On the contrary, during his years in the Netherlands he was in communication with socialists, communists, and nationalists from various backgrounds, including some from what is now Indonesia. This made him aware of the intersection between racism and the economic system. In his book, De Kom addressed white Dutch workers directly:
We ask the Dutch workers: slavery has been abolished in Suriname, but can you call those who are forced to work under such a contract truly free? (p. 152)
De Kom saw white workers not as enemies or as competitors but as potential comrades in the struggle for all people to live in dignity. He must have learned from communist periodicals such as Links richten (“Aim Left”) about the international labor movements that were at their height in the 1930s.
In 1934, Anton met another Surinamese resistance fighter, Otto Huiswoud. Like De Kom, Huiswoud had been born after the abolition of slavery, and in the early twentieth century he had made his way to New York. In 1919, he became the only Black co-founder of the Communist Party of the United States of America. He and his wife Hermina Dumont-Huiswoud traveled the world in support of their ideal: a global revolution through class struggle.
What did De Kom and Otto Huiswoud talk about? The archives show that, along with the artist Nola Hatterman, they attended an Anti-Imperialist League conference in Paris together. The Huiswouds were the editors of the communist newspaper The Negro Worker; in the June 1934 edition, they published an English-language article by De Kom entitled “Starvation, hunger and misery in Dutch Guyana.” In that international forum, De Kom sharply criticized Suriname’s colonial system, writing:
We remember the 16 million florins, Holland gave the white slave barons as indemnity for the emancipated slaves. These millions were given to the Bakras (whites) as a reward for the inhuman deeds they committed against the Negro slaves our forefathers. But to the slaves and today to the free Negroes not a penny. Their only reward today is unemployment, misery and starvation.
Only through organization and struggle can the workers of Dutch Guiana succeed in bettering their living conditions and effectively fight against the exploitation and slavery imposed upon them by the Dutch colonial rulers.
Only through solidarity and joint struggle between the workers of the capitalist countries and the colonial toilers can an effective blow be dealt to the common enemy: Imperialism. Workers, organize and fight against exploitation, unemployment, and starvation! Close ranks in struggle for the emancipation of the colonial toilers!
Demand the independence of Dutch Guiana!
This relatively brief article was written in a style very similar to that of We Slaves of Suriname: clear examples of the exploitation of Surinamese workers, a comparison to exploitation in the days of slavery, and an appeal to workers to unite. The striking thing is that in this article he explicitly called for Surinamese independence. De Kom often wrote about “workers” and “proletarians.” His objective was to unite workers from diverse backgrounds:
And maybe I will find a way to make them feel some fraction of the hope and courage contained in that one powerful word I learned in a foreign country: organization. Maybe I can put an end to some of the dissension that has been the weakness of these colored people; maybe it will not prove completely impossible to make Negroes, Hindustanis, Javanese, and Indians understand that only solidarity can unite all the sons of Mother Sranan in their struggle to live with dignity. (p. 202)
This razor-sharp analysis and message of struggle, sometimes presented in a poetic, literary manner, and sometimes in a factual, historical way, is what still inspires generation after generation. De Kom’s insights into the decades-long impact of the legacy of slavery and the colonial system, both in Suriname and in the Netherlands, give the book its timeless relevance. When we talk about Black history, our thoughts often leap to the Black intellectuals and freedom fighters who left us their timeless work, to figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Marcus Garvey, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and Frantz Fanon. Anton de Kom’s words and deeds have earned him a place among them.
A New Generation Rediscovers Anton de Kom
We Slaves of Suriname was published in 1934, but it was made difficult to obtain for a long time, even after the war. How did this change? According to former members of the Surinaamse Studenten Unie (“Surinamese Student Union”; SSU), one important step was the discovery of a copy of the book by the Surinamese student Rubia Züschen in the Leiden University Library in the 1960s. Züschen was a member of the SSU, which was known for being a hotbed of politically engaged left-wing students who supported the decolonization of Suriname. These students were so inspired by the book that they decided to retype the entire manuscript and distribute clandestine copies. Delano Veira was a member of the Vereniging Ons Suriname and in frequent communication with the SSU. In a conversation about his memories of Anton de Kom, he said:
Anton de Kom was the shining example for Surinamese students in the Netherlands in the 1950s and 60s, because he was the first to hold Surinamese colonialism up to the light in such a fiery way. And he lived up to his words; he returned to Suriname himself, and we all know about that historic episode: two or more people were shot dead by the colonial regime in the uprisings, and Anton de Kom was banished.1
The 1970s saw a rise in anti-colonial consciousness among the Surinamese in the Netherlands and in Suriname, partly under the influence of the international decolonization struggle in former colonies in Africa and Asia. In 1972, the Vereniging Ons Suriname established a non-profit organization for community welfare called Bouw Een Surinaamse Tehuis (“Build A Surinamese Center,” B.E.S.T.). They occupied a vacant building in the Amsterdam city center and declared it the Centrum Anton de Kom (“Anton de Kom Center”), a social and cultural center for Surinamese people in the Netherlands. The monthly magazine Adek, short for Anton de Kom, reported on injustices with which Surinamese people were confronted in the Netherlands, such as racism, discrimination, and police brutality. It also dealt with problems in Suriname, such as poor government policies and unemployment.
In 1973 Vereniging Ons Suriname, in cooperation with other organizations such as the Amsterdam student unions SRVU and ASVA, organized an “Anton de Kom month” to mark the fortieth anniversary of the uprising after De Kom’s arrest. This month of talks and discussions focused on Anton de Kom and his ideas.
Fifteen years later, in June 1988, an event commemorating Anton de Kom was organized by the Anton de Kom–Abraham Behr-instituut, a collective founded by Surinamese activists from the Landelijke Strijd Organisatie voor Surinamers (“National Activist Organization for the Surinamese,” LOSON) in partnership with the V.O.S. A number of people who had known De Kom personally in the World War II resistance spoke of him in glowing terms. His daughter Judith de Kom, an anti-colonial activist in her own right, also participated in the event.
Memories of the man whose work has such profound meaning to the Surinamese people and is also unquestionably part of the rich activist tradition of the Dutch labor movement. Memories that complete and bring to life the image of De Kom as a great humanist, as a revolutionary activist against exploitation and oppression, as an internationalist. Full of humanity and full of fight.2
Monthly magazine Adek © The Black Archives
Bram Behr, who was assassinated in Suriname’s December murders of 1982 after criticizing the country’s military dictatorship, wrote to his friends that reading We Slaves of Suriname had given him courage. Around the same time, LOSON circulated a petition demanding the rehabilitation of Anton de Kom. This resulted in the renaming of a square after De Kom in Amsterdam’s Zuidoost (Southeast) district, near the present location of the Bullewijk metro stop.
