ABSTRACT
The twentieth century launched black America on a difficult and crucial journey: the quest to establish an identity and to gain a stake in determining the future. Cyril Brigg's editorials, essays, and letters provide an extended and detailed chronology of the engagement of American blacks with Soviet Russia and offer numerous points for the examination of the initiation of black Communism. In 1919, Briggs formed the African Blood Brotherhood (A.B.B.), initiating its organization with advertisements encouraging membership appearing in the October 1919 issue of The Crusader. An investigation of Brigg's work situates magazine, The Crusader, a critical publication that exemplified all of the competing strains of the debate, reestablishes Briggs as an important intellectual force in the radicalization of black America. Brigg's reflection on the A.B.B. agenda is, perhaps, the clearest elucidation of Brigg's radical trajectory. Briggs characterized the resignation in a 1958 letter to Theodore Draper as 'protest against the publishers attempt to censor editorials, their intimidation by government officials'.
