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This is a Literature Review study.

September 10, 2025

The Emergence of the Communist Perspective on the “Negro Question” in America: 1919-1931 Part Two

Key Points

The American Communist Party initially neglected issues affecting African Americans, focusing instead on the working class.
In 1928, the Comintern designated the Negro population in the black belt as capable of initiating a national revolutionary movement.
The Scottsboro Case elevated the plight of African Americans to an issue of international concern, intertwining it with American radical politics.
The current analysis explores the consequences of the Comintern's resolution and its impact on American Communist engagement with the Negro question.

Abstract

For nearly a decade American Communists generally ignored the problems of African Americans, much as Socialists had done. The Comintern's involvement with national liberation movements and the activism of some “new Negro” militants put some pressure on the American Party to move into this area. But this did not challenge the Party's basic focus on the working class, against which all else was seen as a diversion. In 1928 the 6th Congress of the Comintern resolved that the Negro population of the “black belt” was a subject nation, thus capable of engen-dering a “national revolutionary movement,” and ordered the American Party to give work on the Negro question high priority. The Party eventually found in the “Scottsboro Case” an issue that made the situation of African Americans a matter of international concern for the first time since the Civil War, and locked it into the American radical/liberal political agenda. The first part of this article ( S the present part ex-amines the Resolution and its consequences.

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