V. I. Lenin
Collected Works
London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1960, Vol. 23, p. 275

"Statistics and Sociology"

In the United States, the Negroes (and also the Mulattos and Indians)
account for only 11.1 per cent. They should be classed as an oppressed
nation, for the equality won in the Civil War of 1861-65 and guaranteed
by the Constitution of the republic was in many respects increasingly
curtailed in the chief Negro areas (the South).

[MC5 adds: Thanks to former SDS leader Noel Ignatin for pointing out
this Lenin quote in the defunct Urgent Tasks magazine.]

"All communist parties should render direct aid to 
the revolutionary movements among the dependant 
and unequal nations (for example, Ireland, the 
Negroes in America, etc.) and in the colonies." 
-- Lenin "Preliminary Draft of Theses on the National and Colonial Questions" 
in "The National Liberation Movement in the East" (a collection of various works) 
published by Foreign Language Publishing House Moscow 1957.
 
[RAIL-Philadelphia comrade comments: In this passage Lenin 
not only says that Amerikan Blacks are an 
oppressed nation, but he lists them with Ireland 
which was a well known oppressed nation. It is 
clear from this that the COMINTERN position and 
Stalin's position after Lenin's death was 
consistent with Lenin and therefore not some form 
of "deviation from Leninism" as many of today's 
Trots and Crypto-Trots would have us believe. ]