Manning Johnson

Manning Rudolph Johnson (December 17, 1908 – July 2, 1959) was a Communist Party USA African-American leader and the party's candidate for U.S. Representative from New York's 22nd congressional district during a special election in 1935. Later, he left the Party and became an anti-communist government informant and witness.

Quotes

Color, Communism, and Common Sense (1958)

• Indeed, I had entered the red conspiracy in the vain belief that it was the way to a "new, better and superior" world system of society. Ten years later, thoroughly disillusioned, I abandoned communism. The experiences of those years in "outer darkness" are like a horrible nightmare. I saw communism in all its naked cruelty, ruthlessness and utter contempt of Christian attributes and passions. And, too, I saw the low value placed upon human life, the total lack of respect for the dignity of man, the betrayal of trust, the terror of the Secret Police and the bloody hand of the assassin, during and since, those fateful years when I embraced communism.
  • 1. In the Web

• Being a Negro top communist, I was placed on the National Negro Commission, an important sub-committee of the National Committee of the Communist Party. On this Commission, which was created on direct orders from Moscow to facilitate the subversion of the Negroes, I began to realize the full implications of how the Negro is used as a political dupe by the Kremlin hierarchy. Under the guise of "unity of black and white in the struggle," several top white communists, such as James S. Allen, Elizabeth Lawson, the late Robert "Bob" Minor, and George Blake Charney were placed on the National Negro Commission. These white communists wielded more power than the nominal Negro heads of the Commission. In a word, they are like white overseers. Every Negro member was aware of the fact that these white overseers constituted the eyes, the ears and the voice of the Kremlin. Moreover, these white overseers are the surest functional guarantee of the maintenance of the hierarchical authoritarian control of the Kremlin over their Negro lick-spittles directing the conspiracy among Negroes in America.
  • 1. In the Web

• In this connection, I observed how white women communists are used as political prostitutes, cohabiting with high-level Negro communists in order to spy on them. Through such intimate relations, these white women communists are able to elicit information pertaining to family background, sources of income, marital difficulties, arrests, convictions, opinions on communist policy and communist leadership. This information is invaluable to the red hierarchy in their relations with their Negro lickspittles. In top red circles, this is known as "bedroom politics."
  • 1. In the Web

• White communist women are also used to maneuver top Negro reds into compromising positions that, if revealed, would result in public scandal or disgrace. In this way, the reds make these Negroes permanently subject to blackmail if they ever consider leaving the red movement. Moreover, this information is used to destroy the credibility of the defector, should he decide to fight the red conspiracy.
  • 1. In the Web

• Only after the order came from Moscow in the 1934–35 period to win over the Negro intellectual by deceptive flattery and adulation did the red's public attitude toward them change. The Kremlin concluded that these "superficial phonies" could serve the cause of Communism.
  • 2. Subverting Negro Churches

• A large number of Negro ministers are all for the Communists. Some are prominent and influential; others are "run of the mill." They in common believe that beating the racial drums is a short cut to prominence, money and the realization of personal ambitions even if the Negro masses are left prostrate and bleeding — expendables in the mad scramble for power.
  • 2. Subverting Negro Churches

• Abner W. Berry, columnist in The Daily Worker, official organ of the Communist Party, recently praised these ministers as fulfilling their "historic role," i.e., delivering the Negro into the hands of the Communists. Neither his pen nor his lips had such praise prior to the 1934-35 period. Then the Moscow line was clear. The resolution on the Negro Question stated: "In the work among the Negroes, special attention should be paid to the role played by the churches and preachers who are acting on behalf of American imperialism. The Party must conduct a continuous and carefully worked out campaign among the Negro masses, sharpened primarily against the preachers and the churchmen, who are the agents of the oppressors of the Negro race."
  • 2. Subverting Negro Churches

• Application of the new line embarked the Communists on an era of outstanding success in infiltrating and penetrating the Negro Church. White ministers acting as missionaries, using the race angle as bait, aided in the cultivation of Negro ministers for work in the Red solar system of organizations. Bribery through gifts, paid lectures, flattery through long applause at staged rallies, favorable mention in the red controlled press were not the only methods employed to corrupt the Negro ministers. The use of sex and perversion as a means of political blackmail was an accepted red tactic.
  • 2. Subverting Negro Churches

• The new line went like this: Jesus, the carpenter, was a worker like the Communists. He was against the "money changers," the "capitalists," the "exploiters" of that day. That is why he drove them from the temple. The Communists are the modern day fighters against the capitalists or money changers. If Jesus were living today, he would be persecuted like the Communists who seek to do good for the common people.
  • 2. Subverting Negro Churches

• Gilbert Green, one of the top Reds in this country, reported as follows: "For example in the South we have more than 300 members who are also members of church youth organizations—especially the Baptist Young Peoples Union. In this district (Alabama)...where possible we should build...units in the Church Youth organizations. Why? Because in the South, especially for the Negro youth, the church is the center of cultural and social activity. It is here that we must work. By building our units in the church organizations we can also improve our work under the illegal conditions, as it will be easier to work in the church organizations. In Alabama there are certain places in which we can in a short while take over the church organizations of youth, under our leadership, and these can become legal covers for our work in the South."
  • 2. Subverting Negro Churches

• Black rebellion was what Moscow wanted. Bloody racial conflict would split America. During the confusion, demoralization and panic would set in. Then finally, the reds say: "Workers stop work, many of them seize arms by attacking arsenals. Many had armed themselves before...Street fights become frequent. Under the leadership of the Communist Party the workers organize Revolutionary Committees to be in command of the uprising. Armed workers...seize the principal government offices, invade the residences of the President and his Cabinet members, arrest them, declare the old regime abolished, establish their own power...."
  • 3. Red Plot to Use Negroes

• What if one or five million Negroes die in an abortive attempt to establish a Negro republic? Is not the advance of the cause worth it? A Communist is not a sentimentalist. He does not grieve over the loss of life in the advancement of Communism.
  • 3. Red Plot to Use Negroes

• This plot to use the Negroes as the spearhead, or as expendables, was concocted by Stalin in 1928, nearly ten years after the formation of the world organization of Communism. Prior to this time, the periodic Moscow gatherings did little more than pass resolutions. Any credit for the change belongs, in the main, to a handful of Negro lick-spittles like James W. Ford, Harry Haywood, Otto Hall, Lovett Fort-Whiteman, and Otto Huiswood, to mention a few.
  • 3. Red Plot to Use Negroes

• During the three decades which have elapsed since the Sixth World Congress in Moscow, the American Communist Party has conducted many campaigns and formed and infiltrated a large number of organizations among Negroes. From the bloody gun battles at Camp Hill, Alabama (1931), to the present integration madness, the heavy hand of communism has moved, stirring up racial strife, creating confusion, hate and bitterness so essential to the advancement of the red cause.
  • 3. Red Plot to Use Negroes

• Few men want the medicine the reds gave the late Senator Joseph McCarthy which the reds boast is the best cure for militant anti-Communists.
  • 3. Red Plot to Use Negroes

• Posing as a "friend of the Negro," they, under the guise of a campaign for Negro rights, set race against race in the cold-blooded struggle for power. Their hypocrisy and the falsity of their claims are clearly revealed in a number of instances.
  • 6. The Real 'Uncle Toms'

• The reds have deliberately twisted and warped the thinking of those intellectual pygmies who lead the "Freedom by '63" campaign by sending them after quick solutions of a centuries' old problem that has never been solved anywhere in the world. Obvious even to the most ignorant is the fact that all people are prejudiced. No one is free of it. Prejudice, in one form or another, has existed almost as long as the human family. They arise out of the complex differences of race, nationality, religion, economic, social and cultural standing.
  • 6. The Real 'Uncle Toms'

• It is then no accident that the N.A.A.C.P. is dubbed "The National Association for the Agitation of Colored People." The record speaks for itself. Millions for agitation; not one cent for those things that win the respect and acclaim of other races and national groups.
  • 7. Creating Hate

• Therefore, we may readily assume that any damage done to our prestige abroad should be at the feet of the N.A.A.C.P. and the reds who started the trouble. What is significant is that those who spread the lie that violence erupted because Negro children are denied an education have not repudiated it.
  Any confusion or misunderstanding created abroad has not been cleared up by the N.A.A.C.P. leadership. At no time have they admitted that no Negro in the United States is denied an education. And, too, they have not admitted that not every Negro wants an education, for reasons better known to himself. That accounts for many Negroes not being able to read or write. Moreover, there are free schools open both day and night for all those who want an education.
  • 7. Creating Hate

• It is also implied that a Negro child is handicapped in his studies unless he is sitting beside a white child. What could be more nonsensical or ridiculous? It is a sad commentary on the ability of the Negro child to say that he cannot properly study or that he will develop harmful complexes if he does not sit beside a white child. By what quirk of reasoning does one conclude that sitting beside a white child will help a Negro child make the grade? Experience shows that a student's success is determined by how much attention, time and effort he is willing to put into his studies.
  • 7. Creating Hate

• In New York, for example, many Negro Junior High and High School graduates are outrageously poor in spelling, writing, reading and mathematics. Yet they attended integrated schools.
  • 7. Creating Hate

• At the root of all the present racial trouble is interference in the internal affairs of Southern States by people not at all interested in an amicable settlement of any problems arising between Negro and white Americans.
  • 8. Modern Day Carpet Baggers

• Mr. James R. Mitchell, Secretary of Labor, reported that the Department of Labor in a recent survey found that: "Purchasing power of the Negroes was more than $17,000,000,000 and that a third of the Negro population owned their own homes. Negro wage earners, he said, make four and a half times what they earned in 1940."
  • 8. Modern Day Carpet Baggers

• In the meantime the Negro is the sacrificial lamb — the innocent victim of the widespread racial hate which the leftists are creating. The energizing of race hate is an asset to the red cause. The more, the merrier, so long as it erupts in cross burnings, threats, loss of jobs, refusal of loans, boycotts, bombings, fist fights, beatings and shootings.
  • 8. Modern Day Carpet Baggers

• Indeed the spectre of the "Modern Carpet Bagger" haunts the South. Reds, NAACPers, do-gooders and other "missionaries" follow in the footsteps of those Northerners who for narrow, selfish, personal or political reasons meddled in the affairs of the South in the period immediately following the Civil War. Like their predecessors, these modern-day Carpet Baggers create only mischief for they have no true interest in the South.
  A check of the record of these modern-day Carpet Baggers will show that most of them are either Communists or persons who have been, or are now, associated with the Communist cause as a fronter, endorser, or fellow traveler.
  • 8. Modern Day Carpet Baggers

• [V]ociferous Negro intellectuals, along with the reds, through their impractical, unrealistic, alien behavior, turn race relations into a shambles. Every Negro who opposes integration and the N.A.A.C.P. becomes a traitor or an "Uncle Tom." Every white person taking a similar stand is branded a "criminal" and "outside of the law." The fact that courts have been known to reverse themselves and that under our system of government every American has the right to protest and oppose any ruling considered onerous or prejudicial is ignored. Stupidly, they go about their business of forcing everybody to conform or be damned, thus building up fires of resentment that will require the work of centuries to extinguish.
  Already, under the guise of "struggling for Negro rights," they have created all the explosive material for racial violence by making impossible demands, resisting sane and just decisions, opposing compromise and adjustment and demanding that everything must be done forthwith or not at all.
  They have no love for their own people. They have no love for America. Naturally, they get the Kremlin's support and approval. Feeling frustrated and inferior, they run to communism and civil disobedience in their folly. They play Moscow's game and they deserve whatever red reward that is due them.
  • 10. Wisdom Needed