The communists in the black movement back then were saps, but there is some room to understand. Back then the Russians were talking only about racial equality. It wasn’t true, but how could some American black back then have known the reality.
In the South, the segregation and Jim Crow laws made American liberty ring hollow. So they were lured away.
I see it like a man who beats his wife and treats her badly.
Next door is some guy who is even worse, much worse. But when the first guy leaves for work, the neighbor makes a big show about listening to her, and telling her she deserves better, etc etc. He seduces her away with what she wants badly to hear.
And it worked out handsomely for the Soviets. Their propaganda was filled with anti American crap. And their defense of American blacks made them heroes in Africa and the Third World. They got a lot of mileage out of it.
Every racist segregationist, every guy making someone move to the back of the bus might as well have been getting a paycheck from the KGB.
I can never understand someone chosing to be added by an ideology that killed 122 Million People.