Great words and thoughts as always -
Concerning the Black community, Du Bois was put on trial and faced the prospect of an extended tenure in prison on the spurious grounds that he was the agent of a foreign power—meaning Moscow--because he campaigned for banning nuclear weapons.
This was part of a larger process of battering the Black Left, then making agonizing anti-Jim Crow concessions through the aegis of Black Liberals, led by the NAACP. The passport of the tallest tree in our forest, Paul Robeson, was taken as his income plummeted from the six figures to the low four figures, hampering his ability to make contributions to allied Black Left organizations, including the Civil Rights Congress, led by his comrade William L. Patterson, who, as Du Bois was being indicted, had filed a petition at the United Nations charging U.S. imperialism with genocide against Black folk. It is not too late for BAR to mark the 75th anniversary of this precedent-setting gambit with the aim of once again taking our plight to the United Nations, to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), to the African Union, to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), to the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). Patterson too was jailed during this tempestuous era. Also behind bars was Black Communist leader Ben Davis Jr., elected to the New York City Council from Harlem in 1943, during the height of the anti-fascist moment, re-elected in 1945, then ousted unceremoniously, perhaps illegally, in 1949 and jailed by 1950. Imprisoned alongside him was his attorney, George Crockett, who in the following decades was elected to Congress from Detroit, where he was a tribune for the anti apartheid cause, culminating in the Comprehensive Anti Apartheid Act, passed over President Reagan’s veto, which led directly to South African independence in 1994.
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