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B. D. Amis B. D. Amis (1896–1993) is virtually unknown today and often overlooked by historians. As an African American Communist, he was a major figure in the black freedom struggle during the two decades between the world wars. At the time, the American Communist Party (CP) played a significant role in fighting for the rights of African Americans .This was especially true during CP’s heyday in the late 1920s and the 1930s. In those years,Amis was, to be sure, part of the small circle of black radicals leading the struggle for workers’ rights and racial justice. In 1930, Amis became the general secretary of the newly formed League of Struggle for Negro Rights and editor of its organ, The Liberator. The league publicized the racial issues of the day, such as lynching, rallies, conferences, and picketing. Aptly described as “urbane in demeanor and a dynamic speaker, ” Amis was indeed one of the most important black activists of his time. His daughter, Debbie A. Bell, chairs the Eastern Pennsylvania/Delaware District of the CPUSA. B. D. Amis died in Virginia in 1993. ■ ■ ■ 22 ■ B. D. Amis Fond 515, Files of the Communist Party of the United States in the Comintern Archives The Negro National Oppression and Social Antagonisms The Communist, 1931 “The Negro agricultural laborers and the tenant farmers feel most the pressure of the white persecution and exploitation. Thus the agrarian problem lies at the root of the Negro national movement.” (Thesis, Sixth World Congress.) The Civil War, a struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie of the North and the slave-owners of the South, did not achieve the real emancipation of the slaves. It is true that by an amendment to the federal constitution bourgeois democratic rights were granted, supposedly to guarantee the new freedom. For the first time the Negroes were granted the right to vote, to hold public office, to obtain an equal education, which for a brief period were enforced by Negro militia and northern federal troops. But the northern bourgeoisie entered into a rapprochement with the overthrown southern plantation lords, thus deserting the property-less former slaves.The northern capitalists were unable to carry the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the war to the end, the taking of the land from the slave holders and giving it to the slaves. If this had been done, the former slaves would not have been forced to return to their former masters after their cowardly betrayal by the northern bourgeoisie, to obtain a livelihood. Thus the Negro masses in the South, left property-less by their northern “friends,” were abandoned to their fate at the hands of their former masters. The former slave-holders soon denied the Negroes their newly granted democratic rights and reduced them to a state of semi-slavery, the plantation system. Nominal slavery passed away, but the subsequent dependence of the betrayed Negroes upon their previous masters continued the institution in another form. The plantation tenancy system was adopted by the landlords as a means to continue their robbery of the Negro masses, and continued to the development of industrial capital, in the North and South. B. D. Amis ■ 23 Repressive Measures A way of securing peons is for an employer or his agent to go to a town or city and hire a group of laborers. He agrees to pay certain wages and transportation and provide the necessary provisions from the commissary, the company store.The laborers, indebted to their employer, trade out their meager wages at the company store. By false methods, trickery, and even foul play the employer keeps the peon in perpetual debt. What books are kept (by the planter only) have false entries. A peon with a large family is most desirable to the planter, who afforded a greater opportunity to increase his robbery of large numbers of permanent victims through his false bookkeeping system. Oft-times to assure that the peons do not attempt to run away, their children are taken from them. To keep the peons on the plantations it is necessary to establish iron authority over them.The overseer is the terrorist of every plantation . He uses the whip and gun to strike terror among the peons, subjecting them to the will of the boss and slavery conditions. Women and children alike become the personal property of the white master. The latter grow up in ignorance, and the former are prostituted by the many white masters. By the use of sheer force these people...

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