In addition to the abbreviations found in the text, the following abbreviations are used in the notes.
1 North, No Men Are Strangers, 227.
2 De Grazia, “For a Social History of Politics”; Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital, 177–212; Kraditor, “Jimmy Higgins”; Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, 135.
3 Painter, Narrative, 16.
4 A few examples include Klehr, Heyday of American Communism; Howe, The American Communist Party; Record, The Negro and the American Communist Party; Flynt, Dixie's Forgotten People; Hevener, Which Side Are You On?; Pope, Millhands and Preachers; Dunbar, Against the Grain; Dyson, Red Harvest; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost; and Charles Martin, The Angelo Herndon Case. There are some recent exceptions, however. See especially Korstad, “Daybreak of Freedom”; Honey, “Labor, the Left, and Civil Rights in the South”; Honey, “The Popular Front in the American South”; Naison, “Black Agrarian Radicalism”; and Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes.
5 See articles and letters by Theodore Draper, Paul Buhle, James R. Prickett, James R. Barrett, Rob Ruck, Norman Markowitz, Al Richmond, Mark Naison, Roy Rosenzweig, Maurice Isserman, and others in New York Review of Books, May 9, 30, August 15, 1985; for an overview, see also Isserman, “Three Generations.”
6 Robert F. Hall, “Those Southern Liberals,” 492.
1 Leighton, Five Cities, 100.
2 Armes, Story of Coal and Iron, esp. 239–42, 268–78, 280; Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, 12–20; Henley, This is Birmingham, 15–96; Kulik, “Black Workers and Technological Change,” 24; Justin Fuller, “From Iron to Steel”; Gregg, Origin and Development of TCI; Weiner, Social Origins of the New South, 168–82; Woodward, Origins of the New South, 126–29. For a vivid pictorial description of Birmingham's early steel industry, see Menzer and Williams, “Southern Steel,” and Barbara J. Mitchell, “Steel Workers in a Boom Town.”
3 Vance, Human Geography of the South, 302–3; Wright, Old South, New South, 170.
4 Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, esp. 52–53; Brownell, “Birmingham,” 43–44; Comer, Braxton Bragg Comer; Atkins, The Valley and the Hills, 130; Carmer, Stars Fell on Alabama, 79–80; quotation from Leighton, Five Cities, 102–3.
5 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census, 1910: Population, 4:538–39; Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, 187; Worthman, “Black Workers and Labor Unions in Birmingham”; Hackney, Populism to Progressivism, 182–208; Brittain, “Negro Suffrage and Politics in Alabama,” 148; Steven F. Lawson, Black Ballots, 89.
6 Brownell, “Birmingham,” 28; Walker interview (BPRM), 4; Moton interview with author; Hudson interview with author; Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, 25–26; Worthman, “Working Class Mobility in Birmingham,” 205; Federal Writers’ Project, Alabama, 166–67; Giddens, “Happy-Go-Lucky Harlem of the South.”
7 Brownell, “Birmingham,” 28; Franklin D. Wilson, “The Ecology of a Black Business District,” 358; Homady, The Book of Birmingham, 68–69; Atkins, The Valley and the Hills, 79, 82, 97; Washington, The Negro in Business, 133–38. On Birmingham's black electorate, see Lewinson, Race, Class, and Party, 218, and for a broader discussion of black elite social life, see Gatewood, “Aristocrats of Color.”
8 Councill, “The Future of the Negro”; Reynolds, “The Alabama Negro Colony in Mexico”; Hamilton, Alabama, 93; Hackney, Populism to Progressivism, 186; on Hobson City, see Blackmon, A Story of the Progress and Achievements, 10–13. Leading white advocates of colonization included John Temple Graves and John Tyler Morgan.
9 Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, 35; Flynt, “Spindle, Mine, and Mule,” 390, and “Folks Like Us,” 226.
10 Chapman, “Occupations of Women in Alabama”; Flynt, Mine, Mill, and Microchip, 140–44, and “Spindle, Mine, and Mule,” 387–88; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Population, 3(1): 122; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census, 1920: Population, 4:132, 148, 368.
11 William Harris, The Harder We Run, 26; Schweninger, “James Rapier and the Negro Labor Movement”; Abernathy, “The Knights of Labor in Alabama”; Rogers and Ward, Labor Revolt in Alabama, 24–28; Marshall, Labor in the South, 21–22; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 15–16; Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 49; Kann, “The Knights of Labor”; Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 40–41; McLaurin, The Knights of Labor in the South, chap. 3, 136–38, 145–47; Fink, Workingmen's Democracy; Painter, Standing at Armageddon, esp. 44–50.
12 For more on Alabama populism, see Hackney, Populism to Progressivism; Rogers, One Gallused Rebellion; Flynt, “Spindle, Mine, and Mule,” 383–385; Rogers, “The Negro Alliance in Alabama.”
13 Alabama Department of Labor, Annual Report, 1938, 32; Spero and Harris, The Black Worker, 355; Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 41–44; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 21. Between 1906 and 1911, the coal mines in Jefferson County employed an average of fifteen hundred convicts per year. Although TCI stopped leasing convicts for the mines in 1911, the system was in operation in Jefferson County until 1927 (Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, 202–5; U.S. Congress, House, Hearings before the Committee on Investigation of U.S. Steel, 4:2962, 2982, 3111–12; Moore, History of Alabama, 814–17; Elizabeth Bonner Clark, “The Abolition of the Convict Lease System in Alabama”). On the coal miners’ strike and the race issue, see Cayton and Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions, 316–20; Leighton, Five Cities, 123; Straw, “The Collapse of Biracial Unionism,” and “ ‘This is Not a Strike’”; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 15–16, 21–24, 27, 52–53; Worthman, “Black Workers and Labor Unions in Birmingham.”
14 Fitch, “The Human Side of Large Outputs”; Rikard, “George Gordon Crawford,” 244–49; Hart, Social Problems of Alabama, 81; Brownell, “Birmingham,” 27; Leighton, Five Cities, 128–29; Alexander interview (WLC), 3, 7; Birmingham Historical Society, Village Creek, 67; U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Housing by Employers in the United States, 31, 69–71.
15 Alabama Department of Labor, Annual Report, 1938, 33; Straw, “The United Mine Workers,” 104–28; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 51–61; Gross, “Strikes in the Coal, Steel, and Railroad Industries.”
16 Spero and Harris, The Black Worker, 286, 354; Worthman, “Working Class Mobility in Birmingham”; Kulik, “Black Workers and Technological Change”; Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 233; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 49–50. On the policies of the ASFL, see Worthman, “Black Workers and Labor Unions in Birmingham,” 76–78; Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 88, 93; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 32–36. For examples of blacklisting during the 1920s, see Alexander interview (WLC), 3–5.
17 Terborg-Penn, “Afro-Americans in the Struggle for Woman Suffrage,” 285; Lee N. Allen, “The Woman Suffrage Movement in Alabama”; Leighton, Five Cities, 125–26; Frederickson, “ ‘I Know Which Side I'm On,’” 169–70. See Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt against Chivalry, chap. 3, for an excellent discussion of the Southern YWCA and women's interracialism during the first two decades of the twentieth century.
18 International Socialist Review 9, no. 4 (October 1908): 309; Loveman, Presidential Vote in Alabama, 14, 41; on Barber see Atkins, The Valley and the Hills, 100, 102; Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, 85, 87, 111. Part of Barber's success can be attributed to the fact that he did not announce his Socialist affiliation until after the election.
19 For a discussion of the Socialist party in the Southwest, see Vidrine, “Negro Locals”; McWhiney, “Louisiana Socialists”; and James Green, Grass Roots Socialism.
20 E. F. Andrews, “Socialism and the Negro,” 524–25. J. B. Osborne shared Andrews's optimism when he wrote that the South constituted “the most important field for Socialist propaganda and organization.” (Osborne, “Socialism in the South,” 159.)
21 Brownell, “Birmingham,” 37; Snell, “Fiery Crosses,” and “Masked Men in the Magic City,” 207–9; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 291–306; Cowett, Birmingham's Rabbi, 137–38; Hamilton, Hugo Black, 65, 84, 95, 113.
22 Flynt, “Organized Labor, Reform, and Alabama Politics”; Loveman, Presidential Vote in Alabama, 44; Brownell, “Birmingham,” 27.
23 Report of E. Newdick, War Labor Board, March 5, 1919, and George Haynes to Secretary of Department of Labor, March 7, 1919, File No. 8/102-D, Special Problems-Birmingham, 1919, Department of Labor Records, 174. See also Birmingham Reporter, February 1, 8, March 8, June 21, 1919, June 19, 1920; Birmingham News, June 21, 1920.
24 Negro World, August 19, 1922. In February 1923, twenty-three people from North Birmingham contributed to the UNIA's “New Orleans Defense Fund,” but there was no division listing for these individuals (Negro World, February 24, 1923). The emigration scheme was initiated during World War I by black Birmingham businessman Joe Thomas. His primary interest was to develop commercial contacts with the Cameroons (Memo from Dr. Joe Thomas, n.d., and Circular Letter, n.d., Box 241, National Republic Files).
25 Negro World, December 1, 1923, August 14, 1926, June 4, 1927, August 8, October 3, November 14, 1931; Hill, Marcus Garvey Papers, 4:667. Just outside Prichard was a tiny community called “Afriky Town,” the purported spot where the last boatload of slaves to America was deposited. In 1941, the Federal Writers’ Project guide to Alabama declared that the residents of Afriky Town “still have many customs and beliefs brought from Africa” (Federal Writers’ Project, Alabama, 359; Hill, Marcus Garvey Papers, 5:667). The UNIA was successful in other parts of the South, however, the only exceptions being Mississippi and Alabama (Hill, Marcus Garvey Papers, 3:539; Negro World, January 15, August 12, 1922; Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey, 153–70).
26 Autrey, “The NAACP in Alabama,” 13–14, 59.
27 Ibid., 61, 63, 67, 96–99; Birmingham Reporter, December 23, 1922. On Indiana Little, see Brittain, “Negro Suffrage and Politics in Alabama,” 177–79.
28 LaMonte, “Politics and Welfare in Birmingham,” 160; Bailey, “Ten Trying years,” 49; Adamson, “Coal Production in Alabama”; UAB News, February 15, June 15, 1931; Henderson, “Relief in Jefferson County,” 9.
1 For a copy of the original text as well as related documents revealing the debate over self-determination, see James S. Allen and Foner, American Communism and Black Americans, 163–200. The history of the black belt thesis is much too complex to discuss here, and few historians agree as to the relative importance of the Comintern versus African-American input. See, for example, Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia, 320–50; Margaret Jackson, “Evolution of the Communist Party's Position”; Kanet, “The Comintern and the ‘Negro Question,’” 89–90, 101–4; Naison, Communists in Harlem, 5–20; Record, The Negro and the American Communist Party, 56–65; Robinson, Black Marxism, 304–6; Frank Scott, “An Inquiry into the Communist Program,” 16–28, 44–56; Solomon, “Red and Black,” 80–155.
2 SW, December 13, 1930; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 36; William Z. Foster, “The Workers’ (Communist) Party in the South,” Communist 7 (November 1928): 676–81; quotation from DW, February 25, 1929; see also DW, April 19, May 29, 1930; Jim Allen, “Voice from the South,” Labor Defender 5 (November 1930): 221; Workers (Communist Party) of America, Program and Constitution, 13.
3 On the Communists’ role in the North and South Carolina textile strikes in 1929, see Dunne, Gastonia; Beal, Proletarian Journey, 27–135; Weisbord, ARadical Life, 182–83, 186–87, 207–8, 270–71, and Weisbord, “Gastonia 1929,” 185–203; Draper, “Gastonia Revisited,” 3–29; Pope, Millhands and Preachers, 239–95.
4 James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 61–62; CPUSA, Struggles Ahead! 27; Central Committee, CPUSA, Thesis and Resolutions for the Seventh National Convention, 63.
5 James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 29; “Testimony of Fred McDuff,” Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 92–94; “Trade Union Unity League Mass Meeting—Workers of Birmingham—White Workers—Negro Workers!” leaflet (copy), ibid., 92, 177; DW, March 25, April 2, 1930; Birmingham Age-Herald, March 30, 1930.
6 “Extracts from a Report of a Private Detective at Gastonia, North Carolina, Dated November 19, 1932,” Box 2847, MID Records; Birmingham News, May 23, 1930; Herndon, Let Me Live, 75–78. Although Herndon claims the meeting took place in June, the actual date was May 22. Herndon uses pseudonyms for Communist organizers—“Frank Williams” is Frank Burns, “Tom Wilson” is Tom Johnson, and “John Lindley” is Walter Lewis.
7 For background on Herndon's life, see Herndon, Let Me Live, 3–64; Entin, “Angelo Herndon,” chap. 1; Herndon, You Cannot Kill the Working Class, 1; Charles Martin, The Angelo Herndon Case, 8. During this period Herndon used the name “Eugene Braxton.” Herndon's given name was Eugene Angelo Braxton Herndon.
8 Tom Johnson to All Unions and Other Working-Class Organizations, May 16, 1930 circular letter, and “Stop the Murder of Workers’ Leaders,” leaflet, Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 146–47, 170; Birmingham Post, May 30, 1930; Herndon, Let Me Live, 84–85; “Testimony of Fred McDuff,” Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 92; DW, June 5, 1930; Angelo Herndon, “My Life,” (manuscript, n.d.), p. 8, ILD Papers, reel 18. The Atlanta Six, as they were called, consisted of Mary Dalton, a young white Communist from New York; Ann Burlack, a nineteen-year-old organizer for the National Textile Workers Union in South Carolina; M. H. Powers and Joe Carr, two Atlanta Communists; and two black Party members, Henry Story and Herbert Newton. At the time of the arrest Newton was using the name Gilmer Brady. See especially, Birmingham News, April 18, 21, 1930; Liberator, May 24, 1930; Atlanta Constitution, May 22, 1930; W. Wilson, “Atlanta's Communists”; Charles Martin, The Angelo Herndon Case, 22–23; Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 345–46.
9 City Commission of the City of Birmingham, The General Code, 1930, 243; “Minutes of the City Commission, City of Birmingham,” June 17, 1930, p. 491; Birmingham News, June 17, 1930; Birmingham Post, June 17, 1930; Birmingham Age-Herald, June 17, 1930; Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 95, 158; Birmingham News, June 19, 27, 1930; DW, June 20, 1930.
10 DW, June 20, 1930; Herndon, Let Me Live, 93; “Monster Mass Protest Meeting at Capitol Park, Twentieth Street and Seventh Avenue, Saturday, June 21, At 3 PM,” leaflet (copy), Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 127; “Testimony of Fred McDuff,” ibid., 93, 95; Birmingham News, June 29,1930; Cason, 90° in the Shade, 80. Those arrested with Lewis were Frank Burns, Harry Jackson, and two black Birmingham recruits, Fred Walker and B. F. Jones. Although Birmingham police took credit for forcing Lewis to leave the state, he had planned to leave all along because he was suffering from tuberculosis, which was aggravated during his brief tenure on a Tennessee chain gang. The Party sent him to a Soviet sanatorium to recover, but he died one year later (Negro Worker 1 [June 1931]: 1).
11 DW, July 4, 8, 1930; “Testimony of Fred McDuff,” Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 95–98; “Confidential Report on Communist Activities,” (1930), p. 2., Folder 21, Box 88, National Republic Files; Charles Martin, The Angelo Herndon Case, 25; Herndon, Let Me Live, 96–97, 100–102. Nearly all Communists arrested in 1930, were convicted under Section 6028 of the City Ordinance of 1930 which defined vagrants as those who “wander about in idleness” who may lead an “immoral profligate life with no property sufficient for [their] support” or people “without visible means of support.” Ironically, Section 6031 states that those involved in labor disputes cannot be considered vagrants (City Commission of the City of Birmingham, The General Code, 1930, 325).
12 Central Committee, CPUSA, Thesis and Resolutions for the Seventh National Convention, 54–60; “Resolution on Workers’ Defense of the District Bureau, District 17, Communist Party of the United States of America” (n.d.), Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 130–32; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 29.
13 DW, February 19, March 7, 1930; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 41–42. Allen and his wife used a series of pseudonyms. He adopted “James Bigelow” for a while, and his wife often went by “Helen Marcy.” Eventually he took the name “James Allen,” the name by which most people have come to know him (51–52). For biographical background on Allen, see Johnpoll and Klehr, Biographical Dictionary of the American Left, 3.
14 SW, August 16, November 15, 1930; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 185.
15 James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 62. Police estimated two or three thousand “members and sympathizers” (“Testimony of Fred McDuff,” Fish Committee Hearings, 1[6]: 99).
16 Quotation from Central Committee, CPUSA, Thesis and Resolutions for the Seventh National Convention, 58; SW, October 18, November 1, 1930; “Working Class against Capitalist Class Sole Election Issue of Communist Party,” pamphlet (copy), Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 117. See also, “Boycott Bosses Jim Crow Primaries—Vote Communist This Fall,” leaflet (copy), ibid., 157.
17 SW, November 22, 1930; Central Committee, CPUSA, Fight against Hunger; Birmingham Age-Herald, November 12, 14, 1930; Birmingham Post, November 12, 1930; Birmingham News, November 14, 1930; “A Government Conspiracy Against the Working Class—Congress Prepares New Anti-Labor Laws,” leaflet (copy), Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 151–52; “Testimony of Achmed H. Mundo,” ibid., 185–86; “Testimony of Fred McDuff,” ibid., 101–3; “Testimony of John G. Murphy,” ibid., 197–99. For more on the Fish Committee's origins, see Delacy, “Congressional Investigation of Black Communism,” 48–52; Wreszin, “The Dies Committee,” 288.
18 James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 62; DW, January 28, 1931; SW, January 31, 1931; Dyson, RedHarvest, 86; “Southern Bulletin—March, 1931, A-375,” p. 4, Box 2847, MID Records; “Communication from Alabama Farmers Committee of Action,” Journal of the House of Representatives of Alabama, Extra Session, 1933, 459.
19 Birmingham News, April 25, 1930; LaMonte, “Politics and Welfare,” 168–69; Birmingham News, April 5, 1930.
20 “Mass Demonstration against Unemployment at Capitol Park, Twentieth Street and Seventh Avenue, Monday, September 1,” leaflet (copy), Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 156. See also Herndon, Let Me Live, 105–7, 109–10; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 28. For background on the history and development of the Unemployed Councils in 1930, see Leab, “‘United We Eat’”; Prago, “The Organization of the Unemployed,” 55–60; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 49–56; and Rosenzweig, “Organizing the Unemployed.”
21 “Unemployed Workers of TCI,” leaflet (copy), Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 155; “Steel Workers of Ensley Fight for Work or Bread,” leaflet (copy), ibid., 154; SW, December 27, 1930.
22 For descriptions of these practices, see Essie Davis interview (WLC), 3–5; Benson interview (WLC), 15; Curtis Maggard interview (WLC), 6, 13–15; Painter, Narrative, 100, 157–59; Clyde Johnson to author, April 10, 1989.
23 Quotation from Price interview (WLC), 7. Several WLC interviews provide rich descriptions of urban farming as a depression survival strategy. See especially Jerald interview, 9; Andrews interview, 21; Benson interview, 15; George J. Brown interview, 3; Bryant interview, 6; Chandler interview, 3; Darden interview, 12–13; Gibson interview, 6; also, McClindon, Oral Testimony (BPRM), 1. The data on livestock and gardening are from Bailey, “Ten Trying Years,” 51, and J. D. Dowling et al., “Consolidated Report and Analysis,” 5.
24 Rikard, “An Experiment in Welfare Capitalism,” 270–79; Durr, Outside the Magic Circle, 79.
25 Birmingham Post, February 23, 1931; Douglas L. Smith, New Deal in the Urban South, 36; quotation from SW, January 17, 1931. On the city commission's efforts, see LaMonte, “Politics and Welfare,” 169–71.
26 LaMonte, “Politics and Welfare,” 204–6; Henderson, “Relief in Jefferson County,” 9; “Minutes of the City Commission, City of Birmingham,” November 18, 1930, p. 139; Cowett, Birmingham's Rabbi, 105–6; Douglas L. Smith, New Deal in the Urban South, 36–37, 41.
27 Gadson interview (BPRM), 2; LaMonte, “Politics and Welfare,” 210, 212; Birmingham News, April 11, November 11, 1932; Bailey, “Ten Trying Years,” 71–72; Durr, Outside the Magic Circle, 77–79; quotation from DW, December 5, 1932. For rich, firsthand descriptions of Red Cross work by Birmingham blacks, see the following WLC interviews: March, 13–15; Lera Maggard, 3, 16; Essie Davis, 5–6.
28 SW, April 18, September 19, 1931; Al Murphy, District Agitprop Director and Political Education, “What is Going on in Birmingham and Vicinity,” memo, n.d., Box 2847, MID Records; Communication from James [Donald] Burke of Unemployed Councils of Alabama, 1931, Drawer 50, Governor Miller Papers; also reprinted in Journal of the House of Representatives of Alabama, Extra Session, 1933, 459–60.
29 Hudson interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 100, 138–40; SW, January 24, April 18, May 9, October 10, 1931; Clyde Johnson to author, April 10, 1989; Washington interview (WLC), 35–36; WW, September 1934. For a discussion of unemployed councils’ tactics in other major urban areas, especially Chicago and New York, see Fisher, Let the People Decide, 35–42; Naison, Communists in Harlem, 41.
30 Lopp interview (WLC), 5–11; Essie Davis interview (WLC), 2; McClindon, Oral Testimony (BPRM), 1; and for a broader discussion of speed-ups in domestic work, see Jones, Labor of Love, 205–7.
31 The figure of 82 percent includes domestic workers in hotels, restaurants, and boarding houses, but this represents a very small percentage compared to the number of women employed in private homes. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Population, 3(1): 122; U.S. Employment Service, A Report on the Availability of the Services.
32 In 1930, 34.5 percent of the black female population was gainfully employed compared with 17.4 percent of the white females in Birmingham. Although I have no figures for the number of single-parent, female-headed households, it should be noted that black women outnumbered black men in Birmingham 52,495 to 46,582 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Population, 1:93). For a discussion of how the depression affected women's work and the response of some male wage earners to the crisis, see Helmbold, “Beyond the Family Economy,” and “Downward Occupational Mobility,” 169–171; Jones, Labor of Love, 221–30.
33 “Statement of Helen Longs, December 30, 1936,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:966; Hudson interview with author; WW, June, 1931; for Addie Adkins's occupation, see Polk's Birmingham City Directory (1932). The articles by Myra Page, “Water,” WW, October 1934, and “Leave Them Meters Be!” WW, September 1934, were also reprinted in Nekola and Rabinowitz, Writing Red, 293–98.
34 DW, April 3, 1934.
35 One of the more notorious black social workers in Birmingham was Ida Shepherd. Curtis Maggard claims that a group of angry black women “called [Ida Shepherd] out and almost whooped her naked” (Curtis Maggard interview [WLC], 4). Hosea Hudson, who refers to her as “Hallie Moses” in his narrative, had similar run-ins with Shepherd (Painter, Narrative, 161–62).
36 Curtis Maggard interview (WLC), 1–3; also Rosa Jackson interview (WLC), 10; George J. Brown interview (WLC), 3.
37 Painter, Narrative, 162–63. For an extended discussion of evasive forms of resistance within the Alabama CP, see Chapter 5.
38 The Scottsboro case is discussed in Chapter 4; see also Dan T. Carter's definitive study of the case, Scottsboro.
39 Al Murphy to Nell Painter, March 1978, 1–6, 8–10, NPHH Collection. Some of his activities as a new recruit are also described in a letter to the YW, December 20, 1930. Although the letter is anonymous, Murphy undoubtedly wrote it since he described himself as the “only young worker” in the Stockham foundry “trying to organize a shop committee.” At the time, Murphy was the only Communist employed at Stockham.
40 Painter, Narrative, 2–13, 80, 81–82, 87; Hudson interview with author.
41 Painter, Narrative, 77, 99; Mayfield, “Memoirs”; on Andy Brown, who used the pseudonym “Oscar Bryant,” see Congress Vue 2 (April 1944): 2; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Hudson interview with author.
42 James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 188; Painter, Narrative, 89–90; Stone interview (SOHP), August 13, 1975, 11; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 258–59.
43 Jarvis interview with author; and on the press coverage of Wirt Taylor's incarceration, see SW, August 15, 1933; Harlem Liberator, July 22, 1933; DW, October 9, 1932, October 9, 1934.
44 Quotation from Jarvis interview with author; Hudson interview with author; and on her marital status, Polk's Birmingham City Directory (1934). Burke's description of Leonard's private life and public militancy might be compared with Jacquelyn Dowd Hall's portrait of Trixie Perry in “Disorderly Women,” 373–75.
45 Quotation from DW, May 27, 1938; Jarvis interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Stone interview (SOHP), June 27, 1975,23–24; Durr interview (SOHP), 19–24; Lumpkin interview (SOHP), 14; “Statement of Jane Speed, January 12, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:961; Montgomery Advertiser, May 19, 1933.
46 See, for instance, Elovitz, A Century of Jewish Life in Dixie, esp. 54, 101; Cowett, Birmingham's Rabbi, 137–38; Norrell, “Steel Workers and Storekeepers”; Birmingham Historical Society, Village Creek, 55. The only Communist of Italian descent was James Giglio, who apparently left the Party within a year after his home had been bombed. The only Jewish activist of the Third Period who joined as an Alabama resident, to my knowledge, was Israel Berlin. For Berlin's background, see Chapter 3.
47 Clyde Johnson interview with author; Loveman, Presidential Vote in Alabama, 19; and for a discussion of North Alabama's voting patterns, see Hackney, Populism to Progressivism, 27; Carmer, Stars Fell on Alabama, 59–60. For a broader discussion of white agrarian class consciousness, see Flynt, Dixie's Forgotten People, 53, 56, and “Spindle, Mine, and Mule”; Shugg, Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana, 274–313; and numerous examples in chapters 4 and 7 of Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost.
48 DW, February 9, 1934; SW, February 10, 1934; Clyde Johnson interview with author; quotation from Norman MacCleod, “Agitated Alabama,” New Masses 7 (October 1931): 18.
49 SW, November 15, 1930.
50 Quotation from DW, April 3, 1932; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview by H. L. Mitchell, p. 39.
51 Minutes of Meeting of District Bureau—District 17, March 13, 1932, p. 5, Box 7, Draper Papers (Emory); Jim Allen, “Voice from the South,” Labor Defender 5, (November 1930): 221.
52 Birmingham News, May 23, June 28, 1930; see also Birmingham News, June 10, 1930; Birmingham Labor Advocate, April 26, May 24, 31, 1930. For an excellent discussion of the historical meaning of “social equality” within the context of class, racial, and sexual politics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, see Painter, “ ‘Social Equality.’” This issue is also dealt with in Chapter 4.
53 “Testimony of John G. Murphy,” and “Testimony of Lester Shannon,” Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 182, 193, 197–199; “Testimony of Achmed H. Mundo,” ibid., 185–86; “Testimony of Fred McDuff,” ibid., 101–3. Xenophobia and anti-Semitism were common characteristics of Southern anti-Communism, much of which rested on the belief that outside agitators are capable of manipulating the “weak-minded” (mainly blacks). See, for example, Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness, 113–14; Roebuck and Hickson, Southern Redneck, 23, 85; Stephen A. Smith, Myth, Media, and the Southern Mind, 30–31; Kelley, “Yankees, Comrades, and Nigger Reds.”
54 BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson, Black Worker, 55–57; Painter, Narrative, 106–9; New York Times, May 14, 1932; John Williams, “Struggles of the Thirties in the South,” 173–74. In Hudson's notebooks, he recalls that the committee was all black. But his later recollections, and the version by John Williams (which is probably a pseudonym for Hudson) originally published in Political Affairs, mention a white member in the delegation. The one white member, Wirt Taylor's father, backed down at the last minute, claiming no part in the event when confronted by police.
In Painter's Narrative, Joe Burton is referred to as “Ted Horton.”
55 “Draft Resolution for District Convention, District 17 (1934),” 2, Browder Papers, reel 3; S. B. [Ted Wellman], “Unity of Negro and White Toilers”; Jarvis interview with author; BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson, Black Worker, 57–58; Painter, Narrative, 127, 136–37; John Williams, “Struggles of the Thirties in the South,” 174. Taylor, who was sentenced to thirteen months on the chain gang, was not released until July of 1933 (SW, August 15, 1933; Harlem Liberator, July 22, 1933; DW, October 9, 1932, October 9, 1934).
56 DW, November 25, 28, 29, 30, 1932; Memorandum by R. M. Howell, November 1, 1932, p. 1, and “Summary of Subversive Situation for Month of November, 1932,” p. 2, Box 2847, MID Records. The Daily Worker reports Mosley as “Alice Moser,” but Hudson identified her as the sister of Party activist Archie Mosley (Hudson interview with author).
57 DW, September 16, 1932; R. M. Howell, “Summary of Subversive Situation for Month of September, 1932,” Box 2847, MID Records; DW, May 30,1932; William Z. Foster, History of the Communist Party, 291; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 330. Sallye Davis, who later became an organizer for the Southern Negro Youth Congress in the late 1930s and 1940s, recalls the positive response Ford's campaign received from blacks in 1932 (Sallye Davis interview (untranscribed tape), NPHH Collection).
58 “To All Workers and Poor Farmers of the South! (White and Negro),” leaflet, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers.
59 Jimmie Jones to Mrs. Frances E. Burnette, September 29, 1932, JMJ Papers; DW, October 4, 1932.
60 DW, October 6, 10, 1932; Birmingham Post, October 10, 1932; Birmingham Age-Herald, October 10, 1932; Report by Lt. Ralph E. Hurst to Brigadier General J.C. Persons—“Subject: Communist Agitation,” Birmingham, October 19, 1932, p. 3, Drawer 34, Governor Miller Papers; BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson interview with author.
61 Loveman, Presidential Vote in Alabama, 19; U.S. Congress, House, Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Elections of November 8, 1932, 2.
62 U.S. Employment Service, A Report on the Availability of the Services. The numbers on relief practically equaled the unemployment rate. In 1933, 27.4 percent of Birmingham's black male population was unemployed (Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book, 2:130).
63 “Organize and Struggle for Relief,” leaflet, Box 2848, MID Records; Birmingham News, May 1, 2, 1933; Birmingham Age-Herald, May 2, 1933; Montgomery Advertiser, May 5, 19, 1933; SW, June 10, 1933; Painter, Narrative, 142–45; John Williams, “Struggles of the Thirties in the South,” 168; Statement of Jane Speed, January 12, 1937, La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:961–62; BWDS (Notebooks). The two men arrested with Speed were Ned Goodwin and Otis DeBardeleben. Speed, who elected to serve time in jail in lieu of a fine, was charged with disorderly conduct and addressing a racially mixed meeting, and Goodwin, who was badly beaten by police, was charged with assault, sentenced to six months on a chain gang, and required to pay a fine of $100. DeBardeleben was picked up for having a concealed weapon (Montgomery Advertiser, May 19, 20, 26, 1933).
64 Taft, Organizing Dixie, 64; SW, August 31, September 20, 1933; “Draft Resolution for District Convention, District 17 (1934),” 1–2, Browder Papers, reel 3.
65 For Birmingham membership figures, see Party Membership Chart D, “Organizational Status of the Party,” (1934), Browder Papers, reel 3. Hosea Hudson estimated that there were six to seven hundred members in Birmingham and about one thousand members in the state of Alabama during this period (Painter, Narrative, 114; Hudson interview with author).
1 Daniel, Breaking the Land, 8–18; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, chap. 1; Tindall, Emergence of the New South, 112–14; Charles S. Johnson et al., Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, 4–5, 46; Woofter, Landlord and Tenant, chap. 3; Mertz, New Deal Policy, 5–6.
2 For a more detailed description of cotton tenancy and its historical roots, see Wiener, Social Origins of the New South; Jaynes, Branches without Roots; Fite, Cotton Fields No More, 120–62; Mann, “Slavery, Sharecropping and Sexual Inequality”; and for descriptions of daily life, Allison Davis et al., Deep South, 270–327; Raper, Preface to Peasantry, chap. 4, 42–43, 52–53; Charles S. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation, 11, 90–102; U.S. National Resources Committee, Farm Tenancy, 29–32, 33–36.
3 Federal Writers’ Project, Alabama, 10; Olive M. Stone, “Agrarian Conflict in Alabama,” 15–21; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Population, 3(1): 91.
4 Daniel, Breaking the Land, 156–58; Allison Davis et al., Deep South, 270–71, 325–27; Garner interview (WLC), 7–9; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 187–97.
5 For a vivid description of women's work patterns in the cotton South, see Minnie Brown, “Black Women in American Agriculture”; Elaine Ellis, “Women of the Cotton Fields,” 333, 342; Mann, “Slavery, Sharecropping and Sexual Inequality,” 778–85; Ruth Allen, The Labor of Women; Charles S. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation, 115; Jones, Labor of Love, 81–99, 200–220; Ware, Holding Their Own, 11–13. On wage differentials in rural Alabama, see SW, March-April 1935, May 1935; DW, May 8, June 21, 1935; “To All White and Negro Share Croppers and Tenants and Farm Workers: To All White and Negro Farm Women and Youth,” n.d., encl., Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to J. R. Butler, July 4, 1935, STFU Papers, reel 1; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 66. In 1931, sharecroppers in Tallapoosa County reported that women received one pound of butter and an occasional dime, per week, for taking in laundry (Liberator, October 25, 1931).
6 DW, July 6, 1934; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Lemon Johnson interview with author. Both Jacqueline Jones and Susan Mann, on the other hand, generalize that black and white women rarely took part in controlling farm finances (Jones, “‘Tore Up and a-Movin,’” 19; Mann, “Slavery, Sharecropping and Sexual Inequality,” 787).
7 Clyde Johnson interview by H. L. Mitchell, 45; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 280; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census, 1940: Population, 2(1): 223; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States, 236; quotation from WW, October 1934; and for a similar example, Lera Maggard interview (WLC), 3. Most rural black families encouraged girls to attend school while boys were often discouraged since it would have meant a loss of labor (Jones, Labor of Love, 91, 96–98; Brock, “Farmer's Daughter Effect,” 18–19).
8 For a theoretical discussion of these forms, see James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, esp. chaps. 2 and 8; Naison, “Black Agrarian Radicalism”; and for a brilliant example from South African historiography, see Bradford, A Taste of Freedom, 49–51. Most scholarly examples of black rural resistance still focus on slavery, ignoring the rich history of these practices in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Examples abound in early secondary sources and firsthand accounts, though rarely do these writers describe such action as resistance. See, for instance, Bizzell, “Farm Tenantry in the United States,” 267–68; Baker, Following the Color Line, 76–77; Sisk, “Alabama Black Belt,” 277–87. For twentieth century accounts suggesting that these practices were indeed oppositional, see Allison Davis et al. Deep South, 396–98; Raper, Preface to Peasantry, 174–74. On the trickster tradition, see Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 121–33; Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 177; and for an excellent discussion of slaves’ use of the dominant ideology to redefine the boundaries of paternalism through theft, see Alex Lichtenstein, “That Disposition To Theft.”
9 Daniel, Breaking the Land, 12–18; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, 53–54; Raper, Preface to Peasantry, 183–224; Campbell and Johnson, Black Migration in America, 72–76; Higgs, “The Boll Weevil.” For example, in Macon County, the number of wage workers declined from 1,720 in 1929 to 1,368 in 1931; in Lowndes County it dropped from 1,627 to 1,294, and Dallas County experienced a decline from 2,411 in 1929 to 1,918 in 1931 (Alabama Department of Labor, Annual Report, 1937, 41). On the impact of the automobile in the rural South, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Agriculture, 2(2): Table 23; Raper, Preface to Peasantry, 117–18; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, 55–56; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 149.
10 “Draft Program for Negro Farmers in the Southern States,” Communist 9 (March 1930): 253, 254–55; “Draft Program for the Negro Laborers in the Southern States,” Communist 9 (March 1930): 246–50; Jim Allen, “Some Rural Aspects of the Struggle for the Right of Self-Determination,” Communist 10 (March 1931): 254–55; Tom Johnson to J. Schmies, May 10, 1930, Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 108; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 62.
11 “Farmers of South Fight Starvation! Appeal By Communist Party,” leaflet, ca. January 1931, Drawer 50, Governor Miller Papers; see also SW, January 24, 1931; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 93.
12 SW, March 7, 21, 1931.
13 Herndon, Let Me Live, 137; SW, March 7, 1931. Referring to “Eugene Braxton,” the Southern Worker reported he was in Alberta, Alabama. James Allen later recalls that “Braxton” was in Camp Hill (“Communism in the Deep South,” 95–96), and Herndon's own account, Let Me Live, mentions a “Camden County” (p. 129). However, Camden is actually the name of a town in Wilcox County. I have determined the actual name of the county by using evidence in Herndon's account, in which he cites a newspaper article stating that he was in Governor Benjamin M. Miller's hometown. Miller was born in Wilcox County, near Oak Hill (Marks, Who Was Who in Alabama, 121).
14 SW, March 14, June 27,1931; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 95.
15 Olive M. Stone, “Agrarian Conflict in Alabama,” 73–78; Federal Writers’ Project, Alabama, 10; Philliou, “Organizing for the Right to Live,” 2; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 19; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Population, 3(1): 91, 94; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Agriculture, 2(2): 709; Ellis, “Women of the Cotton Fields,” 342; Preece, “Epic of the Black Belt,” 75; Liberator, October 17, 1931; WW, June 1931. On the Grays’ role, see letters in SW, January 31, February 28, 1931; Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 398; Henry Puro, “The Tasks of Our Party in Agrarian Work,” Communist 10 (February 1931): 148; Painter, Narrative, 84; Philliou, “Organizing for the Right to Live,” 27.
16 Quoted in James S. Allen, Reconstruction, 124; Olive Matthews Stone, “Ralph and Tommy Gray of Tallapoosa,” typescript, ca. 1970, pp. 1–2, Box 2, Stone Collection. Although Allen was not sure if Alfred Gray was related to Tommy and Ralph, Stone's research reveals that he was indeed their paternal grandfather.
17 ILD Press Service, “The Fight of the Alabama Share Croppers: An Interview with the Niece of Ralph Gray,” by Sasha Small, April 21, 1934, CJP, reel 13; [Tommy Gray], “Brother Ralph Gray's Story,” 21; SW, June 27, 1931. Langley was a descendant of an established, well-respected antebellum family (Tallapoosa County Bicentennial Committee, Tallapoosa County, 131).
18 SW, March 21, 1931; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 31; Painter, Narrative, 84; Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 398; Hudson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview with author; “Testimony of Leonard Patterson,” in State of Louisiana, Subversion in Racial Unrest, 121.
19 James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 96,100–101; quotation from SW, May 16, July 25, 1931; DW, July 18,1931; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 32.
20 SW, July 25, 1931; DW, August 11, 1931.
21 SW, July 25, August 29, 1931; Harris Gilbert [Harry Simms], “Report on Situation in Camp Hill, Alabama,” mimeo, ca. September 1931, p. 2, Box 12, Minor Papers; Liberator, December 19, 1931; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 96; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 33.
22 There are numerous conflicting accounts of the Camp Hill shoot-out. See DW, July 18, 1931; SW, July 25, 1931; YW, July 27, 1931; Birmingham Age-Herald, July 17, 18, 20, 1931; Dadeville Spotcash, July 23, 1931; Liberator, July 25, 1931; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 96–97; B. D. Amis, “Croppers in Southern States Fight to Live,” International Press Correspondence, August 20, 1931, p. 821; Henry Fuller, “Sunday at Camp Hill,” New Republic 99 (1931): 132–34; James D. Burton, “Racial Disturbance in Tallapoosa County, Alabama,” mimeo, 1931, p. 3, Box 23, CIC Collection; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 294–95; Lowell Wakefield, “It Was War in the South,” Labor Defender 8 (February 1932): 32; William Nowell, “Why Camp Hill?” Labor Defender 6 (September 1931): 167; [Tommy Gray], “Brother Ralph Gray's Story,” 21; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 33–35; Philliou, “Organizing for the Right to Live,” 31–32; Solomon, “Red and Black,” 424–27; Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 228–29; Carter, Scottsboro, 124–25.
23 Quotation from [Tommy Gray], “Brother Ralph Gray's Story,” 21; DW, July 18, 19, 1931; SW, August 8, 1931; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 97. According to Sheriff Young, Gray was still alive when they arrested him and died en route to jail (Dadeville Spotcash, July 23, 1931).
24 It is difficult to determine precisely how many people were arrested by Tallapoosa County authorities. Initially, official Party sources and the mainstream press reported twenty-nine arrests, but a few days later most newspapers boosted this figure to thirty-four. Both the Daily Worker (August 14, 1931) and the Young Worker (August 3, 1931) each reported fifty-five jailed and a host of others missing. James S. Allen, however, states that there were only twenty-nine jailed in the aftermath of Camp Hill (“Communism in the Deep South,” 98), and Dale Rosen has estimated thirty-five prisoners (“The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 36). The series of articles published in the Labor Defender concerning the Camp Hill shootout cite the standard number of thirty-four.
25 DW, August 6, 1931; YW, August 3, 1931; Dadeville Spotcash, July 23, 1931; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 98; Philliou, “Organizing for the Right to Live,” 33; W. G. Porter, Secretary of Montgomery Branch, NAACP, to Mr. Andrews, July 17, 1931, and Earle Saffols to William Pickens, July 24, 1931, Box G-6, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; quotation from Gilbert [Harry Simms], “Report on Situation in Camp Hill, Alabama,” 1, Minor Papers; New York Times, July 19, 1931; Chattanooga News, July 20, 1931; Dadeville Spotcash, July 23, 1931; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Beecher, “The Share Croppers’ Union,” 125; Carter, Scottsboro, 125–27; Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 229; Liberator, October 17, November 14, 1931.
26 W. G. Porter, Secretary of Montgomery Branch, NAACP, to Mr. Andrews, July 17, 1931, Box G-6, NAACP Papers, Branch Files. A few writers blamed the entire confrontation on the Scottsboro case. See “Alabama's Race War,” Literary Digest 110 (August 1, 1931): 7–8; Chattanooga Times, July 18, 1931.
27 Birmingham Age-Herald, July 18,1931; Earle Saffols to William Pickens, July 24, 1931, Box G-6, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Carter, Scottsboro, 126; Philliou, “Organizing for the Right to Live,” 35–37. Ned Cobb was also aware of these rumors. After the shoot-out at Camp Hill, he later recalled, “I heard talk about trucks comin into this country deliverin guns to colored people. . . . But didn't no trucks haul guns to nobody” (Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 311).
28 Birmingham Reporter, July 25, August 1, 1931; Birmingham News, July 18, 1931; Labor Advocate, July 25, 1931; Burton, “Racial Disturbance in Tallapoosa County, Alabama,” 1–3, CIC Collection; Haynes, “Communists Are Bidding for Negro Loyalty,” 155; see also Carter, Scottsboro, 127; Pittsburgh Courier, July 25, August 1, 1931.
29 Haynes, “Communists are Bidding for Negro Loyalty,” 155; Liberator, October 17, 1931; Carter, Scottsboro, 127; quotation from L. N. Duncan to Governor B. M. Miller, July 20, 1931; see also Bradford Knapp, president of Alabama Polytechnic Institute to Governor B. M. Miller, July 21, 1931, both in Drawer 50, Governor Miller Papers; Walter White to Dr. Will W. Alexander, July 20, 1931, Box 23, CIC Collection. It is unlikely that any such minute books existed since the union's own secretary could neither read nor write. Moreover, Wilson and county solicitor Sanford Mullins refused to release any of the confiscated documents. For the actions of Wilson and Mullins, see Carter, Scottsboro, 127.
30 Quotation from Walter White to Roderick Beddow, July 30, 1931, Box 23, CIC Collection; DW, July 28 and 30, August 1, 2, 1931; SW, August 1, 8, 1931; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 100; Birmingham Age-Herald, July 29, 1931; DW, August 6, 1931; Carter, Scottsboro, 129.
31 SW, August 8, 1931; “Draft Resolution on Negro Work,” typewritten, ca. 1931, Box 12, Minor Papers; Beecher, “The Share Croppers’ Union,” 124; William Nowell, “Why Camp Hill?” Labor Defender 6 (September 1931): 167; and on conditions in Tallapoosa County, see Gilbert [Harry Simms], “Report on Situation in Camp Hill, Alabama,” 1, Minor Papers.
32 Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to J. R. Butler, July 4, 1935, encl., “In Memory of Ralph Gray,” STFU Papers, reel 1.
33 Clyde Johnson interview with author; Gilbert [Harry Simms], “Report on Situation in Camp Hill, Alabama,” 2, Minor Papers.
34 ILD Press Service, “The Fight of the Alabama Sharecroppers: An Interview with the Niece of Ralph Gray,” by Sasha Small, April 21, 1934, CJP, reel 13; Al Murphy to Nell Painter, March, 1978, p. 14, NPHH Collection; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 106; DW, December 31, 1932; quotation from Jim Allen [Harry Wicks] to Jim Randolph [William Weinstone], March 19, 1932, Box 7, Draper Papers (Emory).
35 Although Murphy remembers having been appointed secretary of the SCU in 1931, evidence from Simms's and Wicks's correspondence, as well as Eula Gray's account, indicates that the union had no permanent secretary until the spring of 1932. Moreover, Nat Ross did not arrive in Birmingham until the early part of 1932 (Gilbert [Harry Simms], “Report on Situation in Camp Hill, Alabama,” 2, Minor Papers; Jim Allen [Harry Wicks] to Jim Randolph [William Weinstone], March 19, 1932, Box 7, Draper Papers [Emory]). For Murphy's account, Murphy to Painter, March 1978, pp. 12–13, NPHH Collection; “Questions for Al Murphy (Al Jackson), Former Organizer of the SCU,” questionnaire, ca. 1975), Box 2, Stone Collection.
36 On James and Capitola Tasker, see DW, July 25, 1934; WW, September 1934; Bloor, We Are Many, 256 (in the Daily Worker Capitola Tasker is listed as Equile McKeithen, undoubtedly to protect her identity); Clyde Johnson interview with author; and on John Beans, see Hudson interview with author; Hackney, Populism to Progressivism, 183.
37 Quotation from SW, February 11, 1931; “To All Captains of the Share Croppers’ Union Locals,” unsigned memo, Birmingham, Ala., August 10, 1932, Box 2848, MID Records; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 322; Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 401–2; Lemon Johnson interview with author.
38 Lemon Johnson interview with author; “To All Captains of the Share Croppers’ Union Locals,” MID Records; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 313; “Excerpts from Washington Daily News,” typescript, n.d., STFU Papers, reel 1.
39 Grace Lumpkin, A Sign for Cain, 223. It should be noted that Lumpkin had attended one or two SCU meetings (Lumpkin interview [SOHP], 15–16). Ruby Weems, “The Murder of Ralph Gray,” Liberator, November 21, 1931; V. J. Jerome, “To a Black Man,” DW, December 3, 1932. Other examples include Cyril Briggs, “Negro Revolutionary Hero—Toussaint L'Ouverture,” Communist 8 (May 1929): 250–54; Eugene Gordon, “Alabama Massacre,” New Masses 7 (August 1931): 16; and Gilbert Lewis, “Revolutionary Negro Tradition,” Negro Worker, March 15, 1930.
40 Quotation from “Excerpts from Washington Daily News” typescript, n.d., STFU Papers, reel 1; WW, November 1935; Lemon Johnson interview with author; Smith interview with author. On black women's social and religious networks, see Perry, “A Day with Becky Clayton,” 165; White, Ar'nt I a Woman, 123; Jean E. Friedman, “Women's History,” 6–9; Jones, Labor of Love, 67–68, 102. The role of “workers correspondence” is treated further in Chapter 5.
41 My analysis here is drawn mainly from Kaplan, “Female Consciousness.”
42 DW, May 10, June 21, 1934; WW, September 1934.
43 See, for example, Israel Amter's comments in WW, February 1930, and Sadie Van Veen, “Negro Women and the Elections,” WW, September 1931. For a discussion of the Party's male-centered vision of the “proletariat,” see Rabinowitz, “Women and U.S. Literary Radicalism”; and Joan W. Scott, “On Language, Gender, and Working-Class History,” esp. 10–11, for a broader treatment of how working-class movements have constructed a concept of class that excludes women.
44 Murphy to Painter, March 1978, p. 22, NPHH Collection; [Al Murphy], Report to Central Committee of CPUSA, June 10, 1933, p. 1, Box 16, Draper Papers (Emory); Lemon Johnson interview with author; DW, March 8, 1933, June 11, July 7, 1934. In 1932 the Party unsuccessfully attempted to organize a separate Tenants’ League for white sharecroppers (Murphy, “Negro Share Croppers Build Their Union,” 16; Bunche, “The Share-Croppers,” 214).
45 After the Reeltown shoot-out (see below) at least one white farmer reportedly gave refuge to an SCU member. Birmingham Age-Herald, December 22, 1932; New York Sun, February 23, 1933; DW, December 24, 1932.
46 DW, December 24, 1932; Loveman, Presidential Vote in Alabama, 19. Quotation from Frank Ellis to Hugo Black, April 8, 1932; see also C. C. Prichard to Hugo Black, June 18, 1932, Hugo Black to Frank Ellis, April 25, 1932, all in Box 94, Black Papers.
47 Quotation from Durr interview (SOHP), 24; Al Murphy to Nell Painter, March 1978, p. 21, NPHH Collection; Stone interview (SOHP), August 13, 1975, pp. 8–10, 15, 18, 20; “Questions for Al Murphy (Al Jackson), Former Organizer of SCU,” questionnaire, ca. 1975, Box 2, Stone Collection.
48 DW, September 9, 29, 1932; Liberator, October 15, 1932; Solomon, “Red and Black,” 434; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 40.
49 DW, December 31, 1932.
50 Montgomery Advertiser, December 28, 1932; DW, December 29, 1932; Philliou, “Organizing for the Right to Live,” 42; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 42–44; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 301–2.
51 “Report on Agrarian Work in the South to Meeting of the Negro Department, January 18,” mimeo, February 3, 1932, p. 8, Box 12, Minor Papers; quotation from Montgomery Advertiser, December 28, 1932; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 45; W. S. Parker to “My Good Colored Customers,” December 29, 1932, CJP, reel 13; Hudson interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 146; DW, December 21, 1932; R. M. Howell, “Report on the Subversive Situation in Birmingham, Alabama,” December 1932, p. 1, Box 2847, MID Records.
52 DW, December 21, 22, 31, 1932; Harlem Liberator, July 29, 1933; SW, May 20, 1933; Montgomery Advertiser, December 22, 24, 1932; Dadeville Record, December 22, 1932; Birmingham Post, December 22, 1932; Birmingham News, December 20, 21, 1932; Tuskegee News, December 22, 1932; “What Happened in Tallapoosa County,” Labor Defender 9 (February 1933): 4; Birmingham Age-Herald, December 24, 1932; Painter, Narrative, 146–48; Beecher, “The Share Croppers’ Union,” 127–31; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 321–29; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 295–96; Jamss S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 104; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 42–48; Philliou, “Organizing for the Right to Live,” 43–45; Solomon, “Red and Black,” 434–40; Rosen and Rosengarten, “Shoot-Out at Reeltown.”
53 Quotation from Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 329.
54 Those indicted for “intent to murder” were Sam Moss, Clinton Moss, Ned Cobb, Cornelius Wood, Edgar Wood, Alf White, Jug Moss, Judson Simpson, Scott Gray, Roy Gray, Bully Warren, Will Warren, Hunker Simpson, Thomas Moss. Sam Simpson, Willie Anderson, John Warren, Sam Cobb, and Merge Wood (State of Alabama, Tallapoosa County, Circuit Court, Spring 1933, Richard H. Powell, Jr., Fifth Judicial Circuit, Indictment by Grand Jury, CJP, reel 13.) Ivy Moss was also arrested, but because he allegedly died of pneumonia less than a week after he was released on bail, he was not indicted (Press Release, Crusader News Agency, January 14, 1933, CJP, reel 13).
55 Quotation from R. M. Howell, “Report on the Subversive Situation in Birmingham, Alabama,” December 1932, p. 2, Box 2847, MID Records; Birmingham Age-Herald, December 20, 1932; Carter, Scottsboro, 176; DW, January 21, 1933; Baltimore Afro-American, January 21, 1933; Beecher, “The Share Croppers’ Union,” 131.
56 Quotation from DW, December 29, 1932; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers Union,” 49; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 104; Painter, Narrative, 148; Solomon, “Red and Black,” 438–40. Tuskegee superintendent Robert Moton claimed that James surrendered while receiving treatment and requested that school authorities notify the Macon County sheriff since he “preferred being placed in the Macon County jail” (Robert Moton to Phillips Bradley, January 24, 1933, CJP, reel 13).
57 DW, December 22, 24, 26, 27, 31, 1932; Birmingham News, December 22, 1932; R. M. Howell, “Report on the Subversive Situation in Birmingham, Alabama,” December 1932, p. 2, Box 2847, MID Records; DW, December 29, 1932, January 4, 5, 9, 1933; Savannah Tribune, January 12, 1933; Painter, Narrative, 151–54; BWDS (Notebooks); Murphy to Painter, March 1978, p. 27, NPHH Collection.
58 Abbie Elmore Bugg to Robert Moton, February 25, 1933, and William McArthur to Dr. Morten [sic], January 1933, CJP, reel 13; DW, December 24, 27, 1932; Nathan Solomon, National Student League, to Robert Moton, January 9, 1932, and Herbert C. Herring to Robert Moton, January 7, 1933, CJP, reel 13; Painter, Narrative, 148; Robert Moton to Hubert C. Herring, January 21, 1933, T. M. Campbell to Leon Harris, February 27, 1932, and Monroe Work to James D. Morris, January 3, 1933, CJP, reel 13.
59 Birmingham Post, December 22, 1932. See also Montgomery Advertiser, December 22, 27, 1932; Jackson County Sentinel, April 13, 1933; CIC Press Release, December 20, 1932, CJP, reel 13. For a more detailed discussion of the local press response to the events, see Kelley, “‘Hammer n’ Hoe,’” 263–64.
60 Quoted in CIC Press Release, December 20, 1932, CJP, reel 13; Reverend M. Nunn to Governor B. M. Miller, January 9, 1933, Drawer 34, Governor Miller Papers; Murphy to Painter, March 1978, p. 21, NPHH Collection.
61 DW, January 11, 1933; Crusader News Agency, press release, January 21, 1933; Carter, Scottsboro, 178; State of Alabama, Tallapoosa County, Circuit Court, Spring 1933, Richard H. Powell, Jr., Fifth Judicial Circuit, Indictment by Grand Jury, CJP, reel 13; Montgomery Advertiser, April 27, 1933; DW, April 27, May 2, 1933; Macon Telegraph, April 28, 1933; Harlem Liberator, May 6, 1933.
62 [AI Murphy], Report to Central Committee of CPUSA, June 10, 1933, p. 1, Box 16, Draper Papers (Emory). The published version of this report claimed two to three thousand members ([Al Murphy], “Agrarian Work,” 80). The enthusiastic support for the SCU following the shoot-out is described in Birmingham World, January 10, 1933; and Beecher, “The Share Croppers’ Union,” 127.
63 Lawrence Gellert, “Negro Songs of Protest,” New Masses 8 (May 1933): 15–16.
64 Daniel, Breaking the Land, 91–109; Wright, Old South, New South, 227–28; Mertz, New Deal Policy, esp. 21–22; Conrad, Forgotten Farmers, 43–50, 64–67; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, 60–61.
65 Wright, Old South, New South, 228–35; Mertz, New Deal Policy, 29–30; Daniel, Breaking the Land, 169–74; Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost, 71–72; Whately, “Labor for the Picking.”
66 DW, October 4, December 22, 1933; Draft Resolution for District Convention, District 17 (1934), 3, Browder Papers, reel 3; Murphy, “The Share Croppers’ Union Grows and Fights,” 45, 47; DW, July 7, 1934; ILD Press Service, “The Fight of the Alabama Sharecroppers: An Interview with the Niece of Ralph Gray,” by Sasha Small, April 21, 1934, CJP, reel 13; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 297; quotation from DW, June 7, 1934.
67 DW, April 5, July 7, 1934; Murphy, “The Share Croppers’ Union Grows and Fights,” 46.
68 DW, August 27, September 6, 18, 27, October 1, 18, 1934; Savannah Tribune, October 18, 1934; “Against the Negro People: Alabama,” Labor Defender 11 (January 1935): 5.
69 Montgomery Journal, August 28, 1934; Birmingham News, October 22, 1934; DW, August 27, 1934.
70 Savannah Tribune, October 18, 1934; SW, October 1934; DW, October 4, 18, 1934.
71 DW, December 8, 1934; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 65; Murphy, “The Share Croppers’ Union Grows and Fights,” 46; SW, August 15, 1933; Draft Resolution for District Convention, District 17 (1934), 5, Browder Papers, reel 3.
1 Douglas L. Smith, New Deal in the Urban South, 17–18; Bailey, “Ten Trying Years,” 49; Benson interview (WLC), 15; Andrews interview (WLC), 20–21; Chandler interview (WLC), 3–4; Willie Johnson interview (WLC), 10; Burns interview (WLC), 1.
2 Battle interview (BPRM), 1–3; George Brown interview (BPRM), 1–2; Boddie and Wright interview (WLC), 3; George Brown interview (WLC), 6–7; Bryant interview (WLC), 2; Darden interview (WLC), 1; Gibson interview (WLC), 8; Esther Lowell, “Housing for Negro Employees, United States Steel Corporation,” Opportunity 7 (August 1929): 247–48; Herndon, Let Me Live, 57–58; see also Chapter 1. According to a report by the secretary of the Alabama State Federation of Labor in 1930, about 65 percent of the miners and 85 percent of the textile workers in Alabama lived in company-owned homes (“What Caused the Southern Uprising,” American Federationist 37 [January 1930]: 28).
3 Leighton, Five Cities, 117; Birmingham Historical Society, Village Creek, 71; quotation from Earl Brown interview (WLC), 9; C. S. Johnson interview (WLC), 18–20; Jones interview (WLC), 8; Hudson interview with author; Herndon, Let Me Live, 43–45; Mayfield, “Memoirs,” 51–52; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 19–20; Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 69–72; Huntley, “Iron Ore Miners,” 32–33.
4 “What Caused the Southern Uprising,” American Federationist 37 (January 1930): 28; Averhart interview (WLC), 24; Mayfield, “Memoirs,” 51; Battle interview (BPRM); Darden interview (WLC), 1; Willie Johnson interview (WLC), 11; Garner interview (WLC), 4; Harris interview (WLC), 8–9; see also Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness, 89–90.
5 Bailey, “Ten Trying Years,” 51; quotation from Burns interview (WLC), 5, 8–11; Darden interview (WLC), 1; Gibson interview (WLC), 6; Harris interview (WLC), 21–22; Willie Johnson interview (WLC), 4; see also Chapter 1. There were a few instances of sexual exploitation of black women: occasionally shack rousters raped the wives or daughters of miners. When black men protested these slave-cabin-style rapes, “they were either beaten almost to death or shot down like a dog” (quoted in Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 70).
6 My analysis here is drawn from Morton, “A Woman's Work Is Never Done”; Paul A. Smith, “Domestic Labour and Marx's Theory of Value”; Blumenfeld and Mann, “Domestic Labour and the Reproduction of Labour Power”; Gerstein, “Domestic Work and Capitalism”; Vogel, Marxism and the Oppression of Women, chaps. 5 and 10.
7 “How to Solve the Problem,” American Federationist 37 (January 1930): 33–40; William Green, “Editorial,” American Federationist 37 (February 1930): 147; Textile Worker, June 1930; Labor Banner, June 14, 1930; quotation from Paul Smith, “Southern Organizing Campaign,” American Federationist 37 (April 1930): 408–9; Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 178–79.
8 Both attempts were initiated by black YCL activists. Following a 10 percent wage cut, an unidentified YCL member led an aborted strike of black employees at McGough Bakery. In the laundry industry in 1931 a black female YCL organizer briefly outlined her attempts to create a union in a letter to the YW, but no other evidence is available. Nonetheless, a laundry workers’ union did come into being two years later with the passage of the NIRA (see below) (SW, June 20, 1931; Memorandum by F. D. Pryor, (Acting) Director of Naval Intelligence to Officer-in-Charge, U.S. Naval Recruiting Office, Birmingham, Ala., April 18, 1934, Box 2848, MID Records; YW, October 19, 1931).
9 DW, July 14, 1930; “Testimony of Fred McDuff,” Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 97–99; Herndon, Let Me Live, 96–97, 100–2; “Confidential Report on Communist Activities,” (1930), p. 2, Box 88, National Republic Files. The NMU experienced a modicum of success in Harlan, Kentucky, during the coal strike of 1931–32. See James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 80–84; Draper, “Communists and Miners,” 382–87; Hevener, Which Side Are You On? 56–84; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 45–47.
Although the CP maintained a policy of “dual unionism” until the TUUL was disbanded in 1935, Alabama Communists discarded it as early as 1933. Dual unionism meant organizing separate unions along industrial lines in opposition to the AFL's craft unions (Labor Unity, February 1935; DW, March 11, 18, 1935; Jack Stachel, “Our Trade Union Policy,” Communist 14 [November 1934]: 1093–1101; William Z. Foster, “Breakthrough in Industrial Organization,” Political Affairs 48 [September-October 1969]: 67–68; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 132–34; Kling, “Making the Revolution,” 305–6).
10 Jim Allen [Harry Wicks] to “Jim Randolph” [William Weinstone], March 19, 1932, Box 7, Draper Papers (Emory); Hudson interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 88–90; SW, October 10, 1931, August 15, 1933; E. S., “Questions of Shop Work in Birmingham,” Party Organizer 6 (July 1933): 17–18; ACLU Weekly Bulletin 594 (January 5, 1934): 1; quoted in Birmingham Post, September 19, 1933.
11 Birmingham News, August 13, September 1, 1933; Labor Advocate, July 15, September 22, 1933; Birmingham Post, July 24, 1933; Mitch interview (WLC), 2–3; Gibson interview (WLC), 8; Birmingham News, August 4, 1933; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 84–89; Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 71; Birmingham News, October 4, 9, 13, 15, 1933; Marshall, Labor in the South, 143.
12 DW, December 2, 1933, June 23, March 1, April 14, May 22, 1934; Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book, 2:43–71; Browder, The New Deal, and What the People Should Know about the NRA; Draft Resolution for District Convention, District 17 (1934), p. 2, Browder Papers, reel 3; Ross, “The NRA in the South,” 1179–82; Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 200–203. For a fascinating overview of early New Deal labor policy, see Vittoz, New Deal Labor Policy, 73–134.
13 Earl Browder, “Why an Open Letter to Our Party Membership,” Communist 12 (August 1933): 707–15; Central Committee, CPUSA, An Open Letter to All Members; Painter, Narrative, 184–86; Ross, “Some Problems of the Class Struggle,” 68–69; SW, August 15, 31, September 20, November 15, 1933.
14 Party Membership Chart A, “The Party in the Factories,” Browder Papers, reel 3. The official figures for 1934 are from Party Membership Chart D, “Organizational Status of the Party,” Browder Papers, reel 3. But these figures were submitted by the various section committees and do not reflect the district's total dues-paying membership at the time.
15 Ross, “Utilize the Rising Militancy,” 19–20, and “Some Problems of the Class Struggle,” 68–69; SW, August 31, September 20, 1933; Draft Resolution for District Convention, District 17 (1934), p. 2–3, Browder Papers, reel 3; DW, February 9, 1934; SW, February 10, 1934; Statement of Israel Berlin, January 9, 1937, La Follette Committee Hearings, 15(C): 6315.
16 “Report from Memphis, Tennessee, June, 1933: Extract,” Box 2848, MID Records; Memphis Commercial Appeal, December 15, 1933; DW, February 1, 1944; Clyde Johnson interview with author. Johnson's replacement in Atlanta was Hosea Hudson.
17 Gibson interview (WLC), 8–10 (section CK-10), and 3–4 (section CK-11A); Willie Johnson interview (WLC), 21; Burns interview (WLC), 8–11; Mitch, interview (WLC), 5; Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 47.
18 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Population, 3(1): 114; Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 47; Paul David Richards, “Racism in the Southern Coal Industry,” 42–48; Burns interview (WLC), 8–11; C. S. Johnson interview (WLC), 23.
19 Myra Page, “Alabama Miners Smash the Color Line,” New Masses 11 (May 8, 1934): 17; quote from Page article in DW, April 13, 1934; Clyde Johnson to author, April 10, 1989. Cayton and Mitchell estimated that in 1934, approximately 60 percent of the UMWA in Alabama was black (Cayton and Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions, 323).
20 Alabama Mining Institute, “Confidential Memorandum re: Alabama Coal Industry,” n.d., Drawer 108, Governor Graves Papers; UMWJ, May 1, 1934; Birmingham News, April 9, 1934; DW, March 10, 1934; SW, March 25, 1934; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 83–84, 88–89; Mallory [Elizabeth Lawson], “Class War in Alabama,” 107. “Jim Mallory” was Elizabeth Lawson's pen name while she edited the Southern Worker from 1933 to 1936 (James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 189).
21 UMWJ, May 1, 1934; Birmingham News, April 9, 1934; Ross, “The Communist Party in the Birmingham Strikes,” 690–92; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 89–91; Marshall, Labor in the South, 144–45, 149; Vittoz, New Deal Labor Policy, 110–11; DW, April 16, 17, 1934, May 29, 1934; Mallory [Elizabeth Lawson], “Class War in Alabama,” 106; Katherine Lumpkin, The South in Progress, 120; Birmingham Post, April 28, 1934.
22 Huntley, “Iron Ore Miners,” 26; Cayton and Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions, 324; Lemley interview (BPRM), 5.
23 Huntley, “Iron Ore Miners,” 48–49, 51, 55; Averhart interview (WLC), 24; Benson interview (WLC), 11; Rikard, “An Experiment in Welfare Capitalism,” 270–79.
24 Mine Mill organizer quoted in DW, May 29, 1934, May 26, October 27, November 10, December 29, 1934; Marge Frantz interview with author; Hudson interview with author; BWDS (Notebooks); Clyde Johnson interview with author; resolution quoted in Birmingham Age-Herald, June 5, 1934; DW, October 20, 1934.
25 DW, April 20, May 29, June 9, 23, 1934; Grace interview (WLC), 5; Huntley, “Iron Ore Miners,” 59; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 111.
26 DW, May 29, June 9, 23, July 21, August 11, 1934; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview by H. L. Mitchell, pp. 34–35. Efforts to obtain relief in Bessemer during the strike were complicated by the fact that the director of relief was married to TCI labor agent A. D. Maddox.
27 Birmingham Age-Herald, June 28, 1934; DW, July 3, September 1, October 27, 1934; Huntley, “Iron Ore Miners,” 69; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 112–13; Furse, “History of Mine Mill,” 12; DW, August 25, 1934; “A Call to Action!” handbill, ca. 1935, Box 143, J. B. Matthews Papers.
28 DW, April 26, 30, 1934; Northrup, “The Negro and Unionism in Birmingham,” 34; Cayton and Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions, 324–25; DW, March 12, 30, 1935.
29 Northrup, “The Negro and Unionism in Birmingham,” 33–34; Cayton and Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions, 324–25, 332–35, 339, 358–59; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 98–100; Birmingham News, June 23, 1934; DW, June 18, 19, 20, 26, 27, 1934; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Population, 3(1): 114; Norrell, “Caste in Steel,” 676.
30 Clyde Johnson interview with author; Northrup, “The Negro and Unionism in Birmingham,” 33–34; DW, March 27, 1935.
31 Mayfield, “Memoirs,” 53; quoted in Myra Page, “Alabama Miners Smash the Color Line,” New Masses 11 (May 8, 1934): 16 (emphasis in original); Hudson interview with author; Grace interview (WLC), 12; Burns interview (WLC), 13.
32 Birmingham News, February 5, 11, 13, 14, 24, 1934; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 72–73, 78–80; DW, June 8, 1934; Painter, Narrative, 222; John Howard Lawson, “In Dixieland,” 9; Kendrick, “Alabama Goes on Strike,” 233; Birmingham News, July 16, 17, 24, 27, 29, August 1, 6, 7, 8, 12, 1934; Hodges, New Deal Labor Policy, 96–98; Nelson, Workers on the Waterfront, 127–155; Alabama, Department of Labor, Annual Report, 1938, p. 32.
33 Quoted in DW, December 31, 1934. In 1935, white league members reportedly stormed the Tarrant City jail and freed black Communist Lanny Walters after he had been arrested for addressing an interracial meeting (SW, May 1935; YW, February 12, 1935).
34 R. M. Howell, “Summary of Subversive Situation for Month of May, 1933,” p. 1, “Summary of Subversive Situation for Month of June, 1933,” p. l.Box 2848, MID Records; DW, March 6, 1934; YW, March 27, 1934. R. M. Howell of the U.S. Military Intelligence Division in Birmingham reported that “Communist agitation among the colored population of this city has developed to such an extent that the social workers here informed me that it will be difficult to get the full quota from this race for the Civilian Conservation Corps” (Howell, “Summary of the Subversive Situation for the Month of June,” p. 1). For descriptions of Southern CCC camps, see Salmond, “The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Negro”; Dubay, “The Civilian Conservation Corps.”
35 Ross, “Some Problems of the Class Struggle,” 65; Clyde Johnson to author, April 10, 1989; DW, June 8, August 4, 1934.
36 SW, August 22, 1934; DW, October 4, 8, 10, 17, 19, 24, 1934.
37 DW, May 19, 1934; Birmingham News, May 9, 10, 1934.
38 Jack Conroy's visit is dealt with in Chapter 6. On Page and Lumpkin, see DW, April 13, 1934; Frederickson, “Myra Page”; Markey [Myra Page] interview (SOHP), 108–115; Lumpkin interview (SOHP), esp. 15–16. For Weller's story, see “Statement of Paul Weller, January 26, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 15(C): 6319–20.
39 DW, April 17, 24, May 2, 3, 1934; New York Post, May 31, 1934; Graham Lacy to ACLU, May 1, 1934, Charles H. S. Houk to Harry E. Ward, May 3, 1934, vol. 731, ACLU Papers.
40 DW, May 10, 15, 18, July 7, 9, 1934; Louise Thompson, “Southern Terror,” 327–28; Minutes of Meeting of Board of Directors, ACLU, July 9, 1934, ACLU Records, reel 5; ACLU, Weekly Bulletin 613 (May 18, 1934): 1–2; ibid., 615 (June 1, 1934): 1–2; Minutes of Meeting of Board of Directors, ACLU, May 14, 1934, ACLU Records, reel 5. Those arrested in the first wave included Boris Israel, Harold Ralston, Carl Wilson, Holland Williams, and Israel Berlin (who at the time of the arrest used the pseudonym “R. S. Harris”). Black Communist Arthur Green was jailed for merely possessing six thousand circulars titled “An Appeal to Labor,” and a few days later, Robert Williams, the black printer responsible for producing the circulars, was also arrested. DW, May 29, June 4, 1934; Birmingham Post, May 23, 1934; Birmingham News, May 22, 1934; John Howard Lawson, “In Dixieland,” 9; “Statement of Israel Berlin, January 9, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 15(C): 6315.
41 There are numerous references to Moser and his Red Squad in the Daily Worker and the Southern Worker. Established in 1931, the unit lasted well into 1937 (Painter, Narrative, 185; “Testimony of Jack Barton [Bart Logan],” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:762). On Section 4902, see City Commission of the City of Birmingham, The General Code, 1930, 169.
42 Clyde Johnson interview with author.
43 DW, October 9, 1934; “Statement of Helen Longs, December 30, 1936,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:967.
44 DW, August 4, 21, 31, September 19, 1934; “Statement of Israel Berlin, January 9, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 15(C): 6316.
45 DW, July 28, 1934; Jack Conroy, “Reception in Alabama,” Labor Defender 11 (September 1935): 9; Beth McHenry, “A Birmingham Dick Sees Red,” Labor Defender 10 (November 1934): 9, 20; Birmingham Post, October 2, 1934; DW, May 31, September 27, 1934, January 21, 1935; SW, November 1934; Wood [Charles Sherrill], To Live and Die in Dixie, 15; Birmingham Post, October 25, 1935; DW, November 3, 1934; Delegation of National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, “Report on Georgia-Alabama,” July 19, 1934, vol. 925, ACLU Papers; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 2; “City Commission of the City of Birmingham, Minutes,” October 2, 1934, p. 427.
46 DW, November 3, December 17, 1934; Labor Advocate, April 27, 1934; Ross, “Some Problems of the Class Struggle,” 67; Moore quoted in SW, December 1934; Hare quoted in Birmingham News, October 20, 1935.
47 SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 2; Birmingham Post, October 20, 1934; DW, October 26, 1934. Of the three Communists convicted, black Communist Fred Hall and white Communist Israel Berlin were sentenced to six months’ hard labor and a $100 fine. (DW, December 3, 6, 10, 1934, January 21, February 12, 1935; SW, January 1935; “Alabama,” Labor Defender 10 (December 1934): 9; Jack Conroy, “Reception in Alabama,” Labor Defender 11 (September 1935): 9; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 3; “Statement by Israel Berlin, January 9, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 15(C): 6316.)
48 John Howard Lawson, “In Dixieland,” 8; “Statement of Jesse G. Owen, December 28, 1936,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:964; DW, July 3, 1935; Louise Thompson, “Southern Terror,” 328; Birmingham Post, October 15, 1934; Ingalls, “Antiradical Violence,” 524; Montgomery Advertiser, May 29, 1934; Labor Research Association, Labor Fact Book, 3:166, 168; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 8; Kourier 11 (December 1934), 16; Wood [Charles Sherrill], “The ILD in Dixie,” 24; Rice, The Ku Klux Klan, 101–2; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 307–18; Wade, The Fiery Cross, 258.
49 Wood [Charles Sherrill], “The ILD in Dixie,” 24; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview by H. L. Mitchell, 34–35; DW, November 26, 1934, February 13, 29, 1935; BWDS (Notebooks); Ingalls, “Antiradical Violence,” 524.
50 DW, August 15, 16, 1934; see also DW, October 22, 1934; S. B. [Ted Wellman], “Party Problems in Birmingham,” Party Organizer 7 (September 1934): 13–16; Ross, “The Communist Party in the Birmingham Strikes,” 699, “Some Problems of the Class Struggle,” 68–69, and “The Next Steps in Alabama,” 976.
51 “Statement of Jesse G. Owen, December 28, 1936,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:963; DW, May 4, 31, 1934. Although this figure is probably an inflated accounting of actual dues-paying members, it still does not take into account members who have “fallen through the cracks.” For many unemployed workers in Birmingham, the joining fee of fifty cents and the monthly dues of two cents constituted a significant sum of money, and during difficult months Party members did not pay their monthly dues and thus were not counted. Moreover, new members who failed to receive their membership books within a reasonable amount of time sometimes quit because they viewed the books as a form of protection (memorandum by R. M. Howell, November 1, 1932, p. 2, Box 2847, MID Records; Tom Johnson to Jim Allen, October 14, 26, 1931, Box 7, Draper Papers (Emory); James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 53–54; Hudson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview with author; DW, July 27, 1934).
52 DW, October 13, 1934; “To the White Workers and Farmers of Alabama: To the Negro People of Alabama: Vote Communist!” leaflet, issued October 1934, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; quotation from “For the Right to Vote,” handbill, 1934, Box 143, J. B. Matthews Papers. The Communist slate included gubernatorial candidate John M. Davis, an expelled Mine Mill organizer and ore miner; Rance Smith, a black TCI worker and candidate for lieutenant governor; Andrew Forsman, former president of the Mobile Trades and Labor Council; and Norman Ragland, a black railroad worker. Both Forsman and Ragland made their bid for congressional seats representing Mobile and Birmingham districts, respectively (“A Call to Action,” handbill, ca. 1934, Box 143, J. B. Matthews Papers).
1 The best account of the Scottsboro case is Dan T. Carter's, Scottsboro: see also, Murray, “The NAACP versus the Communist Party.”
2 SW, April 4, 1931; DW, April 4, 25, 1931; Chattanooga Daily Times, April 24, 1931; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 109; James S. Allen, “Scottsboro—A Proclamation of Freedom,” Labor Defender 11 (June 1935): 14-15; Carter, Scottsboro, 49–59; Murray, “The NAACP versus the Communist Party,” 278; Naison, Communists in Harlem, 60; DW, April 17, 18, 1931.
3 Cash, Mind of the South, 330–33; Labor Advocate, April 27, 1934; Jarvis interview with author; Louise Thompson, “Southern Terror,” 327; and for a broader discussion of these postbellum myths, see Lawrence J. Friedman, White Savage.
4 Champly, White Women, Coloured Men, 252 (emphasis in the original); Louise Thompson, “Southern Terror,” 328; Crenshaw and Miller, Scottsboro: The Firebrand of Communism, 297’. Even the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching was labeled “communistic” because of its strong stance against lynching (Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry, 175).
5 Reprinted in Atlanta Daily World, December 16, 1931; Birmingham Reporter, June 13, 1931; White, “The Negro and the Communists,” 67; and for a thorough discussion of the battle between the ILD and the NAACP, see Carter, Scottsboro, 68–102; Murray, “The NAACP versus the Communist Party.”
6 Director of Branches, NAACP, to Charles A. J. McPherson, May 7, 1931; Charles A. J. McPherson to William Pickens, November 26, 1929; Director of Branches, NAACP, to Mr. Strawbridge, March 26, 1929, “Report of Membership for Birmingham, Alabama, Branch of NAACP,” January 21, 1931; all in Box G-l, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Birmingham Reporter, February 22, March 1, 1930.
7 SW, October 11, 18, 1930; “Down With Lynching!” leaflet (copy), Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 157; Montgomery Advertiser, July 15, 18, 1930; Birmingham News, July 20, 1930; Tuscaloosa News, July 7, 1930; “In Re: Emelle, Alabama, July 4, 1930—Confidential Narrative from One Who Knows,” Bibb Graves to J. W. McClung, October 25, 1930, File 8, Raper Papers.
8 SW, November 15, 29, 1930; “Minutes of the Convention of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights Held in St. Louis, Missouri, November 15 and 16, 1930,” pp. 2–3, “Resolution on the Revolutionary Traditions of the Negroes,” encl., Memorandum re: League of Struggle for Negro Rights, from K.R. Mclntire to Mr. Mumford, October 6, 1942, FBI File 100–14808-1; Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 346–47; “Draft Program of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights,” n.d., 1–3, Box 12, Minor Papers; League of Struggle for Negro Rights, Equality, Land and Freedom.
9 SW, April 11, June 27, 1931.
10 Confidential Memorandum Re: State v. Peterson, Birmingham, Alabama, September 2, 1933, mimeo, Box 25, CIC Collection; Petition and Brief in Support of Application for Certiorari, Willie Peterson v. The State of Alabama, typescript, 1933, pp. 7–8, Box D-68, NAACP Papers, Legal Files; Birmingham News, August 5, 1931; SW, August 15, 1931; Carter, Scottsboro, 129; Herndon, Let Me Live, 148–54; Angelo Herndon, “My Life,” n.d., typescript, p. 11, ILD Papers, reel 9.
11 Quotation from Herndon, Let Me Live, 164, also see 148–164; DW, August 12, 13, 14, 19, 1931; SW, August 15, 29, 1931; Liberator, August 22, September 5, October 17, 1931; Birmingham News, August 8, 10, 12, 24, 1931; Montgomery Advertiser, August 28, 1931; BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson interview with author; Solomon, “Red and Black,” 410.
12 Birmingham News, August 9, 1931; SW, August 15, 1931.
13 “Interracial Cooperation in Alabama,” report by James D. Burton, Interstate Secretary, Oakdale, Tennessee, 1931, Box 142, CIC Collection; “Radical Activities in Alabama: Report of Sub-Committee of State Interracial Commission,” 1931, and CIC Press Release, “Races Warned Against Plots of Communists,” August 27, 1931, Box 27, CIC Collection. The committee consisted of R. B. Eleazer, CIC educational director; Dr. Henry M. Edmonds; Robert Jemison, Jr.; C. B. Glenn; Reverend M. Sears; W. B. Driver; Dr. Robinson Brown of Tuscaloosa; and Jesse Herrin of Montgomery.
14 Confidential Memorandum Re: State v. Peterson, Birmingham, Alabama, September 2, 1933, mimeo, Box 25, CIC Collection; DW, October 13, 14, 15, 1931; Liberator, October 24, 1931.
15 Petition and Brief—. . . Willie Peterson v. The State of Alabama, 20–21, Box D-68, NAACP Papers, Legal Files. The assumption that Peterson's actions were linked to Communist literature was also suggested in a Birmingham News editorial (August 8, 1931).
16 Harris Gilbert [Harry Simms] to Jim Allen, September 24, 25, 1931, Box 7, Draper Papers (Emory); Liberator, November 7, 1931; quotation from “Interview with Henrietta Peterson, by Charles McPherson,” October 24, 1931, Box D-65, NAACP Papers, Legal Files; A. G. Robertson to William Pickens, October 5, 1931, Box G-l, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Hudson, Black Worker, 33.
17 Birmingham News, December 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 1931; Birmingham Post, January 25, 1932; Atlanta Daily World, December 11, 1931; SW, November 21, 1931, January 30, 1932; Charles McPherson to Walter White, November 24, December 9, 1931, Box D-65, NAACP Papers, Legal Files.
18 Charles A. J. McPherson to William Pickens, March 2, 1932, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; McPherson to White, February 3, 9, 1932, quotation from McPherson to White, February 17, 1932, Box D-65, NAACP Papers, Legal Files; Membership Report, Birmingham Branch of NAACP, May 31, 1932, Charles A. J. McPherson to Robert Bagnall, Director of Branches, June 18, 1932, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files.
19 W. W. Harris, Press Committee, Birmingham Branch of NAACP, to Birmingham Post Newspaper, August 24, 1932, and Memo from Walter White to Roy Wilkins, August 31, 1932, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files.
20 Pittsburgh Courier, May 14, 1932; Murphy to Painter, March 1978, p. 11, NPHH Collection; Painter, Narrative, 104–6; Hudson interview with author; quotation from Painter, “‘Social Equality,’” 59; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt against Chivalry, 155–56. Al Murphy likely informed the black press of the incident.
21 For a detailed account of the Herndon case, see Charles Martin, The Angelo Herndon Case.
22 DW, September 23, 24, 26, 1932; R. M. Howell, “Summary of Subversive Situation for Month of September, 1932,” n.d., Box 2848, MID Records; Report by Lt. Ralph E. Hurst to Brigadier General J. C. Persons—“Subject: Communist Agitation,” Birmingham, October 19, 1932, p. 1, Drawer 34, Governor Miller Papers; DW, September 29, November 6, October 4, 1932; Carter, Scottsboro, 151; DW, November 6, 1932; BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson interview with author; R. M. Howell, “Intelligence Summary of Subversive Situation,” October 1932, p. 3, Box 2848, MID Records.
23 Report by Lt. Ralph E. Hurst to Brigadier General J. C. Persons—“Subject: Communist Agitation,” Birmingham, October 19, 1932, p. 2, Drawer 34, Governor Miller Papers; Baltimore Afro-American, October 15, 1932; “Report of International Labor Defense Meeting, October 2, 1932, as given by Ralph Hurst over telephone,” n.d., typescript, p. 1, Box 2848, MID Records; DW, November 6, 1932; BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson interview with author; quotation from Painter, Narrative, 128. Even Charles McPherson admitted that “quite a few Negroes were reported to have attended the meeting of Reds” (Charles A. J. McPherson to Walter White, November 15, 1932, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files).
24 R. M. Howell, “Intelligence Summary of Subversive Situation,” December 1932, p. 3, Box 2848, MID Records; Ross, “Utilize the Rising Militancy,” 20.
25 Quotation from DW, November 6, 1932; Ruby Bates to Earl Streetman, January 5, 1932, ILD Papers, reel 2; DW, February 13, 1933; Carter, Scottsboro, 181–82, 186, 191–234; Leibowitz, The Defender, 189–92.
26 Naison, Communists in Harlem, 82–83.
27 Charles A. J. McPherson to Walter White, April 15, 1933, “Newspaper Release of Birmingham Branch of the NAACP,” April 14, 1933, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files.
28 Lawrence Gellert to Louis Coleman, April 3, 1933, end., “Report on Mass Meeting of Citizens Scottsboro Aid Committee of Birmingham, Ala.” March 31, 1933, and telegram from W. G. B., Birmingham Editor to DW, April 16, 1933, ILD Papers, reel 2; Kester interview (SOHP), 33; Francis Ralston Welsh to Martin Dies, Jr., April 26, 1933, Box 79, National Republic Files; “Civic Meeting on the Scottsboro Case,” leaflet, ca. April 1933), Kester Papers, reel 1, also reprinted in Dunbar, Against the Grain, 35.
29 Reverend William G. McDowell to Dr. Will Alexander, June 30, 1933, Box 25, CIC Collection; Oscar Adams to Walter White, May 20, 1933, Box D-65, NAACP Papers, Legal Files; Montgomery Advertiser, May 27, 28, 1933; Cowett, Birmingham's Rabbi, 148–49; Carter, Scottsboro, 259.
30 SW, August 15, 31, 1933; Tuscaloosa News, August 2, 1933; Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching, Plight of Tuscaloosa, 10–15, 17–18; Birmingham Age-Herald, August 2, 1933; Atlanta Constitution, August 2, 1933. See also Henry B. Foster to Col. Harry M. Ayers, September 4–12, 1933 (copy); J. R. Steelman, “Notes, Tuscaloosa Investigation,” typescript, October 1933, p. 3; and “Tuscaloosa Case: Trip to Vance,” typescript, November 1933; all in File 15-C, Raper Papers; Taub, “Prelude to a Lynching,” 6; Carter, Scottsboro, 276–77; Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 224–26; see also Blasi, Segregationist Violence, 22–26.
31 SW, September 20, 1933; Tuscaloosa News, September 27, October 8, 1933; Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching, Plight of Tuscaloosa, 34–35; Carter, Scottsboro, 277. Most Alabama liberals and many leading black citizens attributed the lynchings to the ILD's presence. See, for instance, Tuscaloosa News, August 14, 1933; St. Louis Argus, August 25, 1933; Thomas Watson, letter to Editor, Birmingham News, May 10, 1933; Cason, 90° in the Shade, 119; Ben A. Green, A History of Tuscaloosa, 100; Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 225; interviews with Dr. McKenzie, Dr. Gilmer, Mr. E. S. Smith, Mr. O'Rourke and Mrs. H. C. Bryant, in Ralph J. Bunche, “Field Notes—Southern Trip, Book IV,” typescript, n.d., 18–19, 28–31, 33, 46, Box 82, Bunche Papers.
32 Birmingham News, September 25, 1933; Birmingham Age-Herald, September 26, 1933; Atlanta Daily World, September 26, 1933; Rosa Durham, “Summary of Our Contact with Dennis Cross,” typescript, ca. 1933, and Foster to Col. Harry Ayers, September 30, 1933, File 15-C, Raper Papers; Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching, Plight of Tuscaloosa, 27–28.
33 Ralph Bunche interview with Dr. McKenzie and Dr. Gilmer, January 7, 1939, p. 29, Bunche interview with Mr. E. S. Smith, November 17, 1939, p. 32, Bunche interview with Mr. O'Rourke, November 16, 1939, pp. 18–21, Ralph J. Bunche, “Field Notes—Southern Trip, Book IV,” typescript, n.d., Box 82, Bunche Papers; Birmingham News, July 24, 1934; Atlanta Journal, July 25, 1934; Birmingham Post, July 28, 1934; Montevallo Times, July 27, 1934; Ann Wells Ellis, “Commission on Interracial Cooperation,” 101.
34 Carter, Scottsboro, 268–70; Birmingham Post, August 10, 1933; Birmingham World, June 30, 1933; Pittsburgh Courier, April 8, 1933.
35 Charles Houston to Robert Moton, July 29, 1933, and Charles McPherson to Walter White, July 18, 1933, Box D-65, NAACP Papers, Legal Files. White liberal minister Rev. William McDowell shared Houston's assessment, observing early in the summer of 1933 that blacks practically gave up on the NAACP because of its failure to free Peterson (Rev. William G. McDowell to Dr. Will Alexander, June 30, 1933, Box 25, CIC Collection).
36 Quotation from Walter White to Robert Moton, January 25, 1934, McPherson to White, January 6, 1934; McPherson to Governor B. M. Miller, January 12, 1934; White to Governor B. M. Miller, January 11, 1934; all in Box D-66, NAACP Papers, Legal Files.
37 “Willie Peterson Saved!” leaflet, ca. 1934, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; SW, February 10, March 25, 1934; Memorandum from Charles Houston to John Altman, February 10, 1934, Box 25, CIC Collection. As Charles Houston observed, “Mrs. Peterson is so distraught that the Communists are getting control over her” (Memorandum from Charles Houston to John Altman, February 10, 1934, ibid.).
38 “Executive Clemency Petition to the Honorable Governor, State of Alabama,” submitted by Birmingham Branch of the NAACP, March 1934, pp. 1–3; Charles McPherson to Walter White, March 20, 1934; White to Governor B. M. Miller, March 22, 1934; all in Box D-66, NAACP Papers, Legal Files; Birmingham Post, March 20, 1934; Birmingham News, March 20, 1934.
39 Charles A. J. McPherson to Walter White, May 9, 1934, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Emily Clay to Walter White, December 2, 1935, Box D-66, NAACP Papers, Legal Files.
40 DW, May 31, December 12, 1934, May 7, 14, June 22, 1935; Wood [Charles Sherrill], To Live and Die in Dixie, 14. In Selma alone, the ILD claimed 250 members (Beth McHenry, “A Birmingham Dick Sees Red,” Labor Defender 10 [October 1934]: 9).
1 Quotation from DW, April 19, 1930, May 4, 1934; Hudson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview with author; “Proposals for Party Training in the South (District 17),” Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 106–7. In March of 1932, the district bureau complained that no whites—outside of the bureau itself—attended Party meetings in Birmingham (Minutes of Meeting of District Bureau, District 17, March 13, 1932, Box 7, Drapers Papers [Emory]).
2 The following interpretation draws a great deal from George Lipsitz's brilliant biography, A Life in the Struggle. I should add that white Alabamians contributed some to the CP's culture of opposition, but their presence was so small during the first five years of Party activity as to be insignificant. Nonetheless, many of the issues discussed below pertaining to whites are dealt with throughout the first four chapters. The Southern white presence becomes much more prevalent during the Popular Front (see especially Chapters 6 and 10).
3 Quotation from John Howard Lawson, “In Dixieland,” 9; Samuel A. Darcy to District 17, Communist Party, April 28, 1930, and Tom Johnson to Sam Darcy, May 8, 1930, Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 105–6; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 62; SW, September 20, 1930; Tom Johnson quotation from “Proposals for Party Training in the South,” Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 106–7. In 1930, 26.2 percent of the blacks and only 4.9 percent of the whites in Alabama could not read or write, and in Birmingham only 14.7 percent of the black population and 1.0 percent of the whites were illiterate. In Tallapoosa County, where the Party was strongest outside of Birmingham, the percentage was just a little higher at 27.1 percent. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States, 236.) But those who were semiliterate with only a few years of formal education made up the bulk of the working class. The 1940 Census reported that 13.8 percent of the total black population had no schooling at all, while 40.3 percent had between one and four years of school. Only about 7.5 percent actually attended high school (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census, 1940: Population, 2[1]: 223).
4 Hudson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Lemon Johnson interview with author; DW, August 11, 1934, January 19, 1935; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census, 1930: Population, 6:70, 97.
5 DW, June 12, 1934; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 56; Lemon Johnson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview with author; North, No Men Are Strangers, 192; quotation from DW, November 14, 1933.
6 Painter, Narrative, 102; Smith interview with author; [Al Murphy], “Agrarian Work,” 81.
7 Garner interview (WLC), 8; Painter, Narrative, 224, chap. 10; quotation from Hudson interview with author.
8 Memorandum by R. M. Howell, November I, 1932, Box 2847, MID Records; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Hudson interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 115, 124; Murphy to Painter, March 1978, p. 29, NPHH Collection; Bloor, We Are Many, 256; DW, July 25, 1934; quotation from WW, September 1934. In the Daily Worker, Tasker is listed as “Equile McKeithen”–undoubtedly to protect her identity.
9 Quotation from YW, March 16, 1931; Stone, “Agrarian Conflict in Alabama,” 59. YCL members in rural Alabama complained constantly about discrimination in public education. See, for instance, YW, April 6, 1931; DW, May 16, 1934. For a broader discussion of inequities in Southern education during the 1920s and 1930s, see Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, esp. chap. 5; Charles S. Johnson, Growing Up in the Black Belt, 102–5; Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 251–61; Garner interview (WLC), 1.
10 DW, April 4, June 7, May 10, 1934; Clyde Johnson interview with author.
11 For examples of black mothers’ traditional attitudes, see Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 45; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry, 142.
12 On the Young Pioneers, see Green interview with author. See Liberator (1931) for the series on black history by Quirt. The episode of “Matt Owen” described above appeared in YW, January 4 and November 11, 1932.
13 G. M. Williams, Home Demonstration Agent, “Supplement to the Annual Report of the Agricultural Extension Work among Negroes in Alabama, Lee County, for the Year Ending November 30, 1935,” encl., “Games and Songs for Old and Young,” mimeo, n.d., Records of the Federal Extension Service, reel 58.
14 Garner interview (WLC), 4; ILD Press Service, “The Fight of the Alabama Sharecroppers: An Interview with the Niece of Ralph Gray,” by Sasha Small, April 21, 1934, CJP, reel 13; DW, August 16, 1934; “To All White and Negro Workers and Poor Farmers in the South,” handbill, 1934, Box 143, J. B. Matthews Papers.
15 Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle, 227–30.
16 Hudson interview with author; see also Painter, Narrative, 95; Kelley, “‘Comrades, Praise Gawd for Lenin and Them!’”
17 Herndon, Let Me Live, 73; Page, Gathering Storm, 327; see similar statements in Painter, Narrative, 95; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, 319.
18 DW, July 4, 1935.
19 Garner interview (WLC), 4; Lemon Johnson interview with author; DW, October 3, 1935.
20 DW, November 26, 1934, January 14, 1935; SW, February, 1935; BWDS (Notebooks); and on the relationship between lynching and counteraggression, see McGovern, Anatomy of a Lynching, 153–56; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt against Chivalry, 133.
21 The following theoretical analysis will be based largely on James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak; de Certeau, “On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life,” 3–8.
22 See, for example, Dee Brown, “Sharecropper,” DW, April 23, 1934; Grace Lumpkin, A Sign for Cain; Page, Gathering Storm; Beth Mitchell, “A Night in Alabama,” DW, May 11, 1935; Gold, “Examples of Worker Correspondence,” 87; Kenneth Patchen, “Southern Organizer,” DW, August 10, 1935.
23 Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 396; Montgomery Advertiser, May 19, 20, 1933; and for DeBardeleben's involvement in the Party and the ILD, Painter, Narrative, esp. 102; Hudson interview with author.
24 Jarvis interview with author; Garner interview (WLC), 7; Parham and Robinson, “‘If I Could Go Back ...,’” 232; Markey [Myra Page] interview (SOHP), 109. I am indebted to Robert A. Hill for his insights into the various ways African-Americans adapted trickster strategies to twentieth-century realities.
25 Lemon Johnson interview with author; Murphy, “Negro Share Croppers Build Their Unions,” 14; James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 103; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Smith interview with author; YW, October 9, 1934; Saul Davis to Clyde Johnson, March 30, 1937, CJP, reel 13.
26 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 286; 322–32. Although most writers on the Left assumed docility was a reflection of workers’ backward consciousness, there were some astonishing exceptions. In a vitriolic review of Carl Carmer's Stars Fell on Alabama in the Daily Worker, one writer explained in vivid terms why a black sharecropper who had just been beaten by his landlord justified his own beating to Carmer: “Why should a Negro worker confide in this author who plays the role of a stoolpigeon in a prison and comes around after the torture to inquire sadistically how the victims liked it?” (DW, August 30, 1934).
27 Copy of ILD leaflet in Labor Defender 11 (January 1935): 7; “800 White and Negro Workers,” Birmingham, Alabama, to Governor Bibb Graves, February 20, 1935, Drawer 101, Governor Graves Papers.
28 DW, October 3, 1935; Lemon Johnson interview with author; DW, March 29, 1934 (emphasis mine); YW, July 3, 1934. For an excellent example of the changing voice in anonymous protest letters, see E. P. Thompson, “The Crime of Anonymity.”
29 This point has been made by Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 317, 319; Fink, “The New Labor History”; Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle, 230–34.
30 YW, July 3, 1934; DW, March 22, 1934.
31 DW, February 22, March 22, April 19, 1934.
32 DW, April 7, 1934; SW, July 1936. As early as 1932, the same song was sung by black Communists in Chicago, but their version was slightly different in that it referred to the “New Communist Spirit” (DW, September 30, 1932, quoted in Denisoff, Great Day Coming, 37). For examples of adaptations of “We Shall Not Be Moved,” see Labor Defender 9 (December 1933): 80; Harold Preece to Anne Johnson, December 25, 1936, CJP, reel 13.
33 SW, July 18, 1931.
34 For an excellent discussion of this tradition, see McCallum, “Songs of Work and Songs of Worship.” Ella May Wiggins, a young white textile worker who was felled by a bullet during the Gastonia textile strike, and “Aunt” Molly Jackson and Florence Reece, natives of Kentucky who were active in the National Miners Union, left a wealth of radical folk songs, blues, and spirituals describing and praising the activities of the Communists in the South (Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest, 245–75; Denisoff, Great Day Coming, 19–26; Margaret Larkin, “The Story of Ella May,” New Masses 5 [November 1929]: 3–4; Wiley, “Songs of the Gastonia Textile Strike”; Hevener, Which Side Are You On?, 61, 67–68).
35 Reprinted in SW, March 25, 1934. See also DW, November 7, 1933; Denisoff, Great Day Coming, 37, and Denisoff, Sing A Song, 54; Harold Preece, “Folk Music of the South,” New South 1 (March 1938): 14.
36 SW, October 20, 1930.
37 SW, September 1936.
38 See Frank, “Negro Revolutionary Music,” 29; Schatz, “Songs of the Negro Worker,” 6–8; Lawrence Gellert, “Negro Songs of Protest,” New Masses 6 (April 1931): 6–8.
39 Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism, 11–12.
40 DW, July 4, 1935; see also DW, April 13, 1933; Hudson interview with author. According to Gil Green, in 1935 the Party had over three hundred members in the South who were also members of church youth groups, especially the Baptist Young Peoples Union. In fact, he called on the Birmingham district to build Party units in the church youth organizations long before it was sanctioned by the Tenth National Convention in 1938 (“Report from Gil Green for the National Bureau to a Meeting of the Enlarged National Executive Committee held in New York, February 23, 1935,” International of Youth (March 1935): 25).
41 Garner interview (WLC), 5; Herndon, Let Me Live, 75.
42 Asbury Smith, “What Can the Negro Expect from Communism?” 211; Herndon, Let Me Live, 78.
43 Kelley, “‘Comrades, Praise Gawd for Lenin and Them!’” 64–66; Hudson interview with author; also Painter, Narrative, 134–35; SW, February 10, 1934; DW, May 4, 1934; and on the Party's official position toward religion during the Third Period, see Stevens, The Church and the Workers; Roy, Communism and the Churches, 29–47. A rare example of the CP's acknowledged atheism in the South is Tom Johnson's pamphlet, The Reds in Dixie (1935), which announced that the Communists’ did not believe in God but added that the Party would not force anyone to renounce their religious beliefs.
44 Pettiford quoted in Washington, The Negro in Business, 136; Birmingham Reporter, July 4, 1931.
45 “Department of Commerce Press Release, Birmingham, Alabama—Retail Stores Operated by Negro Proprietors,” August 5, 1938, Box 2, BPRM; Franklin D. Wilson, “The Ecology of a Black Business District,” 359–60.
46 Hunter, “‘Don't Buy from Where You Can't Work,’” 60–63.
47 Birmingham Reporter, August 15, 1931; Charles A. J. McPherson to Mary White Ovington, April 7, 1933, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files. The clearest exposition of this attitude is in Haynes, “Communists Are Bidding for Negro Loyalty,” esp. 153–56. Intelligence sources accepted the same assumption that the masses of blacks simply followed their “leaders.” As R.M. Howell reported in 1932, “If the religious leaders and the educated Negroes can be held in line there will be little danger [of Communist support] among the masses of the colored race” (R. M. Howell, “Military Intelligence—The G-2 Estimate of the Subversive Situation in the Fourth Corps Area,” January 1, 1932, p. 6, Box 2847, MID Records).
48 Rev. P. Colfax Rameau to Joseph B. Keenan, U.S. Assistant Attorney General, March 19, 1934, and Rev. P. Colfax Rameau to Chairman, U.S. Judicial Committee, February 26, 1934, Straight Numerical Files, 158260, Sub File #10, Records of the Department of Justice, RG 60; “Petition to the Birmingham City Commission,” January 24, 1933, p. 2, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; see also Haynes, “Communists Are Bidding for Negro Loyalty,” 156.
49 “Interview, Dr. E. W. Taggart,” November 18, 1940, p. 38, “Memo on interview with Mr. Irving James and Mr. Joseph Gelders,” July 25, 1939, p. 4, Box 82, Bunche Papers; excerpt from Birmingham Weekly Review, December 16, 1934 (typescript), ILD Papers, reel 8; Birmingham World, December 22, 1934; SW, January 1935; “Interview, Robert Durr,” November 18, 1939, p. 42, Box 82, Bunche Papers; Memorandum from Nelson C. Jackson, Southern Field Director [National Urban League] to Lester B. Granger, December 10, 1948, BUL Papers.
50 Painter, Narrative, 152–55; FBI Report on Joseph Gelders, Esther M. Gelders, and Margie Gelders, September 28, 1941, HQ File 61–9512. The FBI even suggested that Jordan's funeral home was a district committee meeting place.
51 DW, October 30, 1934; SW, November 1934; John A. Boykin, Solicitor General, Atlanta Judicial Circuit to Walter S. Steele, March 11, 1935, end., ILD leaflet, n.d., Box 180, National Republic Files; DW, November 14, 1934; “Alabama,” Labor Defender 10 (December 1934): 9; International Labor Defense, “Long-Term Prisoners in the United States as of June, 1936,” typescript, n.d., ILD Vertical Files, Tamiment Institute, New York.
52 SW, July 4, August 5, February 21, April 18, June 20, 1931.
53 “A Call to Action,” handbill, 1934, Box 143, J. B. Matthews Papers; Chandler interview (WLC), 1; Grace interview (WLC), 4–5; Mitch interview (WLC), 7. According to a Department of Labor Report in 1919, “all the Negro preachers had been subsidized by the companies and were without exception preaching against the negroes joining unions” (H. B. Vaughn to George E. Haynes, March 5, 1919, File No. 8/102-D, “Special Problems—Birmingham,” Records of the Department of Labor, RG 174).
54 Parham and Robinson, “‘If I Could Go Back ...,’” 233. Black anti-clericalism was by no means a Communist invention. As Lawrence Levine points out, the black minister has frequently been a focal point of black ridicule, thus challenging the myth that blacks blindly invested 100 percent trust in their religious institutions (Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 326–28).
55 Herndon, Let Me Live, 88; Murphy to Painter, March, 1978, p. 8, NPHH Collection; Hudson interview with author.
56 Memorandum by R. M. Howell, November 1, 1932, Box 2848, MID Records; Painter, Narrative, 123–24; Hudson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview with author. In Painter's narrative Keith is listed as “MacKurth.”
57 Garner interview (WLC), 3, 8; Painter, Narrative, 99, 122, 271; Hudson interview with author; Jarvis interview with author.
58 Painter, Narrative, 101–2; “To All Captains of the Share Croppers Union Locals,” unsigned memo, Birmingham, Alabama, August 10, 1932, Box 2848, MID Records (in Hudson's narrative Collins is referred to as “Old Dr. Thompson”); Toler, “The Negro and Communism,” 70, 73, 99.
59 Hudson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Benson interview (WLC), 2, 5; Curtis Maggard interview (WLC), 2; Earl Brown interview (WLC), 7. Black ministers were active in the labor movement as early as the 1890s (Worthman, “Black Workers and the Labor Unions,” 64–65).
60 Labor Advocate, March 5, 19, 1932; quotation from Wilmington, (N.C.), Union Labor Record, August 22, 1930; Resolution from G. W. Reed, Forty-Fifth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, March 11, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers. Late in 1932, branch secretary Charles McPherson admitted to “meeting with some handicaps and bold evasions by some of our pastors” (Charles A. J. McPherson to Robert W. Bagnall, November 2, 1932, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files).
61 James S. Allen, “Communism in the Deep South,” 122; quotation from “Draft Resolution on Negro Work,” ca. 1931, p. 3, Box 12, Minor Papers. See also, “National Buro Letter no. 1, To All District and Sub-District Organizers,” February 11, 1932, p. 3, ILD Vertical Files, Tamiment Institute; Painter, Narrative, 129–33.
62 SW, June 10, 1933; Estell interview (BPRM), 1–2; Washington interview (WLC), 37; Painter, Narrative, 170–77.
1 For an overview of the transition from the Third Period to the Popular Front, see Claudin, Communist Movement, 1:166–99; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, chap. 10; Naison, Communists in Harlem, 169–71.
2 SW, October 1934; Nat Ross to Howard Kester, November 30, 1934, Kester Papers, reel 1.
3 DW, December 29, 1934, January 1, 3, 1935; SW, December 1934, January 1935; Howard Kester to Francis Miller, March 19, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers; DW, December 31, 1934, June 4, 1935; SW, June 1935; Ross, “The Next Steps in Alabama,” 974.
4 Dunbar, Against the Grain, 61–62, 136; Revolutionary Policy Committee, An Appeal; quotation from DW, January 5, 1935. For more on Highlander's nonsectarian policies, see Dunbar, Against the Grain, 42–45, 130–32, 136–37; Adams, Unearthing Seeds of Fire; Horton, “Highlander Folk School”; Glen, Highlander.
5 DW, November 19, December 3, 26, 1934, January 1, 1935.
6 DW, April 2, 20, 27, July 3, 1935; “On May Day Let Us Unite to Unionize the South,” leaflet, 1935, Box 143, J. B. Matthews Papers.
7 DW, May 4, 14, 1935; SW, February 1936; Wood [Charles Sherrill], “The ILD in Dixie,” 24; Wood [Charles Sherrill], To Live and Die in Dixie, 17; Robert Wood to Roger N. Baldwin, May 4, 1935, vol. 826, ACLU Papers; Ingalls, “Antiradical Violence,” 525; Robert Wood to Governor Bibb Graves, May 21, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; Owen [Boris Israel], “Night Ride in Birmingham”; “Statement by Blaine Owen, February 25, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 15(C): 6324; Birmingham Post, May 21, 1935; DW, May 20, July 3, 1935. For other examples of the post-May Day wave of terror, see DW, May 16, 24, 1935; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 7–8; ACLU Weekly Bulletin 664 (May 10, 1935): 2.
8 Birmingham Post, March 29, 1935; Birmingham News, April 1, 4, 1935; DW, April 16, 18, 22, 27, 1935; SW, May 1935; Peter A. Carmichael to H. L. Kerwin, Director of Conciliation, Department of Labor, March 26, 1935, Box 3, Taft Papers; DW, May 11, 1935; Labor Advocate, April 20, 1935; “A Call to Action!” handbill, ca. 1935, “On May Day Let Us Unite to Unionize the South,” leaflet, 1935, Box 143, J. B. Matthews Papers; “The I.L.D. and the Laundry Workers,” leaflet, ca. May 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; “The Laundry Strike Goes on, Regardless of Statements to the Contrary,” circular, ca. June 1935, Box 1, Taft Papers.
9 DW, May 4, 8, 28, 1935; SW, June 1935; Chattanooga Times, May 27, 1935; Nat Ross to Howard Kester, May 18, 1935, and James Dombrowski to H. L. Mitchell, May 11, 1935, Kester Papers; Wood [Charles Sherrill], “The ILD in Dixie,” 24; Robert Sherrill, Gothic Politics, 77–81; Dunbar, Against the Grain, 137–38; Laurent Frantz interview with author.
10 DW, July 4, 1935; see also Kling, “Making the Revolution,” 308–9; “July 4th,” leaflet, 1935, Box 143, J. B. Matthews Papers.
11 Naison, Communists in Harlem, 126–59; Ford, The Negro and the Democratic Front, 34, 83–84; Earl Browder, “The United Front—Key to Our New Tactical Orientation,” Communist 14 (December 1935): 1119–20; James W. Ford, “The Negro People and the Farmer-Labor Party,” ibid., 1136–37; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 343–44; Minutes of the Negro Commission, August 3, 1936, Box 12, Minor Papers.
12 DW, February 8, May 11, April 30, August 14, 29, 1935. R E. Duke is probably the same “Dukes” Hudson refers to in Painter, Narrative, 164–66.
13 Carter, Scottsboro, 320–24; “Scottsboro Victory,” leaflet, ca. April 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; DW, April 2, 24, 1935; see also SW, May 1935.
14 DW, January 22, 24, 1935; J. L. LeFlore to Walter White, July 13, 1935, Box G-4, NAACP Papers, Branch Files.
15 Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 345–47; Cicero Hughes, “Toward a Black United Front,” 91–93; Streater, “The National Negro Congress”; Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 457; Wittner, “The National Negro Congress”; John P. Davis, Let Us Build a National Negro Congress; NNC, Official Proceedings, 1, 29–30; Naison, Communists in Harlem, 182; James W. Ford, “The National Negro Congress,” Communist 15 (April 1936): 325–27.
16 James Ford and A. W. Berry, “The Coming National Negro Congress,” Communist 15 (February 1936): 142; see also A. W. Berry, “Southern Toilers and the National Negro Congress,” South Today 1 (April-May 1936): 14–15; Charles McPherson to Walter White, December 17, 1935, White to McPherson, December 28, 1935, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; John P. Davis to James W. Ashford, November 16, 1935, Ashford to Davis, November 14, 1935, NNC Papers, reel 2. For biographical background on James Ashford, see DW, September 21, 1936; YW, October 10, 1932; Young Communist Review 1 (October 1936): 2; Naison, Communists in Harlem, 135.
17 Tom Burke [Clyde Johnson] to John P. Davis, December 28, 1935, and John P. Davis to Anna Bogue, December 11, 1935, NNC Papers, reel 2; NNC, Official Proceedings, 1, 3, 39; “National Negro Congress,” Birmingham, November 6, 1941, sect. 4, FBI File 100–63; “National Negro Congress,” Birmingham, January 9, 1941, sect. 1, FBI File 100–154; “National Negro Congress,” Birmingham, January 19, 1941, sect. 1, FBI File 100–63; “National Negro Congress,” Birmingham, February 1, 1941, sect. 1, FBI File 100–1524.
18 Charles McPherson to Walter White, November 24, 1936, E. W. Taggart to Walter White, March 2, 1936 (telegram); White to Taggart, March 3, 1936; Taggart to White, March 9, 1936; Charles McPherson to Walter White, December 2, 1936; all in Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; SW, March-April 1936; “Birmingham Branch President Arrested,” Crisis 43 (April 1936): 118.
19 E. W. Taggart to Walter White, March 9, 1936, Box G-2, NAACP Papers,. Branch Files.
20 Hall quotation from Robert F. Hall, “Those Southern Liberals,” 490; comment about Hall from DW, May 27, 1938; Rob Hall interview with author; Hall, “Recollections of a Cub Reporter.” See also Robert F. Hall interview by Theodore Draper, August 16, 1971, p. 1, Draper Papers (Emory); Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 310–11; Scales and Nickson, Cause at Heart, 78.
21 Rob Hall interview with author, September 19, 1987; DW, March 26, 28, 29, 1932; Wechsler, Revolt on the Campus, 100–105; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 310–11. When Hall first arrived in Alabama he used the pseudonym “Bill Moseley.”
22 “Testimony of Jack Barton [Bart Logan],” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:759–63; “Statement of Belle Barton [Belle Logan], December 7, 1936,” ibid., 973; DW, November 25, 1936; Marge Frantz interview with author.
23 David Kinkead, Assistant Secretary, NCDPP, to Governor Bibb Graves, telegram, July 30, 1935; Editors of New Masses to Governor Graves, July 30, 1935; Bruce Crawford et al. to Governor Bibb Graves, July 30, 1935; all in Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 3; “Statement of Alfred Hirsch, January 7, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:976–77; Birmingham Post, July 29, 1935; DW, July 25, 31, August 1, 6, 10, 21, 1935; Crawford, “Bullets Fell on Alabama”; Jack Conroy, “Reception in Alabama,” Labor Defender 11 (September 1935): 9, 21; ACLU Weekly Bulletin 675 (August 9, 1935): 2; Montgomery Advertiser, August 18, 1935; Ingalls, “Antiradical Violence,” 525–26. The delegation consisted of Jack Conroy, Alfred Hirsch, Shirley Hopkins, Emmet Gowen, and Bruce Crawford.
24 Amendment quoted in DW, February 8, 1935; “To the Workers and Farmers of Alabama, The Sedition Bill Declares War on the Labor Unions ...” leaflet, ca. February 1935, official's quotation from Justice of the Peace of Trafford, Alabama, to Governor Graves (unsigned), June 13, 1935, and Charles H. S. Houk, pastor, Edgewood Presbyterian Church, to Governor Graves, July 1, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; Editorial, Montgomery Advertiser, February 1, 1935; Minutes of Meeting of Board of Directors, ACLU, February 11, 1935, ACLU Records, reel 5; Dothan (Alabama) Eagle, quoted in ACLU Weekly Bulletin 678 (August 30, 1935): 2. On labor's support for the bill, see Resolution from Local 5928, UMWA, Kimberly, Alabama, February 1, 1935, L. C. Lowery, president, Bessemer Trades Council, et al. to Governor Graves, March 26, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; DW, February 13, 1935.
25 “To the Workers and Farmers of Alabama, The Sedition Bill Declares War on the Labor Unions ...” leaflet, ca. February 1935; Resolution from “800 White and Negro Workers, Birmingham, Alabama,” February 20, 1935; Working Women Club No. 1 of Woodlawn to Governor Graves, n.d.; Resolution from Peace Baptist Church, Powderley, Alabama, February 17, 1935; Resolution from the Church of Christ, February 19, 1935; Resolution from Rev. J. H. Thomas, Friendship Baptist Church, Birmingham, March 14, 1935; Resolution from Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, n.d.; Resolution from Woodlawn Sunday School, n.d.; Resolution from Rev. G. W. Reed, Forty Fifth Street Baptist Church, March 11, 1935; Resolution from St. John Sunday School, February 17, 1935; Resolution from St. John BYPU, February 17, 1935; Willing Workers Club, secretary Cassier McFair, n.d.; Resolution from the Stick Together Club, signed J. W. Wooten, Orrville, Alabama, February 19, 1935; Resolution from the Adult Club, Powderley, Alabama, February 17, 1935; all in Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers.
26 ACLU Weekly Bulletin 675 (August 9, 1935): 2; DW, August 5, 19, 20, 1935. Because Graves vetoed the bill two days past the deadline, it temporarily became law. However, popular opposition forced Alabama legislators to repeal the law a few weeks later (Governor Bibb Graves to D. H. Turner, Secretary of State, August 16, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; ACLU Weekly Bulletin 679 [September 6, 1935]: 2).
27 Belfrage, “Dixie Detour,” 375; Cowett, Birmingham's Rabbi, 140; “Testimony of Joseph Gelders,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:772–73; Birmingham Post, September 25, 1936; Birmingham News, September 26, 1936; Gelders, “Professor, How Could You?” 97; Marge Frantz interview with author; Marge Frantz to author, May 19, 1989.
28 Marge Frantz interview with author. Because sympathetic Southern intellectuals found it difficult to make local contacts with the Party, traveling to New York was not uncommon. Don West, a white, Georgia-born theologian who joined in 1934 traveled to New York on his motorcycle in order to talk to Clarence Hathaway. He was immediately invited to attend the Workers School (DW, June 11, 1934; Marge Frantz interview with author; Dunbar, Against the Grain, 50; Painter, Narrative, 204–6 [West is identified as “Jim Gray” in the Narrative]; Kester interview [SOHP], 32). Similarly, Socialist theologian Howard Kester went to New York to talk directly with Earl Browder, but Kester came away with very negative feelings toward the CP (Kester interview [SOHP], 25–26).
29 Marge Frantz interview with author; La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:772–73; Gelders, “Professor, How Could You?” 97; Joseph Gelders to Roger N. Baldwin, August 14, vol. 826, ACLU Papers; Memorandum re: Joseph Gelders from S. K. McKee to J. Edgar Hoover, January 13, 1942, FBI HQ File 61–9512; Letter from Marge Frantz to author, May 19, 1989.
30 Marge Frantz interview with author; “Testimony of Joseph Gelders” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:774; quotation from Belfrage, “Dixie Detour,” 375; Minutes of Board of Directors, September 29, 1936, ACLU Records, reel 6.
31 DW, January 21, March 22, April 5, 6, 1936; SW, February 1936; “Statement on Police Raid,” prepared by Anne Johnson, 1936, CJP, reel 13; “Statement of Emily Mabel Owen, December 28, 1936,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:962–63; “Statement of Jesse Green Owen, December 28, 1936,” ibid., 964.
32 Birmingham News, July 20, 1936; “Testimony of Jack Barton [Bart Logan],” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:764–66; “Statement of Belle Barton [Belle Logan], December 7, 1936,” ibid., 974; The State of Alabama, Judicial Department, the Alabama Court of Appeals, October term, 1936–1937 (6 Div. 74), Ex parte Jack Barton v. City of Bessemer, appeal from Jefferson Circuit Court, November 10, 1936, ibid. 957–58; ACLU, Weekly Bulletin 741 (November 27, 1936): 1; “Memo on Case of Jack Barton at Bessemer, Ala.” n.d. [1936], vol. 924, ACLU Papers; quotation from “Testimony of Joseph Gelders,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:778.
33 “Statement of Belle Barton [Belle Logan], December 7, 1936,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:975; Joseph Gelders to Roger N. Baldwin, September 21, 1936, vol. 924, ACLU Papers; Birmingham Post, September 25, 1936; Marge Frantz interview with author; “Testimony of Joseph Gelders,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:777–83; “Statement by Joseph S. Gelders,” September 24, 1936, ILD Papers, reel 11; Birmingham News, September 24, 1936; Ingalls, “Antiradical Violence,” 526–27.
34 ACLU Press Release, “Rewards Offered in Alabama Flogging Case,” September 25, 1936, ACLU Records, reel 6; ACLU Weekly Bulletin 733 (October 2, 1936): 2; Montgomery Advertiser, September 26, 1936; Birmingham Age-Herald, September 25, 1936; Birmingham News, September 25, 1936; Belle Barton [Logan], “Things Happen in Alabama,” Labor Defender 10 (December 1936): 10; “Testimony of Joseph Gelders,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:874–76; and see dozens of protest letters in folder “Re: Joseph Gelders,” Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; Birmingham Post, November 14, 18, 1936; Birmingham Age-Herald, November 17, 1936; Birmingham News, January 5, 1937; Birmingham Age-Herald, January 6, 1937; Birmingham Post, January 6, 1937; DW, January 11, 1937; ACLU Weekly Bulletin 741 (November 27, 1936): 1. Two of Gelders's assailants, Walter Hanna and Dent Williams (the same man who shot Willie Peterson five years earlier), had records of antilabor violence. Hanna was a paid employee of the TCI, apparently serving as a secret investigator collecting information on labor activities (Birmingham News, October 20, 21, 23, 1936; “Testimony of Carey E. Haigler,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:802–3; “Testimony of Yelverton Cowherd,” ibid., 803–6; Ingalls, “Antiradical Violence,” 533–34).
35 Birmingham Post, November 18, 1936; Alabama, January 25, 1937, p. 1.
36 “Testimony of J. W. McClung,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:792; Auerbach, Labor and Liberty, 94–95; Ingalls, “Antiradical Violence,” 537, 542; Minutes of Board of Directors, February 1, 1937, ACLU Records, microfilm, reel 6. In March 1937, TCI signed a contract with the CIO's Steel Workers Organizing Committee, which ultimately led to a decline in company-sponsored antiradical violence. (See Chapter 7).
37 DW, November 13, 14, 25, 1936; Jack Barton v. City of Bessemer, 173 So. 626, (1937), Alabama Reports, 234:20–24; The State of Alabama, Judicial Department, the Alabama Court of Appeals, October term, 1936–37 (6 Div. 74), Ex parte Jack Barton v. City of Bessemer, appeal from Jefferson Circuit Court, November 10, 1936, La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:957; Coker et al., Digest of the Public Record of Communism, 266; quotation from Anna Damon, “The Struggle against Criminal Syndicalist Laws,” Communist 16 (March 1937): 284; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 186–206.
38 Kling, “Making the Revolution,” 27–78, 88, 287–88, 308–28; Loveman, Presidential Vote in Alabama, 19–20; SW, December 1936; and for changes in the Party's rural work, see Chapter 9.
39 CPUSA, “National Membership Report, January 1-June 30, 1937,” mimeo, Box 1, Draper Papers (Emory); also cited in Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 380. In 1936 the Party's thirty-five districts received a total of $25,548.14, averaging $729.95 per district. In 1937 District 17 received $3,057.64 out of a total district subsidy of $31,979.92 (DW, May 31, 1938). Personal recollections also support the contention that black membership declined significantly during the Popular Front (Marge Frantz interview with author; James Jackson interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author; and Hudson interview with author).
40 SW, April 1937. On Alabamians in the Spanish Civil War, see DW, November 1, 1937; D. E McKinnon, “Southerners Fight for Democracy in Spain,” New South 1 (August 1938): 11; Marge Frantz interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview with author. Coad was working in North Carolina under the name “Mack Johnson” when he decided to go to Spain (Crouch, “Brief History of the Communist Movement in North and South Carolina,” 7).
41 Quotation from SW, September 1937; Rob F. Hall, “Confessions of a Communist,” New South 1 (November 1937): 2; Hall interview with author; Marge Frantz interview with author; FBI Report on Laurent Frantz, Birmingham Division, May 19, 1941, p. 2, HQ File 100–20023; Painter, Narrative, 246; “In the Heart of Alabama,” Labor Defender 11 (December 1937): 13; advertisement in New South 1 (November 1937): 11; DW, October 25, 1937; Ballam, “The First All-Southern CP Conference,” 14; Laurent Frantz interview with author. By 1938, Speed had left Alabama and Mary Southard had taken over the bookstore (J. Edgar Hoover to Special Agent in Charge, Birmingham, Alabama, January 17, 1941, “Southern Negro Youth Congress,” FBI File 100–82).
42 Ballam, “The First All-Southern CP Conference,” 13–14; DW, September 27, 1937; Browder, People's Front, 248.
43 Delegates quoted in Ballam, “The First All-Southern CP Conference,” 15; second quotation from Paul Crouch, “Broken Chains,” chap. 23, p. 1, Box 1. Paul Crouch Papers; New South 1 (June 1938). A year later Rob Hall declared unequivocally that “the New South . . . was not a Communist magazine.” (Hall to Joe Gelders, November 9, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers).
44 Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 273; Polenberg, Fighting Faiths, 243.
45 John B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era, chap. 1; Sosna, In Search of the Silent South; quotation from SW, September 1937; Coller, “The Solid South Cracks,” 185; New South 1 (March 1938): 4, 6.
46 NAACP Membership Report, Birmingham Branch, March 30, 1937, Box G-3, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; SW, September 1937; “The Negro People and the People's Front,” New South 1 (March 1938): 6–7; Hudson interview with author; quotation from Painter, Narrative, 271–72.
47 Harold Preece, “Folk Music of the South,” New South 1 (March 1938): 13; DW, January 17, 1938; quotation from CPUSA, Proceedings—10th Convention, 298; Ford, The Negro and the Democratic Front, 192; see also Naison, Communists in Harlem, 211–19 for a brilliant discussion of the “Americanization” of African-American music.
48 SW, July 1936; Hall interview with author; quotation from SW, January 1937; “Southern Methodist Conference Votes for Church Unity,” New South 1 (June 1938): 7. The Central Committee strongly encouraged church membership during the Democratic Front. See especially, CPUSA, Proceedings—10th Convention, 298; CPUSA, “Party Building: Resolution Adopted by Tenth National Convention of the Communist Party, USA, May 26–31, 1938,” mimeo, 1938, Browder Papers, reel 3; Negro Commission, “Report on Negro Work: Material for the Negro Commission, 10th Party Convention,” mimeo, May 1938, Box 12, Minor Papers; Painter, Narrative, 269–70; Ford, The Negro and the Democratic Front, 192.
49 Robert F. Hall, “Establishing the Party in the South,” 28–29.
50 DW, January 19, May 27, 1938; T. Spralding, “About a Branch in the South”; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 380; song quoted in DW, May 11, 1938; DW, December 13, 23, 1937; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 245.
51 Memo from Margaret Cowl, Director of Women's Commission, Central Committee to All District Women's Commission, July 1937, Browder Papers, reel 3; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author. Although Hosea Hudson claims he tried to persuade his wife to accompany him to meetings (Painter, Narrative, 115–16), Esther Cooper Jackson remembers that Hudson, Henry O. Mayfield (in the case of his first wife), and others never included their spouses.
52 DW, May 11, 1938; also Hall interview with author; Marge Frantz interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Robert F. Hall, “Establishing the Party in the South,” 29.
53 Painter, Narrative, 244–45, 247–48; Hudson interview with author.
1 DW, March 9, 12, 1935; Research Committee, “Thunder in the South,” South Today 1 (December 1935-January 1936): 13; SW, June 1935; DW, June 25, 1935; Vern Smith, “Victory Achieved in Alabama Coal Strike,” International Press Correspondence (December 28, 1935): 1748; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 92–93.
2 Labor Advocate, January 11, February 22, 1936; see also ibid., March 7, 21, April 18, May 30, 1936. On the Party's role in the WPA strikes, see Chapter 8.
3 DW, February 5, 1938; Prickett, “Communists and the Communist Issue,” 245, 456; Kling, “Making the Revolution,” 340; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 223–30, 243–44; Cochran, Labor and Communism, 136–37; Levenstein, Communism, Anti-Communism and the CIO.
4 SW, March-April 1936; Birmingham News, April 29, 30, 1936; SW, May 1936; Birmingham Age-Herald, April 30, 1936; Hall interview with author. When James Neal, an organizer for the United Textile Workers of America who had never been a Communist, opposed the anti-Communist resolution as a violation of free speech, he was physically beaten by a group of delegates.
5 W. O. Hare to William Green, March 1, 1937, Box 1, Taft Papers; Mitch quoted in Taft, Organizing Dixie, 121; Labor Advocate, April 24, June 12, 1937; see also Labor Advocate, June 19, 26, July 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, August 7, 21, 28, September 4, 18, 1937; Southern Labor Review, September 8, 1937.
6 Phillips, “History of the United Rubber Workers,” 23, 35–43, 47–48; Charles Martin, “Southern Labor Relations in Transition,” 553–56; SW, September 1936; Gadsden Times, June 12, 25, 1936; DW, December 5, 1936; Gadsden Central Labor Union, Report of a Citizen's Committee, 10–15; Marshall, Labor in the South, 188–89; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 116–18.
7 Gadsden Central Labor Union, Report of a Citizen's Committee, 7; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 119; Karam quoted in Gadsden Times, June 20, 1937; see also Phillips, “History of the United Rubber Workers,” 50; Charles Martin, “Southern Labor Relations in Transition,” 561–63.
8 Quoted in Gadsden Central Labor Union, Report of a Citizen's Committee, 31; “Resolution of Gadsden Law and Order Committee,” signed by J. F. Morgan and Walter M. Pearson, August 5, 1937, Box 127, Black Papers; BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson interview with author. Fish Committee testimony and reports from the Birmingham Age-Herald made claims in 1930 that the Communists had been organizing Gadsden workers, but there is no evidence of such activity in Party sources (Fish Committee Hearings, 1(6): 178–79).
9 Southern Labor Review, June 30, 1937; Freeman quoted in Gadsden Central Labor Union, Report of a Citizen's Committee, 34; Marge Frantz interview with author; Charles Martin, “Southern Labor Relations in Transition,” 567–68.
10 Birmingham Post, June 9, 1936; Patton interview (BPRM), 4.
11 Norrell, “Caste in Steel,” 671; Marshall, Labor in the South, 185; SW, November 1936; Hall interview with author; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 103, 105–10.
12 Southern Labor Review, January 20, 1937; Shaw quoted in Bunche, “A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership,” 135, CMS Collection; Hall interview with author. Shaw also spoke at several SWOC-CIO meetings; see Birmingham World, June 20, 1941; BWDS (Notebooks). For more on black middle-class support for the CIO, see Emory O. Jackson interview (CRDP), 8; NAACP, Birmingham Branch, Advancement (Birmingham, 1941), pamphlet in Box C-l, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Coke interview with author.
13 Hudson quotation from BWDS (Notebooks); Painter, Narrative, 247–51; John Williams, “Struggles of the Thirties in the South,” 175–76; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, December 22, 1938; Frederick Cox interview (WLC), 4; Hudson interview with author; Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 35; Mayfield quotation from Mayfield, “Memoirs,” 53; worker's quotation from Parham and Robinson, “ ‘If I Could Go Back ...,’” 233.
14 Battle interview (BPRM), 3; Dean interview (BPRM), 2–3, 4; Andrews interview (WLC), 9–18; George Brown interview (BPRM), 1–2. During and after World War II, however, after skilled, relatively conservative whites left the company unions and seized control of the CIO, the union was used as a lever to hinder black upward mobility in steel (Norrell, “Caste in Steel”).
15 Marshall, Labor in the South, 185–86; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 104–5; Alabama, January 4, 11, 1937, 6; BWDS (Notebooks); Painter, Narrative, 247.
16 Painter, Narrative, 247; Hudson interview with author; Alabama, February 15, 1937; “Birmingham Stove and Range Company, Birmingham, Alabama, Strike—February 4, 1937,” Dispute Case Files (1935–39), Alabama Department of Labor Records; Alabama, February 15, March 8, 15, 1937; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 105.
17 Northrup, “The Negro and Unionism in Birmingham,” 35; Marshall, Labor in the South, 186; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 107; Traver de Vyver, “Present Status of Labor Unions in the South,” 489. With the exception of the two sit-down strikes mentioned above, the steel mills operated without any major (reported) labor disputes. See Alabama Department of Industrial Relations, Annual Report, 1938–1939, 54–58; Alabama Department of Labor, Annual Report, 1938, 26–32; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 106–9.
18 Jensen, Nonferrous Metals Industry Unionism, 53; Cochran, Labor and Communism, 149–50; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 236–37.
19 Noel R. Beddow to Mercedes Daugherty, secretary to Philip Murray, July 27, 1943, Box 1, Taft Papers; Testimony of Homer D. Wilson, U.S. Congress, Senate, Communist Domination of Union Officials, 134–36; Marge Frantz interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Hall interview with author; Hudson interview with author; Thomas interview (WLC), 8–9.
20 Testimony of Homer D. Wilson, U.S. Congress, Senate, Communist Domination of Union Officials, 135–36.
21 Alabama (CIO) News Digest, January 12, 1939.
22 William Mitch to Aubrey Williams, telegram, July 23, 1936, C. L. Pagues, Secretary Treasurer, District 5, International Union of Mine Mill and Smelter Workers to Hugo Black, July 8, 1936, Box 784, WPA Records; Huntley, “Iron Ore Miners,” 90–91; Regensburger, “The Emergence of Industrial Unionism,” 100–110; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 112–14.
23 Alabama (CIO) News Digest, September 14, 1939; Huntley, “Iron Ore Miners,” 94–98; Huntley, “The Rise and Fall of Mine Mill,” 5; Regensburger, “The Emergence of Industrial Unionism,” 101; Taft, Organizing Dixie, 113–15; interview with Members of Mine Mill Smelter Workers, CIO, conducted by George Stoney, 1940, pp. 1, 6, Box 83, Bunche Papers. Mine Mill did not win complete recognition from TCI until 1941.
24 Prickett, “Communists and the Communist Issue,” 456; see also Kling, “Making the Revolution,” 340; Buhle, Marxism in the United States, 152–53; Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor's War at Home, 140–46.
25 Hudson interview with author; Hall interview with author.
26 Interview with Members of Mine Mill Smelter Workers, CIO, conducted by George Stoney, 1940, p. 7, Box 83, Bunche Papers; DW, December 5, 1937; Hudson interview with author; Augusta Strong, “Southern Youth's Proud Heritage,” 44; SNA, June 5, 1941.
27 Hudson interview with author.
28 Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 35; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, December 22, 1938; Cox interview (WLC), 4.
29 Interview with Mine Mill Smelter Workers, CIO, 1940, p. 7 (quotation from p. 2), Box 83, Bunche Papers; Benson interview (WLC), 2; Earl Brown interview (WLC), 9.
30 McGill interviews (BPRM), 2; Holston interview (WLC), 1–4; Anderson Underwood quoted in McCallum, “Songs of Work and Songs of Worship,” 23; Korson, Coal Dust on the Fiddle, 306–9.
31 Alabama (CIO) News Digest, February 16, 1939.
32 Highlander Folk School, “Songs of Field and Factory,” 12, 15.
33 McGill interviews (BPRM), 12. On the use of popular songs on picket lines, see Denisoff, Sing A Song, 24.
34 Highlander Folk School, “Songs of Field and Factory.”
1 Douglas L. Smith, New Deal in the Urban South, 86, 91; “Minutes of Conference Held at Gay-Teague hotel, July 12, 1935, with Representatives of Organized Labor in Alabama, in Connection with the Program and Problems of the Works Progress Administration under the New Set-Up,” Box 784, WPA Records; Fred R. Smith, Director of Labor Management to Thad Holt, October 22, 1935, and H. J. Adcox to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 16, 1935, Box 784, WPA Records; DW, September 16, 1935.
2 Montgomery Advertiser, August 27, 29, 1935; leaflet issued by Montgomery Unemployed Council, “Organize for Decent Wages and Conditions on Jobs and for Direct Relief,” ca. August 1935, CJP, reel 13; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 1;DW, October 2, 1935.
3 WPA foreman quoted in John M. Tillery to President Roosevelt, September 1935, Women's Auxiliary, Local 719 [Hod Carriers] to Mrs. Roosevelt, September 2, 1935, Box 784, WPA Records; DW, July 22, 1935; “Minutes of Conference Held at Gay-Teague hotel, July 12, 1935. . . ,” Box 784, WPA Records; DW, September 16, 20, 24, 1935. See also Clayton Norris to Harry Hopkins, telegram, September 20, 1935; Clayton Norris to J. W. Garvey, September 19, 1935; Nels Anderson, Director of Labor Relations to Thad Holt, September 21, 1935; WPA official quoted in Memorandum from Dean R. Brimhall to Harry Hopkins, September 14, 1935, “re: Reported WPA Strike”; all in Box 784, WPA Records.
4 Fred Smith, Director of Labor Management to Clayton Norris, September 25, 1935, and ACLU to Governor Bibb Graves, October 17, 1935, Box 784, WPA Records; DW, October 12, 1935.
5 “Closed File, General Strike WPA Jefferson County, April 15, 1936,” p. 1, Container SG 4191, Dispute Case Files, Alabama Department of Labor Records; SW, May 1936; “Statement by Kenneth Bridenthal, January 12, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:970. The total number of strikers included some two hundred Public Works Administration (PWA) workers who were not affected by the order but chose to join the strike as an act of solidarity.
6 “Closed File, General Strike WPA Jefferson County, April 15, 1936,” p. 2, Container SG 4191, Dispute Case Files, Alabama Department of Labor Records; “Statement by Kenneth Bridenthal, January 12, 1937,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:970; “Statement by Harriet Flood, January 12, 1937,” ibid., 971–73; “Statement of Belle Barton [Logan],” ibid., 973–74; SW, May 1936; Alabama Department of Labor, Annual Report, 1935–1936, 19.
7 SW, June 1936. See also W. J. Bennet to Thad Holt, August 14, 1936; Clarence W. McGullough to President Roosevelt, April 6, 1936; Jim Manning to Nels Anderson, Director, Section on Labor Relations, July 30, 1936; Elmer Wood, Local 719 International Hod Carriers to President Roosevelt, March 16, 1936; Mrs. Grady Patmon to President Roosevelt, January 20, 1936; Circular from North Alabama WPA Workers Local Union No. 1, September 30, 1936; quotation from unsigned letter to Labor Policies Board, November 5, 1936; all in Box 784, WPA Records.
8 Labor Advocate, March 7, 21, 1936; “Hosea Hudson interview, November 18, 1939,” in R. J. Bunche, “Field Notes—Southern Trip, Book IV,” n.d., 44, Box 82, Bunche Papers; Hudson interview with author; SW, January 1936; “Resolution of the Amalgamated Association of State and United States Government Relief Workers of North America, April 1, 1937, and Resolution of the Amalgamated ...” April 12, 1937, Box 786, WPA Records.
9 Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 295–97; Piven and Cloward, Poor People's Movements, 75–76.
10 Painter, Narrative, 283; Hudson interview with author; and see, for instance, Claude Lambert, Recording Secretary, Workers Alliance of America, Local #1 to Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 1, 1936, Box 784, WPA Records. In Mobile in September 1936, however, the Workers Alliance held a mass demonstration of three hundred unemployed and WPA workers to demand wage increases in relief and WPA work (Workers Alliance of America, Mobile Branch to Harry Hopkins, telegram, September 4, 1936, Box 784, WPA Records).
11 Painter, Narrative, 284–88; John Williams, “Struggles of the Thirties in the South,” 176–77; BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 58–62; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, February 2, 1939; “Interview with Hosea Hudson,” November 18, 1939, p. 44, Box 82, Bunche Papers. In Painter, Narrative (282–83), Donavan is referred to as “John Buckley” and James D. Howell is referred to as “Tom Howard.”
12 BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 62; “Interview with Hosea Hudson,” November 18, 1939, in R. J. Bunche, “Field Notes,” 44, Box 82, Bunche Papers.
13 DW, July 26, 1938; Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 69; BWDS (Notebooks); John Williams, “Struggles of the Thirties in the South,” 177; DW, February 22, 1938.
14 James Hood, Secretary and Treasurer of the Workers Alliance, Bessemer Union Local #1 to Harry Hopkins, June 24, 1938, Box 786, WPA Records; New South 1 (August 1938): 5; BWDS (Notebooks); Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 63–65.
15 Herbert Benjamin, “After a Decade of Mass Unemployment,” Communist 19 (March 1940): 264; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 297; BWDS (Notebooks); quotation from Beulah Banks to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, February 23, 1938, Box 786, WPA Records.
16 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census, 1940: The Labor Force, 3(1): 44. See also Lillian Bell to President Roosevelt, March 20, 1938; Rossie Barrington to President Roosevelt, January 28, 1938; Beulah Banks to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, February 23, 1938; all in Box 786, WPA Records. By 1940, all of Alabama's cities combined employed only 1,273 black women on WPA projects (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census, 1940: Population, 2(1): 226).
17 Piven and Cloward, Poor People's Movements, 89–90; “Interview with Hosea Hudson,” November 18, 1939, in R. J. Bunche, “Field Notes,” 44, Box 82, Bunche Papers; Painter, Narrative, 298–99.
18 Earl J. Ball, Secretary of the Workers Alliance, Etowah County to Ernest L. Marbury, Acting Director, Division of Employment, WPA, December 1, 1939, Resolution of the Gadsden United WPA Workers, June 28, 1940, signed by John F. Morgan, Clarence Tucker, Dennis Huff, and J. C. Belyeu, Box 789, WPA Records; quotation from BWDS (Notebooks); Painter, Narrative, 300–301; Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 70.
19 See Piven and Cloward, Poor People's Movements, 91; Naison, Communists in Harlem, 269–73; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 303–4.
1 SW, August 15, 1933; Draft Resolution for District Convention, District 17 (1934), 5, Browder Papers, reel 3; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Clyde Johnson interview by H. L. Mitchell, 14–26; Dunbar, Against the Grain, 53–54.
2 See especially Naison, “Black Agrarian Radicalism,” 55–56.
3 Clyde Johnson interview with author; Murphy to Painter, March 1978. pp. 28–29, NPHH Collection; Al Murphy, “The Share Croppers’ Union Grows and Fights,” 48; see also [Al Murphy], “Agrarian Work,” 80–82; [Murphy], Report to Central Committee of CPUSA, June 10, 1933, Box 16, Draper Papers (Emory).
4 Clyde Johnson interview with author.
5 DW, March 21, January 31, 1935, October 1, 1934, March 14, 1935.
6 SW, March-April 1935, May 1935; DW, May 8, June 21, 1935; “To All White and Negro Share Croppers and Tenants and Farm Workers: To All White and Negro Farm Women and Youth,” n.d., encl., Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to J. R. Butler, July 4, 1935, STFU Papers, reel 1; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 66.
7 Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to J. R. Butler, July 4, 1935, STFU Papers, reel 1.
8 DW, May 24, 1935, June 4, 12, 21, 1935, July 2, 1935; SW, June 1935; Robert Wood [Charles Sherrill] to Governor Bibb Graves, May 21, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; quotation from “Statement of Robert Washington, December 21, 1936,” La Follette Committee Hearings, 3:965–66; BWDS (Notebooks); Painter, Narrative, 187–88; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 66.
9 Quotation from DW, May 25, 1935; DW, May 15, 20, 25, 1935; Robert Wood [Charles Sherrill] to Governor Bibb Graves, May 18, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers.
10 DW, June 21, 1935; SW, June 1935; DW, May 30, June 21, 1935; “To All White and Negro Share Croppers and Tenants and Farm Workers: To All White and Negro Farm Women and Youth,” n.d., encl., Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to J. R. Butler, July 4, 1935, STFU Papers, reel 1; Union Leader, July 4, 1935; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 65.
11 Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “The Murder of Joe Spinner,” New Masses 12 (September 3, 1935): 21, 22; Jack Martin and E. Selridge, Thurston County, Washington, Unemployment Council to Governor Graves, September 15, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers.
12 For background on the STFU, see Dyson, Red Harvest, chap. 8; Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton; Harry L. Mitchell, Mean Things Happening; Dunbar, Against the Grain, 88–110; Thrasher and Wise, “The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union.”
13 DW, October 16, 1934; SW, December 1934, January 1935; Ross, “Some Problems of the Class Struggle,” 72; Mitchell, Mean Things Happening, 55; U.S. Congress, Senate, Alleged Communistic Activities at Howard University, 13–36, 55; DW, May 20, June 1, 4, 1935; Mitchell quoted in DW, May 20, 1935.
14 Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to J. R. Butler, July 4, 1935, STFU Papers, reel 1; quotation from Mitchell interview (COHP), “The Reminiscences of H. L. Mitchell,” 53; H. L. Mitchell to Jack Herling, August 24, 1935, and H. L. Mitchell, “Report-Sharecroppers Union of Alabama,” n.d., STFU Papers, reel 1; H. L. Mitchell to Norman Thomas, August 4, 1935, and Mitchell to Howard Kester, August 3, 1935, Kester Papers, reel 1; Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 81; Dunbar, Against the Grain, 102–3; Mitchell, Mean Things Happening, 80–81; Sharecroppers Voice, August 1935; DW, August 14, 1935; H. L. Mitchell to Clarence Senior, September 9, 1935, SPA Papers, reel 126.
15 DW, July 22, 1935; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “A Statement on the Terror Against the Cotton Pickers’ Strike—Share Croppers’ Union,” circular letter, August 27, 1935, “Support the Cotton Pickers Strike!” leaflet, 1935, CJP, reel 13; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to J. R. Butler, July 4, 1935, STFU Papers, reel 1; DW, July 31, August 2, 1935; “Organize for Decent Wages and Conditions on Jobs and for Direct Relief,” leaflet, 1935, CJP, reel 13; Burke [Clyde Johnson], “We Told Washington,” 649; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 1; Montgomery Advertiser, August 27, 29, 1935; DW, September 25, 1935.
16 DW, August 7, 8, 26, September 3, 16, 1935 (quotation from August 8, 1935); Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “You Can Kill Me,” 6; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “A Statement on the Terror against the Cotton Pickers’ Strike,” CJP, reel 13; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to Governor Bibb Graves, August 25, 1935, and Horace B. Davis to Governor Bibb Graves, October 9, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; Lemon Johnson interview with author; Smith interview with author.
17 DW, September 3, 16, 1935; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to Governor Bibb Graves, August 25, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “A Statement on the Terror against the Cotton Pickers’ Strike,” CJP, reel 13; Charles A. J. McPherson to Walter White, February 13, 1936, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “You Can Kill Me” 6; “Written in Blood,” Labor Defender 11 (November 1935): 4.
18 DW, September 9, 10, 16, 1935; Birmingham Post, October 12, 1935; Union Leader, September 28, 1935; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “You Can Kill Me,” 6; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 12; Lemon Johnson interview with author; Preece, “Epic of the Black Belt,” 92; and for details on Watkins's murder, see Charles A. J. McPherson to Walter White, February 13, 1936, Box G-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files. See also Emzie Watkins to Harry Hopkins, March 24, 1936; Statement of Emzie Watkins submitted to WPA, January 23, 1936; Statement of Pauline Watkins, January 23, 1936; all in Box 785, WPA Records.
19 DW, September 3, 16, 1935; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to Governor Bibb Graves, August 25, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Preece, “Epic of the Black Belt,” 92; Burke [Clyde Johnson], “We Told Washington,” 649.
20 Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to Governor Bibb Graves, August 25, 1935; International Labor Defense to Governor Bibb Graves and Mayor Gunter, n.d.; E. L. Bolland to Governor Bibb Graves, September 14, 1935; all in Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “A Statement on the Terror Against the Cotton Pickers’ Strike,” CJP, reel 13; Montgomery Advertiser, September 14, 1935; Montgomery Journal and Times, September 14, 1935; Clyde Johnson interview with author; DW, October 12, 1935; Burke, [Clyde Johnson], “We Told Washington,” 650.
21 Resolution “To Gov. Graves, Montgomery Alabama,” n.d., Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “On the Alabama Front,” Nation 141 (September 18, 1935); Lemon Johnson interview with author.
22 DW, September 5, 25, 1935; Union Leader, September 28, 1935; A. W. Roper, County Agent [Lowndes County] to T. M. Campbell, August 26, 1935. Box 24, CIC Collection; Al Jackson [Clyde Johnson], “It Looks Like War-Torn Belgium,” South Today 1 (December 1935-January 1936): 12; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 74; Smith interview with author; Lemon Johnson interview with author.
23 “Comrade Larry” [Clyde Johnson], “To Those Who Fell,” Union Leader, September 28, 1935.
24 See Drawer 103, Folder “Communist Correspondence,” Governor Graves Papers; Clyde Johnson interview with author.
25 Burke [Clyde Johnson], “We Told Washington,” 649–50; “Written in Blood,” Labor Defender 11 (November 1935): 4; SCPR, Civil Rights in the South, 12; Union Leader, October 28, 1935. As a result of the AAA investigations, however, several Tallapoosa landlords were forced to pay back allotments to sharecroppers (SW, June 1936).
26 Clyde Johnson interview with author; Clyde Johnson to author, March 6, 1989; quotation from Belfrage, “Dixie Detour,” 375.
27 Clyde Johnson interview with author; Rex Pitkin to J. R. Butler, July 10, 1936, STFU Papers, reel 2; Clyde Johnson to author, January 6, 1989; and for more on the Deacons in Louisiana, see Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle, 94–97, 109–10, 114.
28 Clyde Johnson interview with author; Tom Burke to H. L. Mitchell, January 31, 1936, STFU Papers, reel 2; “STFU Convention Proceedings—Official Report of Second Annual Convention, January 3, 4, 5, 1936, Labor Temple, Little Rock,” Gardner Jackson to Howard Kester, November 26, 1935, H. L. Mitchell to Gardner Jackson, December 26, 1935, STFU Papers, reel 1.
29 Clyde Johnson to author, April 20, 1988; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 145; Dyson, Red Harvest, 134–37; Clarence A. Hathaway, “Let Us Penetrate Deeper into Rural Areas,” Communist 14, no. 7 (July 1935): 641–60.
30 Tom Burke to H. L. Mitchell, March 2, 1936, STFU Papers, reel 1; DW, October 1, 1935; Albert Jackson [Clyde Johnson] to Governor Bibb Graves, September 24, 1935, Drawer 103, Governor Graves Papers; SFL, May 1, 1936; U.S. Congress, House, Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Elections . . . 1936, 1; Clyde Johnson to author, April 20, 1988; Stone, “Agrarian Conflict in Alabama,” 519–20.
31 Clyde Johnson interview with author; “For Unity in the South,” SFL, May 1, 1936.
32 Mitchell quotation from H. L. Mitchell to Donald Henderson, August 12, 1936, also J. R. Butler to Gardner Jackson, July 31, 1936, STFU Papers, reel 2; Sharecroppers Voice, August, September 1936; see also Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 83–84; Johnson quotation from Clyde Johnson interview with author, December 21, 1986. Two years later, McKinney and other black leaders criticized the STFU for practicing racial discrimination, for which McKinney was accused of being a Garveyite and briefly expelled. He was eventually reinstated (Mitchell interview [COHP], “Early Life of H. L. Mitchell” 32–34).
33 Clyde Johnson to author, April 20, 1988.
34 C. L. Johnson to G. S. Gravelee, September 5, 1936, and Gravelee to Clyde Johnson, September 16, 1936, CJP, reel 13; SFL, August 1936; DW, October 23, 1936; SFL, November 1936; Clyde Johnson interview with author.
35 SFL, January 1937; “Statement on Farm Tenancy by C. L. Johnson and Gordon Mclntire,” January 6, 1937, CJP, reel 13; SFL, April-May 1937.
36 Quotation from Clyde Johnson to J. J. Krai, May 15, 1937, CJP, reel 13; see also criticisms of AFU program in SFL, April-May 1937; SFL, July 1936; Saul Davis to Clyde Johnson, March 30, 1937, Clyde Johnson to National Board Members and Officers and Alabama Board Members and Officers of the Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, ca. April 1937, CJP, reel 13.
37 Clyde Johnson to National Board Members and Officers and Alabama Board Members and Officers of the Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative Union of America, ca. April 1937, CJP, reel 13; Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, April 15, 1937; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 292; quotation from McKinley Gilbert to Clyde Johnson, July 13, 1937, CJP, reel 13; Clyde Johnson to author, April 20, 1988; DW, October 26, 1937.
38 Clyde Johnson to author, April 20, 1988; DW, October 26, 1937; Louisiana Farmers’ Union News, January 15, 1938; Clyde Johnson interview with author; Margery Dallet to John P. Davis, August 4, 1940, Box 24, SCHW Papers.
39 Quotation from Vester Burkett to Gordon Mclntire, June 16, 1938, CJP, reel 13.
40 Butler Molette to Clyde Johnson, January 23, 1937; Saul Davis to Clyde Johnson, March 6, 1937; Ollie Johnson to Clyde Johnson, May 23, 1937; see also “Ben” to Clyde Johnson, October 20, 1936; Saul Davis to Clyde Johnson, March 6, 30, 1937; all in CJP, reel 13; on the agricultural extension, see “D” to Clyde Johnson, November 1936, ibid.
41 SW, May 1937; Southern Labor Review, May 19, 1937; Birmingham Post, April 16, 19, 1937; Labor Advocate, April 3, 1937; Rural Worker 2 (April 1937): 1; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Unionism in American Agriculture, 301; Rosen, “The Alabama Share Croppers’ Union,” 113.
42 Clyde Johnson interview with author; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 237; Report of District 9, UCAPAWA, December 12, 1938, p. 1, STFU Papers, reel 9; Report to the International Executive Board, UCAPAWA, by Donald Henderson, January 18, 1938, p. 2, STFU Papers, reel 7; UCAPAWA News 1, no. 3 (September 1939); Ida Dailes, Office Director, UCAPAWA, to Evelyn Smith, February 10, 1938, STFU Papers, reel 7; Richard Linsley, “Report of District 9, UCAPAWA,” December 12, 1938, p. 1, ibid., reel 9. Alabama comprised nearly half of District 9’s total membership, which amounted to 3,975 members organized in seventeen locals (Report of Donald Henderson, General President, to the Second Annual Convention of the UCAPAWA, San Francisco, December 12–16, 1938, p. 4, STFU Papers, reel 9).
43 Richard Linsley, “Report of District 9, UCAPAWA,” December 12, 1938, pp. 1–2, STFU Papers, reel 9; Richard Linsley, Field Representative, UCAPAWA, to Harry Hopkins, August 16, 1938, Box 787, WPA Records.
44 Confidential Memo, “Report of Preliminary Investigation of Arrest of Willie Joe Hart and Peavey Smith, Dadeville, Alabama,” ca. 1940, pp. 1, 4, “Affidavit by Hosie Hart on His Talk with Cliff Corprew, Thursday, September 8, the Morning after the Arrest of His Son,” n.d., Box 25, SCHW Papers; Linsley, “Report of District 9, UCAPAWA,” December 12, 1938, p. 2, STFU Papers, reel 9.
45 Open letter from Hosea Hart to Claude Wickard, Secretary of Agriculture, printed in SNA, February 6, 1941, also SNA, March 7 and 23, 1940; Southern Farmer, April 1941, p. 9; quotation from UCAPAWA News 1, no. 6 (February 1940): 13.
46 Godwin, “Differentials in Out-Migration,” 2.
47 For examples of this line of argument, see especially Dyson, Red Harvest, 151; Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton, 82–84; and Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 533.
1 Ballam, “Southern Textile Workers,” 1035; DW, January 19, 1938.
2 Clarence Hathaway, “The 1938 Elections and Our Tasks,” Communist 17 (March 1938): 216; also Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 207–22.
3 Ballam, “Southern Textile Workers,” 1036; see also Donald Burke, “The Right To Vote,” New South 1 (November 1937).
4 DW, January 31, February 1, May 7, August 23, 1938; New South 1 (March 1938): 4.
5 Stone interview (SOHP), August 13, 1975, p. 21, and September 10, 1975, pp. 1–4; Circular Letter, “To All Southern Liberals,” October 30, 1936, and Minna Abernathy to Olive Stone, November 23, 1937, Box 2, Stone Collection; on Ford's visit to Chapel Hill, see Scales and Nickson, Cause at Heart, 59–60.
6 Laurent Frantz interview with author.
7 “Ballad of John Catchings,” mimeo, n.d., CJP, reel 13; also in Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest, 230–31 (spelled “Catchins”); on the Catchings case, see Gelders, “Professor, How Could You?” 97; Marge Frantz interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author.
8 Circular letter from Joseph Gelders, NCPR, and W. E. Shortridge, NAACP, January 15, 1938, Box 1, Stone Collection; DW, February 1, 1938. The federal government initially considered black management, but city commissioner Jimmie Jones would not allow it (Jimmie Jones to Edgar G. Puryear, Personnel Director, Housing Division, Washington, D.C., August 11, 1937, Folder 43, JMJ Papers).
9 DW, May 11, 20, 1938.
10 “Report of the Credentials Committee to the 10th National Convention of the Communist Party,” typescript, May 1938, p. 8, Browder Papers, reel 3; Painter, Narrative, 280–81; DW, May 27, 29, 1938; Ford, The Negro and the Democratic Front, 190; “Report on Negro Work: Material for the Negro Commission, 10th Party Convention,” typescript, May 1938, p. 1, Box 12, Minor Papers. The Daily Worker used pseudonyms for black Alabama Communists: “Larry Brown” was Hosea Hudson; “Frank Curry” was Henry O. Mayfield; and “John Parker” was Hosea Hart.
11 DW, May 13, 1938; Painter, Narrative, 273–76, 280.
12 Coller, “The Solid South Cracks,” 185; Painter, Narrative, 256–60; Hudson interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Hall interview with author.
13 Spralding, “About a Branch in the South,” 32; Fred Cox, “The Negro Vote in the South,” New South 1 (March 1938): 14–15.
14 Painter, Narrative, 258; Hudson interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Hall interview with author; Bunche, “The Political Status of the Negro,” 2:465; Donald Strong, Registration of Voters in Alabama, 14, 54.
15 Bunche, “The Political Status of the Negro,” 2:465, 468–70; Lawson, Black Ballots, 88–89; Donald Strong, Registration of Voters in Alabama, 14, 54; Painter, Narrative, 259, quotation from p. 261.
16 Bunche, “The Political Status of the Negro,” 2:449; Interview with Percy Moore conducted by Joseph Taylor, August 19, 1939, Birmingham, Alabama, p. 7, CMS Collection, reel 5.
17 “Interview, Dr. E. W. Taggart,” November 18, 1940, p. 37, in R. J. Bunche, “Field Notes—Southern Trip, Book IV,” n.d., typewritten manuscript, Box 82, Bunche Papers; Painter, Narrative, 263, 264, 381.
18 Birmingham Post, June 16, 1939; Birmingham News, July 14, 1939; Bunche, “The Political Status of the Negro,” 2:456–58, 470; Hudson interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 262–63.
19 “Interview, Hartford Knight,” November 18, 1939, p. 44, in R. J. Bunche, “Field Notes—Southern Trip, Book IV,” n.d., typewritten manuscript, Box 82, Bunche Papers; Hudson interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 263, 268; Bunche, “The Political Status of the Negro,” 2:481; Lawson, Black Ballots, 56; Laurent Frantz interview with author.
20 Earl Browder, “An Historic Report on the South,” typescript, ca. 1938, Browder Papers, reel 3; Reed, “The Southern Conference,” 17, 25; Sullivan, “Gideon's Southern Soldiers,” 24–25.
21 Krueger, And Promises to Keep, 3–39; Dunbar, Against the Grain, 187–89; Charles H. Martin, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Front Liberalism,” 120–22; Reed, “The Southern Conference,” 20–23; Sullivan, “Gideon's Southern Soldiers,” 25–60; Robert F. Hall, “The SCHW,” 57–59. Most historians argue that Lucy Randolph Mason put Gelders in touch with Mrs. Roosevelt, but Rob Hall, Gelders's closest collaborator, strongly disagrees. Marge Frantz also corroborates Hall's version (Robert F. Hall, “Those Southern Liberals,” 491; Marge Frantz interview with author).
22 Robert F. Hall, “Those Southern Liberals,” 491; Charles H. Martin, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Front Liberalism,” 120–21; SCHW, Report of Proceedings, 13; Robert F. Hall, “The SCHW,” 62–63; Reed, “The Southern Conference,” 49–52.
23 Robert F. Hall, “Those Southern Liberals,” 491; Charles H. Martin, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Front Liberalism,” 120–21; SCHW, Report of Proceedings, 13; Reed, “The Southern Conference,” 32–33; Durr interview (COHP), “The Reminiscences of Virginia Durr,” 3:128; Coke interview with author; Hall interview with author.
24 Paul Crouch, “The Southern Conference for Human Welfare,” New South 1 (January 1939): 7; Robert F. Hall, “The SCHW,” 62–63, and “To All Southern Progressive Leaders,” New South 1 (January 1939): 14.
25 Painter, Narrative, 290–91; Hall interview with author; Hudson interview with author.
26 U. S. Congress, House, Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation, 7:4482–84, 4765–67; and for a broader discussion of the Dies Committee's impact, see Wreszin, “The Dies Committee, 1938.”
27 Mitchell interview (COHP), “The Reminiscences of H. L. Mitchell,” 120–22; Howard Kester to Francis Miller, March 19, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers; Charles H. Martin, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Front Liberalism,” 124; Durr, Outside the Magic Circle, 123.
28 Clarence Poe to Frank Graham, December 10, 1938, and Sallie F. Hill to Clarence Poe, December 10, 1938, Box 10, FPG Papers. See also W. H. Pitts to Jimmie Jones, November 30, 1938, William M. Greenwood, president, Five Points Progressive Club, to J. M. Jones, November 30, 1938; Resolution on SCHW, by Associated White Collar Workers, Council #1, signed by C. O. Hubbard, president, n.d.; White E. Gibson to J. M. Jones, Jr., November 25, 1938; Merrill P. Smith to City Commission, November 25, 1938; W. A. Currie to J. M. Jones, November 25, 1938; Marvin Pearce to Jimmie Jones and Eugene (Bull) Connor, November 26, 1938; W. T. McCurdy to J. M. Jones, November 24, 1938; Jimmie Jones to Joseph Starnes, November 29, 1938; Joe Starnes to J. M. Jones, December 1, 1938; all in Folder 43, JMJ Papers.
29 Charles F. DeBardeleben to Frank Graham, January 2, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers; Hubert Baughn, ed. of Alabama to Frank Graham, December 26, 1938, Box 10, ibid; quotation from “Editorial,” Alabama, November 13, 1939; and for background on the magazine, see “Interview with Bob Kimsey, Labor and Industrial Reporter, Birmingham, Alabama, conducted by George C. Stoney,” (1940), p. 1, Box 83, Bunche Papers.
30 Birmingham News, April 13, 1939; “Interview with Mabel Jones West conducted by George C. Stoney,” (1940), pp. 3–8, Box 83, Bunche Papers; “Wake Up! Southern Men and Women,” AWDC leaflet, ca. 1939, Box C-l, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, February 8, 1940.
31 Frank Graham to Joseph Gelders, January 15, 1940, Box 15, FPG Papers; Francis P. Miller to Graham, December 21, 1938, and Luther Patrick to Graham, December 1, 1938, Box 10, ibid; Reed, “The Southern Conference,” 55–58; Charles Martin, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Front Liberalism,” 124; Ashby, Frank Porter Graham, 158–60; Dunbar, Against the Grain, 187–91; Hamilton, Lister Hill, 107; Robert F. Hall, “The SCHW,” 65; Hall interview with author; Rob Hall to Louise O. Charlton, February 9, 1939, Charlton to Graham, n.d., Box 12, FPG Papers. A few months later, Graham reported only four Communists (Frank Graham to Francis P. Miller, February 15, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers).
32 Sullivan, “Gideon's Southern Soldiers,” 97–98; James C. Foster, Union Politics; Norrell, “Labor at the Ballot Box,” 13–15; Wreszin, “The Dies Committee,” 288–91; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, February 8, 1940, O'Connell quotations from Alabama (CIO) News Digest, November 10, 1938, and December 8, 1938.
33 Alabama (CIO) News Digest, August 31, 1939; Hall interview with author; Noel R. Beddow to Congressman Joe Starnes, January 14, 1939, Box 1, Taft Papers; Noel R. Beddow to the Editor, Birmingham Post, December 1, 1938, Folder 43, JMJ Papers. Aside from Joe Gelders and other Birmingham Communists, the only influential figure in the labor movement who opposed the expulsion of Communists from the CIO was Charles Stelzle, executive director of a CIO support group called the Good Neighbor Club and writer for the Southern Labor Review. By no means sympathetic to Communism, Stelzle argued that the issue of civil liberties was at stake since “many of the workers sincerely believe in the principle of Communism” (Southern Labor Review, September 7, 1938).
34 DW, September 5, November 5, 1939; Klehr, Heyday of American Communism, 386–409; Dennis, Autobiography, 133–36; Charney, A Long Journey, 123–24; Jaffe, Rise and Fall, 38–48; Naison, Communists in Harlem, 287–90.
35 Marge Frantz interview with author; Hall interview with author; Hudson interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Virginia Durr to Frank Graham, n.d. [ca. November 1939], and Joe Gelders to Durr, November 10, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers. See also Roger N. Baldwin to Graham, January 9, 1940; Graham to Gelders, January 15, 1940; Gelders to Graham, January 17, 1940; Frank Mcallister to Graham, March 18, May 11, 1940; all in Box 15, FPG Papers; SNA, February 29, 1940.
36 Clark Foreman to Graham, March 20, 1940, Box 15, FPG Papers; Charles H. Martin, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Front Liberalism,” 125–27; Frank McAllister, “Confidential Report on the Southern Conference for Human Welfare,” April 14, 1940, STFU Papers, reel 14; Marge Frantz interview with author; Krueger, And Promises to Keep, 61–63, 91–92.
37 Gelders to Frank Graham, September 20, 1939, Box 31, SCHW Papers; Reed, “The Southern Conference,” 64–67; “Minutes of Executive Board of Southern Conference for Human Welfare, Washington D.C., August 2, 1941,” Box 18, FPG Papers. The Communist office holders in the Alabama Committee for Human Welfare during the 1940s include Pauline Dobbs, Malcolm Dobbs, Mary Southard, Ordway “Spike” Southard, Sam Hall, and Louis Burnham. In Tennessee Marge Frantz was active in the SCHW and edited its journal, the Southern Patriot. (See Epilogue.)
38 Eugene Dennis, “The Bolshevization of the Communist Party of the United States in the Struggle against the Imperialist War,” Communist 19 (May 1940): 406–7; Browder, Second Imperialist War, Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 494–96; Robert F. Hall, “New Forces for Peace,” 702.
1 Robert F. Hall, “New Forces for Peace”; SNA, March 23, September 19, November 7, 1940.
2 SNA, January 25, 1940; Marge Frantz interview with author; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Pauline Dobbs to James Dombrowski, October 1, 1945, Box 18, SCHW Papers; Memorandum from S. K. McKee to J. Edgar Hoover, January 13, 1942, re: Joseph Gelders, FBI HQ File 61–9512; Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 83; Hudson interview with author; SNA, August 22, 1940.
3 SNA, March 30, April 6, 13, 1940. For a discussion of the radical social gospel in the 1930s, see Dunbar, Against the Grain; Robert F. Martin, “A Prophet's Pilgrimage”; Belfrage, A Faith to Free the People; Richard Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr; Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society; Richard Stone, Paul Tillich's Radical Social Thought.
4 SNA, March 16, 23, 30, April 6, 13, June 18, 1940. Through the auspices of Claude Williams's People's Institute of Applied Religion, Maxey and West tried to take their teachings directly to the people of Birmingham by holding a series of seminars, but their message of racial equality and class struggle did not find a ready audience (Howard Lee to Claude Williams, October 4, 1940; Alton Lawrence to Claude Williams, July 2, 1941; Williams to Lawrence, July 8, 1941; all in Box 48, SCHW Papers).
5 Helen Fuller to Frank Graham, January 20, 1939, and William McKee to Graham, June 6, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers; James F. Anderson circular letter, June 26, 1940, Box 170, J. B. Matthews Papers; Reed, “The Southern Conference,” 59–60; News of the Young Southerners, August 29, 1939.
6 Lee to Graham, June 9, 1939; McKee to Graham, June 6, 1939; Howard Kester to Francis Miller, March 19, 1939; Jack Tolbert to Josephine Wilkins, October 19, 1939; all in Box 12, FPG Papers; Reed, “The Southern Conference,” 63; Charles H. Martin, “The Rise and Fall of Popular Front Liberalism,” 126–27; News of The Young Southerners, August 29, 1939; Howard Lee to Frank Graham, November 14, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers; “League of Young Southerners,” n.d., typescript, “Council of Young Southerners,” n.d., typescript, Box 170, J. B. Matthews Papers.
7 SNA, May 30, July 25, 1940, February 6, March 27, 1941; Malcolm Dobbs to Joe Gelders, March 6, 1940, Box 29, SCHW Papers; Marge Frantz interview with author; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author; FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” March 11, 1944, p. 68, File 100–82; Scales and Nickson, Cause at Heart, 82.
8 Marge Frantz interview with author; FBI Report, “Margaret Gelders, Washington D.C. Division,” April 1, 1942, HQ File 100–20023, sect. 1.
9 DW, August 15, 1936; Memo on Ed Strong, n.d., Box 240, National Republic Files; Johnnetta Richards, “The SNYC,” 17–18; Augusta Strong, “Southern Youth's Proud Heritage,” 38–39; Cicero Hughes, “Toward a Black United Front,” 172–73; Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 609–10; Lloyd Brown, “Southern Youth's Heritage.”
10 DW, August 15, 1936; James E. Jackson interview with author; SNA, August 7, 1941; quotation from Augusta Strong, “Southern Youth's Proud Heritage,” 41; Augusta V. Jackson [Strong], “A New Deal for Tobacco Workers,” 324; FBI Identification Order 2437, “Wanted: James Edward Jackson, Jr.,” July 7, 1951; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL).
11 Quoted in FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” March 11, 1944, p. 2, File 100–82; Chicago Defender, August 10, 1939; Augusta Strong, “Southern Youth's Proud Heritage,” 37, 39; Carl Ross, “Problems of Reconstructing the Young Communist League,” Communist 16 (July 1937): 662; Johnnetta Richards, “The SNYC,” 27–45; Cicero Hughes, “Toward a Black United Front,” 146; SW, April 1937; Augusta V. Jackson [Strong], “A New Deal for Tobacco Workers,” 322–24, 330; James E. Jackson interview with author; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL).
12 SNYC, Official Proceedings, 1938; “Proclamation of Southern Negro Youth—For Freedom, Equality and Opportunity,” leaflet, ca. 1938, Box 2, Stone Collection; Augusta V. Jackson [Strong], “Southern Youth Marches Forward,” 170–71, 188–89; Henry Winston, “Freedom, Equality and Opportunity: Southern Negro Youth Congress Charts Road to Progress,” New South 1 (May 1938): 10–11; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); Augusta Strong, “Southern Youth's Proud Heritage,” 40; Hudson interview with author; Coke interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 250.
13 “Third All-Southern Negro Youth Conference—Tentative Program, April 28–30, 1939, Birmingham, Alabama,” mimeo, FBI File 100–82; Circular letter from H. D. Coke, Chairman, Speakers Bureau for SNYC, n.d. [ca. 1939], Birmingham, Alabama, FBI File 100–82; Ed Strong to Olive Stone, March 13, 1939, Box 2, Stone Collection; Coke interview with author.
14 Quotation from Augusta V. Jackson [Strong], “Youth Meets in Birmingham,” 178; Augusta Strong, “Southern Youth's Proud Heritage,” 42; New South 1 (May 1939): 9; Lee Coller, “Not Since Reconstruction: Third All-Southern Negro Youth Conference Shows Awakening of Negro People,” New Masses 31 (May 30, 1939): 13; Johnnetta Richards, “The SNYC,” 118; “SNYC—Forum” (OHAL), As with the SCHW a few months earlier, SNYC's conference had a run-in with Birmingham police. Singer Marian Anderson was scheduled to perform at the conference, but city officials barred her from Constitution Hall where she was to make her appearance.
15 Delegate's quotation from Augusta V. Jackson [Strong], “Youth Meets in Birmingham,” 178; Folder, “Youth Council Alabama, 1938–1939,” Box E-2, NAACP Papers, Youth Division Files; Ethel Lee Goodman to Juanita Jackson, September 21, 1937, Box G-3, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Johnson quotation from Charles Johnson, “Source Material for Patterns of Negro Segregation, Birmingham, Alabama,” n.d., memorandum, 19, CMS Collection, reel 5. Birmingham World editor Emory O. Jackson recalled in a later interview that black youth were not active at all in the NAACP during the late 1930s. (Emory O. Jackson interview [CRDP], 11).
16 FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” April 24, 1941, p. 6, File 100–79; FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” March 11, 1944, p. 20, File 100–82; Hudson interview with author; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author.
17 SNA, February 6, March 27, 1941; Howard Kester to Francis Miller, March 19, 1939, Box 12, FPG Papers; Marge Frantz interview with author.
18 National Youth Administration, “Study of Employment in Alabama by Race and Sex,” ca. 1937, pp. 1, 4, Box 10, J. E. Bryan, “National Youth Administration, Monthly NYA Narrative Report for State of Alabama,” July 1937, p. 4, Box 1, Records of the National Youth Administration, RG 119; Robert C. Johnson, “Delinquency of Negro Youth in Birmingham,” 12–13; and see John B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era, chap. 9, for a discussion of New Deal-inspired optimism, and Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South, 274, for a discussion of increased black college enrollment.
19 Ethel Lee Goodman to Juanita Jackson, September 21, 1937, Box G-3, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Hudson, “Highlights of Some of the United Labor Struggles,” 69; John Williams, “Struggles in the Thirties in the South,” 177; DW, February 22, 1938.
20 Sallye B. Davis interview, untranscribed tape, NPHH Collection; Sallye B. Davis interview (BPRM), 1–2; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author. Davis's maiden name was Bell.
21 Esther Cooper Jackson to author, September 15, 1988; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author.
22 Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author; Cavalcade 1, no. 2 (May 1941); FBI Report, “SNYC,” August 14, 1947, File 100–6548-291; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); James E. Jackson interview with author; FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” April 25, 1942, p. 19, File 100–82; SNA, August 7, 1941.
23 SNA, December 5, 1940; Cavalcade 1, no. 1 (April 1941): 3, and no. 2 (May 1941): 3; James E. Jackson interview with author; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author; and for a comparison of the role of quilting in the network of female slaves, see White, Ar'nt a Woman? 123.
24 Circular letter from Margie Gelders to Fellow Americans, August 23, 1940, Box 37, SCHW Papers; Marge Frantz interview with author; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author; Patton interview (BPRM), 6. Efforts to increase wives’ participation in political work apparently succeeded in a few cases. During the early 1940s Henry O. Mayfield's second wife, Annie Mae, was very active in both SNYC and the ladies’ auxiliary of the UMWA in Birmingham (FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” March 11, 1944, pp. 34, 75, File 100–82; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author).
25 Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author. Esther Cooper Jackson's assessment holds true for SNYC leaders Louis and Dorothy Burnham, who moved to Birmingham in 1942. (See Epilogue.)
26 Quotation from Marge Frantz interview with author; James E. Jackson interview with author; Hall interview with author. On the concept of “movement culture,” see Goodwyn, The Populist Moment, xix; and for a discussion of its application to CP internal life, see Lieberman, “People's Songs,” 66.
27 Laurent Frantz interview with author; James E. Jackson interview with author; also Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author.
28 Quotation from Augusta V. Jackson [Strong], “Southern Youth Marches Forward,” 188; Cavalcade 1, no. 3 (June 1941): 2–4; Augusta Strong, “Southern Youth's Proud Heritage,” 43; Chicago Defender, August 10, 1939; FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” April 1, 1941, FBI File 100–82; James E. Jackson interview with author; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); SNA, December 5, 1940, January 30, 1941; Johnnetta Richards, “The SNYC,” 119–21; FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” April 1, 1941, File 100–82.
29 Richards, “The SNYC,” 112–13.
30 Cavalcade 1, no. 3 (June 1941): 4.
31 Cavalcade 1, no. 1 (April 1941): 4. On Cuney see Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, 114–15.
32 Cavalcade 1, no. 4 (October 1941). Cuney added music to “Uncle Sam Says” and it was recorded by Josh White (Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest, 106).
33 Cavalcade 1, no. 3 (June 1941): 4.
34 Ibid., no. 2 (May 1941): 3.
35 Ibid., no. 3 (June 1941).
36 Ibid., no. 2 (May 1941). The author of “The People to Lincoln, Douglass,” is identified as A. S., which stands for Augusta Strong, though at the time she used her maiden name Jackson.
37 FBI Report, “SNYC, New Orleans,” April 28, 1940, p. 2, File 61–218; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); Chicago Defender, May 18, 1940.
38 FBI Report, “SNYC, New Orleans,” April 28, 1940, p. 2, File 61–218; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); Chicago Defender, May 18, June 29, 1940; Johnnetta Richards, “The SNYC,” 91–97. See also NAACP, Birmingham Branch, Advancement (Birmingham, 1941), pamphlet; Frederick Morrow to Walter White, March 27, 1940; Memo from Frederick Morrow to Executive Staff, April 4, 1940; all in Box C-l, NAACP Papers, Branch files. In fact, NAACP leader and Birmingham World editor Emory O. Jackson was at times somewhat sympathetic to the Communists. James Ford's 1940 tour of Birmingham was reported quite favorably in the World, as was his vice-presidential campaign (Birmingham World, October 4, 11, 1940).
39 FBI Report, “SNYC, New Orleans,” April 28, 1940, p. 2, File 61–218; James E. Jackson, Our Battle for the Ballot, 8–9.
40 Augusta Strong, “Southern Youth's Proud Heritage,” 43–44; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); Bunche, “The Political Status of the Negro,” 2:451–52; copy of SNYC pamphlet, Let Us Vote (1940), FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham, Alabama,” April 1, 1941, File 100–82, sect. 1; James E. Jackson interview with author. Months following the arrests, several black miners formed the Hamilton Slope Young Southerners Youth Club in April 1941. Its vice-chairman was none other than Henry O. Mayfield (Cavalcade 1, no. 3 [June 1941]: 1).
41 Edward E. Strong to Joseph Gelders, October 24, 1940, Box 24, SCHW Papers; Birmingham World, November 1, 1940; quotation in SNA, November 14, 1940.
42 Cavalcade 1, no. 2 (May 1941): 2; SNA, April 3, 1941.
43 SNA, June 5, 1941; FBI Report, “Laurent Frantz, Birmingham Division, January 6, 1942,” p. 5, HQ File 100–20023, sect. 1; FBI Report, “Joe Gelders, Birmingham Division, March 26, 1942,” p. 2, HQ File 61–9512; Birmingham World, May 13, 1941.
44 Birmingham World, May 13, 1941; see also Johnnetta Richards, “The SNYC,” 100–108.
45 FBI Report, “Laurent Frantz, Birmingham Division,” May 19, 1941, p. 2, HQ File 100–20023; Laurent Frantz interview with author; SNA, August 1, 22, 1940; Joseph Gelders to Gifford Cochran, August 23, 1940, and Circular Letter from Margie Gelders, August 23, 1940, Box 37, SCHW Papers; Memorandum from S. K. McKee to J. Edgar Hoover, January 13, 1942, re: Joseph Gelders, FBI HQ File 61–9512.
46 SNA, August 22, 1940; Memorandum from S. K. McKee to J. Edgar Hoover, January 13, 1942, re: Joseph Gelders, FBI HQ File 61–9512; Marge Frantz interview with author. See also “We Challenge the Birmingham Police Department,” handbill, ca. August 1940; Joseph Gelders to Gifford Cochran, August 23, 1940; Circular Letter from Margie Gelders, August 23, 1940; “Statement of Joseph S. Gelders before the Birmingham City Commission, August 20, 1940”; “Statement of the Rev. Malcolm Cotton Dobbs, Executive Secretary of the League of Young Southerners, before the Birmingham City Commission, Tuesday Morning, August 20, 1940”; all in Box 37, SCHW Papers.
47 Joseph Gelders to Gifford Cochran, August 23, 1940, Box 37, SCHW Papers; Laurent Frantz interview with author; Coker et al., Digest of the Public Record of Communism, 307.
48 Jefferson Richards, “Nora Wilson was too ‘Uppity,’” The Review 5 (December, 1940): 11; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); Cavalcade 1, no. 1 (April 1941): 1; quotation from Augusta V. Jackson, “Free at Last,” Cavalcade 1, no. 3 (June 1941); James E. Jackson interview with author; Johnnetta Richards, “The SNYC,” 82–83.
49 “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); Cavalcade 1, no. 1 (April 1941): 1, and no. 3 (June 1941): 1; SNA, May 1, 1941; Birmingham World, May 2, 6, 1941.
50 Cavalcade 1, no. 3 (June 1941): 1; SNA, May 1, 1941; Birmingham World, May 2, 6, 1941; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL).
51 SNA, February 20, 1941; Cavalcade 1, no. 3 (June 1941): 1; Scales and Nickson, Cause at Heart, 119–21; SNA, May 22, August 14, 1941; Memorandum re: Joseph Gelders from S. K. McKee to J. Edgar Hoover, January 13, 1942, FBI HQ File 61–9512; Marge Frantz interview with author; SNA, May 22, 29, 1941.
52 SNA, July 3, 10, 1941; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, My 3,10, 1941. For a discussion of the CPUSA's response to Germany's invasion of Russia, see Isserman, Which Side Were You On? chap. 6.
53 Sidney Rittenberg to Frank Graham, August 26, 1941, Box 18, FPG Papers; Cavalcade 1, no. 5 (November 1941), and no. 1 (May 1942); FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham,” June 17, 1942, p. 3, File 100–82; DW, April 22, 26, 1942.
54 SNA, August 21, 1941; Cavalcade 1, no. 4 (October 1941): 4–5.
1 Painter, Narrative, 307.
2 Ibid., 314; Mayfield, “Memoirs”;DW, February 6, 1944; Norrell, “Caste in Steel,” 679–81; Noel R. Beddow to Mercedes Daughtery, July 27, 1943, Box 1, Taft Papers; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, May 4, 1949; on the Mobile uprising, see Shapiro, White Violence, 338–39; National Urban League, “Summary of a Report on the Race Riots in the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company Yards in Mobile, Alabama,” typescript, June 25, 1943, BUL Papers. For a brief period during and after the war, the Left in Mobile, which had been virtually nonexistent during the 1930s, had begun to gain a small following under the leadership of maritime union educational director William Zeuch and a local optometrist named Herbert P. McDonald. McDonald founded and presided over the Mobile Council of American-Soviet Friendship (Herbert P. McDonald to SCHW, February 3, 1945, James Dombrowski to Pvt. Robert Hardy, May 11, 1945, Box 18, SCHW Papers).
3 YCL, Weekly Review, June 16, 1942; Cavalcade 2, no. 1 (May 1942); SNYC, A Public Appeal to the President; FBI Report, “SNYC, Washington, D.C.,” July 8, 1942, p. 2, File 100–6294; Memo from D. K. Brown, SAC, to Director, December 11, 18, 1943, January 18, 1944, and Memo from R. J. Abbaticchio, Jr., to Director, March 18, 1944, FBI File BH-100–82-1E.
4 Birmingham World, October 15, 26, 1943; SNYC Press Release, “Montgomery Citizens Launch Registration Campaign,” May 24, 1944, Vertical Files, Moorland-Springarn Research Center; Patton interview (BPRM), 1–2; SNYC, Proceedings—6th All-Southern Negro Youth Conference; James E. Jackson interview with author; FBI Report, “SNYC, Birmingham,” March 11, 1944, File 100–82.
5 Thelma Dale, “New Currents in the South,” Congress View 1, no. 7 (December 1943): 6, and 2, no. 6 (September 1944): 7; Oscar Bryant, “Draft Constitution for Rural Clubs,” typescript, n.d., NNC Papers, reel 41; FBI Report, “NNC, Birmingham,” March 10, 1944, File HQ 61–6728-372, sect. 8; FBI Report, “NNC, Birmingham,” September 30, 1944, File HQ 61–6728-434; FBI Report, “NNC, Birmingham,” July 18, 1944, File HQ 61–6728-414; FBI Report, “NNC, Birmingham,” June 9, 1945, File HQ 61–6728-480.
6 Memo from D. K. Brown to Director, December 18, 1943, Memo from R. J. Abbaticchio, Jr., to Director, March 18, 1944, FBI File 100–82-1E.
7 Hudson interview with author; Painter, Narrative, 306–8; Memo from R. J. Abbaticchio, Jr., to Director, June 1, 21, July 18, 1944, FBI File BH 100–82-1E. Hudson's claim that Rob Hall was district organizer when the CP was liquidated is not entirely accurate. Following Browder's Teheran speech on January 7, 1944, in which he alluded to the possibility of disbanding the Party, Hall discussed Browder's remarks and the CP's future with the Alabama cadre. But by the time it became official policy, May 20, 1944, Hall had already left for the army (Abbaticchio to Director, June 21, 1944, FBI File BH 100–82-1E; Hall interview with author; Isserman, Which Side Were You On? 184–203).
8 Circular letter from Pauline Dobbs and Rev. D. C. Whitsett, July 18, 1944; Pauline Dobbs to Marge Frantz, August 23, 1944; Pauline Dobbs to James Dombrowski, February 19, 1945; all in Box 18, SCHW Papers; “Organizational Report of Alabama Chapter, July 1944 through December 1944,” pp. 5–7, and “Minutes of Meeting of Alabama Chapter, June 30, 1944,” Box 42, SCHW Papers; Memo from R. J. Abbaticchio, Jr., to Director, July 3, 18, November 21, December 11, 29, 1944, February 13, 1945, FBI File 100–82-1E.
9 Hudson interview with author; Birmingham Post, October 23, 1947; Alabama, September 5, 1947; Pauline Dobbs to James Dombrowski, November 14, 1945, Box 18, SCHW Papers; Salmond, “Vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement,” 51–60; Southern Farmer, August 1945, January, June, October, 1946, April and September, 1947; Alabama, December 15, 1950; Circular letter from Aubrey Williams, August 11, 1947, Box 31, SCHW Papers.
10 For a description of the CPUSA in postwar United States, see Isserman, Which Side Were You On? 214–47; Starobin, American Communism in Crisis; Buhle, Marxism in the United States, 194–97.
11 Painter, Narrative, 309–10; Marge Frantz interview with author; FBI Internal Security-C Memo, “Justification for Continuation of Technical or Microphone Surveillance: SNYC,” December 5, 1946, File 100–82-1E.
12 “The Communist Party's Economic and Political Program for the South,” typescript, 1945, 1–7, Box 14, Minor Papers. On the revival of the black belt theory in 1946, see Haywood, Black Bolshevik, 548–59, and Haywood, Negro Liberation; Frank Scott, “An Inquiry,” 103–26; William Z. Foster et al., Communist Position on the Negro Question; and the string of articles published in Political Affairs between 1946 and 1950.
13 Malcolm Dobbs to Clark Foreman, June 8, 1946; Martin Knowlton to James Dombrowski, June 27, 1946; Malcolm Dobbs to Dombrowski, June 10, 1946, “Our Men Fought for the Right to Vote,” handbill, January 1946, quotation from Malcolm Dobbs to Dombrowski, May 7, 1946; all in Box 3, SCHW Papers; Committee for Alabama Press Release, “County School Board Undercuts Democracy in Fight against Court Decree to Equalize Pay of County School Teachers,” n.d., ca. 1948, Box 17, SCHW Papers; on the Boswell Amendment see, Birmingham World, January 11, 1949; Birmingham News, March 28, November 19, 20, 1949, January 22, 29, 1950; Alabama, September 6, 1946; Vera Chandler Foster, “ ‘Boswellianism’”; Lawson, Black Ballots, 90–93; on Folsom's 1946 progressive agenda, see Sims, The Little Man's Big Friend, 80–82; Grafton, “James E. Folsom and Civil Liberties”; Alabama, March 22, 1946.
14 Scales and Nickson, Cause at Heart, 162, 192; Birmingham World, May 9, 1947; Alabama, April 4, 1947. Ross's efforts to create a public presence in the South is also discussed in Korstad, “The Communist Party in Winston-Salem.” Communists in the CIO and SNYC, however, did not reveal their Party membership, although they publicly opposed any efforts to outlaw the CPUSA. See for example, Internal Security-C, Memo, “Justification for Continuation of Technical or Microphone Surveillance: SNYC,” December 5, 1946, FBI File 100–82-1E.
15 Alabama General Assembly, Senate Journal, Regular Session, 1947, 1:92, 370; Alabama, August 8, 1947; Memo on Report of HUAC from National Office, SCHW, no. 019230, Edmonia Grant to Don West, September 5, 1947, Box 11, SCHW Papers; U.S. Congress, House, Un-American Activities, Committee Report on the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. See also Carey E. Haigler to John Brophy, March 9, 1948; W. S. Hixon and Hosea Hudson to Brophy, n.d.; Eugene Wells to Brophy, April 6, 1948; Communication from W. S. Hixon, Secretary, Local 2815, to Alabama State Industrial Union Council, November 26, 1947, Resolution of Local 660-B, UPW-CIO, n.d.; Resolution of Local 1700, USA-CIO, n.d.; all in Box 6, CIO Records; Reuben Fair to Philip Murray, December 1, 1947, Box 1, Taft Papers; DW, December 14, 1947; Birmingham News, March 3, 1948; FBI Report, “Hosea Hudson, Birmingham,” September 13–15, 1948, pp. 4–5, File 100–743 fc. After being driven out of the CIO, the Dobbses worked for the SCHW in Mobile for a few months before moving to Texas in 1948 (Malcolm Dobbs to Edmonia Grant, July 7, 1947; Pauline Dobbs to Edmonia Grant, December 5, 1947; Grant to Pauline Dobbs, December 9, 1947; all in Box 17, SCHW Papers).
16 Stetson Kennedy, “Interview with Dr. E. P. Pruitt, KKK, Birmingham, Alabama,” August 16, 1946 (typescript), Box 1, Kennedy Papers; Alabama, February 25, 1949; Wayne Clark, “An Analysis,” 8–41; Norrell, “Labor at the Ballot Box,” 14–15; quotation from Southern Labor Review, April 7, 1948. One survey conducted in the 1950s concluded that Southerners were more anti-Communist than the rest of the country (Stouffer, Communism, Conformity, and Civil Liberties, 204).
17 “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); SNYC, “The Battle of Birmingham,” (typescript, 1948), Box 21, SCHW Papers; Birmingham Age Herald, May 1, 3, 1948; Sunday Worker, May 9, 16, 1948; Birmingham Post, April 9, 26, 1948; Birmingham News, May 3, 1948; Birmingham World, April 13, 16, May 1, 4, 7, 1948; Coke interview (WLC), 12–13; Memo from G. D. King to Director, April 28, 1948, FBI File 100–82; Recorders Court, City of Birmingham, Transcript of Case No. 53989, City of Birmingham v. Glen Taylor: Remarks of Honorable Oliver B. Hall, May 4, 1948 mimeo, copy in Box 21, SCHW Papers; Johnnetta Richards, “The SNYC,” 186–98.
18 Quotation from Birmingham World, January 2, 1948; Birmingham World, February 6, 16, 1948; Daniel Byrd, assistant field secretary to Gloster B. Current, director of branches, September 26, 1949, Box C-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Noel Gaines to Governor Jim Folsom, March 23, 1948, Drawer 235, Governor Folsom Papers; Mrs. Ora H. Thornton to Governor Jim Folsom, January 25, 1948, Drawer 244, Governor Folsom Papers.
19 Southern Farmer, April, September, 1948; Hudson interview with author; Sullivan, “Gideon's Southern Soldiers,” 248–49; Alabama, September 3, 1948; Emory O. Jackson, Chairman of Research Committee, “Proposed Alabama Progressive Democratic Association,” typescript, June 19, 1948, p. 3, Box C-2, NAACP Papers, Branch Files; Painter, “Hosea Hudson and the Progressive Party”; Loveman, Presidential Vote in Alabama, 23.
20 “Report of the President of the Alabama State Industrial Union Council, Period from March 1, 1949 to March 1, 1950,” typescript, March 1, 1950, pp. 1, 5, Box 2, Taft Papers; Birmingham Age-Herald, May 29, 1949; Birmingham Post-Herald, September 4, 1950, Birmingham World, May 12, 1949; Proceedings of the Alabama State Industrial Union Council, Ninth Constitutional Convention, CIO, 1948, typescript, n.d., 271–74, Box 2, Taft Papers; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, May 4, 1949; for a discussion of Mine Mill's expulsion and its violent aftermath, see especially, Huntley, “The Rise and Fall of Mine Mill,” 7–13; Huntley, “Iron Ore Miners,” 110–69; Alabama (CIO) News Digest, April 27, May 18, 25, 1949; Underwood interview (WLC), 2–3; Jensen, Nonferrous Metals Industry Unionism, 233–38; Hudson, “Struggle against Philip Murray's Racist Policies,” 55–57.
21 Connor, “Birmingham Wars on Communism,” 37–38; Anne McCarty Braden to Cooper Green, July 18, 1950, Folder 6.18, Green Papers; Home, Communist Front! 195; Coker et al., Digest of the Public Record of Communism, 384–86; Alabama General Assembly, House Journal, Regular Session, 1951, 1:1106, 2:2483; DW, May 30, July 17, 1950; Sunday Worker, June 26, 1949; Hudson interview with author.
22 Hudson interview with author; Esther Cooper Jackson interview with author; “SNYC—Forum,” (OHAL); William Patterson to Asbury Howard, August 4, 1952, Howard to Patterson, August 7, 1952, reel 4, CRC Papers; Horne, Communist Front? 195; Confidential Memorandum from Herbert Hill to Walter White, May 8–17, 1953, Box 6, CIO Records.
23 Carson, In Struggle, 162–65; Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power, 98–103; Smith interview with author, July 12, 1989.
24 Smith interview with author, July 12, 1989; Carson, In Struggle, 300–301.
25 Painter, Narrative; Rosengarten, All God's Dangers; conversation with Nell Irvin Painter; Jennifer Hadley to author, April 27, 1989; Frank Rich, “Out of the Old South, the Word of a Witness,” New York Times, October 23, 1989; NAARPR postcard and miscellaneous pamphlets in author's possession; “A Celebration of 50 Years of Southern Struggle and a Vision for the 21st Century,” flyer, n.d., and “What SOC Is,” flyer, n.d., both in author's possession. I am indebted to Anne Braden for providing information about the Southern Organizing Committee and to a Birmingham activist, who shall remain nameless, for information about the NAARPR and the Paul Robeson Club. As this book went to press, the Birmingham NAARPR was engaged in a fight to remove Johnny Imani Harris from Alabama's death row. Harris was eventually released three years after the publication of Hammer and Hoe.