“The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is an organization of black congressional representatives. While it is officially “nonpartisan,” the CBC since its founding has functioned as part of the left wing of the Democratic Party.

The CBC was established in January 1969. Its founders were Representatives John Conyers and Charles Diggs of Michigan, Ron Dellums and Gus Hawkins of California, Charles Rangel and Shirley Chisholm of New York, Louis Stokes of Ohio, Ralph Metcalf and George Collins of Illinois, Parren Mitchell of Maryland, Robert Nix of Pennsylvania, William Clay of Missouri, and Delegate from the District of Columbia Walter Fauntroy”

The CBC as they are called have been close to a number of Communist leaders and Socialist leaders and like the Progressive Caucus, they are very strong in support of the Socialist ideology. When Barbara Lee was the Chairwoman of the CBC, she made statements that supported Cuba and Castro.

In April 2009, a delegation of seven CBC members traveled to Havana to meet with former Cuban president Fidel Castro. After the meeting, they praised Castro as a warm and hospitable host, and called for an end to America’s longstanding ban on travel to Cuba. According to CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee, “The fifty-year embargo just hasn’t worked. The bottom line is that we believe it’s time to open dialogue with Cuba.” Reflecting on her moments with Castro, Lee said, “It was quite a moment to behold.”  Rep. Bobby Rush said of his conversation with Castro, “It was almost like listening to an old friend…. In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor.”  Rep. Laura Richardson, meanwhile, said Castro was receptive to President (and former CBC member) Barack Obama’s message of reconciliation. “He listened,” said Richardson. “He [Castro] said the exact same thing as President Obama said.” Added Richardson: “He looked right into my eyes and he said, ‘How can we help? How can we help President Obama?’”

Under Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, socialist opposition to World War I was widespread, leading to the governmental repression collectively known as the First Red Scare. The Socialist Party declined in the 1920s, but the party nonetheless often ran Norman Thomas for president. In the 1930s, the Communist Party USA took importance in labor and racial struggles while it suffered a split which converged in the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. In the 1950s, socialism was affected by McCarthyism and in the 1960s it was revived by the general radicalization brought by the New Left and other social struggles and revolts. In the 1960s, Michael Harrington and other socialists were called to assist the Kennedy administration and then the Johnson administration‘s War on Poverty and Great Society^[2] while socialists also played important roles in the civil rights movement.^[3][4][5][6] Unlike in Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, a major socialist party has never materialized in the United States^[7] and the socialist movement in the United States was relatively weak in comparison.^[8] In the United States, socialism can be stigmatized because it is commonly associated with authoritarian socialism, the Soviet Union and other authoritarian Marxist–Leninist regimes.^[9] Writing for The Economist, Samuel Jackson argued that socialism has been used as a pejorative term, without any clear definition, by conservatives and right-libertarians to taint liberal and progressive policies, proposals and public figures.^[10] The term socialization has been mistakenly used to refer to any state or government-operated industry or service (the proper term for such being either municipalization or nationalization). The term has also been used to mean any tax-funded programs, whether privately run or government run. The term socialism has been used to argue against economic interventionism, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Medicare, the New Deal, Social Security and universal single-payer health care, among others.

The Democratic Party’s Racist History

Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator and a former aide to Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan, has chronicled the following vital facts about the Democratic Party of 1800 through the 1960s:

• Seven Democrat presidents owned slaves between 1800 and 1861.

• Between 1840 and 1860, there were six Democratic Party platforms supporting slavery.

• From 1868-1948, there were 20 Democratic Party platforms that either openly supported segregation or were silent on the subject.

• The infamously racist “Jim Crow laws” of the post-Civil War era — mandating segregation in virtually all public settings throughout the South — were passed enthusiastically by Democrats.

• In the post-Civil War era, the Democratic Party and the Ku Klux Klan had a very close relationship. Columbia University historian Eric Foner writes that the Klan became “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party.” And according to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease, the Klan served as the “terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.”

• Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th banned slavery. The 14th effectively overturned the 1857 Dred Scott decision (made by Democratic pro-slavery Supreme Court justices) by guaranteeing due process and equal protection to former slaves. And the 15th gave black Americans the right to vote.

• Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was passed by a Republican Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson, who had been a Democrat before joining Abraham Lincoln’s Republican ticket in 1864. The law gave blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, file lawsuits, and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.

• Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by Republican President Ulysses S. Grant. The law prohibited racial discrimination in public places and public accommodations.

• The Democratic Party’s 1904 platform used the term “Sectional and Racial Agitation” to condemn the Republican Party’s protests against segregation and against the denial of voting rights to blacks. This “agitation,” said the Democratic platform, sought to “revive the dead and hateful race and sectional animosities in any part of our common country,” which in turn would bring “confusion, distraction of business, and the reopening of wounds now happily healed.”

• Between 1908 and 1920, there were 4 Democratic platforms that were silent on the issues of blacks, segregation, lynching, and voting rights. By contrast, the Republican platforms of those years specifically addressed the “Rights of the Negro” (1908), opposed lynching (in 1912, 1920, 1924, 1928), and (with the advent of the New Deal) the dangers of turning blacks into “wards of the state.”

• At the direction of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, Democrats segregated the federal government.

• The Democratic Convention of 1924, held in New York’s Madison Square Garden, has been dubbed by historians as the “Klanbake.” Hundreds of the delegates present were members of the Ku Klux Klan, which was so powerful that a plank condemning Klan violence was unwaveringly rejected. To celebrate, some 10,000 hooded Klansmen staged a massive rally complete with burning crosses and calls for violence against blacks and Catholics.

• Democrats created the Federal Reserve Board, passed labor and child welfare laws, and created Social Security with Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom and FDR’s New Deal. But these programs were created as the result of an agreement to ignore segregation and the lynching of blacks.

• Thousands of Democratic local officials, state legislators, state governors, U.S. congressmen, and U.S. senators were elected as supporters of slavery and then segregation between 1800 and 1965.

• In return for election support, three post-Civil War Democratic presidents — Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt — agreed to leave the issues of segregation and lynching unaddressed.

• Three-fourths of the opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the U.S. House of Representatives came from Democrats, as did four-fifths of the opposition in the Senate. That opposition included such figures as future Democratic Senate leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia (a former Klan member) and Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Sr., father of Al Gore.

• The Birmingham, Alabama Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor — who infamously unleashed dogs and fire hoses on civil-rights protestors in the 1960s — was a member of both the Democratic National Committee and the Ku Klux Klan.

• In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson launched a massive expansion of FDR’s New Deal welfare state that Johnson called the Great Society. One day when he was aboard Air Force One, Johnson confided in two like-minded governors regarding his underlying intentions for the Great Society programs, saying: “I’ll have those ni**ers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” In short, he saw government giveaways as a way of buying the allegiance of a permanent, ever-dependent voting bloc for the Democratic Party.

• In a similar spirit, Johnson said on another occasion: “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days, and that’s a problem for us, since they’ve got something now they never had before: the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this — we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”

The Socialist Party formed strong alliances with a number of labor organizations because of their similar goals. In an attempt to rebel against the abuses of corporations, workers had found a solution—or so they thought—in a technique of collective bargaining. By banding together into “unions” and by refusing to work, or “striking”, workers would halt production at a plant or in a mine, forcing management to meet their demands. From Daniel De Leon’s early proposal to organize unions with a socialist purpose, the two movements became closely tied. They shared as one major ideal the spirit of collectivism—both in the socialist platform and in the idea of collective bargaining.

The most prominent American unions of the time included the American Federation of Labor, the Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). In 1869, Uriah S. Stephens founded the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, employing secrecy and fostering a semireligious aura to “create a sense of solidarity.”^[36] The Knights comprised in essence “one big union of all workers.”^[37] In 1886, a convention of delegates from twenty separate unions formed the American Federation of Labor, with Samuel Gompers as its head. It peaked^[when?] at 4 million members. In 1905, the IWW (or “Wobblies”) formed along the same lines as the Knights to become one big union.

The IWW found early supporters in De Leon and in Debs.

The socialist movement was able to gain strength from its ties to labor. “The [economic] panic of 1907, as well as the growing strength of the Socialists, Wobblies, and trade unions, sped up the process of reform.”^[38] However, corporations sought to protect their profits and took steps against unions and strikers. They hired strikebreakers and pressured government to call in the state militias when workers refused to do their jobs. A number of strikes collapsed into violent confrontations.