Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

By Robin D.G. Kelley

Book Overview

A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the "long Civil Rights movement," Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how, during the 1930s and 40s, Communists took on Alabama's repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality.

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. In this book, 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 forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals.

After discussing the book's origins and impact in a new preface written for this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Kelley reflects on what a militantly antiracist, radical movement in the heart of Dixie might teach contemporary social movements confronting rampant inequality, police violence, mass incarceration, and neoliberalism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1469625482
• ISBN13: 9781469625485
• Release Date: August 2015
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 412 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 8.8"

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.