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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

“Communism,” Civil Rights, and Fighting Fire with Fire

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My relationship with Communism has been both intimate and estranged. My mother grew up in Communist Poland, and consequently lived through the many harsh realities of the regime. My grandfather’s disassociation with the party came with negative consequences: extreme poverty, limited access to medical and dental care, and blatant discrimination, as my mother was denied immediate access to a university education—essentially “weeded out” and “held back.” Thankfully, the United States granted my mother a visitor’s visa in the heat of the Solidarność movement, which eventually allowed her to go through the painstaking process of becoming a permanent resident, and a citizen of the United States.

I became aware of Communism at a very young age. I often examined the contents of my mother’s jewelry box as a little girl, where she kept a Solidarność pin. Adults were often taken aback by the fact that a six year old could name Communism. However, I understood my mother as a person who, despite living in the United States as an illegal immigrant, despite facing charges of deportation, forever remained courageous even when repeatedly harassed by Immigration Officers in downtown Chicago.

Despite growing up with a Communist consciousness, it wasn’t until I visited the Museum of Terror in Budapest, Hungary that I realized the absolute horror of Communism as it afflicted Eastern Europe. As a graduate student, I’m even more perplexed by “Communism” in the United States, as traced through Timothy B. Tyson’s book Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams & the Roots of Black Power (1999).

If you’re publically educated in the United States, you learned about two, maybe three leaders of the Civil Rights Movement: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and if you’re lucky, Malcolm X. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that militant leaders are “erased,” if you will, from historical texts. It is not a coincidence that in my 18th year of education, I finally get to learn about Robert F. Williams.

Tyson’s text offers readers a first hand account (by means of well organized primary texts) of the violence that took place not only in Monroe, North Carolina, but the racially inspired violence that took place throughout America. Violence inspired by the black vote, by the preoccupation with black male desire for white women, by trips to the community swimming pool. Violence manifested in physical, mental, and spiritual forms. The question that Tyson brings our attention to is whether or not it’s right, just, and fair to fight fire with fire.

The crucial component of Tyson’s book rests in the ability to produce empathy within the reader. The United States glorifies peace in the most ironic way—we raise up the Black leaders who chose to demonstrate peacefully, but we are quick to violently fight against even those individuals. When a leader like Robert F. Williams  endorses violence in the name of self defense, all hell breaks loose. I’m not interested in condemning or endorsing militancy or peaceful protest. But when Robert F. Williams states that “We must be willing to kill if necessary… We cannot rely on the law. We get no justice under the present system,”— I understand, I empathize, and I believe him (Tyson 149). Robert F. Williams’ opinion on violence as necessary appears to mirror the conclusion that Fyodor Dostoyevsky makes in his novel, “The Brothers Karmazov.” The brothers debate innocent suffering as a necessary component of humanity, as a further argument for the existence, or non-existence of God. They say: “If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony,” (Dostoyevsky 225). I believe Williams would agree that it’s beyond all comprehension for African Americans to suffer from the effects of passivity. Fighting fire with holy water only goes so far.

Robert F. Williams’ connection to Communism is really intriguing. Of course, any affiliation with Fidel Castro makes this label half appropriate, however the idea that fight for black civil rights were somehow communist is incomprehensible to me. The distorted understanding of  civil, human rights as a socialist (Marxist?) caused extraordinarily confusion in the United States. Human equality is not a communist cause, no matter how the propaganda might spin it.

Works Cited

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. “Rebellion." The Brothers Karamozov. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1956. 218-27. Print.


Tyson, Timothy B. Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1999. Print.