The American Negro Labor Congress was established in 1925 by the Communist Party as a vehicle for advancing the rights of African Americans, propagandizing for communism within the black community and recruiting African American members for the party.

The organization attacked the segregationist practices of many of the unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor; it also campaigned against lynching, the disfranchisement of black Americans, and Jim Crow laws. The group was renamed the League of Struggle for Negro Rights in 1930.

The first mass organization of the American Communist Party dedicated to advancing issues of importance to American blacks and building a party presence within the black community was the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB). The ABB was established independently of the nascent Communist movement but had been formally brought under party auspices as a byproduct of its need for funding. In 1923 the tiny New York City-based organization was formally integrated into the structure of the Workers Party of America, as the party was then known. The group's handful of activists had proven insufficient to maintain critical mass, however, and by 1924 the ABB had been virtually dissolved.

American Communists had been ineffectual in its efforts to build a significant mass organization among American blacks during the first half decade of the movement's existence and the Communist International prodded the Workers Party to begin a new initiative to establish a group able to mobilize black workers. The result of this push was the establishment of a new organization called the American Negro Labor Congress.

According to historian Maria Gertrudis van Enckevort, archival evidence indicates that the idea for the new mass organization directed to American blacks came from Lovett Fort-Whiteman, a national organizer for the ABB who had been sent to Moscow by the summer of 1924 for ideological and technical training. Fort-Whiteman complained in an October 1924 letter to head of the Comintern Gregory Zinoviev about the lack of work being conducted by the American Communist and repeated a call to act on a plan he had submitted to the Far Eastern Section of the Comintern seeking convocation of an "American Negro Labor Congress."

This idea found support among Comintern decision-makers and in December 1924 a communication was passed on to the Workers Party of America, current name of the Communist Party, stating "it has been proposed to call an American Negro Labour Congress at Chicago, to be held sometime during the summer" and seeking the American party's advice.

The call for the American Negro Labor Congress was issued late in the spring of 1925 with the proposal emanating from the Workers (Communist) Party. Although the convention call vaguely established "some time in the summer" for the time of the gathering, in actuality the founding convention did not take place in Chicago until October 25, 1925. There were 17 signatories of the convention call, of whom six were members of the Workers Party.

The communists sought to use front tactics by downplaying their own presence and casting the ANLC as a multi-tendency organization, thereby reducing the chance of the group's ability to challenge the NAACP and the Marcus Garvey's UNIA as the paramount voice of the black working class. The convention call indicated that delegates must represent black or interracial trade unions, farm workers, or unorganized factory workers — although provision was made for participation by "individual advocates" engaged in promoting "the cause of the working class."