ABSTRACT
On September 1, 1919, Otto Huiswoud, an immigrant from Surinam, became the first African American to join the newly formed American Communist Party after the Socialists split into three groups. Active in the Harlem Twenty-first Assembly District club of the Socialist Party, Huiswoud became close friends with Arthur P. Hendricks, an immigrant from British Guyana and a theology student with strong interest in Marxist theory. Sharing a similar colonial background, the two men joined the Socialist left wing, which was about to be expelled because of its refusal to deal with the “Negro problem.” Hendricks died of tuberculosis that spring, and in June 1919 Huiswoud attended the National Left Wing Conference and was among the group that met to found the Communist Party on September 1, 1919.
