1970s PAUL ROBESON Young Workers Liberation League (Communist Youth) Cause Pin

Description

OFFERED FOR SALE IS THIS
2 1/4 INCH CELLULOID PINBACK BUTTONS
I
N WHAT I BELIEVE TO BE REALLY GREAT SHAPE.
HOWEVER, THAT IS JUST MY OPINION.  SEE PHOTOS FOR CONDITION, AND YOU BE THE JUDGE.
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, PLEASE CONTACT ME BEFORE BIDDING OR BUYING.
RETURNS ARE NOT ACCEPTED UNLESS THE ITEM IS NOT AS DESCRIBED OR SHOWN IN THE PHOTOS OR HAS SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE OR DEFECTS  NOT VISIBLE IN THE PHOTOS OR OTHERWISE DESCRIBED.
GUARANTEED AUTHENTIC AND ORIGINAL AS DESCRIBED
.
Check out my other Political and Social Protest and Cause items!
This pin was
i
ssued and sold in the early to mid 1970s
by the
Communist Party U.S.A. youth group
, the
YOUNG WORKERS LIBERATION LEAGUE
(
YWLL
).
The pin honors
Paul Robeson
, the world renowned black actor, singer, civil rights activist and communist. The Spanish Civil War stopped temporarily while both sides listen to Paul Robeson sing in a broadcast to the troops on the front lines.  (See short Bio of Paul Robeson, below.)
Paul Robeson once said: “
The artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative
.”
The pin has a handsome and bold portrait of Paul Robeson along with  the more common design of the YWLL emblem.  The pin reads:
Here We Stand To Live Like PAUL ROBESON
Paul Robeson
Born in Princeton, New Jersey, Paul Robeson was the son of a minister who had been a runaway slave. A keen student and gifted athlete, he won a scholarship to Rutgers, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, and graduated in 1919 as class valedictorian. He was also an All-American football player who put himself through Columbia Law School by playing professional football on weekends.
When a stenographer in the New York law firm where he worked refused to take dictation from a “nigger,” he abandoned his legal career in favor of the stage. He joined the Provincetown Players where he won praise for his performance in the title role of
Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones
. Success followed success. His generation knew him best for his portrayal of Othello on-stage and for his bass rendition of “
Ol’ Man River
” in stage and screen versions of Show Boat.
Traveling and performing abroad offered Robeson new perspectives. In his 1958 autobiography, Here I Stand, he wrote that “
the essential character of a nation is determined … by the common people, and that the common people of all nations are truly brothers in the great family of mankind
.” This perception led him not only to focus on the traditional American work songs and spirituals, but to learn more languages so that he could sing folk songs from other cultures. In the Soviet Union of the 1930s, he found a country free of racial prejudice: “Here, for the first time in my life I walk in full human dignity.” When he returned to the United States, Robeson became an
outspoken critic of racism: he refused to sing before segregated audiences and led an anti-lynching campaign.
Many artists and writers who were drawn to Communism in the 1930s had renounced it
by the end of the decade when Stalin signed a pact with Hitler.
Paul Robeson did not
, and his acceptance of the 1952 Stalin Prize made him an outcast in an America gripped by the Cold War. When a Congressional committee asked him why he hadn’t stayed in the Soviet Union, he answered: “Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay right here and have a part of it just like you.” His passport was revoked from 1950-58; he was blacklisted as a performer and unable to earn a good living.
The
Young Workers Liberation League
, the then
youth arm
of the
Communist Party USA
, was formed
Feb. 7-9, 1970
in
Chicago,
as
the successor to the CPUSA's earlier youth front, the WEB DuBois Clubs of America
. The founding of the YWLL was based
on several concepts: the need to
unify all youth across racial and ethnic lines
, and the strategy of
organizing young workers around wages, job security and discrimination in the workplace and for peace
, as well as relating these struggles to the working class and socialism.  Shortly after its founding, the
YWLL
was invited by the Ho Chi Minh Working Youth Union to
visit Vietnam
to see areas destroyed by U.S. bombing and to exchange experiences with Vietnamese youth fighting for national liberation.
The YWLL played a key role in the
antiwar movement in the 1970s
, emphasizing young workers’ interest in ending the war
.
The
YWLL also spearheaded
the struggle for
youth jobs at union wages, affirmative action
and
academic freedom
. It helped to make the connection between jobs and peace, social needs and military spending, and racism and budget cuts. It organized among young workers, especially in basic industry.  The YWLL led
solidarity campaigns for Chile’s Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, elected in 1970
. At a World Federation of Democratic Youth conference in Chile, the YWLL delegation was invited to
a reception with President Allende
, just weeks before he
was murdered in the 1973 U.S.-backed coup
. After the bloody overthrow, the YWLL played a leading role in organizing a movement to support the Chilean struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship.  On May 17, 1975, the
YWLL
participated in the Boston rally to end racism.
The
official newspaper of the YWLL
was "
Young Worker
", published on both a monthly and bi-monthly basis, starting in the mid-1970's. In 1983,
YWLL reorganized itself into a new Young Communist League
. With the new generation of youth and students no longer cowed by Cold War anticommunism, it was believed the times demanded the
rebirth of the YCL
and a new approach to organizing youth for peace, jobs and equality.
This underground pinback button pin or badge relates to the Hippie (or Hippy ) Counterculture Movement of the psychedelic Sixties (1960s and Seventies (1970s).  That movement included such themes and topics as peace, protest, civil rights, radical, socialist, communist, anarchist, union labor strikes, drugs, marijuana, pot, weed, lsd, acid, sds, iww, anti draft, anti war, anti rotc, welfare rights, poverty, equal rights, integration, gay, women's rights, black panthers, black power, left wing, liberal, etc.  progressive political movement and is guaranteed to be genuine as described.
THIS IS
MY HOBBY AND IS NOT A BUSINESS
.  THIS AND OTHER ITEMS I LIST ON EBAY ARE FROM MY PERSONAL COLLECTIONS AND WERE NOT INITIALLY ACQUIRED BY ME FOR RESALE.  PROCEEDS GO TO BUY OTHER STUFF I AM INTERESTED IN COLLECTING AT THIS MOMENT, AND THEREBY AMOUNTING TO A TRADE OF ITEMS.
I HAVE BEEN A LONG TIME MEMBER OF
A. P. I .C. (AMERICAN POLITICAL ITEMS COLLECTORS)
.  IF YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER, YOU SHOULD CONSIDER JOINING.
IT IS A GREAT ORGANIZATION!
SHIPPING:
ITEMS WILL BE SAFELY PACKED TO AVOID DAMAGE DURING SHIPPING.  ITEMS ARE SHIPPED BY FIRST CLASS MAIL.
SHIPPING TO DESTINATIONS
WITHIN THE UNITED STATES
IS
.95
OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES
, SHIPPING IS
.00
I WILL COMBINE SHIPPING CHARGES ON MULTIPLE ITEMS
.  However, to get a reduced shipping rate on multiple purchases,
you must wait to pay until I send an invoice with reduced shipping charges
.  You can also request one.
I cannot refund shipping costs in whole or in part once paid
. So
please wait to pay!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST
The Deacons emerged as one of the first visible self-defense forces in the South and as such represented a new face of the
civil rights
movement.  Traditional civil rights organizations remained silent on them or repudiated their activities.  They were effective however in providing protection for local African Americans who sought to register to vote and for white and black civil rights workers in the area.  The Deacons, for example, provided security for the 1966 March Against Fear from Memphis to Jackson,
Mississippi
.  Moreover their presence in Southeastern Louisiana meant that the Klan would no longer be able to intimidate and terrorize local African Americans without challenge.
The strategy and methods that the Deacons employed attracted the attention and concern of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which authorized an investigation into the group’s activities. The investigation stalled, however, when more influential black power organizations such as US and the
Black Panther Party
emerged after the
1965 Watts Riot
.  With public attention, and the attention of the FBI focused elsewhere, the Deacons lost most of their notoriety and slowly declined in influence.  By 1968 they were all but extinct.  In 2003 the activities of the Deacons was the subject of a 2003, “Deacons for Defense.” - See more at: HTTPS://www.blackpast.org/aah/deacons-defense-and-justice#sthash.s6D3h3ZZ.dpuf
On July 10, 1964, a group of African American men in Jonesboro,
Louisiana
led by Earnest “Chilly Willy” Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick founded the group known as The Deacons for Defense and Justice to protect members of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
against Ku Klux Klan violence.  Most of the “Deacons” were veterans of
World War II
and the
Korean War
. The Jonesboro chapter organized its first affiliate chapter in nearby Bogalusa, Louisiana led by Charles Sims, A.Z. Young and Robert Hicks. Eventually they organized a third chapter in Louisiana. The Deacons tense confrontation with the Klan in Bogalusa was crucial in forcing the federal government to intervene on behalf of the local African American community.  The national attention they garnered also persuaded state and national officials to initiate efforts to neutralize the Klan in that area of the Deep South.
The Deacons emerged as one of the first visible self-defense forces in the South and as such represented a new face of the
civil rights
movement.  Traditional civil rights organizations remained silent on them or repudiated their activities.  They were effective however in providing protection for local African Americans who sought to register to vote and for white and black civil rights workers in the area.  The Deacons, for example, provided security for the 1966 March Against Fear from Memphis to Jackson,
Mississippi
.  Moreover their presence in Southeastern Louisiana meant that the Klan would no longer be able to intimidate and terrorize local African Americans without challenge.
The strategy and methods that the Deacons employed attracted the attention and concern of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which authorized an investigation into the group’s activities. The investigation stalled, however, when more influential black power organizations such as US and the
Black Panther Party
emerged after the
1965 Watts Riot
.  With public attention, and the attention of the FBI focused elsewhere, the Deacons lost most of their notoriety and slowly declined in influence.  By 1968 they were all but extinct.  In 2003 the activities of the Deacons was the subject of a 2003, “Deacons for Defense.” - See more at: HTTPS://www.blackpast.org/aah/deacons-defense-and-justice#sthash.s6D3h3ZZ.dpuf
On July 10, 1964, a group of African American men in Jonesboro,
Louisiana
led by Earnest “Chilly Willy” Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick founded the group known as The Deacons for Defense and Justice to protect members of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
against Ku Klux Klan violence.  Most of the “Deacons” were veterans of
World War II
and the
Korean War
. The Jonesboro chapter organized its first affiliate chapter in nearby Bogalusa, Louisiana led by Charles Sims, A.Z. Young and Robert Hicks. Eventually they organized a third chapter in Louisiana. The Deacons tense confrontation with the Klan in Bogalusa was crucial in forcing the federal government to intervene on behalf of the local African American community.  The national attention they garnered also persuaded state and national officials to initiate efforts to neutralize the Klan in that area of the Deep South.
The Deacons emerged as one of the first visible self-defense forces in the South and as such represented a new face of the
civil rights
movement.  Traditional civil rights organizations remained silent on them or repudiated their activities.  They were effective however in providing protection for local African Americans who sought to register to vote and for white and black civil rights workers in the area.  The Deacons, for example, provided security for the 1966 March Against Fear from Memphis to Jackson,
Mississippi
.  Moreover their presence in Southeastern Louisiana meant that the Klan would no longer be able to intimidate and terrorize local African Americans without challenge.
The strategy and methods that the Deacons employed attracted the attention and concern of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which authorized an investigation into the group’s activities. The investigation stalled, however, when more influential black power organizations such as US and the
Black Panther Party
emerged after the
1965 Watts Riot
.  With public attention, and the attention of the FBI focused elsewhere, the Deacons lost most of their notoriety and slowly declined in influence.  By 1968 they were all but extinct.  In 2003 the activities of the Deacons was the subject of a 2003, “Deacons for Defense.” - See more at: HTTPS://www.blackpast.org/aah/deacons-defense-and-justice#sthash.s6D3h3ZZ.dpuf
On July 10, 1964, a group of African American men in Jonesboro,
Louisiana
led by Earnest “Chilly Willy” Thomas and Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick founded the group known as The Deacons for Defense and Justice to protect members of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
against Ku Klux Klan violence.  Most of the “Deacons” were veterans of
World War II
and the
Korean War
. The Jonesboro chapter organized its first affiliate chapter in nearby Bogalusa, Louisiana led by Charles Sims, A.Z. Young and Robert Hicks. Eventually they organized a third chapter in Louisiana. The Deacons tense confrontation with the Klan in Bogalusa was crucial in forcing the federal government to intervene on behalf of the local African American community.  The national attention they garnered also persuaded state and national officials to initiate efforts to neutralize the Klan in that area of the Deep South. - See more at: HTTPS://www.blackpast.org/aah/deacons-defense-and-justice#sthash.s6D3h3ZZ.dpuf