mid-1920s, writing about conferences of the Communist International for African-American audiences. McKay's book, The Negroes in America (published in Russian in 1924 but not in the U.S. until 1979) argued, against the official Communist position of the time, that the oppression of black people in the U.S. was not reducible to economic oppression, but was unique. He argued against the color blindness that the Communists had inherited from the Socialist Party. McKay argued vociferously for national self-determination in support of national independence for oppressed peoples, which to him meant an independent African-American government separate and apart from that of the United States. Subsequently, in the aftermath of the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928, the CPUSA adopted a policy of national self-determination for African-Americans living in the American South. The policy was neglected after the Popular Front period began in 1935, but was not formally replaced until 1959. As the Communist Party developed, it regularized its structure along the lines called for by the Communist International (Comintern). Semi-independent organizations such as the African Blood Brotherhood with its divergent Afro-Marxist political theories were anathema to the Comintern and its Soviet leaders, who believed all communist and Marxist–Leninist organizations should be unified in a single communist party and platform in each nation under Moscow's overall direction and control. In the early 1920s the African Blood Brotherhood was dissolved, with its members merged into the Workers Party of America and later into the American Negro Labor Congress. Many early ABB members, however, went on to be key CP cadres for decades. Membership The ABB had a total membership of fewer than 3,000 members at its peak. See also The Communist Party and African-Americans Harry Haywood Alternative press Black separatism Black nationalism References Footnotes Further reading ABB Publications Cyril V. Briggs (ed.), The Crusader. August 1918-February 1922. New York: Garland Publishing, 1987. Cyril V. Briggs, "The African Blood Brotherhood," The Crusader, vol. 2, no. 10 (June 1920), pp. 7, 22. "Programme of the African Blood Brotherhood", The Communist Review, vol. 2, no. 6 (April 1922). Published material Eric Arnesen, Black Protest and the Great Migration : A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002. Anthony Dawahare, Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars: A New Pandora's Box. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. Michael C. Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2003.