Changes

===Blacks===

===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]].

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 favorite 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. Many CP members resisted but Moscow issued an even stronger edict in 1930, hoping to stir up a revolution in the homeland of capitalism. After 1930 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]].

 

Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. (1903-64) was a black graduate of Harvard Law School and a practicing lawyer in Atlanta who abruptly changed his course in life when a controversial civil rights case led him to join the Communist Party and move to New York City. Davis served as editor of the party newspaper the ''Daily Worker'' during 1936-43, and was elected to the New York City Council in 1943 and reelected in 1945. In 1949, Davis was convicted of conspiracy under the Alien Registration Law. After more than three years in prison, he resumed his involvement in Communist Party politics for another decade before dying in 1964.

===Intellectuals===

===Intellectuals===