The personal debts I've incurred while working on this book have made me more sensitive to the plight of gamblers and Third World nations. I am especially grateful to those who fed and housed me during various stages of research and writing. Major funding was provided by the Institute of American Cultures, Center for Afro-American Studies, UCLA; the Dorothy Danforth Compton Fellowship; the UCLA Graduate Affirmative Affairs Office; and the Carolina Minority Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. For such generous financial support I owe a great deal to Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Belinda Tucker, Cheryl Armstrong-Turner, and Edward Alpers. My tenure with the UCLA Oral History Project, under the kind and sensitive direction of Dale Trelevan, not only provided crucial financial assistance but proved an excellent training ground. Family, friends, and folks I hardly knew at first gave more than any grant or fellowship could ever give. The many people who opened their homes, hearts, and/or purses include my sister and brother-in-law, Makani Themba-Parish and Van Parish; my mother, Ananda Sattwa; my younger siblings, Meilan Carter, Chris Kelley, and Idrissa Morehouse; my grandmother, “G-Ma” Carmen Chambers; my mother-in-law Annette Rohan; my father and his wife, Donald Kelley and Mary Kay; my cousin Arlene Liddie; Professors Robert and Melbourne Cummings; Kamili Anderson; Regina Woodlen; Toni Cook; Eugene Mackie; Kathleen Mackie; Shawn Baccus; Barbara Saunders; “Old Man” Joe Moton; Stephanie Webb and her wonderful family; Abagail van Alstyne; and Redding Pitt. Without these folks I'd still be in graduate school, posturing and crying broke.
Those Communists, ex-Communists, and miscellaneous observers who took time out to discuss their experiences warrant more than an acknowledgment—they deserve downright praise. I shall be forever grateful to Hosea Hudson and Lemon Johnson, both of whom passed away before this book was completed; Charles Smith; James E. Jackson; Esther Cooper Jackson; Marge Frantz; Laurent Frantz; Alice (Burke) Jarvis; H. D. Coke; Clyde and Ann Johnson; Rob Hall and his family; Gil Green; the late H. L. Mitchell; Anne Braden; Ned Harrison; Junius Scales; and Don Wheeldin. Marge Frantz, James and Esther Jackson, and Clyde Johnson read all or part of the manuscript and offered critical suggestions and corrections; Marge and Laurent shared precious FOIPA FBI documents pertaining to their activities in Alabama, as well as those of Joseph Gelders. The late James S. Allen, Josh Dunson, and Milicent Selsam were gracious enough to provide me with a copy of Allen's unpublished manuscript and permitted me to quote from it.
Scholars who claim collegiality has died know little of the world I entered when I began this project. Even when I was a graduate student merely testing the muddy waters of Communist historiography, a number of eminent historians freely offered time, information, and encouragement—a rare thing, especially for black graduate students who must enter the academy through long, dark pipelines or sneak in through windows of opportunity. Nell Irvin Painter and Mark Naison—both of whom saw this book grow from an inchoate idea to an unwieldy dissertation to a publishable manuscript—carefully and patiently read several drafts of the work at various stages. Their selfless assistance, scholarship, and enthusiasm for this project can never be paid back in full. The same must be said of Elsa Barkley Brown, Paul and MariJo Buhle, Leon Fink, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Lois Rita Helmbold, Michael Honey, Tera Hunter, Walter Jackson, Robert Korstad, Cliff Kuhn, Susan Levine, Jeff Norrell, Linda Reed, Julius Scott, and Stephanie Shaw. Jacquelyn and Elsa, each in her own special way, schooled me in feminist theory and helped me understand the meaning of “multiple consciousness.” I have Paul to thank for punctuating my writing blues with long, wonderful, witty missives; for introducing me to some Russian dude named Mikhail Bakhtin; and for re-introducing me to C. L. R. James.
Other scholars who read all or parts of the manuscript or offered helpful suggestions for further inquiry include John Laslett, Edward Alpers, Cedric Robinson, Stuart Clarke, Robert Hill, Gerald Gill, Sidney J. Lemelle, Tricia Rose, Dolores Janiewski, Gerald Zahavi, George Rawick, Jonathan Prude, Dan T. Carter, Shinobu Uesugi, Charles Martin, Harvey Klehr, August Meier, Mark Solomon, Jim Philliou, Dale and Theodore Rosengarten, and Gerald Home. Theodore Draper graciously gave me permission to use his rich collection of Communist Party materials at Emory University and the Hoover Institution. I owe special thanks to my colleagues at Emory University for their unflinching support—most notably Mary Odem, Russell Andalcio, Margot Finn, and Dwight Andrews, all of whom remained in my corner at critical moments—and to Dean David Minter for allowing me to take my first year off in order to finish Hammer and Hoe. My editor, Lewis Bateman, has been a fountain of encouragement as well as a sensitive reader and relentless critic. I am equally grateful to Iris Tillman Hill for introducing me to the UNC Press family. Finally, I must thank Carl Gardner for the index (not to mention the tasty honey from his farm) and Debra Beckel for putting me in touch with Carl.
Without exception, I was always warmly received and assisted by archivists across the country. Particularly memorable were the courtesies extended to me by Marvin Y. Whiting, director of Special Collections, Birmingham Public Library; Dan Williams and Linda Harvey of the Hollis Burke Frissell Library, Special Collections, Tuskegee Institute; Ed Bridges, director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History; Minnie Harris-Clayton, director of the Division of Archives and Special Collections, Woodruff Library, Atlanta University; Ronald Becker, Curator of Manuscripts, Rutgers University; Joyce Lamont, director of W. S. Hoole Special Collections, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; Esme Bhan, Manuscript Division of the Moorland-Springarn Research Center, Howard University; Elinor Sinnette, Oral History Librarian, Moorland-Springarn Research Center, Howard University; Ethel Lobbman and Mary Allison Farley, Tamiment Institute, Bobst Library, New York University; and Sarah Cooper, director of the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research.
I have reserved this last paragraph for my best friend and comrade, Diedra Harris-Kelley. Typical spousal cliches are inappropriate for describing her role in the production of this book. She certainly did not make the research and writing any easier, nor did she allow Hammer and Hoe to interfere with my domestic duties. But she did break the monotony of an historian's life by turning each day into an adventure. She endured constant intrusions with remarkable patience, read drafts of the work, uprooted inconsistencies, analyzed my dreams, bragged to our families about how “our book” is coming along, and survived my famous vegetarian neck-bone soup when photocopying costs drained our finances. Being the enthusiast she is, behind closed doors she cussed out every single individual who dared criticize me or my work, and yet she remained a relentless critic in her own right. Diedra's most important contribution to Hammer and Hoe graces the dust jacket. A great artist by trade and spirit, her powerful portrait of Alabama Communists captures the essence of Southern radicalism in ways that mere words could never convey.