Customer Reviews

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)

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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.

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.

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.

I believe that Prof. Kelley -along with Profs Linebaugh and Rediker- are the most important historians writing these days. Prof. Kelley --apart from being a splendid writer-- challenges
the mythology or I should say cliches that passes for the history of a people though long suffering and abused , never stopped resisting the most baroque and savage indignities and repression visited upon them. No one having read Hammer and Hoe will ever want to see such enormities as Birth of a Nation or Gone with the Wind. More importantly, Kelley powerfully shows that African Americans were not beaten into a state of passivity (a view held even by some of the noblest members of SNCC) but rather fought tenaciously for their rights. Though Prof. Kelley does not mention it (it is not part of this book's project) one would do well to remember that after the destruction of the Black section of Tulsa evidence reveals that more White people than Black ended up dead--however his description of the events of Camp Hill alone make the same point. . Nor is Prof. Kelley afraid to challenge Cold War lies. He points out that the leadership of the USSR was instrumental in forcing CPUSA to give priority to fighting racial injustice, a struggle which it embraced with more passion and dedication than any other "civil rights" organization at the time.
Black sharecroppers did call Stalin the "new Lincoln" John Garner, Lemon Johnson DID read Lenin's State and Revolution and Stalin on the national question. They did look at organizations such as the NAACP with something bordering on contempt--as they sung" The NAACP no Moses/can stop us Blackies fighting the bosses...Teacher Lenin don said/Brothers all oppressed an po/Ain't it so?/Sho! Al Murphy did experience a sense of awe in the USSR and in fact married a Soviet woman.Ralph Gray, his niece Eula (who tried to raise funds for the imprisoned German Communist Ernst Taelmann) emerge as valiant heroes and though the Party was 95% black Lemon Johnson gave great credit to those white sharecroppers who dared to cast their lot with the SCU --women and men such as J.W. Davis a white sharecropper lynched for his courage and convictions. I doubt that any of these names will be shouted from the microphones of the "progressive" media or mentioned during the antics of Black History Month--but they resonate with passion and command the deepest respect in Prof. Kelley's pages. Kelley notes that other Socialist organizations became alienated from the Communists because of the CP's dedication to Black people--and for that dedication the CPUSA should be glorified rather than vilified as is the custom.
In the end however the CP helped flame the fans of resistance that had been there way before there was ever a Bolshevik revolution. Kelley quotes Ralph Gray's grandfather Alfred who announced or rather proclaimed in 1868 "I am not afraid to fight....and I will fight till hell freezes over. I may go to hell, my home is hell but the white man shall go there with me"
Robin Kelley allows us to see and and admire these folk and to hear their voices. For that we should be immensely grateful..