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Invisible Man and African American radicalism in World War II
African American Review, Fall, 2005 by Christopher Z. Hobson
(11.) For instance, in chap. 17, Ras is allowed a powerful critique of African Americans who work in integrated organizations, without either Tod or the protagonist offering a real answer (370-77).
(12.) See Daily Worker, various issues of 1942; for an alternative wording, read "Fascist Enslavement." I have not attempted to trace use of the slogan throughout the war years.
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(13.) See Daily Worker 10 June 1941: 6 (the paper's first specific reference to the march movement); 27 June 1941: 6; 16 June 1942: 4; 18 June 1942: 4, 6. For some typical coverage of race issues at this time, see "A Real Slap at Jim-Crow," 13 June 1942: 6 (on election of two Negroes to a state CIO executive); "Negro, White Units Join AEF," 14 June 1942: 1; "'Our Chance to Serve,' Say Negro Nurses," 14 June 1942: 6; Davis, "Negro People." The CP was for civil rights during the whole period, but its attitude toward militant civil rights demands can fairly be called squeamish. It is likely that the delay of a day before reporting the 16 June 1942 rally reflected uncertainty about how to characterize it; the party first attacked the rally for not being explicitly pro-war, and later elided its demands with the CP's own (see Daily and Sunday Worker 14 June 1942: 2.5; 30 June 1942: 5). See Garfinkel 42-53 for the CP and the 1941 movement, 62-96 for events from June 1941 to June 1942, and 93 for the sketch that the CP's reporter (Ben Davis, Jr., a leading African American member) deplored. For other CP statements on African Americans and the war, see Ford, The Negro People and The War. See also Kryder 55-70 and Naison 310-12 for the 1941 events. Isserman argues that the CP regained strength in Harlem as the March On Washington movement declined after 1942 and overall patriotism became stronger. Fabre, Unfinished Quest 228-29, Jackson, Ralph Ellison 232-33 and 265 (based on Fabre), and Webb 153-55 (partly used by Fabre) all confuse events of 1941 and 1942.
(14.) See Webb's account of one such argument over the March On Washington movement (153-55). Webb's dates and details are garbled, but she is probably presenting some version of what she heard from Wright.
(15.) "Spontaneist" and "spontaneism" in Marxism refer to the idea that workers can develop socialist, revolutionary consciousness and organization on their own, without direct leadership by a Marxist party. In a famous passage What Is To Be Done? 1902, Lenin denied such spontaneity, insisting that there "could not have been Social-Democratic [Marxist] consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness" (chap. 2A; 375). Hence Leninist parties believed in the indispensability of their leadership. Ellison represents this view in IM with Jack's avowal, "[W]e do not shape our policies to the mistaken and infantile notions of the man in the street. Our job is not to ask them what they think but to tell them!" (473).
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