Harry Haywood facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Harry Haywood
Haywood in 1948
Born	Haywood Hall (1898-02-04)February 4, 1898 South Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
Died	January 4, 1985(1985-01-04) (aged 86)
Resting place	Arlington, Virginia, U.S.
Occupation	Political figure
Spouse(s)	Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
Children	Dr. Haywood Hall Dr. Rebecca Hall Leonid A. Yuspeh
Military career
Allegiance	Spanish Republic  United States of America
Service/branch	International Brigades United States Army
Unit	370th Infantry Regiment (United States) The "Abraham Lincoln" XV International Brigade
Battles/wars	World War I Spanish Civil War World War II

Harry Haywood (born February 4, 1898 – died January 4, 1985) was an American political activist. He was a very important person in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). His main goal was to connect the ideas of the Communist Party with important issues of race in America.

In 1926, Harry Haywood and other African-American Communists traveled to the Soviet Union. They wanted to study how Communism might help with racial problems in the United States. Because of his work there, he was chosen to lead the Communist Party's "Negro Department." Later, the party's main ideas changed, and they stopped supporting the idea of African-American self-determination. As the party's views shifted, Haywood lost his important role. He also helped create a group to support the Scottsboro boys in their famous court case.

Haywood was also a writer. His first book, Negro Liberation, came out in 1948. After he was no longer part of the Communist Party, he wrote his life story called Black Bolshevik, published in 1978. He greatly helped shape Marxist ideas about the "national question" for African Americans in the United States. He also helped start the Maoist New Communist movement.

Harry Haywood's Life Story

Early Years and Moving Around

Harry Haywood was born as Haywood Hall, Jr., on February 4, 1898. His birthplace was South Omaha, Nebraska. His parents, Harriet and Haywood Hall, were formerly enslaved people from Missouri and West Tennessee. They moved to Omaha to find jobs in railroads and meatpacking. Many other Black families from the South also moved there. Haywood was the youngest of three sons.

In 1913, his family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, after his father was attacked by white people. Two years later, in 1915, they moved to Chicago. During World War I, he served in the Eighth Regiment, which was a Black United States Army unit. When he returned to Chicago, he became more interested in political change. This was especially after the difficult Red Summer of 1919 and the Chicago race riot. During the riot, many white people, especially Irish immigrants, attacked Black people on the South Side.

Haywood was inspired by his older brother, Otto, who joined the Communist Party in 1921. Otto invited him to join a secret group called the African Blood Brotherhood. Harry was also influenced by a book he read as a teenager called State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin. In his autobiography, Black Bolshevik, he wrote that this book was the most important one he read during his search for political ideas. It helped him decide to join the Communist Party.

Working with the Communist Party USA

Harry Haywood started his political journey by joining the African Blood Brotherhood in 1922. Then, in 1923, he joined the Young Communist League. Soon after, in 1925, he became a member of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA). After joining the CPUSA, Haywood went to Moscow to study. It was on his passport application that he first used the name "Harry Haywood." This name came from the first names of his mother and father.

In Moscow, he studied at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in 1925. Later, in 1927, he went to the International Lenin School. While in Moscow, he met many anti-colonial leaders, including the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. He started to speak up for African-American concerns. He argued that Black people were like captives in the United States. He believed they needed to embrace nationalism to avoid the negative effects of trying to fit in completely. He stayed in Moscow until 1930 as a representative to the Communist International (Comintern).

While there, he worked on committees that focused on the issue of African Americans in the United States. He also helped develop the "Native Republic Thesis" for the South African Communist Party. Haywood helped write the "Comintern Resolutions on the Negro Question" in 1928 and 1930. These resolutions stated that African Americans in the Southern United States formed an oppressed nation. They had the right to self-determination, which meant they could even choose to separate from the United States. He continued to fight for this idea throughout his life.

In the CPUSA, Haywood was part of the Central Committee from 1927 to 1938. He was also on the Politburo from 1931 to 1938. He took part in important disagreements within the CPUSA against Jay Lovestone and Earl Browder. He usually sided with William Z. Foster.

Haywood was the General Secretary of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. But he also worked on issues that affected white working-class people. In the early 1930s, when he led the CPUSA Negro Department, he helped lead the movement to support the Scottsboro Boys. He also helped organize miners in West Virginia with the National Miners Union. He was a leader in the struggles of the Sharecroppers' Union in the Deep South. In 1935, he led the "Hands off Ethiopia" campaign in Chicago's Black South Side. This campaign was against Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. When eleven Communist leaders were put on trial in 1949 under the Smith Act, Haywood was given the job of finding information to help their defense.

Military Service in Three Wars

Harry Haywood served in three wars during his life. His interest in military action began when his friends told him stories about their service in the Eighth Illinois, Black National Guard Regiment. During World War I, he served in the Eighth Regiment, a Black United States Army unit.

In the Spanish Civil War, like many other Americans, he fought for the Popular Front. He was part of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades. Haywood held the position of Regimental Commissar in the XV International Brigade during the Battle of Brunete. While in Spain, he, Langston Hughes, and Walter Benjamin Garland broadcast messages from Madrid to support the Republican side. During World War II, he served in the Merchant Marine. He was also active with the National Maritime Union during this time.

The Comintern and the Black Belt Nation Idea

Map of the Black Belt Nation from Haywood's Negro Liberation, 1948.

During his four-and-a-half-year stay in the Soviet Union (1925–1930), Harry Haywood was a member of both the CPUSA and the CPSU. As a member of the CPSU, he traveled widely in the Soviet Union's autonomous republics. He also took part in struggles against different political groups, always supporting Joseph Stalin.

With the Comintern, Haywood was assigned to work with the new Negro Commission. In his important book Negro Liberation, he argued that the main reason for the oppression of Black people was the unsolved land problem in the South. He believed that the promises of the Reconstruction period after the Civil War were broken. This left African Americans as "landless, semi-slaves" on plantations as tenant farmers and sharecroppers. They faced harsh Jim Crow laws and terror from groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Haywood believed that because of imperialism, Black people were stuck in this unfair situation in the South.

He thought that a unique African-American nation had formed in the South. This nation met the requirements set by Stalin for a nation: a stable community with a common language, territory, economic life, and culture. Because African Americans in the South fit this description, Haywood believed they had the right to self-determination, even to separate from the United States. Their "national territory" was historically the South, and they deserved full equality everywhere else in the United States. Haywood believed that only with real political power, including control over land, could African Americans achieve true equality. He felt that Black people gaining equality was necessary for all working-class people to unite.

Many in the CPUSA disagreed with Haywood. They saw African-American oppression as a problem of racial prejudice with moral roots. They did not see it as an economic and political issue of national oppression. They thought it would be solved under Socialism and didn't need special attention until after a revolution. They criticized him for focusing too much on fighting racial prejudice. Haywood argued back that "race" was a misleading idea. He believed that focusing only on race and ignoring economic issues would push African Americans away and prevent working-class unity.

After millions of Black people moved North and Midwest in the Great Migration, some critics used statistics to argue against the "Black Belt theory." They said there was no longer a Black nation centered in the South. In his 1957 article, "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question," Haywood replied that the question of an oppressed nation in the South was not just about counting people.

Harry Haywood's book, Negro Liberation, first published in 1948, was the first major study of the African-American national question written by a Black Marxist. According to Haywood, Paul Robeson helped pay for his work on the book. It was translated into several languages, including Russian, Polish, German, Czech, and Hungarian. It was reprinted in 1976. Haywood said the book's main idea was not new. It was a restatement of the revolutionary idea developed in 1928. This idea was that the problem was mainly about an oppressed nation with full rights to self-determination. The book showed how the struggle for Black equality was a key part of the fight for a proletarian revolution. It argued that the working-class movement must solve the problem of land and freedom for Black people as it moves toward socialism. Haywood also said that the book offered a detailed look at the lives of Black people after World War II. He used population data and census information to show that his ideas were still correct. Because of this and other works, Robert F. Williams called Harry Haywood "one of the modern pioneers in the Black liberation struggle."

Since 1998, historians in the U.S. have been able to access Comintern documents about the "Self-Determination in the Black Belt theory." These documents show how important the Communist Party was in the Deep South from 1929 onward. They show the Party's efforts to unite all workers in the South. They also highlight the global impact of the defense of the Scottsboro Boys. The documents reveal the organization of inter-racial unions in the Deep South. They also show a united Black protest movement in the United States. This movement led to the creation of the National Negro Congress in 1935 and the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1937. These movements, inspired by the self-determination theory, also helped increase activity in the Civil Rights Movement starting in the 1950s. This is now called the "Long Civil Rights Movement" by historians. During the McCarthy era, civil rights activities were often labeled as Communist threats. In the South, even the NAACP was banned because it was seen as a Communist threat.

Leaving the Communist Party USA

After Stalin died in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev came to power, the CPUSA followed Khrushchev's new policies. These policies included "destalinization" and "peaceful coexistence" with other countries. Harry Haywood had long admired Mao Zedong. He became one of the first people in the anti-revisionist movement, which grew out of the split between China and the Soviet Union. He was forced out of the CPUSA in the late 1950s. Many others who strongly supported anti-revisionist or pro-Stalin ideas also left.

A main reason for Haywood's expulsion was the CPUSA's decision to change its view on the African-American national question. Although the CPUSA had not been very active in the South since the Sharecroppers Union ended, in 1959, the CPUSA officially stopped demanding self-determination for African Americans there. (This demand had been dropped earlier when Browder closed the party in 1944.) The CPUSA instead believed that as American capitalism grew, so too would Black-White unity.

In 1957, he wrote "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question." This was later published, but it did not succeed in changing the Party's direction. In 1959, even though Haywood was no longer an active party member, he tried one last time to make a difference. He wrote "On the Negro Question," which was shared at the Seventeenth National Convention by African Blood Brotherhood founder Cyril Briggs. However, this did not work. Most of Haywood's possible supporters had already been forced out of the CPUSA.

Haywood believed that "White chauvinism" (a strong, often unfair, belief in the superiority of one's own group) within the party caused the change in position. He thought this was not based on a correct understanding of economic issues. He also argued that this change stopped the CPUSA from providing proper leadership as the Civil Rights Movement grew. He felt the Party was left behind by the actions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the NAACP. The Party became even more separated from the strong Black Power Movement that followed.

Political Activities from the 1950s to 1980s

Haywood and his wife Gwendolyn Midlo Hall helped start the Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party (POC). This group was formed in New York City in August 1958. It included 83 members, mostly Black, Puerto Rican, and white trade unionists. Many were coal miners from Williamsport, Pennsylvania and maritime workers. Its members included Coleman Young, who later became the first Black mayor of Detroit, and Theodore W. Allen. Haywood felt the POC quickly became too isolated and dogmatic. However, it did free many skilled organizers from the CPUSA, just as the civil rights and Black Power movements were starting.

In 1964, Haywood worked in Harlem with Jesse Gray, who led the Harlem Rent Strike and Tenants' Union. Gray was later elected to the New York State Legislature. Haywood worked with Malcolm X in 1964 until Malcolm X's death in 1965. He also worked with James Haughton and Josh Lawrence in Harlem Fight-Back. Then, in 1966, he worked in Oakland, California, and later in Detroit, Michigan, with the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Haywood then returned to Mexico for a short time. He came back to the United States permanently in 1970, invited by Vincent Harding, who was then the Director of the Institute for the Black World in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1964, Haywood became involved with the New Communist Movement. This movement aimed to create a new vanguard Communist Party based on anti-revisionist ideas. They believed the CPUSA had moved too far from Marxism-Leninism. He later worked with one of the new Maoist groups in this movement, the October League. This group later became the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (CP(M-L)). In the CP(M-L), Haywood served on the Central Committee.

He published his autobiography Black Bolshevik. However, some important writings and parts of his political life during the 1960s were left out of the book. For example, a manuscript he wrote with Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, dedicated to Robert F. Williams, was not mentioned. This work was shared in copied form from early 1964 throughout California and the Deep South. It greatly influenced the armed self-defense movement against the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 and 1965. It also promoted a slogan that became popular in the Deep South: that Black people must challenge the existing order to counter the "massive resistance" from Southern politicians and racist groups.

Black Bolshevik became an important book, often used by scholars and read by the public. Through this book and his other writings, Haywood provided ideological leadership beyond just the New Communist Movement. Haywood's ideas had a big impact on many of the different Maoist groups in the New Communist Movement, even beyond his own CP(M-L). These groups included the League of Revolutionary Struggle (Marxist-Leninist), the early Revolutionary Communist Party, the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, and the Communist Workers Party. However, these young Maoist groups often lacked experience and were too focused on their own small groups, which stopped them from taking a strong leading role. In his last published article, Haywood wrote that the New Communist movement spent too much time trying to get approval from governments and parties outside the United States, instead of proving themselves among the people of their own country.

Haywood's ideas about African-American national oppression and national liberation are still highly valued today. Groups like the Ray O. Light Group, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the Maoist Internationalist Movement value his contributions. Many Black revolutionaries and activists today also find his work important. Haywood's role in Black protest movements from the 1960s to the 1980s can be studied through his papers. These are kept at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.

Haywood's new ideas have influenced many areas of study. These include historical materialism, geography, Marxist education, and social movement theory.

Marriage and Family Life

In 1920, Haywood married a woman named Hazel, but they separated in the same year.

Later, in the late 1930s or 1940s, while in Los Angeles, he married Belle Lewis, whom he had known for many years. They divorced in 1955.

In 1956, Haywood married Gwendolyn Midlo. She was a Jewish activist from New Orleans, Louisiana. She has been active in civil rights throughout her life. She also became a well-known historian of slavery in the United States and Latin America, and of the African diaspora (the spread of African people around the world). She built her academic career at Rutgers University. Harry and Gwendolyn had three children, whom Gwendolyn mostly raised by herself. Their children are Dr. Haywood Hall (born 1956), Dr. Rebecca Hall (born 1963), and a third child from a previous marriage, Leonid A. Yuspeh (born 1951).

Haywood and Midlo Hall remained married until his death in 1985. Between 1953 and 1964, they worked together on many articles. Some of these were published in Soulbook Magazine, which started in Berkeley, California, in 1964. She did not follow him into the New Communist Movement, and they mostly lived apart after late 1964.

Shortly before Haywood was forced out of the Communist Party, he moved with his family to Mexico City, Mexico. During these years, Midlo Hall earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in history at Mexico City College. She returned with Haywood to the United States in 1964. She worked as a temporary legal secretary, started teaching in North Carolina in 1965, and went to graduate school in 1966. She earned her doctorate in 1970 at the University of Michigan. From there, she became an assistant professor at Rutgers University, where she became a full professor. Midlo Hall has also taught "Africans in the Atlantic World" at Michigan State University as an Adjunct Professor of History.

Death and What He Left Behind

Harry Haywood died in January 1985. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. (His burial spot is Columbarium Court 1, Section LL, Column 7, 2nd Row from bottom, under his birth name "Haywood Hall.") He had a disability from his military service and spent his last few years at a Veterans Administration medical facility.

Harry Haywood's papers and writings are kept at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. They are also at the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York City.

In Richard Wright's book Black Boy (American Hunger), the character of Buddy Nealson is thought to be based on Harry Haywood.

Works by Harry Haywood

• The Communist Position on the Negro Question. With Earl Browder and Clarence Hathaway. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1931.
• The Road to Negro Liberation: Report to the Eighth Convention of the Communist Party of the USA. New York: Workers Library Publishers, 1934.
• Negro Liberation. New York: International Publishers, 1948. —Reissued by Liberator Press, Chicago, 1976.
• Articles from Soulbook, 1965–1967.
• Harry Haywood, For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question. Chicago: Liberator Press, 1975.
• Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1978.

See also

In Spanish: Harry Haywood para niños