My friend Hugh Murray (b. 1938), a native New Orleanian, is a veteran of the African American civil rights movement (CRM), a critic of its betrayal by “affirmative action” (its latest incarnation being “diversity, equity, and inclusion”), and scholar of the 1931 trial of the Scottsboro Boys, the first international American civil rights cause célèbre. Our paths first crossed over a half-century ago in the reading room of the American Institute for Marxist Studies (AIMS) on East 30th Street in Manhattan. Its director, Herbert Aptheker (1915-2003), hired us (and others) as research assistants for the massive project of preparing for publication the correspondence, bibliography, and published writings of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963). For the past few years, Hugh and I have been preparing an anthology of Hugh’s writings for publication later this year, Deo volente.
On his blog, Murray recently explored the tension between the noble, justice-seeking motives of the CRM and the ignoble motives of the Communist movement to which some CRM activists were attracted to one degree or another. (For the CRM one could substitute the labor movement.) It’s a tension I’d rather ignore. It’s easier to concentrate on the horrors of Communism uncomplicated by the fact that many Communists were drawn to it to fight the horrors of lynching and other violence. It was easy for me to call them dupes (among whom I was once numbered) and leave it at that.
The notable figures listed in this post’s title, Hugh writes, were all “at some point in their lives . . . in the orbit of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA, or “the Party”).” So what? Here’s what: “the CPUSA, though a small political party, had influence far beyond its numbers, which at its height, was only 100,000” and the influence was not all bad. The evidence he adduces fills the rest of his post. Here’s Hugh’s conclusion:
In 1948 the civil rights movement in the South was the Henry Wallace Progressive Party [PP]. The CPUSA endorsed the 1948 PP. That year, Virginia Durr ran for the Senate from Virginia. She and her husband were Alabama natives who had moved to the Washington area in 1933 when Clifford was appointed to a federal agency, and they remained during the New Deal era. When [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] . . . sought to gain support in the South . . . the New Deal sought to gain support to uplift the South, the poorest part of the nation. Eleanor Roosevelt was also involved in the creation of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW), and Virginia Durr was on its civil rights committee. Of course, to many Southerners, integration was communism, more commonly called “race-mixing” or “mongrelization.” Harry Truman’s Attorney General would place the SCHW on his list of subversive organizations to target it for destruction. Durr did not win the Senate seat. She and Clifford returned to Alabama, the city of Montgomery. She required a seamstress to help, and then she helped the seamstress get a scholarship to Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, a “progressive” school where one might learn about protest. So, Rosa Parks went. The rest is history.
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In 1960, Hugh Murray (seated on the far right in the photo on the left) and others were trained in non-violent civil disobedience by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders at Miami’s Prince George Motel. [Photo scans courtesy of Hugh Murray.-A.F.] |
Martin Luther King, Jr. [Murray continues] had also attended Highlander. There was a famous photograph taken of him seated beside a member of the CPUSA. If you drove through the South in the 1950s or ‘60s, you might have seen the billboards showing King at the Communist training school. . . . King was a young minister, thrust into the fire of the Montgomery bus boycott, with all its dangers. If there were threats, there was also help, and one helper became one of King’s chief advisors, Stanley Levison. According to the FBI, Levison was a secret member of the CPUSA and handled some of its funds. Levison was now fund-raising for King. Moreover, he was advising on tactics, writing speeches, perhaps chapters of books. Both President John Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy told (that is, ordered) King to break with Levison. King lied: he said he had split with his advisor, but kept in touch with him.
Murray asks rhetorically (in all-caps, which I eschew): “Can there be any doubt that the CPUSA has had a great influence on America?” But, Murray further notes:
It was not only blacks who were swayed by the CP. For whites, I shall mention only one name of a person involved in the communist orbit. Some disagree. However, his wife was a member of the CP; his mistress was also a member of the CP, and his brother was a member of the CP. Was he in the orbit of the Communist Party? The man I am referring to is J. Robert Oppenheimer. With a wife, mistress, and brother all party members, did that color his thinking closer to red? Moreover, according to Diana West in her book American Betrayal, not only did J. Robert contribute healthy sums to communist front organizations in the 1930s, [but also] she alleges, he himself was also a member.[1] Then, CP leaders told him to drop out of the organization, for he might have to pass a security check. He did pass it, and was soon working on the Manhattan Project. The rest is history and a [multiple Oscar-winning] movie.
For the other “red threads,” read Hugh’s post.
Note
[1] Hugh misremembered his source: “Oppenheimer” is not an entry in American Betrayal’s index. I brought this lapse to his attention today, and he has replaced the reference to West’s book with a citation of Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, “Oppenheimer Was a Communist,” Commentary, September 2023, which settles the matter. Also useful is Cold War International History Project, The Wilson Center. No date given.