ABSTRACT
Uncertainty prevailed in the Republican camp prior to the 1920 National Convention at Chicago. Negro politicians, Republicans by naught save traditional allegiance and sinecure doles, floundered in a quandary of bewilderment. In Virginia the trend of political events at this time seemed designed maliciously to crush the aspirations of the Negro in national politics. The Lily White Republicans of Center City had issued a call for the purpose of electing delegates to the National Convention. The Lily Blacks held mass meeting at which they poured vials of vitriolic protest and denunciation upon the "double-crossing" Lily Whites. The Negro communists had not thought it necessary to make special mention of the few colored workers who were numbered among the strikers. The very fact that Negro workers had a so-called Colored Branch of the Socialist Local spelled our doom. These are social forces to which southern communists like the rest of their Dixie kinsmen, are blind.
