Herbert Aptheker lecture, "The Abolitionist Movement and the Black Liberation Movement: An Analytical Comparison," at the University of Iowa, June 2, 1976

Speaker 1: The following was recorded June 2, 1976, as part of the eighth annual Institute for Afro-American Culture, held at the University of Iowa. The Abolitionist Movement and the Black Liberation Movement, an analytical comparison is the subject of this address by Herbert Aptheker, internationally known author, editor and lecturer. He is introduced by Darwin Turner, professor of English and chairman of the Afro American Studies Department at the University of Iowa. Darwin Turner: If you'll forgive me, I have two beginnings to this introduction, much in the matter of the Old Testament. The first beginning, as institute participants know, this afternoon we discussed the topic of back of Black abolitionists. This evening, we're continuing the discussion with a lecture by Herbert Aptheker, who was internationally known as an author, editor and lecturer. Darwin Turner: Now, that's what I had prepared, but as I looked at this group of people this evening, I could not help reflecting how quickly times can change. I was reminiscing with Mr. Aptheker just a little while ago, about a time when I was working in North Carolina, and when he was invited to speak at the University of North Carolina. Darwin Turner: Some individuals in the legislature considered certain kinds of speakers so dangerous that they perhaps could not speak to university students. Professor Aptheker stood on a street corner and through a megaphone broadcast his ideas onto the campus of the University of North Carolina to an audience that mobbed the campus. How times change. Darwin Turner: Born in Brooklyn, he received his bachelor's, his master's and his doctorate from Columbia University. In 1966, he received an honorary doctorate from Martin Luther University in Germany. After serving as editor of Masses and Mainstream from 1948 to 1952, and as an editor of Political Affairs from 1952 to 1963, he became director of the American Institute of Marxists studies in New York City, a position he has held since 1964. Darwin Turner: Presently, he is professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Hostos Community College in the City University of New York, and he has recently been appointed visiting lecturer at Yale university for the fall of '76. His many grants and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. Twice in 1939 and in '69, he's received the History Award from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Darwin Turner: Active politically, as well as academically, he was a candidate for Congress in 1966. Professor Aptheker is the author or editor of more than 30 books. Among those most relevant to this Institute are To Be Free, Studies in American Negro History published in 1948, The Negro in The Civil War, 1938, The Labor Movement in the South during slavery, published in '54, a two volume history of the American people, which I understand has just added a third volume to it, with a fourth volume in the future, Essays in the History of the American Negro, American Negro Slave Revolts, Afro American History, The Modern Era, published in 1971, and an annotated bibliography of the published writings of W.E.B. Du Bois published in '73. Darwin Turner: Professor Aptheker is the editor of the three volume, a Documentary History of Negro People in the United States. He's edited two volumes of the Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois and his working on the third, and he has edited 17 volumes of a proposed 40 volume series of the Collected Published Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois. Darwin Turner: Professor Aptheker topic for this evening is The Abolitionist Movement and The Black Liberation Movement, An Analytical Comparison. Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to introduce Professor Herbert Aptheker. Herbert Aptheke...: Thank you very much, Professor Turner. I'm glad to see that the speaker in this Institute tomorrow, Professor Sydney Kaplan, a very dear friend, has made it and is here, and that really delights me. I regret, Sydney, that I won't be able to stay tomorrow, but folks here are luckier than I. They'll be able to hear you. Herbert Aptheke...: The abolitionist movement in the United States was the second great revolutionary effort to succeed in our history. The first of course being that movement that resulted in the establishment of this nation. The abolitionist movement had three interrelated purposes. First, to abolish slavery immediately and without compensation to the owners. Second, to combat racism and racist practices in the North, and third, to assist the free Black population. Herbert Aptheke...: Certainly, the first goal to abolish slavery was the basic one in the 19th century, but the other two were consciously part of the movement and their historical treatment has been relatively meager. Generally in the literature, the abolitionist movement has been presented as a reform effort with white people as inspirers, strategists and leaders. Herbert Aptheke...: In my opinion, this is erroneous. The abolitionist effort was a revolutionary one, and therefore, necessarily was a Black-white movement. For in the United States, no democratic effort, let alone a revolutionary one, can be anything but the united struggle of peoples of all colors and ethnic origins. Furthermore, since the movement was especially concerned with the position of Black people, it naturally was that people which were its main strategists, its most effective tacticians, its most persevering adherents and especially its pioneers. Herbert Aptheke...: The movement was a revolutionary one, because it sought the overthrow of the ruling class. The ruling class, not only in the South, but also in the nation as a whole. Of course, the slave owners dominated completely the economics, theology and politics of the South, though not without significant challenge from the slaves, and increasingly as the years rolled on, from the non-slave holding whites. But that class, the slave-owning class, which numbered not more than perhaps about 175,000 at its high point in 1860, also constituted the greatest single economic interest in the nation as a whole prior to The Civil War. Herbert Aptheke...: Their ownership of some three and a half million slaves, worth about three and a half billion dollars, plus their ownership of the cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar, hemp, lumber products that they produced, and of the land, which that labor made fruitful, plus the buildings and tools and animals, made of that interrelated, highly class conscious oligarchy, by far the greatest single vested interest in the nation as a whole. Based upon that foundation, that class dominated both political parties, Democratic and Whig, while tending to favor of the former, and therefore, dominated the Congress and the presidency. Herbert Aptheke...: It dominated the Judiciary, and its ideology was the ruling one, not only in Mississippi, but in the nation as a whole. That is, the major publishing houses would print nothing offensive to the slave holding class. The major universities would not hire professors who condemned slavery, and the leading newspapers of the nation, with extremely rare and partial exceptions, at least acquiesced in slavery's existence and excoriated what were uniformly called the fanatical abolitionists. Herbert Aptheke...: The abolitionist movement then stood opposed to all of that. It was in principled opposition to the ruling class and the state and all its operators of persuasion, domination, and coercion. That movement was revolutionary exactly in the sense that it sought the overthrow of the ruling class in the only way in which a ruling class can be overthrown, IE, it sought the elimination of that form of private property, the ownership of which defined that ruling class and gave it basically its power. Herbert Aptheke...: The slave owners were the ruling class, and the abolitionists sought the immediate uncompensated abolition of slave property. Nothing else could end slavery, and nothing else could terminate the power of the slave owners. That is not a reform movement. That is a revolutionary movement. Herbert Aptheke...: The available literature is meager also on the movement feature of the abolitionist struggle. Most of the available works and especially the textbooks give readers an impression of a rather formless, nebulous conglomeration of, generally white, people or benevolent feelings or malevolent, if the author opposes abolitionism as many books still do, who somehow were able to stir up considerable commotion and influence somehow significant political developments. The reality is otherwise. Herbert Aptheke...: The abolitionist movement was a movement. That is, it was highly organized on national, regional, statewide and local levels. In addition, it contained organizations of particular components of the population. As for example, of women and of youth, it was served by what may be called a professional revolutionary cadre. Men and women who devoted their entire lives to the movement. It held regular meetings and conventions. It had formal constitutions and organs of agitation and propaganda. Its points of concentration and its major campaigns did not simply happen. Herbert Aptheke...: On the contrary, they were the results of collective and prolonged discussions and debates, and on the basis of such efforts would be determined a policy of concentrating upon, for example, ending the domestic slave trade, or example, petitioning Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia or in the Federal Territories, or would fight in Massachusetts, for instance, to abolish Jim Crow schools or Jim Crow transportation. Herbert Aptheke...: In this way came into being, especially among the Afro American people but always with some white allies, vigilance committees and the underground railroad and major rescue attempts, which helped capture the attention of the nation and indeed of the world. Herbert Aptheke...: The abolitionist movement, like all revolutionary efforts, had its inner struggles against opportunism, sectarianism, and especially true in the United States, racial chauvinism and also sexual chauvinism. This movement too, like all revolutionary movements, not only was Black-white, but also reflected male and female joint struggle. Herbert Aptheke...: Indeed, it is reflective of the deeply revolutionary nature of the struggle to abolish slavery that it was exactly that movement, which witnessed the earliest appearance of significant public participation by women, and which in turn helped inspire the organized movement in the United States for the liberation of women. Herbert Aptheke...: The abolitionist movement also was a basic component of the overall democratic struggle of humanity. That is, its effort to abolish slavery, its commitment to oppose racism, it's male-female reality, all reflected a new definition of people. When the fathers of this Republic wrote "people" they had in mind, of course, what propertied, white men of the 18th century had in mind by that word. That is, people like themselves, and not people of other colors and not women and not the property-less, but the abolitionist movement of the 19th century broadens the meaning of people. Herbert Aptheke...: Its usage is anti-elitist, anti-racist and anti-male supremacist. When the abolitionist movement sought freedom, it sought freedom for the least among the people, and therefore, its blows were directed towards human emancipation. Still, one sees in the struggle against slavery a significant effort to preserve and extend freedom of press and speech and assembly, and to oppose aggressive expansionist foreign policies emanating from Washington as that which made war upon Mexico and threatened war upon Spain in order to seize Cuba. Herbert Aptheke...: Furthermore, this battle to abolish slavery is part of a whole history of the labor movement in this country and in the world. Most of the Black people labored as slaves, skilled and unskilled, and not only in the field, but also in the city, and not only raising cotton, but also digging coal, and not only producing hemp, but also making iron. In this very real sense, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, are great documents in the history of the labor movement. Herbert Aptheke...: This is at the heart of Marx's insistence that labor in a white skin cannot be free, while labor in a Black skin is branded. This is the point negatively and the insistence by the leading ideologists of the slaveholders, as George Fitzhugh, for example, that only slavery solves, his word, solves the class struggle, for it makes of the work of so much capital in the pockets of the owners. Herbert Aptheke...: Abolitionism struck at the heart of so-called civilization as envisaged from John Locke to John Calhoun. That is, to them, government exists to secure private property, and the security of that private ownership of the means of production is the fundamental function of the state. Our slaves insisted their owners belonged to us by the same right and the same law, and with the same justification that the land and the factories belong to you, owners in the North. If on Monday, they warned, the flames of abolition should light up our plantations and consume our property and slaves. Herbert Aptheke...: Then on Tuesday, you had better watch out that the tenants on your lands do not treat you similarly. And that on Wednesday, the workers in your factories do not feel it is their turn to emulate the slaves and the landless farmers. Once yield a precedent in any form of property, and then the ownership of all private property is in jeopardy and the sanctity of contract is vitiated. When that goes, there goes also that sacredness, and if that goes, and what has become of civilization? Herbert Aptheke...: This is why the pro-slavery propagandists insisted that the abolitionists were communists and socialists, they use both words, as well as atheists and barbarians. One of the central purposes of the racism was bulwark slavery was to hide this anti-elitist, basically revolutionary quality of abolitionism. Herbert Aptheke...: Abolitionism then was part of the democratic, egalitarian, anti-elitist quality of the entire fabric of human struggle and history. Further, of course, it was fundamental to the liberation of the Afro American people, and while that liberation is a basic part of the history of the United States and of the world, it also is a history in and of itself. In this sense then, abolitionism is part of the liberation struggles of the especially oppressed peoples and nationalities of the earth. Herbert Aptheke...: In our country, the cost of the organic character of Black-white unity, one sees the merging of all these struggles. This is dramatized in the Civil War, where the original avowed purpose of the salvation of the Union was only possible if there occurred the emancipation of the Black people, and the emancipation of the Black people in turn was only possible if one saved the Union. To save the Union, it was necessary to end slavery. To end slavery, it was necessary to save the Union. Herbert Aptheke...: Another feature of the revolutionary quality of the abolitionist movement was its internationalism. The effort to end slavery in the United States was part of the effort to end slavery in Mexico and all Latin America and the West Indies. The struggles of the slaves in Virginia and the struggles of the slaves in Jamaica, of the slaves of Mississippi and of Haiti, of South Carolina and Cuba. These are all one mighty component of the inspiring human resistance to insult and enslavement. Herbert Aptheke...: The anti-slavery men and women in the United States had comrades in the same struggle in Mexico and Brazil, in France and England, in Ireland and Cuba. These revolutionaries frequently knew each other, visited each other and helped each other. Of course, the humanistic essence of anti-slavery and its anti-elitist and basically labor component made all Marxists friends of the struggle to abolished slavery, with the leadership of that undertaking falling upon on Marx himself. This brought decisive results during the Civil War with a significant role, played in the diplomacy of that war by the working classes of Europe. Herbert Aptheke...: In this great crusade within the United States, there appeared some of the noblest figures, not only in the history of our nation, but that of the world. From the best among the Black and white people who preceded us in this country came such colossal figures as the indomitable Harriet Tubman, the clear visioned Wendell Phillips, the stalwart Sojourner Truth, the brilliant Frederick Douglass and the magnificent John Brown. Herbert Aptheke...: Someday, someday a dramatist will appear among us, and he or she will be able to do a full justice to, for example, that moment when the jailed and chained Nat Turner faced the court appointed questioner who came seeking an admission from the 30 year old slave rebel and what he had tried was foolish and wrong. It was very important to the slaveholders that this rebel, who was uprising had rocked their society to its heels, be made to confess failure and fault. Herbert Aptheke...: The slave owner's representative came to Nat Turner the day before he was to be hanged. He told Turner that his wife was sold, that all was lost, that his comrades had been hanged and that he himself would be hanged the next day. "Tell us," demanded [Gray] for the court, "that you know that your act was stupid and wrong." That lackey of the masters reports himself what the rebel did and said. Nat Turner raised himself from his cot, there in the county jail in Virginia back in 1831, stood up and with one hand shackled to the cement wall, he spread his other arm wide, and looking at the inquisitor, he said to him, "According to the inquisitor, was not Christ crucified?" Herbert Aptheke...: It is my opinion, that in the entire record of the history of the United States, with its many moments of high drama from Bunker Hill to Harper's Ferry, from the Boston Massacre to the Haymarket Martyrdom, there is no single moment so filled with drama and with meaning as that one instant of immortal defiance and challenge. Such were the struggles of our abolitionist comrades, such as the heritage of [Vallo], and the effectiveness that they bequeath to us. Herbert Aptheke...: In the United States today, it is commonly insisted that to refer to what we used to call the Civil Rights Movement or more properly, the Black Liberation Movement, to refer to this as revolutionary, we are told, is mere rhetoric. Thus, recently, for instance, professor Daniel Bell of Columbia University and professor August Meier of Kent State University, in separate papers, have emphasized that view. Herbert Aptheke...: The Black Liberation Movement, they contend, is nothing but a reform effort and is distinctly non revolutionary, both base this on the idea that the movement seeks to enter the social order and not to transform it. I think this view is an error and the error has serious consequences. It is analogous to that error, which I have dealt, which dominates most historical in the United States and holds the abolitionist movement to have been a reform movement and not a revolutionary one. Herbert Aptheke...: No. The enslavement of the Black people was basic to the origins and growth and world capitalism and especially of US capitalism. The special oppression of the Afro-American people has been fundamental in the appearance of, and the development of, world imperialism. Again, especially US imperialism, this base of the so-called Negro question, a basic one from the historic view, the oppression of the Black people in the United States is not a peripheral matter. It is not a pimple on the face of the nation. It is an organic matter. It is cancerous and menaces the entire body as it characterizes that body. Herbert Aptheke...: Fundamental to the aborting of the first American revolution was the failure to cleanse the new Republic of slavery. Basic to the aborting of the second revolution was the failure to make real the emancipation of the Black millions. The special oppression of the Afro-American people is not only part of the very structure of US society in the historic sense, it is also part of that structure now and has been, and is now in basic economic, sociological, political, psychological, and ethical senses. Herbert Aptheke...: These reasons taken together explain why the ruling classes here throughout history have held on to this special oppression and still do, in spite of fearful internal and international pressures and embarrassment, hold on so very tenaciously. Herbert Aptheke...: The Black people's movements were full of absolute equality is a revolutionary one. Not only because it carries within it, the fulfillment of both the first and second American revolutions, it is revolutionary too, because the Black people, constituting now 25 million, or over 10% of the total population and about 20% of the working class, are the most oppressed segment of the American population. It is not possible to achieve the goals of the Black movement without simultaneously renovating and refreshing and transforming every feature of American life as a whole. Herbert Aptheke...: One cannot successfully resolve the so-called Negro question without simultaneously attacking in a basic way the question of widespread poverty and deprivation, the persistence of unemployment, the Frankenstein quality of automation, the crisis in education, the spreading blight of the cities, the growth of slums, the accumulating inadequacy of health care, the necessity to revitalize the trade union movement, to reverse the vitiation of democratic structure and process, to effectively defend the Bill of Rights, to challenge the monumental inadequacy of the two party system. Herbert Aptheke...: None of these great tasks can be tackled successfully so long as there is persistence in a garrison state and an aggressive foreign policy with colossal proportions of the national wealth, going to instruments of death rather than two measures for life. Hence, the question of the rights of Black people is basic to every significant domestic and international question facing the people of the United States as a whole. Herbert Aptheke...: This is why in a historic sense that question is one that requires Black-white unity, and this is also why that question is a revolutionary one. All this quite apart from what its resolution must mean in terms of governmental structure through the enforcement, finally, of the post-Civil War amendments to the constitution and through the democratization of local government. Furthermore-