Ruling-class historians have segregated the fight against racism and the fight for an egalitarian system, communism. In reality, the two were connected like flesh and bone. Many antiracist struggles were led by, initiated by, or were fought with communists and communist-influenced organizations. Many Black fighters were also dedicated communists and pro-communists of their time.
In turn, the bosses have used anti-communism as a tool to terrorize and divide antiracist fightback. Regardless of communist affiliation, anyone who fought racism was at risk of being redbaited. Why? 1) The ruling class understands the natural relationship between antiracism and communism, and 2) Multiracial unity threatens the very racist system the bosses “work so hard” to maintain.
This series aims to reunite the history of communism with antiracism. Part I explored how the fight to free Scottsboro Boys was ignited by the International Labor Defense of the Communist Party. See Robin D.G. Kelley’s book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression to find out more.
Part II explored how the international communist movement was the imeptus of the civil rights movement. It excerpts from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in the essay, “The Civil Rights Movement” by researcher Davarian L. Baldwin at Trinity College.

The communist movement both helped inspire and was shaped by the anti-racist struggle for civil rights in the U.S. Martin Luther King Jr. and many of the leading civil rights figures were influenced by the Communist Party (CP). Rosa Parks had attended Communist Party meetings and been trained as an activist at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee which had been supported by members and friends of the CP. Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levinson and Jack O’Dell, who all played important roles in King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, that grew out of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, were active at various times in the communist movement.
Just as important was the 25-year history of the Communist Party in Alabama led by Black workers leading many struggles against racism and building several organizations including the International Labor Defense, the Sharecroppers Union, the International Workers Order, the League of Young Southerners, and the Southern Negro Youth Congress that in total involved around 20,000 mainly Black workers. These organizations were at their peak in the 1930’s, but the experience of fighting against racism and for the needs of the working-class laid the basis for the fight against Jim Crow laws in the 1950’s and 60’s.

The party inspired loyalty for reasons beyond simply an affinity for Marxist ideas. It was the campaigns Communists ran against police brutality, the practice of lynching and the Jim Crow laws that made their politics relevant to the lives of ordinary people. In the North as well as the South, on soapboxes on the streets of Harlem as well as on plots of sharecropped land in Alabama, Communist organizing addressed the…concerns of black people.
Communists believed that organizing the working-class would work only if white workers realized that their liberation, too, was bound up with the fate of black workers….
In short, American Communism was a movement that grew out of what the historian Robin D. G. Kelley, the author of “Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression,” calls “the most despised and dispossessed elements of American society.” “It was the Black workers drawn to the party, Professor Kelley argues, who shaped its political choices as much as … the Communist International (NY Times 6/6).

Like the Scottsboro campaign 20 years earlier the Montgomery Bus Boycott, initiated when Rosa Parks refused to move to the Black section of a Montgomery, Alabama bus, drew world-wide attention to the fight against racism in the segregated South. The fight for civil rights became a major embarrassment to the U.S. ruling-class. At the time, China, the world’s largest country was communist-led, as was the Soviet Union. These two worker super powers provided leadership and support to anti-imperialist movements across Africa, Asia, and South America.
U.S. Rulers Forced to Support Civil Rights Movement
The U.S tried to counter the growing communist-led movements by championing capitalist democracy, but at every turn the racist conditions forced on Black workers in the United States and the increasing demonstrations against those conditions undercut the U.S. bosses’ attempts to gain support.
Under increasing pressure, the U.S. bosses were forced into tacitly supporting the growing civil rights movement. At the same time, they were terrified of the movement that brought together hundreds of thousands of Black and white workers and students in the fight against segregation. The U.S. ruling-class, between a rock and a hard place, tried to gain control of the movement by both working with and threatening Martin Luther King.
While John F. Kennedy and later Lyndon B. Johnson worked with Martin Luther King to end official Jim Crow, the bosses’ legal arm. led by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, spied on and tried to disrupt and control the movement by building anti-communism. The bosses’ goal was to limit the movement to blaming the smaller Southern bosses for all of the racism in the country and ignore the racist conditions in the North.
The ruling-class went after every leader and institution connected to the civil rights movement to try to keep it under control. Martin Luther King as the leading figure of the movement came under particular attack and pressure.

In 1963 King bowed to the wishes of the Kennedy Administration and fired SCLC employee Jack O’Dell after the FBI alleged that he was a Communist. King also agreed to cease direct communication with his friend and closest white advisor, Stanley Levison, although he eventually resumed contact with him in March 1965. FBI surveillance and bugs tracked King’s political associations and produced evidence of King’s extramarital sexual activities—information that was later leaked to some reporters.
In 1965 King faced questions from journalists on Meet the Press about his association with Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, which had been branded a ‘‘Communist training school’’ on billboards that appeared throughout Alabama during the Selma to Montgomery March and showed King attending a Highlander workshop. (Stanford University King Encyclopedia)

King was a contradictory figure. He publicly professed anti-communism, yet he was undoubtedly influenced by the communist movement and recognized that communism reflected the desires of an exploited working-class oppressed by racism.

Indeed, it may be that communism is a necessary corrective for a Christianity that has been all too passive and a democracy that has been all too inert. Communism should challenge us to be more concerned about social justice. However much is wrong with communism, we must admit that it arose as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. The Communist Manifesto, which was published in 1847 by Marx and Engels, emphasizes throughout how the middle-class has exploited the lower-class. Communism in society is a classless society. Along with this goes a strong attempt to eliminate racial prejudice. Communism seeks to transcend the superficialities of race and color, and you are able to join the Communist Party whatever the color of your skin or the quality of your blood.” (MLK speech “Can a Christian be a Communist”)

At the end of the famed march from Selma to Montgomery, King gave perhaps his clearest speech on the roots of racism as a tool used by the bosses to divide the working-class:

Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then…the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem…to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.
Later King began to expand his public activity to address the war in Vietnam and attempted to extoll the U.S. to end the war on communism.
“[I]n the summer of 1965 the press reported King’s off-the-cuff remarks to a Southern Christian Leadership Conference rally in Virginia: ‘‘We’re not going to defeat Communism with bombs and guns and gases.… We must work this out in the framework of our democracy’’ (‘‘Dr. King Declares’’). In his 1967 book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? King decried America’s ‘‘morbid fear of Communism,’’ arguing that it prevented people from embracing a ‘‘revolutionary spirit and … declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism, and militarism.’’ (Stanford University King Encyclopedia)

While there are so many unanswered questions about the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, like the killing of Malcolm X, it coincided with an expansion in King’s political focus from civil rights for Blacks in the United States to fighting for economic rights for the working class and opposing imperialism. King was killed in Memphis where he was actively supporting striking Black sanitation workers.
As the ruling-class pressured King and ultimately murdered him, the working-class became increasingly politicized. Rebellions of Black workers rocked Newark, Watts, Harlem and Detroit and U.S Soldiers were rebelling against the war in Vietnam. In spite of the bosses’ attempts to smother the movement, the working-class was rising up. The bosses may have hoped that killing King would stop the movement but instead the attack hardened the resolve of the working-class, particularly Black workers, to continue to fight.

LOS ANGELES, June 12—In a cowardly move meant to halt resistance, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) suspended three teachers at a high school here, including a PL teacher, one week before summer break. The teachers were associated with citywide student walkouts in protest of Trump’s inauguration over six months ago.
What began as a letter of misconduct turned into a mandatory suspension. These teachers allowed discussions in their classes around important issues, like police terror and anti-immigrant policies. Apparently, that is a suspendable offence! Waiting a week before summer break is an obvious attempt by the district to curb the ability of the staff, parents, and students to organize against these suspensions.
Our fellow teachers have shown support and fightback. Half of the faculty signed a letter protesting the suspensions and the underlying message they are sending to the teachers about discussing political issues in class. Students confronted the principal in person to demand answers.
School Bosses Expose Themselves as Racists
This segregated school is nearly 100 percent Black and Latin and has a history of walkouts organized by students. Suspending teachers associated with the walkout is a silencing and terrorization strategy by the school bosses. The principal even interrogated students. When the school district decides to discipline teachers in response to student fightback, they are sending a clear racist message to students, families, and workers.
They do not care that sexist, anti-immigrant, and racist rhetoric angers our working class brothers and sisters. They do not care that racist segregation of schools continues to leave Black and Latin students behind. They do not care that the police are killing our Black and Latin working-class brothers and sisters with impunity. They do not want students to voice their opinions or take an active stand against racism and sexism. They just want them to stay in class and learn to be obedient to the system.
LAUSD, the largest public school system after New York City, is exposing themselves to be the racist ruling-class agents that they are. Nearly three-fourths of students are Latin. Though Black students make up 9.16 percent of the population, they received 32.3 percent of suspensions in 2014 (Daily News, 1/14/15). When teachers are shut down for fighting racism, it’s a racist attack on students’ education. LAUSD has confirmed that segregation and racism are no accident; they’re part of the bosses’ plan to keep the future working class divided and alienated.
Teachers in other parts of the city are facing similar attacks, some also suspended. A plan is in the works to have a larger, more general protest to the district’s attempt to silence teachers and students during a critical time of increased fascism in the country.  We will keep CHALLENGE informed as we move forward. The class struggle continues!

VIRGINIA, June 8—Forty advocates for changing J.E.B. Stuart High School’s racist name rocked Virginia’s Fairfax County School Board meeting with bold anti-racist speeches amid a cheering throng of supporters.
Students Give Leadership
In this two-year fight, Black students in the high school have given leadership. Two Black Stuart high school students led off tonight’s testimonies, declaring that unless the school board changed the name, it would forever be linked with the racist segregationist school board that named the school in 1958.
“I walk into the weight room [every Tuesday and Thursday] to see a giant mural of J. E. B Stuart painted on a wall in front of me. He’s portrayed like a hero...This sends a message to me that General Stuart and what he fought for is deemed heroic…My ancestors being bought and sold like cattle is OK, because J.E.B. Stuart was a patriot,” said one student.
19th Century Fascist
Stuart was a general and considered the “eyes and ears” of the Confederate Army. He fought to preserve slavery in the 1860s during the Civil War in the United States. Stuart helped capture white anti-racist abolitionist John Brown at Harpers Ferry in 1859. (With the help of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, John Brown organized armed insurrections against slave owners. For his fight against slavery, he was executed.)
Racist Stuart made a name for himself by literally fighting to keep the right to oppress, exploit, and murder Black and indigenous peoples. He served during Bleeding Kansas and in the bloody border wars against indigenous people.  
J.E.B. Stuart is the most diverse high school in Fairfax County: only a quarter of the students are white, a little over 60 percent are Latin and Black. This struggle to change the high school’s name is giving the school and county community an opportunity to be on the side of anti-racism. Some adults and students who are in favor of keeping Stuart’s name said they were called white supremacists and felt intimated. But that is no excuse for their racism!
The school board is scheduled to vote on the name change on June 22. More next issue!

Throughout the months of May and June, students across the United States have been taking stands, turning their backs, and loudly protesting the racist commencement speakers their colleges and universities have invited to send them off into the “real world.”
Colleges: Ruling-Class Institutions
Established just less than 400 years ago, the U.S. university system has been a breeding ground for imperialist leaders, think tanks, and providing funding for mass murders around the world.
As a microcosm of the state, college campuses exist to develop the ruling-class thought leaders while also giving liberal-leaning students enough leeway to buy into the façade of activism and first amendment “rights.” College campus sit-ins, peaceful protests, and study groups have often been bolstered by institutions, teachers and administrations until they grew organized, militant, and—most threatening—integrated.
A Contradiction for the Bosses
The bosses, and the institutions they rely on to maintain state power, need racism to keep workers divided. This year, U.S. bosses are in one of their greatest binds in recent years. With the undisciplined, racist, sexist, and fascist Donald Trump at the supposed helm of the country, the main wing of the ruling-class is struggling to maintain order, while also encouraging their biggest resource for ideological control and profit.
College students and workers have historically played a central role in anti-racist movements (see spread above).  The Civil Rights movement, protest against Vietnam, Cambodia, and Apartheid in South Africa and Israel were led by integrated student groups.
This year, however, students are under attack for even the most peaceful of protests. Major media outlets, another arm of the capitalist system, ganged up on students for boldly disrupting racist commencement speakers. Meanwhile, new laws in Illinois, Tennessee, Colorado and Arizona are also in consideration in an effort to prevent institutions and students from dis-inviting speakers and force administrations to penalize students who obstruct and protest. (USA Today, 5/10)
Students at Bethune-Cookman Univeristy, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Florida, stood up, turned their backs on, and booed their commencement speaker—Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who was invited to speak after Trump promised funding for HBCUs. Racist DeVos called HBCU’s “pioneers when it comes to school choice,” when in reality, such colleges were the only option for Black workers during de jure segregation. The college’s president publicly chastised this group of all Black students; later on, the bosses’ media attacked them with numerous headlines.
“Some students stood up and turned their back, and the booing was so loud at different points in the speech that the school’s president stood up, interrupted DeVos, took the microphone, and said to the students, “If this behavior continues, your degrees will be mailed to you. Choose which way you want to go.” (The Washington Post, 5/12)
At Yale thousands of graduate students and workers marched toward the commencement ceremony last month to demand the school begin negotiations with a union that was formed by students after the National Labor Relations Board lifted a ban on organizing teachers’ assistants and researchers at private universities. (CHALLENGE, 6/14)
And perhaps the most outrageous attack in recent months was towards the group of integrated students at Middlebury College who shut down a speech by the racist and sexist eugenicist Charles Murray. (CHALLENGE, 4/19) The students have since been charged with serious penalties and been labeled “violent” and “unruly” for protesting the leading voice in eugenics.
Racist teachers and administrators are disguising their racism as pro-free speech. “In this country, threat kind of speech is legal. We have no hate speech exception in the first amendment. Even stopping the most virulent Nazi on campus isn’t free speech; it is civil disobedience,” said James Weinstein, professor of constitutional law at Arizona State University (USA Today, 5/13).
 However, students at Notre Dame, a private and predominately white university, have only gotten praise for walking out on Vice President Mike Pence, who was invited to speak at the commencement in lieu of Trump. “School officials knew of the student walkout plans and did not try to stop them. The students – more than 100 out of a few thousand who were earning degrees – walked quietly out, and there were some cheers and boos sounded, through only briefly“ (The Washington Post, 5/21).
Students have historically been given space to explore varying political ideologies and practices at college but within limits controllable by the ruling-class. The bosses play a balancing game between their need for a vibrant movement that keeps the farce of democracy and patriotism alive and their need to control and funnel the movement for their war aims.
Multiracial student movements, a threat to the bosses, are quickly shutdown by any means necessary.  New York Times columnist Frank Bruni exposes himself for the ruling-class mouthpiece he is when he instructs working-class and multiracial students to not “bite the hand that feeds them:”
“They ratchet up their language to a degree that weakens its currency for direr circumstances. And they undermine their goals—our goals—by pushing away good-hearted allies and handling ammunition to the very people who itch to dismiss them” (NYT, 6/3).
Pledge to Continue to Fight
CHALLENGE says hats off to all graduates and students who organized against racist speakers! As young and future workers at colleges across the country continue to expose these institutions as racist-for-profit breeding grounds, the need for political leadership and guidance is greater than ever. Commencement speech protests  may be the first fightback as students join workforces that are equally as racist, sexist, and segregated.
Graduates, the struggle for a better world continues and the working-class needs you to pledge allegiance to a lifetime of antiracism. Only a multiracial international movement for communism can abolish this segregated society once and for all.