The Party and Black Liberation AN INTERVIEW WITH JACOB ZUMOFF In its formative years, the Communist Party was pushed by the Comintern to organize against racism. INTERVIEW BY SCOTT MCLEMEE The frst decade of the American Communist Party is difcult to sentimentalize. Unlike the campaign to defend the Scottsboro Boys — or even the patriotic hokum of the Popular Front days (“Communism is Twentieth Century Americanism!”) when the members and sympathizers numbered around a million — the party’s early years saw more state repression and internal confict than decisive action or steady growth. No sepia-toned image of it is burned into the American lef’s historical memory. But the CP was also the frst socialist group in the United States to make the fght against racial oppression central to its program. Most members were working-class immigrants; the party had deep roots in ethnic communities while also taking pride in its internationalism and anti-imperialism. Jacob Zumof ’s The Communist International and U.S. Communism, 1919-1929, now out in paperback, is among the few studies of the CP in its formative period — and the organization it describes has strengths we would do well to remember, since they were hard-won and priceless. Using archives from the Communist International (Comintern) and other sources that were unavailable to previous historians, Zumof attempts to refute what he sees as the myth of destructive Moscow The Party and Black Liberation https://jacobin.com/2015/08/communist-party-scottsboro-cominterm-z... 1 of 9 8/23/23, 10:38 PM