Cyril Briggs

Cyril Valentine Briggs (May 28, 1888 – October 18, 1966) was an African-Caribbean American writer and communist political activist. Briggs founded the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a small but historically important radical organization dedicated to advancing the cause of Pan-Africanism. He founded and edited its publication, The Crusader, a seminal New York magazine of the New Negro Movement of the 1920s.

Biography

Early years Cyril Valentine Briggs was born on May 28, 1888, on the Caribbean island of Nevis, part of the West Indies. His father, Louis E. Briggs, was a white plantation overseer; his mother, Mary M. Huggins, was of African-Caribbean descent. In accord with the racial caste system in colonial Nevis, the biracial Briggs was regarded as "coloured" despite his extremely light complexion. He would later move to become a writer himself, taking jobs with the St. Kitts Daily Express and the St. Christopher Advertiser.

Briggs' first American writing job came in 1912 at the Amsterdam News.

In 1917, shortly after Hubert Harrison founded the Liberty League and The Voice, Briggs founded the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), one of the seminal groups of African-American associations. His goal was to stop lynching and racial discrimination, and ensure voting and civil rights for African Americans in the South. He also called for black self-determination. The group initially opposed American involvement in the First World War.

African Blood Brotherhood founder

In 1918, the ABB started a magazine called The Crusader, which supported the Socialist Party of America's platform and helped expose lynchings in the South and discrimination in the North. Briggs hoped that President Woodrow Wilson would support voting rights for African Americans in the South after the service of veterans in the war. Southern Democratic congressmen opposed any changes. Disillusioned by Socialist and progressive efforts, Briggs joined the Communist Party of America in 1921,

Garvey believed that Briggs was trying to undermine the UNIA and filed a series of lawsuits against him.

Briggs supported the Irish War of Independence saying "the Irish fight for liberty is the Greatest Epic of Modern History. It is a struggle that should have the sympathy and active support of every lover of liberty of every member of an oppressed group."

Communist Party membership Briggs joined the Communist Party of America (CPA) in 1921 as a result of direct solicitations to join the still underground movement made by Rose Pastor Stokes of the CPA and Robert Minor of the rival United Communist Party. Briggs later recalled in a letter to historian Theodore Draper that his motivation for joining the Communist movement related to the domestic policy of Soviet Russia towards its national minority groups and to the fledgling Soviet state's explicitly anti-imperialist foreign policy.

Briggs would remain an active member of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) throughout the decade of the 1920s. In 1925 the African Blood Brotherhood was dissolved and replaced with a new organizational entity, the American Negro Labor Congress. Briggs was tapped as the new national secretary of the new Communist Party-sponsored organization.

Briggs was named a member of the governing Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1929. He would remain an influential figure in the party's hierarchy until the advent of the moderate Popular Front. Briggs would ultimately be expelled from the CPUSA at the end of the 1930s, accused of maintaining a "Negro nationalist way of thinking" in defiance of the new integrationist party line.

Briggs was allowed to rejoin the CPUSA in 1948, following the fall of party leader Earl Browder. He would remain active in the organization for the rest of his life, participating in its west coast activities.

Death and legacy Briggs died on October 18, 1966, in Los Angeles, California.

Footnotes

Works "The American Race Problem", The Crusader [New York], vol. 1, no. 14 (September–December 1918). "The African Blood Brotherhood", The Crusader, vol. 2, no. 10 (June 1920), pp. 7, 22. "The Negro Convention", The Toiler [New York], vol. 4, whole no. 190 (October 1, 1921), pp. 13–14. "The Negro Question in the Southern Textile Strikes", The Communist, vol. 8, no. 6 (June 1929), pp. 324–328. "The Negro Press as a Class Weapon", The Communist, vol. 8, no. 8 (August 1929), pp. 453–460. "Our Negro Work", The Communist, vol. 8, no. 9 (September 1929), pp. 494–501.