TheSoviet Negro Republic (also known as theNegro Soviet Republic) was a hypothetical futurecommunist republic, proposed by some black communist activists in 1930s America. In 1945, the former leader of theCommunist Party USA told theHouse Un-American Activities Committee that these proposals were not official party policy. In the 1960s, the far-rightJohn Birch Society linked the burgeoningcivil rights movement forBlack Americans to plans for a "Soviet Negro Republic", claiming that the movement was a communist plot.
The position ofblack Americans within the wider communist movement in America had been hotly debated for a while. Many communists favored the formation of an independent Soviet republic for black people as an oppressed ethnic group within the United States, influenced byMarcus Garvey's formulation of theBack-to-Africa movement. This was purportedly the line favored byJoseph Stalin and orthodoxLeninists within the Soviet Union, but opposed by US party leaders and many black Americans within the communist movement opposed such as an example ofJim Crow-style segregation and whitechauvinism, and unhelpful in alleviating the position of black people in America at that time.[1][2]
A proposedcommunist republic within the "Black Belt" of theSouthern United States was mentioned byJames W. Ford andJames S. Allen inThe Negroes in a Soviet America (1935).[3] Ruled byblack people under the principle ofself-determination, it was hypothesized that the proposed republic might later favor federation with a communistUnited States. The proposal drew criticism for the implication that blacks were not really American, and for the idea that all blacks in America be relocated there.[4]
In 1945, former leader of theCommunist Party USA,Earl Browder, told theHouse Un-American Activities Committee that official communist plans for a Soviet Negro Republic were false.[5]
The far-rightJohn Birch Society continued to claim that theAfrican-American civil rights movement was a communist plot to found a Soviet Negro Republic, withMartin Luther King Jr. as its president.[6][7] Posters from the society promoting the claim were seen during theBarry Goldwater 1964 presidential campaign, supposedly disturbingGoldwater, who viewed the signs asracist.[8] TheCalifornia Eagle, an African-American newspaper, claimed that the campaign against King put the Society "out in the open as an active anti-Negro organization ... The Birchers are a little more subtle than theKlansmen but they are just as dangerous to our hopes for first class citizenship."[9]
