Southern Negro Youth Congress

Last updated
Southern Negro Youth Congress
Founded1937;86 years ago (1937)
Dissolved1949;74 years ago (1949)

The Southern Negro Youth Congress was an American organization established in 1937 at a conference in Richmond, Virginia. [1] It was established as a left-wing civil rights organization, arising from the National Negro Congress (NNC) and the leftist student movement of the 1930s. The SNYC aimed to empower black people in the Southern region to fight for their rights and envisioned interracial working-class coalitions as the way to dismantle the southern caste system. The NNC itself had been created in 1936 to address the economic and discriminatory challenges faced by African Americans, especially in New Deal programs.

Contents

The Southern Negro Youth Congress consisted of young leaders who participated in the National Negro Congress. [2] The first gathering of the Southern Negro Youth Congress consisted of a wide range of individuals. Such individuals as representatives from almost all the black colleges in the country, Boy and Girl Scouts, young steel workers, and even members of the YMCA all joined together to form the Southern Negro Youth Congress.

The Southern Negro Youth Congress felt that the major threat to democracy was not communism or socialism but rather fascism, not only to the black population but also a major threat to the white population as well. Many members of the Southern Negro Youth Congress felt that it was a great organization because it allowed people to not only settle into the Southern areas but also take action to change it for the better as well.

The Southern Negro Youth Congress engaged in many activities during the late 1930s and 1940s such as leading boycotts against discriminatory working environments, registering African-American votes, discussed problems with government officials in Washington, D.C., organized workers into unions and assisted rural African-Americans in legal cases. The Southern Negro Youth Congress performed such studies as taking items being purchased in a black community and then comparing the prices to those same items being purchased in a white community. This study showed that prices for the same goods were 20-30% higher in the black communities than they were in the white communities, which meant that the citizens who were struggling most to survive were actually paying higher prices for the items that were necessary for them to live.

Prominent members of the Southern Negro Youth Congress included veteran activists James Jackson, Helen Gray, Esther Cooper Jackson (at the far left of the photo with Senator Taylor), Louis Burnham (to the left of, and holding a paper with, Senator Taylor in the photo) [3] and Edward E. Strong. At one time or another it had the support of prominent figures that included Mary McCleod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Franklin D. Roosevelt and William Edward Burghardt DuBois. [4] At its prime the Southern Negro Youth Congress claimed that it represented about 250,000 young black southerners but due to insufficient records these numbers could not be verified. The Southern Negro Youth Congress saw its demise in 1949 in part due to the postwar period of the United States caught in the Cold War as well as fear, hysteria, racial violence and loss of jobs that led to many difficulties for the Southern Negro Youth Congress leaders to solve.

Early years and beginnings

Prior to the creation of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, many African-Americans during the first 30 years of the twentieth century struggled with financial hardships and often were near the bottom of the American economic and political life. The National Negro Congress was held in Chicago in 1936---although the young were present felt the need to create their own congress in hopes of not being hampered by elder members of the African-American movement during this time. Although there was much debate on where the first Southern Negro Youth Congress meeting would be held it was eventually decided that it would be held in Richmond, Virginia on February 13 and 14, 1937 at the Fifth Baptist Church. The first Southern Negro Youth Congress meeting consisted of 534 delegates that represented 250,000 young people in 23 states. Of these delegates a representative from all historically black colleges was present as well and members from YMCA branches and Girl and Boy scouts across the region. Like the National Negro Congress before it the Southern Negro Youth Congress also consisted of Communist party members as well.

First assembly

The Southern Negro Youth Congress met on February 13 and 14, 1937 where they were divided into groups to discuss problems and to advocate ideas to the general body for approval, modification or rejection. Prominent adult leaders such as John P Davis, executive secretary of the National Negro Congress, as well as many other leaders from the Christian Youth Council of North America, members of the YMCA and teachers from the black colleges around the area assisted the divided groups of the SNYC. The key components of the first Congress were noted by the seminar on “The Role of the Negro Church in Solving Social and Economic Problems of the Negro Youth,” as well as the keynote address delivered by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, the first black president of Howard University [5] Dean Herbert M. Smith spearheaded the seminar stating that Negro ministers had to interest themselves in matters with church members if they wanted the church to remain the greatest instrument of social enlightenment. Following the seminar, Dr. Johnson addressed the delegates with his keynote urging the audience to refrain from the status quo and to take a role in abolishing injustice caused by the American system against African-Americans. Dr. Johnson’s keynote addresses was received with great enthusiasm and applause from the delegates and observers, as it mainly was filled with advice for the young and criticized the old.

First session

The first conference also saw the establishment of the infrastructure of the Southern Negro Youth Congress in the National Office located in Richmond. The Congress looked to make officers consisting of young people who lived and worked in the South. The national officers elected to serve a one-year term were as follows: William F. Richardson as National Chairman, Edward Strong as Executive Secretary, C. Columbus Alston as National Field Representative, and James A. Cox as Treasurer. National officers were responsible for recruitment for the Southern Negro Youth Congress. [6] The most frequently used method for expansion was the membership drives that consisted of three different types: affiliate, club, and individual. [7]

Four-point program

Throughout its history, SNYC followed a four-point program that was utilized in almost all issues and campaigns. In addition to the SNYC, 100 local councils associated with the group supported this four-point program. The four-point program sought to improve the areas of the South in citizenship, education, jobs, and health. [8] In adopting these points, the SNYC attracted acceptance not only from African-Americans but white citizens in the south, as well.

Tobacco strikes

The Southern Negro Youth Congress was caught in two spontaneous strikes that occurred in Richmond, Virginia in 1937. The first strike occurred on April 16, 1937 against the Carrington & Michaux Tobacco Stemming Company. The second strike occurred on May 7, 1937 against the I. N. Vaughn & Company. At the time, the tobacco industry already had an established tobacco union, The Tobacco Workers’ International Union, which followed the policy of occupational segregation rather than racial discrimination which allowed them to ignore the rights and needs of African-American workers. In order to get the black workers organized, the Southern Negro Youth Congress sent a field representative, C. Columbus Alston. In addition to being a member of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, Alston was also a union member of the Youth Committee of the American Federation of Labor and helped organize the black workers into the Tobacco Stemmers and Laborers Industrial Union. With the help of Alston and Southern Negro Youth Congress, the Tobacco Stemmers and Laborers Industrial Union was able to draft a list of demands aimed at the Tobacco companies. Some of the demands listed by the black tobacco workers consisted of having higher wages, shorter working-hours and better working conditions. Within 48 hours of the union’s committee presenting its case to the management of the company, an agreement was reached with Frank Kruch of the State Labor Department and the owners of the companies. [9]

Other campaigns

Although the Southern Negro Youth Congress often campaigned for the rights of black workers in the South, they also targeted lynching crimes, the poll tax, and registering African-Americans to vote. The Southern Negro Youth Congress sought to combat the lynch terror that was occurring against the youth throughout the south. [10] The Southern Negro Youth Congress teamed up with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Conference on Human Welfare as well as many other organizations in hopes to support legislation that would make lynching a federal crime. Members of the Southern Negro Youth Congress were encouraged by members of the NAACP to send telegrams, letters and postcards to delegates in the area and more importantly, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since its inception, the Southern Negro Youth Congress attempted to get many blacks to vote in the South, despite the poll taxes. The Southern Negro Youth Congress pushed this movement through their editorial “Citizenship Campaign” which stated that the majority of problems blacks faced in the South could be changed if they voted. [11] Besides editorials, the Southern Negro Youth Congress also passed out pamphlets, leaflets, manuals, and buttons to encourage interest in voting. Although not always successful in their tactics, the Southern Negro Youth Congress did excel in being one of the first community groups to have citizenship campaigns that included voter registration clinics.

A sample of the aims and projects of the Southern Negro Youth Conference can be found in Louis Burnham's organizational report at the 1942 Atlanta joint meeting of SNYC's Advisory Board and National Council. The proposals were:

All the proposals in Burnham's report passed. [12]

Other tactics

Besides campaigning, the Southern Negro Youth Congress also believed in the power of using the arts as an instrument to promote their causes to the youth. The two main tactics used by the Southern Negro Youth Congress were poetry and drama. The Congress helped this movement by creating a literary publication Cavalcade: The March of Southern Negro Youth and a creative association entitled the Association of Young Writers and Artists to allow blacks to spread their expressions. [13] In addition, the Southern Negro Youth Congress Community Theatre also performed across the South to reacquaint Southern African-Americans with their heritage, as well as show them that struggle was necessary to demonstrate that America should change its democratic pronouncement.

Communism in the Southern Negro Youth Congress

Since the formation of the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1937, there was a strong communist representation present. [14] With the emergence of the American Communist Party and their visibility from 1935 to 1939, the United States government began to take actions to suppress organizations with Communist members. From 1940 to 1952, the FBI gathered data on the Southern Negro Youth Congress through technical surveillance such as telephone and microphone taps. [15] Besides this the FBI paid informants and paid for subscriptions to the Southern Negro Youth Congress’ publications. However, the imminent perception of the Southern Negro Youth Congress as a Communist Party dominated the mass, which subsequently led to the downfall of many Southern Negro Youth Congress campaigns and its popularity. Sallye Davis, mother of communist scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis, was active in the Southern Negro Youth Congress in Birmingham, Alabama. [16]

Eighth and last conference meeting

The Southern Negro Youth Conference in 1948 held their eighth Southern Negro Youth Congress Conference that also happened to be the last conference. The meeting was held on April 23, 24, and 25, 1948 in Birmingham, Alabama where the headquarters was located. The eighth conference attracted national news headlines as well as showed the extent of control over the lives of citizens that lived in the South. During this time the Police Commissioner was Bull Connor who used everything in his power to prevent the Southern Negro Youth Congress from gathering stating that the separation of races was required and that any action that disobeyed this law was to be reinforced by the police. [17] The Southern Negro Youth Congress looked for churches to hold the meetings but upon securing a location to use Bull Connor would often intervene and call the Minister of the church facilities being used and state that since the Southern Negro Youth Congress was an interracial organization that the meeting would violate the state of Alabama’s laws. Three black churches turned down the Southern Negro Youth Congress before Reverend H. Douglas Oliver allowed the meeting to be held in his pastor of the Alliance Gospel Tabernacle. The meeting was held on May 1, 1948 and upon arrival all white members were arrested and charged for breaking the segregation laws. [18] Despite this occurrence the meeting still commenced with the remaining black members under the segregated conditions. At the meeting the Southern Negro Youth Congress passed resolutions condemning the segregation laws and denying any affiliation with the Communist Party. The contentions of the party were not accepted by the U.S. Department of Justice and shortly after the meeting Edward K. Weaver; president of the Southern Negro Youth Congress was forced to resign.

Aftermath and legacy

With the end of the eighth Southern Negro Youth Congress and the resigning of the president the Congress began to lose rapid popularity in the south and north as membership declined drastically. The opposing powers against the Congress were too much to withstand as well as the times that occurred post World War II. The United States was undergoing what later became known as the Cold War and this led to heightened racial tension and encouraged local and national law enforcement agencies to increase the surveillance of radical and subversive organization. According to the United States Attorney General, Tom Clark, the Southern Negro Youth Congress appeared as a subversive organization. The Southern Negro Youth Congress was based on two fundamental objectives which were to democratize the South and to provide equal opportunities to its residents and although the Southern Negro Youth Congress disbanded by 1949 the effects of the Southern Negro Youth Congress efforts were not lost in that instilled an essence and spirit into the people for the further Civil Rights Movement that would occur a decade later.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters</span> American labor organisation

Founded in 1925, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) was the first labor organization led by African Americans to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The BSCP gathered a membership of 18,000 passenger railway workers across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Beginning after the American Civil War, the job of Pullman porter had become an important means of work in the black community in the United States. As a result of a decline in railway transportation in the 1960s, BSCP membership declined. It merged in 1978 with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks (BRAC), now known as the Transportation Communications International Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Negro Labor Congress</span> Congress established to advance the rights of African Americans

The American Negro Labor Congress was established in 1925 by the Communist Party as a vehicle for advancing the rights of African Americans, propagandizing for communism within the black community and recruiting African American members for the party.

The Communist Party USA, ideologically committed to foster a socialist revolution in the United States, played a significant role in defending the civil rights of African Americans during its most influential years of the 1930s and 1940s. In that period, the African-American population was still concentrated in the South, where it was largely disenfranchised, excluded from the political system, and oppressed under Jim Crow laws.

The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long, primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society – in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.

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.

The National Negro Committee was created in response to the Springfield race riot of 1908 against the black community in Springfield, Illinois. Prominent black activists and white progressives called for a national conference to discuss African American civil rights. They met to address the social, economic, and political rights of African Americans. This gathering served as the predecessor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was formally named during the second meeting in May 1910.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James W. Ford</span> American politician

James W. “Jim” Ford was an activist, a politician, and the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA in the years 1932, 1936, and 1940. Ford was born in Alabama and later worked as a party organizer for the CPUSA in New York City. He was also the first African American to run on a U.S. presidential ticket (1932) in the 20th century.

The United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) was a labor union formed in 1937 and incorporated large numbers of Mexican, black, Asian, and Anglo food processing workers under its banner. The founders envisioned a national decentralized labor organization with power flowing from the bottom up. Although it was short-lived, the UCAPAWA influenced the lives of many workers and had a major impact for both women and minority workers in the union.

The National Negro Congress (NNC) was an American organization formed in 1936 at Howard University as a broadly based organization with the goal of fighting for Black liberation; it was the successor to the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, both affiliated with the Communist Party. During the Great Depression, the party worked in the United States to unite black and white workers and intellectuals in the fight for racial justice. This period represented the Party's peak of prestige in African-American communities. NNC was opposed to war, fascism, and discrimination, especially racial discrimination. During the Great Depression era, a majority of Americans faced immense economic problems. Many lost their jobs and as a result, were forced to live at the margins of society. The crisis highlighted inequities for many African Americans, who were unemployed at higher rates than white.

Hosea Hudson was an African-American labor leader in the Southern United States.

The National Negro Labor Council (1950–1955) was an advocacy group dedicated to serving the needs and civil rights of black workers. Many union leaders of the CIO and AFL considered it a Communist front. In 1951 it was officially branded a communist front organization by U.S. attorney general Herbert Brownwell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliver Cox</span> American sociologist

Oliver Cromwell Cox was a Trinidadian-American sociologist noted for his early Marxian viewpoint on fascism.

Manning Rudolph Johnson AKA Manning Johnson and Manning R. Johnson was a Communist Party USA African-American leader and the party's candidate for U.S. Representative from New York's 22nd congressional district during a special election in 1935. Later, he left the Party and became an anti-communist government informant and witness.

<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 and social worker. 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">Negro Sanhedrin</span> Historic trade union conference

The Negro Sanhedrin was a national "All-Race Conference" held in the American city of Chicago, Illinois, from February 11 to 15, 1924. The gathering was attended by 250 delegates representing 61 trade unions, civic groups, and fraternal organizations in a short-lived attempt to forge a national program protecting the legal rights of African-American tenant farmers and wage workers and extending the scope of civil rights.

The Tobacco Workers International Union (TWIU) was a labor union representing workers in the tobacco industry in the United States and Canada.

<i>Freedom</i> (American newspaper) 1950–1955 monthly newspaper on African-American issues

Freedom was a monthly newspaper focused on African-American issues published between 1950–1955. The publication was associated primarily with the internationally renowned singer, actor and then officially disfavored activist Paul Robeson, whose column, with his photograph, ran on most of its front pages. Freedom's motto was: "Where one is enslaved, all are in chains!" The newspaper has been described as "the most visible African American Left cultural institution during the early 1950s." In another characterization, "Freedom paper was basically an attempt by a small group of black activists, most of them Communists, to provide Robeson with a base in Harlem and a means of reaching his public... The paper offered more coverage of the labor movement than nearly any other publication, particularly of the left-led unions that were expelled from the CIO in the late 1940s... [It] encouraged its African American readership to identify its struggles with anti-colonial movements in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Freedom gave extensive publicity to... the struggle against apartheid."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis E. Burnham</span> African-American activist and journalist (1915-1960)

Louis Everett Burnham was an African-American activist and journalist. From his college days, and continuing through adulthood, he was involved in activities emphasizing racial equality, through various left-wing organizations, campaigns and publications in both the northern and southern United States, particularly in New York City and Birmingham, Alabama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Gelders</span> American physicist and activist

Joseph Sidney Gelders was an American physicist who later became an antiracist, civil rights activist, labor organizer, and communist. In the mid-1930s, he served as the secretary and southern-U.S. representative of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners. In September 1936, Gelders was kidnapped, beaten, and nearly killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan for his civil rights and labor organizing activities. After his recovery, Gelders continued his activism and cofounded the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax. He collaborated closely with other activists including Lucy Randolph Mason and Virginia Foster Durr. Internal injuries sustained during his kidnapping and assault led to Gelders' death on March 1, 1950.

Henry O. Mayfield was an American miner and social activist. Mayfield was one of the prominent Black miners who played an active role in forming the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) between 1935 and 1955 as well as having a leadership role in the SNYC. Mayfield served as Chairman of the Board for Freedomways Associates, the publishing company for the popular cultural magazine Freedomways, up until his death.

References

  1. ↑ See, e.g., Hosea Hudson, Black Worker in the Deep South, at 69 (Int'l Pubs. 1972).
  2. ↑ Hughes, C. Alvin (1987). "We Demand Our Rights: The Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949". Phylon. 48 (1): 38–50. doi:10.2307/275000. JSTOR   275000.
  3. ↑ Swindall, Lindsey R. (2014). The Path to the Greater, Freer, Truer World: Southern Civil Rights and Anticolonialism . Gainesville: University Press of Florida. p. 119. ISBN   9780813049922. OCLC   1054374507 . Retrieved 20 August 2021– via Project MUSE.
  4. ↑ Richards, Johnetta Gladys (1987). The Southern Negro Youth Congress: A history. University of Cincinnati. p. 2.
  5. ↑ Hughes, C. Alvin (1987). "We Demand Our Rights: The Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949". Phylon. 48 (1): 40. doi:10.2307/275000. JSTOR   275000.
  6. ↑ Richards, Johnetta Gladys (1987). The Southern Negro Youth Congress: A history. University of Cincinnati. p. 35.
  7. ↑ Richards, Johnetta Gladys (1987). The Southern Negro Youth Congress: A history. University of Cincinnati. p. 36.
  8. ↑ Hughes, C. Alvin (1987). "We Demand Our Rights: The Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949". Phylon. 48 (1): 43. doi:10.2307/275000. JSTOR   275000.
  9. ↑ Hughes, C. Alvin (1987). "We Demand Our Rights: The Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949". Phylon. 48 (1): 44. doi:10.2307/275000. JSTOR   275000.
  10. ↑ Richards, Johnetta Gladys (1987). The Southern Negro Youth Congress: A history. University of Cincinnati. p. 78.
  11. ↑ Richards, Johnetta Gladys (1987). The Southern Negro Youth Congress: A history. University of Cincinnati. p. 91.
  12. ↑ Aptheker, Herbert, ed. (1951). "National Council Meeting, S.N.Y.C. (1942)". A documentary history of the Negro people in the United States . Preface by William L. Patterson. New York: Citadel Press. pp. 424–425. Retrieved 14 November 2022.
  13. ↑ Richards, Johnetta Gladys (1987). The Southern Negro Youth Congress: A history. University of Cincinnati. p. 126.
  14. ↑ Richards, (2008).
  15. ↑ Richards, Johnetta Gladys (1987). The Southern Negro Youth Congress: A history. University of Cincinnati. p. 141.
  16. ↑ Bhavnani, Kum-Kum; Davis, Angela Y. (1989). "Complexity, Activism, Optimism: An Interview with Angela Y. Davis". Feminist Review (31): 66–81. doi:10.2307/1395091. JSTOR   1395091.
  17. ↑ Hughes, C. Alvin (1987). "We Demand Our Rights: The Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949". Phylon. 48 (1): 48. doi:10.2307/275000. JSTOR   275000.
  18. ↑ Hughes, C. Alvin (1987). "We Demand Our Rights: The Southern Negro Youth Congress, 1937-1949". Phylon. 48 (1): 49. doi:10.2307/275000. JSTOR   275000.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.