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Scottsboro Boys standing

Ada Wright, The Scottsboro Defense Campaign, and the Popular Front

The Scottsboro Case quickly became one of the most infamous international spectacles that would eventually define the interwar period.
Eugene V. Debs, in prison clothes, flanked by Socialist party leaders.

Free Speech Wasn't So Free 103 Years Ago

When 'seditious' and 'unpatriotic' speech was criminalized in the U.S.
Richard Wright

When Richard Wright Broke With the Communists

His posthumously released novel, “The Man Who Lived Underground,” was written during a crisis of political faith.
Robin D.G. Kelley

The Future of L.A. Is Here

On L.A. solidarity and the Black radical tradition.
Walkout participants in East LA in 1968.

The Long History of Mexican-American Radicalism

Mexican-American workers have a long tradition of radical organizing, stretching back to the days of the IWW and the mid-century Communist Party.
James Baldwin smoking at a table in the South of France in November 1979.

The Socialism of James Baldwin

By the end of his life, inspired by the radicalism of the Black Panthers, Baldwin was again ready to proclaim himself a socialist.
Artistic photo with american flags

Richard Hofstadter’s Discontents

Why did the historian come to fear the very movements he once would have celebrated?
Joseph McCarthy presenting a map.

The Real Legacy of a Demagogue

A new biography of Joseph McCarthy does not reckon with the devastating effects of anti-communism.
Black and white STFU members including Myrtle Lawrence and Ben Lawrence listen to Norman Thomas speak outside Parkin, Arkansas, on September 12, 1937. Louise Boyle / Kheel Center

When Black Sharecroppers in the South Rose Up

In the 1930s, Socialist and Communist organizers tried to help Black sharecroppers rise up against their oppressors.
Heavily armed police patrolling Los Angeles in the 1960s.

“No Matter How Different the Movements Were, the LAPD Targeted Every One of Them”

From the Black Panthers to the Communist Party, radical Los Angeles in the ’60s was a seething cauldron of unrest, united by the brutal repression of the LAPD.
A group of men gather at a headquarters of the Communist Party USA following a protest demanding pay raise and an end to police brutality, US, circa 1920. Hirz / Archive Photos / Getty

How McCarthyism and the Red Scare Hurt the Black Freedom Struggle

Union activists linked the struggle for black equality in housing, employment, and at the ballot box, to the broader struggle against capitalist domination.

The Inner Life of American Communism

Vivian Gornick’s and Jodi Dean’s books mine a lost history of comradeship, determination, and intimacy.

We’re Getting These Murals All Wrong

The murals have been denounced as demeaning, and defended as an exposé of America’s racist past. Both sides miss the point.

Before the Central Park Five, There Was the Trenton Six

In both cases, false confessions were used against a group of black men with only precarious links to one another.

The Socialist Origins of Public Defense

The right to public defense wasn’t granted by elites. It was won by socialist-led mass movements.

“There Is a Scottsboro in Every Country”

A review of two new books that illuminate a range of still unrealized visions of anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-racism.
Edna Lewis in the kitchen.

The People of Freetown

Can renowned Southern chef and writer Edna Lewis' radical communist politics be parsed out by analyzing her cookbooks?

Black and Red

The history of Black Socialism in America.

Marx in the United States

A conversation with the author of a forthcoming book about the twists and turns of Marx's legacy in America.
partner

When ‘Free Speech’ Becomes a Political Weapon

What we can learn from liberal anti-communists.

America's Obsession With Rooting out Communism Is Making a Comeback

California lawmakers debate barring Communist party members from government jobs.
Young boy holding the Communist sickle and hammer, in black and white

Revisions in Red

A scholar wrestles with the legacy of her grandfather, onetime leader of America’s Communist Party.
Woody Guthrie.

This Land Is Our Land

The Popular Front and American culture.
Pete Seeger.

American Dreamers

Pete Seeger, William F. Buckley, Jr., and public history.
Stokely Carmichael talking to members of the press at the House Rules Committee (1966).

Watching the Watchers

Confessions of an FBI special agent.
Antiwar march on October 31, 1970. Marchers holding a banner reading "Chicano Power" and "Remember Reuben Salazar."

Mapping American Social Movements

Interactive maps showing the historical geography of influential American social movements since the late 19th century.
Fistfight in Peekskill, NY, 1949.

75 Years Ago, the KKK and Anti-communists Teamed Up to Violently Stop a Folk Concert in NY

Racist mobs attacked a 1949 concert in Peekskill, NY, raising anti-communist fervor and showing how hatred could gain legitimacy amid today’s political turmoil.
summer campers around a fire
partner

Around the Campfire with Paul Robeson

The history of Camp Wo-Chi-Ca tells a largely overlooked story about left-wing politics and Black culture.
Sections of the US Constitution torn to be used as pennants.

Is the United States Too Devoted to the Constitution?

A new book argues that worship of the Constitution has distorted our politics.
partner

The Annotated Oppenheimer

Celebrated and damned as the “father of the atomic bomb,” theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer lived a complicated scientific and political life.

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