Mr. Dennett. Well, the most important one was my expulsion and that of my former wife.
This occurred after my return from the service. You will recall that I have previously indicated that by the time I was inducted into service I was beginning to fall into some disrepute in the party, and the reason for that was that I had been actively engaged in trying to develop a struggle for equal rights for Negroes.
I was very much impressed by cases of police brutality against Negroes in the city of Seattle way back in 1940 and 1941. And some special cases had been brought to my personal attention, and I had developed a rather broad struggle on behalf of those people through my connections with the Washington Commonwealth Federation.
Of course, I was trying to build a considerable corps of Negro people in the Communist Party.
Without going into the detail of that, I simply want to say that my activities at first met with the approval of the Communist Party, but, with the outbreak of the war and the changed policy of the Communist Party, my activities met with the sharp disapproval of the party.
In other words, the party adopted the policy during the war of subordinating all other things in supporting the war. They had a slogan of “Subordinate the sectional or local interests to the national interest.” This was quite a sharp change in policy.
Mr. Tavenner. Do you construe that as a sharp interest in the policy of the United States or of some other country?
Mr. Dennett. It was not with respect to the policy of the United States. It was intended to guarantee that the full strength of the United States would be brought to bear on the side of the Soviet Union in the war which was then raging with Nazi Germany; and to guarantee that it would be complete, the Communist Party ordered that the fight for equal rights for Negroes should be subordinated and that Negroes would have to wait for their equal rights, they would have to cease being troublemakers over this question. And they used that term. They used that term against me, that I was simply a troublemaker organizing diversionary interests.
Well, I felt that if the war that was being fought was worth anything it certainly was worth applying the principle of equal rights throughout the length and breadth of this Nation of the United States, especially when I knew of the heavy burden which the Negroes were carrying in parts of this country. And I knew that there were some attitudes around here which were extremely offensive to the Negro people. They certainly do object to segregation, and they certainly have a right to object to it.
It is my feeling, and always has been, that it is the duty of the white people to see to it that they are not treated as inferiors.