Richard B. Moore, radical politics, and the Afro-American history movement: the formation of a revolutionary tradition in African American intellectual culture.

  "Dogs and slaves are named by their masters; free men name
  themselves!"
  Richard B. Moore, The Name 'Negro'--Its Origin and Evil Use

Richard B. Moore, lay historian, dynamic orator, community and labor organizer, socialist, and Communist was a leading representative of the intellectual tradition termed as Black "historians without portfolio." (2) In addition to writing historical works, Moore was also a Black book dealer and Africana bibliophile. Arguably the general public usually associates the prototype of Africana bibliophiles with Arthur Schomburg and his extensive collection. Of course, many are now aware that Schomburg's collection forms the basis for the famed research library in Harlem, which bears his name. Less known but equally significant is the fact that not only were Moore and Schomburg close friends and fellow bibliophiles, but also there is Moore's own impressive collection of 5,000 books and 15,000 pamphlets, booklets and periodicals, which serve as the foundation for the Richard B. Moore Library in St. Michaels, Barbados. (3)

Moore has not received the full scholarly attention that he richly deserves. In part, this is due to the fact that he stood outside of the walls of academia. What is more, given his radical politics, we discover that his contributions to African American historiography, the African American Marxist political tradition in the United States, Caribbean independence and unity, the Pan-Africanist movement, and his scholarship and teaching toward the elevation of a sense of Black pride and dignity among the grassroots Black community are not fully appreciated. (4)

Nonetheless, Moore's life remains a significant and extraordinary chapter in African American history and culture and especially now as we look back on the tremendous intellectual and practical struggles of the twentieth century and now seek to forge new ground in the 21st century. Moore's life covers the full spectrum of Afro-American political activism, cultural development and social advances. Given the expansive scope of Moore's life activities, the need for more diligent research into his biography becomes most glaring. For example, despite considerable research into African American involvement in sports, little has been written about Moore's pioneering role in advancing Black participation in the sport of tennis. Fortunately, we do have record of Moore's efforts to "End Jim Crow in Sports" and his comments at the 1940 World's Fair, where he announced, "If we are to preserve democracy, we must stand firm ... against those forces who trample on the principles of sportsmanship." (5)

Moore was a pivotal leader among a contingent of Afro-Caribbean immigrants that arrived in the United States from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth century, and who emerged as a considerable activist/intellectual influence on the growing sense of new racial and national awareness among Black people in the United States. (6) This resurgence of racial pride developed into a compelling political and cultural movement, which was/is commonly referred to as the "New Negro Movement". During the decade following World War I, when the "New Negro Movement" became closely identified with the "Harlem Renaissance," Moore helped shape these very two concepts ("New Negro Movement" and "Harlem Renaissance") into living monuments. Although, as we shall see, the term "Negro" would later give way to his advocacy for the group name of "Afro-American." (7)

Cyril Briggs, Moore's comrade in the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB) and Communist Party, wrote about the idea of a "New Negro" in the 1919 edition of the ABB organ called The Crusader. In many respects, Briggs offers a perspective that summarizes Moore's viewpoint of the importance of the "New Negro Movement." Briggs argues,

      The Old Negro and his futile methods must go. After fifty years of
    him and his methods the Race still suffers from lynching,
    disfranchisement, Jim Crowism, segregation and a hundred other ills.
    His abject crawling and pleading have availed the Cause nothing. He
    has sold life and his people for vapid promises tinged with traitor
    gold. His race is done. Let him go. The New Negro now takes the
    helm. It is now OUR future at stake. Not his. His future is in the
    grave. And if the New Negro, imbibing the spirit of Liberty, is
    willing to suffer martyrdom for the Cause, then certainly the very
    least that the Old Negro can do is to stay in the background for his
    remaining years of life or to die a natural death without in his
    death struggles attempting to hamper those who take new means to
    effect ends which the Old Leaders throughout fifty years were not
    able to effect. (8)

In addition to Moore's work as an historian and the plethora of cultural activities, which captured his attention, he was also a leader in the left radical political movement that began with the Socialist Party, African Blood Brotherhood (ABB) and pen ultimately the Communist Party USA. Moore holds a formidable place among the Black left and stands as part of a legacy that includes Lucy Parsons, Peter Clark, Hubert Harrison, the early political activism of A. Philip Randolph, and Cyril Briggs, Grace Campbell, Harry Haywood, Claudia Jones, Paul Robeson, Eslanda Goode Robeson, Doxey Wilkerson, Louise Thompson Patterson, William Patterson, Maude White, C.L.R. James, William Alphaeus Hunton, and Shirley Graham Du Bois during the latter part of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois' career among others. (9)

As a public speaker on the streets of New York, a cultural tradition often associated with Harlem, Moore was a popular orator in the "soapbox tradition." His moving rhetorical style and commanding presence precedes such outstanding public orators such as Malcolm X on Harlem streets. Unfortunately, and unlike with Malcolm X, many of Moore's speeches were not recorded. We do have the recollection of some who heard him speak. Harry Haywood, Moore's comrade from the ABB and of the Communist Party years, accordingly states, "Richard B. Moore [was] a fine orator who did much of the public speaking for the ABB." And about Moore's capacity as an organizer at the initial meeting for the Communist Party's American Negro Labor Congress, Haywood graphically comments, "Richard B. Moore brought the house down with an impassioned speech which reached its peroration in Claude's McKay's poem, 'If We Must Die'." I was spellbound by Moore; I never heard such oratory." (10)

After leaving the Communist Party in 1942, Moore remained a fixture in Harlem left politics and Black cultural life. His 1965 article, in the New York based journal Liberator, "The Passing of Churchill and Empire," is one of several articles that demonstrate that Moore, nothing like other former Black Communists such as George Padmore, remained a Marxist-Leninist and a strong anti-imperialist fighter long after his departure from the Communist Party U.S.A.. (CPUSA). On the cultural front, Moore actively produced and distributed literature on Black history and culture, participated in several academic/cultural groups including, the Association for the Study of Afro-American History and Life. Perhaps, more that any other individual, Moore was the key to why this organization changed its name from 'Negro' to 'Afro-American'. Concerned with how Afro-American Studies could become a grassroots movement and not simply confined within the walls of academia, Moore in addition to lecturing and teaching, even established his own African American bookstore and publishing company. (11)

Not content to stay silent given the progressive social and political changes in his native West Indies, he engaged in various levels of political support and struggle for Caribbean independence and unity. Although a staunch defender of the West Indian struggle, Moore was never one to narrowly conceive the struggle of African peoples only with respect to Caribbean interests and concerns. Moore gave indefatigable assistance to the cause of Pan-Africanism. His essay "Africa Conscious Harlem," in my estimation, is one of the most valuable scholarly articles ever written on Harlem and the history of the Pan-Africanist movement. Moore covers Harlem's Pan-Africanist connection to Africa inclusive of the political, social, literary, religious, journalistic activities as well as the mass movements such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Garvey movement and the anti-imperialist struggle in solidarity with the Ethiopian people against the Italian invasion led by Mussolini. (12)

In the last period of his life (1966-1978), Moore divided his time and energies between Harlem and Barbados. It was during this time that Moore increased his activities as a publicist for Caribbean liberation. Franklin W. Knight observes, "Moore kept the issue of the political future of the Caribbean islands constantly before English, American, and local Caribbean audiences. His group badgered organizations with memoranda, letters, and addresses while constantly sending money and correspondence to the leading political groups and daily newspapers in the larger islands of Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad." (13)

Richard Benjamin Moore, a native of Barbados, was born on August 9, 1893 to Richard Henry and Josephine Thorn Moore. By the current standards of Barbados, the Richard Henry and Josephine Moore family was middle class in terms of socio-economic status. The senior Moore was a lay preacher and building contractor in Barbados and along with building the Moore family home; he was also responsible for constructing several prominent edifices including the home of Richard Barrow, the grandfather of future Prime Minister Errol Barrow. Unfortunately, young Richard's mother died when he was only three years of age. Consequently, Richard Benjamin's father was the primary and most important factor in nurturing young Richard's life. The elder Moore was responsible for introducing his son to the importance of education, religion and the ethic of hard work. (14)

When Moore's father later remarried to Elizabeth McLean, the youthful Richard Benjamin, although maintaining found memories of his birth mother, gained a very close and supporting relationship from Elizabeth McLean Moore. This relationship with his "second mother" proved to be indispensable to Richard's development, education and outlook on life. The strong bonds between young "Benny" and his second mother especially solidified after his father died in 1902. Elizabeth McLean Moore made sure that the elder Moore's wishes for his son's continued education were met and she facilitated the younger Richard Moore's move to the United States. (15)

Moore's arrival to the United States in 1909 was a considerable transition for him. Faced with the need to find employment and gripped by the desire to continue his education, Moore had to learn how to confront cultural differences that were based on the United States' racist customs and institutions. Moore experienced virulent racial discrimination in both employment and educational opportunities because of the emerging dual labor and wage market in the United States, which relegated Black labor to the status of "last hired and first fired." The intersection of employment and education was in many ways a hurdle Moore had clearly and successfully jumped over in Barbados. Yet, in the United States, the added dimension of racism complicated these two goals on which Moore set his eyes and heart. Later, in his life, as a mass leader of Harlem political activities, Moore led the fight against job discrimination of Black workers. (16)

Ironically, Moore arrived in New York on July 4, 1909, which symbolized the racist ethos that marked the American cultural and social milieu. When Moore tried to enroll in courses at the 57th Street Young Men Christian Association (YMCA), he immediately found out that the YMCA was far from being "Christian" when it came to racial exclusionary practices. Although, Moore was trained in Barbados to do clerical work, but in the United States menial jobs were the only options open to him. Moore soon acquired a job as an elevator "boy" and in a fashion similar to the prior experience of Afro-American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar; for he and Dunbar both worked as elevator operators while pursuing their intellectual and artistic work, respectively. (17)

Moore was deprived the viable option of a formal education and this was primarily due to racist exclusion from educational institutions as well as the exhausting physical demands and time constraints of menial employment. For instance, Moore tried taking classes at both the Harlem Evening School and the New York Preparatory School but as Joyce Moore Turner reports, "The long hours and arduous work taken to improve his earning seemed to require a physique greater than his 140 pounds." (18) Nevertheless, Moore had the fortitude and determination to become a self-educated intellectual, scholar and political activist. Moore's intellectual development was directly linked to his evolving political and social consciousness of Black exploitation and oppression. Awakened by the humanist secularism as presented in C.F. Volney's The Ruins: Or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, Moore's comprehension and vision of social, political and religious practices were now directed at how human actions, instead of God's intervention, offered an explanation for the presence of "despotism and destruction" in history. (19)

Moore was not alone among Afro-American autodidacts who were influenced by Volney's text and/or who found some measure of worth in secular humanist explanations of history, John G. Jackson and Yosef Ben-Jochannan both refer to Volney's text as a crucial source in their work, and Hubert H. Harrison and Joel Augustus Rogers were secular humanists. Thus, this cadre of Afro-American 'Street Scholars' contribution to the development of a distinctive tradition of secular humanism, in the philosophy of history, and this is one area that requires further research and discussion when examining the contours of Afro-American intellectual culture. (20)

During the late 19th century, the preeminent philosophy of history among African American historians was a religious form of idealism, wherein biblical citations and theistic explanations were considered legitimate means for the comprehension of historical events and developments. For instance, Edward A. Johnson (1860-1944), who historian Earl E. Thorpe describes as a 'historian without portfolio, presents his views on why Africa and Africans were not on par with Europe in the 19th century. In his 1891 text, A School History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1890, Johnson argues,

    The present condition of the African is the result of the fall of
    the Egyptian empire, which was in accord with the Bible prophecy of
    all nations who forgot God and worship idols ... Long years spent in
    the most debilitating climate on earth and violation of divine law
    made the African what he was when the slave trade commenced in the
    16th century. (21)

Moreover, George Washington Williams, who is generally acknowledged as the pioneer of modern empirically based Afro-American historical research, nevertheless belonged to the same theistic school of historical thought. Hence, Williams claims, "But, again what was the cause of the Negro's fall from his high state of civilization? It was his forgetfulness of God, idolatry. 'Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach of any people.'" (22)

The secular humanist historians rejected this kind of theistic historical interpretation and thus some of them eventually played a large part in the departure from idealist views on history and opened the door to the materialist conception of history that came to mark a significant segment of 20th century Afro-American intellectual culture. For example, Oakley Johnson reports, "J. A. Rogers ... read a great deal of Marx ... around 1915 and afterwards, and was especially influenced by Marx's materialist conception of history." (23) The view that Rogers was influenced by Marx's materialist conception of history should not be taken to mean he was a historical materialist, which would undoubtedly be an overstatement (see Dr. Malik Simba's essay on Rogers in this anthology). Nonetheless, in the case of Moore's evolution, it can clearly be demonstrated that Moore's commitment to the materialist conception of history was not far into the future. (24)

First we have Oakley Johnson's allusion to Richard B. Moore as the "orator and scholar, who had sat at the feet of Hubert Harrison." Johnson adds, "Moore read Morgan's Ancient Society in 1916 [and] joined the Socialist Party in 1917." (25) The import of Johnson's comment is not only that Moore studied with the atheist and socialist Hubert H. Harrison, but also there is the underlying fact that Moore discovered in his readings that the Morgan text was one of the crucial sources for Frederick Engels' anthropological study entitled, The Origin of The Family, Private Property, and the State. Thus, Moore entered into the school of historical materialism by reading the same sources as Marx's comrade-in-arms, Frederick Engels. Moore's 1964 lecture "A New look at African History" is representative of how he rejected idealist and racist views about Africa's place in world history and affirms the significance of the materialist approach to history. (26)

Moore's eventual embrace of the Marxist theory of history--historical materialism--came by way of his transition from a radical (idealist) Christian conception of socialism and Unitarianism. This tradition of Christian socialism included the likes of Afro-American clerics such as Revs. George Washington Woodbey, Reverends Ransom and George Frazier Miller. They had a considerable impact on the progressive outlook among certain social reform minded Afro-American religious leaders and as well as those activists who held a commitment to the Christian ideal of social justice. This was especially so during the first two decades of the twentieth century and the emergence of the "Progressive Era." Moore, himself, worked directly with Rev. Frazier Miller in New York via Miller's Congressional campaign on the Socialist Party ticket in 1918. (27)

Moore own roots in the Church, going back to his youth in Barbados, was a significant part of his world outlook when he arrived in the United States. As in the case of his encounter with the YMCA, Moore recognized the wide hiatus between Christian pronouncements about brotherhood and the actual practice of racism. The dominant representatives of Christianity in the United States, Moore surmised, left much to be desired. Therefore, Christian socialism and Unitarianism had a particular appeal for him in his move into left politics. (28)

Of particular note is the fact that Moore was a member of Rev. E. Ethelred Brown's Lenox Avenue Unitarian Church in Harlem. Brown was not by any means an apolitical minister, and his religious commitments were closely linked to his political sentiments toward socialism. Brown (1875-1956) was a native of Jamaica and he began seminary studies in 1910 at the Unitarian Meadville Theological School in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1912 and thereafter returned to Jamaica. Brown later migrated with his family to New York in 1920 and started his church in Harlem. Brown's Harlem Community Church, which in 1928 assumed the name of Hubert Harrison Memorial Church, after the Harlem orator, socialist, nationalist and "Street Scholar" who had so influenced Moore. Brown's decision to name his church after Harrison was a rather bold step since Harrison was a leading atheist in Harlem. Along with Moore, a number of Black socialists including W. A. Domingo, Frank Crosswaith, and Grace P. Campbell were members of Brown's church.

Brown, himself, was a socialist and lay historian. His 1919 article, "Labor Conditions in Jamaica Prior to 1917" appeared in Dr. Carter G. Woodson's Journal of Negro History and it was a materialist historical analysis of Jamaican working class conditions since emancipation from slavery. Additionally, Brown was a spokesperson for the Socialist Party and served as the chaplain of the ABB. Brown thought of his church as both as "A Forum and a Temple." (29)

Brown's Church served as a means for Moore to voice his socialist convictions. He stated, "Socialism developed a critique of the existing society and what I preached in the Unitarian Church was also critical of society." Moreover, Moore in 1929 presented a counter to Brown's "How I Found Jesus" with a sermon of his own entitled, "How I Lost Jesus." (30)

Joyce Moore Turner specifically mentions the influence that Bouck White's book, The Call of the Carpenter had on Moore. White was pastor of the Church of the Social Revolution and argued that Jesus was a revolutionary. With this radical view of Christianity as a starting point and transmission belt, Moore ultimately became a full-fledge atheist and John G. Jackson notes in his "The Black Atheists of The Harlem Renaissance: (1917-1928)" that Moore was among those identified as Black atheists during this period, and that included not only Harrison and Rogers but also George S. Schulyer, Walter Everette Hawkins, A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen. With Moore we have not only an atheist but more importantly, we observe that he travels down the road from atheism and humanism to historical materialism. (31)

The transformations within African American intellectual culture in the wake of secular humanism and historical materialism created a distinctively uneven course of development. While the aforementioned Black historians gravitated toward secular humanism, African American philosophers, for the most part, remained tied to dialectical idealism and to a religious Weltanschauung. Dialectical idealism and/or theistic philosophical trends among Afro-American philosophers remain as a vibrant trend right up into our contemporary period. Materialist currents and secular humanism within the Afro-American philosophical community emerged long after the secular humanist trend in historiography made its break from theocentric conceptions of history. (32)

The works of philosophy appearing in the A.M.E. Church Review during the late 19th and early 20th century as well as the contributions of Thomas Nelson Baker, the first Afro-American to earn a doctorate from a university in the United States, Marquis Lafayette Harris, and Charles Leander Hill all give a strong voice to philosophy's ties to theology. Although proponents of modern science, for many of the Afro-American philosophers, the path of secular humanism, materialism and atheism would not be their course of intellectual sojourn. (33)

Later representative efforts toward materialism in philosophy include C.L.R. James's works in history and philosophy, W. E. B. Du Bois in the philosophy of social science, Abram Harris in the philosophy of political economy, Eugene C. Holmes in philosophy of science, along with William R. Jones and Roy D. Morrison's critical humanist philosophical theology. However, this humanist and materialist progression in philosophy followed the Afro-American secular humanist historians by several decades. Moore's own materialist philosophical outlook on history and reality was shaped by his quest for a theory and practice of Afro-American liberation. Moore evolves to historical materialism while he was engaged in socialist politics. For the Socialist Party was one of the conduits that Moore decided to employ in the service of Afro-American liberation. (34)

RICHARD B. MOORE'S SOJOURN FROM SOCIALISM TO COMMUNISM: STREET SCHOLAR IN THE STRUGGLE FOR AFRO-AMERICAN LIBERATION

Chief among his many talents was Moore's high quality of public speaking and perhaps one could argue that he was best known for his role as an important street orator on behalf of the socialist cause and Afro-American liberation. Wilfred Samuels aptly describes Moore (along with his compatriots Cyril Briggs and Wilfred A. Domingo) as "members of the 'soapbox intelligentsia,' which gathered daily at the corner of 135th and Lennox ..." (35) Joyce Moore Turner fittingly illustrates how Moore and his fellow comrades embarked on their speech making via soapbox platforms on the streets of New York.

Once the stepladder was hauled from a fellow socialist's tailor or cigar shop on 135th Street, the comrades assembled for a street meeting put a standing question to one another: "Well, what shall it be tonight? Shall it be propagate straight socialism or shall we talk Negroology?" They were prepared to discuss the meaning and significance of socialism or to deal with the problems and suffering of the Afro-American people and the potential solutions to those problems. Since the Socialist Party had not been able to come to grips with the "Negro Question," there remained two separate topics rather than an integrated approach. (36)

Hubert H. Harrison who pioneered the soapbox oratory tradition had also introduced the integrated approach to socialism and the 'Afro-American Question'. Harrison's dialectical approach to racism and capitalism is a key to our comprehending why Moore would stress many years later how it was that he sat at the feet of Hubert H. Harrison and learned so much about the struggle. Perry insightfully states, From 1911 to 1914 he [Harrison] was America's leading Black socialist prominent party speaker (at times delivering over twenty talks in a week) ... [Harrison was] an articulate and popular critic of capitalism, the leading Black socialist organizer in New York, and the initiator of the Colored Socialist Club--an unprecedented effort by U.S. socialists at organizing African Americans.

His most important theoretical contributions were two series of articles on the subject of "The Negro and Socialism" which appeared in the Socialist Party's New York Call and in the International Socialist Review. The articles provided the first comprehensive political, economic, social, and educational analysis of "The Negro Question" by a Black Socialist, challenged the racism-is-innate and the racism-is-in-workers'-class-interest arguments used to support white supremacist thinking, moved the "Negro problem" discussion from the biological and religious spheres to the socio-historical arena, and broke new ground by calling on Socialists to champion the cause of African Americans as a revolutionary doctrine ... (37)

Harrison's contribution to the Marxist analysis of the "Afro-American Question" greatest impact may have been his influence on Moore and his comrades in the ABB. Harrison argued that "The great labor problem with which all working people are faced is made harder for black working people by the addition of the race problem."38 He also pointed out that Afro-Americans were, "the most ruthlessly exploited working class group in America ... hanging on the ragged edge of the impending class conflict." (39)

The enduring presence of "Afro-American Question" among Communists, as an essential part of the proletarian movement, could not have happen if not for the presence of Black Communists and their insistence of the fight against white chauvinism and the centrality of Afro-American oppression as a national question. The merger of the ABB into the Communist Party was the single most cause for the initial number of Afro-Americans that made the Party's membership. Harrison played a formidable role as mentor and Black pioneer in the socialist movement and many of his students, like Moore, were in the leadership of the ABB and later members of the Communist Party. (40)

Oakley Johnson's remembrance of Moore's recognition of Harrison's valuable teaching is not the only record of Moore's public statements about Harrison's influence. Moore acknowledged his own intellectual debt to Harrison on numerous occasions. Moore never forgot and would not let others neglect the immeasurable impact that Harrison had on the political and cultural life of the many activists that were to appear on the Harlem scene. For example, Moore in his "Afro-Americans and Radical Politics" had this to say about Harrison:

      Hubert H. Harrison ... was a man of exceptional intellect and wide
    knowledge. Studies in economics and sociology had led him to
    socialism and he soon became a leader in the socialist movement ...
    But becoming dissatisfied with some of the socialists' attitude on
    the "race" question, Harrison left them for the Harlem scene ...
    More than any other man of his time, he [Harrison] inspired and
    educated the masses of Afro-Americans then flocking into Harlem ...
    While Harrison moved more and more toward the position of "race
    first," a score of young, militant, and studious Afro-Americans were
    actively propagating Socialism, while at the same time examining its
    philosophy and possible practical application for the removal of the
    ills which they suffered along with their people. (41) [Italics
    Added]

Moore's statement is quintessentially an autobiographical reflection. He was a part of the "masses of Afro-Americans then flocking into Harlem" that were "inspired and educated" by Harrison's teachings. (Before Harrison became disgruntled with the Socialist Party, he elaborated the concept of "Class First" in contradistinction to the bourgeois liberal reformism of DuBois and the NAACP and also the capitalist ethos of the Puritan Ethic set fourth by Booker T. Washington.) Furthermore, the "young, militant, and studious Afro-Americans were actively propagating Socialism" included Moore among its number. Despite Harrison's departure from the Socialist Party, due to its failure to address racial oppression in a serious manner, he, nevertheless, worked with the Communist Party among other political groups. The enduring influence of Harrison on Moore is demonstrated in the fact that one of Moore's last scholarly essays was a posthumously published biographical entry on "Hubert Henry Harrison" that appeared in 1983 by way of Rayford W. Logan and Michael Winston's fine reference book, The Dictionary of American Negro Biography. (42)

I would venture to say that the link between Moore's initial involvement in the Socialist Party and his eventual transition to the Communist Party (where he and his ABB comrades help initiate the international Communist line on the Afro-American question) emanated from how he digested the lessons gained from Harrison about the dialectics of socialism and Afro-American oppression. For Harrison, and as it came to be for Moore, Marxism's emphasis on class analysis did not eliminate the need to address racism, national oppression and white supremacy, instead Marxist materialism was the theoretical weapon for understanding the "race" and/or national question. Rather than take a class only approach to racial and national exploitation, Harrison argued that racial and national oppression cannot be reduced to just class exploitation, and he demonstrated to Moore how Marxism accented the critical need for a materialist analysis of racism and national oppression by means of an understanding of capitalism and imperialism. This very point later became the centerpiece of V. I. Lenin's approach to the national question and the very basis on which Moore and his Afro-American Communist Party comrades came to influence not the only the CPUSA but also the Communist International. Moore's socialist organizing experiences prepared the way for his later Communist Party work in Harlem. (43)

Moore was a member of the Socialist Party during World War I. He viewed the war as an intra-imperialist conflict of great importance to Africa, the Caribbean and for all people of African descent. Moore's opposition to the war grew out of the conviction that Africana interests were not served by joining with the respective imperialist powers and socialism was the only viable option for African people to imperialism and national oppression. Joyce Moore Turner explains, "When the formation of the 21st Assembly District [AD] Branch of the Socialist Party was announced in the July 1918 issue of [A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen's] The Messenger magazine, Moore could be counted as a member." (44)

Moore and his comrades at the 21st AD Socialist Club represented the growing political consciousness and militancy of Harlem at this period. They formed study groups, which read The Communist Manifesto and Engels' Socialism--Utopian and Scientist. They also established the People's Educational Forum for their own political development and for the mass education of Harlem's residents. Moore in cooperation with Grace Campbell, Otto Huiswood and W. A. Domingo created an important cultural space for lectures, discussions and debates around the pressing social and political issues of the day. Among the people they invited to lecture and have dialogue with included W. E. B. Du Bois, Franz Boas, William H. Ferris, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Norman Thomas and Walter White. It was at one of these forums that Moore debated and challenged DuBois' suggestion that Black people should take a neutral position with regard to the conflict between capital and labor. Not content to merely debate ideas, Moore was also actively engaged in the practical struggles waged in the streets of Harlem. (45)

When Afro-American socialists from Harlem including A. Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen, George Frazier Miller, Grace B. Campbell, Frank Poree, and W. B. Williams all campaigned for electoral offices from 1918 to 1920, Moore assisted in developing the campaigns of Harlem socialists for public office. Moore recounts that with Rev. George Frazier Miller's campaign in the 1918 election for Congress, the socialist secured "25 per cent of the Harlem vote." (46)

One of the first Afro-American women to join the Socialist Party, Grace Campbell (1883-1943) was a candidate on the Socialist Party slate in both 1919 and 1920. Campbell was one of the first women, of any race, to run for elective office in the state of New York. Campbell, along with Moore, was also a founding member of the ABB. She ran for the New York State Assembly in 1919 and garnered 7% of the total vote and in 1920 when she contested for the United States Congress, she managed to win almost 10.5 % of the total vote. As for Campbell's success in the latter election, Winston James notes, "she did better than almost all the Socialist Party candidates from New York City and certainly much better than the other black Socialist candidates including A. Philip Randolph ..." (47)

Moore even thought Campbell's efforts in the 1919 Congressional elections was historic and paved the way for the later election of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Moore argued, "The nomination of the first Afro-American candidate for Congress, since the post-Reconstruction period, on a radical party ticket, was significant in establishing a precedent which was carried to success with the election of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr." (48)

After Moore joined the Communist Party, he, himself, ran for office on three occasions. First, we discover that Moore was on the Communist Party ticket for the United States Congress in 1928. In fact, in that same year, the Communist Party had several Black candidates from Harlem besides Moore including Lovett-Fort Whiteman who ran for state comptroller and Edward Welsh contested for the state assembly. (49) Moore stood for election again in 1930, this time for the position of New York's Attorney General's office. And in the next year, Moore contested for New York State Assembly as representative of the 19th Assembly District. (50)

The Afro-American socialists, like Moore, paved the road for radical political action in Harlem. Following in the wake of Socialist Party breakthroughs, the Communist Party in Harlem, of which Moore became a member, continued to make considerable head way in electoral politics. Carl Brodsky, Communist state campaign manger, noted in 1936 that Harlem's response to Communist Party candidates reflected the fact that "organization for the election campaign is more advanced in Harlem than any other district of the state.' (51)

The objective of Moore's involvement in electoral politics was to gain the opportunity to organize the Harlem community around the concrete issues facing it. The educational value of increased political consciousness outweighed the actual election to public office. Nevertheless, the Communist Party was able to get Adam Clayton Powell elected to New York City Council in 1941, and one of its own Communist Party candidates was elected to the council when Ben Davis was elected in 1943. (52)

Moore's evolution from the socialist into the communist movement was facilitated by his involvement with the ABB. The ABB and the Socialist Party were distinct organizations. While some of the ABB's stalwarts like Moore, Campbell and Domingo held joint memberships; others such as Briggs were not members of the Socialist Party. Through the series of educational/political forums held in Harlem under the auspices of the 21st AD socialist Club and the community activism of the Socialist Party Harlem branch, Moore became a full-fledged part of the leftwing of the Socialist Party, which upheld the merits of the Bolshevik Party and the October Revolution.

Moore was already in opposition to the war, and with the advent of the Russian Revolution, it increasingly seemed that socialist revolution offered real possibilities beyond capitalism and its denigrating forms of white supremacy. Moore came to believe that Bolshevism was an effective approach to fighting white chauvinism and colonialism. Moore and a number of his comrades such as W. A. Domingo did not agree with the rightwing of the Socialist Party and its opposition to Bolshevism. Moore and Domingo wrote articles in their organ, The Emancipator in support of Bolshevism. Moore's ABB comrade Cyril Briggs also welcomed the Russian Revolution in his journal, The Crusader. Eventually, after a confrontation with white Socialist Party leaders, particularly Algernon Lee and Julius Gerber, over the special needs and proletarian status of Afro-American workers, Moore left the Party. Lee argued that Black workers were not proletarian but rather peasants and did not belong to the industrial working class. Furthermore, he said that respect to the Socialist Party, whose interests remained with organizing industrial workers; it need not develop a program that specifically addressed the Afro-American question. Moore rejected such white chauvinism and this is why he left the Socialist Party. After a time, within about two or three years, he joined the Communist Party. (53)

Moore joined the Communist Party in, or around, 1922. Indeed Moore brought his Bolshevik ideas on the national question into the Communist movement. (54) Mark Naison surmises,

    Cyril Briggs and Richard B. Moore, two of the first Blacks to join
    the Party, were leading figures in the upsurge of radical protest
    that swept through Harlem during and after World War I. They joined
    the American Party only after several years of independent efforts
    to combine militant nationalism with the support for the
    international working-class movement. Both were strong "race men"
    who joined the American Party largely because of the Communist
    International's commitment supporting "racial and national movements
    against imperialism." (55)

The Naison summation while correct, with respect to the centrality of how the race/national question was paramount in Moore's eventual joining of the Communist Party, gives us only part of the picture. With the accent only on the race question, Naison effectively leaves out some very important ideological aspects of Moore's thinking. While Moore's choice to join the Communists definitely flowed from his concern for the national question, the fact is that he both opposed the war and thought that Bolshevism was a truly a revolutionary answer to capitalism, imperialism and imperialist war.

The Socialist Party was split between leftwing and rightwing factions and Moore belonged to the former. The ideological dispute was essentially a conflict about whether the solution would be reformist or revolutionary. Moore's subsequent ideological differences with A. Philip Randolph were a manifestation of these divergent political perspectives. Additionally, the class nature of capitalism, in Moore's judgment, ought not be separated from the substantial nature and character of racial and national oppression. Lastly, Moore found that materialism, as a worldview, philosophically far outweighed idealism. (56)

Yes, Moore can in all honesty and with plausible warrant be labeled a "race man" but his credentials as a "race man" was something completely different than the "race consciousness" of Marcus Garvey and the later ideological phase of Harrison's thought where "race first" principle superceded that of "class first." Moore was not a bourgeois nationalist or simply a Garveyite in red clothing. Although, it should be noted that initially Moore saw there was some value in establishing cooperation with Marcus Garvey. Moore had even offered the facilities of the Cosmo-Advocate Publishing Company (of which he was part-owner) for Garvey's use shortly after Garvey arrived in Harlem. Years later Moore remembers, "Garvey got space from us ... and we used to have long talks as to what he was after. He was not aggressive then as he later became, as power excited him. He had not started the UNIA [in the US]; he was struggling to get that started ..." (57)

He eventually had ideological fights with Garvey, although Moore differed from many of his comrades (who had also opposed Garvey) on the issue of Garvey's deportation. Moore did not (and I think correctly so) agree with those in the movement whom called for Garvey's deportation or assisted the United States government in doing its bidding by gathering evidence against Garvey. Moore was foremost a materialist and he understood that aiding the state in its efforts to deport Garvey (however backward and reactionary Garvey's position may have been) in fact worked against the Afro-American liberation movement and not for it. Any cooperation with the state could only add to its repressive powers; thus joining in the state's actions was to fundamentally undercut the struggle. (58)

Years latter Moore wrote what is arguably the best account of the issues surrounding the ideological and political battles waged by various individuals and groups against Garvey. Moore in his article, "The Critics and Opponents of Marcus Garvey" offers a balanced summation of the concerns at hand that came to envelop the polemics around Garvey's leadership. Moore pointed out that a key issue was Garvey's blanket dismissal of Afro-American leadership. Early on when Garvey arrived in the United States, he charged that Afro-American leaders and their organizations lacked any programmatic direction and the leadership was merely opportunistic. However, at the very moment of Garvey's allegation, Moore pointed out that, Afro-Americans were fiercely battling against lynching, disfranchisement and Jim Crow. Additionally, some Afro-American organizations had founded a socialist movement for "the fundamental reconstruction of society" and an internationalist movement in the pursuit of Pan-Africanist goals. I should note that especially, although not exclusively, the latter two movements involved Moore and his comrades. Hence Garvey expressed his own opportunism in making such allegations about Afro-American leadership. In fact, Moore pointed out that Garvey's own opportunism was demonstrated when he took advantage of certain disputes within Hubert Harrison's organization to recruit members to his own UNIA. (59)

MOORE'S LOCUS IN AFRO-AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND CULTURE: ON THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC REFORMISM

Moore's intellectual allegiance to historical materialism directly corresponded with his political ideology of Marxism or scientific socialism. Therefore, in terms of Afro-American intellectual culture, Moore stood squarely on the leftwing of the ideological spectrum. Furthermore, from a philosophical standpoint Moore rejected idealism and embraced materialism and hence this distinguishes his position from the Theo centric conception of history and reality so pervasive among the aforementioned historians and philosophers. This summation of Moore's ideological and philosophical locus has import with regard to contemporary Afro-American intellectual culture; for earlier I made mentioned of the fact that idealism still exists among some of our contemporary Afro-American philosophers.

Arguably, Cornel West's notion of prophetic pragmatism is the foremost example of how idealism and anti-materialism still hold considerable sway among present-day Afro-American philosophers. This is no small matter since West presents, in his text entitled, Prophesy Deliverance! a broad interpretation of Afro-American intellectual history that seeks to provide a political and an ideological perspective on Afro-American socialists and communists (along with other political/ideological trends) from a rather syncretic viewpoint; wherein he posits his own idiosyncratic form of Afro-American Christianity in combination with his social democratic (rightist) conception of Marxism. Consequently, West's interpretation of the Afro-American left tradition is not only idealist but it is also far from being free of ideological commitments. While I do not find fault in interpreting history from the standpoint of one's ideology, the recognition of the historical facts of the case is still a mandate for writing history with a modicum of veracity.

Moore, as we have already observed, was an activist in Harlem and he diligently worked with a wide range of individuals and organizations around an assortment of movements and campaigns I have not as yet covered the full scope of his political and cultural practices but with the little we have witnessed, it clearly locates him in the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, in the hub of the Afro-American grass roots history movement, among the central forces of the socialist and communist political campaigns in Harlem, and in the leadership of such cultural and social activities as Black involvement in tennis and the fight against segregation in sports.

I have only briefly discussed Moore's work with the American Negro Labor Congress (where he served as National Organizer) in the effort to amplify his oratorical skills and role as a mass speaker and organizer in Harlem. We have discussed his work with the 21st Assembly District Branch of the Socialist Party and its various educational forums and electoral campaigns. Up to this juncture, I have not ventured to talk about Moore's political journalism or involvement with the Harlem Tenant League or The League for the Struggle of Negro Rights; nor I have addressed his participation in the DuBois led Pan-African Conferences, and there has been no mention of Moore's leadership role in the Scottsboro Boys defense efforts. Clearly, from all of this, we can see that Moore was an activist with a long history of grassroots engagement and with very strong ties in the Harlem community. Therefore, I become quite curious, in fact suspicious, when West, in his text--Prophesy Deliverance--locates Moore within the ideological context of some minor response to the DuBois--Washington debate. Furthermore and crucially significant, West places Moore's activism outside the general mass movement of Afro-Americans.

Granted that Moore's political, ideological and philosophical grounds are fundamentally different from West, this ought not be reason enough for West to skirt the hard facts about Moore's roots in the Afro-American mass struggle. Although the process of historical interpretation can assume an ideological character, and in deed most historians bring their ideologies into the picture via the hermeneutical function, which is so key in writing history, nonetheless empirical inquiry saliently governs the investigation of history. However, without any empirical support, West states,

      A second minor attempt to step outside the confines of the DuBois-
    Washington debate consisted of the African Blood Brotherhood's
    amalgam of revolutionary black nationalism and scientific socialism.
    Its principal figures--Cyril Briggs, Richard B. Moore, W. A.
    Domingo, Harry Haywood--were the first African communists in the
    United States. Their major contribution was that they put
    imperialist issues on the agenda of the Afro-American liberation
    movement. Yet such issues--along with untimely revolutionary
    rhetoric--remained on the back burner of petite bourgeois
    intellectuals and entrepreneurs, proletarian preachers and
    parishioners in urban centers, and sharecroppers, tenants, and
    yeoman farmers in rural areas throughout Afro-America. (60) [Italics
    Added]

How West comes to the notion of what constitutes "minor" and "major" developments in African American intellectual history is not explained. We do know, however, that West views the DuBois--Washington debate as essentially about "the framework for inclusionary African practices in the United States. The numerous black ideological battles between integrationist and nationalism, accomodationism and separatism are but versions and variations of the Washington--DuBois debate." (61)

So we have a rather facile reductionism with respect to the ideological and intellectual complexities of the Du Bois--Washington polemics. Moreover, he trivializes its historical implications and connection to ideological struggles that emerge afterwards within the confines of future 20th century Afro-American intellectual history. West's general course is primarily a rehash of Harold Cruse's nationalism versus integrationist thesis. And herein lies the basis for why West has a problem in accurately assessing the left tradition of Afro-American intellectual culture.

Where Cruse straightforwardly claims that the Afro-American left were/are integrationists, West wants to be more nuanced and say that the Black left tried to "burst out of the framework the DuBois--Washington debate" i.e., stand outside of the polemical current of nationalism versus integrationist. Yet on the first two occasions of this attempted breakaway, the Afro-American left could only muster a minor detour. Consequently, the Afro-American left's "socialist viewpoint" in real terms could only give an additional choice, rather than a fundamental alternative to the nationalist/integrationist polemic. This evaluation has profound import because West, unlike in Cruse's instance, views his own ideological position as leftist, for after all, West claims, at least in this particular text, to be some kind of a Marxist, namely via his ideological allegiance to social democracy.

Albeit such a designation is only part of the picture to West's ideological description, given his added commitments to Afro-American Prophetic Christianity and "American Pragmatism." From West's historical vantage point, with the possible exception of the Rev. George Washington Woodbey, we find that the Afro-American left has not been able to bring these primary strands of thought (Christianity, pragmatism and social democratic thought) into a cohesive unified framework. Could this be the reason why the Afro-American left could only attempt a minor break from the Washington--DuBois debate? We must also ask, what is this other "minor break" that precedes Moore and the ABB?

West informs us that the first 'minor' breakthrough emerged when A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen offered an anti-capitalist orientation (something that both Washington and DuBois did not tender) and the class oriented suggestion of linking the Black struggle to radical labor movement. West concludes, "This valuable addition proved to be premature at that time, especially given the racist character of the labor movement." (62)

But did not both DuBois and Washington seek alliances with white folk? Did not DuBois seek out a partnership with white liberals, progressives and even social democrats in the NAACP and Socialist Party? And did not Washington, in turn, cater to forging an alliance with white ruling class philanthropists and politicians? (Washington even had dinner with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House). Were these efforts too "premature" given the racism of these particular groups?

Furthermore, what of the other Afro-American socialists, besides Randolph and Owens, who like Moore and Hubert Harrison, were simultaneously critics of Washington, DuBois and of the socialists that were white chauvinists? Although, West talks about some of the Afro-American socialists in another context, in his commentary on "The Marxist Tradition in the Afro-American Experience", the link of the Washington-DuBois debate as in concert with the notion about 'minor breaks' and his critique of Moore and the ABB are not under review. Yet, Hubert H. Harrison is vital in this respect for his place in Afro-American ideological/intellectual history sheds light on all of the trends noted above. Jeffrey Perry remarks,

      Harrison described Washington as "subservient." He criticized the
    core of Washington's philosophy, which he referred to as "one of
    submission and acquiescence in political servitude." In contrast to
    Washington, Harrison was staunchly anti-Republican Party and favored
    protests and struggles for equality, "modem education," thought
    unfettered by religion, support of trade unions, and Black leaders
    who were chosen by Black people rather than by powerful whites ...
    The rejection of the Republican Party and the sympathy for the
    socialist message accelerated his move toward third-party politics
    and toward the Socialist Party. (63)

Harrison was also critical of DuBois and made his criticisms specifically on how DuBois decided to back Woodrow Wilson during World War I and advised the Black community to "Close Rank" behind the government's imperialist war effort. Perry states,

    Following the Liberty Congress, Harrison initiated "New Negro"
    criticism of DuBois for urging African American to forget
    justifiable grievances, for "closing ranks" behind President Woodrow
    Wilson's war effort, and for following Spingarn's lead and seeking a
    captaincy in Military Intelligence. Harrison's expose, "The Descent
    of Dr. Du Bois," was a principal reason that DuBois was denied the
    captaincy he sought in Military Intelligence and, more than any
    other document, it marked the significant break between the "New
    Negroes" and the older leadership. (64)

We already noted Moore's criticisms of DuBois on the issue of Afro-American neutrality of the class conflict between capital and labor. However, Moore also criticized Du Bois' "close ranks" argument. Joyce Moore Turner points out, "Moore and other socialists took vehement exception to D Bois' advice to 'close ranks' and support the war. Ever strident and militant with words, they battled against service on behalf of the British colonialists while worrying about being drafted for military duty." (65)

Now it is clear that the ideological break effected by the ABB was far from minor. Moore (following Harrison) thus presented the case for a materialist approach to Black oppression and exploitation. West's putative "second minor attempt" is precisely when we have the efforts of Briggs, Moore and the ABB to combine Black Nationalism with scientific socialism. What separates the former (Randolph and Owen) from the Moore and company? How are we to grasp the historical import of this distinction?

West seems to imply that where Randolph and Owen were premature about forming class alliances, given their overestimation of white labor, in contrast the ABB and Moore failed due to lacking an understanding all of the various class forces that compose the Afro-American community. Where as, according to West, Randolph underestimated white workers, in the case of Moore and the ABB there is no understanding of the Afro-American community, its various classes and their respective--class--interests.

With regard to Moore, this is a very serious charge and especially about a person who life activities were rooted in the Afro-American community of struggle. For Moore not to have understood the class orientation of various groups of Black people is a far greater mistake than to underestimate white people's racism. Yet, clearly Moore was not an intellectual who was a member of the ivory tower of academia. Perhaps if he was so situated then there could have been the real danger of his possible descent, (perhaps like West?) into the euphoria of idealist illusions associated with being uprooted from the material realities of the Afro-American working class community. Removed from the Black community and stuck in the halls of academia is a real and ever-present danger for ivory tower intellectuals. But our historical evidence about Moore paints a different picture.

A closer look at West's allegations about Moore and the ABB uncovers that he is right in sync with Harold Cruse's judgments about Moore, which were made in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Just as Cruse bent history to render his own ideological judgments and personal vendetta with Moore, we observe that West's summary conclusions on Moore and the ABB stand as equally obnoxious and unscholarly, particularly when measured against solid historical research and in light of the hard facts under review. (66)

While it is generally true that the Black petite bourgeois was less incline to fully embrace a platform of anti-imperialism, the same cannot be said of the vast majority of politically active urban workers and rural sharecroppers, tenants, and yeoman farmers throughout Afro-America. And even then we find that not all Black petite bourgeois intellectuals and/or members of the Black bourgeoisie ignored the dangers of imperialism or gave support to United States' imperialism.

As early as 1872, the stalwart Rev. Henry Highland Garnet gave a speech, "A Plea in Behalf of the Cuban Revolution." Garnet even made two trips to Cuba and demanded that the United States government support the revolutionary cause, which included the aim to terminate slavery. Later, yet before the turn of the century, Afro-American classical scholar and linguist William Saunders Scarborough in 1894 denounced United States' imperialism and its attempts to annex Hawaii. Furthermore, in line with Garnet's previous efforts, the Massachusetts branch of the Colored National League in 1899 also sent an open letter to President McKinley that condemned not only "national transgressions and injustices" against Afro-Americans but also United States imperialism in Cuba. The signatures affixed to this letter came from various publicly acclaimed petite bourgeois leaders including I. D. Barnett, Edward E. Brown, Archibald Grimke and Edwin G. Walker. (67)

So what about the outlook of the masses of rural Black people toward imperialism and exploitation? Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw is a first hand graphic account of the revolutionary heroism of Black sharecroppers and workers in the South and particularly in Alabama. Many unsung fighters, both Afro-American men and women, sometime in the thousands joined the proletariat and sharecroppers' struggles. Along with Shaw, there were other important Afro-American leaders in Alabama such as Al Murphy, Hosea Hudson, Andy Brown, Joe Howard, Saul Davis, John and David James, Mack Coad, Henry O. Mayfield, John Beidel, Lemon Johnson, and Angelo Herndon. We discover as well that Afro-American women forged for themselves leadership roles, especially in organizing the Sewing Club movement in Alabama, which was linked to mass organizing efforts among sharecroppers. We cannot ignore the courage of women like Eula Gray and Estelle Milner. Gray, the daughter of sharecroppers, was an organizer for the Share Croppers Union in Tallapoosa and Milner, and in a clandestine manner distributed copies of the Southern Workman at the risk of her life. She ultimately suffered a broken back as a result of a brutal attack at the hands of the police. Afro-American leadership, something that was a keystone in the ABB propaganda, came from the Afro-American sharecropping and working class women and men, who took the initiative to fight for their own freedom at whatever cost against imperialism. (68)

For example, Al Murphy, whose grandfather served as an A.M.E. minister and was an elder under the supervision of Bishop Henry M. Turner (Turner espoused Black nationalist principles in his conception of Afro-American Christianity) came from a family of Alabama sharecroppers and held a variety of jobs from picking cotton to working in a pipe factory. Murphy joined the Communist Party and assumed a leadership role in building the Share Cropper's Union. Murphy even attended the Communist International Congress in 1935 as an official delegate. More importantly, for our immediate discussion, Al Murphy became a close comrade of former ABB members, Otto Hall and Harry Haywood and shared in their class and anti-imperialist political outlook. (69)

When we consider the well researched studies on Alabama particularly and more generally about Southern Afro-American sharecroppers and the industrial proletariat involvement with the Communist Party, such as Robin Kelley's Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression and Mark Solomon's The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936 (see especially chapter seven "The Communist Party in the Deep South") we discover these texts clearly reveal a diametrically different scenario than what we get with West's paradigm. Black sharecroppers and the Black rural population expressed a positive response to the kind of anti-imperialist ideology that Moore and the ABB espoused. Serious students of Afro-American labor history acknowledge the fact that the ABB ideology was congruent with the material interests of Black workers and sharecroppers and they readily understood this fact. (70)

As early as 1919, when the ABB made its anti-imperialist pronouncements, there was militant armed resistance to white violence in the south. The Progressive Farmers Union, who were Afro-American sharecroppers and tenant farmers in Elaine Arkansas, defended themselves with arms and the virtual war that took place was front page news in the Afro-American press throughout the country. We should not overlook that the very meeting of The Progressive Farmers and Households Union that took place on September 30, 1919 happened in a church, Hopp Spur Church in Phillips County. And not only did the white sheriff deputies shoot into the church, but also that the Afro-American "parishioners" in the church shot back. This armed resistance was the "front burner" of a major break from the integrationist/nationalist paradigm. For such actions not came by way of the group initiative of Black farmers but they also formed alliances with white farmers and sharecroppers. Later in 1935, the will of rural Black farmers to fight for a better life in Arkansas was expressed in the formation of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Tyronza, Arkansas and Mr. George Stith was only one of many who displayed courage and heroism in the effort to form a union. (71)

This organized response among Black sharecroppers and workers was in part facilitated by the work of former ABB members within the CPUSA. We cannot overlook that the ABB merged into the Communist Party and much of what surfaced as the CPUSA's position on the "Negro Question," directly came from the efforts of the former ABB leadership. Mass arm resistance to white mob violence was not uncommon in the period following World War I. And the ABB and Hubert Harrison, as early as this post-War period, thus called for armed self-defense. Later, during the 1930s, Harry Haywood described the militant actions of the Alabama sharecroppers in terms of "Sharecroppers with Guns: Organizing the Black Belt". (72)

Going as far back as to 1919, the idea of armed self-defense was a key component of the ABB's program. Moore and his ABB comrades anticipated such organizations as The Deacons for Self-Defense, Malcolm X and the OAAU, along with The Black Panther Party by several years. Armed self-defense was not something foreign to the Afro-American masses and just after World War I there were several incidents were Black people, workers and sharecroppers, resorted to arms to defend themselves. Many Black veterans, like Harry Haywood, understood that if they could fight in an imperialist war surely they could defend themselves against racists and imperialists on the domestic scene. (73)

Additionally, Moore's engagement with proletarian preachers and parishioners in the urban center--Harlem--clearly contradicts West's assessment. Moore not only actively participated in the Rev. E. Ethelred Brown's congregation; he was a charter member. He even maintained his enrollment in the Harlem Unitarian Community Church when he was a member of both the ABB and the Communist Party.

In fact, Moore did not leave the church until the late 1920s. Moreover, he was not the only member of the ABB that belonged to the church, for Grace Campbell and W. A. Domingo were also in the ABB and as well were charter members of Brown's church. As was previously mentioned, the Rev. E. Ethelred Brown was an ordained minister and he served as the ABB chaplain. However, what was not previously mentioned is that from sometime in 1921, the meeting place of the church, "the Lodge Rooms of the American West Indian Association, 149 W. 136th Street," was also the same meeting hall for the ABB. (74)

Far from being removed from the "proletarian preachers and parishioners," Moore's connection to Brown's church served as a community base for mass activity. Moore, and his fellow ABB compatriots, was not cloister off in an ivory tower or merely espousing ultra-leftist slogans, better yet he assumed that the church was an important institutional base in the various community causes in which he fought; both as a resident of Harlem and as a class-conscious member of the Afro-American proletariat. At worst, Moore was quintessentially what Gramsci latter termed as an 'organic intellectual' and at best, he exemplified that a revolutionary and militant response to Black oppression and exploitation was not something removed from the consciousness of Black working class; i.e. whether inside or outside of the church. (75) During Moore's ABB days, his ties to the mass based community church and/or the Afro-American proletarian struggle was not jeopardize by his revolutionary convictions. In counter distinction to West, Joyce Moore Turner insightfully informs us,

      Moore drifted away from the church, however, not for philosophical
    reasons. His growing agnostic conviction was not completely out of
    harmony with the ethical considerations of Unitarianism. The members
    of the church were broad enough to tolerate his critical position,
    but pressure was exerted by some of his radical comrades outside of
    the church who feared the church might be more successful in
    influencing him than vice versa. Even though Moore had come to view
    organized religion as the 'opiate of the people' by the late 1920s,
    his association with the Harlem Unitarian Church was considered
    inappropriate by associates in the Communist Party. (76)

In concert with Moore Turner, Mark Solomon also reports,

    At a meeting of the Party's Negro Commission in January 29, Moore
    was reminded that he had not yet left the church as the Political
    Committee had instructed. He now gave in, announcing he was
    resigning from his denomination 'not because he agree[d] with the
    perverted statement,' given out by the Party, that he had 'an anti-
    Communist attitude toward religion, but because his 'Communist work
    in the church [was] not yet fully understood even by Communists,'
    and he did not wish to perpetuate 'illusions' about the nature of
    his church membership. (77)

From both statements we can see that it was not that Moore's revolutionary politics alienated and separated him from the "proletarian preachers and parishioners," and thus he was not pushed away from the church. Rather it was the pull of his Communist Party comrades that led to his departure. Remarkably, it was for nearly a decade that he belonged to the church and hence his membership extended way beyond his time with the ABB. A balanced historical analysis of Moore and the revolutionary tradition he represented would surely reveal that Moore, the Street Scholar, was organically part and parcel of the Afro-American mass community and its relentless struggle for liberation.

Conclusion

I am keenly aware that I have left out so very much about the life of Richard B. Moore. His work on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, his fight against white chauvinism--even within the ranks of the Communist Party, the pioneering research into African history, his Frederick Douglass Bookstore, the critique of the concept of race and his gallant struggle to affirm the name of Afro-American when "Negro" was in vogue. Undoubtedly, one essay cannot do just service to Moore's remarkable life. Yet, it does not take an extended dissertation to see and acknowledge that Moore was a grassroots activist par excellence, a materialist and scientific socialist and as well he was a "Street Scholar" in the finest sense of that great Harlem tradition.

Armed with the revolutionary position of scientific socialism, Moore's incredible life journey illuminates our path toward Afro-American liberation. His life is an exemplar of what its means to fight against all odds. Moore died in his native island of Barbados in 1976, yet his legacy lives on in the mass struggle against imperialism and racism and in the fight for the unity of African and working peoples, a lesson he learned from his mother remained as his cardinal principle for conduct in life: "You do nothing that a person of worth would be ashamed of." Thus he waged a singular campaign against the degrading name of "Negro" and for the affirming name of "Afro-American." Even today, we find that Moore's words still ring loud and clear for us and hence the opening epigram: "When all is said and done, dogs and slaves are named by their masters; free men name themselves!"

(1) John M. McClendon is a professor at Williams College.

(2) I have borrowed the idea of Black "historians without portfolio" from Prof. Earl Thorpe who makes this particular reference when he classifies those who are Black historians without formal training in the field. Thorpe offers his framework for the classification of Black historiography in Earl Thorpe, Black Historians: A Critique (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1971) pp. 143-44.

(3) W. Burghardt Turner, "The Richard B. Moore Collection and its Collector" Caribbean Studies (April 1975) pp. 135-45. Michael Chandler, "Richard B. Moore Collection" Report to the Barbados Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, August 9, 1965. Also see the catalogues compiled by S.G. Moss, Books on Race and Race Relations, Books on the West Indies or by West Indian Writers and Slavery and Emancipation: A Bibliography of Pamphlets Published in the 19th century and Early 20th century contained in the Richard B. Moore Library, St. Michael, Barbados, 1986. These catalogues can be found and read at the Schomburg Research Center.

(4) A notable exception to the scholarship on Richard B. Moore is the seminal text of W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1988). Despite the fact that Alger Hiss, secretary general of the UN conference on International Organizations, rejected Moore's May 25, 1945 Appeal, Herbert Aptheker includes the very important piece by Moore, "Appeal to the United Nations Conference on International Organizations on Behalf of the Caribbean Peoples" in Herbert Aptheker ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States V. 5 (New York: Carol Publishing Company, 1993) pp. 61-6. In contrast, Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas in their Encyclopedia of the American Left (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) fail even to have an entry on Moore and Ronald Walters in his Pan Africanism in the African Diaspora (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1993) neglects to discuss any of Moore's Pan African activities and this despite the fact that there are two chapters in Walters' text, "The Pan African Movement in the United States" and "Afro-Caribbean Pan Africanism" where discussion about Moore would have been relevant. Walters has only two references to Moore's writings and both are to the same article, "Africa Conscious Harlem" written by Moore initially in Freedomways, (Summer, 1963) and republished in several other places including John Henrik Clarke, ed., Harlem A Community in Transition (New York: Citadel). Walters' citations are to Moore's article as it appears in the Clarke anthology.

(5) Moore's involvement with the Ideal Tennis Club in Harlem began as early as 1911. It would be some thirty years later when the late Althea Gibson (1927-2003) would come on the tennis scene from Harlem via the Harlem Cosmopolitan Tennis Club. Althea Gibson, I Always Wanted to be Somebody (New York: Harper Collins, 1958). On Moore's involvement in bringing Afro-Americans into tennis read page 24 of Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem" and note 11 on p. 100 in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1988). The role of Moore and the Ideal Tennis Club of Harlem is left out of the rather comprehensive treatment on tennis in African American history in Arthur R. Ashe, A Hard Road to Glory V. 2 and V.3 (New York: Amistad, 1993). On Moore's comments on Jim Crow in sports, see Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (New York: Grove Press, 1983), p. 300. For general works on the Caribbean legacy in African American and Moore's role consult, Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early-Century America (New York: Verso, 1998), and Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929 (Boulder: Belmont Books, 1977).

(6) On Caribbean migration to the United States, read "Caribbean Migration: Scale, Determinants, and Destinations, 1880-1932", which is Chapter 1 in Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early-Century America. Also consult, Franklin W. Knight, "The Caribbean Background of Richard B. Moore," Introduction to W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1988), pp. 4-8. For a scholarly treatment of the political economy of Caribbean migration read, Hilbourne A. Watson, "International Migration and the Political Economy Underdevelopment: Aspects of the Commonwealth Caribbean Situation" in Roy S. Bryce-Laporte and Dolores M/Mortimer, eds., RIIES Occasional Papers No. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1976) pp. 16-43. About Caribbean migration specifically to New York consult, Calvin Holder, "The Causes and Composition of West Indian Immigration to New York City, 1900-1952" Afro-Americans in New York Life and History V.11, n. 1.

(7) Franklin Knight comments on Moore's role in advancing the concepts of the 'New Negro' and 'Harlem Renaissance', see Franklin W. Knight's 'Introduction', "The Caribbean Background of Richard B. Moore," see particularly note 19 on p. 14. Three of Moore's fellow Street Scholars, W. A. Domingo, "The Tropics in New York", J. A. Rogers, "Jazz at Home" and Arthur Schomburg, "The Negro Digs Up His Past" were contributors to the special issue of the journal--Survey Graphic--"Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro" (March 1925). This journal, many hold, was one of the catalysts for launching the Harlem Renaissance into broader public recognition. On Moore's later rejection of the name 'Negro' also read Richard B. Moore, "The Name 'Negro'--Its Origin and Evil Use" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1988) pp. 223-239. (Originally published in 1960 by Afroamericans Publishers, New York.)

(8) Cyril Briggs, "Out With the Old, In With the New" Crusader, October 1919.

(9) For a compilation of biographies of this tradition read Daryl Russell Grigsby, For the People: Black Socialists in the United States, Africa and the Caribbean (San Diego: Asante Publications, 1987). For additional biographical information on Lucy Parsons see John McClendon III, "Lucy Parsons (1853-1942) Anarchist, socialist, communist, journalist, poet" in Jessie Carney Smith, Notable Black American Women Book II (New York: Gale Research, 1996) pp. 514-16. On Peter Clark read David A, Gerber, "Peter Humphries Clark: The Dialogue of Hope and Despair" in Leon Litwack and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988) pp. 173-90. On Hubert Harrison, read the Introduction to Jeffrey B. Perry, ed., A Hubert Harrison Reader (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001). About A. Philip Randolph read Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph; A Biographical Portrait (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973). On Cyril Briggs read Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929 (Boulder: Belmont Books, 1977) pp. 47-57. On Grace Campbell, read Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early-Century America, pp. 173-77. For Harry Haywood, see Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978). For Paul Robeson, Paul Robeson Jr., The Undiscovered Paul Robeson (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001). About Claudia Jones, read John McClendon III, "Claudia Jones (1915-1964) Political Activist, Black Nationalist, Feminist, Journalist) in Jessie Carney Smith, Notable Black American Women Book II (New York: Gale Research, 1996) pp. 343-46 and Carole Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: The Poetics and Politics of Claudia Jones (unpublished manuscript). On Eslanda Goode Robeson read Barbara Ransby, "Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895-1965) in Darlene Clark Hines et. al., eds., Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia V. II (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) pp. 986-97. About Doxey Wilkerson, read Maceo C. Dailey and Ernest D. Washington, "The Evolution of Doxey A. Wilkerson, 1935-1945" Freedomways V. 25, n. 2 (Spring Quarter 1985). For Louise Thompson Patterson consult Margaret Wilkerson, "Excavating Our History: The Importance of Biographies of Women of Color," Black American Literature Forum V. 24, no. 1 (Spring, 1990): 73-84. On William Patterson see William Patterson, The Man Who Cried Genocide (New York: International Publishers, 1971). About Maude White Katz and Louise Thompson Patterson read Mark Solomon, "Rediscovering a Lost Legacy: Black Women Radicals Maude White and Louise Thompson Patterson", Abafafazi (Fall/Winter) 1995. About C.L.R. James read Farrukh Dhondy, C.L.R. James: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2001). On William Alphaeus Hunton, consult Dorothy Hunton, Alphaeus Hunton: Unsung Valiant (Privately Printed, 1986). For Shirley Graham Du Bois read Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois. New York: New York University Press. On W.E.B. DuBois see John Henrik Clarke, Esther Jackson, Ernest Kaiser, J. H. O'Dell, eds., Black Titan: W.E.B. Du Bois (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970)

(10) Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: An Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist (Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978) p., 127, 145. As for Moore's oratorical skills, Theodore Kornweibel follows Haywood and describes Moore as the African Blood Brotherhood's "most dynamic speaker". Theodore Kornweibel, Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy, 1919-1925 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998) p. 30. On the relationship between Moore and McKay see, Wayne F. Cooper, Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Schocken Books, 1987) pp. 106-07, 142-43 and 198. In addition to his oratory and numerous written works (for a bibliography see Turner and Moore Turner, pp. 313-315) Moore utilized other media such as film to teach about Africana history and culture. See "Africa Lost and Found: A Dialogue (Motion picture) WCBS-TV and Columbia University and released by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969. For an excellent account of Malcolm X 's oratory impact on Harlem culture see William Strickland, Malcolm X: Make It Plain (New York: Viking, 1994).

(11) On Moore's involvement with the Socialist Party, the African Blood Brotherhood and the Communist Party, see Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem" pp. 26-44, 46-68. For additional commentary on Moore and the African Blood Brotherhood and the Communist Party, see Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, pp., 3-10, 12-13, 47-48, 98-103, 108-09. Also consult Daryl Russell Grigsby, For the People: Black Socialists in the United States, Africa and the Caribbean, pp. 89-94, Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929, pp. 50-7 and Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early-Century America, pp. 183-84. About George Padmore see James Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmore's Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1967). For Moore's post-Communist Party activities read Joyce Moore Turner, "The Pan-Caribbean Movement" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem, pp. 69-91 and Richard B. Moore, "The Passing of Churchill and Empire" Liberator (March 1965) pp. 8-10. On the name change of The Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History read Joyce Moore Turner, "The Pan-Caribbean Movement", p. 73.

(12) Joyce Moore Turner, "The Pan-Caribbean Movement", pp. 69-91 and Richard B. Moore, "Africa Conscious Harlem" Freedomways, V. 3, n.3 (Summer 1963) pp. 315-34. Also see William R. Scott, "Black Nationalism and the Italo-Ethiopian Conflict, 1934-1936" Journal of Negro History 63 (1978) and The Sons of Sheba's Race: African American and the Italo--Ethiopian War, 1935-1941 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

(13) Franklin W. Knight, "The Caribbean Background of Richard B. Moore," p. 10. Joyce Moore Turner, "The 'Awayman' Returns to Barbados" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem, pp. 92-6. Richard B. Moore, "The Foreign Policy of an Independent Jamaica" Freedomways V.2, n.3 (Summer 1962) pp. 313-16. Richard B. Moore, "Independent Caribbean Nationhood--Has It Been Achieved or Set Back" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem, pp. 291-301. (This essay was originally written in 1962.)

(14) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 19.

(15) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", pp. 19-20.

(16) Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, pp. 106-110.

(17) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", pp. 23-4. The fate of elevator 'boy' for talented Black intellectuals and artists is an under-researched topic in African American cultural history. The outstanding poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), whose parents had been slaves, graduated magna cum laude from Central High School in Dayton, Ohio. Despite this academic accomplishment, and moreover he had already started Dayton's first African American newspaper and served as the editor of his school's yearbook, Dunbar was denied employment at a white owned Dayton newspaper and thus was forced to take employment as an elevator 'boy'. Consult, Margaret E. Peters, Dayton's African American Heritage (Virginia Beach: The Dunning Company/Publishing, 1995) p., 21, 22, 24, and 28. Also consult Charles M. Austin, Paul Laurence Dunbar's Roots and Much Moore (Dayton: A Sense of Roots Publication, 1989). (Mr. Austin is also a contemporary 'historian without portfolio' in Dayton, Ohio.) The Rev. E. Ethelred Brown of Harlem was another prominent Afro-American that had to resort employment as an elevator operator, see note 28.

(18) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", pp. 24.

(19) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", pp. 26.

(20) For references to Volney see, John G. Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations (New York: University, 1970) p. 11, 154-56. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, The Black Man's Religion and Extracts and Comments from the Holy Black Bible, V. II (New York: Alkebu-lan Books Associates, 1974) p. 91. On secular humanism read John G. Jackson, "Hubert Henry Harrison: The Black Socrates" (Austin, TX: American Atheist Press, 1987) and Mike McBryde, "Joel Augustus Rogers: A Leading Scholar, Thinker, and Motivator" in Norm R. Allen Jr., African-American Humanism: Anthology (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1991) pp. 50-71. On Rogers' take on Volney see the Simba article in this anthology.

(21) The citation from Johnson appears in S. P. Fullwider, The Mind and Mood of Black America (Homewood: The Dorsey Press, 1969) p. 7. For biographical information on Johnson read Earl E. Thorpe Black Historians: A Critique (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1971) pp. 149-50. Also consult, August Meier, Negro Thought in America (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1973) pp. 52-3.

(22) Williams is cited in S. P. Fullwider, The Mind and Mood of Black America, p. 7. Also see, John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams, A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

(23) Oakley C. Johnson, Marxism in the United States Before the Russian Revolution (1876-1917) (New York: AIMS/Humanity Press, 1974) p. 81.

(24) For an example of one of Moore's earlier materialist article addressing the race/class dialectic consult, Richard B. Moore, "Bogalusa" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem, pp. 140-41. Originally published in The Emancipator, March 13 1920, p. 4.

(25) Oakley C. Johnson, Marxism in the United States Before the Russian Revolution, p. 81. Also consult, Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early-Century America, p. 77.

(26) Consult Frederick Engels, The Origin of The Family, Private Property, and the State in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Works V. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973). Henry Lewis Morgan's text also plays an important role in John G. Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations; see the following pages, pp. 51-2, 57-8, 62 and Moore's comrade Harry Haywood gives notice to reading Morgan, Engels and Marx as crucial to his development of a materialist view of history. See Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist, p. 98, 116. Richard B. Moore, "A New Look at African History (Introduction)" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem, pp. 241-44.

(27) George Washington Woodbey, The Bible and Socialism: A Conversation Between Two Preachers (New York: A. Falconer, 1904) George Washington Woodbey, Why the Negro Should Vote the Socialist Ticket (Chicago: National office of the Socialist Party, n.d.) Reverdy Ransom, "The Negro and Socialism" The A.M.E. Church Review, October 1896, Reverdy Ransom, "Socialism and the Social Spirit" The Christian Recorder, March 18, 1897. Rev. George Frazier Miller, The Sacredness of Humanity: Annual Sermon of the Conference of Church Workers (Episcopal) among Colored People at St. Philip's Church, New York, October 6-9, 1914 (Brooklyn: Frank R. Chisholm, 1914). Richard B. Moore, "Afro-Americans and Radical Politics" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem, pp. 217-18.

(28) Unitarianism also played a formidable role in the humanism of William R. Jones. See for example, William R. Jones "Toward a Unitarian-Universalist Concept of Authority" Kairos: An Independent Quarterly of Liberal Religion (1979). The link between socialism and Unitarianism among Afro-American included not only E. Ethelred Brown and members of his congregation like Moore but also Peter H. Clark of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mark D. Morrison-Reed, "From Reconciliation to Rage" in The First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto May 28, 2001. Also consult, David A, Gerber, "Peter Humphries Clark: The Dialogue of Hope and Despair". The connection between Unitarianism and socialism made by Afro-Americans does not preclude that racism was absent from the Unitarian Universalist Church. In fact Brown was expelled from the Unitarian Church in 1929, however he was reinstated after enlisting the support of the ACLU in 1935. For a chronology of how racist practices against Black Unitarians unfolded see the U & U Racial Diversity History Timeline, Universalist Unitarian Fellowship at Stony Brook, http://pbisotopes.ess.sunysb.edu/UU-history/racial.htm

(29) For biographical information on Brown see the Biography attached to the "Brown (Egbert Ethelred) Papers, 1908-1964" of the Schomburg Research Center via the New York Public Library Digital Library Collection. http://digilib.nypl.org/dynaweb/ead/nypl/scmgeebr/@Generic Book View. Also read Rev. Ann C. Fox's sermon "Journey to Wholeness" in Unitarian Universalist Society of Fairhaven (January 19, 2003) http://www.uufairhaven.org/Sermons2003.htm and the seminal text of Mark Morrison-Reed, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1994). Despite his religious convictions, Brown's article in The Journal of Negro History was saliently a materialist approach to history. See E. Ethelred Brown, '"'Labor Conditions in Jamaica Prior to 1917" The Journal of Negro History, V. 4, n. 4. (Oct., 1919), pp. 349-360.

(30) Moore is quoted in Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 40.

(31) Also see John G. Jackson, "The Black Atheists of The Harlem Renaissance: (1917-1928)", lecture presented before the American Atheists Convention in 1984, Jackson mentions Richard B. Moore as one of the atheists who participated in the Harlem Renaissance. Consult the American Atheists (2003) http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/roots/harlem/. For a treatment on Black religious views and theology during the Harlem Renaissance consult Roy D. Morrison II, "Self-Transformation in American Blacks: The Harlem Renaissance and Black Theology" in Lewis R. Gordon, ed., Existence in Black (New York: Routledge, 1997) pp. 37-47.

(32) Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982)

(33) H. T. Johnson, "Philosophy Religiously Valued" The A.M.E. Church Review V.7, n. 1. (April 1891). D.J. Jordan, "The Philosophy of Progress" The A.M.E. Church Review, V.10 n.1 (July 1893). A.J. Kershaw, "Evolution: Its Darwinian and Jordanic Theories Compared" The A.M.E. Church Review V.14, n.4, (April 1898). George Yancy, "On the Power of Black Aesthetic Ideals: Thomas Nelson Baker as Preacher and Philosopher" The AME Church Review V. CXVII, n. 384 (October-December 2001). Marquis L. Harris, Some Conceptions of God in the Gifford Lectures During the Period 1927-1929, (Doctoral Dissertation, Philosophy, The Ohio State University, Columbus) 1933. John H. McClendon III, "Dr. Charles Leander Hill, Philosopher and Theologian" The A.M.E. Church Review, V. CXIX, n. 390 (April-June 2003).

(34) I develop the notion of dialectical idealism in an unpublished paper, "Dialectical Idealism, Double Consciousness and the Reconstruction of the History of African American Philosophy", this was given as a lecture presented at The College at Wooster, April 2003 and at the conference "W.E.B. Du Bois, 100 Years After The Souls of Black Folk", Bates College October 2003. Also consult the previously cited John H. McClendon, "Dr. Charles Leander Hill: Philosopher and Theologian." For one of the early demonstrations of historical materialism in Black historiography read, C. L. R. James, Black Jacobins (New York: Vintage Books, 1963) originally published in 1938. James also wrote the first text by a person of African descent, which was strictly devoted to Marxist-Leninist philosophy, consult C. L. R. James, Notes on Dialectics (Westport: Lawrence Hill, 1980) originally privately printed in 1948. For a critique of James's text consult, John H. McClendon III, C. L. R. James's Notes on Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005). On Du Bois in materialist philosophy of social science see Eugene C. Holmes, "W. E. B. Du Bois--Philosopher" Freedomways (V. 5, n. 1, Winter 1965). Abram Harris, "Economic Evolution: Dialectical and Darwinian" in William Darity Jr., ed., Race, Radicalism and Reform: Selected Papers, Abram Harris, (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1989) pp. 362-401. Originally published in the Journal of Political Economy, V. 42, n. 1, (February 1934) pp. 34-79. Holmes presents a defense of materialist philosophy in Eugene C. Holmes, "The Main Philosophical Considerations of Space and Time" American Journal of Physics, V. 18, n. 5, (December 1950). Also read John H. McClendon, "Eugene C. Holmes: A Commentary on a Black Marxist Philosopher" in Leonard Harris, ed., Philosophy Born of Struggle (Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 1983). For a treatment of a humanist philosophical theology consult William R. Jones, Is God a White Racist (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1973) and Roy D. Morrison, Science, Theology and the Transcendental Horizon: Einstein, Kant (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994).

(35) Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929, p. 42.

(36) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", pp. 30-1.

(37) Jeffrey B. Perry, "Hubert Harrison (1883-1927: Race Consciousness and the Struggle for Socialism" Socialism and Democracy V. 17, n. 2., p. 1. http://www.sdonline.org/34/jeffrey_perry.htm. Also read Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929, especially Chapter III, "Hubert H. Harrison and the New Negro Manhood Movement".

(38) Hubert H. Harrison, "What Socialism Means to Us" in Philip S. Foner, ed., The Voice of Black America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972) p. 700.

(39) Harrison is quoted in Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929, p. 29.

(40) Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929, p. 42.

(41) Richard B. Moore, "Afro-Americans and Radical Politics" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem, p. 216. Hubert H. Harrison, "What Socialism Means to Us".

(42) Jeffrey B. Perry, "Hubert Harrison (1883-1927): Race Consciousness and the Struggle for Socialism" Socialism and Democracy, p. 4. Rayford W. Logan and Michael Winston, eds., The Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: Norton, 1983) pp. 292-93

(43) Richard B. Moore, "Statement and Resolution at the Congress of the league Against Imperialism and for National Independence" in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem, pp. 143-46. Originally published in the Proceedings of the Congress (Berlin, 1927). Richard B Moore, "Is the Negro Without a Party" Daily Worker (August 29, 1928). Hubert H. Harrison, "Socialism and the Negro" in Hubert Harrison, The Negro and the Nation (New York: Cosmo-Arcate Publishing Company, 1917). V. I. Lenin, "Critical Remarks on the National Question" Lenin Collected Works V. 20 (Moscow: Publishers, 1972).

(44) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 27.

(45) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 29-30.

(46) Richard B. Moore, "Afro-Americans and Radical Politics" p. 217.

(47) Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early-Century America, pp., 174-5, 326.

(48) Richard B. Moore, "Afro-Americans and Radical Politics" p. 217. The CPUSA played a crucial role in the election of Powell to the New York City Council in 1941. Read Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, pp. 312-13. Moore had previously worked directly with Powell on the Harlem Scottsboro Defense Committee. Consult Joyce Moore Turner, "Radical Politics", p. 65. Also Communist Party and Harlem City Councilman Ben Davis gave support to Powell electoral efforts. See Gerald Home, Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994), p. 105. For a detailed view of Powell's politics see Charles V. Hamilton, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: A Political Biography of An American Dilemma (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1991) and Adam Clayton Powell, Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr (New York: Dial Press, 1971).

(49) Gerald Horne, Black Liberation/Red Scare, p. 99.

(50) Joyce Moore Turner, "Radical Politics", p. 57.

(51) Brodsky's statement cited in Gerald Horne, Black Liberation/Red Scare, p. 99. Ben Davis, Communist Councilman from Harlem; Autobiographical Notes Written in a Federal Penitentiary (New York: International Publishers, 1969).

(52) Gerald Horne, Black Liberation/Red Scare, pp. 97-118.

(53) Lee was the Socialist Party's Director of its Rand School of Social Science and Gerber was the Executive Secretary of the Local New York. Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem," pp.41-3. Wilfred D. Samuels, Five Afro-Caribbean Voices in American Culture, 1917-1929, pp. 45-7.

(54) Joyce Moore Turner, "Radical Politics", pp. 50-3.

(55) Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression, pp. 3-4.

(56) On Moore's ideological differences with Randolph read, Richard B. Moore, "An Open Letter to Mr. A. Philip Randolph, General Organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters" The Negro Champion, V.1, n. 14 (August 8, 1928).

(57) Moore is quoted in Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 38.

(58) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", pp. 38-9.

(59) Richard B. Moore, "The Critics and Opponents of Marcus Garvey" in John Henrik Clarke, ed., Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa (New York: Random House, 1974) p. 213.

(60) Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982) p. 40.

(61) Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance, p. 40.

(62) Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance, p. 40.

(63) Jeffrey B. Perry, "Hubert Harrison (1883-1927)" p. 2.

(64) Jeffrey B. Perry, "Hubert Harrison (1883-1927)" p. 3.

(65) Joyce Moore Tumer, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 28.

(66) Harold Cruse devotes an entire essay to Moore in his Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, yet there is horrendous factual distortions, tendentious interpretation, and a strong core of personal acrimony that mar the Cruse analysis. Read Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early-Century America, see especially the Postscript, "Harold Cruse and the West Indians: Critical Remarks on The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual". James examines the correspondence from Cruse to Moore and uncovers the source of Cruse's personal acrimony toward Moore, read note 45 on page 348. For Moore's response to Cruse consult Moore's 9/4/69 correspondence to Reginald Barrow in W. Burghardt Turner and Joyce Moore Turner, eds., Richard B. Moore, Caribbean Militant in Harlem (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1988), p. 105, note 79. For substantial critiques of Cruse consult Ernest Kaiser, "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual" Freedomways V. 9, n.1 (Winter 1969). Ernest Allen, "The Cultural Methodology of Harold Cruse" The Journal of Ethic Studies V, 5, n. 2, (Summer 1977) and Sterling Stuckey, and Joshua Leslie, "Reflections on Reflections about the Black Intellectual, 1930-1945, First World, V. 2, n. 2 (1979).

(67) Henry Highland Garnet, "A Plea in Behalf of the Cuban Revolution" in Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham, eds., Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1998) pp. 518-520. William Saunders Scarborough, "The Ethics Of the Hawaiian Question" in Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham, Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 1998) pp. 790-96. See "Massachusetts Negroes to President McKinley, 1899" in Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States V. II (New York: The Citadel Press, 1968). For a view on Afro-American anti-imperialist thought in the 20th Century, read Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Ithaca: Cornel University Press, 1997). For a comprehensive look at the connection between United States imperialism and racism see, Rubin F. Weston, Racism in U.S. Imperialism; The Influence of Racial Assumptions on American Foreign Policy, 1893-1946 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972.

(68) Robin Kelly, Hammer And Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, pp.25-47. Mark Solomon, The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936 (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 1998) p. 121-22. Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), Angelo Herndon, Let Me Live (New York: Arno Press, 1969).

(69) Robin Kelly, Hammer And Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990) pp. 23-25. Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik, pp. 398-401.

(70) Mark Solomon, The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936 (Jackson: University of Mississippi, 1998). Robin Kelly, Hammer And Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (New York: Grove Press, 1983). The classic first-hand account of organizing in the Alabama is Hosea Hudson, Black Worker in the Deep South (New York: International Publishers, 1972).

(71) George Stith, "African American Sharecroppers: Repressions as a Way of Life" in Bud Shultz and Ruth Schultz, eds., The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) pp. 25-33. For the legal implications of the Elaine, Arkansas incident see Dr. Simba's article in this anthology. Also consult Albert Jackson, "Alabama's Blood-Smeared Cotton" in Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States V. 4 (New York: Carol Publishing Company, 1990) pp. 192-94.

(72) Hubert Harrison, "A Call to Arms" Baltimore Afro-American (June 10, 1921) in Theodore G. Vincent, Voices of a Black Nation (Trenton: Africa World Press, 1973) p. 138. Cyril V, Briggs "Declaration of War on the Ku Klux Klan" Crusader (January 1921) in Theodore G. Vincent, Voices of a Black Nation, p. 138. Please read, Chapter 15 of Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik.

(73) Editorial, "Race Riot in Knoxville: Uncle Tom is Dead" Veteran (September 6, 1919) in Theodore G. Vincent, Voices of a Black Nation, p. 138. Robin Kelly, Hammer And Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990)

(74) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 41.

(75) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 40-1.

(76) Joyce Moore Turner, "From Barbados to Harlem", p. 41.

(77) Mark Solomon, The Cry was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-1936, pp. 165-66.

John M. McClendon (1)