Gerald Horne
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037924
- eISBN:
- 9780252095184
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037924.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter argues that the Scottsboro case was profoundly important not least because it was seized upon by the Communist party and its global network of activists to highlight Jim Crow. This ...
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This chapter argues that the Scottsboro case was profoundly important not least because it was seized upon by the Communist party and its global network of activists to highlight Jim Crow. This placed tremendous pressure on the nation's rulers at a time when national security was being challenged frontally in leading capitals—Moscow particularly—which had decided to focus on Jim Crow, while training talented Negroes like Patterson to subvert this hateful system. For only months after the Scottsboro campaign had been launched, the CP was crowing about the gigantic steps that had been taken on the anti-Jim Crow front. Scottsboro occasioned a massive counterattack by the radical left not only on the antiracist front but with regard to the lineaments of Negro history generally. Ultimately, however, a delicate pas de deux was performed whereby those like Patterson, who had helped to place Jim Crow in the global spotlight, were sidelined, and in compensation, Jim Crow was eroded.Less
This chapter argues that the Scottsboro case was profoundly important not least because it was seized upon by the Communist party and its global network of activists to highlight Jim Crow. This placed tremendous pressure on the nation's rulers at a time when national security was being challenged frontally in leading capitals—Moscow particularly—which had decided to focus on Jim Crow, while training talented Negroes like Patterson to subvert this hateful system. For only months after the Scottsboro campaign had been launched, the CP was crowing about the gigantic steps that had been taken on the anti-Jim Crow front. Scottsboro occasioned a massive counterattack by the radical left not only on the antiracist front but with regard to the lineaments of Negro history generally. Ultimately, however, a delicate pas de deux was performed whereby those like Patterson, who had helped to place Jim Crow in the global spotlight, were sidelined, and in compensation, Jim Crow was eroded.
Gerald Horne
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037924
- eISBN:
- 9780252095184
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037924.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter focuses on the Scottsboro campaign. Buoyed by massive global support, the Scottsboro campaign took black America and then the nation by storm. Patterson asserted accurately in early 1934 ...
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This chapter focuses on the Scottsboro campaign. Buoyed by massive global support, the Scottsboro campaign took black America and then the nation by storm. Patterson asserted accurately in early 1934 that Scottsboro “has raised the question of international working class solidarity to its highest level.” Thus, he said beamingly, “Every Negro worker and toiling slave on the land breathes freer because of the activities of the ILD,” while the “southern landlord lynchers have learned to curse its name and to dread the presence of its organizations.” The main point, he stressed, was “a new understanding of the term—international working class solidarity.” Moreover, as a result of this case, “The world began to act on the [mal]treatment of [the] Negro.” This was particularly true in the aftermath of 1945, when the United States found it necessary to more effectively charge Moscow with human-rights violations—in part to counter Moscow's charges about Washington's deficiencies in this crucial realm.Less
This chapter focuses on the Scottsboro campaign. Buoyed by massive global support, the Scottsboro campaign took black America and then the nation by storm. Patterson asserted accurately in early 1934 that Scottsboro “has raised the question of international working class solidarity to its highest level.” Thus, he said beamingly, “Every Negro worker and toiling slave on the land breathes freer because of the activities of the ILD,” while the “southern landlord lynchers have learned to curse its name and to dread the presence of its organizations.” The main point, he stressed, was “a new understanding of the term—international working class solidarity.” Moreover, as a result of this case, “The world began to act on the [mal]treatment of [the] Negro.” This was particularly true in the aftermath of 1945, when the United States found it necessary to more effectively charge Moscow with human-rights violations—in part to counter Moscow's charges about Washington's deficiencies in this crucial realm.
Gerald Horne
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037924
- eISBN:
- 9780252095184
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037924.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
A leading African American Communist, lawyer William L. Patterson (1891–1980) was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the defeat of Jim Crow by virtue of his leadership of the Scottsboro ...
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A leading African American Communist, lawyer William L. Patterson (1891–1980) was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the defeat of Jim Crow by virtue of his leadership of the Scottsboro campaign in the 1930s. This watershed biography shows how Patterson helped to advance African American equality by fostering and leveraging international support for the movement. The book highlights key moments in Patterson's global activism: his early education in the Soviet Union, his involvement with the Scottsboro trials and other high-profile civil rights cases of the 1930s to 1950s, his 1951 “We Charge Genocide” petition to the United Nations, and his later work with prisons and the Black Panther Party. Drawing from government and FBI documents, newspapers, periodicals, archival and manuscript collections, and personal papers, the book documents Patterson's effectiveness at carrying the freedom struggle into the global arena and provides a fresh perspective on twentieth-century struggles for racial justice.Less
A leading African American Communist, lawyer William L. Patterson (1891–1980) was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the defeat of Jim Crow by virtue of his leadership of the Scottsboro campaign in the 1930s. This watershed biography shows how Patterson helped to advance African American equality by fostering and leveraging international support for the movement. The book highlights key moments in Patterson's global activism: his early education in the Soviet Union, his involvement with the Scottsboro trials and other high-profile civil rights cases of the 1930s to 1950s, his 1951 “We Charge Genocide” petition to the United Nations, and his later work with prisons and the Black Panther Party. Drawing from government and FBI documents, newspapers, periodicals, archival and manuscript collections, and personal papers, the book documents Patterson's effectiveness at carrying the freedom struggle into the global arena and provides a fresh perspective on twentieth-century struggles for racial justice.
