“Hammer and Hoe – Alabama Communists During the Great Depression”

by Robin D.G. Kelley

A group book study for members of Portland DSA and fellow travelers.

Fridays, 6-7:30pm, August 27, September 3, 10, & 17

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Sponsored by the Bread and Roses Caucus

Order from University of North Carolina Press (or Amazon)

As we 21^st century socialists grapple with how to engage with today’s struggles for economic and racial justice, this book tells the story of how, during the 1930s and 40s, Communists took on Alabama’s repressive, racist police state, at the workplace and in the community.

The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth and renegade liberals.

Robin D.G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama’s farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party’s tactics and unique political culture. The result was a remarkably resilient movement.

We’ll be reading three chapters a week.