Part I: The Downfall of SCEF
The organization that civil rights activist Anne Braden dedicated herself to building had crashed and burned before her eyes in just six months. The Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), focused on organizing white people against racism and exploitation, moved its headquarters to Louisville in 1966 when Anne and Carl Braden became directors and wished to station it in their hometown. Their office, planted in the predominantly Black West End, became a beacon for local activists. But it all fell apart in the 1970s when the overwhelmingly white organization “became a battleground for competing ideologies among self-styled white revolutionaries.” As this bickering amplified, so did tensions with the surrounding Black community and the groups they were building. The Black Panthers were working in the West End as well, starting their breakfast and clothing programs despite the fact that they “didn’t have the money to buy bacon and eggs and bread and milk for our breakfast program. We went to stores and a lot of times they throw this stuff out, but as opposed to throwing it out they would give it to us.” The foundations for resentment among local Black radicals against SCEF was clear: it was run by white radicals despite being in their neighborhood, blessed with resources like an office and a printing press while the Black Panthers struggled to feed the starving in their backyard. Despite the fact that SCEF was openly supportive of Black power and was willing to share their resources with local Black radicals, Black nationalists were cognizant of the contradictions between their ideology and dependence on a white group in their neighborhood.
Before the Panthers established themselves in town, a group known as the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO) recognized this and responded by appropriating the SCEF office for themselves. The SCEF appealed to interracial solidarity, arguing that attacking white radicals would position Black radicals “on the side of the oppressor instead of on the side of people who are fighting the oppressor.” Into this uneasy atmosphere came the Black Panthers, who would face crippling repression in 1972 when police framed members for an armed robbery in the “Louisville Seven” case. SCEF joined in the grassroots campaign for their release, with a SCEF lawyer representing the defense. Five of the Louisville Seven were acquitted by the judge for lack of evidence, and the cases of Ben Simmons and William Blakemore went to jury-trial; Simmons was acquitted but Blakemore was sentenced to ten years in prison. The Panthers took issue with how SCEF handled the case, since they wanted to argue that those arrested, like Black people across America, were political prisoners in the struggle between the “submerged black nation” and white settlers. SCEF, as a predominantly white group, unsurprisingly took a different approach. Meanwhile, the two groups argued over usage of SCEF’s office and equipment, and members of SCEF (falsely) alleged that one of the Panthers was a police agent.
These conflicts would produce an embarrassing debacle for SCEF when an armed Ben Simmons broke into the SCEF office, locking the members in a closet and commandeering their equipment. He was subdued and SCEF members decided to commit him to a mental hospital instead of involving the police. This understandably provoked the Panthers, writing in a communique that it was an attempt to destroy Ben Simmons’ mind. “Brother Ben, the Black Panther Party, Blacks of February 21st, and the community understand that SCEF, the Communist Party [of America], and other white organizations have created contradictions in the Black Progressive movement,” the BPP pamphlet read. “The white movement has failed because the majority of whites are the oppressor themselves…. They are asking the Black community to believe that white liberals and radicals can liberate Black people from ‘white domination.’ …The Black man needs a strong organization of its own that is able to stand on its own two feet and speak for a significant number of Black people. Competent Blacks have become helpless appendages and captives rather than full-fledged partners in alliances.”
The Black Panthers demanded $29,000 as compensation for Ben Simmons’ mental hospital commitment. When they were turned down, three members kidnapped the executive director Helen Greever and her husband, who, by faking a heart attack, got his kidnappers to flag down a police car and send him and his wife to the hospital. Then SCEF obtained arrest warrants for the members responsible. These actions led to bitter debate within SCEF. Anne Braden protested that jailing Black Panthers was out of the question “no matter the circumstances,” that it was part of “a ruling class… tactic to put SCEF in the position of prosecuting the Panthers.” The 1973 SCEF Committee Report likewise criticized its own officers, recognizing the prevailing insensitivity of white radicals to Black people. The scathing report by Black board member Walter Collins accused the organization of plastering over the matter of white racism with an emphasis on Black-white unity and pointed the blame at SCEF officers who were members of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA). Collins claimed this was an illustrative example of the “undeclared war between the Panthers who call themselves revolutionary nationalists and members of the Communist party who seem to believe that nationalism is not revolutionary and even if it is, that in America and SCEF it has no place.”
The divisions within SCEF became unbridgeable with this crisis. The broad coalition that made up SCEF broke up, the Bradens stepped away from the organization they had nurtured for so long, and a group of Maoists would take control of the shell of the old fund. The struggle for supremacy within SCEF grew more intense against the backdrop of tensions with Black radicals who resented the presence of a mostly white organization in their backyard rendering them “helpless appendages and captives” to a movement run by settlers. They provided their equipment and their legal team on their own terms, meaning that by sharing resources with Black nationalists they made them subordinates. The fact of the matter was that the white organization had ownership. While they spoke of interracial unity, they didn’t understand the form that would necessitate. This reality exaggerated the crisis within SCEF, now forced to ask itself its position on Black nationalism; the ignorance of their white leadership meant that even with their outward support of Black radicals, they relegated the Black radicals to junior partners. SCEF couldn’t see that the only role they could ever have in a revolutionary interracial coalition is the very role they boxed their Black comrades into.
Part II: DSA in Crisis
When I first came across the story of SCEF’s demise, I had been in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for about a year. The largest socialist organization in the country was by then out of the honeymoon phase that came from a 1,400% growth in members over just six years. Much like SCEF, the Democratic Socialists are an overwhelmingly white organization made up of a broad coalition from Social Democrats to Leninists to Anarchists. The difference is that DSA is nationwide, and with its exponential growth it intends to wield newfound political power– each group with its dramatically different ideas of just how. Complicating the matters is that DSA knows it can’t effectively wield power until it solves the problem of racial exclusion. Around 90% of the organization was white as of 2017.
How does a virtually all-white socialist organization justify itself? Debates over how to diversify the organization make it clear that the goal is to maintain the current dynamic while taking in just enough people of color to dodge the accusations and stereotypes that pursue the group. DSA, on the national level, is not interested in forming healthy relationships with their chapters’ communities; rather, it is content to build white ideological garrisons next to their colonized neighbors. The infighting that has seized DSA reveals that the organization is currently led by a white petite-bourgeoisie intent on shaping America in a way that will better divide the spoils from its imperial ventures among its settler citizens. The national organization has blocked at every turn a consistently anti-imperialist and internationalist approach to politics, insisting that the only way to improve this land is through the channels established and maintained by the empire. The reason DSA is virtually all-white is because its current mission is to better distribute America’s imperialist loot.
As the Black Panthers noted about SCEF, the leaders within the Democratic Socialists of America largely believe that white radicals will choose the best course for people of color, and any non-white members joining should moderate their tone and politely follow the group’s line. Asking for true liberation will come with consequences. That’s because DSA sees the role of people of color as “appendages” to an interracial movement– that Americans of all colors must unite in a way that conveniently gives settlers the lion’s share of power. This organization sees the problem of diversity as an embarrassing public relations disaster and not as the proof that they are on the side of the empire.
In no way is this to say that many DSA members don’t stand for anti-imperialism and internationalism. It is simply the bare minimum not pursued by the National Political Committee (NPC). And unfortunately the group will have to work uphill against its makeup as a white petite-bourgeois club to do anything positive, much as the CPUSA lost any revolutionary potential as its class makeup changed (from 5% to 41% “middle class” between 1932 and 1938) and it entered that “undeclared war” against nationalism from the colonized people living in the artificial borders of the US. The rumors are true. DSA is white and middle class. And, as Lenin says, “the class of those who own nothing but do not labor either is incapable of overthrowing the exploiters.”
As a group dominated by settlers it should surprise no one that DSA was unable to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle. The NPC first stood firmly behind Jamaal Bowman, the Democratic Socialist congressman that the organization endorsed, after he voted for more Iron Dome funding, took a photo shoot with the Israeli Prime Minister, and held a town hall with the pro-Israeli advocacy group J Street. DSA’s BDS Palestinian Solidarity Working Group (BDS-WG) called him out, demanding that he be expelled for his open support of an apartheid state. The consistent anti-imperialist dissent of the BDS-WG warranted the NPC to fold the working group as a whole, signaling their apathy towards Palestinian solidarity. Is it any coincidence that a predominantly white organization made moves to shut up the voices crying out against settler colonialism? If DSA can’t meaningfully oppose a settler colonialist, apartheid state halfway around the world, how are they going to dismantle the settler colonialist, apartheid empire that the organization operates in?
DSA is led by settler “socialists” who know their job is to stand in the way of those looking to end the colonization of the various submerged nations swallowed up by the United States. They willingly stand for settler colonialism and apartheid in their effort to use imperialist channels for a measly sliver of electoral power. Despite this, many in the organization stand against imperialism and in solidarity with colonized people around the world; for the most part, however, their approach is backward. We will not persuade the mass of settlers to dismantle the American empire. We should listen to Sakai when he says that “whatever ‘advanced’ or democratic-minded Euro-Americans do exist need to be dis-united from their fellow settlers, rather than welded back into the whole lock-stepping, reactionary white mass by the usual reform movements.” That is why I will not be renewing my dues. I still believe that my role is to subvert white-dominated spaces from the inside, but winning over the hollow shell of DSA is a lost cause– this organization will never hold the trust of the proletariat. Its impressive growth in recent years is largely the result of a national movement of the white labor aristocracy which presents itself as “left wing” but is incapable of true class consciousness.
Conclusion: SCEF and DSA
Much like SCEF, the factionalism within DSA is accelerated by a division within settler ranks on how to react to the meaningful advances by colonized people striving for liberation. Unfortunately, that such a debate even exists is evidence of the organization’s failure. DSA can never challenge the empire because it doesn’t understand the role that white radicals have; much like in SCEF, ignorance has kept many of us from seeing that liberation will never be led by Euro-Americans, and any interracial unity must be premised on unconditional support of colonized people and their leadership. We cannot use racial unity as a shield against what is really white paternalism. Nonwhite radicals do not need to be told who the oppressor is.
Analyzing the case of SCEF’s demise makes it clear that DSA is repeating the same mistakes as majority-white radical groups of the past. With the zeal of missionaries, it believes its job is to organize people of color. It will use its large membership and bountiful resources to absorb nonwhite radicals and turn them into appendages of a settler movement to reform the empire. As it stands, DSA can only undermine true radical movements. They are proven to use every tool in the book to suppress dissent from actual leftists, folding outspoken working groups and even purging leftist members in the case of the Atlanta chapter! The complete suppression of an anti-imperialist and internationalist position has made the organization intolerable. The leadership intends to use American imperialism to the advantage of the labor aristocracy.
DSA is even worse than SCEF, an organization that was at least willing to share its resources with Black nationalists. But the issue is deeper than that. The fact of the matter is that Euro-Americans will never organize people of color like DSA would like. Euro-Americans must let the colonized people of the world liberate themselves on their own terms and support them unconditionally on the terms they have set for themselves. Euro-American “socialists” have not advanced far enough to recognize this; they are not class conscious, but believe in a program that divides up the loot of the American empire’s conquests. DSA’s leadership has already demonstrated that they stand with settler colonialism and apartheid, not just around the globe but here at home.
Notes
SCEF moves HQ to Louisville. Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South by Fosl, Catherine, pp. 305-306
SCEF “became a battleground….” Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South by Fosl, Catherine, pp. 320-321
Black Panthers “didn’t have the money….” Freedom on the Border: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky by Fosl, Catherine & K’Meyer, Tracy E., pp. 208-210.
JOMO appropriates SCEF office, SCEF and Louisville Seven Case, Ben Simmons takes action. Irwin Klibaner, “The Travail of Southern Radicals: The Southern Conference Educational Fund, 1946-1976,” The Journal of Southern History 49, no. 2 (May, 1983), pp. 195-198, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2207502.
Arguments over usage and SCEF accusations, BPP Pamphlet. White, Hannah and Fosl, Catherine, “A Case Study of Louisville’s Racial Justice History from 1968 to 1974” (2020). Undergraduate Research Events. 9. https://ir.library.louisville.edu/undergradresearch/
Kidnapping, debate within SCEF. Irwin Klibaner, “The Travail of Southern Radicals: The Southern Conference Educational Fund, 1946-1976,” The Journal of Southern History 49, no. 2 (May, 1983), pp. 199-200, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2207502.
1,400% growth in members. “Democratic Socialists of America Make a Strategy for the Biden Era.” In These Times, https://inthesetimes.com/article/democratic-socialism-politics-election-dsa-convention-aoc.
90% white. Salazar, Miguel. “Do America’s Socialists Have a Race Problem?” The New Republic, 8 Apr. 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/152789/americas-socialists-race-problem.
CPUSA 5% to 41% middle class. Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern by Sakai, J., pp. 298-299.
“The class of those who own nothing but….” Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern by Sakai, J., p. 336.
Bowman’s actions and BDS-WG statement. DSA Observer. “Bowman Holds Town Hall with J Street; BDS-WG Renews Their Call for Expulsion.” Bowman Holds Town Hall with J Street; BDS-WG Renews Their Call for Expulsion, DSA Observer, 30 Nov. 2021,
BDS-WG de-chartered by NPC. DSA Observer. “DSA Leadership Votes to De-Charter BDS Working Group.” DSA Leadership Votes to De-Charter BDS Working Group, DSA Observer, 20 Mar. 2022,
Sakai quote. Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat from Mayflower to Modern by Sakai, J., p. 115.