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W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs of America

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The W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was a national youth organization sponsored by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and launched at a national convention held in San Francisco in June 1964. The organization was active in the American student movement of the 1960s and maintained a prominent presence on a number of college campuses including Columbia University in New York City and the University of California in Berkeley. The organization was dissolved by decision of the CPUSA in February 1970 and succeeded by a new organization known as the Young Workers Liberation League.

Organizational history

Forerunners

The W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was one of a series of youth organizations affiliated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Its precursors included the Progressive Youth Organizing Committee, established in April 1959, and Advance, the New York City-based youth organization which had sprung from this formational organization.[1]

In 1961 a small group of radicals in San Francisco established themselves as the "W.E.B. DuBois Club."[2] This small group proved the inspiration for sister DuBois Clubs across the bay in Berkeley and at San Francisco State College.[2] The next year, a campus chapter was organized at UCLA in Los Angles.[2]

These Communist Party-inspired mass organizations in California were made part of the CPUSA's national strategy in October 1963, when national secretary Gus Hall announced the intention of the CPUSA to establish "a Marxist-oriented youth organization to attract non-Communists as the first step toward their eventual recruitment into the party."[3] This new organization would be the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America.

Formation

The founding convention for the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was called for June 1964 in San Francisco, the place from whence the pioneer California groups had sprung. The gathering was attended by several hundred delegates, including such leading communist activists as Bettina Aptheker, Carl Bloice, Mickey Lima, and People's World editor Al Richmond.[4]

The convention elected Phil Davis, a former field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as President and Eugene Dennis, Jr. as editor of the organization's bulletin, which was renamed The Insurgent early in 1965.[5]

Development

In 1966 the headquarters of the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America was moved from San Francisco to Chicago.[6] It was there that the 1966 convention of the organization was held, with speakers including Donna Allen of Women Strike for Peace, communist historian Herbert Aptheker, and radical attorney William Kunstler.[6]

On August 27-28, 1966, the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America hosted a national conference in Washington, D.C. under the slogan "for jobs, peace, and freedom." Over 125 people participated in the event, which included a mass meeting at the National Sylvan Theater and a protest demonstration against poverty and the war in Vietnam at the gates of the White House.[7]

The DuBois Clubs were active in demonstrations against military conscription and the free speech movement throughout the latter half of the 1960s, high profile activity which lead the federal government to take action against the organization. In March 1966 U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach petitioned the Subversive Activities Control Board to issue an order to the DuBois Clubs ordering them to register with federal authorities as a so-called "communist front."[8] This action lead to a 1967 attempt at a legal challenge of the constitutionality of the Subversive Activities Control Board, a case which was lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals.[6] The DuBois Clubs tried again in 1968, without success, to enjoin the government from forcing it to register as a "Communist front."[6]

Dissolution and legacy

Footnotes

  1. ^ Francis X. Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 2. Boston: Western Islands, 1971; pg. 181.
  2. ^ a b c Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 2, pg. 182.
  3. ^ Quoted in Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 2, pg.182.
  4. ^ Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 2, pp. 182-183.
  5. ^ Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 2, pp. 183-184.
  6. ^ a b c d Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 2, pg. 187.
  7. ^ Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 2, pg. 188.
  8. ^ Gannon, Biographical Dictionary of the Left: Volume 2, pg. 186.

Additional reading

  • US Senate Judiciary Committee, Gaps in Internal Security Laws: Hearings, Eighty-ninth Congress, Second Session. Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1966. LoC number 66062152.

See also

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