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27 Chapter 3 Harry Haywood, KUTVA, and Training Black Cadres  In the manner of the old Underground Railroad, I was passed on from one set of comrades to the next. . . . Upon landing, I presented my visa and passport to the authorities. Addressing me in English, a man in civilian dress said, “Oh, you’re going to the Comintern school in Moscow?” “Yes,” I replied. He immediately took me in [his] charge.1 —Harry Haywood (1978) “Several weeks after I received my passport , I heard the FBI had been making inquiries about me. . . . [As] my departure time drew near, I hid out at the home of comrades on Chicago’s Westside [while my] political credentials, typed on silk, were sewn into the lining of my coat sleeve.”2 Spirited out of Chicago and passing through Canada and Germany , Harry Haywood embarked on his own search for the promised land, finally landing in Leningrad in April 1926. This was a mere year after Haywood (né Haywood Hall) had formally joined the Communist Party, although several years after his political credentials had been tested in other progressive arenas.3 Like many other black World War I veterans, Haywood had not been content to return to a life under Jim Crow and spent years looking for “an organization with which to make revolution.” His Soviet experience changed him from simply being “a disgruntled Black ex-soldier” to being what he termed “a self-conscious revolutionary.”4 As he learned, the battles were far broader than his fight against Jim Crow. “This was my first experience with Irish revolutionaries and their experiences excited me[;] . . . we had a lot in common. . . . [I admired] their sense of national pride [and awareness] of the international importance of their independence struggle.”5 Early Education Born in Omaha, Haywood was still young when his family moved to Minneapolis . His early life in these less cosmopolitan and predominantly white environments shielded him from the full brunt of Jim Crow. There were times, though, when “the ugly reality of race would intrude upon the dream world of 28 Blacks, Reds, and Russians my childhood.” A substitute teacher came to his school one day. “[She] was a Southerner from Arkansas. During history class she started talking about the Civil War [and how] the slaves . . . did not really want freedom because they were happy. . . . Her villain was General Grant, whom she contrasted unfavorably with General Robert E. Lee.” Haywood challenged her comments, and his classmates seemed to generally agree with him. But he discovered a mixed response back home. “When I told my Mother she supported me. . . . But Father was not so sure. ‘You might have gotten into trouble.’”6 To Haywood’s mind, confronting this woman’s racism was a good thing. It was especially satisfying when we saw that he had the support of his white classmates and mother. But his father’s cautionary statement stung him, and he feared that as long as he was black in the United States and living under Jim Crow, he, too, would have to bow to the pressures of white society. In these circumstances, his older brother, Otto, stood out as his hero: Otto was waging a protracted campaign to frustrate his parents’ efforts to have him accept the status quo. As he got older and moved away from his parents’ supervision, Haywood ’s personal and political trajectories often mirrored his brother’s. Although brilliant in school, Otto had refused to continue his studies, even when offered a special scholarship to a Jesuit college. “Father was an ardent follower of Booker T. Washington. His ambitions for his sons were very modest. . . . He thought of jobs a notch or two above his own station, like a postal employee, a skilled tradesman, or a clerk in the civil service. . . . Otto came to the conclusion that there was no use in continuing his education. That it was irrelevant. Opportunities for educated Blacks were few.” Later, when Otto joined the Communist Party, Haywood aspired to follow in his footsteps. “Otto [joined] in succession, the Wobblies, or Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the African Blood Brotherhood and finally the Communist Party.”7 Haywood was seventeen when he set out on his own for Chicago in 1915. He found a job at the Tip Top Inn that led to other good positions, “I got a job as a busboy at the Tip Top Inn, then considered the finest restaurant in town[;] . . . if you had been a waiter at the Tip...

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