Angie Dickerson

Last updated

Angie Dickerson was a New York-based American tenants' rights organizer [1] involved in the Communist Party who was under surveillance by the FBI. [2] She was one of the members of Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a leftist, black feminist organization formed in 1951. [3]

Dickerson was a member of the World Peace Council and advocated for US withdrawal from Vietnam and Korea. [4] For the conference held in East Berlin of the World Peace Council from 21–23 June 1969 to convince the US to recognize the German Democratic Republic, Dickerson was sent 20 tickets for Aeroflot passage from New York City for conference attendees. [5]

In 1970, Dickerson chaired, along with Ossie Davis, Dick Gregory and others, a National Emergency Conference to defend the Black Panther Party's right to existence. Believing that the US Attorney was attempting to destroy the party, a wide group of church leaders, civil rights groups, labor groups and colleges sponsored the conference. The sponsors included: Ralph Abernathy head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality; Irving Sarnoff of the Los Angeles Peace Action Council; and Rev. Quincy Cooper, of Black Methodists for Church Renewal. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">COINTELPRO</span> Series of covert and illegal projects by the FBI

COINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations. FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights and Black power movements, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, independence movements, a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the far-right group National States' Rights Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peace and Freedom Party</span> American left-wing political party

The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a left-wing political party with affiliates and former members in more than a dozen American states, including California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana and Utah, but none now have ballot status besides California. Its first candidates appeared on the 1966 New York ballot. The Peace and Freedom Party of California was organized in early 1967, gathering over 103,000 registrants which qualified its ballot status in January 1968 under the California Secretary of State Report of Registration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stokely Carmichael</span> African American activist (1941–1998)

Kwame Ture was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending the Bronx High School of Science. He was a key leader in the development of the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and last as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Lee</span> American politician (born 1946)

Barbara Jean Lee is an American politician and social worker who has served as a U.S. representative from California since 1998. A member of the Democratic Party, Lee represents California's 12th congressional district, which is based in Oakland and covers most of the northern part of Alameda County. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, it is one of the nation's most Democratic districts, with a rating of D+40.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communist Party USA</span> American political party

The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), also known as the American Communist Party, is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Lawyers Guild</span> American association of lawyers

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is a progressive public interest association of lawyers, law students, paralegals, jailhouse lawyers, law collective members, and other activist legal workers, in the United States. The group was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association (ABA) in protest of that organization's exclusionary membership practices and conservative political orientation. They were the first predominantly white US bar association to allow the admission of minorities to their ranks. The group sought to bring more lawyers closer to the labor movement and progressive political activities, to support and encourage lawyers otherwise "isolated and discouraged," and to help create a "united front" against Fascism.

The New Communist movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution. The movement, according to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.

The Civil Rights Congress (CRC) was a United States civil rights organization, formed in 1946 at a national conference for radicals and disbanded in 1956. It succeeded the International Labor Defense, the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties, and the National Negro Congress, serving as a defense organization. Beginning about 1948, it became involved in representing African Americans sentenced to death and other highly prominent cases, in part to highlight racial injustice in the United States. After Rosa Lee Ingram and her two teenage sons were sentenced in Georgia, the CRC conducted a national appeals campaign on their behalf, their first for African Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louise Thompson Patterson</span>

Louise Alone Thompson Patterson was a prominent American social activist and college professor. Patterson's early experiences of isolation and persecution on the West Coast had a profound impact on her later activism. She recognized the ways in which racism and discrimination affected individuals and communities and dedicated her life to challenging these systems of oppression. Her involvement in the Harlem Renaissance, a period of intellectual and cultural awakening in African American communities, allowed her to connect with other artists and activists who were similarly committed to social justice. In addition to her notable contributions to civil rights activism, Thompson Patterson was also recognized as one of the pioneering Black women to be admitted to the University of California at Berkeley.

African-American leftism refers to left-wing political currents that have developed among various African-American communities in the United States. These currents are active around social issues, and often call for an African-American led movement that aims at bringing about some form of socialism between the African-American community and White community and other minority groups.

During the Cold War (1947–1991), when the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in an arms race, the Soviet Union promoted its foreign policy through the World Peace Council and other front organizations. Some writers have claimed that it also influenced non-aligned peace groups in the West.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Panther Party</span> US black power organization (1966–1982)

The Black Panther Party was an American Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esther Cooper Jackson</span> Civil rights activist (1917–2022)

Esther Victoria Cooper Jackson was an American civil rights activist, social worker, and communist activist. She worked with Shirley Graham Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Strong, and Louis E. Burnham, and was one of the founding editors of the magazine Freedomways, a theoretical, political and literary journal published from 1961 to 1985. She also served as organizational and executive secretary at the Southern Negro Youth Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Revolutionary Youth Movement</span> Political party in United States

In the United States, the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) is the section of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that opposed the Worker Student Alliance of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Most of the national leadership of SDS joined the RYM in order to oppose PLP's party line and what they alleged to be its attempted takeover of the SDS leadership structure, particularly at the 1969 SDS convention in Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sojourners for Truth and Justice</span>

Sojourners for Truth and Justice was a radical civil rights organization led by African American women from 1951 to 1952. It was led by activists such as Louise Thompson Patterson, Shirley Graham Du Bois and Charlotta Bass.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosa Lee Ingram</span>

Rosa Lee Ingram was an African American sharecropper and widowed mother of 12 children, who was at the center of one of the most explosive capital punishment cases in U.S. history. In the 1940s, she became an icon for the civil rights and social justice movement.

Defending Rights & Dissent (DRAD) is a national not-for-profit advocacy organization in the United States, dedicated to defending civil liberties, exposing government repression, and protecting the right of political dissent. DRAD was formed as the merger of the Defending Dissent Foundation (DDF) and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC). DRAD is currently active in defending the right to protest, opposing political surveillance, and campaigning against the prosecution of national security whistleblowers.

Bonita Williams was a British West-Indian Communist Party leader, poet, and civil rights activist in Harlem, New York during the Great Depression in the 1930s. During this time, she wrote several poems and gave speeches focusing on black suffrage and workers' rights in the context of racial discrimination and class inequity. In addition, Williams served as the leader of several Harlem-based organizations, namely the Harlem Unemployment Council, Harlem Tenants' League, Harlem Action Committee against the High Cost of Living, and League of Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR).

References

  1. McDuffie, Erik (2008). "A "New Freedom Movement of Negro Women": Sojourning for Truth, Justice, and Human Rights during the Early Cold War". Radical History Review. 2008 (101): 81–106. doi:10.1215/01636545-2007-039.
  2. FBI (14 January 1955). "Angie Dickerson". New York Bureau File.
  3. McDuffie, Erik S. (2011). Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press. p. 160. ISBN   978-0-8223-5033-0 . Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  4. "Congressional Record House #11189". Congressional Record. 117 (92nd Congress, Session 1, Parts 8-9): 869. 21 April 1971. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  5. Huston, Tom Charles (1969). "Foreign Communist Support of the Revolutionary Protest Movement in the United States". Internet Archive. US Government Declassified Internet Archive. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
  6. "Groups To Rally In Chicago To Defend Black Panthers". The Carolina Times. 7 February 1970. Retrieved 4 April 2015.