A Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle

A Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle

Author: Harry Haywood

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0816679053

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An extraordinary life story that encompasses the fight for African American freedom throughout the twentieth century


Black Revolutionary

Black Revolutionary

Author: Gerald Horne

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2013-09-30

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0252095189

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A leading African American Communist, lawyer William L. Patterson (1891–1980) was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the defeat of Jim Crowby virtue of his leadership of the Scottsboro campaign in the 1930s. In this watershed biography, historian Gerald Horne shows how Patterson helped to advance African American equality by fostering and leveraging international support for the movement. Horne highlights key moments in Patterson's global activism: his early education in the Soviet Union, his involvement with the Scottsboro trials and other high-profile civil rights cases of the 1930s to 1950s, his 1951 "We Charge Genocide" petition to the United Nations, and his later work with prisons and the Black Panther Party. Through Patterson's story, Horne examines how the Cold War affected the freedom movement, with civil rights leadership sometimes disavowing African American leftists in exchange for concessions from the U.S. government. He also probes the complex and often contradictory relationship between the Communist Party and the African American community, including the impact of the FBI's infiltration of the Communist Party. Drawing from government and FBI documents, newspapers, periodicals, archival and manuscript collections, and personal papers, Horne documents Patterson's effectiveness at carrying the freedom struggle into the global arena and provides a fresh perspective on twentieth-century struggles for racial justice.


Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement

Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement

Author: R. Lieberman

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2009-04-27

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0230620744

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This collection of essays looks at the impact of anticommunism on black political culture during the early years of the Cold War, with an eye toward local and individual stories that offer insight into larger national and international issues.


The Cry Was Unity

The Cry Was Unity

Author: Mark Solomon

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2009-10-20

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 1496801040

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The Communist Party was the only political movement on the left in the late 1920s and 1930s to place racial justice and equality at the top of its agenda and to seek, and ultimately win, sympathy among African Americans. This historic effort to fuse red and black offers a rich vein of experience and constitutes the theme of The Cry Was Unity. Utilizing for the first time materials related to African Americans from the Moscow archives of the Communist Inter-national (Comintern), The Cry Was Unity traces the trajectory of the black-red relationship from the end of World War I to the tumultuous 1930s. From the just-recovered transcript of the pivotal debate on African Americans at the 6th Comintern Congress in 1928, the book assesses the impact of the Congress's declaration that blacks in the rural South constituted a nation within a nation, entitled to the right of self-determination. Despite the theory's serious flaws, it fused the black struggle for freedom and revolutionary content and demanded that white labor recognize blacks as indispensable allies. As the Great Depression unfolded, the Communists launched intensive campaigns against lynching, evictions, and discrimination in jobs and relief and opened within their own ranks a searing assault on racism. While the Party was never able to win a majority of white workers to the struggle for Negro rights, or to achieve the unqualified support of the black majority, it helped to lay the foundations for the freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. The Cry Was Unity underscores the successes and failures of the Communist-led left and the ways in which it fought against racism and inequality. This struggle comprises an important missing page that needs to be returned to the nation's history.


Want to Start a Revolution?

Want to Start a Revolution?

Author: Dayo F. Gore

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2009-12

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0814783147

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The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, or rank and file party members. But what about Vicki Garvin, a Brooklyn-born activist who became a leader of the National Negro Labor Council and guide to Malcolm X on his travels through Africa? What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman? From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Helping to create the groundwork and continuity for the movement by operating as local organizers, international mobilizers, and charismatic leaders, the stories of the women profiled in Want to Start a Revolution? help shatter the pervasive and imbalanced image of women on the sidelines of the black freedom struggle. Contributors: Margo Natalie Crawford, Prudence Cumberbatch, Johanna Fernández, Diane C. Fujino, Dayo F. Gore, Joshua Guild, Gerald Horne, Ericka Huggins, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Joy James, Erik McDuffie, Premilla Nadasen, Sherie M. Randolph, James Smethurst, Margaret Stevens, and Jeanne Theoharis.


Civil Rights Crossroads

Civil Rights Crossroads

Author: Steven F. Lawson

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-03-17

Total Pages: 575

ISBN-13: 0813181585

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Over the past thirty years, Steven F. Lawson has established himself as one of the nation's leading historians of the black struggle for equality. Civil Rights Crossroads is an important collection of Lawson's writings about the civil rights movement that is essential reading for anyone concerned about the past, present, and future of race relations in America. Lawson examines the movement from a variety of perspectives—local and national, political and social—to offer penetrating insights into the civil rights movement and its influence on contemporary society. Civil Rights Crossroads also illuminates the role of a broad array of civil rights activists, familiar and unfamiliar. Lawson describes the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson to shape the direction of the struggle, as well as the extraordinary contributions of ordinary people like Fannie Lou Hamer, Harry T. Moore, Ruth Perry, Theodore Gibson, and many other unsung heroes of the most important social movement of the twentieth century. Lawson also examines the decades-long battle to achieve and expand the right of African Americans to vote and to implement the ballot as the cornerstone of attempts at political liberation.


Black Bolshevik

Black Bolshevik

Author: Harry Haywood

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press

Published: 1978

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780930720537

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Black Bolshevik is the autobiography of Harry Haywood, the son of former slaves who became a leading member of the Communist Part USA and a pioneering theoretician on the Afro-American struggle. The author's first-hand accounts of the Chicago race riot of 1919, the Scottsboro Boys' defense, communist work in the South, the Spanish Civil War, the battle against the revisionist betrayal of the Party, and other history-shaping events are must reading for all who are interested in Black history and the working class struggle.


Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder

Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder

Author: Jack O Dell

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-09-30

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0520274547

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“This book helps to set the record straight, not just through the facts of O'Dell's life, but through introducing the reader to O'Dell's powerful analysis.”—Bill Fletcher Jr., coauthor of Solidarity Divided “Jack O'Dell describes an 'easy journey…[and] an easy course' through his extraordinary life. But there was and is nothing easy about the roles Jack played—and continues to play—as strategist, tactician, mentor, and leader in so many campaigns for justice. As often behind the scenes as in front of the microphone, Jack fought for internationalism in the African-American freedom movement and held the internationalist movement accountable for fighting racism. Jack O'Dell resides among the greats in the pantheon of our movements and of our country. His words continue to shape our history.”—Phyllis Bennis, author of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power "Jack O'Dell is one of the great unsung heroes of the Black Freedom Movement. Climbin' Jacob's Ladder offers a fascinating and inspiring chronicle of O'Dell's long career through his own writings. With a brilliant and exhaustive introduction by Nikhil Singh, one of the sharpest radical thinkers of his generation, this collection is a vital addendum and corrective to our existing knowledge of the 'long' Civil Rights Movement and its legacy."—Barbara Ransby, author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision


B. D. Amis, African American Radical

B. D. Amis, African American Radical

Author: B. D. Amis

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 9780761835813

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African American Communist B.D. Amis was a major figure in the black freedom struggle during the two decades between the world wars. At that time, the American Communist Party (CPUSA) played a significant role in fighting for the rights of African Americans. Amis was part of the small circle of black radicals leading the struggle for workers' rights and racial justice. This anthology of his key writings and speeches reveals the deep commitment to the working class by his generation of African American Marxists. His classics, such as 'Lynch Justice at Work' and 'They Shall Not Die , ' as well as his speech nominating William Z. Foster for president at the 1936 CPUSA Convention in Chicago, are included. This work also features important documents penned by Amis and found in the former Soviet archives and in the private holdings of the Amis Family. It also includes many of Amis' theoretical works found in international documents, such as the CPUSA's International Press Correspondence, and a selected bibliography on the research scholarship pertaining to African Americans and communism


Thyra J. Edwards

Thyra J. Edwards

Author: Gregg Andrews

Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Published: 2011-06-14

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0826219128

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Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: "The Spirit of Aframerican Womanhood"--1. Texas Roots of Rebellion under the Chinaberry Tree -- 2. Social Work and Racial Uplift in Gary, Indiana -- 3. Getting a Labor Education in Illinois, New York, and Denmark -- 4. Chain Smoking and Thinking "Black" from Red Square to Nazi Germany -- 5. Building a Popular Front in Chicago -- 6. Conducting Educational Travel Seminars to Europe -- 7. With Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War -- 8. With Health Problems and Spanish Loyalist Refugees in Mexico -- 9. The Double V Years and Marriage in New York City -- 10. The Final Years in Italy -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index