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Communist Party of the United States of America (view source)
Revision as of 03:30, June 6, 2009
, 03:30, June 6, 2009→Ethncs
The CPUSA drew a large fraction of its members from certain ethnic groups, such as Finns, Jews and Italians.
The CPUSA drew a large fraction of its members from certain ethnic groups, such as Finns, Jews and Italians.
In 1928 the 6th Congress of the Comintern in Moscow resolved that the black population of the American South was a subject nation, thus capable of engendering a "national revolutionary movement," and ordered the CPUSA to give high priority to mobilizing blacks. The party made the 1931 Scottsboro lynching case its favoprite publicity issue, making the maltreatment of African Americans a matter of international concern for the first time, and locked it into the American radical-liberal political agenda. After 1928 the Party strongly supported civil rights for blacks, weeded out racism among its white members and tried to enlist a large black membership. It enlisted only a small black membership, which tried to take over the [[Civil Rights Movement]]. Only one major figure in the Civil Rights Movement was a Communist, Stanley Levison, who was a top advisor to [[Martin Luther King]].
Before World War I, Finnish immigrants in Michigan and Minnesota waged internal disputes as the Finnish Socialist Federation fought the [[Industrial Workers of the World]] for dominance. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party gained a strong following, and fought both the Socialists and the conservative Lutherans. Thousands of Finnish radicals voluntarily migrated to Soviet Russia. Stalin executed most of them in the 1930s.
===Blacks===
In 1928 the 6th Congress of the Comintern in Moscow resolved that the black population of the American South was a subject nation, thus capable of engendering a "national revolutionary movement," and ordered the CPUSA to give high priority to mobilizing blacks. The party made the 1931 Scottsboro lynching case its favoprite publicity issue, making the maltreatment of African Americans a matter of international concern for the first time, and locked it into the American radical-liberal political agenda. After 1928 the Party strongly supported civil rights for blacks, weeded out racism among its white members and tried to enlist a large black membership. It enlisted only a small black membership, which tried to take over the [[Civil Rights Movement]]. Only one major figure in the Civil Rights Movement was a Communist, Stanley Levison, who was a top advisor to [[Martin Luther King]].
===Intellectuals===
===Intellectuals===
The Party had a small but influential following among intellectuals and artists, especially in New York City in the 1930s and early 1940s. In 1935 the Party leaders created the "League of American Writers," downplaying the Party connection and overtly Marxist dogmas in an attempt to attract liberal, middle-class writers of established stature; after several years as a prestigious and broadly based organization, however, the league broke into hostile factions of progressives and Communists over such international issues as the Moscow show trials and the Hitler-Stalin Pact.
The Party had a small but influential following among intellectuals and artists, especially in New York City in the 1930s and early 1940s. In 1935 the Party leaders created the "League of American Writers," downplaying the Party connection and overtly Marxist dogmas in an attempt to attract liberal, middle-class writers of established stature; after several years as a prestigious and broadly based organization, however, the league broke into hostile factions of progressives and Communists over such international issues as the Moscow show trials and the Hitler-Stalin Pact.