"James W. Ford"(December 22,1893-1957)

Was the vice-presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA in 1932,1936,and 1940.A party organizer from New York City,James was the first African American to appear on a presidential ticket in the 20th century.James was born in Pratt City Alabama on December 22,1893,the son of Lymon Forsch.His father a former resident of Gainesville Georgia,had come to Alabama in the 1890sto work in the coal mines and steel mills.He wound up working for 35 years as Cole miner for the Tennessee coal,Iron,and Railroad Company.His mother earned additional money for the family as a domestic worker.James got his first job at age 13 working working on a railroad track in Ensley Alabama.He later worked as a blacksmith's helper at a steel plant,a machinist's helper,and at a blast furnace.He worked his way through high school before attending Fisk University.A few months before graduating in 1917,James enlisted in the U.S. Army in support of the American War effort as a new participant in World War 1.He entered the signal corps in charge of communications for the 86th Brigade of the 92nd Division in France.At the end of the war,James was discharged from the Army and returned to civilian life.He returned to America in which a black man with telecommunications skills was deemed unemployable in his profession and wound up taking a job as an unskilled laborer at a mattress factory in Chicago.He then landed a job working for the post office as a parcel post dispatcher,joining the Union of Post Office Workers at that same time.James became active in working for his union local,activity which put him into contact with the Communist Party for the first time.This union activity in consort with radicals seems to have brought James  to the attention of his superiors,and he was ultimately fired from his post office job.In 1925 James was recruited into the Chicago section of the American Negro Labor Congress (ANLC),established by the Communist Party as mass organization of black workers.The next year James joined the Workers (Communist) Party of America itself.As there were few African American members of the communist party in this period,James quickly gained recognition as one of the leading black communist in the nation.In 1928 he was sent to the Soviet Union to represent the American Communist Party at the 4th World Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions(RILU),held in Moscow during March and April.He was elected to the RILU Secretariat.James did not immediately return to the United States,instead remaining in Moscow to work on RILU matters as a full-time functionary.In August 1928,James attended the 6th World Congress of the Communist International on behalf of the American Communist Party,where he was elected to the Comintern's Negro Commission.He was also elected a delegate to the 1929 World Congress of the League Against Imperialism,which met in Hamburg Germany.In 1929,James attended the 10th Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI),at which he delivered two speeches.Later that month,James attended the 2nd Congress of the League Against Imperialism,where he was elected to the General Council and the Executive Committee.During the Ultra-radical "Third Period"(1929-1933),many in the Comintern advocated that the American Communist Party launch the inflammatory slogan "Self-determination for the Black belt"-a call for de facto or even de jure sovereignty of a broad swath of the American South in which black Americans constituted a demographic majority.James considered the question of whether American blacks constituted an "oppressed nationality"to be a largely academic matter,in view of the exceedingly limited contact which the Communist Party had with the black community.Nevertheless,the supporters of the ultra-radical idea of "self-determination"for the black people as an "oppressed nationality"(as opposed to fighting for equal rights for an "oppressed racial minority"of Americans)won the day.Thereafter James dutifully spoke out on behalf of independence of the American black belt,in accord with the new party line.In 1930 James organized the Comintern-sponsored 1st.International Conference of Negro Workers in Hamburg where he was elected as Secretary of the short-lived International Trade Union Committee for Black Workers as well as editor of its journal,The Negro Worker.There he was supplied with a young mistress (an agent of the Soviet GPU)and a monthly pension from Soviet intelligence.While in Hamburg,James participated in distributing copies of The Negro Worker via couriers to sailors on ships headed to British possessions,including Jamaica and the Union of South Africa.In response to an official protest lodged by the British government,German, police raided JAMES headquarters in Hamburg.After a botched attempt to escape by bicycle,James was arrested in a glare of publicity,and was summarily relieved of his political post with the Comintern.He return to the United States in 1930,where he assumed the role of Vice President of the League of struggle for Negro rights,the organization successor to ANLC.In 1932 James was elected to the governing Political Buro of the CPUSA.He had arrived as top political leader of the Communist Party of the USA.James status as one of the nation's most recognizable black Communist was further cemented in 1932 when he was named by the CPUSA as its candidate for Vice President of the United States,running on the ticket with presidential with nominee William Z. Foster.The placing of a black man near the top of the Communist ticket was symbolic of the party's self-declared commitment to racial equality and its commitment to advance blacks to its own leadership.Historian Mark Solomon notes that this was part of a brader campaign:"In 1932 the CP  ran dozens of black candidates in every region for everything from alderman and mayor to lieutenant governor and governor to member of congress.All the party candidates stressed the issues of unemployment insurance and racial equality.Getting elected was not a serious goal.Campaigns were "mass actions,'political boards;in James words,they were means "to mobilize workers in the struggle for their immediate needs."When asked about chances for the Party's black candidates,James replied The Communist Party is not stupid;in James words,we know that better than 4 million Negroes in this country cannot vote...and besides this,there is a great anti-Negro sentiment which the Party foes up against when it puts forth Negroes as their candidates.In all,the Foster-Ford ticket tallied 102,991 votes in 1932-a tiny total but a major step forward when gauged against the organization's performance during its first two electoral efforts in 1924 &1928.In 1933 James was made the new head of the Harlem Section of the Communist Party,a move designed both to tighten party discipline in the organization and to lessen the place of the more freewheeling,nationalist-inclined agitators like Cyril Briggs and Richard B. Moore.The ultra-left "Third Period"slogan of "Self-determination for the Black Belt"was drawing to a close,in favor of a new effort to build bridges with liberals and fighting for the solution of practical problems through the New Deal.The Harlem Communist sought to join with church and civic groups in a "Provisional Committee against Discrimination"in an effort to eliminate racism in job hiring and firing.Building the so-called "Popular Front"would be the new slogan of the day.On March 19, 1935,Harlem was torn by a riot,caused when a manager at a Kress store on 125th grabbed a black teenager for allegedly stealing a knife.The boy was dragged into the basement by police before being released through a back door.Black customers believed the boy was beaten,however,and a rumor started to spread that the boy had been killed.An angry crowd formed,a rock was thrown through the chain store window,and police broke up the spontaneous street meeting that had developed.Within an hour,not a window was left intact on 125th street and rampant looting had broken out.In the end,one person was killed,several others injured,and more than 200 were jailed in the so-called "Harlem Race Riot."While the immediate response of the press was to blame the Communist for fomenting racial unrest,two months of hearings followed in which James Harlem Section of the Communist Party was able to highlight the area's plight.The Communist Party established connections with a number of the area's labor,religious,and political leaders in the aftermath of the March 19th event.In the summer of 1935 James was sent by the CPUSA to the 7th World Congress of the Comintern as a delegate,where he was elected an alternate member of ECCI.In 1936,James was again placed on the CPUSA's ticket as its Vice Presidential hopeful,running this time with the CPUSA's General Secretary Earl Browder.James traveled to Spain in 1937 along with other American Communist in support of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War.The 1940 campaign saw a renewal of the Browder/Ford ticket by the Communist Party,the third and final time James appeared in that capacity.Earl reading too much into the dissolution of the Communist International in May of 1943 and the wartime alliance of the Soviet Union with America,dissolved the Communist Party in 1944,replacing it with a "Communist Political Association."James was chosen as the Vice President of this formation.When in April 1945 Moscow signaled its intense displeasure's in the decision to dissolve the Communist Party,Earl was cashiered,expelled from the reconstituted party in July.Although James made a public self-criticism of his alleged errors he was nevertheless demoted from the top echelon of Communist Party leaders,not re-elected to the National Committee of the party and supplanted in his de facto as "America's leading black Communist."James not targeted by the US Department of Justice in its 1948 prosecution of the top leadership of the CPUSA.