Summary of Robin D. G. Kelley's Hammer and Hoe

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 We were up against some tough terror. We couldn’t pity people. We had to work quietly, like the Abolitionists in the South during the Civil War, behind drawn shades and locked doors.
#2 The South was a new frontier for Communists eager to get on with the task of revolution. They brought with them the cultural and ideological baggage of a Northern, urban-based movement, including assumptions about the backwardness of Southern workers. But they also brought the idea that African Americans were an oppressed nation.
#3 The CPUSA chose Birmingham, the center of heavy industry in the South, as its headquarters. The first full-time organizers in Birmingham were Tom Johnson and Harry Jackson, two veteran white Communists who had been active trade union organizers in the North. They established contact with Italian metal worker James Giglio, who had written to the CP-led TUUL in New York.
#4 The Communist Party had a large influence on the black community in 1930s Birmingham. They held meetings in Capitol Park, which was often frequented by black and white workers alike. The police would regularly arrest Communists, but they continued to meet.

Sujets

• Communisme
• Post-Communism
• Socialism
• Communism
• Political Science
• Political Ideologies

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 16 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822512665
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Robin D. G. Kelley's Hammer and Hoe
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

We were up against some tough terror. We couldn’t pity people. We had to work quietly, like the Abolitionists in the South during the Civil War, behind drawn shades and locked doors.

#2

The South was a new frontier for Communists eager to get on with the task of revolution. They brought with them the cultural and ideological baggage of a Northern, urban-based movement, including assumptions about the backwardness of Southern workers. But they also brought the idea that African Americans were an oppressed nation.

#3

The CPUSA chose Birmingham, the center of heavy industry in the South, as its headquarters. The first full-time organizers in Birmingham were Tom Johnson and Harry Jackson, two veteran white Communists who had been active trade union organizers in the North. They established contact with Italian metal worker James Giglio, who had written to the CP-led TUUL in New York.

#4

The Communist Party had a large influence on the black community in 1930s Birmingham. They held meetings in Capitol Park, which was often frequented by black and white workers alike. The police would regularly arrest Communists, but they continued to meet.

#5

The Party launched a Southern-based radical weekly called the Southern Worker in 1930, and it was sold for two cents a copy. It was primarily focused on the problems of black working people, and it did not discuss the specific struggles of African-Americans.

#6

The Communist Party grew quickly in Birmingham, and by 1930 had gained a few adherents among white farmers and miners in northern Alabama counties.

#7

The Communist Party stepped up its relief efforts in Birmingham in 1930, holding demonstrations to draw attention to the plight of the jobless. The demonstrations were often met with hostility from the city’s white labor organizers, who were hostile to the idea of helping black workers.

#8

The Communist Party in Birmingham, Alabama, seemed suicidal to most poor people, as the political and financial power of the city’s corporate interests seemed unassailable. But for many unemployed or working with reduced hours, welfare was a necessity.

#9

The city commission tried to fix unemployment by creating jobs through public works projects. However, the jobs paid only twenty-five cents an hour for three eight-hour days. The Communists called for a government relief program that would provide the unemployed with a weekly minimum of ten dollars cash relief, free coal, carfare, and a minimum of twenty dollars per week for city relief jobs.

#10

Communist organizers in Birmingham worked with neighborhood relief committees to address the specific grievances of their members. They avoided confrontations with authorities by adopting more evasive tactics, such as flooding landlords with postcards and letters.

#11

The neighborhood relief committees in Birmingham were the key organizations that attracted black women to the Communist Party.

#12

The Party’s fight against inadequate relief measures and expanding unemployment brought a few hundred workers into its ever-widening circle. But it was the Communist-led ILD’s defense of nine young black men accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931 that boosted Party popularity in Birmingham’s black communities almost overnight.

#13

The circle of friends that Murphy created in the Stockham plant expanded to include Hosea Hudson, a fellow iron worker who had grown up in Georgia and had no trade union experience. They all joined the Communist Party in 1931.

#14

The Party leadership also underwent changes during this period. In 1931, district organizer Tom Johnson left Alabama for health reasons, and Harry Jackson stepped in to take his place.

#15

White women Communists were rarely given leadership positions, and when they were, they were usually relegated to mimeograph machines and occasional public speaking.

#16

The few white Southerners who were in the Communist Party during this period were usually unemployed industrial workers from the Birmingham district and coal miners and poor farmers from northern Alabama. They had a tradition of voting Republican, Populist, and Socialist, but their opposition to the planter class and the Big Mules overpowered their racism.

#17

The Party initially rejected or expelled whites who exhibited racial prejudice. But the policy was not very successful, for as Clyde Johnson recalled, when white Southerners were assigned to direct a unit in a black neighborhood, they were usually ostracized by their friends and neighbors.

#18

The Fish Committee hearings in 1930 show how difficult it was for the Communist Party to develop relationships and make connections with the white working class in Birmingham.

#19

In 1931, the Party’s future was directly tied to black working people, and they made sure to demonstrate that they were willing to fight for them. In 1932, they made good on their promise.

#20

The Communist Party’s campaign in Birmingham was not about voting, but rather about working-class unity. It focused on the plight of African-Americans, who were treated like dogs by their bosses.

#21

The Communist Party USA had a surprising amount of support in the South, particularly among black workers. The Party also had a difficult time building a following among poor white farmers in the North.

#22

The Communist Party in Birmingham focused on helping the unemployed, and by 1933, their membership had grown to nearly 500 people. The relief campaign was crucial to the formation of a local cadre, and the various tactics developed in the campaign would be valuable to the local Communists later on.

#23

The rural world Communist organizers entered in 1930–31 made the poverty-stricken streets of Birmingham look like a paradise. Cotton farmers were in the midst of a crisis that had begun at least a decade ago. After World War I, cotton prices plummeted, forcing planters to reduce acreage.

#24

The world of cotton culture was extremely difficult for women. Women had to rise early and prepare meals for the family, wash clothes by hand, and care for their children while their husbands were in the fields.

#25

The black belt counties where the literacy rate was as high as 35 and 40 percent in 1940 were also the locations of the most tenant resistance. In these areas, individualized forms of resistance were used to wrest small material gains or to retaliate against unfair landlords.

#26