Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

By Robin D.G. Kelley

Book Overview

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 of the Party. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals.

In the South race pervaded virtually every aspect of Communist activity. And because the Party's call for voting rights, racial equality, equal wages for women, and land for landless farmers represented a fundamental challenge to the society and economy of the South, it is not surprising that Party organizers faced a constant wave of violence.

Kelley's analysis ranges broadly, examining such topics as the Party's challenge to black middle-class leadership; the social, ideological, and cultural roots of black working-class radicalism; Communist efforts to build alliances with Southern liberals; and the emergence of a left-wing, interracial youth movement. He closes with a discussion of the Alabama Communist Party's demise and its legacy for future civil rights activism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807842885
• ISBN13: 9780807842881
• Release Date: November 1990
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Grand Old Party

This is a first-rate history of the Communist Party and its fellow-travelers in Alabama during the depression. It describes the Party during the "third period" and the popular front era. While it does not discuss the ulterior motives of the Party in any great detail, it does help to establish the positive role of the Communists in the prehistory of the civil rights movement. It also gives glimpses of the life in the Party in Alabama including Communist songs sung to the tune of spirituals, and African-American Young Pioneers. In addition, book discusses the courage of the Communists in resisting racism. The attempt by radicals in the 1930's to change this country for the better has not found its rightful place in popular or high school history. This book helps to remedy that omission.

A powerful venture in American history

Kelley has produced a powerful and startling history of the deep south in the 1930s. He tackles a difficult subject both historically and ideologically (the relationship between poor black sharecroppers and the American Communist party). His tireless efforts at writing this book shine out of the pages unquestionably as does his deep, thoughtful intelligence. I would recommend this book for anyone interested in subversive U.S. history or just in a good read.

Excellent. HIghly Infoormative and Insightfuul.

This book is great, it undermines the conventional treatments of afro-american history and although it is focused in the south it takes a genuine look at the struggle to free the shackles from Afro-americans and lift the blanket of opressions.