Party-mandated portrayals of Black life would surrender Black masses to fascism

Evidence

In April 1940, Wright had written to Gold: “[I]f I should follow Ben Davis’s advice and write of Negroes through the lens of how the Party views them in terms of political theory, I’d abandon the Bigger Thomases. I’d be tacitly admitting that they are lost to us, that fascism will triumph because it alone can enlist the allegiance of those millions whom capitalism has crushed and maimed.” Fabre, op. cit., pp. 185–86. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2492

Categorization

• XREF: Wright’s defense of the Bigger Thomases as a radical act anticipates the later split between lived Black experience and party line.