Download or read book Hammer and Hoe written by Robin D. G. Kelley and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the "long Civil Rights movement," Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how, during the 1930s and 40s, Communists took on Alabama's repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality. The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. In this book, Robin D. G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party's tactics and unique political culture. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals. After discussing the book's origins and impact in a new preface written for this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Kelley reflects on what a militantly antiracist, radical movement in the heart of Dixie might teach contemporary social movements confronting rampant inequality, police violence, mass incarceration, and neoliberalism.

Download or read book Red Black White written by Mary Stanton and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Red, Black, White is the first narrative history of the American communist movement in the South since Robin D. G. Kelley's groundbreaking Hammer and Hoe and the first to explore its key figures and actions beyond the 1930s. Written from the perspective of the district 17 (CPUSA) Reds who worked primarily in Alabama, it acquaints a new generation with the impact of the Great Depression on postwar black and white, young and old, urban and rural Americans. After the Scottsboro story broke on March 25, 1931, it was open season for old-fashioned lynchings, legal (courtroom) lynchings, and mob murder. In Alabama alone, twenty black men were known to have been murdered, and countless others, women included, were beaten, disabled, jailed, “disappeared,” or had their lives otherwise ruined between March 1931 and September 1935. In this collective biography, Mary Stanton—a noted chronicler of the left and of social justice movements in the South—explores the resources available to Depression-era Reds before the advent of the New Deal or the modern civil rights movement. What emerges from this narrative is a meaningful criterion by which to evaluate the Reds’ accomplishments. Through seven cases of the CPUSA (district 17) activity in the South, Stanton covers tortured notions of loyalty and betrayal, the cult of white southern womanhood, Christianity in all its iterations, and the scapegoating of African Americans, Jews, and communists. Yet this still is a story of how these groups fought back, and fought together, for social justice and change in a fractured region.

Download or read book Race Rebels written by Robin D. G. Kelley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1996-06-01 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many black strategies of daily resistance have been obscured--until now. Race rebels, argues Kelley, have created strategies of resistance, movements, and entire subcultures. Here, for the first time, everyday race rebels are given the historiographical attention they deserve, from the Jim Crow era to the present.

Download or read book Communists in Harlem During the Depression written by Mark Naison and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No socialist organization has ever had a more profound effect on black life than the Communist Party did in Harlem during the Depression. Mark Naison describes how the party won the early endorsement of such people as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and how its support of racial equality and integration impressed black intellectuals, including Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson.This meticulously researched work, largely based on primary materials and interviews with leading black Communists from the 1930s, is the first to fully explore this provocative encounter between whites and blacks. It provides a detailed look at an exciting period of reform, as well as an intimate portrait of Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, at the high point of its influence and pride.Mark Naison is professor of African American studies and history at Fordham University. He is the author of White Boy: A Memoir and co-author of The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1940_1984.

Download or read book Freedom Dreams written by Robin D.G. Kelley and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2002-06-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kelley unearths freedom dreams in this exciting history of renegade intellectuals and artists of the African diaspora in the twentieth century. Focusing on the visions of activists from C. L. R. James to Aime Cesaire and Malcolm X, Kelley writes of the hope that Communism offered, the mindscapes of Surrealism, the transformative potential of radical feminism, and of the four-hundred-year-old dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow. From'the preeminent historian of black popular culture' (Cornel West), an inspiring work on the power of imagination to transform society.

Download or read book Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain written by Kate A. Baldwin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2002-10-17 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the significant influence of the Soviet Union on the work of four major African American authors—and on twentieth-century American debates about race—Beyond the Color Line and the Iron Curtain remaps black modernism, revealing the importance of the Soviet experience in the formation of a black transnationalism. Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, and Paul Robeson each lived or traveled extensively in the Soviet Union between the 1920s and the 1960s, and each reflected on Communism and Soviet life in works that have been largely unavailable, overlooked, or understudied. Kate A. Baldwin takes up these writings, as well as considerable material from Soviet sources—including articles in Pravda and Ogonek, political cartoons, Russian translations of unpublished manuscripts now lost, and mistranslations of major texts—to consider how these writers influenced and were influenced by both Soviet and American culture. Her work demonstrates how the construction of a new Soviet citizen attracted African Americans to the Soviet Union, where they could explore a national identity putatively free of class, gender, and racial biases. While Hughes and McKay later renounced their affiliations with the Soviet Union, Baldwin shows how, in different ways, both Hughes and McKay, as well as Du Bois and Robeson, used their encounters with the U. S. S. R. and Soviet models to rethink the exclusionary practices of citizenship and national belonging in the United States, and to move toward an internationalism that was a dynamic mix of antiracism, anticolonialism, social democracy, and international socialism. Recovering what Baldwin terms the "Soviet archive of Black America," this book forces a rereading of some of the most important African American writers and of the transnational circuits of black modernism.

Download or read book Border and Rule written by Harsha Walia and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Border and Rule, one of North America’s foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation. Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of the conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change that are generating mass dispossession worldwide. Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Walia demonstrates how borders divide the international working class and consolidate imperial, capitalist, and racist nationalist rule. Ambitious in scope and internationalist in orientation, Border and Rule breaks through American exceptionalist and liberal responses to the migration crisis and cogently maps the lucrative connections between state violence, capitalism, and right-wing nationalism around the world. Illuminating the brutal mechanics of state formation, Walia exposes US border policy as a product of violent territorial expansion, settler-colonialism, enslavement, and gendered racial ideology. Further, she compellingly details how Fortress Europe and White Australia are using immigration diplomacy and externalized borders to maintain a colonial present, how temporary labor migration in the Arab Gulf states and Canada is central to citizenship regulation and labor control, and how racial violence is escalating deadly nationalism in the US, Israel, India, the Philippines, Brazil, and across Europe, while producing a disaster of statelessness for millions elsewhere. A must-read in these difficult times of war, inequality, climate change, and global health crisis, Border and Rule is a clarion call for revolution. The book includes a foreword from renowned scholar Robin D. G. Kelley and an afterword from acclaimed activist-academic Nick Estes.

Download or read book American Communism and Soviet Russia written by Theodore Draper and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion volume to The Roots of American Communism brings to completion what the author describes as the essence of the relationship of American Communism to Soviet Russia in the fi rst decade after the Bolsheviks seized power. The outpouring of new archive materials makes it plain that Draper's premise is direct and to the point: The communist movement "was transformed from a new expression of American radicalism to the American appendage of a Russian revolutionary power." Each generation must fi nd this out for itself, and no better guide exists than the work of master historian Theodore Draper. American Communism and Soviet Russia is acknowledged to be the classic, authoritative history of the critical formative period of the American Communist Party. Based on confi dential minutes of the top party committees, interviews with party leaders, and public records, this book carefully documents the infl uence of the Soviet Union on the fundamental nature of American Communism. Draper's refl ections on that period in this edition are a fi tting capstone to this pioneering effort. Daniel Bell, in Saturday Review, remarked about this work that "there are surprisingly few scholarly histories of individual Communist parties and even fewer which treat of this crucial decade in intimate detail. Draper's account is therefore of great importance." Arthur M. Schlesinger, in The New York Times Book Review, says that "in reading Draper's closely packed pages, one hardly knows whether to marvel more at the detachment with which he examines the Communist movement, the patience with which he unravels the dreary and intricate struggles for power among the top leaders, or the intelligence with which he analyzes the interplay of factors determining the development of American Communism." And Michael Harrington, in Commonweal, asserted that Draper's book "will long be a defi nitive source volume and analysis of the Stalinization of American Communism."

Download or read book Thelonious Monk written by Robin D. G. Kelley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-11-02 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full biography of Thelonious Monk, written by a brilliant historian, with full access to the family's archives and with dozens of interviews.

Download or read book The CIO 1935 1955 written by Robert H. Zieger and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) encompassed the largest sustained surge of worker organization in American history. Robert Zieger charts the rise of this industrial union movement, from the founding of the CIO by John L. Lewis in 1935 to its merger under Walter Reuther with the American Federation of Labor in 1955. Exploring themes of race and gender, Zieger combines the institutional history of the CIO with vivid depictions of working-class life in this critical period. Zieger details the ideological conflicts that racked the CIO even as its leaders strove to establish a labor presence at the heart of the U.S. economic system. Stressing the efforts of industrial unionists such as Sidney Hillman and Philip Murray to forge potent instruments of political action, he assesses the CIO's vital role in shaping the postwar political and international order. Zieger's analysis also contributes to current debates over labor law reform, the collective bargaining system, and the role of organized labor in a changing economy.

Download or read book Sweatshop Warriors written by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie and published by South End Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this up-close and personal look at the heroines who make family, community, and society tick, Miriam Ching Yoon Louie showcases immigrant women workers speaking out for themselves, in their own words. While public outrage over sweatshops builds in intensity, this book shows us who these workers really are and how they are leading campaigns to fight for their rights. In-depth, accessible analyses of the immigration, labor, and trade policies, which together have forced these women into the most dangerous, poorly paid jobs, dovetail with vivid portraits of the women themselves. Louie, a longtime writer/activist and well-known figure in feminist, immigrant, and labor circles, is uniquely poised to make her case: that the labor of immigrant women worker-activists not only sustains families and communities, but the vibrant social activism that undergirds democracy itself. With chapters on successful campaigns against Levi-Strauss, Donna Karan, and restaurants in Los Angeles; Koreatown, among others. Miriam Ching Yoon Louie is a longtime writer/activist in campaigns to organize women of color. She is national campaign media director of Fuerza Unida, a board member of the Women of Color Resource Center, and former media director of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates. Her essays and articles on immigrant women and labor issues have been widely anthologized, including in the 1997 collection Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire (South End Press) and she speaks at public events internationally. She is the co-author, with Linda Burnham, of Women's Education in the Global Economy (Women of Color Resource Center, 2000).

Download or read book Be Antiracist written by Ibram X. Kendi and published by One World. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflect on your understanding of race and discover ways to work toward an antiracist future with this guided journal from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning. Antiracism is not a destination but a journey--one that takes deliberate, consistent work. Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism has reenergized and reshaped the conversation about racial justice in America and pointed us toward new ways of thinking about ourselves and our society. Whether or not you've read How to Be an Antiracist, this stunning paperback journal offers the opportunity to reflect on your personal commitment to antiracism. Be Antiracist is both a confessional and a log of your journey toward a more equitable and just society. Be Antiracist helps you reflect on topics such as body, power, class, gender, and policy, as well as specific questions like, "Who or what scares you the most when you think about race?" and "How can we go about disconnecting Blackness from criminality?" and "What constitutes an American to you?" Kendi's multipronged approach to self-reflection will challenge you to make change in yourself and your community, and contribute to an antiracist future.

Download or read book Chicano Communists and the Struggle for Social Justice written by Enrique M. Buelna and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1930s and 1940s the early roots of the Chicano Movement took shape. Activists like Jesús Cruz, and later Ralph Cuarón, sought justice for miserable working conditions and the poor treatment of Mexican Americans and immigrants through protests and sit-ins. Lesser known is the influence that Communism and socialism had on the early roots of the Chicano Movement, a legacy that continues today. Examining the role of Mexican American working-class and radical labor activism in American history, Enrique M. Buelna focuses on the work of the radical Left, particularly the Communist Party (CP) USA. Buelna delves into the experiences of Cuarón, in particular, as well as those of his family. He writes about the family’s migration from Mexico; work in the mines in Morenci, Arizona; move to Los Angeles during the Great Depression; service in World War II; and experiences during the Cold War as a background to exploring the experiences of many Mexican Americans during this time period. The author follows the thread of radical activism and the depth of its influence on Mexican Americans struggling to achieve social justice and equality. The legacy of Cuarón and his comrades is significant to the Chicano Movement and in understanding the development of the labor and civil rights movements in the United States. Their contributions, in particular during the 1960s and 1970s, informed a new generation to demand an end to the Vietnam War and to expose educational inequality, poverty, civil rights abuses, and police brutality.

Download or read book Hillbilly Nationalists Urban Race Rebels and Black Power written by Amy Sonnie and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historians of the late 1960s have emphasised the work of a small group of white college activists and the Black Panthers, activists who courageously took to the streets to protest the war in Vietnam and continuing racial inequality. Poor and working-class whites have tended to be painted as spectators, reactionaries and even racists. Tracy and Amy Sonnie have been interviewing activists from the 1960s for nearly 10 years and here reject this narrative, showing how working-class whites, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, fought inequality in the 1960s.

Download or read book Black Brown Beige written by Franklin Rosemont and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-12-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection documents the extensive participation of people of African descent in the international surrealist movement over the past 75 years.

Download or read book Yo Mama s Disfunktional written by Robin D.G. Kelley and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2001-01-04 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this vibrant, thought-provoking book, Kelley, "the preeminant historian of black popular culture writing today" (Cornel West) shows how the multicolored urban working class is the solution to the ills of American cities. He undermines widespread misunderstandings of black culture and shows how they have contributed to the failure of social policy to save our cities. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Download or read book May We Forever Stand written by Imani Perry and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twin acts of singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand tells an essential part of that story. With lyrics penned by James Weldon Johnson and music composed by his brother Rosamond, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was embraced almost immediately as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of black Americans. Since the song's creation, it has been adopted by the NAACP and performed by countless artists in times of both crisis and celebration, cementing its place in African American life up through the present day. In this rich, poignant, and readable work, Imani Perry tells the story of the Black National Anthem as it traveled from South to North, from civil rights to black power, and from countless family reunions to Carnegie Hall and the Oval Office. Drawing on a wide array of sources, Perry uses "Lift Every Voice and Sing" as a window on the powerful ways African Americans have used music and culture to organize, mourn, challenge, and celebrate for more than a century.