agreement that, well, they didn't want to lose this union because the majority of white longshoremen, they said, were opposed to Negroes, so they would only give them permit cards so when the war was over, they could kick them out. And when we Communists, longshoremen, got up and made a fight and forced them to give the Negroes books in the Longshoremen's Union down in San Pedro, the Communist Party leadership in Los Angeles called me and other Negro Communists in, and there were 3 of us, and they kicked the others out. I was the only one who was not kicked out because we broke a party decision. I am here because I want to do everything that I can and explain to the Negro people and the American people the threat of the Communist conspiracy; that it is not a political organization, it is not an American organization, but is a part of a worldwide organization of Communists whose major aim is to, through coercion, through organization, through strikes, through capturing our organizations, through using one group against the other, through bringing about confusion in order to prepare an armed uprising and civil war and overthrow of this Government and establishing in its place the dictatorship of the Soviet Union, a Soviet Government. As we look back at what happened to the Jewish people once the Communists got in power in Russia and put them all out on that desert in Birobidjan, we can see-and they already plan for the Negro's statehood. They would give us the wornout land down there somewhere in Alabama, and I am ready to fight against that thing, and it took me a long time to reach this, and I did a lot of damage to this country while in the Communist Party. I I was a very good organizer; I was a Negro fraternity leader; could go in any Negro church and speak; I was welcomed by all the Negroes, and today I must say that I am still, since I quit the party. I am happy to say that the Negro community in Los Angeles has opened their arms to me, and I am a part of the Negro community, and I am not one of those violent anti-Communists who holler "Communist." I am one of those constructive kind who try to educate the Negroes to understand, and that is why I quit, and that is why I have no attorney. I don't need an attorney. Mr. DOYLE. Now, Mr. Rosser, I certainly wish to compliment you on your magnificently helpful statement, but you have mentioned many times the Young Communist League, and immediately I want to know how young and how old those young people are in the Young Communist League. Mr. ROSSER. I was, I think, 25 or 26, and the leadership of the-you have to understand the Young Communist League. They got them in from 14 to 27, 28, 29, but the Young Communist League is a training ground for Communists, and the leadership of the Young Communist League—there they put these young people, 20, 25, 26, whom they want to train. For example, I worked with Gil Green, the national chairman of the Young Communist League, who is now one of the top Communists in America. I worked with Bob Thompson on the national committee of the Communist Party in America. I worked with Henry Winston, a Negro Young Communist League member who was trained in the Young Communist League who is a national leader of the Communist Party in America. I worked with Johnnie Gates. Johnnie Gates was in the Young Communist League, was trained there. He is a national leader of the Young Communist League. In California I worked with Ben Dobbs. Ben Dobbs is State leader of the Young Communist League. I worked with Celeste Strack in the student movement. She was trained in the Young Communist League. She is a State leader of the Young Communist League, and in the party, anybody who is a leader, a State leader or county leader, of the Young Communist League is also a member of the Communist Party. Mr. DOYLE. Now, Mr. Rosser, may I ask you this: What was your experience, if any-because I haven't discussed this or any other questions or testimony with you-in the Communist Party with references to what pattern, if any, should be followed by Communist Party members in being subpenaed before this committee? Were they to claim the fifth amendment? Were they to claim their constitutional rights generally? Or what was their instruction, if any, from the Communist Party headquarters? (Representative Donald L. Jackson returned to the hearing room at this point.) Mr. ROSSER. I have only had one experience, my own personal experience. I was called before the grand jury in 1936 or 1937 in the Webster case. I don't know whether it is 1936 or 1937 right now. Pettis Perry-quite a few of the leading Communists of southern California were called before the grand jury, and in a meeting with the county leadership of the Communist Party I was told the only answers I could give were my name, my address, where I lived, who my family was, if I wanted to, but any discussion about the Communist Party, that was out; because I was an open, known_Communist, I would say yes, I was a member of the Communist Party. The party members, they are told what to do in training. Mr. DOYLE. You mentioned in your testimony twice that the Communist Party even tried to work through the Young Democrats and the Young Republicans. I notice you mentioned that twice. In what way did the Communist Party try to work through the Young Democrats and the Young Republicans in California? Mr. ROSSER. Well, the party has a program and in the Young Democrats, the question of building a Communist group in there, some of them were elected into the State leadership of the Young Democrats. The Young Republicans, the party program was a little different. There is a program of confusion, a program stating that the Republicans didn't have a program, blah, blah, blah, blah, and the Young Democrats, for California especially-the party used the Young Democrats as a whip to push the party program for the things that the party wanted and to use them as a place where they could attract a lot of people who later on got patronage jobs in the Government, and so forth. Mr. DOYLE. May I ask you this question: What, if any, to your personal knowledge is the attitude of the Communist Party toward the functioning of this particular committee-we will say the UnAmerican Activities Committee of the House of Representatives? What position, if any, has the Communist Party taken during your membership in it toward the function of this committee? Mr. ROSSER. Well, I think the best answer I could give for you, Congressman Doyle, is the Friday issue of the Daily People's World. I think that gives the answer a lot better. Of course they mention the committee, but they jump on Mr. Velde, and I think that would give the answer of the party because you have to understand the Daily People's World is not just a newspaper. It is a directive to every Communist Party member who understands Marx and Lenin. It is a directive. When they discuss the Un-American Activities Committee and say it is bogus and baloney and no good and this and that, it means every Communist, wherever he is, must start a protest against the Un-American Activities Committee, and be it the union or Republican club or Democratic club or social club or PTA, after they read the Daily People's World issue on that, they know. They have an issue in there on the Negro Wells, to free him out of jail. Every Communist who will read that will know that the job in the shop is to get one of those petitions to get him free. So the party's attitude on these committees you can understand that-is that they must be abolished because they are going after the Communist Party. Mr. DOYLE. You did not mention anywhere in your dissertation the Duclos letter, and I am wondering if you have any opinion to give on that, or are you in a position to Mr. ROSSER. Well, the Duclos letter, I pointed out that at Pearl Harbor, when the party was fighting hard for the opening of the second front in Teheran, when Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt met, and they agreed in December 1943 to open the second front through Europe and to give more aid to the Soviet Union and food and material, the party, in order to not disrupt this decision, took Lenin's teachings and used them. So the party retreated; the party came out through the party press and said that in this period and the postwar period, after there is no need for the Communist Party-and they discussed the two-party system, and they said they were going to dissolve the Communist Party and set up the Communist Political Association, and in this way the national leadership of the party felt that they would ease the tension of the American people because the American people felt that even though they were helping Russia, every time the Red army moved, they had a bayonet, and they had propaganda, so they wanted to ease the tension, that the Communist Party is an American party; that it is a party that wants America to win the war, and of course they were fighting for aid to the Soviet Union. Browder made his speech, wrote his book on Teheran, and they completely-in the South they abolished the Communist Party completely. I was told this personally, that the reason they abolished the Communist Party in the South is because the Democratic Congressmen from the South, especially in the Senate, controlled all the main appropriation committees and had the most important committees that were necessary for aid to the Soviet Union. As long as they had a Communist Party in the South and anything would happen-Negroes fighting for their rights-the Communists would be accused of it, and in this way the Southern Democrats would oppose opening the second front through Europe and giving more aid to the Soviet Union. So they abolished the party in the South. In the rest of America they set up this Communist Political Association, and it was nothing but a tactic of the party, but when the back of the German Army was broken, they got all our guns and ships, and they were standing there near the Elbe in Germany in the middle of Berlin, and then Duclos writes a letter. Stalin could have written it, but he had Duclos write it because during that period they also had abolished the Communist International. They said, "We don't need it any more." Russia said, "We don't give directives to the Communist Party throughout the world," and they abolished that, so through their system they had an information center, the Cominform. They had Duclos, the leading French Communist and one of the leading Communists of the world, write a letter to the American Communists that Browder watered down Marxism and Leninism; that Browder was screwy if he thought that there could be any peace between the capitalist class and the working class; that Browder's idea that labor and management committees would survive was a lot of baloney; that the question of the day is the revolution. And so the Communists then went back again, see; they changed their line, and they went back to the national liberation of the Negro people. They changed the organization, went back to the Communist Party. They took the Young Communist League, the youth organization, and made it the youth organization, and so forth. Mr. DOYLE. I know, Mr. Rosser, that the practice of the Communist Party and their fellow travelers is habitually to attack anyone who appears before this committee who tries to help it, as you have. I want to ask you this question, and again this is something I haven't asked you about, and I haven't asked you anything else about which you have testified here today: You are not in the employ of this committee; are you? Mr. ROSSER. Oh, no. Mr. DOYLE. Never have been? Mr. ROSSER. No. Mr. DOYLE. Were you offered any emolument or anything of value, either directly or indirectly, in order to come here and help this committee today? Mr. ROSSER. No, no. Mr. DOYLE. That is all, Mr. Chairman. Mr. VELDE. I think, Mr. Rosser, that my colleagues have already summed up the knowledge that you have brought forth today regarding your activities in the Communist Party while you were a member. It was very interesting to me to learn the motives which impelled you to become a member of the Communist Party or the Young Communist League in the first place and the motives which compelled you to leave the Communist Party. We have had a number of different reasons given to this committee as to why persons, American citizens, have joined the Communist Party and a number of different reasons why they have left. Your very lucid dissertation on that particular subject is extremely valuable to this committee because we are planning to issue a booklet on the subject-matter which you have just discussed, the reasons that American citizens joined the Communist Party and the reasons that they left the Communist Party. I want to join with my colleagues, too, in thanking you for appearing here before this committee and giving the valuable information to the committee which will assist it in recommending remedial legislation to handle the problems of the Communist conspiracy. In order that you might be within the jurisdiction of the United States Congress, your subpena will be continued until further notice. At this time you are dismissed with the committee's thanks. Call the next witness. Mr. JACKSON. Mr. Chairman, I see that there has entered the hearing room one of our colleagues of the House of Representatives, the Honorable John J. Allen, Jr. I think the committee should be aware of that. Mr. VELDE. We certainly want to welcome you here, Mr. Allen. If you don't have a chair and want to come and sit down here, you are certainly welcome. Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Donald Niven Wheeler. Mr. VELDE. In the testimony you are about to give before this subcommittee do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Mr. WHEELER. I do. TESTIMONY OF DONALD NIVEN WHEELER, ACCOMPANIED BY HIS COUNSEL, GEORGE ANDERSEN Mr. TAVENNER. What is your name, please, sir? Mr. WHEELER. Donald Wheeler. Mr. TAVENNER. Do you have a middle name? Mr. WHEELER. Yes; Niven, N-i-v-e-n. Mr. TAVENNER. Are you accompanied by counsel, Mr. Wheeler? Mr. WHEELER. Yes, sir. Mr. TAVENNER. Will counsel please identify himself for the record? Mr. ANDERSEN. George Andersen. Mr. TAVENNER. Your address, please? Mr. ANDERSEN. 240 Montgomery. Mr.TAVENNER. When and where were you born, Mr. Wheeler? Mr. WHEELER. White Bluffs, Wash. Mr. TAVENNER. What date? Mr. WHEELER. October 23, 1913. Mr. TAVENNER. Will you give the committee, please, a statement of your formal educational training? (At this point Mr. Wheeler conferred with Mr. Andersen.) Mr. WHEELER. I attended grade school in White Bluffs, Wash.; high school in Woodland, Wash., White Bluffs, and Seattle. I attended Reed College in Portland, Oreg. Mr. TAVENNER. When did you finish your work at Reed College? Mr. WHEELER. In 1935, and I attended Oxford University in 1935-37 and the University of Paris. Mr. TAVENNER. Will you speak a little louder, please, sir? Mr. WHEELER. The University of Paris from 1937-38, as I recall. Mr. TAVENNER. Will you tell the committee, please, how you have been employed since the completion of your educational training in 1938? |