Leading US Racial Revolutionary Profiled

In my series of posts on the “National Question” I contend that NZ’s racial problems have been consistently aggravated by Marxist-Leninist groups in order to bring about social change and eventually, a socialist NZ.

This process is not confined to this country, but is standard operating procedure for Marxist-Leninist parties, world wide.

The article below is taken from the Communist Party USA’s theoretical journal, Political Affairs. It originally appeared in the British communist newspaper, Morning Star.

It is a profile of leading Communist Party USA member, Jarvis Tyner, who recently toured the UK as the guest of British communists to help highlight “Black History Month”. Tyner spoke on RACE, CLASS AND SOCIALIST REVOLUTION.

I think the article illustrates how much “social change” can be achieved by a small number of disciplined Marxist-Leninists, acting to a well planned programme.


“One of the most prominent and influential leaders of the American left will begin a speaking tour of Britain next week, during what is appropriately Black History Month. Jarvis Tyner has been a tireless fighter for civil rights since the campaigns of his youth in his native Philadelphia.

Today he is one of the most prominent black figures in the US peace, labour and anti-racist movements. His experience shows how the dimensions of race, class and anti-imperialism can be combined in revolutionary action.

Fresh out of high school in 1959, Jarvis Tyner joined the struggle against discrimination in employment, housing and local services. When the black students sat in to protest against Woolworth’s segregated meal counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, he helped organise a boycott of the company’s ‘five and dime’ stores in Pennsylvania.

Then he joined the picket line called by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People outside the whites-only Girard College in the middle of northern Philadelphia’s largest black ghetto.

Tyner put his organising skills to work when his own American Lithographers Union struck for several weeks in 1962, after which white workmates elected him as their shop steward. Subsequently laid off, he later found work in a furniture factory where he led a successful battle to bring in the Teamsters Union.

He participated in one of the great moments of 20th century history, bringing busloads of Philly youth to hear Martin Luther King deliver his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in Washington DC in August 1963. By this time, too, Jarvis was rising through the ranks of the Negro American Labor Council and the Du Bois Clubs of America movement, named after NAACP founder William Du Bois.

In 1961, both the then 20-year old Jarvis Tyner and the 93-year old Du Bois had joined the US Communist Party.

Tyner’s activites in the black power and anti-Vietnam War movements brought him increasingly into direct confrontation with the state. On May Day 1964, he was arrested at a rally against extreme right-wing Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, although a mass campaign led to charges being dropped.

Elected national chairman of the Du Bois Clubs of America four years later, Jarvis moved to New York where he played a key role in uniting black and Latino workers with the anti-war movement. As leader of the Young Workers Liberation League, he helped organise a 16,000-strong rally at Madison Square Gardens to welcome Angela Davis following her acquittal in 1970 on charges including homicide in aid of the Black Panthers.

Naturally, he played a major part in the campaign against South African apartheid and for the release of Nelson Mandela, as well as taking US contingents to the World Youth Festivals in Bulgaria and the German Democratic Republic. The international involvement continues to the present day, including participation in the recent World Social Forum in Mumbai.

Jarvis Tyner also maintains his work in the Black Radical Congress which he helped to found, and in the US Communist Party as its executive vice-chair.

But his writings and lectures influence even broader sections of the left and progressive movements in the US and beyond.

In a memorable phrase, he once described globalisation as ‘imperialism on speed’. His pamphlet on ‘The Republican Campaign to Suppress the Black Vote’ laid bare the racism of US institutions and the Bush administration before a wide audience.

Now trade unionists, socialists, black activists and peace campaigners in Britain have the opportunity to hear and discuss his views at first hand.”

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3 thoughts on “Leading US Racial Revolutionary Profiled

  1. The post points out that the path to leadership in the higher levels of the CP require time and effort spent organizing and turning institutions and persons who are not communist to do work which the CP would not be able to accomplish on its own. The efforts he engaged in were not unpopular at the time, but the communists want it to seem that changes which would have come anyway were solely through their efforts.

    Good post and I see why anonymous chose to stay that way. It was not about race and homosexuals, but about the division of society by creating problems where there are not and taking credit for solving those that would be changed regardless.

  2. This Tyner bloke sounds like an alright guy also.
    What is it with you Trevor?
    Gay and black people have right to live too!

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