Civil rights movement

=== Avoiding the "Communist" label ===
{{See also|The Communist Party and African-Americans}}

On December 17, 1951, the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party]]–affiliated [[Civil Rights Congress]] delivered the petition ''[[We Charge Genocide]]: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People'' to the United Nations, arguing that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against [[lynching in the United States]], was guilty of [[genocide]] under Article II of the [[Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide|UN Genocide Convention]] (see [[Black genocide]]).<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis51.htm ''We Charge Genocide''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080402015621/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis51.htm |date=April 2, 2008 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> The petition was presented to the United Nations at two separate venues: [[Paul Robeson]], a concert singer and activist, presented it to a UN official in New York City, while [[William L. Patterson]], executive director of the CRC, delivered copies of the drafted petition to a UN delegation in Paris.<ref name="autogenerated1981">{{cite book |last=Carson |first=Clayborne |title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s |url=https://archive.org/details/instrugglesnccbl00cars_1 |url-access=registration |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1981|isbn=978-0-674-44726-4 }}</ref>

Patterson, the editor of the petition, was a leader of the Communist Party USA and head of the [[International Labor Defense]], a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African Americans who were involved in cases that involved issues of political or racial persecution. The ILD was known for leading the defense of the [[Scottsboro Boys]] in [[Alabama]] in 1931, where the Communist Party had a considerable amount of influence among African Americans in the 1930s. This influence had largely declined by the late 1950s, although it could command international attention. As earlier civil rights figures such as Robeson, Du Bois and Patterson became more politically radical (and therefore targets of Cold War [[anti-Communism]] by the U.S. Government), they lost favor with mainstream Black America as well as with the NAACP.<ref name="autogenerated1981" />

In order to secure a place in the political mainstream and gain the broadest base of support, the new generation of civil rights activists believed that it had to openly distance itself from anything and anyone associated with the Communist party. According to [[Ella Baker]], the Southern Christian Leadership Conference added the word "Christian" to its name in order to deter charges that it was associated with [[Communism]].<ref>{{cite interview |url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/html_use/G-0007.html |title=Oral History Interview with Ella Baker, September 4, 1974. Interview G-0007. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007): Electronic Edition. Ella Baker Describes Her Role in the Formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee |last=Baker |first=Ella |author-link=Ella Baker }}</ref> Under [[J. Edgar Hoover]], the FBI had been concerned about communism since the early 20th century, and it kept civil rights activists under close surveillance and labeled some of them "Communist" or "subversive", a practice that continued during the civil rights movement. In the early 1960s, the practice of distancing the civil rights movement from "Reds" was challenged by the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] which adopted a policy of accepting assistance and participation from anyone who supported the SNCC's political program and was willing to "put their body on the line, regardless of political affiliation." At times the SNCC's policy of political openness put it at odds with the NAACP.<ref name="autogenerated1981" />