Communist Party of China
Excerpt from Peking Review 12 April 1968, p. 21
Armed Violence Against Tyranny: Afro-American Struggle Batters
U.S. Imperialism
In the United States, the new wave of armed violence staged by the
Afro-Americans against racial oppression on April 4 spread rapidly to
scores of cities, including Washington, New York and Chicago. Crowds
of angry Afro-Americans, men and women, old and young, poured into the
streets, shouting slogans opposing racial discrimination and demanding
Black power. Defying bloody suppression by troops and police, they
trampled underfoot the "law and order" which upholds the interests of
monopoly capital. This scared the wits out of the white racists and
exploiters. Urgent telegrams for help streamed into Johnson's office
from the reactionary authorities of many cities. Johnson was kept on
tenterhooks in the White House.
For the three days ending on April 6, the violent struggle against racial
oppression waged by the Afro-American masses in Washington continued
with great intensity. Filled with great hatred for the white racists'
atrocities, the Black Americans burnt down shops owned by them in the
business centre with petrol and incendiary bottles. In the morning of
April 6 alone, more than 250 of the shops were set ablaze and in some
quarters row after row of buildings went up in flames.
At the same time, courageous Black snipers fired at the spying helicopters
hovering low overhead. The snipers were even active near the heavily
guarded White House and Congress, shooting at the reactionary police
and troops.
In Chicago, the second largest city in the United States, the wave of
the violent struggle against racial oppression swept over the whole
city. By April 6, there had been 1,000 fire alarms in the city. The
fires burnt fiercely in 250 places. Black snipers shot at the troops and
police from the roof tops or from behind doors and windows. As a result,
police cars on night patrols dared not turn their lights on.
In Detroit, the fifth largest city in the United States which last summer
witnessed the biggest Black violent struggle against racial oppression in
American history, the Black masses threw bricks and rocks at cars driven
by white racists and set fire to stores run by white exploiters. Snipers
shot at and wounded two police officers patrolling a ghetto district.
In Baltimore, the sixth largest city of the United States, the Black
masses on April 6 fiercely carried on their violent struggle against
racial oppression for five hours on end. Again and again, crowds of
Black youth demonstrated in the city and set fire to stores run by white
exploiters. Ten policemen were beaten up by the angry Black masses.
Frightened by the Afro-Americans' courageous struggle, the Johnson
Administration has mobilized large numbers of paratroopers and marines
to join the army, police and "National Guards" to carry out bloody
suppression of the Black masses. Up to April 6, 12,500 regulars,
including the 82nd Airborne Division which has taken part in massacring
the Vietnamese people abroad and suppressing popular struggle at home,
had been thrown in. On the 6th alone, two to three thousand Afro-Americans
were reported to have been arrested.
The Afro-Americans' struggle also hit Boston, Memphis, which a week
earlier had just witnessed another Afro-American struggle, Miami,
Birmingham, Jackson and other major cities.
The courageous and stubborn fight by the broad masses of the Black people
in the American cities once again demonstrates their awakening and their
great latent potentiality. Once again, too, the death from white racist
violence of Martin Luther King, the exponent of non-violence, shows
to the Black masses the bankruptcy of the doctrine of non-violence. As
Stokely Carmichael, a young Afro-American leader, has correctly stated:
"What we need now are guns and more guns."
[MC5 comments: Mao believed that there was no role for himself to play in
leading a new COMINTERN of the world communist movement. Hence he relied
on his comrades in other countries to examine their own conditions and
report on them. Peking Review is full of articles written by comrades
outside China. Thanks to the bad information from the Progressive Labor
Party that Mao received, Mao held some illusions about the industrial
working classes of imperialism. According to Mao, the students and
victims of racist violence would move first for revolution, but he still
held out hope for the industrial workers to join them if the students
appealed to the workers with the workers' own demands.
MIM does not speak of "Afro-Americans." We refer to a Black nation. The
division in the communist movement within U$ borders explains why
sometimes the Peking Review would refer to oppressed nations sometimes
and other times just racism.
Despite the divisions in the U$ communist movement, Peking Review
managed to squelch the most important illusions about U$ workers, first,
by always showing oppressed nations and the anti-war movement in the lead
and secondly, by attacking the ideas of integration and non-violence. This
is done most clearly in the Peking Review article of January 26, 1968.
Lastly we should note that Chinese Communist Party was for armed struggle
by Blacks in 1968 and 1969. It supported the Black Panther style of
struggle against "violent suppression"--i.e. pigs. However, the Chinese
comrades also believed the U.$. was going fascist and about to meet
its final doom. This condition and the legality of armed struggle in
California where the Black Panthers had headquarters changed. We Maoists
no longer refer to the U$A as fascist or about to suffer imminent defeat
as it looked like in the late 1960s.]
