African-American self-determination
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African-American self-determination refers to efforts to secure self-determination for African-Americans and related peoples in North America. It often intersects with the historic Back-to-Africa movement and general Black separatism, but also manifests in present and historic demands for self-determination on North American soil, ranging from autonomy to independence. The freedom to make whatever choices as a free American, and willfulness to do for self are often a key demand for advocates of African-American self-determination.[citation needed]
As U.S. state
Edwin P. McCabe in Oklahoma
Former Kansas State Auditor
Oscar Brown Sr.
The
Republic of New Afrika
The Republic of New Afrika was an organization which sought three key goals:
- Creation of an independent African-American-majority country situated in the southeastern United States, in the heart of black-majority population. A similar claim is made for all the black-majority counties and cities throughout the United States.
- Payment of several billion dollars in US government for the damages inflicted on Africans and their descendants by chattel enslavement, Jim Crow segregation, and modern-day forms of racism.
- A referendum of all African Americans to determine their desires for citizenship; movement leaders say they were not offered a choice in this matter after emancipation in 1865 following the American Civil War.
Established in 1968, the RNA attracted a number of members, including Robert F. Williams, Betty Shabazz and Chokwe Lumumba. The organization persists to this day.
American Communist support
During the USSR
The idea for outright independence was also adopted by American communist activists. Throughout US history, several revolutionary organizations have sought to promote control of the region as a separate political nation within the United States. The black liberation activist Cyril Briggs wrote a number of editorials starting in 1917 which called for a "colored autonomous state" on U.S. soil, first in the publication Amsterdam News and later in the publication The Crusader which he founded in 1918.[1] The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) later adopted the suggestion that African Americans in the "Black Belt" region constituted an oppressed nation, and that they should be allowed to vote on self-determination, as had populations following World War I under rules of the League of Nations. After fierce debate in the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1928, the CPUSA officially adopted a plan for self-determination for an African-American nation in the region.[2]
Although
Given the CPUSA's proposal on the national question, it enjoyed large-scale party growth in the US South. But the party was also involved in organizing agricultural workers and supporting African-American civil rights, which most Black US Americans considered more important. In Alabama, for instance, the Party organized the Sharecroppers' Union (SCU) in 1931, which grew to "a membership of nearly 2,000 organized in 73 locals, 80 women's auxiliaries, and 30 youth groups."[4] The SCU was openly organized by Alabama communists, and while it drew substantial support from the African-American community, it was subject to a harsh crackdown by state and non-state actors.[5] Nevertheless, it helped lead a strike of agricultural workers for higher wages.
"[T]he SCU claimed some substantial victories. On most of the plantations affected, the union won at least seventy-five cents per one hundred pounds, and in areas not affected by the strike, landlords reportedly increased wages from thirty-five cents per hundred pounds to fifty cents or more in order to avert the spread of the strike."[6]
During the same period, the CPUSA also alienated much of the African-American working class by excoriating other self-determination organizations such as the Movement for a 49th State and the back-to-Africa-oriented Peace Movement of Ethiopia for not toeing the party line on self-determination.[7]
In 1935, the CPUSA abandoned its line on national self-determination for the Black Belt. It wanted to attract coalition support from middle-class African-American groups in the Northeast as a part of the Party's "Hands Off Ethiopia" campaign. It launched this effort after Italian forces under Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in the same year.[8] The CPUSA criticized the invasion as part of the colonial enterprise.
Haywood and similar members tried to promote the Black Belt national question in the 1950s, without success. Communists did not officially support this concept again until the
In the 21st century
In the 21st century, several communist organizations have continued to uphold the Black Belt national question. Chief among them is the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which continues to organize around the line.[10] The FRSO publishes several pamphlets and statements on the African-American national question in the Black Belt.[11] They uphold the right of national self-determination by the region.[12]
The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is another revolutionary organization upholding the right of self-determination for residents of the Black Belt.
See also
- Legal status of Hawaii
- Aboriginal self-government in Canada
- Ethnic separatism
- Ethnic nationalism
- Indigenous rights
- Self-determination
- Self-determination of Australian Aborigines
- Native American self-determination
- Tribal sovereignty
- National questions
- Racial oppression
References
- ISBN 978-0816679058.
- ^ a b c Sherman, Vincent (2012). Nations Want Liberation: The Black Belt Nation in the 21st Century http://return2source.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/nations-want-liberation-the-black-belt-nation-in-the-21st-century/
- ^ Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul (1992). The Trotsky Reappraisal. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 184–192.
- ISBN 978-0807842881.
- ISBN 978-0807842881.
- ISBN 978-0807842881.
- ^ "Self-determination and the "Black Belt"". Socialist Worker.
- ISBN 978-0807842881.
- ISBN 1844675637.
- ^ Staff (February 11, 2014). "Racism, national oppression of African Americans at the core of Jordan Davis killing", Fight Back! News
- ^ Freedom Road Socialist Organization (May 2006). The Third International and the struggle for a correct line on the African American National Question http://www.frso.org/docs/2006/2006nq.htm Archived 2006-06-18 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Freedom Road Socialist Organization (March 2012). FRSO Program: Immediate Demands for U.S. Colonies, Indigenous Peoples, and Oppressed Nationalities http://www.frso.org/about/5congress/oppnat-demands.htm