accusations that it was an organization actually controlled by or unduly influenced by

Communists, both “card‐carrying” and fellow travelers.7 Many pointed to the Progressive Party

Platform as being taking as whole cloth from that of the American Communist Party, but this

assertion by the contemporary press when investigated appears dubious. The 1948 American

Communist Party platform is only two pages in length and mostly focuses on foreign affairs and the need to support the Wallace campaign as a continuation of the “Popular Front” tradition created during the Roosevelt presidency.8 By contrast, the 1948 Progressive Party Platform is

fifteen pages in length had has detailed stands on ending Jim Crow and other forms of

discrimination as well as women’s rights. It also contains a sections dedicated to youth,

increasing government supported housing, national health insurance, extension of Social Security

benefits to uncovered workers, agricultural support programs, increased labor rights,

5 Henry Wallace cover, “Liberal or Lollipop”, Time, August 9, 1948 6 “Third Party Support for 37 Candidates for Office,” Baltimore Afro‐American July 31, 1948 7 William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative of American History form 1932‐1972, p. 456‐458; Karl M. Schulz, Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade 1948 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1960) p. 187‐190 8 1948 American Communist Party Platform

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and Increased benefits for veterans.9

As the campaign began, a 2,000 delegate “second convention” was held at the end of the

first to create a Youth for Wallace Group. In this instance, there appears to be little controversy

as to the fact that the youth or college wing of volunteer organization for the campaign became

dominated by youth members of the Communist Party more experienced and adept at

organizing the new group. The promise of this group of volunteers being an effective wing of

the Wallace campaign began to fade in time partially due the strident tactics of the Communist

led speakers and recruiters sent across college campuses. These tactics backfired in recruiting

new young Wallace supporters due their demands that a volunteer had to follow an ideological

line. These college age youth leaders also developed a reputation for savaging any reporter or

newspaper editor who criticized or question any of the Wallace campaign positions.10 An example of an overly aggressive Wallace campaign sign placed in upper New York state

demonstrated the hyperbole used by some of adamant supporters in its warning of a likely

police state or atomic war unless one voted for Wallace.11

As Wallace’s youth effort began to fail he had to begin to rely on two groups well‐

represented at the convention: women and blacks. As will also be discussed below, Wallace’s

anticipation of receiving more solid support from CIO affiliated unions would fade with the anti‐

9 1948 Progressive Party Platform 10 Thomas W. Devine, Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 2012) p. 201‐210; Vincent Sheehan, “The Wallace Youth: A Communication,” ‐New Republic, November 1, 1948 11 “The Choice before the American people is . . . Wallace or Atomic War! Wallace or Sky High Prices! Wallace or Jim Crow! Wallace or a Police State!” – Troy Area for Wallace Poster (1948) accessed https://antiquesnavigator.com/e‐ bay/images/2013/15102189427.jpeg

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Communism campaign to rid unions of possibly disloyal members which occurred to a much higher degree in unions with higher black memberships.

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II.

WOMEN LEADERS IN THE PROGRESSIVE CAMPAIGN: EARLY DEFEATS AND LATER SUCCESS

The Women for Wallace effort proved critical for not only developing the first feminist planks in a national party platform calling for wage equality, free childcare, social security benefits for homemakers, and free medical care for families but also to allow them to be recognized leaders of this national campaign. Individual women supporters not only proved to be the greatest individual financial contributors but also provided most of the volunteers performing the daily campaign activities. The Progressive Party also notably chose many women as candidates for Congress and other significant offices. Although the Wallace campaign was defeated and some of these Progressive women would withdraw from formal political life during the height of the McCarthy era, an influential number of these women continued forward to become leaders within the 1960s and 1970s feminist movement. Others would resurface as local leaders in the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

Perhaps the two most influential women in the Wallace campaign were Elinor Gimbel, one of the heirs to the Gimbel department chain based in New York, and Anita Blaine McCormick

one of the heirs to the McCormick Reaper manufacturing company. They served two very different, but very important functions in building the upstart Progressive Party. Both dealt with

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ridicule that they had become “traitors to their class” by endorsing the most liberal New Deal

policies during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Both also reacted negatively when they

perceived that liberal Vice President Henry Wallace had been unfairly removed from the 1944

Democratic ticket in favor of the more conservative Harry S. Truman who followed the 1946

Republican Congress to the right on issues of union labor rights , government price regulations

during the war period and foreign affairs which helped drive them into helping form

Progressive Citizens of America in 1946, the forerunner of the Progressive Party.12 Other

female celebrities joining the Progressive Citizens of American and later the Progressive Party

included singer Lena Horne and Elinor Robeson the wife of singer Paul Robeson. Lena Horne

stated her interest in progressive politics arose out of her belief that “in my heart I was a

feminist before I was a Negro.”13

If there was a “financial angel” for the 1948 Progressive Party campaign it was Anita Blaine

McCormick. Ms. McCormick had inherited her father’s fortune from the invention and

manufacture of the McCormick reaper and soon became a progressive activist investing much money in the social projects of Jane Addams and other Chicago charities. She also participated in many Chicago political campaigns to promote liberal causes. Before World War II she had supported America’s involvement in the League of Nations and therefore Henry Wallace’s proposal that the growing nascent Cold War disputes with Stalin’s Soviet Union be placed into the United Nations appealed to her. Before Wallace announced his candidacy in a radio broadcast from Chicago in 1947 Ms. McCormick arranged for two floors for Mr. Wallace’s

12 Curtis MacDougall, Gideon’s Army, 3 Vols. , (New York: Manzania & Munsell, 1965) p. 301 13 L. Horne and Schnekel, p. 188, 205

8 initial campaign headquarters. She met with Wallace frequently and gave him at least one million dollars in known contributions. Ms. McCormick even attempted to arrange a trip for

Wallace to accompany her to Russia to visit Stalin in during the Presidential campaign but it was cancelled due to her on failing health due her advanced age.14

If Ms. McCormick’s health was failing during the 1948, by contrast Elinor Gimbel became not only the most visible woman supporting Wallace but also played an important management role during the campaign. Ms. Gimbel had entered the political arena after her husband’s premature death and she realized that child care was needed for other working women such as herself. The specter of ‘latch‐key” children coming home from school without parental supervision drove her to seek the promise of child care to be placed into the 1948 Progressive

Party platform. Ms. Gimbel served another vital role the convention in creating compromise language on the issue of what type of constitutional movement was needed to protect women’s rights. A significant division of opinion then existed as to whether support proposed the Equal Rights Amendment supported by Wallace before the convention and the Republican

Party which promoted legal parity between the sexes. An alternative promoted by labor

feminists would have ensured that existing labor laws protecting women would not fall with the passage of the amendment. Ms. Gimbel threaded the eye of the needle of this debate by

Inserting compromise language into the platform endorsing a constitutional amendment to promote women’s right while avoiding possible convention discord on the subject with language promising to “to raise women to first class citizens by removing all restrictions – social, economic, and political” as well as stating “without jeopardy to the exiting protective

14 Curtis MacDougall, Gideon’s Army, 3 vols. 310‐314

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legislation to mothers and future mothers.”15

As the leader of the “Women for Wallace” movement, Ms. Gimbel aided in securing the of

both campaign literature and posters to send the message of both female independence and

the desire to maintain peace for family security. In one poster the message was “If You Hate

War but Love Peace with Wallace”16 In even a stronger anti‐war message direct appeal to women to help avoid the potential absence or loss of their male family members in another military conflict a Women for Wallace poster stated “If He is Your Brother, Your Husband, Your

Son Henry Wallace is Fighting for Lasting Peace Through A Strong United Nations”17 Even segmented marketing targeted farm women through a campaign literature piece entitled

“Tanks..or Tractors” depicting a prototypical farm woman wearing overalls contemplating the

hardships she may suffer if her husband has to serve in yet another war.18 Yet another

campaign piece appeals to women’s insecurities about having sufficient money to buy a hat and

whether their husband might have to return to military service. The argument is that Wallace

will help the country avoid war while keeping in place wartime price controls.19

Susan B. Anthony II, the great niece of her namesake, proved an influential supporter of

Wallace and later peace movements. By 1936 Ms. Anthony had become a committed peace activist. Many believe her greatest achievement was writing Women During the War and After

15 1948 Progressive Party Platform 16 “If You Hate War But Love Peace with Wallace” Women for Wallace Poster (1948) https://lib.uiowa.edu/scua/tomsc200/nsc177/pstr_batewar.jpeg 17 “If He is Your Brother, Your Husband, Your Sons, Henry Wallace is Fighting for Lasting Peace Through a Strong United Nations.” Women for Wallace Campaign Poster (1948) https://library.duke.edu/exhibits/sevenelections/images/speex0100911‐media.jpeg 18 “Tanks…or Tractors?” Box 1, Steefel Collection, Wallace Campaign 19 “I’ve Got the Jitters . . . and It Isn’t Just Nerves!” Steefel Collection, Box 1

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the War proposing that women having once entered the work force in large numbers should

not be expected to return to the home as housewives. Instead, they needed government

programs or employer provided benefits designed to support their roles as both mothers and

future mothers including child care and guaranteed healthcare. These proposals became part of

the Progressive Party platform as part of a larger concept advocated by Ms. Gimbel as a form of

“economic feminists” creating government support programs to keep women in the

workforce.20 In later years, Ms. Anthony became more widely known for her efforts for nuclear

disarmament. In 1977 at the National Women’s Conference she was honored as one of the

leaders of the “second wave” of Feminism along with Billy Jean King, Congresswoman Bella

Abzug, and The Feminine Mystique author Betty Frieden. Betty Frieden had also been a delegate

at the 1948 Progressive Party convention.21

Mary Price was a North Carolina woman “labor feminist” progressive who challenged the

systemic Jim Crow South by not only supporting Wallace but personally becoming the first

woman candidate for North Carolina governor on the 1948 Progressive Party ticket. Although

Price, like Ms. Durr described below, according to her interview did not devote significant time

to her own race, her organizing skills did assist in the registration of 10,000 new black voters

while obtaining 12,000 signatures to place the Progressive Party on the 1948 ballot in a biracial

effort in a Jim Crow state. Price’s political activities in North Carolina began with her active

participation in Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW) where she became comfortable

in working with black male and female activists. The primary effort of the SCHW was elimination

20 Jacqueline Castledine, Cold War Progressives: Women’s Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016) p. 14, 49, 51. 21 Jacqueline Castledine, Cold War Progressives: Women’s Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom, p. 136, 140

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of the poll‐tax as a national effort with funding and volunteer assistance provided by both

Northern and Southern progressives. . As 1946‐47 arrived tensions began to mount as to

members having alleged ties to Communism or Communist supported and the SCHW formally

introduced rules requiring any Communist member to self‐declare himself or herself but not

formally barring their membership in the SCHW. Price, and many others chose to leave the SCHW

in protest. Price having left the SCHW was asked form the local Progressive Party of North

Carolina chapter. The organizational statement demanded the immediate end of Jim Crow,

abolition of the poll‐tax and recognition of full rights for women. Working with other black

leaders, but not the better established NAACP which chose to support Truman in 1948, she and

her partnering organizations registered yet another 10,000 new black voters. Not only did the

new party nominate Ms. Price for Governor but also a black candidates for both United States

Senate and state attorney making them the first to appear on a statewide North Carolina ballot

since the end of Reconstruction. 22

However, Price found her loyalty questioned by the local press based on charges of her having

been a Communist informant, if not a true spy, during the World War II years while working as a

federal employee during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Ms. Price decried the spying charges as

“fantastic,” although later Freedom of Information Act produced documents and investigations

would suggest the contrary, and likely exacerbated the situation by stating that such “smear”

charges were designed to divide liberal forces comparing them to Hitler‐like tactics to “smear”

22 Progressive Party leaflet, papers of Robert Korstad; Sayoko Useugi, “Gender, Race, and the Cold War: Mary Price and the Progressive Party in North Carolina: 1945‐1958,” North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 77, Issue 3, p. 306‐ 307

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the new party.23 These charges of Communism or being a fellow traveler were not unique to be

addressed to a Southern Progressive woman as noted below.

Perhaps the one of the most remarkable acts of Ms. Price included racially integrating all

Progressive Party meetings and ensuring the Wallace would only address desegregated

audiences. She also insisted that black and white campaign workers enter restaurants together

and be viewed as a new type of biracial organization working for true Southern social justice.

Such published photographs would cause some Jim Crow supporters to refer to the Progressive

Party as the “Negro Party”(or worst) in addition to the “Red Party” or “Moscow Party.”24

Henry Wallace and Ms. Price frequently had to face angry white and loud tomato and egg throwing crowds, many of them young “Dixiecrats” who gathered to disrupt their events.25 On at least one occasion a supportive mostly black audience was able to push back against the white “Dixiecrat” hecklers without much violence. Although these acts gave Wallace’s campaign much needed publicity suggesting he was a man of principle unafraid of fighting Jim Crow, many believed it did little to either increase black electoral participation in South due to the near violence of the crowds and Northerners viewed such Southern behavior with disgust, but outside of few Northern black voters who tended to support Truman after the Democratic Party adopted a civil rights platform there was no favorable political benefit upside for Wallace. 26As

one Southern white male Wallace supporter observed retreating from an angry crowd at a

23 Winston‐Salem Journal, July 31, August 1, 1948; News and Observer, July 31, August 1, 1948; Greensboro Dally News, July 31, August 1, 1948 24 Photograph of University of North Carolina College Students for Wallace Lunch, North Carolina Collection, from Doris Friedland’s papers 25Raleigh News and Observer, photograph anti‐Wallace protestors, dated August 29, 1948 26 “2,300 Silence Hoodlums at Wallace Rally” Daily Worker September 1, 1948

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Wallace even , that his campaign had arrived “thirty years too soon.”27

Unlike most of the other white Northern and Midwestern women leaders who had

supported Wallace, Ms. Price continued to experience negative consequences from her

participation in the 1948 campaign as the years passed. When interviewed by the Southern

Oral History Project, Ms. Price noted her “friends in North Carolina didn’t give a job to me, and

my enemies wouldn’t give me a job.” Although she stated that she was proud for her time

spent on the campaign trail fighting for the working class, she faced FBI surveillance for the rest

of her work life reporting that in one year alone she took fourteen different jobs as she sought

new employers a step ahead of the FBI. She ended her career working the National Council of

Churches which explicitly rejected efforts by the FBI to have her terminated. In her retirement

years in 1976 as part of the Price continued her political activities by actively volunteering for

the United Farm Workers 28

In contrast to Mary Price, Virginia Foster Durr represented another side of the Progressive

Party feminism, an upper class Southern woman who adopted liberal political beliefs from her

New Deal activism against poverty during the Great Depression. Ms. Durr, like Ms. Price, first began interracial organizing when she joined the anti‐poll tax campaign promoted by the

Southern Conference for Human Welfare where she served as a delegate from the Women’s

Division of the Democratic National Committee. Ms. Durr worked with known Southern

Communists this effort and eventually joined the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA) when

Mrs. Roosevelt was still a member. She attended biracial meetings in the effort to end the poll

27Greensboro Daily News, August 31, 1948 28 Mary Price Interview, Southern Oral History Project, University of North Carolina p. 125, 130, 133‐139

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taxes and to support anti‐lynching laws.29 When the rupture within the “Popular Front” began in

1946 as organizations such as the PCA refused to follow the increasingly expected political need

to rid their memberships of known Communists leading to the breakaway Americans for

Democratic Action (ADA) being created by Eleanor Roosevelt and more “conservative” liberals,

Ms. Durr elected to remain loyal to the PCA and supported its reorganization and the new

Progressive Party supporting Henry Wallace for President. As with other Progressive Party

supporters she shared his fear of a possibly “hot” war with the Soviet Union if Truman’s

containment policies were pursued.

Then being a resident of Virginia she agreed to run as the Progressive Party candidate in that

state for United States Senate though her only passing mention of this suggests in her

autobiography and in her earlier oral interview suggests she invested little time to her own

campaign viewing it as merely assisting the Wallace effort in that state. She did campaign before

mostly black audiences, but noted that many blacks were becoming uncomfortable with being

associated with the Wallace campaign due to the Communist smears being made against him

and the Progressive Party30

As for her post‐Wallace campaign life, Ms. Durr found herself before the Eastland

Committee facing questions about whether she or her husband were members of the

Communist Party. She, playing on her own reputation of being a difficult “Southern belle,”

29Hollinger F. Barnard, Out of the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Durr (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1985) p. 119‐121 30 Hollinger F. Barnard, ed., Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr, p. 198‐200

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instead of answering questions chose to powder her nose while taking the 5th Amendment

before the committee to make the point about the absurdity of hearings gaining much

sympathetic press coverage on the televised event31

Her high profile liberal Southern woman status was further enhanced when she and her

husband came to the aid of their personal seamstress, Rosa Parks, when she found herself

arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus. This led her and her attorney

husband to bail out Ms. Parks and she became a symbol of an older white woman supporting the

successful Montgomery Bus Boycott.32 However, as much as Ms. Durr and her husband

participated as white supporters of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement, they became

surprised and saddened when those rejecting Mr. King’s approach began calling for more

radical action by the mid‐1960s. Ms. Durr recalls she and her husband being invited to speak

before a class at the Tuskegee Institute about the significance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The black students in the class claimed that they did not want to listen to “white folks” and that

voting did not matter to them. The only hope they saw came in the form of Eldridge Cleaver

who was “going to take it away from the white folks.” Ms. Durr’s words imply a certain disbelief

that despite her years of fighting for integration of the races so much distrust and

misunderstanding of the motives and efforts of others existed.33 This increasing racial distrust

between young blacks and whites also surfaced in the Peace and Freedom campaign effort

discussed below.

31 Hollinger F. Barnard, ed., Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr, p. 259‐260 32 Hollinger F. Barnard, ed.,, Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr, p. 278‐281 33 Hollinger F. Barnard, ed. , Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr, p. 328‐330

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III.

AFRICAN AMERICAN LEADERSHIP VISBILITY WITHIN THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY BUT AN

AMBIVALENT RESPONSE BY AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTERS

The Wallace campaign did receive enthusiastic support from a number of prominent African‐

Americans frustrated by the failure of Truman to prevent the repeal of World War II era laws

banning segregation in certain industries and trades as part of the war effort. The shifting mood

of the country against the continuation of these employment protections was seen in the 1946

failure of a biracial coalition in California to pass a ballot initiative to preserve such laws.34 A significant division developed within the African‐American leadership as to the Wallace challenge to Truman. Although Wallace received support from many female African American leaders as well as mostly male African American union leaders, many leaders of the established civil rights organizations elected not to abandon the Democratic Party given Truman’s eventual acceptance of a civil rights plank to the Democratic platform. Many prominent African

American male union leaders, such as Merchant Marine Union leader Ferdinand Smith, supporting Wallace frequently found themselves later purged from their unions due to McCarthy era Communism charges despite their years of support of the liberal candidates within the

Democratic Party when the “Popular Front” concept was acceptable, while women leaders continued forward as activists in the later Civil Rights campaigns.35

34 Daniel Martinez HoSang, Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010) p. 39‐48 35 Gerald Horne, Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica (New York: New York University Press, 2006) i‐x

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Much press coverage was given to the speech by Shirley Graham DuBois endorsing the

Progressive Party campaign due the strident nature of its anti‐Jim Crow stand and calling for the

immediate desegregation of all government and private workplaces. The speech opened

dramatically with the simple statement: “I am a Negro woman from Philadelphia here to write a

platform for my children.” Within the speech she spoke of a son who had died unable to obtain

medical and demanded that “good” mothers fight to end war to avoid the loss of their own

children in the future.36 She would continue her peace activism not only through the Wallace

campaign, but until her death. She believed that to achieve peace one most first have racial

integration and gender equality.37

Sharing Ms. DuBois’ passion for peace based upon both racial and gender equality, Eslanda

Robeson – the wife of singer Paul Robeson – not only ran as the 1948 Progressive candidate for

secretary of state in Connecticut in which she castigated the Republican Party for failing to

deliver on is promises to fight for civil rights by not pressing for anti‐lynching laws or civil rights

bill despite its majority in Congress.38 Additionally, she continued to serve through the 1950s as

noted peace activist and defender of free speech rights in the age of McCarthyism raising the

15th Amendment guaranteeing the rights of former slaves to vote even as a “second class

citizen” attempting to preserve her voting right as yet another reason not answer questions

about whether she or her husband were Communists. She called for the end of white

supremacy at home and imperialism abroad joining Charlotta Bass and Ms. DuBois in

36 “Speech delivered by Shirley Graham DuBois at the Founding Convention of the Progressive Party”, Shirley Graham DuBois papers. 37 Jacqueline Castledine, Cold War Progressives: Women’s Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom, 134‐135 38 Connecticut speech – Eslanda Robeson (1948), Eslanda Robeson Papers

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establishing the Sojourners for Truth and Justice black feminist organization.39

Other African Americans, particularly union leaders, would face the challenges of being

purged from their unions due the required certification of no Communist leadership in the 1947

Taft‐Hartley bill. Most prominent among these was Ferdinand Smith, an openly Communist

Jamaican immigrant Vice‐President of the Maritime Trade Union. He had obtained his position

in a union with a black membership of less than ten percent based on his reputation for

effective organizing and being a strong leader. In 1944 he was honored as union leader with the

mayor of New York present and led a campaign among union members to support the

Roosevelt‐Truman ticket. After his break with the CIO leadership and the President of his own

union by supporting Wallace in the 1948 campaign, he and others who had supported Wallace

were purged from the leadership and experienced FBI harassment and accusations of

Communism. Finally deported in 1952 to his native Jamaica, he returned home and help aid the

sugar worker’s strike there proving himself to be truly transnational union leader.40

A young college volunteer for the Progressive Party in 1948 would also become a significant leader of the Voters Education Foundation and the civil rights campaign through the South.

Randolph T. Blackwell was a young high school student in 1946 when he heard a speech in

Greensboro by NAACP leader Ella Baker. He joined the 1948 North Carolina Progressive Party working with Mary Price while a student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technology Institute motivated to increase voter registration. He unsuccessfully ran as candidate for the North

39 Jacqueline Castledine, Cold War Progressives: Women Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom, p. 89‐90. 99, 101‐102 40 Gerald Horne, Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica (New York: New York University Press, 2005) p. xiii‐xv

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Carolina State Assembly on the Progressive Party ticket making a reasonable showing. After returning to academia in the following years to obtain his law degree at Howard and economics training at Syracuse University he obtained a teaching position in Economics at Alabama

Agriculture and Manufacturing. There there he developed a belief and wrote about the need to create different forms of “economic uplift” through government and private economic intervention in the black community if the civil rights movement would succeed.41

A California African American leader Charlotta Bass proved critical in assisting the necessary

votes to help Wallace carry by a plurality two black congressional districts in Los Angeles.

Disappointed with years of service in a Republican Party that offered unfulfilled promises to

obtain civil rights legislation, the Progressive Party’s emphasis on a broader civil rights agenda

appealed to her. As she later stated the Progressive Party was the first where she and other blacks

were “invited to a seat at the head of the table” when the party was founded in 1948. When she

herself was nominated as the Vice Presidential candidate for remnant of the Progressive Party in

1952 at the height of the Korean War, Ms. Bass described well her then 40 years of experience

as the editor of the oldest Negro newspaper in Los Angeles and “watching the rising tide of racial

hatred and bigotry against my people and against all people who believe the Constitution is

something more than a yellowed piece of paper be shut off in a glass,” Bass called on the

Progressive Party to fight against McCarthyism, continuing Jim Crow laws, restrictive covenants,

and American racism abroad in the form of expansive imperialism.42 Ms. Bass’s activism did not

41 Randolph Blackwell Interview with William Chafe,” 5 March 1973, William Henry Chafe Oral History Collection; “Randolph Blackwell and the Economics of Civil RIghts”, Alec Fazaackerly Hickmott, M.A. Thesis, University of Sussex, Sept. 10, 2010 p. 26‐38 42 Charlotta Bass, “Acceptance Speech for Vice Presidential Candidate of the Progressive Party,” http://www.socallib.org/bass/pdfs/vp1.pdf

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end in 1952, after selling her newspaper to the Los Angeles Sentinel, the competing of African‐

American newspaper in Los Angeles, she moved to Lake Elsinore converting her garage into a

community center and reading room. She also led voter registration drives while also advocating

for policies to disinvest from South Africa and prisoner rights before her death in 1977.43

IV.

PROGRESSIVE PARTY SUCCESS AMONG LATINO AND ITS LEGACY

The Progressive Party became the first national platform to call for civil rights protection not

only for African‐Americans but also for all “Spanish speaking Americans” and other ethnic

groups. The party platform also addressed the concerns of Puerto Rican nationalists by

demanding a plebiscite to determine the future status of Puerto Rico.44 Mr. Wallace’s ability

to give speeches in Spanish was appreciated in both East Los Angeles and In the Tampa Bay area,

and the Wallace campaign was able to carry those areas predominated by Mexican‐American

voters in California and Caribbean Hispanic voters in and around Tampa Bay and make those

congressional districts four of the only seven he carried in entire by a plurality on election night.45

Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other Caribbean island Hispanic voters had become an almost majority population of the Tampa Bay region by 1948. These voters had a unique history of immigration with many either actually being or being the descendants of a politicized

43 “Charlotta Bass” blackhistorynow.com.charlotta‐bass 44 1984 Progressive Party Platforms 45 John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000) p. 348

21

population through their participation in unions both in their native countries and the United

States. The membership in such unions CIO unions as the Maritime Trade Union and the Cigar

Maker Union in Florida were considered to be some of best organized and most radical labor

voters in the country. Much to the chagrin of the local Anglo population which had historically

dominated the local politics, deep divisions in the Democratic Party choosing between the

incumbent Harry S. Truman or the breakaway Jim Crow “Dixiecrat Party” running Gov. Strom

Thurmond of South Carolina over the civil rights issue opened the door for a small, but significant

victory for rather dismal outcome of the Wallace campaign. Jared G. Toney opines in his

published thesis paper that the Wallace campaign of 1948 provided an “expression of

Americanism which provided equal space for ethnic, racial, and working‐class voters” giving

Tampenos a new platform to express their political demands for recognition.46

Unlike the hostile reception that Wallace received throughout most of the South due to his

party’s commitment to ending Jim Crow and the alternative promotion of civil rights, in Tampa

Bay Wallace received a warm welcome amongst large groups of working‐class Hispanic voters

believing Wallace represented their interests in not only protecting labor rights but also calling

for peace given the past disruption of the maritime and cigar making trades during the last war

amongst a transnational population.47 Wallace’s two visits to Tampa Bay as well as the

performance of Paul Robeson on his behalf brought out large crowds of both Tampenos and a

significant number of black voters.48 The local press received letters noting that Wallace was

46 Jared G. Toney, “Viva Wallace! Tampa Latins, the Politics of Americanization, and the Progressive Party of 1948”, M.A. Thesis, University of South Florida, 2006 p. 75 47 Jared G. Toney, “Viva Wallace! Tampa Latins, the Politics of Americanization, and the Progressive Party of 1948,” 77‐78 48 “Henry Wallace to Speak in Tampa Tonight; Wallace Visits Ybor City,” La Gaceta (from Spanish) February 17, 1948; “Crowd Shouts Viva Wallace as He Strolls Into Park,” Tampa Bay Morning Tribune, October 5,

22

the only Presidential candidate visiting Tampa Bay during the campaign while Anglo

newspapers in editorials accused him of stirring up local racial problems and urged voters to

avoid his speeches.49 A local Tampa Bay Spanish edition paper endorsed Wallace over the

President and Dewey given his greater concern for working class voters.50 Not all residents of

the Tampa area were so supportive. Local Klansmen began burning crosses in communities

before the election in an obvious attempt to dampen black and perhaps even Hispanic voter

turnout.51 Whatever their intent, the attacks on black and Hispanic voter participation failed as

Wallace carried the day in the two area congressional districts.

In New York City he carried Congressional Districts with large Puerto Rican populations and

the leftist union based American Labor Party was dominant. Like the Tampenos, these voters

and their Italians ethnic group neighbors tended to be liberal voters given their working class

roots and highly effective organized labor political committees and less willing to hold

allegations of Communist influence against him.52

A significant, but apparently less studied, group of voters supporting Wallace in the West

were Mexican‐Americans. The Wallace campaign of 1948 proved a watershed in East Los

Angeles and Boyle Heights politics and local Mexican‐American leaders had Wallace speak to a

large rally in East Los Angeles as part of Edward R. Roybal led Community Services Organization

(CSO) voter registration drive which succeeded in registering approximately 15,000 new voters.

1948; “500 Hear Robeson Sing at 3rd Party Rally,” Tampa Bay Morning Tribune, October 5, 1948 49 “Welcome to Wallace,” Letter to the Editor, Tampa Tribune, February 18, 1948; “Wallace’s Listeners Eager to Give Opinions of Him.” Tampa Times, February 18, 1948; “General Calls for Boycott of Wallace Speech,” Lakeland Ledger, February 17,1948 50 “The Real Struggle,” translated from Spanish, El Internacional, June 25, 1948, p. 2 (Tampa Bay, Florida) 51 Cross Burns at Ft. Myers Negro Rally,” Tampa Bay Morning Tribune, February 14, 1948; “Cross Burning in Pinellas Still a Mystery,” Tampa Bay Morning Tribune, June 1, 1948 52 John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace, 351‐352

23

These proved essential in aiding Wallace to carry one of the two California Congressional

districts he remained competitive in by election day. In 1949 Edward R. Roybal launched a

successful campaign to become the first Mexican‐American City Councilman in Los Angeles

history representing East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, and portions of downtown Los Angeles.

Roybal’s success in building a coalition of CIO union members, aging Jewish voters in East Los

Angeles and a growing Mexican‐American community allowed the rise of leftist activism in the

eastern part of Los Angeles. It would eventually lead to Roybal’s own election as the first

Mexican‐American Congressman in the years to come.53

Another springboard for Mexican‐Americans into the politics of the 1950s and 1960s was

The support received by Wallace from the leaders of the Mine, Millers and Smelters Union.54This union known for its proclivity to stage long strikes endorsed Wallace under the leadership of Bert Corona and Lucio Benabe. Henry Wallace gave support to a Mexican‐American led strike during a 1948 nationwide speech. 55 After the war they created the Mexican‐American

National Association as the first nationwide Mexican‐American left organization. Also known by

its Spanish version acronym ANAM it soon found itself listed as a Communist front organization

leading to other members creating other organizations such as the Mexican‐American Political

Association which would help develop Mexican‐American politicians nationwide.56

53 Kenneth C. Burt, “Edward Roybal’s Election to the LA City Council Marked the Birth of Latino Politics in California,” https://www.irivinator.com/126/doc/96/him 54 A strike led by this union was later inspired the 1954 documentary style dramatic film “The Salt of the Earth” depicting union leadership skills by Mexican‐American men and women prevailing against an Anglo mine owners. Many of those associated with the production of this film had been blacklisted in Hollywood for alleged Communist sympathies. 55 Henry Wallace Speech, NBC Radio, 13 September 1948 https://blackpast.org/1948‐henry‐wallace‐radio‐address 56 Zaragisa Vargas, Latino Workers, https://www.nps.gov/heritageinitiatives/latinothestory/labor.htm

24

V.

THE NEXT GENERATION: ANTI‐WAR AND MILITANT RADICALS CREATE THE 1968 PEACE AND

PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY IN AN ALLIANCE WITH THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY DESPITE

EVIDENCE OF RACIALIZED TENSIONS WITHIN THE COALITION

As the Vietnam War raged in 1967 many young white college students as well as slightly

older new left or radical activists sought to create an alternative political party in response to

the likely re‐nomination of Lyndon Baines Johnson as the Democratic Party candidate in 1968.

In the fall of 1967 the Black Panther Party under the leadership of Eldridge Cleaver, Huey

Newton, and Bobby Seale became engaged in confrontations with police officers by appearing

armed when blacks were being arrested by mostly white police officers. Eventually violence

took place with a police officer killed and another seriously wounded in an incident between

the officers and the Black Panthers. Huey Newton was charged with murder with the Black

Panthers and others claiming it was a permissible act of self‐defense. Creating even greater publicity, armed with rifles a number of Black Panthers entered the California State Capitol to protest proposed legislation aimed at preventing the Black Panthers from being openly armed on the streets. In an attempt to create a viable electoral challenge to the existing two party structure an alliance was eventually reached between the predominantly white Peace and

Freedom Party and the Black Panther Party. Although much recent historiography has been dedicated since the 1990s as to the history of the Black Panther Party and its eventual collapse, far less historian research appears to have been devoted to the relationship of the these two

25

organizations which contributed to the Peace and Freedom Party remaining as a third party

choice on the California ballot to this day.

In his chapter essay contribution to In Search of the Black Panther Party, Joel Wilson tackles

the conflicts associated with bringing white left‐radicals with mostly middle class backgrounds

into an alliance with the Black Power movement. He proposes that the alliance was always fragile

as each had conflicting primary underlying causes for their efforts: whites to bring an immediate

withdrawal of United States forces from the Vietnam War and the Black Panther Party for

another vehicle to which to challenge the system for its mistreatment of the black community.

Wilson concludes the divisions between idealists and pragmatists in both organizations to

bridge the divide amongst leftists in 1968 found itself subverted by the extent of racial distrust

that existed at the time.57

The difficulties in bringing the two organizations together for a common campaign in 1968 was

apparent in the January 5, 1968 Los Angeles Free Press article announcing the success of the

Peace and Freedom Party gaining ballot status. Although saluting the party to having gained

ballot status as an apparent off‐set to the success of Alabama Governor’s George Wallace

organization to qualify the ultraconservative American Independent Party with segregationist

roots on the ballot, the article discusses in some detail the conflict that arose at the original San

Luis Obispo organizing convention when the majority left white delegates objected to a demand from the black delegates and their Communist allies that they be given an essential veto power over any issues “relevant to the Black community including war, poverty, and foreign policy.” An

57 Joel Wilson, “Invisible Cages: Racialized Politics and the Alliance between the Black Panther Party and the Peace and Freedom Party,” in Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams eds. In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Durham: University of North Carolina, 2006) p. 215

26

alternative motion requiring a mutual agreement among the various new party caucuses was

rejected as racist. In response. In to the walk‐out by black delegates a white member stated that

the Peace and Freedom Party should not “become a white tail on a black dog.”58However, the

article concluded that in the intervening months that an alliance had been agreed to by the Black

Panther Party and on the basis of “the fundamental principle is that we are willing to with Stokely

Carmichael’s dictum of specific coalitions for specific purposes as we feel this fits into our objectives.”59 This strategy was endorsed by the Independent Socialist finding that the two

organizations need each other to achieve common goals of ending the war while promoting and

receiving publicity by fielding a high profile Black Nationalist candidate in Eldridge Cleaver.60 At

the time of preparations for the formal founding convention for the Peace and Freedom Party

Education Caucus issued a lengthy report confirming the basic need to nominate no one else then

Eldridge Cleaver for President and rebutting point by point objections to the Cleaver nomination

being detrimental in terms of future party recruitment or an ability to attract voters in November

1968.61

The conflict over the whether the Peace and Freedom Party should, or could, maintain an

identity separate and apart from the Black Panther Party and its joint nomination of Eldridge

Cleaver for President would persist throughout the campaign. A notable campaign poster trying

to remind voters that the Peace and Freedom Party crossed racial lines showed a young white

woman stating “You Don’t Have To Belong To A Minority Group to Register Peace and

58 Geronimo ji Jaga, “Every Nation Struggling to Be Free Has a Right to Struggle, a Duty to Struggle,” in Cleaver and Kasfificas eds. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party, 71‐77 59 “Peace and Freedom Now on Calif. Ballot, “ Los Angeles Free Press, January 5, 1968 60 “The Road Forward For the Peace and Freedom Party” Independent Socialist June‐July 1968 Vol. 5, Supplement 61 Report from the Peace and Freedom Education Caucus – January 29‐31, 1968 (Papers of Lanric (Ric) Hyland)

27

Freedom.”62 Most of the campaign posters used mentioned and used the logos of both the Black

Panther Party and the Peace and Freedom Party some with Cleaver calling for “Power to the

People,Black Power for Black People.63 However, several of the posters only make mention to his

participation as the Peace and Freedom Party candidate with more neutral calls for “Revolution”

and “Power to all People.” This use of segmented marketing for even an upstart

organization like the Peace and Freedom Party is timely.64

The audio file of the recording from the Peace and Freedom Party Founding Convention and

Some silent film footage from the convention is noteworthy as to how the decision to form the

alliance meant a campaign devoted to two primary issues: 1) withdrawal of American troops

from the Vietnam and the immediate end of the draft; and 2) and support of the Black Panther

Movement and the adoption of their 10 Point plan calling for a form of self‐rule for black

communities, particularly in regard to policing of their community. Very few speakers in the

over two hours of audiotape mention any other issues, with the exception of two Hispanics

speaking on behalf of the struggles of Chicanos in general and the United Farm Workers

specifically. As for the Latino issues. Also the video footage only shows two black speakers and

former Free Speech Movement leader Mario Salvo speaking to a white young, middle class

62 “You Don’t Have to Belong To A Minority Group to Register Peace and Freedom” 1967‐68 Poster http://versobooks.props3amazon.com/images/000013/563/Peace and Freedom Party Flyer/683b0d2fc9c5071c36d3a.jpeg 63 “Rally at Boverd Auditorium” Eldridge Cleaver for President Campaign (1968) https://images_na.sslimages amazon.com/images/1/41yD2cMCPLL.jpeg; “Support Eldridge Cleaver for President at the Peace and Freedom Presidential Nominating Convention” https://media.vam.ac.uk/media/thira/collection/images/2009BX/2009BX4350jpeg 64 “Revolution” – Eldridge Cleaver for President Poster (1968) https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8202/8160497005_60d691e683_b.jpeg; Eldridge Cleaver for President campaign literature piece https://www.ebay.com/itm/1968‐Eldridge_Cleaver_for_President_flyer/27053452516?bash

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looking audience.65 This vision of other primarily white socialist groups endorsing the Peace and

Freedom Party as the best alternative for the left for a Presidential candidate with the campaign, even if grudgingly for the need to have more discussion as to the class rather than just a demand for racial reform in the future, is encapsulated in several socialist newsletters and commentaries published in 1968.66

The fact that most white leadership accepted the or Black Panther Party and Peace and

Freedom Party combined effort as a mutually beneficial alliance is found in a subsequent survey

of the elected members of the County Council of the Peace and Freedom Party of Los Angeles

County which indicated the membership supported the Black Power agenda and the support of

black militants protect themselves from the police.67 Although the Cleaver campaign formed

the alliance with the 1968 California Peace and Freedom Party, not all efforts at building alliances

with white radical groups similarly succeeded. Carl Oglesby, then the former President of

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) refused Cleaver’s offer to be his Vice Presidential

nominee on the Black Panther Party/Peacce and Freedom Party ticket which represented yet

another rejection of the black power movement by SDS. Bernandine Dohrn, the national

secretary for the SDS declared in the party’s weekly publication New Left Notes that the white

and black revolutionary movements and “different levels of consciousness” which required the

pursuit of different strategies other than electoral politics. She favored less formal promotion of

65https://archive.org/details/PeaceAndFreedomPartyConvention1968; https://archive.org/FoundingConventioOfThe CaliforniaPeaceandFreedomParty 66 Peter Camejo ,“The Peace and Freedom Party” (Socialist Workers Party – 20 Dec. 1967) www,Marxists.org/history/etol/document/swo‐us‐history/etol/swp‐us/misc‐2/1967/12‐20‐1967/swp/p&F/‐ conejo.pdf; Jon Britton, “NY ‘Peace and Freedom’ and ‘Freedom and Peace’ Conventions” 12 June 1968 www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp/MISC‐2/1968‐06‐12‐swp‐p&F‐ny‐britton.pdf 67 James Elden and Daniel R. Schweizer, “New Third Party Radicalism: The Case of the California Peace and Freedom Party,” The Western Political Quarterly, 24, no. 4 (1971) 761‐774

29

aspects of the Black Panther Party agenda through perhaps joint speaking tours with Black

Panther leaders which would not interfere with SDS plans to build a “white revolutionary mass

movement, not a paper alliance” with the Black Panthers doing work on the “ground level” in

their own communities.68 The Black Panthers rejected any alliance that would not recognize them

as true equals and thus abandoned the pursuit for SDS support.

Despite the call of their leadership, members of both groups did report some racial tensions

in holding the alliance together partially out of some likely predictable distrust derived from living more segregated lives prior to 1968. Regina Jennings wrote in her essay about the Black

Panther experience in working with white Peace and Freedom members that “[i]nitially I refused to work with Whites . . .I had not forgotten the either the racism of White cops or the racism of my former co‐workers… I always wondered and openly asked why they were not aggressively to solve the racism within their own communities.”69 The drastically different

dress style between Peace and Freedom party and the more formal Black Panther attire could

spark discomfort and even disdain as Panther leader Bobby Seale once commented when

observing a long‐haired hippy Peace and Freedom Party member: “Clothes and looks reflect

who you are: with their stringy arms and pasty faces these long‐haired, bell‐bottomed, tie‐dyed

flakes stone on acid or weed seem to have no self‐respect.”70

The commitment of the Eldridge Cleaver as to the promotion of the Peace and Freedom

68 “White Mother Country Radicals,” New Left Notes, July 29, 1968; David Barber, “Leading the Vanguard: White New Leftists School the Panthers on Black Revolution,” in Jana Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, eds, In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006) 227‐229 69 Regina Jennings, “Why I Joined the Party: An Africana Womanist Reflection https://lib.com/. . ./why‐i‐joined‐ party‐africana‐womanist‐reflection, p. 261 70 David Hillard, This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hillard and the Study of the Black Panthers Party (Boston: Little and Brown, 1993) p. 147

30

agenda could be questioned given his failure to even mention that he was the Peace and

Freedom Party candidate for the 1968 election when speaking before students at UCLA or

appearing on national television with William F. Buckley. In both instances he focused on the

Black Panther Party issues of the need for a revolutionary change within a white dominated

society to some independent power to the black community and reform to the white

community. Nor did he discuss the Chicano Movement or women rights when he had the

opportunity to do so in such a large public forum. Perhaps this was a function of the nature of

the speech or an interview, but may also indicate the attention became directed too much on

Cleaver alone to actually assist the Peace and Freedom Party effort to become the new party for

the American left.71

VII.

THE CONFLICTED ROLE OF WOMEN AND A LIMITED FEMINIST AGENDA IN THE 1968

PEACE AND FREEDOM CAMPAIGN

As noted above, the Progressive Party in 1948 produced arguably the most feminist platform of any nationwide party until that time by devoting large sections of the platform to particular calls for expanded rights for women and their families.72The Progressive Party also

demonstrated that new nationwide party could be created with approximately one‐third of the

71 Eldridge Cleaver, “No Democrats…No Republicans” ‐ UCLA Speech 10/4/1968 Youtube UCLAComStudies; “Eldridge Cleaver on Blacks in America,” (October 16, 1968) https://youtu.be/yd7n1xioviy 72 1948 Progressive Party Platform

31

national delegates being women whose dedication to Wallace during the general election

campaign evidenced itself in reports that over half of the party volunteers were women.

By contrast, the Peace & Freedom Platform in its 1968 national local and campaign

literature, with notable exception of Kathleen Cleaver discussed below, suggests a much

lesser concern for women’s issues then being advocated by older women who had worked in

the 1948 Wallace campaign. In fact the Peace and Freedom party only makes a passing

comment about equality for women. (In fairness to the party, in 1968 the reference to women’s

rights in the Democratic and Republican platforms other than the support for the Equal Rights

Amendment was minimal as well73).

Robert Self in All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s posits

that diminished profiles given to women in the Black Nationalist movement, which the Peace and

Freedom hitched most of its rhetoric with the decision to endorse Eldridge Cleaver for president,

related to a desire for African American men to overcome the matriarchal power stereotype

caused by their loss of patriarchal “breadwinning” within the black community which had been

publicly discussed by white liberals to explain the cause of the violent riots of 1965‐1968. In other

words, a concept of assertive black males needed to exist to combat white oppression which

eclipsed the demands of black women for their own justice at that time.74Support for Self’s point

exists in Eldridge Cleaver’s speech at UCLA in which only after spending approximately two hours

excoriating the police violence and imposed on people of color did he spend approximately less

than five minutes on the “p###y power” of women mostly to support men in the movement or

73 1968 Republican National Platform; 1968 Democratic National Party; and the 1968 American Independent Party Platform 74 Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s,

32

to help bring other men into the movement. No mention is made of women leaders of the Black

Panthers, including his own wife.75 In her published essay “Why I Joined the Party: An Africana

Womanist Reflection,” Regina Jennings acknowledges Kathleen Cleaver as one the Black Panther

Party leaders, but also spoke of the “vulgar male behavior” at the Panther Oakland office while

agreeing with Self’s theory by stating that “Black men, who had been so long without some form

of power, lacked the background the understand and rework their double standard toward

female cadre”76

The extent of the sexism in the organization has been called into question by some men and

women who participated in it. Elaine Brown stated that: “Did these brothers drop form

‘revolutionary heaven’? Of course not. We were working through issues.”77 Eldridge Cleaver

after 1968, in contrast to his earlier “p###y power” comments, did say that women were the

other half of the Panther organization deserving respect from the male membership.78 Lanric

(Ric) Hyland stated that he attended multiple meetings with the Black Panther leadership as the

National Coordinator of the Cleaver’s Presidential campaign and never witnessed what he considered poor treatment of the women attending. By contrast, he noted that both Elaine

Brown and Kathleen Cleaver led as much as the men in the organization.79 Kathleen Cleaver

became not only a candidate for State Assembly for the Peace and Freedom Party but also campaigned with a poster depicting her in the classic Black Panther leather jacket holding a

75 “Eldridge Cleaver. . .’No Democrats. . . No Republicans’” – 1968 – UCLA 10/4/1968 YouTube UCLACommStudies 76Regina Jennings, “Why I Joined the Party: An Africana Womanist Reflection,” The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 25, Issue no. 3, 261 77 Elaine Brown, Interview by Joel Wilson, September 26, 2003 78 “The Role of Revolutionary Women,” Black Panther, May 4, 1969 79 Author’s Interview with Lanric (Ric Hyland), March 20, 2018

33

shotgun with the question “1968: Bullet or Ballot You Decide.” 80 Also her speech at

January 31, 1968 Peace and Freedom of Alameda County candidate’s forum before a primarily

white, middle class background Peace and Freedom Party audience was credited by many as a

key moment in bridging the aforementioned difficulties in creating the alliance between the

Peace and Freedom Party and the Black Panther Party by calling for revolutionary efforts both at the ballot box and through other means.81The success of the Black Panther Party in being able

to nominate at least seven of its member in 1968 as nominees of the Peace and Freedom Party

for local and state office indicates the deference being given to them by their alliance partners

at least for that election cycle.

VII.

CHICANO MILITANTS: THE FORGOTTEN ALLIES OF THE 1968 PEACE AND FREEDOM CAMPAIGN

Although most research to date as focused on the Black Panther Party as being given a co‐

equal status in the campaign, what has been overlooked or diminished is the active roles played

by Chicano militants in seeking to bring both farmworkers and urban Chicanos into the party.

Usually the references to the Peace and Freedom Party are passing a best.82 This author might

speculates this may have been related to failed efforts by some Chicano activists to gain ballot

80 Poster “1968: Bullet v. Ballot . . .Shoot your Shot” – Kathleen Cleaver for California State Assembly https://collectionpoliticalgraphics.org/mxgis/?kv=46178&style=detail 81 “Position of the Black Panther Party for Self‐Defense Position on the Seventh Congressional District Election in Alameda County and the Candidacy of John George in the Democratic Party” Box 1B, Folder 5A, Social Protest Collection, University of California, Berkeley 82 Laura Pulido, Black, Brown, and Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles, P. 164‐165 refers to the Peace and Freedom Party as an effort to build a wider radical coalition through an electoral process.

34

access to their own La Raza Unida Party in the early 1970s promoted by Rodolfo “Corky”

Gonzalez, former champion boxer and Chicano poet activist who was placed on the ballot in

Utah as the Peace and Freedom Party Vice Presidential candidate while Cleaver could not be on

the ballot there as he not yet turned 35.83 However, Mr. Gonzales is remembered by some in

1968 as actually traveling with Cleaver and other Panthers and assisting in registering Mexican‐

American farmworkers at the California rallies in the more rural parts of the state.84 Mr.

Gonzalez more importantly became remembered for helping to organize and preside

over the first national Chicano conference in Santa Barbara in 1969 at which the Plan Espiritual

de Aztlan was adopted as the manifesto of a now national Chicano movement.85

However, the Peace and Freedom Party was the only political party that had created a permanent “Black‐Brown Caucus” and there were several Chicano activist speakers at the 1968

Convention. Several of those attending went on to leadership positions both within the UFW and various government positions. In the audio file from the founding convention of the Peace and Freedom Party two Chicano activists are highlighted as speakers: Manuel Gomez and Peter

Velasco.86

Mr. Gomez announced the success of the Brown‐Black Caucus meeting of the convention,

from which white delegates did not participate, and the report that it had been recognized that

the Chicano movement represented an equal struggle with that of the Black Power movement.

The East Los Angeles “Blow‐out” of Mexican‐American students from the high schools to

83 Interview with Cleaver Campaign Coordinator C.T. Weber, March 11, 2018 84 Interview with Lanric (Ric) Hyland – March 21, 2018 85 Armando Navarro, The Cristal Experiment (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998) 109‐110 86 Audio File from the 1968 Peace and Freedom Party Convention (Richmond) https://archive.org/details/PeaceAndFreedomPartyConvention1968; Film without Audio https://archive.org/FoundingConventionOfTheCaliforniaPeaceandFreedomParty

35

protest received much attention along with police brutality of Chicanos at the hands of white

police officers. It was also demanded that Spanish be given a co‐equal status in the schools. Mr.

Velasco, a Filipino and United Farm Workers organizer from the Salinas Valley asked the

delegates to participate as Pickets in the on‐going Delano strike. Both of these men would have

significant careers following the convention: Mr. Gomez would eventually become the senior

University of California official in charge of its Diversity Outreach Program after years of

Chicano movement activism and Mr. Velasco would eventually succeed Cesar Chavez as

president of the United Farm Workers union.87 88

VIII.

PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY SURVIVAL AND SUCCESSES POST THE 1968 CLEAVER CAMPAIGN

In the days following the 1968 Presidential campaign conservative television talkshow

host William F. Buckley, Jr. conducted an hour long interview with Eldridge Cleaver during which

he never mentioned the Peace and Freedom Party or his recent Presidential campaign in which

Cleaver only received a relatively small number of votes given his national celebrity as an active

leader of the Black Panther Party. Although the Black Panther Party practically disappeared by

1970 as many of its leaders, Including Eldridge Cleaver, had legal problems or financial problems

to maintain the existence of the organization, the Peace and Freedom, unlike the Henry Wallace’s

Independent Progressive Party before it which failed within seven years of after ts formation, ,

87 “UC Outreach Chief Quits in Scandal: UC Official Manuel N. Gomez temporarily takes over department rocked by charges the director gave athletes special treatment,” Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2011 88 “Peter G. Velasco; United Farm Workers Leader” (Obituary) Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1995

36

would continue to maintain its ballot status in California this day. In 1970 the Peace and Freedom

Party ran the first Hispanic candidate for governor, former Socialist Workers Party member Peter

Camejo, since the nineteenth century and would continue to remain the party most likely to run women or minority candidates for statewide office until 2000. Perhaps the key to the survival of the party was the decision to redefine itself in 1974 as a “Feminist‐Socialist” party thus avoiding the fate that other American third parties when a primary original organizing issue behind those who labored to place the party on the ballot, namely ending the Vietnam War and eliminating the draft, had been adopted by the other political parties.89 Ironically, the women’s rights agenda

absent from the 1968 Peace and Freedom Party platform became one its primary rallying cries

by 1974.

IX.

CONCLUSION

Although neither Henry Wallace or Eldridge Cleaver achieved a significant number of votes in

their respective campaigns, the parties that were created to support them left some permanent

effects on the American political landscape. The feminists involved in the 1948 Progressive

campaign created the first nationwide feminist political party platform and many of its leaders

would follow through and would become the core feminist leaders of the 1960s and 1970s.

Latinos found a home with the Henry Wallace campaign and from which their supporters would

later form one of the earliest nationwide Mexican‐American organizations and proved

89 “Peace and Freedom Party, “ join.california.com/Party%/Peace&/20and&20Freedom

37

instrumental in electing the first Mexican‐American to the Los Angeles City Council. Although the

Black Panther Party, the nationwide electoral platform created by the alliance with the Peace and

Freedom Party permitted Eldridge Cleaver to eloquently raise the demands of black nationalists

across the nation creating a necessary dialogue for future reforms.90 The other discernible

pattern is that third parties usually raise popular issues adopted by the major parties making the

need for their continued existence superfluous. However, both of these parties calling for efforts

to make America a more peaceful, less militaristic nation with a domestic policy squarely

addressing issues of racial and economic justice may yet reappear in different forms as many of

these issues still exist and do not remain fully addressed until today.

90 Statement by former Cleaver Campaign National Coordinator Ric Hyland in an interview by Robert Bates – “This country owes a debt gratitude to Cleaver for telling American how bad things were in the black community so change could happen.”

38

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Barnard, Hollinger F. ed. Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr. Birmingham: The University of Alabama Press, 1985

Castledine, Jacqueline. Cold War Progressives: Women’s Interracial Organizing for Peace and Freedom. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016

Cleaver, Kathleen and George Kasfificas. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party. New York: Rutledge, 2001

Culver, John C. and John Hyde. American Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000

Devine, Thomas. Henry Wallace’s 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of Postwar Liberalism. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013

Hillard, David. This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hillard and the Story of the Black Panther Party. Boston: Little and Brown, 1993

Horne, Gerald. Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica. New York: New York University Press, 2005

HoSang, Daniel Martinez. Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010

Lazerow, Jama and Yohuru Williams, eds. In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006

MacDougall, Curtis. Gideon’s Army, 3 Vol. New York: Manziana & Munsell, 1965

Manchester, William. The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative of American History. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974

McCullough, David. Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992

Navarro, Armando. The Cristal Experiment. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998

Pulido, Laura. Black, Brown, Yellow & Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006

Schulz, Karl. Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1960

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Self, Robert O. All in the Family: The Realignment of American Politics Since the 1960s. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012

Articles

Barber, David, “Leading the Vanguard: White New Leftists School the Panthers on Black Revolution” in Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, In Search of the Black Panthers: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006) 223‐251

Britton, Jon, “NY ‘Peace and Freedom’ and ‘Freedom and Peace’ Conventions,” Socialist Workers Party, June 12, 1968 accessed at https://www.Marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp/misc‐ 2/1968‐06‐12‐swp‐p&f‐ny/britton.pdf

Burt, Kenneth C. “Edward Roybal’s Election to the LA City Council Marked the Birth of Latino Politics in California,” https://www.irvinator.com/126/doc/96/him

Camejo, Peter, “The Peace and Freedom Party,” Socialist Workers Party, December 20, 1967 accessed https://www.Marxists.org/history/etol/documents/swo‐us‐history/etol/swp‐us/misc‐ 2/1967/12‐20‐1967/swp/p&f/‐conejo.pdf

“Charlotta Bass,” https:/www.blackhistory.now.com.charlotta‐bass

“Cross Burns at Ft. Myers Negro Rally,” Tampa Bay Morning Tribune, February 14, 1948

“Cross Burning in Pinellas Still a Mystery,” Tampa Bay Morning Tribune, June 1, 1948

“Crowd Shouts Viva Wallace as He Strolls Into Park,” Tampa Bay Morning Tribune

Dohrn, Bernadine, “White Mother Country Radicals,” New Left Notes, July 20, 1968

Elden, James and Daniel R. Schweizer, “New Third Party Radicalism: The of the California Peace and Freedom Party,” The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1971) “500 Hear Robeson Sing at 3rd Party Rally,” Tampa Bay Morning Tribune,

Fuller, Helen, “For a Better World Now,” New Republic, August 2, 1948

“General Calls for Boycott of Wallace Speech,” Lakeland Ledger, February 17, 1948

Greensboro Daily News; July 31, August 1, 1948

“Henry Wallace to Speak in Tampa Tonight: Wallace visits Ybor City,” La Gaceta (translated from Spanish) February 17, 1948

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Jaga, Geronimo, “Every Nation Struggling to be Free Has a Right to Struggle, a Duty to Struggle,” in Kathleen Cleaver and George Kasificas eds, Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party. New York: Rutledge, 2001

Jennings, Regina, “Why I Joined the Party: An Africanist Woman Reflection,” The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 25, Issue no. 3, p. 146‐152

“Peace and Freedom on the Calif. Ballot,” Los Angeles Free Press, January 5, 1968

“Peter Velasco; United Farm Workers leader,” (obituary) Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1995

Raleigh News and Observer, August 29, 1948

Sheehan, Vincent, “The Wallace Youth: A Communication,” New Republic, November 1, 1948

“The Real Struggle,” (translated from Spanish), El Internacional, June 25, 1948

“The Road for the Future of the Peace and Freedom Party,” Independent Socialist, June‐July 1968, Vol. 5, Supplement

“The Role of Revolutionary Women,” Black Panther, May 4, 1969

“2,300 Silence Hoodlums at Wallace Rally,” Daily Worker, September 1, 1948

Useugi, Sayoko, “Gender, Race, and the Cold War: Mary Price and the Progressive Party in North Carolina: 1945‐1958,” North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 77, Issue 3

Vargas, Zarg, “Latino Workers,” https://www.nps.gov/heritageinitiatives/labor/htn

“Wallace’s Listeners Eager to Give Opinions of Him,” Tampa Times, February 18, 1948

Winston Salem Journal; July 31, August 1, and August 31, 1948

“UC Outreach Chief Quits in Scandal: UC Official Manual N. Gomez temporarily takes over department rocked by charges that director gave athletes special treatment,” Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2011

Wilson, Joel, “Invisible Cages: Racialized Politics and the Alliance between the Black Panther Party and the Peace and Freedom Party,” in Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams eds., In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006

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Campaign Platforms, Posters, and Literature

1948 Communist Party Platform

1948 Progressive Party Platform

1968 Peace and Freedom Party Platform (Richmond, California)

1968 Democratic Party Platform

1968 Republican Party Platform

“Peace and Freedom,” joinCalifornia.com/party%/peace&/20and&freedom

Photograph of University of North Carolina College Students for Wallace Lunch. North Carolina

Collection, Doris Friedland’s papers

Progressive Party leaflet, papers of Robert Korstad

“Rally at Boverd Auditorium” Poster, Eldridge Cleaver for President Campaign (1968) https://images_nass/images/amazon.com/images/1/41yD2c507136d3aoj[eg Report from the Peace and Freedom Education Committee, January 29‐31, 1968

“Revolution” poster with Eldridge Cleaver quote – Eldridge Cleaver for President (1968) accessed at https://www.c1staticflicker.com/9/8202/8160497005_60d691eb3

“Support Eldridge Cleaver for President at the Peace and Freedom Nominating Convention” Poster https://media.vam.ac.uk/media/thira/collection/images/2009BX/2009/Bx9350jpeg

“You Don’t Have to Belong To A Minority Group to Register Peace and Freedom” 1967‐68 Poster https://versobooks.props3amazon.com/images000013/563/Peace_and_Freedom_Party_Flyer/ 683b0d2fc95071c36d3ajpeg

Speeches

Bass, Charlotta, “Acceptance Speech for the Vice Presidential Nomination of the Progressive Party,” https://www.socalib/Bass/pdfs/vp1.ped

Connecticut Speech – Eslanda Robeson (1948) Eslanda Robeson papers “Eldridge Cleaver says. . .’No Democrats. . .No Republicans’ 1968” https://youtu.be/5s05kc60gim

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Henry Wallace Speech, NBC Radio, September 13, 1948 https://www.blackpast.org/1948‐henry‐ wallace‐radio‐address

“Position of the Blank Panther Party for Self‐Defense on the Seventh Congressional District Election in Alameda County and the Candidacy of John George in the Democratic Party,” Box 18 Folder 5a, Social Protest Collection, University of California, Berkeley

“Speech delivered by Shirley Graham DuBois at the Founding Convention of the Progressive Party,” Shirley Graham DuBois papers

Audio and Film Files

Audio recording from the 1968 Peace and Freedom Party Convention (Richmond) https://archive.org/details/PeaceAndFreedomPartyConvention1968

Film without audio from the 1968 Peace and Freedom Party Founding Convention (1968) https://archive.org/FoundingConventionOfThePeaceAndFreedomParty

Dissertations and Theses

Hillworth, Alec Fazzarkely. “Randolph Blackwell and the Economics of Civil Rights.” M.A.Thesis, University of Sussex, 2010

Toney, Jared G. “Viva Wallace! Tampa Latins, the Politics of Americanization, and the Progressive Party of 1948.” M.A. Thesis, University of South Florida, 2006

Interviews

Elaine Brown Interview by Joel Wilson, 2010

“Eldridge Cleaver on Blacks in America” (October 16, 1968) https://youtu.be/yd7n1xioviy

Eldridge Cleaver Interview, “Firing Line with William F. Buckely, Jr.: The Black Panthers,” November 13, 1968 https://youtube/5NPak_Dbin8

Interview with Cleaver Campaign Coordinator C.T. Weber, April 9, 2018

Interview with Cleaver Campaign National Coordinator Lanric (Ric) Hyland by Robert W. Bates, March 21, 2018

Oral History Interview with Mary Price Adamson, April 19, 1976. Interview G‐0001. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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“Randolph Blackwell Interview with William Chafe,” March 5, 1973. William Chafe Oral Interview Collection

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