We Charge Genocide is a paper accusing the United States government of genocide based on the UN Genocide Convention. This paper was written by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) and presented to the United Nations at meetings in Paris in December 1951.
The document pointed out that the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide defined genocide as any acts committed with "intent to destroy" a group, "in whole or in part." [1] To build its case for black genocide, the document cited many instances of lynching in the United States, as well as legal discrimination, disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, a series of incidents of police brutality dating to the present, and systematic inequalities in health and quality of life. The central argument: The U.S. government is both complicit with and responsible for a genocidal situation based on the UN's own definition of genocide.
The document received international media attention and became caught up in Cold War politics, as the CRC was supported by the American Communist Party. Its many examples of shocking conditions for African Americans shaped beliefs about the United States in countries across the world. The United States government and press accused the CRC of exaggerating racial inequality in order to advance the cause of Communism. The U.S. State Department forced CRC secretary William L. Patterson to surrender his passport after he presented the petition to a UN meeting in Paris.
Soon after the United Nations was created in 1945, it began to receive requests for assistance from peoples across the world. These came from the indigenous peoples of European colonies in Africa and Asia, but also from African Americans. The first group to petition the UN regarding African Americans was the National Negro Congress (NNC), which in 1946 delivered a statement on racial discrimination to the Secretary General. The next appeal, from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1947, was more than 100 pages in length. W. E. B. Du Bois presented it to the UN on 23 October 1947, over the objections of Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of the late president and an American delegate to the UN. [2] Du Bois, frustrated with the State Department's opposition to the petitions, criticized president Walter White of the NAACP for accepting a position as consultant to the US delegation; White in turn pushed Du Bois out of the NAACP. [3] The petitions were praised by the international press and by Black press in the United States. America's mainstream media, however, were ambivalent or hostile. Some agreed that there was some truth to the petitions, but suggested that "tattling" to the UN would aid the cause of Communism. The Soviet Union did cite these documents as evidence of poor conditions in the United States. [4] The Civil Rights Congress (CRC), the successor to the International Labor Defense group and affiliated with the communist party, had begun to gain momentum domestically by defending Blacks sentenced to execution, such as Rosa Lee Ingram and the Trenton Six. The National Negro Congress joined forces with the CRC in 1947. [5]
The petition quotes the UN's definition of genocide as "Any intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, or religious group is genocide." It concludes that "the oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated against, and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent, conscious, unified policies of every branch of government. If the General Assembly acts as the conscience of mankind and therefore acts favorably on our petition, it will have served the cause of peace." The CRC emphasized that attempting to destroy a group "in part" was part of the definition, and argued that treatment of African Americans qualified as genocide. [6]
As evidence, the 237-page petition addresses the question of racism in the United States from different angles. It lists hundreds of wrongful executions and lynchings, refers to at least 10,000 undocumented cases, and also charges that Southern states in the U.S. had engaged in a conspiracy against African Americans' ability to vote through poll taxes and literacy tests. In addition to legal discrimination, the petition discusses systematic economic inequalities and differences in quality of life. [7]
Ultimately, the petition holds the US government responsible for genocide, through endorsement of both racism and "monopoly capitalism"—without which "the persistent, constant, widespread, institutionalized commission of the crime of genocide would be impossible. [6] Seeking to demonstrate the urgency of the problem, and to invite explicit comparisons between American genocide and Nazi genocide, the document focuses on incidents occurring after 1945: [8] The CRC only focused on incidents of mob violence and police terror since 1945; that is to say, since America proclaimed itself the leader of the 'free world' The charge of genocide, in the wake of the Holocaust, was devastating; it was more wrenching under the klieg lights of the Korean War and American platitudes about democracy. And everyone knew it.
The CRC procured source material carefully, and critics of the document acknowledged that its facts were correct. After it became clear that the CRC had, in fact, meticulously verified each incident, White tried another tactic. The 'facts are true' he lamented, but 'like all indictments drafted by a prosecutor', We Charge Genocide is one-sided ...." The CRC sought to demonstrate that systematic oppression of African Americans amounted to genocide because it reflected a violent white supremacy at the core of American culture. [9]
On 17 December 1951, the petition was presented to the United Nations by two separate venues: Paul Robeson, concert singer and activist, together with people who signed the petition, handed the document to a UN official in New York City, while William L. Patterson, executive director of the Civil Rights Congress, delivered copies of the petition to a UN delegation in Paris. [10] W. E. B. Du Bois, also slated to deliver the petition in Paris, had been classified by the US State Department as an "unregistered foreign agent" and was deterred from traveling. [11] Du Bois had previously had an expensive legal battle against the Justice Department. [12]
The 125 copies Patterson mailed to Paris did not arrive, allegedly intercepted by the US government. But he distributed other copies, which he had shipped separately in small packages to individuals' homes. [13]
The document was signed by many leading activists and family of Blacks who had suffered in the system, including: [7]
Patterson said he was ignored by US ambassador Ralph Bunche and delegate Channing Tobias, but that Edith Sampson would talk to him. [13]
Patterson was ordered to surrender his passport at the United States embassy in France. When he refused, U.S. agents said they would seize it at his hotel room. [14] Patterson fled to Budapest, where through the newspaper Szabad Nép, he accused the U.S. government of attempting to stifle the charges. [15] The U.S. government ordered Patterson to be detained when he passed through Britain and seized his passport when he returned to the United States. [16] As Paul Robeson had been unable to obtain a passport at all, the difficulty these two men faced in traveling led some to accuse the United States government of censorship. [17] [18]
We Charge Genocide was ignored by much of the mainstream American press. One exception, the Chicago Tribune , called it "shameful lies" (and evidence against the value of the Genocide Convention itself). [19] I. F. Stone was the only white American journalist to write favorably of the document. [7] [20] The CRC had communist affiliations, and the document attracted international attention through the worldwide communist movement. [21] Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term "genocide" and advocated for the Genocide Convention, disagreed with the petition because the African-American population was increasing in size. He accused its authors of wishing to distract attention from the alleged "genocide" in the Soviet Union, which had resulted in millions of deaths, because of their communist sympathies. [7] Lemkin accused Patterson and Robeson of serving foreign powers. He published an op-ed in The New York Times arguing that African-Americans did not experience the "destruction, death, annihilation" that would qualify their treatment as genocide. [11]
The petition was particularly well received in Europe, where it received abundant press coverage. [22] We Charge Genocide was popular almost everywhere in the world except in the United States. One American writer traveling India in 1952 found that many people had become familiar with the cases of the Martinsville Seven and Willie McGee through the document. [23]
The American delegation heavily criticized the document. Eleanor Roosevelt called it "ridiculous." Black delegates Edith Sampson and Channing Tobias spoke to European audiences about how the situation of African Americans was improving. [11] [24]
At the request of the State Department, the NAACP drafted a press release repudiating We Charge Genocide, calling it "a gross and subversive conspiracy." However, upon hearing initial press reports of the petition and the expected NAACP response, Walter White decided against issuing the release. He and the board decided that the petition did reflect many of the NAACP views. For instance, the organization had long been publishing the toll of blacks who had been lynched. [25] [26] "How can we 'blast' a book that uses our records as source material?" asked Roy Wilkins. [27]
The CRC's power was already declining due to accusations of Communism during the Red Scare, and it disbanded in 1956. [23]
The United Nations did not acknowledge receiving the petition. Given the strength of U.S. influence, it was not really expected to do so. [11] [28]
The document has been credited with popularizing the term "genocide" among Black people for their treatment in the US. [29] After renewed interest generated by Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party, We Charge Genocide was republished in 1970 by International Publishers. [30] Allegations of genocide were renewed in relation to the disproportionate effects of crack cocaine and HIV/AIDS in the black communities in the United States. [31] The National Black United Front petitioned the United Nations in 1996–1997, directly citing We Charge Genocide and using the same slogan. [32] [33]
Their petition begins:
Declaration of Genocide by the U.S. Government Against the Black Population in the United States.
Whereas, we the undersigned people of African ancestry understand that the proliferation of the distribution and sale of crack cocaine...has reached epidemic proportions, causing serious harm to the African community in the United States. Therefore, we understand that this harm can only be described as acts of genocide by the United States government through its Central Intelligence Agency.
In addition to acts of genocide perpetuated through the CIA and in this recent revelation, acts of genocide can also be attributed to the Government's use of taxpayers' resources to wage war on a segment of the U.S. population. This is evidenced by the following: (1) cutting back on welfare; (2) privatization of public housing and land grab schemes; (3) privatization of public education; (4) racist immigration policies; (5) privatization of basic health care; (6) building prisons and the expanding incarceration of millions of African and Latino youth. [32]
The high rate of incarceration of minorities is another American phenomenon sometimes connected to the word "genocide." [34] Disproportionate application of the death penalty to blacks convicted of the same crime as whites has also been cited, [35] as it was in the 1946–1951 era by the CRC. The United Nations, anthropologists, and mass media have generally not applied the term after 1945 to the internal affairs of Western states. [36] [37]
The petition also represented one of the first high-profile uses of the modern concept of "racism", framed in relation to the eugenic ideology of the reviled Nazis. [38]
We Charge Genocide was used as an example of how the Genocide Convention could be used against the United States. [39] The convention remained unpopular with the United States government and was not ratified until 1986. [30]
During the United Nations Convention against Torture Committee Review of the U.S. in November 2014, a group of eight young activists from Chicago, Illinois, (Breanna Champion, Page May, Monica Trinidad, Ethan Viets-VanLear, Asha Rosa, Ric Wilson, Todd St. Hill, and Malcolm London) submitted a shadow report using the name, We Charge Genocide. Their report addressed police brutality toward blacks in Chicago, the lack of police accountability, and the misuse of tasers by the Chicago Police Department. [40]
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances.
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of its prohibition. It was the first legal instrument to codify genocide as a crime, and the first human rights treaty unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on 9 December 1948, during the third session of the United Nations General Assembly. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951 and has 153 state parties as of June 2024.
Ralph Johnson Bunche was an American political scientist, diplomat, and leading actor in the mid-20th-century decolonization process and US civil rights movement, who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. He is the first black Nobel laureate and the first person of African descent to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He was involved in the formation and early administration of the United Nations (UN), and played a major role in both the decolonization process and numerous UN peacekeeping operations.
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 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.
William Lorenzo Patterson was an African-American leader in the Communist Party USA and head of the International Labor Defense, a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African Americans in cases involving issues of political or racial persecution.
While there is a consensus in the international community that ethnic groups have been targeted in Darfur and that crimes against humanity have therefore occurred, there has been debate in some quarters about whether genocide has taken place there. In May 2006, the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur organized by United Nations "concluded that the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide ... [though] international offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be more serious and heinous than genocide." Eric Reeves, a researcher and frequent commentator on Darfur, has questioned the methodology of the commission's report.
Henderson Lovelace Lanham was an American politician and lawyer.
The National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee(NECLC), until 1968 known as the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, was an organization formed in the United States in October 1951 by 150 educators and clergymen to advocate for the civil liberties embodied in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, notably the rights of free speech, religion, travel, and assembly. Though it solicited contributions, its program and policy decisions were controlled by a self-perpetuating national council for most of its first 20 years.
The Abraham Lincoln School for Social Science in Chicago, Illinois was a "broad, nonpartisan school for workers, writers, and their sympathizers," aimed at the thousands of African-American workers who had migrated to Chicago from the American South during the 1930s and 1940s.
The Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders in New York City from 1949 to 1958 were the result of US federal government prosecutions in the postwar period and during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Leaders of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) were accused of violating the Smith Act, a statute that prohibited advocating violent overthrow of the government. The defendants argued that they advocated a peaceful transition to socialism, and that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and of association protected their membership in a political party. Appeals from these trials reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled on issues in Dennis v. United States (1951) and Yates v. United States (1957).
Human rights movement refers to a nongovernmental social movement engaged in activism related to the issues of human rights. The foundations of the global human rights movement involve resistance to: colonialism, imperialism, slavery, racism, segregation, patriarchy, and oppression of indigenous peoples.
The International Labor Defense (ILD) (1925–1947) was a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 in the United States as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network. The ILD defended Sacco and Vanzetti, was active in the anti-lynching, movements for civil rights, and prominently participated in the defense and legal appeals in the cause célèbre of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s. Its work contributed to the appeal of the Communist Party among African Americans in the South. In addition to fundraising for defense and assisting in defense strategies, from January 1926 it published Labor Defender, a monthly illustrated magazine that achieved wide circulation. In 1946 the ILD was merged with the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties to form the Civil Rights Congress, which served as the new legal defense organization of the Communist Party USA. It intended to expand its appeal, especially to African Americans in the South. In several prominent cases in which blacks had been sentenced to death in the South, the CRC campaigned on behalf of black defendants. It had some conflict with former allies, such as the NAACP, and became increasingly isolated. Because of federal government pressure against organizations it considered subversive, such as the CRC, it became less useful in representing defendants in criminal justice cases. The CRC was dissolved in 1956. At the same time, in this period, black leaders were expanding the activities and reach of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954, in a case managed by the NAACP, the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
In the United States, black genocide is the argument that the systemic mistreatment of African Americans by both the United States government and white Americans, both in the past and the present, amounts to genocide. The decades of lynchings and long-term racial discrimination were first formally described as genocide by a now-defunct organization, the Civil Rights Congress, in a petition which it submitted to the United Nations in 1951. In the 1960s, Malcolm X accused the US government of engaging in human rights abuses, including genocide, against black people, citing long-term injustice, cruelty, and violence against blacks by whites.
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.
The Darfur genocide is the systematic killing of ethnic Darfuri people which has occurred during the War in Darfur. The genocide, which is being carried out against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups, has led the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict several people for crimes against humanity, rape, forced transfer and torture. An estimated 200,000 people were killed between 2003 and 2005.
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group's conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Isaiah Nixon was an African American soldier who was shot and killed in retaliation for voting in the 1948 Georgia Democratic primary.
RobertChilds "Big Duck" Mallard was an African American traveling casket salesman and landowner, who was shot and lynched by a group of about 20 members of the Ku Klux Klan in Lyons, Toombs County, Georgia. The people charged with his murder were acquitted by an all-white jury.