What Did the Black Belt Thesis Mean for Black American Communists?

The new slogan did not persuade black communists to attempt to seize Mississippi and secede from the United States, nor did it bring black folk to the party in droves. The so-called black belt thesis posited that black Americans in the South constituted a colonized nation with the right to self-determination. "It was an organizing slogan in terms of securing the right of black communists to have some control over print culture," he says.