On Aug. 27, 1961, a mob of white citizens, including Ku Kluxers and police, attacked a civil rights demonstration outside the county courthouse in Monroe, N.C, injuring several of the demonstrators.
The demonstration would probably have gone into history as no different from many others in the South at the time –except for the famous Monroe “kidnapping” frame-up that arose from it.
During the demonstration, word spread in the black community that marchers had been attacked, and it was rumored that some had been shot. When a white couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Stegall, identified by some as members of the Klan, drove into the black section of Monroe, their car was rapidly surrounded by a crowd of angry blacks. The couple took refuge in the home of Robert F. Williams, militant leader of the black community, well known for his advocacy of self-defense against racist violence. Several hours later, the couple left Williams’ home, and the next day told a local paper that he had saved their lives.
Out of this incident, however, five people were charged with “kidnapping” – Robert Williams; Mrs. Mae Mallory, who was visiting Williams at the time; Richard Crowder and Harold Reape, two young black militants from Monroe; and John Lowry, white freedom rider from New York. Williams, knowing he would not be able to get a fair trial in Monroe and fearing for his life if arrested, fled to Cuba.
Between the fall of 1961 and early 1964, when the “kidnapping” trial finally took place, a nationwide defense effort developed. Monroe was prominent in the black and radical press of the time. The defendants spoke to numerous meetings all over the country. Funds were raised, articles written, leaflets and brochures distributed.
Most radical groups rallied to the aid of the Monroe defendants, including Progressive Labor.
The radical movement in this country has had a whole history of experience in defense efforts. Here in the United States, world-famous battles have been fought to save victims of racism and the class struggle from death or imprisonment – Mooney and Billings, Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro case, the Rosenberg-Sobell case, just to name some of the most famous.
Many lessons have been learned from these defense campaigns, one of the most important being that public opinion, mobilized in favor of the defendants, can make a decisive difference in the outcome of the legal proceedings. Many times militants have been victimized needlessly because they decided to rely on some “deal” with the prosecutor or judge who promised to let them off easy if they wouldn’t “make a lot of noise.”
Similarly, a cardinal rule of defense is that no unnecessary risks be taken which might jeopardize the defendants or unnecessarily narrow their base of support.
For instance, while continuing to express their ideas, groups helping in a defense effort must be careful not to impose their own political views on the defense committee itself or act in a manner which will lead to that end. A defense committee has one purpose – to mobilize funds, legal aid, and public support for the defendants.
Without capitulating to red-baiting, radicals must be very sensitive to attempts by the government and press to red-bait non-socialist or noncommunist defendants in order to limit and damage the defense effort.
Progressive Labor’s involvement in the Monroe defense case violated virtually all elementary concepts of defense. As in Hazard, it was clear that PL placed its own sectarian aims ahead of the needs of the struggle as a whole. PL’s cynical attempts to obtain easy publicity and make quick organizational gains succeeded only in jeopardizing the defense.
PL apparently “discovered” Monroe in the summer of 1963, some two years after the frame-up was initiated. Several PLers move there, and the July-August 1963 issue of Progressive Labor contained their first article on Monroe, entitled “Monroe Youth Organize.” The article describes the Monroe Youth Action Committee, the publication of Freedom – which was to be a biweekly printed newspaper –the establishment of Freedom House as a community center and headquarters for MYAC, and a campaign to organize women domestic workers into the Union County Women’s League. More on all this later.
Also projected, and seemingly imminent, was the launching of the Union County Workers League for black workers and unemployed, and the Progressive Farm Workers League for tenant farmers and sharecroppers.
Curiously, Progressive Labor never again mentioned the activities of these supposedly indigenous working-class organizations, leading one to assume that they never really came into being.
Anyone reading that issue of Progressive Labor would get the impression that PL was deeply involved in the Monroe defense, had been for a long time, and was rapidly building a base for itself in the area –all of which was patently false.
Since PL’s “Monroe period” was rather brief, the only other important information published in Progressive Labor appeared in the September 1963 issue.
In August PLer Ed Lemansky and MYAC activists Richard Crowder and Frank Butler were arrested in Pageland, S.C., a town about 20 miles from Monroe, where they had been organizing a class on Afro-American history. They were charged with carrying a concealed weapon and Lemansky was also charged with driving without registration and with improper lights. The three were held for several days, then released upon payment of fines totaling $270.
It was a typical example of harassment by white Southern “justice.” However, the implications for Richard Crowder, one of the defendants in the kidnapping case, were more serious.
Crowder stood to lose his bond by leaving the state of North Carolina, even if it was just to cross the nearby border. He could have been jailed and held until trial. If Crowder felt it was worth leaving the state anyway, the PLers involved should have at least taken the elementary precautions of driving a legal car and not violating other obvious laws which only gave the cops a handy excuse to arrest them.
But more important, once the arrest had occurred, PL was requested by those helping on the defense not to publicize the incident, since that could jeopardize Crowder and increase the chances that the Monroe authorities would revoke his bond. Yet PL proceeded to publicize the entire story in the September issue of Progressive Labor – after all, it showed PL’s involvement in Monroe, which was for them the most important thing.
Seemingly a minor incident, this was typical of PL’s callous lack of concern for the general needs and desires of the defense – and it comes from their own pen.
More damaging is the information reported by activists in the black community of Monroe, after they had a few experiences with PL.
By mid-October, barely two months after the PLers had arrived, the Monroe Youth Action Committee asked PL to leave town. In a press release entitled “Exploitation of Blacks in Monroe, N.C.” Richard Crowder, president of MYAC, said:
Here in Monroe, N.C., we welcomed members of Progressive Labor with open arms for we need the help of all sincere people. We worked along with these white ’friends,’ introduced them to our people and showed them our inhuman plight. We thought that these people from Progressive Labor really intended to help us. But alas! We’ve found out that our ’friends’ were only using the situation in Monroe, N. C. for their own personal gains. We have asked them to leave us in peace, so that we may regroup ourselves and try to fight our fight unhampered. They have refused, even have hinted retaliatory acts if they are forced out . . .
I’m asking all sincere individuals and groups for your help in any way, as the Monroe Youth Action Committee and people of the black community here still welcome assistance from sincere individuals and groups. This exploitation of us by PL has not dampened our belief in the goodness of mankind.
At the same time, Vol. 1, No. 7 of Did You Know? a community mimeographed newsletter published by Mrs. Ethel Johnson, a Monroe activist, charged: “The newspaper Freedom is not published by MYAC. MYAC members are merely used to give that impression . . .
Money solicited from sources over the country by the ’self-appointed helpers’ for the MYAC Movement is not banked in the name of the Movement.
The rent on Freedom House is two months in arrears, although the ’self-appointed helpers’ fly back and forth to their headquarters in New York City frequently. . . .
The members of Progressive Labor who are here to ’help’ the oppressed black people have been asked to leave. We feel that what happened and is happening is damaging the image of sincere white friends who are sincere in the plight of Afro-Americans not only here, but throughout the country.
The members of PL who are here refuse to leave. The oppressed black people here are confronted with an additional battle.
Obviously, such charges are extremely serious ones to be leveled against any organization which considers itself revolutionary. Yet PL never even let its readers know that such charges had been leveled against it –to say nothing of attempting to refute them. They simply ceased printing any news of Monroe!
But in parting, PL had one final stunt to pull. Several months later, when the “kidnapping” case finally came to trial in February 1964, the press stepped up its red-baiting campaign to a fever pitch, uncovering “reds” like aides of Martin Luther King among every new group of people who came to attend or help publicize the trial.
While not hiding their identities or ideas, radicals clearly should have been sensitive to the situation, as most radicals involved in the defense were. Not so PL, which could always spot a good publicity angle for itself, regardless of the wishes or needs of the defendants. PLer Ed Lemansky arrived for the trial to sell Marxist-Leninist Quarterly, pamphlets by Lenin, and other Marxist literature right in the courtroom! With the jury present, the judge called Lemansky up to the bench, confiscated his literature, and read the titles into the official trial record. Quite a sight for the all-white Southern jury, which later convicted the defendants on all counts after deliberating for 33 minutes.
PL, naturally, never explained why it was a matter of revolutionary principle to have a literature sale right then and there.
For those who had seen PL in operation in Hazard, its actions in Monroe came as no surprise – only as further confirmation of their willingness to use serious and genuine struggles for their own ends, despite the consequences for others. Future articles in this series will analyze what it is about PL’s political line that leads to such a consistent record of cynical, destructive efforts to manipulate and exploit other movements.