This statement from the leadership of the Communist Party to the 4th International Convention of Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association takes issue with that organization’s failure to confront the Klan, long a point of schism between Black Communists and the U.N.I.A., and an epitome of larger differences in ideology and perspective. An important document for a variety of reasons; it summarizes differences between the two organizations, acts as an early description of the Communist position towards Black liberation, and a thesis on the history and role of the Klan in the U.S. class struggle.

‘Workers Party Calls for Fight on Klan’ by the Workers (Communist) Party Central Executive Committee from The Daily Worker. Vol. 2 No. 126. August 14, 1924.

Urges Militant Attitude

Failure of the convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, now meeting In New York, to take a determined attitude in opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, is criticised in a statement issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Workers Party of America and released for publication today.

The statement in full reads: To the Fourth Annual International Convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Meeting at Liberty Hall, New York):

BROTHERS and sisters: We address you on the question of your attitude toward the Ku Klux Klan.

You have already passed a set of two resolutions on the Ku Klux Klan, setting out the position that you intend to maintain toward that organization, as follows:

1. “Resolved, That the fourth international convention of the Negro peoples of the world regards the alleged attitude of the Ku Klux Klan to the Negro as fairly representative of the feelings of the majority of the white race towards us, and places on record its conviction that the only solution of the crucial situation is that of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, namely, the securing for ourselves as speedily as possible a government of our own on African soil.” 2. “Moved, That it shall be the policy of the Universal Negro Improvement Association to protest against the brutalities and atrocities alleged to be perpetrated upon the members of the Negro Race by the Ku Klux Klan or by any other organization.”

Before passing the foregoing resolutions, you defeated a substitute proposed by Mr. Wallace, which provided “that the brutalities and atrocities perpetrated upon the members of the Negro Race by the Klan be condemned.” The debate indicated that this substitute was defeated partly because it stated plainly that brutalities and atrocities are perpetrated by the Klan, while the second resolution passed speaks only of such brutalities and atrocities “alleged to be perpetrated” by the Klan.

From the foregoing facts it is evident:

First. That the Universal Negro Improvement Association offers the Negro people no program for meeting the atrocities of the Klan in the United States, except the plan for securing a government in Africa.

Second. That the Universal Negro Improvement Association refuses to say that the Ku Klux Klan is guilty of crimes against Negroes.

The Workers Party of America, composed of Negro and white workers alike, fraternally requests you to reconsider the above action. We believe that if this convention fails to make an outright attack upon the Klan, boldly accusing it of its crimes against the Negro people and laying down a concrete plan for combatting it, that such a failure will work untold injury to the Negro people and to the working class generally. We believe, furthermore, that your failure officially to declare your enmity to and your determination to fight against that organization will result in weakening the struggle of the colored peoples thruout the world against their oppressors.

The Redemption of Africa.

We, the Workers Party of America, stand for the right of self-determination of the peoples of Africa. stand for driving all of the European imperialists out of Africa, forever breaking their colonial rule, and for the right of the peoples of Africa to build whatever nation they may choose to establish of their own free will.

We stand also for the right of the Negro people of America and of all other countries to come and go where they please and to migrate to Africa or to any other country they may choose, in a free world of complete equality of all races.

We, the Workers Party of America, as the American section of the Communist International, with branches in all countries of the world, including Africa and the countries of the darker races of Asia, are engaged no less than you in the struggle against the imperialism which is enslaving Africa.

Our Position.

At our Fourth International Congress. held in the city of Moscow, Russia, in 1922, we declared in part:

“It is with intense pride that the Communist International sees the exploited Negro workers resist the attacks of the exploiter, for the enemy of his Race and the enemy of the white workers is one and the same-capitalism and imperialism. The international struggle of the Negro Race is a struggle against capitalism and imperialism. It is on the basis of this struggle that the world Negro movement must be organized. In America, the center of Negro culture and the crystallization of Negro protest; in Africa, the reservoir of human labor for further development of capitalism; in Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia and Nicaragua and other ‘independent’ republics), where American imperialism dominates; in Porto Rico, Haiti, Santo Domingo and other islands washed by the waters of the Caribbean, where the brutal treatment of our black fellow-men by the American occupation has aroused the protest of the conscious Negro and the revolutionary white workers everywhere; in South Africa and the Congo, where the growing industrialization of the Negro population has resulted in various forms of uprisings; in East Africa, where the recent penetration of world capital is stirring the native populations into an active opposition to capitalism, in all these centers the Negro movement must be organized.

“It is the task of the Communist International to point out to the Negro people that they are not the only people suffering from oppression of capitalism and imperialism; that the workers and peasants of Europe and of the Americas are also the victims of imperialism; that the struggle against imperialism is not the struggle of any one people, but of all the peoples of the world; that in India and China, in Persia and Turkey, in Egypt and Morocco, the oppressed colored colonial peoples are struggling heroically against their imperialist exploiters; that these peoples are rising against the same evils that the Negroes are rising against-racial oppression and discrimination, and intensified industrial exploitation; that these people strive for political, industrial and social liberation and equality. Communist International, which represents the revolutionary workers and peasants of the whole world in the struggle to break the power of imperialism, is not simply the organization of the enslaved white workers of Europe and America, but equally the organization of the oppressed colored peoples of the world, and feels it to be its duty to encourage and support the international organization of the colored people in their struggle against the common enemy.”

An International Struggle.

The Workers Party of America calls your attention to the fact that the struggle against the Ku Klux Klan which murders and tortures the Negro in this country, is a part of this worldwide fight.

The terrorizing of the Negro in America is not simply a local matter, to be dealt with opportunistically, but it is a part of the world-wide effort to degrade the Negro and to establish the “principle” that he is “inferior.” Any surrender to or conciliation with the Klan here will only serve to demoralize and discourage the fight against race and class oppression thruout the world.

In faraway, India, the dark-skinned man who has been touched with the aspiration for freedom will learn with sorrow of your concession to the enemy of all colored races and oppressed classes. In the colonies of Africa, where the beaten and tortured black laborer has begun at last to dare to look the white man in the face and to say, “I am your equal,” the news that an important Negro organization e has agreed not to contend against the organization which denies the equality of the Negro in America will come as a shock that cannot be offset by any hope that the same Negro organization will successfully fight the combined British, French, Italian, Spanish, Belgian and American armies and navies for equality or supremacy in Africa.

The pride and courage of the brave black people now struggling for liberation in Haiti and the other island republics and colonies will not be increased by learning that the Universal Negro Improvement Association has decided not to fight for the equality of the Negro in the United States against the degraded and criminal Klan organization.

The hundreds of millions of Chinese and other yellow and brown peoples of Asia are struggling now to destroy the huge lie of “white superiority” over darker peoples. Their courage will not be improved by learning that you will not openly contest the claim of “white supremacy” in this country of twelve million Negroes.

This is an international fight. The Ku Klux Klan is the American phase of an international issue. Any failure to combat the Ku Klux Klan in America is a surrender of one sector of a world-wide battle front, bringing injury to all concerned in the struggle for liberation.

Don’t Demoralize the Fight.

We are fully aware that the best members of your organization know perfectly well that the Klan is no friend of the Negro, but that it burns, hangs, tortures and terrorizes Negro men, women and children. In the debate Mr. Sherrill, even in supporting the resolutions, pointed out that the Klan is no friend of the Negro, and that to state otherwise would be both untrue and cowardly.

We know furthermore that no matter what position this convention may take on the subject, the American Negro will have to fight the Klan. The members of your organization, especially, who are almost entirely of the working class, will have to fight the Klan, which is not only against Negroes, but also against the working class. Our objection is not that your members will not fight the Klan, but that your failure to declare a program for fighting it will tend to demoralize the fight against the Klan. As evidence of this tendency to demoralize the fight, we point out that some of your delegates in the debate expressed the belief that your organization will gain certain toleration, if not actual help, from the Klan in return for your pacific attitude toward it. On behalf of the Negro workers and white workers who are our members, we issue the solemn warning that any friendly toleration that may be promised by or expected of the Klan will be delivered in the form of the rope and the torch. The more the Negro weakens himself before the Klan, by giving up the fight for his political and social rights in America, the more ready the cowardly Klan will be to torture and burn his weakened victim.

What Does the Klan Want of the Negro?

There are some who think that because the Klan hates the Negro, the Klan will be glad to get rid of the Negro by encouraging a large migration to Africa.

To any who may think this way, will say that the Klan hates the Negro, not to get rid of him, but to keep him working in the cotton fields and the workshops, and to suppress any aspiration the Negro may have to escape exploitation.

We warn you that the Klan’s hatred of the Negro has an economic basis. The Klan is an expression of the American capitalist class, or at least of the petty capitalist class, and it is utterly unable to act in any way that is not in the interest of capitalism.

The interest of capitalism is to create hatred of the Negro; and the Klan hates accordingly. The interest of capitalism is. to rob the Negro of political, social and economic equality, so as to make him easier to exploit; and therefore the Klan becomes a tool for this purpose. The interest of capitalism is to maintain a caste system, as an aid to the class division of society; and the Klan makes the preservation of the caste system its most joyful task. The interest of capitalism is to divide the working class into “air-tight compartments” by means of race hatreds–gentile hating Jew, “hundred per cent Americans” hating foreign-born workers, white worker hating Negro worker, one religious sect hating another–thus preventing the working class coming together in a solidarity which would endanger capitalism; and so the Ku Klux Klan distils the poison which robs the working people of their sanity and their ability to understand each other, marking them as the people of Babel.

Thus the Ku Klux Klan, as a class instrument of capitalist society, does everything in the service of the capitalist system of exploitation. It does nothing and can do nothing of any sort that is opposed to the interests of capitalist exploitation.

What is the supreme interest of the capitalist class in regard to the Negro?

To exploit the Negro is the first object of the capitalist class. All other purposes are subordinate to that supreme object: to extort wealth out of the toil of the Negro as well as out of his white fellow-worker. To gather wealth out of the toil of the black laborer; to have the Negro pick its cot- ton, plow its cornfields, dig its ditches and slave in its steel mills and stockyards, is the interest of the white ruling class. And this interest alone I will the Ku Klux Klan serve.

Capitalist Klan Wants Negro to Labor.

The capitalist class of America gathers its wealth solely out of the labor which it exploits. To have la- borers under its domination is its supreme interest. In centuries gone by the white ruling, class brought black labor from Africa in slave ships, in order to have these laborers here to exploit. In later years it brought millions of wage laborers from Europe for exactly the same purpose. During and after the world war, when the European labor supply was shut off, the northern industrialist capitalists began to draw their “immigrant” labor supply from the agricultural south–Negro labor. Fearing to bring more European laborers who are now infected with revolutionary ideals, the capitalist class is more dependent to- day upon holding Negro labor under exploitation than at any other time in seventy-five years.

Is it to the interest of the American capitalist labor exploiters to permit many, many thousands of Negro workers to leave this country? No, it is the interest of the capitalist class to keep the Negro digging its ditches and working in its steel mills for a starvation wage, so as to create the wealth for the ease and comfort of the ruling class. It is to the interest of the capitalist class to rob the Negro of his political rights, his economic freedom, his self-respect and his will to freedom and social equality; but it is not to the interest of the capitalist class to send the Negro back to Africa.

The Ku Klux Klan, as an instrument of the capitalist system, will not do anything to help the Negro to escape from capitalist exploitation. Has not the southern capitalist class already used violence against northern labor agents who attempted to entice a few hundred Negroes away from the south for northern factories? Have not several southern states under Klan domination passed laws to punish with heavy fines any labor agents who may entice even a handful of laborers away? What, then, would be their attitude in case of any serious danger of losing millions of black laborers whose toil furnishes the wealth and luxury of the capitalist class?

It is entirely possible that the Klan anti-Negro organization may make promises of friendliness to the emigration of Negroes from America. But if the Klan does so it will be only to induce the Negro to give up the fight for his political, economic and social equality.

Negroes, beware of your enemies bearing gifts! Beware of the promises of an organization which considers you as similar to “baboons and monkeys” and which publicly expresses regret that you are not still in chattel slavery!

Regardless of any assurances that the chief Negro burners of the Klan may make in consideration of your giving up your political and social rights in America, when the time comes to deliver, you will find yourselves all the more hopelessly exploited, degraded, tortured and terrorized, a people without a home either in America or in Africa or anywhere else.

The Workers Party of America and the Communist International stand for the right of the Negro to migrate where he will–freely to Africa or anywhere else it may please him to go–or to stay where he will, and to enjoy full, free political, industrial and social equality wherever he may be, in any country on earth. But without your contesting for these rights here and now where you are, these rights cannot be won anywhere.

What of Africa?

The rights of the Negro in Africa are not free for the taking. They have to be fought for, no less than the rights of the Negro in America. The African continent is now under the brutal domination of the most

powerful capitalist governments on earth. Its gold, diamonds, rubber and other products, and the power to exploit African labor, are among the most precious possessions of these foreign aggressors, who will fight to the last with the strongest armies and navies in the world before they will surrender an inch of Africa’s soil. Even the supposedly “independent” African Negro states are being irresistibly encroached upon by these greedy European capitalist states, with the American capitalist government also forcing its way in, to have a share of the spoils for American capitalists.

Is it, then, possible that these predatory governments would permit or encourage a migration into Africa of a large number of Negroes going there for the purpose of winning their own nationhood and freeing the millions of African people from the exploitation of these very powers? Will the capitalist powers who are seizing Abyssinia’s seaports extend a welcome to tens of thousands of Negroes come to strengthen Abyssinia’s independence? Is it not clear that the supposedly “independent” republic of Liberia is completely under the control of the great powers that are stealing her land on all borders, when the American, French and British ministers, and not the Liberian government, decide the policy of that country? In refusing the recent request of your organization for permission to locate 3,000 immigrants, did not the president of Liberia state as one reason for the refusal “that he is keeping his mind on the obligation of Liberia to the great powers”? Does this not mean that Negro independence in Africa is a farce, and that a fight against capitalism and capitalist governments in Africa, in America, in Europe and thruout the world is a necessity to any plan for Negro freedom?

Can you afford, then, to abstain from fighting against a petty and contemptible Negro-baiting society in any one of these countries, on the theory that such a society will tolerate your efforts for liberation? The Ku Klux Klan will not help you to destroy its father and mother, capitalism and imperialism. It will fight you. You must fight it.

Is it not better for you to issue your defiance to the Ku Klux Klan and the capitalism and the caste system which it supports, and to join hands with the great world movement which is fighting your enemies in all countries?

On behalf of the Negro workers and white workers and workers of all races who are members of our party, we most earnestly request the convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association to reconsider the resolutions which were passed on the subject of the Ku Klux Klan. We ask you, for the sake of not betraying the Negro Race and the class to which you and we belong, to declare your undying antagonism to the Ku Klux Klan and all that it stands for, and to join us in the determination not to rest until the last filthy trace of it is exterminated from this country.

Fraternally yours,

THE WORKERS PARTY OF AMERICA.

WILLIAM Z. FOSTER, National Chairman. C.E. RUTHENBERG, National Executive Secretary.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1924/v02a-n126-aug-14-1924-DW-LOC.pdf