Communists: Practice v. Polemics

Communists loudly claim to be the friend of the Negro, foe to racial discrimination. But last week a Negro woman who is a former U.S. party member testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee about Communist practices as opposed to polemics. Mrs. Julia Clarice Brown said that in 1947, when she joined the party in Cleveland, she found that she could not attend meetings of the cell in her Cleveland neighborhood. Said Mrs. Brown: "It was a Jim Crow club." Mrs. Brown had to make a three-mile trip to reach a Communist cell that was willing to mingle Negroes and whites. She quit the party, then rejoined as an undercover agent for the FBI.