Written in the midst of 1919’s ‘Red Summer,’ African Blood Brotherhood leader Cyril Briggs says Black people in the U.S., by virtue of their ‘race’ should not claim to be ‘American citizens,’ since Black people, by virtue of their ‘race,’ are without the most elementary rights of a citizen.

‘Americans?’ by Cyril V. Briggs from The Crusader. Vol. 1 No. 10. June, 1919.

WHILE white people view as a slave that man who has no part in the making of the laws that govern him, there is among sapheaded Negroes a tendency toward accepting the phrase, “American citizen” as a glorified and sufficient camouflage for the inconsistencies of the case. But who and what is an American Citizen? To those who have not read the Constitution of the United States let Dr. Frank Crane, a white man, explain:

“Whatever rights one American citizen has every other American citizen has.

“The right to vote wherever he resides.

“Freedom of religion.

“Freedom of the press.

“Freedom of peaceable assembly.

“The right to petition the government for redress to grievances.

“The right to bear arms.

“Protection against having his house papers, or property searched or seized without due process of law.

“No American citizen may be put in jeopardy twice for the same offence, nor

“Be compelled in a criminal case to be a witness against himself.

“When accused of crime he is entitled to a speedy and public trial by jury, he must be told the nature of the charge against him, allowed to compel witness in his own favor to come and testify, and allowed or provided a lawyer to defend him.

“He may not be deprived of life, liberty or property without a fair trial.”

Is that person then an American citizen who is discriminated against, refused the right to travel when, how, and where he pleases, refused the protection of the laws and denied the right to vote in many parts of the country?

When accused of crime an American citizen is entitled to and to given a speedy and public trial by jury. A Negro–which is quite a different thing by all the facts of the case–is usually strung up by self constituted and unrebuked, and unpunished judges from among his “superiors” and “masters”.

An American must be and is protected by law against having his property seized without due process of law. A Negro may be deprived of his property by the simple process of gathering a mob and driving him out of town with a threat to lynch him if he returns. The law does not protect the Negro in his property rights.

An American citizen may not be deprived of life or liberty without a fair trial. There were over sixty Negro women, children and men lynched in the United States last year, and even the white man agrees that lynching does not allow of a fair trial. But they were Negroes, not American citizens. Many others were sold into slavery in the South.

Finally, “whatever rights one American citizen has every other American citizen has.” And this would seem to show plainly enough the difference between being American citizen and being a Negro in America. “Whatever rights one American citizen has, etc.” Every American citizen has the right to “life, liberty and happiness,” the right to vote wherever he resides, to travel where, when and how he pleases, protection against having his property seized. I, as a Negro have not these rights. Therefore I am NOT, in the true and therefore important sense of the phrase, an American citizen. This however is not my fault. Still, for the guidance of the Immigration Officials, who have lately shown a tendency towards deporting all who dare think for themselves it might be well to state my citizenship subjectship. Let it be understood then that I am a Negro–Negro, first, last and all the time. Negro by birth, choice and by the treatment which denies to Negroes the right of being American citizens. It does not matter where I was born since the place of that unimportant event is of a purely accidental nature and may have just as easily have been the West Coast of Africa or the Southern part of the United States the West Indies or South America. It would all depend upon the whereabouts at the time of one’s mother. Had my mother been aboard a steamship on the high seas, I would have been born on the high seas. What really matters is what one is born. I was born a Negro and have not been allowed to forget that fact. Yet I daily thank the Supreme Being—God, Jehovah, Allah, whichever you will–for the good fortune of being born a Negro when all Neg roes should be fighters. Yet this fact would hardly help the Immigration Officials since the Negro has today no country that he may call his own. (That is if he is intelligent and knows the things that a country should stand for.) However as I hail as my true mother land, my only motherland, the mother and inventor of all civilization–Glorious Africa! I stand prepared to be deported–if it should so please the white government in which I, as a Negro, have no deciding voice or part–to that continent. However there is one proviso to such voluntary deportation on my part. And that is based upon the historical fact that’ my ancestors did not come to this country of their own choice and free will, but were brought here in chains and much against their will who loved the sunny healthful climate of the African continent. I make but one stipulation and that is: that it must be a free Africa to which I am deported.

The Crusader was published in New York City between 1918 and 1922, becoming the paper of the The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption and the earliest Black Communist publication in the US. Founded by Cyril V Briggs, who had arrived to the city from the Caribbean in 1905, at first it was the journal of the Hamitic League of the World, a Pan-African group led by George Well Parker. Increasingly in sympathy with the Russian Revolution and new Communist International, in October 1919 the paper announced the African Blood Brotherhood and its adherence to Marxism. In June 1921, The Crusader officially became the journal of the ABB and the Black publication of the US Communist movement. Antipathy with Marcus Garvey’s movement led the Communist Party, at the insistence of Claude McKay, to withdraw support and Its last issue was in January, 1922. The African Blood Brotherhood with dissolve into the Workers Party of America with many activists joining the American Negro Labor Congress in 1925.

PDF of full Issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/crusader/v1n10-jun-1919-crusader-r.pdf