American Negro Labor Congress
[7] The communists sought to use front tactics by downplaying their own presence and casting the ANLC as a multi-tendency organization, thereby reducing the chance of the group's ability to challenge the NAACP and the Marcus Garvey's UNIA as the paramount voice of the black working class.
[9] American-born and educated at the Tuskegee Institute, the veteran former member of the Socialist Party of America Fort-Whiteman had been selected to lead the new group over other top black Communists, including Cyril Briggs, Richard B. Moore, and Otto Huiswoud.
[12] The call for the founding convention consequently touched upon not only matters of importance to labor in general but also spoke to specifically racial interests such as the "abolition of Jim Crowism," an end to electoral restrictions disfranchising blacks, enforcement of "the right of the Negro to equal accommodations with whites in all theaters, restaurants, hotels, etc.," an end to discrimination in education, and Congressional action to make lynching a federal crime.
[14] Fort-Whitman's keynote speech declared that the new organization was established "to gather, to mobilize, and to coordinate into a fighting machine the most enlightened and militant and class-conscious workers of the race" in support of concrete objectives.
[18] At the founding convention was announced that 10 American blacks were already in Moscow enrolled at the University of the Toilers of the East, where they were ostensibly being trained for work in the Soviet "diplomatic service.
[20] Such a congress was to be held with a view to establishing a world organization of black workers and farmers which would unite exploited colonial populations to overthrow imperialism, the Comintern indicated.
[22] The officialdom of the American Federation of Labor was hostile to the new ANLC, with AFL President William Green cautioning black unionists that they were "being led into a trap.
[23] Green's attitude drew return fire from the ANLC, which called the AFL chief's position "clearly erroneous, harmful, and prejudicial to the best interests of the American labor movement.
"[24] Despite such protestations, the mainstream press of America echoed Green's hostile sentiments, with the Chicago Tribune accusing the Communists of attempting to "stir up race hatred and disorder" and the Philadelphia Record rejecting the entire idea that American blacks could be "bolshevized" as "ridiculously childish.
The selection of Fort-Whiteman as leader by the Comintern had proven controversial, as he seemed to leapfrog long-time party activists with impeccable bona fides, including Moore, Huiswoud, and Briggs.
