Manning Johnson

Manning Rudolph Johnson (December 17, 1908 – July 2, 1959) was a Communist Party USA African-American leader and the party's candidate for U.S. Representative from New York's 22nd congressional district during a special election in 1935. Later, he left the Party and became an anti-communist government informant and witness.

Background In 1932, Johnson went to a secret Communist Party training school, where his instructors included William Z. Foster (here, silhouetted in 1971 USSR stamp) Manning Rudolph Johnson was born on December 17, 1908, in Washington, DC. He attended Lovejoy Elementary School, Lovejoy Junior High School, and the Armstrong Technical High School (now Friendship Armstrong Academy). He graduated from the Naval Air Technical School (at Naval Support Activity Mid-South, then in Memphis, Tennessee, now at Naval Air Station Pensacola).

In 1932, he studied for three months by J. Peters, William Z. Foster, Jack Stachel, Alexander Bittelman, Max Bedacht, Israel Amter, Gil Green, Harry Haywood, and James S. Allen among others at the "National Training School," part of the New (York?) Workers School, a "secret school" devoted to training "development of professional revolutionists, professional revolutionaries, or active functionaries of the Communist party." Tuition was free with expenses paid and accommodations provided at the "Cooperative Colony" (Allerton Avenue, the Bronx) (now known as the United Workers Cooperatives). Jacob Golos of World Tourists provided transportation via the "Martell Bus Line." and 1936 books on Negro Liberation contained maps of the "Black Belt" as the basis of a Negro Soviet Republic (here, on March 24, 1953) From 1930 to 1939, Manning Johnson was a member of the Communist Party USA; he left shortly after the announcement of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Fellow members of the Party's national Negro Commission were: James S. Allen, Elizabeth Lawson, Robert Minor, and George Blake Charney.

In 1950, Johnson testified against the International Workers Order.

In May 1954, Johnson testified against Ralph Bunche before the International Organizations' Employees Loyalty Board, as did Leonard Patterson. An issue which he attacked in that speech was NAACP support for racial integration. He said, "This integration stuff has gone to all sorts of extremes."

Manning Johnson died following an auto accident which had occurred on June 26, 1959, just south of Lake Arrowhead Village, California. He is buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego, California.

Legacy

During the July 1949 hearing into Communist infiltration of minority groups, Manning told HUAC of his interactions with HUAC investigator Alvin Williams Stokes. He said that Stokes "talked to us in New York about 2 years ago and convinced me I should take part before this committee."

In 1981, Victor S. Navasky (then, publisher of The Nation magazine and who refers to Johnson only with the epithet "informant") documented Manning Johnson's 1951 admission to lying in 1949 during the second trial of Harry Bridges:

Works

Writings of Johnson include: "Party Organizer" (1933) Archibald Roosevelt, a son of US President Theodore Roosevelt, wrote the book's preface as president of The Alliance, Inc. In describing his Communist experience, he claimed that the CPUSA was under the control of the Soviet Politburo, of which he claimed to be a member, and that Gerhart Eisler (named in 1946 by Louis F. Budenz as head of Soviet espionage in the USA) was the Soviet's country representative.

Johnson claimed that the Communist Party controlled the unions including American Negro Labor Congress, League of Struggle for Negro Rights, International Labor Defense, National Negro Congress, Sharecroppers' Union, Civil Rights Congress, Negro Labor Victory Committee, Southern Negro Youth Congress, and Negro Labor Councils.