Investigation of Communist activities in Seattle, Wash., Area, Hearings, Part 2United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities
History
Investigation of Communist activities in Seattle, Wash., Area, Hearings, Part 2
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities
Communism -- Washington (State) -- Seattle
Without going into the detail of that, I simply want to say that my
activities at first met with the approval of the Communist Party, but,
with the outbreak of the war and the changed policy of the Communist
Party, my activities met with the sharp disapproval of the party.
In other words, the party adopted the policy during the war of
subordinating all other things in supporting the war. They had a slogan
of “Subordinate the sectional or local interests to the national
interest.” This was quite a sharp change in policy.
Mr. TAVENNER. Do you construe that as a sharp interest in the policy of
the United States or of some other country?
Mr. DENNETT. It was not with respect to the policy of the United
States. It was intended to guarantee that the full strength of the
United States would be brought to bear on the side of the Soviet Union
in the war which was then raging with Nazi Germany; and to guarantee
that it would be complete, the Communist Party ordered that the fight
for equal rights for Negroes should be subordinated and that Negroes
would have to wait for their equal rights, they would have to cease
being troublemakers over this question. And they used that term. They
used that term against me, that I was simply a troublemaker organizing
diversionary interests.
Well, I felt that if the war that was being fought was worth anything
it certainly was worth applying the principle of equal rights
throughout the length and breadth of this Nation of the United States,
especially when I knew of the heavy burden which the Negroes were
carrying in parts of this country. And I knew that there were some
attitudes around here which were extremely offensive to the Negro
people. They certainly do object to segregation, and they certainly
have a right to object to it.
It is my feeling, and always has been, that it is the duty of the white
people to see to it that they are not treated as inferiors.
So I was pressing that point, and I defied the leadership of the
district in the party to show me anything anywhere which justified
their change of attitude.
For my militant determination on it I was falling into bad graces so
rapidly that they removed me from the district bureau.
Before I went into the service I also quarreled with them over some
of the literature published under the name of Earl Browder, under
the title of “Victory and After,” in which I challenged some of the
contentions of Browder that it was possible to get along with some of
the big capitalists of the United States in the interest of the war
effort and forget the interest of the workers who were employed by
those capitalists, because in too many instances the capitalists were
making enormous profits in the war but the workers were not increasing
their wages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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