During World War II, leftists in the IWO and the newly founded win-the-war umbrella group, the ASC, endeavored to harness patriotism and antifas-cist animus to a civil rights campaign. While other Poles and Slovaks (along
with other white ethnics) attacked black people in the streets of Detroit and other urban battlegrounds, adherents of the Slav Congress called for racial unity and denounced the rioters as Hitler’s apologists. “[Fifth columnists]
will attempt to weaken and defeat us by dividing us among ourselves,”
Krzycki thundered to the first Slav Congress. “They will try to divide us from Americans who look back to other homelands. They will try to set us against Negroes. We will not be taken in. We will answer the sly whispers of the fifth columnists with clenched fists and determined hearts.”45
Lodges of the Polonia Society, SWS, and Ukrainian-American Fraternal Union participated in the Slav Congress, so it is not surprising that the IWO likewise called for interracial solidarity as necessary to win the war. Already on February 8, 1942, the IWO’s GEB passed a “resolution on Negro Rights,”
approving Roosevelt’s creation of the FEPC, but again the IWO committed to going beyond what the president was willing or politically able to deliver in urging federal prosecution of lynchers and an end to segregation in the armed forces.46 In 1942 the IWO also sent its lodge brother, Communist activist Patterson, as its delegate to the National Negro Labor for Victory Conference, determined to hold the government to its commitment to im-plement the FEPC.47
A permanent FEPC, the IWO believed, would guarantee “our Negro citizenry . . . taking an increasing part in the war effort both as fighting men and as soldiers of production” who would no longer face the “shameful practice” of industries’ racial discrimination. The IWO demanded “full ap-propriations” for a permanent FEPC to ensure that “all forms of racial dis-crimination shall be ultimately abolished from the industrial life of our country.” Ten months later the IWO singled out the poll tax and lynch terror for eradication, demanding an antilynching bill that “would bar all literature from the mails which promotes racial and religious hate.” While the IWO did not explain how it would determine what letters sent through the mails promoted “hate” and how this could be prevented (and the irony of a left-wing organization demanding federal government intervention to prohibit the dissemination of ideas went unremarked), the Order again backed the creation of a permanent FEPC. To teach white ethnics the justice of these causes, the IWO began an “educational campaign in the nationality group societies, printing of pamphlets on the Negro question in a number of lan-guages, and the direct involvement of members from these societies in the campaign.” Candela guaranteed Italian Americans “could be won to aid in the fight for Negro equality” and committed his Garibaldi Society to win-ning “Negro” equality. A Republican attorney also endorsed the IWO’s cam-paign of promoting racial brotherhood, suggesting that the wartime Popular Front was capacious. Requests for copies of IWO pamphlets such as Democ-racy and the Negro People came from African Americans throughout the South as well as correspondents in Saskatchewan, Canada.48
Near war’s end white ethnics in the IWO remained committed to creation of a permanent FEPC, conceiving of racial discrimination as only the most pernicious end of a spectrum that encompassed Semitism and anti-Catholic hatred. Members of the JPFO in particular saw the linkages between antiblack racism and the peril of anti-Semitism as all too apparent. In July 1945 June Gordon of the JPFO’s women’s branch, the Emma Lazarus Division, said, “The Fair Employment Practices Committee does not concern the Negro people alone.” Countering zero-sum-gain rhetoric already building, which saw any policy aiding black people’s advancement as coming at the expense of white people, Gordon noted, “The opponents of F.E.P.C. speak of it in terms of a gift to the Negro people at the expense of the white. Well, we are white;
but we are Jews and we also suffer the effects of this policy of discrimination.”
She committed the JPFO to working “to put a stop to the sickness of racism.”
Arguing that the poison of racism in America was the kind of discrimination that had led to “the Maidenek [sic] and Lublin furnaces,” Gordon called on Congress to vote for continuation of the FEPC. The Emma Lazarus Division would remain defiantly unrepentant in linking anti-Semitism and racism in the postwar world as Cold War militarism escalated and the demonization of America’s erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union, increased. “War Propagation Feeds Anti-Semitism and Its Monstrous Big Brother—White Supremacy,” Gordon declared in a February 1950 “Bulletin on Women and Peace in Celebration of the 6th Anniversary of the Emma Lazarus Division.”49
The Emma Lazarus Division became a financial supporter of the So-journers for Truth and Justice, an African American women’s group com-bating racism and segregation at home and imperialism abroad. The Sojourners, in which Thompson Patterson of the IWO was an officer, linked racial, gender, and class oppression, too, in an early and unapologetic de-mand for intersectional liberation. One 1952 Sojourners action sought to expose the horrors of South African apartheid, picketing and petitioning at the UN and South Africa’s embassy. The Sojourners joined the Council on African Affairs (CAA) in endorsing a nationwide campaign of civil disobe-dience that the African National Congress (ANC) was conducting and sent letters of solidarity to women in the ANC as well as to white women trade union leaders “who have loyally supported the African people’s struggles.”
Bertha Mkize was congratulated for leading demonstrations against the re-cently enacted pass laws, and for her declaration, “Whatever they call us, Communists or anything else, we must fight this tyranny to the end.” The letters sent to Mkize and three other South African women, coauthored by Thompson Patterson, told them,
We have been inspired by the example of militant action on the part of African women. We realize that our fight for freedom in the Unit-ed States is inextricably linkUnit-ed to the struggle against the tyranny of
the white supremacists not only in South Africa but throughout the entire Continent. We further recognize that these struggles for full freedom on the part of colored women in Africa, Asia and in these United States must lead to the complete emancipation of women throughout the world.50
A surprised Mkize wrote back from Durban, “Your unexpected letter was received with the greatest pleasure. It is sweet and very encouraging that you have made it possible the link with you we have always wished for this side of the world.” She wrote, “Please, give the love of the African women to the Negro women in the States,” signing her letter, “Yours in Sisterhood.”51
The CAA, under the leadership of Robeson, forcefully linked racial ter-rorism in the United States and South Africa four decades before the United States got around to disapproving of apartheid. A CAA flyer declared, “Rac-ism Threatens Us in South Africa as Here.” In reference to white riots that broke out when the first black person attempted to move into a Chicago-area city, the flyer added, “It’s not as far as you think from Cicero, Illinois, to Odendaalsrust, South Africa, where police recently machine-gunned Afri-can men and women.” Declaring that U.S. corporations benefited from both Jim Crow and apartheid, the CAA supported the South African campaign to oppose unjust laws, which was “contributing directly to our struggle for democratic rights and peace.” The CAA urged people to sign petitions call-ing on the U.S. government to support the African people, not the apartheid Pretoria regime.52
The spirit of intersectionalism, as well as global antiracism, lived on in IWO members such as Thompson, Robeson, and Gordon who targeted rac-ism at home and abroad. By the early 1950s, however, the leftist Emma Laza-rus Division, Sojourners for Truth and Justice, CAA, and IWO were under assault for their political ideology and unapologetic calling out of racist im-perialism, both U.S. and South African models. Their very support for black people’s civil rights in any context was eyed suspiciously by many guardians against “un-American” ideas.53
Like Gordon, some Italian IWO members recognized fellowship with black members due to their common enemies. When Josephine Picolo of Brooklyn wrote to arch-segregationist Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi in 1945 urging support for a permanent FEPC, she received a snide reply addressed to “Dear Dago.” Picolo turned to the Garibaldi Society president, Congressman Marcantonio, for assistance. The New York Daily News re-ported, “Vito Demands Bilbo Apology on ‘Dago’ Note,” but Bilbo instead wrote the congressman that when he called a Dago a Dago, no insult was meant. The Mississippi senator was in turn denounced by Marcantonio for
“spewing out race hatred.” “Now that the war is over you are Hitler’s incon-solable political male widow,” he wrote. Marcantonio assured Picolo, “I shall
keep after this rat and the other domestic fascists until they are driven out of public life by an enraged democracy.”54
The IWO and CRC did what they could to remove Bilbo from the Senate.
An “Oust Bilbo Now!” campaign was begun by the CRC, while the IWO secretary stressed “the need for intensifying” the drive to remove the senator, twinning this campaign with lobbying for a permanent FEPC. Shaffer of the JPFO New York City committee organized a parade in the Garment District to demand Bilbo’s impeachment, labeling him a menace to progressive de-mocracy, and the IWO circulated petitions calling for the senator and fellow Mississippian congressman John Rankin’s ouster for “spreading the danger-ous seeds of anti-Semitism and other forms of hate propaganda in Con-gress.” An IWO meeting at Philadelphia’s Bok Vocational School passed a resolution demanding Bilbo’s ouster, declaring him “the leading exponent in America of the Nazi theory of racial and religious superiority.” Meanwhile, an FBI agent noted that a meeting of the IWO City Committee in Detroit presided over by national officer Milgrom passed around “We Accuse” peti-tions. The agent noted, “At the head of these sheets was . . . condemnation of . . . Bilbo for his attacks ‘on the negro, the Jewish, and the Italian people and other minority groups.’” The agent further noted that Picolo, the woman insulted in Bilbo’s original “Dear Dago” letter, was conducting an IWO-backed national speaking tour.55
The IWO and CRC were unsuccessful in their attempts to remove Bilbo from the Senate; he still retained his seat when he died of cancer in 1947. Nor did they change his or many white Mississippians’ minds on the need for an FEPC. Although Bilbo’s views were repugnant to the IWO, the effort to squelch his speech ironically bore some resemblance to the campaigns soon to be directed at the organization, the CRC, and other “un-American” advo-cates. In any event, many other Americans were more comfortable with the Mississippi defender against race “mongrelization” than with left-wing be-lievers in civil rights, as Marcantonio learned from letters addressed to “dear wop” telling him, “you are a white man stay with your own color” and “three cheers for Bilbo, the forgotten white man’s friend.”56 The IWO’s demands for racial equality may seem to have been prescient and praiseworthy from the vantage point of seven decades; in 1945 they were still the outliers.
Even as it faced government prosecution, as late as 1952 the IWO still demanded the creation of a permanent FEPC, a measure Congress would never take. Citing an Urban League survey revealing “shocking examples of job discrimination against Negro Americans,” the IWO urged enactment of a “compulsory FEPC” to secure “equal treatment for all Americans based on the democratic foundation of our Bill of Rights and Constitution,” and asked all its lodges to “cooperate with civic, religious, social, and other community organizations” to secure the FEPC and end the “vile practice” of racial dis-crimination. By 1952 the Popular Front was a distant memory, and the IWO
found few allies with which to cooperate. Within a few years the modern civil rights movement would win heralded victories such as the Brown school integration decision, but the Old Left bridge to a class-based racial justice campaign represented by the IWO had already been severed.57
When the national campaign sputtered, local lodges lobbied for fair em-ployment and civil rights legislation on a statewide basis. From Trenton, Morris Forer wrote to Middleton about his lodge’s participation in a Mercer County Legislative Conference in support of a state FEPC bill. With the cooperation of the IWO and the New Jersey Independent Voters’ League, the bill was introduced into the legislature the day after the conference. Forer hoped to tie in the IWO’s support for the FEPC with a celebration of Negro History Week. In order to make the Trenton gala a success, Forer sought to secure a prominent speaker such as Communist novelist Howard Fast or Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Forer said he hoped the Negro History Week celebration would be an opportunity “to enroll Negro members into the Order.”58
In Detroit, too, the IWO tried to defuse discontent among white resi-dents, even some members of its own Garibaldi Society, over plans to place black people in public housing projects planned for white neighborhoods such as Oakwood. Part of this campaign involved lobbying in Lansing for enactment of a state FEPC. This campaign, though, was entered as one more damning indictment in the FBI’s voluminous file on the IWO. The FBI agent in Detroit noted of the IWO, “It was ascertained that the headquarters office had sent a telegram to Michigan State Legislators on July 12, 1945, stating that ‘10,000 members in Detroit are strongly in favor of Fair Employment Practices Legislation’ and urged the passing of the FEPC Bill.” The sneering
“ascertained” suggests that the FBI was probing for secret, “evil” purposes of the Order, when this organization had gone on record as supporting ef-forts to secure for African Americans their constitutional rights and had openly sent letters to legislators urging them to support the Michigan bill.
Such activity is otherwise known as petitioning one’s elected officials for redress of grievances. The FBI, however, also worriedly noted that the Michi-gan IWO had previously held a picnic—again this publicly advertised, open event was easily “ascertained”—at which a speaker “pleaded for the rights of the Negro” and circulated a petition calling for integrated battalions in the armed forces.59
At least one legislator was receptive to the IWO’s plea for a civil rights agency, for state senator Nowak was also the Order’s Michigan president.
When some Grand Rapids businessmen objected to the bill for a permanent state FEPC that he had introduced, Nowak countered that he was merely trying to secure equal opportunity for all Michiganders regardless of race or national origin. He wrote, “If there is no discrimination in employment of people because of race or national origin, as some of the writers claim, then
there is no reason to fear the bill, as certainly a law against discrimination would not apply. The fact that so many employers of labor strenuously pro-test against a Fair Employment Practice Bill adds evidence in favor of such legislation.” As to charges the bill was Communist-inspired, Nowak noted that one of the FEPC’s most prominent sponsors was the Catholic bishop of Grand Rapids. Nowak would continue to support black civil rights, first as a New Deal Democrat and then in his Progressive Party runs for Congress, noting on his campaign flyers that he had walked picket lines to protest De-troit’s segregated lunch counters. The charge made by state’s witnesses and FBI agents that progressives such as Nowak were opportunistically exploit-ing racial tensions for their own nefarious purposes seems specious when one reflects that, as Sugrue has noted, many other Detroit-area white people would have been repelled by, not attracted to, Nowak’s championing of racial equality. That Nowak publicized his positions on these issues indicates that he, and the Michigan IWO he led, acted out of principle, not cynicism.60
During World War II, the ASC also endorsed civil rights for American blacks and, like the IWO, was active in antilynching and poll-tax campaigns.
In Gary, Indiana, ASC member Katherine Hyndman, a Croatian immigrant, became involved with the Gary Civil Liberties Committee. After the war the ASC’s journal lionized Hyndman, also a member of the IWO, as “an out-standing advocate of equal rights and the betterment of race relations” who
“helped to settle a hate-strike of white citizens against Negro citizens in Gary. . . . [H]er efforts laid the groundwork for more harmonious relations between the groups.” Officials of the IWO such as Thompson Patterson, too, endorsed Hyndman’s efforts to promote racial brotherhood in her city when she worked to counter the white boycott of integrated schools. These efforts on behalf of school integration (and her left-wing affiliations) would later earn Hyndman prosecution and an attempted deportation. Hyndman sug-gested that this was because “we dare entertain thoughts not to the liking of present-day bigots.”61
At its 1943 conference, the SWS equated segregation with Hitler’s reign in Europe. “The enemies of the common people always use laws and the courts to incite the differences between the various religions, races and na-tional groups, and thus are the common people divided and cast down into fascist slavery,” its “Resolution against Race Discrimination and Anti-Semitism” began. “We are now seeing that anti-black laws in the U.S., just like the Nazis’ anti-Semitic laws . . . is the best means of installing in America a similarly bloody fascist regime.” The SWS consequently condemned all antiblack or anti-Semitic laws, and “call[ed] for strict punishment of all ra-cial and ethnic unrest and slurs and riots.” “We call on all workers, in order to strengthen understanding and cooperation between the various national groups, to work and engage in educational campaigns among those who ei-ther out of ignorance or as a result of the work of subversive elements, are
hoodwinked by such racist laws.” The following year, the SWS convention passed a similar “Resolution on Negroes” that equated American racism to the Hitlerism that had overrun Europe. The convention “ended with a call for an end to discrimination against Negroes, an end to Jim Crow and poll tax, and that as fast as possible, Negroes be integrated into all sections of
hoodwinked by such racist laws.” The following year, the SWS convention passed a similar “Resolution on Negroes” that equated American racism to the Hitlerism that had overrun Europe. The convention “ended with a call for an end to discrimination against Negroes, an end to Jim Crow and poll tax, and that as fast as possible, Negroes be integrated into all sections of