Black people fled to USSR from US bigotry and linch mobs

[Cael]

From Time Magazine 1931


Negroes who are bona fide U. S. citizens are in high favor at Moscow as potential workers for a Soviet revolution in the U. S. Such a Negro is William Lorenzo Patterson, frankly a Communist, who after three and one-half years in Russia returned to the U. S. last week on his valid U. S. passport and began at once to preach Communist doctrines which appeared in front-page position before the 41,000 Negro readers of Harlem's Amsterdam News. Communist Patterson is a member of the New York Bar, a former law partner of two Negroes who are now Assistant District Attorneys in New York City. As a youth he was the only pupil of his race at Mill Valley (Calif.) High School, was nevertheless elected by his white fellows captain of the baseball team. After working his way through the University of California, after practicing law and joining the Communist party in New York, he went in 1927 to Russia.


"After a critical comparison of the Soviet system with Capitalism in other countries," said Lawyer Patterson last week, "I am convinced that when the Negro masses of America come to understand more clearly the ideology of Communism they must accept it as the only genuine relief from their present plight. . . .

"Under Capitalism they are doomed to exploitation and oppression. The door to better things is closed to the American worker by his wage scale. In Russia, where private profit is being progressively abolished, there will be no limit to the benefits the worker may receive.* When the Negro realizes the superiority of that system he is bound to accept its tenets."

There is almost no limit to the benefits a likely U. S. Negro may receive just now in Moscow. A scholarship awaits him at the "Lenin School" for propaganda and revolution maintained by the Third International. At periodic congresses of the International, he proudly finds the U. S. Communist Party represented by a Negro or Negroes who state, amid cheers, that Communism is spreading like wildfire among their race in the U. S. Also, in Moscow a Negro can take a white bride without exciting comment. Prudently Communist Patterson left his white bride of 15 months with her parents in Moscow when he returned to the U. S. last week.

What U. S. Negroes are eager to hear about Russia is the truth of the so-called "lynching incident" (the Negro was not lynched) in a Soviet factory at Kharkov. The story, as retold last week by Communist Patterson: "Lewis and Brown, two white Americans from the South who were working side by side in a large tractor plant in Kharkov with Robinson, an American Negro, objected to his eating in the same dining room with them. When brought to trial, their fellow-workers found them guilty of race discrimination and sentenced them to two years in prison or expulsion from the country for twelve years.

Full article:

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...#ixzz0Wa6VmlOM

[sandar]

and jews fled the ussr for other places because of the progroms...oh and gerogians wqerent over happy under stalin either...the treatment of minorty ethnic people in the USA is soemthing to that countries shame...and should be condemed by all right thinking people...but tjhe USSR was not a place of racial tolerance either..and their attitudes to mincoritty ethnic people should be condemned by all right thinking poeple

[borntorum]

Can DC set up a special "I heart the USSR" forum for Cael so that his endless threads can be hidden away in there?

[Cael]

and jews fled the ussr for other places because of the progroms...oh and gerogians wqerent over happy under stalin either...the treatment of minorty ethnic people in the USA is soemthing to that countries shame...and should be condemed by all right thinking people...but tjhe USSR was not a place of racial tolerance either..and their attitudes to mincoritty ethnic people should be condemned by all right thinking poeple

So you agree that Black people fled to the USSR from US bigotry and murder?

[sandar]

I agree that black people suffered those things in the USA. That they fled to the USSR is new to me, but if you have a rwelaible source I am preapred to believe it.
I think the USSR owuld take any american in as apolitical gesture, never mind how they traeted their own minorties.
By the way, thats not how you spell lynch

[jcdf]

Ethnic minorities have never really been treated well anywhere for most of human history. They are not always to recipients of violence but are nearly always treated as second class citizens or outsiders.

[eyeswideopen]

So you agree that Black people fled to the USSR from US bigotry and murder?

There was a propoganda war between the US and USSR over who was least racist.
There were definitely more lynchings in the US, but I've also read of black people in the USSR experiencing racism. At this stage, we should be at least thinking about doing better than either.

The worker's states weren't a paradise and a lot of people stayed very poor. They were labouring against the disadvantages of their history and also against Cold War pressures and the general economic and political dominance of capitalism globally. They did make enormous gains in the 1950s and 60s particularly.

Rather than slug it out with one extreme false image being posited against another, it would imo be more useful to make an appraisal of the workers' states based on some real data.

[Sailor]

Cael - is this the best argument in favour of communism and your beloved USSR that you can come up with? They had a race relations situation slightly better than 1930´s U.S.? That´s weak - in fact, that´s downright pathetic

[Captain Sensible]

Well its a fact that the USA's racism was actual state policy . There was a fully operational aparteid system . The 'evidence' of USSR racism is mostly hearsay , tho human nature tells me it must have existed to some degree .

[sandar]

talk to the jews or the gerogians about whether what happened to themw as state policy or not. Whta happenedin the US was state policy until tleats the 1960s, but even after that the USSR WAS worssee