In this Book
- Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression
- Book
- 2015
- Published by: The University of North Carolina Press
summary
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.
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.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Illustrations
- p. ix
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xxxiii-xxxv
- Abbreviations
- pp. xxxvii-xxxix
- Part I. the Underground, 1929–1935
- Part II. Up from Bolshevism, 1935–1939
- 7. The CIO's in Dixie!
- pp. 138-151
- 9. The Popular Front in Rural Alabama
- pp. 159-175
- 10. The Democratic Front
- pp. 176-192
- Part III. Back to the Trenches, 1939–1941
- 11. The March of Southern Youth!
- pp. 195-219
- Bibliography
- pp. 301-334
Additional Information
ISBN
9781469625508
Related ISBN(s)
9781469625485, 9781469625492, 9798890851307
MARC Record
OCLC
917153031
Pages
412
Launched on MUSE
2015-08-30
Language
English
Open Access
No