Amis, B. D. (Benjamin DeWayne), 1896-1993

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 Worke r, 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:

From the guide to the B. D. Amis Papers, Bulk, 1930-1949, 1930-2004, (Bulk 1930-1949), (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)