Dhalgren
11-28-2016, 09:43 AM
The communists had been organizing in the steel plants and factories of Birmingham, Alabama, the cotton mills of Gadsden, and the wharfs and shipyards of Mobile since the early twenties and by the mid-twenties they had established strong organizations with sharecroppers, both white and black. The history of these actions and this dangerous work is very involved and complex – ranging from who the CPUSA chose to go south and organize and why; the numerous name changes and aliases which make the history difficult to follow, at times; and the heart breaking violence and cruelty meted out to anyone with the temerity and courage to even attend a communist meeting. For the purpose of this thread I will present just a couple of examples of the “pitched battles” and serious, violent “unrest” that worked to force FDR to proffer a plan to stem this rising red tide in the years prior to the “New Deal”.
On July 15, (1931) Taft Holmes organized a group of sharecroppers near Camp Hill (Alabama) and invited (Mack) Coad (a CPUSA organizer), along with several other union members, to address the group in a vacant house that doubled as a church. In all, about eighty black men and women piled into the abandoned house 'to listen to Coad discuss the CFWU (Croppers' and Farm Workers' Union) and the Scottsboro (Boys) case. After a black informant notified Tallapoosa County sheriff Kyle Young of the gathering, deputized vigilantes raided the meeting place, brutally beating men and women alike. The posse then regrouped at Tommy Gray's (local communist and union leader) home and assaulted his entire family, including his wife who suffered a fractured skull, in an effort to obtain information about the CFWU. Only an agitated Ralph Gray, who had rushed into the house, armed, saved them from possibly fatal consequences. Union organizer Jasper Kennedy was arrested for possessing twenty copies of the Southern Worker (a CPUSA publication), and Holmes was picked up by police the following day, interrogated for several hours, and upon release fled to Chattanooga." Despite the violence, about 150 sharecroppers met with Coad the following evening in a vacant house southwest of Camp Hill. This time sentries were posted around the meeting place. When Sheriff Young arrived on the scene with Camp Hill police chief J. M. Wilson and Deputy A. J. Thompson, he found Ralph Gray standing guard about a quarter-mile from the meeting. Although accounts differ as to the sequence of events, both
Gray and the sheriff traded harsh words and, in the heat of argument, exchanged buckshot. Young, who received gunshot wounds to the stomach, was rushed to a hospital in nearby Alexander City while Gray lay on the side of the road, his legs riddled with bullets. Fellow union members carried Gray to his home where the group, including Mack Coad, barricaded themselves inside the house. The group held off a posse led by police chief J. M. Wilson long enough to allow most members to escape, but the wounded Ralph Gray opted to remain in his home until the end.22 The posse returned with reinforcements and found Gray lying in his bed and his family huddled in a comer. According to his brother, someone in the group "poked a pistol into Brother Ralph's mouth and shot down his throat." The mob burned his home to the ground and dumped his body on the steps of the Dadeville courthouse. The mangled and lifeless leader became an example for other black sharecroppers as groups of armed whites took turns shooting and kicking the bloody corpse of Ralph Gray.23
Over the next few days, between thirty-four and fifty-five black men were arrested near Camp Hill, nine of whom were under eighteen years of age.24 Most of the defendants were charged with conspiracy to murder or with carrying a concealed weapon, but five union members, Dosie Miner, T. Patterson, William Gribb, John Finch, and Tommy Finch, were charged with assault to murder. Although police chief Wilson could not legally act out his wish to "kill every member of the 'Reds' there and throw them into the creek," the Camp Hill police department stood idle as enraged white citizens waged genocidal attacks on the black community that left dozens wounded or dead and forced entire families to seek refuge in the woods.
Union secretary Mack Coad, the vigilantes' prime target, fled all the way to
Atlanta. But few Tallapoosa Communists were as lucky as Coad. Estelle
Milner suffered a fractured vertebra at the hands of police after a local black minister accused her of possessing ammunition. (pp. 41-42)
(This is from the book “Hammer and Hoe” by Robin Kelley and is a very grim, thorough history of communist organizing in Alabama during the Depression. Just a mention here, if anyone wants to worship a hero, Estelle Milner would be a truly great candidate.)
Behind the violence in Tallapoosa County loomed the Scottsboro case.
William G. Porter, secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, observed that vigilantes in and around Camp Hill were "trying to get even for Scottsboro." Rumors spread throughout the county that armed bands of blacks were roaming the countryside searching for landlords to murder and white women to rape. On July 18, for example, the Birmingham Age-Herald carried a story headlined "Negro Reds Reported Advancing" claiming that eight carloads of black Communists were on their way from Chattanooga to assist the Tallapoosa sharecroppers. In response, about 150white men established a roadblock on the main highway north of the county (line).(p. 43)
These “Black Reds” went armed and were willing to fight; the white power structure knew this and was afraid.
(Share Cropper’s Union members), such as Lemon Johnson, former secretary of the Hope Hull local, believed armed self-defense distinguished the SCU from other organizations. His own experience informed him that "the only thing going to stop them from killing you, you got to go shooting." When Harry Haywood attended an SCU meeting in Dadeville, he was taken aback by what he described as "a small arsenal." "There were guns," he recalled, "of all kinds-shotguns, rifles and pistols. Sharecroppers were coming to the meeting armed and left their guns with their coats when they came in. 37 (pp. 44-45)
The SCU was a communist organized union.
These are some of the men and women who were facing down the bullets and the bayonets in the early thirties. These actions were being repeated, with variations, all over the country. This may, in part, help illuminate why FDR would not even discuss anti-lynching laws at the time – why should he?
This is a very rich vein of communist history in the US.
1928 & 1930 & 1932 elections had up to 7-8% communist vote (in some cases twice as many votes as went to Republicans) - and these are in predominantly 'white' counties. The only serious organizing of farmers to any extent, at all, was by the commies. African Americans were especially ardent Reds, but most of that history has been "whited-out".
Back in the early 30s the CPUSA would not back down from its total social equality stance - and they lost a lot of white support. But the Comintern in 1929 or 30 issued a finding that the African Americans of the Southern US were an "oppressed nation" and therefore deserved and were due the right of self-determination. The only folks talking equality in the US in 1932 were the Communists. That deserves repeating: The only folks talking equality in the US in 1932 were the Communists. The NAACP has got some serious guilt to deal with, when they sided with the white power structure against the only organized resistance to oppression in this country.
A year after the Camp Hill battle, in 1932, came the Reeltown incident.
It all started near Reeltown, an area about fifteen miles southwest of
Camp Hill. The SCU's (Share Croppers' Union) armed stand centered around a landlord's attempt to seize the property of Clifford James, a debt-ridden farmer who had been struggling desperately to purchase the land he worked. The story actually
dates back to 1926, when James borrowed $950 to purchase the seventy-seven
acre plot he was working from (white) Notasulga merchant W. S. Parker. The
full cost of the land was $1,500. In addition to the borrowed money, James
paid $250 in cash and sold $450 worth of timber from his property. Parker
then absorbed James' debt by taking out a mortgage on the land. After
advancing James money, food, and implements in 1927, Parker sold him
three mules on credit, which then augmented James' debt to $1,500.
James' friend and fellow SCU member, Ned Cobb, was also indebted to
Parker. "[Parker] had it in for me," Cobb recalled. "He knew I had good
stock and I was a good worker and all like that. He just aimed to use his
power to break me down; he'd been doin to people that way before then."50
When the SCU reorganized in Tallapoosa County, its approach to debt
peonage attracted James and hundreds of other black farmers. As a result of
debates within the Communist Party's National Negro Commission, the
SCU added to its core program the abolition of all debts owed by poor
farmers and tenants, as well as interest charged on necessary items such as
food, clothes, and seed. The SCU's solution to indebtedness ... appealed
to ... many black tenants and small landowners. James threw himself into the movement, becoming a Communist and a leader of an SCU local that included farmers from Reeltown and Lee County. Parker blamed this "sinister influence" for his inability to reach an agreement with James concerning his debts. Unable to come to terms, Parker asked Deputy Sheriff Cliff Elder to serve a writ of attachment on
James' livestock. When Elder arrived on December 19, 1932, about fifteen
armed SCU members were already standing outside James' home prepared to resist or avert the seizure. Although the group challenged established property rights by protecting James' right to retain his livestock in contravention of the law, they tried to avoid a gun battle. Their collective stand ... remained clearly within the traditional boundaries of rural paternalism. Ned Cobb humbly pleaded with Elder: "Please sir, don't take it. Go to the ones that authorized you to take his stuff, if you please, sir, and tell em to give him a chance. He'll work to pay what he owes em." When Elder and his black assistant officer attempted to seize the animals, humility ceased. James and Cobb warned them against taking the animals, and Elder interpreted their warnings as death threats. Fearing for his life, he left James' farm, promising to return to "kill you niggers in a pile."52
Elder returned a few hours later with three reinforcements... Several SCU members barricaded themselves in James' home and others stood poised at the b&. Shots were exchanged almost as soon as the four men stepped onto the property, but when Elder's
small posse "seed that crowd of niggers at the barn throw up their guns they
jumped in the car" and fled from the vicinity. Unable to persuade Governor
Miller to dispatch state troops, Sheriff Young proceeded to form his own
posse, gathering men from Lee, Macon, Elmore, and Montgomery counties
to scour the area for Suspected SCU members.53
When the shoot-out was over, SCU member John McMullen lay dead,
and several others were wounded, including Clifford James, Milo Bentley,
Thomas Moss, and Ned Cobb. Within the next few days, at least twenty
union members were rounded up and thrown in jail. Several of those
arrested were not involved in the shoot-out, but their names were discovered
when the police returned to James' home and uncovered the SCU local's membership list along with "considerable Communistic literature."
The violence that followed eclipsed the Camp Hill affair of 1931. Entire
families were forced to take refuge in the woods; white vigilante groups
broke into black homes and seized guns, ammunition, and other property;
and blacks were warned that if they appeared in the Liberty Hill section of
Reeltown they would be shot on sight. A blind black woman reported to be
nearly one hundred years old was severely beaten and pistol whipped by a
group of vigilantes, and one Tallapoosa doctor claimed to have treated at
least a dozen black patients with gunshot wounds.55
Despite severe injuries to his back, James managed to walk seventeen
miles to Tuskegee Institute's hospital. After dressing James' gunshot
wounds, Dr. Eugene Dibble of Tuskegee contacted the Macon County sheriff, who then removed James to a cold, damp cell at the Montgomery County jail. Milo Bentley, who reportedly had been shot in the head, back, and arms, was also taken to Montgomery County jail. Observers claimed that Bentley and James received no medical treatment from their jailers and both were found "lying on filthy and flimsy blankets on the floor. Cliff James was lying naked on the floor in a separate cage, delirious from the loss of blood and with blood-soaked dirty dressings over those wounds
which had been dressed." On December 27, James died from infected
wounds and pneumonia, both caused by the lack of medical treatment. Ten
and one-half hours later, Bentley's lifeless body was found in the same
condition.
About four or five days after the shoot-out, the ILD (International Labor Defense) and the SCU in Tallapoosa County held a mass meeting in Camp Hill and elected a committee of fifteen to investigate the arrests. The ILD sent attorneys Irving
Schwab and George Chamlee to Montgomery on behalf of the imprisoned
black farmers, but because jail authorities denied ILD representatives access
to the prisoners, they had very little information with which to prepare
a case. The ILD faced other unforeseen obstacles. Its Birmingham office
was ransacked by police, or vigilantes masquerading as law officers, and
within hours police arrested several Communist organizers. Despite these
setbacks, the ILD held a very successful public meeting at the Old Pythian
Temple on January 2, 1933, to protest the arrests and to censure Robert
Moton and staff members at Tuskegee Institute for their complicity in the
deaths of James and Bentley. A few days later, a mass funeral was held for
the two martyred union organizers. Pall bearers carrying two caskets draped
with banners emblazoned with deep red hammers and sickles led a procession
of three thousand people, most of whom were black. The mourners
marched six miles through Birmingham to Grace Hills Cemetery on the
southern side of the city, cordoned by an additional one thousand people
who crowded the sidewalks along the route of the procession.
This from "Hammer and Hoe" - pp. 49-51
Three thousand marched through Birmingham, Alabama with red hammer and sickle flags! Now that is something to comtemplate...
BTW: the ILD is the same group that defended the Scottsboro Boys' case.
On July 15, (1931) Taft Holmes organized a group of sharecroppers near Camp Hill (Alabama) and invited (Mack) Coad (a CPUSA organizer), along with several other union members, to address the group in a vacant house that doubled as a church. In all, about eighty black men and women piled into the abandoned house 'to listen to Coad discuss the CFWU (Croppers' and Farm Workers' Union) and the Scottsboro (Boys) case. After a black informant notified Tallapoosa County sheriff Kyle Young of the gathering, deputized vigilantes raided the meeting place, brutally beating men and women alike. The posse then regrouped at Tommy Gray's (local communist and union leader) home and assaulted his entire family, including his wife who suffered a fractured skull, in an effort to obtain information about the CFWU. Only an agitated Ralph Gray, who had rushed into the house, armed, saved them from possibly fatal consequences. Union organizer Jasper Kennedy was arrested for possessing twenty copies of the Southern Worker (a CPUSA publication), and Holmes was picked up by police the following day, interrogated for several hours, and upon release fled to Chattanooga." Despite the violence, about 150 sharecroppers met with Coad the following evening in a vacant house southwest of Camp Hill. This time sentries were posted around the meeting place. When Sheriff Young arrived on the scene with Camp Hill police chief J. M. Wilson and Deputy A. J. Thompson, he found Ralph Gray standing guard about a quarter-mile from the meeting. Although accounts differ as to the sequence of events, both
Gray and the sheriff traded harsh words and, in the heat of argument, exchanged buckshot. Young, who received gunshot wounds to the stomach, was rushed to a hospital in nearby Alexander City while Gray lay on the side of the road, his legs riddled with bullets. Fellow union members carried Gray to his home where the group, including Mack Coad, barricaded themselves inside the house. The group held off a posse led by police chief J. M. Wilson long enough to allow most members to escape, but the wounded Ralph Gray opted to remain in his home until the end.22 The posse returned with reinforcements and found Gray lying in his bed and his family huddled in a comer. According to his brother, someone in the group "poked a pistol into Brother Ralph's mouth and shot down his throat." The mob burned his home to the ground and dumped his body on the steps of the Dadeville courthouse. The mangled and lifeless leader became an example for other black sharecroppers as groups of armed whites took turns shooting and kicking the bloody corpse of Ralph Gray.23
Over the next few days, between thirty-four and fifty-five black men were arrested near Camp Hill, nine of whom were under eighteen years of age.24 Most of the defendants were charged with conspiracy to murder or with carrying a concealed weapon, but five union members, Dosie Miner, T. Patterson, William Gribb, John Finch, and Tommy Finch, were charged with assault to murder. Although police chief Wilson could not legally act out his wish to "kill every member of the 'Reds' there and throw them into the creek," the Camp Hill police department stood idle as enraged white citizens waged genocidal attacks on the black community that left dozens wounded or dead and forced entire families to seek refuge in the woods.
Union secretary Mack Coad, the vigilantes' prime target, fled all the way to
Atlanta. But few Tallapoosa Communists were as lucky as Coad. Estelle
Milner suffered a fractured vertebra at the hands of police after a local black minister accused her of possessing ammunition. (pp. 41-42)
(This is from the book “Hammer and Hoe” by Robin Kelley and is a very grim, thorough history of communist organizing in Alabama during the Depression. Just a mention here, if anyone wants to worship a hero, Estelle Milner would be a truly great candidate.)
Behind the violence in Tallapoosa County loomed the Scottsboro case.
William G. Porter, secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, observed that vigilantes in and around Camp Hill were "trying to get even for Scottsboro." Rumors spread throughout the county that armed bands of blacks were roaming the countryside searching for landlords to murder and white women to rape. On July 18, for example, the Birmingham Age-Herald carried a story headlined "Negro Reds Reported Advancing" claiming that eight carloads of black Communists were on their way from Chattanooga to assist the Tallapoosa sharecroppers. In response, about 150white men established a roadblock on the main highway north of the county (line).(p. 43)
These “Black Reds” went armed and were willing to fight; the white power structure knew this and was afraid.
(Share Cropper’s Union members), such as Lemon Johnson, former secretary of the Hope Hull local, believed armed self-defense distinguished the SCU from other organizations. His own experience informed him that "the only thing going to stop them from killing you, you got to go shooting." When Harry Haywood attended an SCU meeting in Dadeville, he was taken aback by what he described as "a small arsenal." "There were guns," he recalled, "of all kinds-shotguns, rifles and pistols. Sharecroppers were coming to the meeting armed and left their guns with their coats when they came in. 37 (pp. 44-45)
The SCU was a communist organized union.
These are some of the men and women who were facing down the bullets and the bayonets in the early thirties. These actions were being repeated, with variations, all over the country. This may, in part, help illuminate why FDR would not even discuss anti-lynching laws at the time – why should he?
This is a very rich vein of communist history in the US.
1928 & 1930 & 1932 elections had up to 7-8% communist vote (in some cases twice as many votes as went to Republicans) - and these are in predominantly 'white' counties. The only serious organizing of farmers to any extent, at all, was by the commies. African Americans were especially ardent Reds, but most of that history has been "whited-out".
Back in the early 30s the CPUSA would not back down from its total social equality stance - and they lost a lot of white support. But the Comintern in 1929 or 30 issued a finding that the African Americans of the Southern US were an "oppressed nation" and therefore deserved and were due the right of self-determination. The only folks talking equality in the US in 1932 were the Communists. That deserves repeating: The only folks talking equality in the US in 1932 were the Communists. The NAACP has got some serious guilt to deal with, when they sided with the white power structure against the only organized resistance to oppression in this country.
A year after the Camp Hill battle, in 1932, came the Reeltown incident.
It all started near Reeltown, an area about fifteen miles southwest of
Camp Hill. The SCU's (Share Croppers' Union) armed stand centered around a landlord's attempt to seize the property of Clifford James, a debt-ridden farmer who had been struggling desperately to purchase the land he worked. The story actually
dates back to 1926, when James borrowed $950 to purchase the seventy-seven
acre plot he was working from (white) Notasulga merchant W. S. Parker. The
full cost of the land was $1,500. In addition to the borrowed money, James
paid $250 in cash and sold $450 worth of timber from his property. Parker
then absorbed James' debt by taking out a mortgage on the land. After
advancing James money, food, and implements in 1927, Parker sold him
three mules on credit, which then augmented James' debt to $1,500.
James' friend and fellow SCU member, Ned Cobb, was also indebted to
Parker. "[Parker] had it in for me," Cobb recalled. "He knew I had good
stock and I was a good worker and all like that. He just aimed to use his
power to break me down; he'd been doin to people that way before then."50
When the SCU reorganized in Tallapoosa County, its approach to debt
peonage attracted James and hundreds of other black farmers. As a result of
debates within the Communist Party's National Negro Commission, the
SCU added to its core program the abolition of all debts owed by poor
farmers and tenants, as well as interest charged on necessary items such as
food, clothes, and seed. The SCU's solution to indebtedness ... appealed
to ... many black tenants and small landowners. James threw himself into the movement, becoming a Communist and a leader of an SCU local that included farmers from Reeltown and Lee County. Parker blamed this "sinister influence" for his inability to reach an agreement with James concerning his debts. Unable to come to terms, Parker asked Deputy Sheriff Cliff Elder to serve a writ of attachment on
James' livestock. When Elder arrived on December 19, 1932, about fifteen
armed SCU members were already standing outside James' home prepared to resist or avert the seizure. Although the group challenged established property rights by protecting James' right to retain his livestock in contravention of the law, they tried to avoid a gun battle. Their collective stand ... remained clearly within the traditional boundaries of rural paternalism. Ned Cobb humbly pleaded with Elder: "Please sir, don't take it. Go to the ones that authorized you to take his stuff, if you please, sir, and tell em to give him a chance. He'll work to pay what he owes em." When Elder and his black assistant officer attempted to seize the animals, humility ceased. James and Cobb warned them against taking the animals, and Elder interpreted their warnings as death threats. Fearing for his life, he left James' farm, promising to return to "kill you niggers in a pile."52
Elder returned a few hours later with three reinforcements... Several SCU members barricaded themselves in James' home and others stood poised at the b&. Shots were exchanged almost as soon as the four men stepped onto the property, but when Elder's
small posse "seed that crowd of niggers at the barn throw up their guns they
jumped in the car" and fled from the vicinity. Unable to persuade Governor
Miller to dispatch state troops, Sheriff Young proceeded to form his own
posse, gathering men from Lee, Macon, Elmore, and Montgomery counties
to scour the area for Suspected SCU members.53
When the shoot-out was over, SCU member John McMullen lay dead,
and several others were wounded, including Clifford James, Milo Bentley,
Thomas Moss, and Ned Cobb. Within the next few days, at least twenty
union members were rounded up and thrown in jail. Several of those
arrested were not involved in the shoot-out, but their names were discovered
when the police returned to James' home and uncovered the SCU local's membership list along with "considerable Communistic literature."
The violence that followed eclipsed the Camp Hill affair of 1931. Entire
families were forced to take refuge in the woods; white vigilante groups
broke into black homes and seized guns, ammunition, and other property;
and blacks were warned that if they appeared in the Liberty Hill section of
Reeltown they would be shot on sight. A blind black woman reported to be
nearly one hundred years old was severely beaten and pistol whipped by a
group of vigilantes, and one Tallapoosa doctor claimed to have treated at
least a dozen black patients with gunshot wounds.55
Despite severe injuries to his back, James managed to walk seventeen
miles to Tuskegee Institute's hospital. After dressing James' gunshot
wounds, Dr. Eugene Dibble of Tuskegee contacted the Macon County sheriff, who then removed James to a cold, damp cell at the Montgomery County jail. Milo Bentley, who reportedly had been shot in the head, back, and arms, was also taken to Montgomery County jail. Observers claimed that Bentley and James received no medical treatment from their jailers and both were found "lying on filthy and flimsy blankets on the floor. Cliff James was lying naked on the floor in a separate cage, delirious from the loss of blood and with blood-soaked dirty dressings over those wounds
which had been dressed." On December 27, James died from infected
wounds and pneumonia, both caused by the lack of medical treatment. Ten
and one-half hours later, Bentley's lifeless body was found in the same
condition.
About four or five days after the shoot-out, the ILD (International Labor Defense) and the SCU in Tallapoosa County held a mass meeting in Camp Hill and elected a committee of fifteen to investigate the arrests. The ILD sent attorneys Irving
Schwab and George Chamlee to Montgomery on behalf of the imprisoned
black farmers, but because jail authorities denied ILD representatives access
to the prisoners, they had very little information with which to prepare
a case. The ILD faced other unforeseen obstacles. Its Birmingham office
was ransacked by police, or vigilantes masquerading as law officers, and
within hours police arrested several Communist organizers. Despite these
setbacks, the ILD held a very successful public meeting at the Old Pythian
Temple on January 2, 1933, to protest the arrests and to censure Robert
Moton and staff members at Tuskegee Institute for their complicity in the
deaths of James and Bentley. A few days later, a mass funeral was held for
the two martyred union organizers. Pall bearers carrying two caskets draped
with banners emblazoned with deep red hammers and sickles led a procession
of three thousand people, most of whom were black. The mourners
marched six miles through Birmingham to Grace Hills Cemetery on the
southern side of the city, cordoned by an additional one thousand people
who crowded the sidewalks along the route of the procession.
This from "Hammer and Hoe" - pp. 49-51
Three thousand marched through Birmingham, Alabama with red hammer and sickle flags! Now that is something to comtemplate...
BTW: the ILD is the same group that defended the Scottsboro Boys' case.