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autonomous nation state. Programmatically the Communist Party did not promote
independence for the Black Belt Nation, but it proposed to support such an
independent state if that was the choice of the people of the area. On the other
hand, Black people living outside the Black Belt Nation, in the rest of the United
States, were not pan of a nation but formed an oppressed national minority; theirs
was not ultimately a struggle for nationhood, but a struggle for full democratic
rights and full social equality. However, since their oppression was distinct from -
and for most Blacks, supplementary to — working-class oppression, this struggle for
democratic rights could not be reduced to the general workers struggle (as socialist
and communist parties in the U.S. had previously tended to do), but had to have its
own special forms and demands. Whatever the merits of the idea of the Black Belt
Nation, the most important advance of the new line was that the Communist Party
came to view African Americans, north or south, not.as a "race" (a physiological
category) but as a historically-constituted people. As a result of this line, the
development of a powerful movement for Black freedom, as well as the
development of multiracial workers' and communist movements, became central
concerns for Communists. Moreover, providing a bridge between these movements
and bringing them into alliance, became an important Communist task.^°
The Communist view of Black oppression as a form of national oppression
did not, however, cause them to support separatism. The CP was thoroughly
integrationist. Indeed, as Mark Naison has shown, its opposition to "narrow
nationalism" (viewed as an erroneous over-reaction to white chauvinism)
sometimes went so far that the party became suspicious of any organizing efforts by
Black communists in which whites were not involved. On the positive side, though,
the Communist Party worked very hard to integrate organizations it was involved
with - including, above all, itself - and to insure equality within those
organizations. It also promoted Black leadership in the party and the mass
organizations. For example, Black Communist James Ford campaigned widely as
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