North Detroit Young Communist League militant ‘Tony’ recounts the Y.C.L.’s activities in the wake of the Ford Hunger March Massacre of March 7, 1932. That day Joe York, George Bussell, Coleman Leny and Joe Blasio were murdered by the Dearborn Police Department and Henry Ford’s gun thugs led by Harry Bennett as workers marched on Ford’s Rouge factory complex. Five months later, Curtis Williams would also die of his injuries. The report written for the C.P.’s internal bulletin notes dozens of new members and highlights the central issue of race in Detroit organizing.

‘Experiences in Recruiting and Building New Young Communist League Units Immediately After the Ford Massacre’ from The Party Organizer. Vol. 5 Nos. 3-4. March-April, 1932.

“The League can only be built most effectively in struggle.” This is a familiar old phrase which we have heard time and time again, but now we are experiencing it.

Immediately after the Bloody Monday, the North Detroit Section of the Young Communist League arranged to have a mass protest meeting the coming Thursday in one of the public schools. The northern part of Detroit, being a proletarian section, is composed mostly of Ford, Briggs and Dodge workers. At this protest meeting, we got about 40 to 50 applications, 24 of which were of young workers, some working at the above mentioned factories.

The young workers who signed the application cards the next day came to the place where the dead bodies of our murdered comrades laid, at the same time bringing with them more young workers who signed at the hall. They helped us in recruiting young workers who passed to see the bodies and also stood as guard of honor.

Being known in the neighborhood as a Y.C.L. member and one of the “Reds” from the headquarters, young workers would approach me and speak to me on the Ford massacre—young workers who before would not speak to me—and asked me where and when the funeral would be held, and where they could join the Y.C.L.

I remember one pool room especially where I was known to the boys there because of my activities in the late Briggs Hunger March; they would always say “Hello comrade” or “Hello red” in a very sarcastic manner; but now it was different. They stopped me and talked to me and came to the central protest meeting where many of them joined, and also to the funeral.

After the funeral, the following week, another mass meeting was held and more members were recruited. During this week, we sent letters to all the contacts recruited, and visited as many as we could to come to a new members’ meeting to be held the following Saturday. At this meeting, we explained more in detail what the Y.C.L. was, the tasks of the members, held a general discussion and also signed up some more new members. At this meeting, the majority of the applicants were young workers either working or unemployed. The group of young workers were divided into three new units and arrangements were made to meet the following week.

The next Tuesday, Unit No. 14 met. About 12 good young workers came. This group was mostly of young workers, about six of them employed, and the rest unemployed, with one student. We elected an executive committee, held a discussion, gave the members present the task of visiting those members that did not show up and asked them to get their books and pay their initiation fees. The composition of the executive committee of this unit is the following: Unit organizer—an employed Briggs worker; Young Worker Agent—unemployed Briggs worker; other two members of the executive—one a part time Ford worker, and the other an unemployed Ford Trade School student. We also stressed the point of recruiting still more new members, their shop-mates, friends, etc.

These young workers when asked why they joined the Y.C.L., answered: ‘‘Because the Y.C.L. and the C.P. are the only organizations that come out with a good program for the workers and that really put it into practice”‘ In other words, they saw action.

When asked why they did not join before, they remarked, “all this stuff was too deep and too complicated for me.”

These young workers, the majority of them, hung around the pool rooms, and now the main discussion in the pool room is Communism. You can see one of the members tackling another young worker in one corner trying to get him to join the Y.C.L. and the rest of the gang in an argument over some question or discussion. When you go down the street with one of them, if a friend of theirs sees him, he raises his fist and says, “Hello comrade.” They also have convinced the proprietor of the pool room that the movement is the only thing, and now he subscribed to the Daily Worker, and they are trying to get him to join the I.L.D.

There is one young worker in particular who is doing pretty good work. He brings in on the average of one application a day either for the Y.C.L. or A.W.U.

The Negro problem in this section is also a vital question. One of the pool room gang leaders is very much prejudiced against Negro workers. When asked if he believed in Negro and white fighting together, he answers— yes; but he said he can’t stand to see a Negro worker dance with a white girl. We had a long discussion with him and gave him literature to read and so far we have not been able to convince him or show him where he is wrong. He will not join the League, although he did sign an application, but he said he will come to all mass meetings and marches and joined the A.W.U.

The other pool room gang members are very much different than this pool room. One member even asked me why we had so few Negro workers compared to the white members. After explaining why, he said this will have to be our main task for the beginning to recruit more Negro workers as well as white.

The young workers of North Detroit feel the loss of their leading comrades, Joe York and Joe Bussell, and they are doing their utmost in getting all of the young workers in this territory to take the places of our fallen comrades by building not only two or three units, but by having hundreds of young workers join the League, and in that way take their places.

Now that we have these young workers in the Y.C.L., our task is to keep them. They were drawn in through struggle, drawn in because they saw that the Y.C.L. was the leader of the young workers in their struggles; they feel that the Y.C.L. is fighting for their everyday needs and is a part of their everyday life. Therefore it is our task now to activize every single member, hold classes and teach them what the Y.C.L. is, what the duties of a Y.C.L. member are, why the Negro workers are not our enemies as the bosses say but that they are part of the working class and therefore we must organize both Negro and white why we must build youth sections in the A.W.U. and how we must work in the shops and form shop units of the Y.C.L.

“TONY”—Y.C.L.

The Party Organizer was the internal bulletin of the Communist Party published by its Central Committee beginning in 1927. First published irregularly, than bi-monthly, and then monthly, the Organizer was primarily meant for the Party’s unit, district, and shop organizers. The Organizer offers a much different view of the CP than the Daily Worker, including a much higher proportion of women writers than almost any other CP publication. Its pages are often full of the mundane problems of Party organizing, complaints about resources, debates over policy and personalities, as well as official numbers and information on Party campaigns, locals, organizations, and periodicals making the Party Organizer an important resource for the study and understanding of the Party in its most important years.

PDF of issue (large file): https://files.libcom.org/files/Party%20Organizer%205.pdf