B. D. Amis Papers
Call Number
Dates
Creator
Extent
Language of Materials
Abstract
B. D. Amis (1896-1993), was an African-American Communist and labor union organizer. He was a leader of the American Negro Labor Congress, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and the National Negro Congress, three Communist Party-inspired popular front organizations. He was a Party organizer for District Six, headquartered in Cleveland. He then moved to Philadelphia, where he was an organizer for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and chairman of the Philadelphia Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia, and went on to organize Catering Industry Employees Union, Local 758, an African-American local within the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union (AFL), serving as Secretary-Treasurer of both organizations, ca. 1939-1942. The collection consists mostly of published and unpublished writings, many of them written for the Daily Worker, for the monthly journal, Communist, or for the international Communist movement weekly, International Press Correspondence (aka Inprecorr). Also included are reports to various Communist Party national and local bodies, most of which are concerned with the struggle for African-American civil rights and the Communist Party's positions on civil rights issues. There are also clippings by and about Amis, correspondence, including a letter from African-American Communist leader Benjamin J. Davis, radio speeches, copies of photographs of Amis and of political meetings, and collective bargaining agreements signed by Amis.
Historical/Biographical Note
B. D. (B. DeWayne) Amis, 1896-1993, was an African-American Communist Party USA and labor union organizer. Amis was born in Chicago and by 1928 was president of the NAACP branch in Peoria, IL, when the Communist Party invited him to come to New York. Amis became a member of the National Committee of the Communist-inspired American Negro Labor Congress, and also wrote articles for the Daily Worker, the party newspaper. In 1930, Amis became general secretary of the Communist-inspired League of Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR) and an editor of its publication, The Liberator. During this period Amis wrote the pamphlets Lynch Justice at Work (1930) and They shall not die!: The story of Scottsboro in pictures (1932). Amis went on to become the District Organizer for the Communist Party in Cleveland and traveled to the Soviet Union on two occasions, the second time for about a year and a half. While there, he took courses in Marxism and wrote articles for the Negro Worker, the newspaper of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers.
Upon his return to the United States, Amis settled in Philadelphia where he joined the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) as a field organizer. He was also the head of the Philadelphia committee of the National Negro Congress, and the chairman of the Philadelphia Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia. He ran as the Communist candidate for Auditor General of Pennsylvania in 1936. He went on to organize Catering Industry Employees Union, Local 758, an African-American local of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union (AFL), serving as Secretary-Treasurer of both organizations, ca. 1939-1942. He subsequently worked for the Gulf Oil Company, while continuing his union and community organizing activities. Amis died in 1993.
Sources:
B. D. Amis - Black Communist and Labor Leader, by his son Barry D. Amis, People's Weekly World, Nov. 20, 2004. (http://www.pww.org/index.php/article/articleview/6137/1/241/)
Arrangement
Arranged alphabetically.
The files are grouped into one series:
Missing Title
- I, Papers, 1930-2004.
Scope and Content Note
The collection consists mostly of published and unpublished writings, many of them written for the Daily Worker, for the monthly journal, Communist, or for the international Communist movement weekly, International Press Correspondence. Also included are reports to various Communist Party national and local bodies, including reports to District Six (headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio), for which he served as the District Organizer and a report detailing the Communist movement's activities in the city of Rockford, Ohio, as well as radio speeches, some relating to Amis' labor and Communist Party activism in Eastern Pennsylvania. There are also several collective bargaining agreements signed by Amis on behalf of the Local Joint Board of Philadelphia, consisting of Local 758 and several other locals of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees' International Alliance and Bartenders' International Union (AFL). The majority of Amis' writings relate to the struggle for Africa-American civil rights, and the Communist Party's positions on civil rights issues. There is also a file relating to the Philadelphia Committee for the Defense of Ethiopia, a file relating to his candidacy for the office of Auditor General of Pennsylvania, clippings, letters to Amis from Philadelphia government officials in response to his queries about community issues, a 1947 letter from Ben Davis, copies of photographs, and a copy of a 2004 biographical article by his son, Barry D. Amis, published in the Communist Party's newspaper, the People's Weekly World.
Subjects
Organizations
Genres
People
Topics
Donors
Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by B.D. Amis, were transferred to New York University in 2006 by Debbie Amis Bell. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection must be secured from the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive. Please contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date; Collection name; Collection number; box number; folder number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated by Debbie Amis Bell in 2006. The accession number associated with this gift is 2006.010.
