Black Liberation/ Red Scare Ben Davis and the Communist Par V Gerald Horne ■ ~ tr*- §5$S JL-. ^w:. > ...,* .w *.»L_ . ..m .c :*: Black Liberation/Red Scare Ben Davis and the Communist Party GERALD HORNE Black Liberation!Red Scare is a study of an African-American Communist leader, Ben Davis, Jr. (1904-64). Though it examines the numerous grassroots campaigns that he was involved in, it is first and foremost a study of the man and secondarily a study of the Communist party from the 1930s to the 1960s. By examining the public life of an important party leader, Gerald Horne uniquely ap- proaches the story of how and why the party rose—and fell. Ben Davis, Jr., was the son of a promi- nent Atlanta publisher and businessman who was also the top African-American leader of the Republican party until the onset of the Great Depression. Davis was trained for the black elite at Morehouse, Amherst, and Harvard Law School. After graduating from Harvard, he joined the Communist party, where he remained as one of its most visible lead- ers for thirty years. In 1943, after being endorsed by his predecessor, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., he was elected to the New York City Council from Harlem and subsequently reelected by a larger mar- gin in 1945. Davis received support from such community figures as NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, boxer Joe Louis, and musician Duke Ellington. While on the council Davis fought for rent control and progressive taxation and struggled against transit fare hikes and police bru- tality. With the onset of the Red Scare and the Cold War, Davis—like the Commu- nist party itself—was marginalized. The (Continued on back flap) Black Liberation/ Red Scare •V Black Liberation/ Red Scare Ben Davis and the Communist Party Gerald Horne DELAWARE Newark: University of Delaware Press London and Toronto: Associated University Presses © 1994 by Associated University Presses, Inc. All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the copyright owner, provided that a base fee of $10.00, plus eight cents per page, per copy is paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 27 Congress Street, Salem, Massachusetts 01970. [0-87413-472-2/94 $10.00 + U pp, pc.] Associated University Presses 440 Forsgate Drive Cranbury, NJ 08512 Associated University Presses 25 Sicilian Avenue London WC1A 2QH, England Associated University Presses P.O. Box 338, Port Credit Mississauga, Ontario Canada L5G 4L8 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Horne, Gerald. Black liberation/red scare : Ben Davis and the Communist Party / Gerald Horne, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87413-472-2 (alk. paper) 1. Davis, Benjamin J. (Benjamin Jefferson), 1903-1964. 2. Afro- American communists—United States—Biography. 3. Communism— United States—History. I. Title. HX84.D28H67 1994 324.273'75'08996073—dc20 [B] 92-53778 CIP PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Contents Acknowledgments 7 Introduction 9 1. Origins of a Black Revolutionary 17 2. The Making of a Black Revolutionary 27 3. The Road to the Communist Party 35 4. To Be a Professional Revolutionary 53 5. Squeeze Play, 1940-1942 83 6. A Turning Point in U.S. History, 1943 97 7. “Browderism,” 1944 119 8. Unity and Struggle, 1945 137 9. Victory, 1945 154 10. Cold War Coming, 1946-1947 167 11. Red Scare Coming, 1948 192 12. “The Trial of the Century”, 1949 210 13. Purged from the Council, 1949 227 14. Fighting Back, 1950-1951 244 15. Jailed for Ideas, 1951-1955 254 16. Party Wars, 1956-1959 271 17. When Black and White Unite, 1958-1959 285 18. Black Communist in the 1960s 305 Notes 326 Selected Bibliography 406 Index 425 The illustrations appear as a group following page 226. Acknowledgments This study was aided immeasurably by the cooperation of the family of Ben Davis, particularly his widow, Nina Goodman, his niece Jean Carey Bond and his sister, Johnnie Carey. It was aided in a different way by the largesse of the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library (which provided a generous grant and access to their numerous collections, which formed the backbone of this work) and the librarians of Sarah Lawrence College and the University of California at Santa Barbara. They all merit my most sin- cere thanks. My editor and various readers have been helpful as well, along with the staff of the Black Studies Department at the University of California-Santa Barbara. The endnotes provide a guide as to how and where this research was con- ducted, yet I want to thank the libraries of Columbia University, New York University, Yale University, Howard University, Providence College, Har- vard Law School, Boston University, Emory University, University of California-Los Angeles, Stanford University, the Federal Bureau of Inves- tigation, and the University of Wisconsin; the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, the New York Police Department, the New York Public Library, the Municipal Archives of New York City, and the Communist party were also helpful. I also thank those who consented to allow me to conduct an in- terview. This type of history will be continuing for some time to come since archives are just opening and collections are now becoming accessible; I par- ticularly look forward to the complete opening of the archives of the Comin- tern in Moscow, which should allow us to answer many questions. 7 * . V s