30 Facts About Otto Huiswoud

Otto Eduard Gerardus Majella Huiswoud was a Surinamese political activist who was a charter member of the Communist Party of America.

Otto Huiswoud served briefly as the Communist Party's representative to the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1922 and was a leading black Comintern functionary during the decade of the 1920s.

Otto E Huiswoud was born October 28,1893, in Paramaribo, a South American coastal city in what was then the Dutch colony of Surinam and is today the capital of the independent country of Suriname.

Otto Huiswoud was the son of Rudolf Huiswoud, a former slave who had gained his freedom as a boy of 11 and who learned the skills of a tailor, working at the trade until his death in 1920.

Otto Huiswoud was the fifth child and the second son in a family of eight siblings.

Otto Huiswoud remained in school for five years, gaining exposure during this time not only to Dutch, but the French and German languages.

Otto Huiswoud settled in Brooklyn, where he made ends meet by working at various jobs as a printer, cook, and janitor.

In New York, Otto Huiswoud was exposed to soapbox speakers in Union Square, where he was introduced to socialist arguments and literature for the first time.

Black crew members were not organized by the International Seamen's Union, so Otto Huiswoud took it upon himself to lead a walkout that led the company to negotiate for better pay and improved working conditions for its minority workers.

Otto Huiswoud accepted this offer and did not return to Cornell.

Otto Huiswoud found himself a supporter of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party during the acrimonious factional war of 1919.

Otto Huiswoud was one of 94 delegates to the June 1919 National Conference of the Left Wing, which elected a governing Left Wing National Council and participated in the formation of the Communist Party of America on September 1 of that year.

Otto Huiswoud addressed the assembled delegates on the situation facing black workers in the United States.

Otto Huiswoud was elected head of the Congress's Negro Commission and was instrumental in helping draft the thesis of the Comintern on the so-called "Negro Question" as well as four resolutions, all of which Otto Huiswoud presented on the floor of the Congress.

Otto Huiswoud returned to America in 1923, entering the country on March 1 legally as a passenger on a ship called the Ryndam and being entered on the books as a permanent resident of the United States.

Otto Huiswoud was set to work as a functionary in the African Blood Brotherhood, by then a mass organization of the Communist Party targeted towards black workers.

Otto Huiswoud served as the National Organizing Secretary of the group until the termination of the organization.

In June 1924, Otto Huiswoud was a delegate to the St Paul Convention of the Farmer-Labor Party, an attempt by the Workers Party of America to create and harness a mass political organization including the organized labor movement and disaffected farmers.

At this gathering Otto Huiswoud proposed a resolution calling for full social equality for American blacks and an end to lynching.

Otto Huiswoud responded by taking to the floor to denounce the farmer, an action that threatened the fragile alliance that the communists were attempting to build and which was regarded as a serious breach of discipline.

The affair ended with Otto Huiswoud being quietly suspended from the Workers Party for one year.

The organization was headed by Lovett Fort-Whiteman, an individual with whom Otto Huiswoud came into conflict, leading to Fort-Whiteman's ouster in 1927.

In March 1929, Otto Huiswoud was elected as a delegate to the 6th National Convention of the Communist Party, held in New York City.

Otto Huiswoud was at that time the party's highest ranking black member, sitting on the governing Central Executive Committee and the Political Committee which guided the party's day-to-day operations.

Otto Huiswoud additionally served as the Director of the Negro Department of the Communist Party at this time.

On January 31,1941, Otto Huiswoud was interned at Copieweg internment camp by Governor Johannes Kielstra as a communist propagandist.

Otto Huiswoud was released on September 25,1942, due to poor health and was not considered dangerous.

Otto Huiswoud was an active member of Vereniging Ons Suriname, an organisation to promote the interests of Surinamese people living in the Netherlands.

Otto Huiswoud was 67 years old at the time of his death.

Otto Huiswoud's papers, archived under the name of his wife, Hermina "Hermie" Dumont Otto Huiswoud, reside at the Tamiment Library at New York University in two archival boxes.