Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing

by Charisse Burden-Stelly, Jodi Dean

Overview

Black Communist women throughout the early to mid-twentieth century fought for and led mass campaigns in the service of building collective power in the fight for liberation. Through concrete materialist analysis of the conditions of Black workers, these women argued that racial and economic equality can only be achieved by overthrowing capitalism.

The first collection of its kind, Organize, Fight, Win brings together three decades of Black Communist women's political writings. In doing so, it highlights the link between Communism and Black liberation. Likewise, it makes clear how Black women fundamentally shaped, and were shaped by, Communist praxis in the twentieth century.

Organize, Fight, Win includes writings from card-carrying Communists like Dorothy Burnham, Williana Burroughs, Grace P. Campbell, Alice Childress, Marvel Cooke, Esther Cooper Jackson, Thelma Dale Perkins, Vicki Garvin, Yvonne Gregory, Claudia Jones, Maude White Katz, and Louise Thompson Patterson, and writings by those who organized alongside the Communist Party, like Ella Baker, Charlotta Bass, Thyra Edwards, Lorraine Hansberry, and Dorothy Hunton.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781839764974
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	10/04/2022
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.05(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.84(d)

About the Author

Charisse Burden-Stelly is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College. She is the author, with Gerald Horne, of W.E.B. DuBois: A Life in American History.

Jodi Dean is the author of numerous books, including The Communist Horizon, Crowds and Party and, most recently, Comrade.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction Charisse Burden-Stelly Jodi Dean 1

Section I Struggle in the Early Years 15

1 Two Articles on the Women's Day Court

Grace Campbell, 1925 17

2 Negro Work Has Not Been Entirely Successful

Williana Burroughs, 1928 21

3 How Shall the Negro Woman Vote?

Grace Campbell (writing as Grace Lamb), 1928 26

4 Trade Union Work Report

Williana Burroughs, 1929 28

5 Three Reports on Negro Women Workers

Williana Burroughs, 1930 31

Section II Organizing, Labor, and Militancy 41

6 Special Negro Demands

Maude White, 1932 45

7 Organizing the Unorganized: Two Articles on Unionization Efforts in Chicago

Thyra J. Edwards, 1935 49

8 Women's Department

Williana Burroughs, 1935 59

9 The Bronx Slave Market

Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke, 1935 62

10 Toward a Brighter Dawn

Louise Thompson, 1936 70

11 Attitudes of Negro Families on Relief-Another Opinion

Thyra J. Edwards, 1936 74

12 She Was in Paris and Forgot Chanel

Marvel Cooke, 1936 80

13 Negro Women in Our Party

Louise Thompson, 1937 84

14 Food Gets Scarcer and Scarcer on Spanish Front, Says Writer

Thyra J. Edwards, 1937 87

15 Excerpt from Memoirs on Scottsboro Boys Organizing

Louise Thompson Patterson, 1930s 91

16 The Negro Woman Domestic Worker in Relation to Trade Unionism

Esther V. Cooper, 1940 103

Section III Fighting Fascism 123

17 Negro Youth Organizing for Victory

Esther V. Cooper, 1942 126

18 Reconversion and the Negro People

Thelma Dale, 1945 142

19 On the Right to Self-Determination for the Negro People in the Black Belt

Claudia Jones, 1946 152

20 The Status of Negro Women in the United States of America

Thelma Dale, 1947 165

21 For New Approaches to Our Work Among Women

Claudia Jones, 1948 171

Section IV Winning Peace at Home and Abroad 177

22 International Women's Day and the Struggle for Peace

Claudia Jones, 1950 181

23 Union Leader Challenges Progressive America

Vicki Garvin, 1950 198

24 Proclamation of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice

Sojourners for Truth and Justice, 1951 202

25 Where Are YOU Hiding?

Dorothy Hunton, 1952 204

26 Egyptian People Fight for Freedom

Lorraine Hansberry, 1952 206

27 Our Cup Runneth Over

Sojourners for Truth and Justice, 1952 208

28 "Illegal" Conference Shows Peace Is Key to Freedom

Lorraine Hansberry, 1952 210

29 Southern Officers Treat Korean POWs

Like Negroes in the South

Eslanda Goode Robeson, 1952 214

30 Southern Tenants and 'Croppers Talk About Need for Organizing

Dorothy Burnham, 1952 217

31 Pearl Bailey Incident Recalls Life and Death of Bessie Smith

Yvonne Gregory, 1952 220

32 Acceptance Speech of Mrs. Bass

Charlotta Bass, 1952 223

Section V The Struggle Continues: White Supremacy and Anticommunism 231

33 Excerpt from This Is My Husband: Fighter for His People, Political Refugee

Esther Cooper Jackson, 1953 234

34 Unrest in Africa due to Oppression

Eslanda Goode Robeson, 1953 253

35 American Women Join World Peace Crusade

Dorothy Burnham, 1953 256

36 A Conversation from Life: Two Columns from Freedom Magazine

Alice Childress, 1953 260

37 Introduction to Ben Davis: Fighter for Freedom

Eslanda Goode Robeson, 1954 265

38 Excerpt from Ben Davis: Fighter for Freedom

Claudia Jones, 1954 267

39 White Advocates of Negro Freedom Continue Tradition of John Brown

Vicki Garvin, 1955 270

40 New Hope for Negro Labor

Vicki Garvin, 1955 273

41 Prison: The Bail Fund Affair

Dorothy Hunton, 1986 278

42 In Retrospect: An Attack-An Answer

Charlotta Bass, 1960 292

Notes 299

Index 307

About the Contributors 319

About the Editors 325

Editorial Reviews

"Charisse Burden-Stelly is a sharp engaged radical thinker, representing the best of the Black radical tradition. Along with co-editor Jodi Dean, Burden-Stelly has curated a powerful and enormously valuable collection of writings by Black socialist and communist women, rightly placing their voices at the center of U.S. and international left histories. A great teaching tool and a much needed source of inspiration for contemporary activists."
—Barbara Ransby, historian, author and activist

"The women whose voices are collected in Organize, Fight, Win are some of the principal radical thinkers and activists of the 20th century making this collection a must-read for researchers, teachers, and students of freedom struggles. Burden-Stelly and Dean have brought together some of the most significant women in the struggles for equality and their essential contribution to theorizing emancipation, including anticipating how we understand intersectionality and its relevance to political organization. These sources are an important corrective to the history of the Black Freedom Struggle and the women's rights movement putting radical Black women at the forefront of those histories."
—Denise M Lynn

"In this brilliantly curated anthology, Burden-Stelly and Dean celebrate the voices of Black and communist women whose struggles against capitalism were confluential with their struggles against sexism and white supremacy. The thoughtful collection of articles, reports, proclamations, and personal reflections provides an invaluable glimpse of the essential political role that Black women played between 1919 and 1956, an era which encompassed the first Red Scare, the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the second Red Scare instigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph R. McCarthy. Organize, Fight, Win reminds us that anticommunism remains a key ideological bludgeon of American white supremacists to this day and provides relevant theoretical tools for continued resistance."
—Kristen Ghodsee, Author of Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons from Five Revolutionary Women

"Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean have assembled a fascinating archive of writings by Black women in and around the CPUSA. These militants provide us with an important model for how to be anticapitalist, antiracist, antisexist, anti-imperialist, and antimilitarist all at once."
—Kathi Weeks

"Burden-Stelly and Dean have compiled a unique, much-needed volume on the lives and thought of black women communists. The voices of Williana Burroughs, Louise Thompson Patterson, Thyra Edwards, Lorraine Hansberry and many others ring out here, resonating with rich historical insights and political inspiration. Organize, Fight, Win is a proper tonic against those who mischaracterize and impugn left anti-capitalist struggle as some whites-only political project."
—Cedric Johnson, author of The Panthers Can't Save Us Now: Debating Left Politics and Black Lives Matter

"This is an essential and beautifully curated collection that provides an important foundation for understanding the Black radical tradition."
—Vijay Prashad

"This book returns the voices of Black women Communists to their rightful place in histories of labor, race, and gender in the 20th century. Libraries serving historians or general readers interested in Black women's history and activism need to add this to their shelves."
—Library Journal

"In their new collection Organize, Fight, Win, which gathers the writings of Black Communist women starting in the 1920s, Jodi Dean and Charisse Burden-Stelly provide a genealogy for the strains of Black feminism that emerged as part of the radicalization of the 1960s."
—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New York Review of Books

"In this groundbreaking collection, Burden-Stelly and Dean have compiled a treasure trove of historical, political and seminal writings about Communism from Black women's perspectives. Includes pieces by Claudia Jones, Charlotta Bass, Alice Childress, Dorothy Burnham and so many more."
—Ms. Magazine

"Organize, Fight, Win brings to light to the theories and tactics activists used to build successful coalition movements at the beginning of the 20th century, and their enduring relevance in today's political climate."
—Morgan Forde, The Nation

"This text is an important addition to the history of the United States, especially as regards the struggle for Black residents' freedom and equality. The fact that all of the work included in this book is written by communists is also important in that it proves the important role they played in the struggle during the period represented. However, more than just a look at that legacy, Organize, Fight, Win is also a working textbook for the current and future state of the fight for liberation and against the economic system of capitalism; a system that is the basis of most every other oppression, especially those targeting Black and Brown people."
—Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch

"[Organize, Fight, Win] confounds decades of obfuscation and contemporary misconceptions, uncovering a hidden history of black women's leadership of and struggle within communist parties and movements in the twentieth century. Debates around theory and strategy take on a new vibrancy in these writings and paint a picture of left-wing party building that challenges stale caricature."
—Chris Dite, Jacobin

"Urgent and passionate ... the editors' careful work has not only corrected the historical narrative but achieved something inspiring."
—Helen Mercer, Morning Star

"[An] essential collection…"
—Andy Hines, Public Books

From the Publisher

08/05/2022

Burden-Stelly (Africana studies and political science, Carleton Coll.; W.E.B. DuBois: A Life in American History) and Dean (Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging) compile texts by Black women Communists (most of them U.S. Americans) from the end of World War I through the 1950s. The editors present essays, manifestos, and even a master's thesis to sound these largely ignored or forgotten voices, which challenge misconceptions about the U.S. Communist Party and the role of Black women. Highlights include texts on Black women domestic workers by Williana Burroughs and by Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke. Baker and Cooke's investigative report "The Bronx Slave Market" (published in 1935 by the newspaper of the NAACP) discusses the Black women who had to stand on street corners in the Bronx every morning and wait for white women to hire them as domestic day laborers, at wages of 15 to 30 cents an hour. Baker and Cooke argued the need to politically organize Black women and create class consciousness in the white women who hired and underpaid them. Some of the texts in this book could be criticized for misplaced idealism in their views of Soviet socialism under Stalin; on the whole, the collection makes apparent how racism, sexism, anti-unionism, class division, and other conflicts of the first half of the 20th century seem dismally familiar today. VERDICT This book returns the voices of Black women Communists to their rightful place in histories of labor, race, and gender in the 20th century. Libraries serving historians or general readers interested in Black women's history and activism need to add this to their shelves.—Bart Everts

Library Journal