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103 5 AN ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES Otto was pleased when I first told him of my desire to join the party in the summer of 1922. He said that he had known I had been ready to join for some time, but he suggested I should wait a while before joining. When I asked why, he told me about an unpleasant situation that had arisen in the party’s Southside branch. Most of the few Black members were concentrated in this English-speaking branch, but it seemed that a number of recent Black recruits had dropped out. They resented the paternalistic attitude displayed toward them by some of the white comrades who, Otto said, treated Blacks like children and seemed to think that the whites had all the answers. It was only a temporary situation, he assuredme.ThematterhadbeentakenupbeforethepartyDistrictCommittee; if it was not resolved there, they would take it to the Central Committee. “And if you don’t get satisfaction there?” I queried. “Well, then there’s the Communist International!” he replied emphatically. “It’s as much our party as it is theirs.” I was properly impressed by his sincerity and by the idea that we could appeal our case to the “supreme court” of international communism, which included such luminaries as the great Lenin. The Blacks who had remained in the party had decided not to bring any new members into the branch until the matter was satisfactorily settled. I was rather surprised to hear all of this. Clearly, membership in the party did not automatically free whites from white supremacist ideas. Nor, for that matter, did it free Blacks from their distrust of whites. Throughout my lifetime, I found that interracial solidarity—even in the Communist Party—required a continuous ideological struggle. Otto suggested that until the matter was cleared up I should join the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB). The ABB was a secret, all-Black, revolutionary organization to which some of the Black party members belonged—including Otto.Ilaterlearnedthatthematterofwhitepaternalismwaseventuallyresolved to the satisfaction of the Black comrades. I don’t recall the details; I think that Arne Swabeck (the district organizer) or Robert Minor from the Central Committee finally came down and lectured the branch on the evils of race prejudice 104 An Organization of Revolutionaries and threatened disciplinary action to the point of expulsion of comrades guilty of bringing bourgeois social attitudes into the party. In the meantime, I took Otto’s advice and joined the African Blood Brotherhood . He took me to see Edward Doty, then commander of the Brotherhood’s Chicago post. Vouched for by Otto and Doty, I was taken to a meeting of the membershipcommitteeandwentthroughtheinductionceremonies.Thisconsisted of an African fraternization ritual requiring the mixing of blood between the applicant and one of the regular members. The organization took its name from this ritual. Doty performed the ceremony; he pricked our index fingers with a needle (I hoped it was sterilized!), and when drops of blood appeared, he rubbed them together. Now a Blood Brother, I proceeded to take the oath of loyalty, which contained a clause warning that divulging of any of the secrets of the organization was punishable by death. I was deeply impressed by all this; the atmosphere of great secrecy appealed to my romantic sense. There were two degrees of membership ; one was automatically conferred upon joining, and the second, which I took a few days later, involved the performance of some service for the organization . In my case, as I recall, it was a trivial task—selling a dozen or so copies of its magazine, the Crusader. At the time that I joined the African Blood Brotherhood, I knew little about the organization other than the fact that it was in some way associated with the Communist Party. I do remember having read a copy or two of the Crusader before I joined the group. Some of the history of the ABB I got from Otto and other post members, but most of it I found out much later when I met and worked with Cyril P. Briggs, the original founder of the group. The African Blood Brotherhood was founded in New York City in 1919 by a group of Black radicals under the leadership of Briggs. A West Indian (as were most of the founders), he was a former editor of the Amsterdam News, a Black New York newspaper. He quit in a disagreement over policy with the owner, who attempted to censor his antiwar editorials. Briggs’s own...

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