Harry Haywood

Harry Haywood (February 4, 1898 – January 4, 1985) was an American political activist and a leading figure in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). He was principally known for his efforts "to bring the political philosophy of the Party in line with issues of race."

In 1926, he joined with other African-American communists and traveled to the Soviet Union as a student. While there he became a Communist International (Comintern) delegate. He stayed four years and studied the Marxist-Leninist theory of the "national question" regarding how to unify ethnic nationalities within a country's dominant culture. Haywood's work in the USSR resulted in his being selected to head the CPUSA's "Negro Department". In the 1930s he organized a movement to defend the Scottsboro boys in Alabama. He made theoretical contributions to the African-American national question. He argued that blacks represented an oppressed nation inside the U.S. and had the right to self-determination. His doctrine was known as the Black Belt thesis, i.e., blacks should be able to form their own nation-state in the Black Belt South. In the 1950s as the CPUSA platform moved away from black nationalism and separatism and towards integration, Haywood lost standing in the Party until he was expelled in 1959.

Haywood fought in three wars: World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II. He authored several books and pamphlets, including Negro Liberation in 1948, and "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question" in 1957. After his expulsion from the CPUSA, he remained a left-wing activist. In the 1960s, he became involved in the Maoist New Communist movement. In 1978, his autobiography Black Bolshevik was published.