black folks in 1919 had it right pt.2
The African Blood Brotherhood was a short-lived but highly influential Black Liberation organization in the US, formed during the infamous “red summer” of 1919. That year saw murderous pogroms against African-Americans from Chicago to St. Louis, yet it also was a year of rising militant resistance to racist oppression. The African Blood Brotherhood was formed in part to organize physical resistance to pogroms, but also to organize for socialist revolution against white supremacy. Many members of the African Blood Brotherhood eventually joined the nascent Communist Party and helped to shape their policy on Black Liberation through the 1920’s and 30’s. Notable African Blood Brotherhood comrades included queer communist poet Claude McKay, whose 1919 poem “If We Must Die” epitomized the African Blood Brotherhood’s spirit of militant struggle.