Maurice B. | Red Phoenix correspondent | New York–

Throughout the history of the United States, the continuous and unrelenting struggle of the African-descendant peoples of this country has been part and parcel of the great sweeping march of progressive change. From the times of chattel slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the rebellions against it, such as with Nat Turner’s revolt, to later Reconstruction and even later still Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement – the struggles of Black Americans have been a soaring wind in the sails of social progress. Through such struggles, great and remarkable leaders have been recognized through their dedication to the struggle and their considerable love and devotion to their people’s freedom and self-determination.

From the onset of capitalist development in America, these foremost leaders in the struggle against white supremacy and racism, and for self-determination, were communists, communist-inspired revolutionaries, or fellow travelers sympathetic to these causes and the ideologies that guided their actions. This includes the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Lemon Johnson, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture (née Stokely Carmichael), Fred Hampton, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, and far too many others to name. All of these individuals were guided primarily by anti-capitalist and revolutionary ideologies that linked together the sufferings of African descendant peoples in the Americas and the Caribbean with the capitalist-colonialist system and eventually the capitalist-imperialist system that has touched every inch of the modern world.

Through these worldviews, these and other fighters for liberation and racial equality tied the struggles of Black Americans with the struggles of all African-descendant peoples, as well as all other oppressed peoples under the bondage of capitalist imperialism. Through the prism of revolutionary working class political power, these Black Americans led the fight against reaction and exploitation through their resolute efforts against racial chauvinism, imperialism, and neocolonialism.

Juneteenth is celebrated to commemorate the “end of slavery” in the United States, as June 19, 1865 was the day when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was proposed that January, but would not be ratified until Dec. 6 and not proclaimed until Dec. 18 of that year. This amendment and the man to whom it is so often associated with, Abraham Lincoln, have been touted by liberals and reactionaries alike as a grand stride forward in the advancement of American capitalism’s dedication to civil rights – to the ruling class’ ability to “change with the times”; to “reckon with its previous mistakes”; to “defend its founding ideals.”

All of this obfuscates the true nature of the Thirteenth Amendment and the American Civil War as a whole: an “advancement” in the capitalist system insofar as it was faced with two social contradictions that were irreconcilable with its contemporary policies. The first contradiction was the growing conflict over new territory between, on the one hand, the slave states on the verge of crisis (due to soil exhaustion and monopolization by the huge plantations) and, on the other hand, the capitalist states which had begun automating and mechanizing agriculture, and thus no longer needed slavery as a means of accumulating capital. The second contradiction was the increasing radical and active nature of the abolitionist movement culminating with John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, alongside uprisings and mass escapes by enslaved African Americans across the slave-owning states. These symptoms of crisis gave Lincoln a kill-switch on southern secession, in the form of being able to incite a slave revolt.

Under such conditions, the American ruling class would have to make drastic changes in its policies towards both the Southern planters and the enslaved toilers of African descent and their supporters in the abolitionist movement. As such, Lincoln and the American capitalist government saw to force the hand of the Southern states to abandon the technically backwards and relative productively inefficient slave plantation economy to embrace industrialization, modernization, and automation, while appeasing the moderate and reformist elements of the abolitionist movement through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, so often treated as the coup de grâce to American slavery.

Yet, while the Thirteenth Amendment stripped the political power of the slave owners through expropriation (i.e., “abolition” of chattel slavery), formerly-enslaved African Americans were still often forced into severe standards of living laboring as sharecroppers or in chain gangs. In reality, the Thirteenth Amendment only modified the terms to which an individual could be forced into slavery (through debt, wage labor, etc.) and ceased to definitively enforce the abolition of forced labor and servitude wholesale. In a very actual sense, the amendment reinforced the order of wage-slavery throughout the country.

To put it simply: the American capitalist class didn’t want the end of exploitation – i.e. of “free” labor – but of the economic pressures on slavery that hampered its profitability. Only as a capitalist solution to the crisis in the slave system was the Thirteenth Amendment proposed, ratified, and thereby proclaimed. In the end, the capitalist class never intended to end slavery at all, but rather preferred the system of wage slavery to that of chattel slavery, so that this class could be the primary beneficiaries of exploiting Black labor in this country.

If not for uprisings and revolts of enslaved peoples, an increasingly militant abolitionists movement, and growing international opposition to the system of chattel slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, in conjunction with the steadfast expansion of capitalist-industrial relations of production, chattel slavery would more than likely would have still been practiced in this country for some time after 1865, as had occurred in other countries such as Brazil (where slavery was not abolished until the 1880s).

The American capitalist class was and continues to be, by its capitalist nature, thoroughly racist, anti-Black, and white supremacist. These attitudes that permeate beyond the ruling class and to the petit bourgeoisie and reactionaries across all classes.

This racial hatred expanded to the Union Army’s attitude towards Black troops during the Civil War. While some white officers such as Robert Gould Shaw were proud to fight alongside Black soldiers, much of his enthusiasm stemming from his upbringing amidst of a family of vocal anti-slavery activists, many if not most other commanding officers of the Union Army were against such considerations. Black soldiers were segregated from white soldiers, received less pay, and were given inferior benefits, food, and equipment than their white counterparts, all while facing the threat of execution by the Confederates if taken as prisoners of war.

While Lincoln was forced to acknowledge the decisive role played by the hundreds of thousands of Black men who fought for the Union Army and Navy, how can a government whose fighting force upholds racist and white supremacist values in its ranks ever claim to actually fight for the freedom and equality of all of humanity? All such claims are lies – historical revisions and fabrications – only used to blind the American working class and Black Americans in particular of their true history of struggle.

It wouldn’t be until the Spanish Civil War, over 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, for Black American soldiers to be held in equal consideration and respect as their non-Black comrades. It was during this war, not through the regular armed forces of the capitalist class, but through the Comintern organized International Brigades, that the first African American to lead an integrated military force in the history of the United States was to be found.

Born on Oct. 23, 1900, in West Texas to Sam Law and Julia Ann Hawkins Law, that man was Oliver Law. Oliver Law led a life of fierce and determined struggle against capitalism, white supremacy, and fascism from his time in the International Longshoreman’s Association and the Communist Party, and finally with his time fighting Francoite fascism in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. A trailblazer and stalwart fighter for the international working class, Oliver Law is a forgotten comrade in our centuries-long struggle as a people and as a class. On days like Juneteenth, we should do all we can to preserve the legacy and sacrifices of our Oliver Laws and Fred Hamptons and Harry Haywoods alike.

There’s a valley in Spain called Jarama
It’s a place that we all know so well
It was there that we gave up our manhood
Where so many of our brave comrades fell

Pete Seeger, “Jarama Valley”

Law was among the earliest U.S. volunteers for the International Brigades, receiving his passport on Jan. 7, 1937 and arriving in Spain sometime shortly thereafter. After the Lincoln Brigade or Battalion was reorganized following setbacks during operations at the Battle of Jarama on Feb. 27, 1937, Law was promoted to Commander of the Lincoln Brigade. Through his unrelenting spirit and revolutionary example, Law rose through the ranks of the International Brigades, eventually selected as Adjutant to the Battalion Commander and then Captain of the Abraham Lincolners.

Oliver Law fought side by side with his comrades in intense trench warfare at the battles of Jarama and Brunete against the combined might of Franco’s Nationalist forces and Italian-German volunteers of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie and the Condor Legion. During the Abraham Lincolners’ campaign at the Battle of Brunete, on the offensive’s fourth day, Law was mortally wounded while leading his comrades during an assault on Mosquito Ridge. On July 10, 1937, this bright and courageous son of the international proletariat joined the pantheon of our class’ martyrs: the hundreds of thousands who have laid down their lives in the ongoing war to end all exploitation and oppression on Earth, and for the true equality of humanity regardless of nation or color.

So on Juneteenth let us all remember our Oliver Laws and our Black communist fighters against oppression. Let us not be duped by the capitalists’ attempts to coax popular support for their bourgeois dictatorship by playing to national or racial and ethnic sympathies. We cannot forget the class interests of the capitalists and that ultimately any instance of “social good” enacted by the ruling class is nothing more than appeasement, a concession to their brutal oppression of American workers and the people of oppressed nations. Don’t be fooled! Learn our history and never let it be tainted or whitewashed!

Remember Oliver Law and uphold his sacrifice!

Remember the Abraham Lincoln Brigade!

Down with Fascism!

To the victory of socialism in our lifetimes!

For readers interested in the 90 African American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and their stories, here is a short list of some of those valiant fighters, though nowhere near a complete or even substantial list. Rather, it should be seen as a jumping off point for comrades to embrace their long forgotten history. These are but some of the forebears of our anti-fascist and anti-racist struggle. Long live their legacies!

Other Black Lincoln Brigadiers:

●      Thomas Page; 1909 – 1985
●      Walter Cobbs; 1914 – UNK
●      Abraham “Abe” Lewis; 1906 – 1948
●      Albert Edward Chisholm; 1913 – 1995
●      Salaria Kea; 1913 – 1990
●      Amos Archer; 1897 – 1939
●      Harry Haywood; 1898 – 1985
●      Walter Garland; 1913 – 1974
●      Claude Pringle; 1894 – 1959
●      Doug Roach; 1909 – 1938

For the extensive list of all African American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, visit the ALB Archives here.

Additional reading on the life and work of Oliver Law:

●     ALBA – Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
●     Anatomy of an Anticommunist Fabrication: The Death of Oliver Law, An Historiographical Investigation by Grover Furr

Categories: History, Revolutionary History, United States History