Hammer and Hoe

Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

Paperback, 392 pages

English language

Published Nov. 16, 1990 by University of North Carolina Press.

ISBN:
978-0-8078-1921-0
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5 stars (2 reviews)

Between 1929 and 1941, the Communist Party organized and led a radical, militantly antiracist movement in Alabama -- the center of Party activity in the Depression South. Hammer and Hoe documents the efforts of the Alabama Communist Party and its allies to secure racial, economic, and political reforms. Sensitive to the complexities of gender, race, culture and class without compromising the political narrative, Robin Kelley illustrates one of the most unique and least understood radical movements in American history.

The Alabama Communist Party was built from scratch by working people who had no Euro-American radical political tradition. It was composed largely of poor blacks, most of whom were semiliterate and devoutly religious, but it also attracted a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, iconoclastic youth, and renegade liberals. Kelley shows that the cultural identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the development …

1 edition

Subjects

  • History
  • Politics
  • Labor History
  • Alabama
  • Black Studies
  • Great Depression
  • Communism
  • CPUSA
  • 20th Century
  • Nonfiction
  • Race

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