Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War by Dayo F. Gore (review)

As a “collective political biography” (4) of black women leftists in the Cold War era, Dayo F. Gore’s Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War adds to an important, yet developing, subsection of literature on the long black freedom struggle. Joining scholars such as Danielle McGuire, Martha Biondi, Carol Boyce Davies, Eric McDuffie, Gregg Andrews, Thyra J. Edwards and Barbara Ransby, Gore seeks to return black women to their central role in the struggle for liberation—politically, economically, and otherwise—and to stretch the chronology of that struggle to reflect roots in the Old Left. In short, black women shaped every aspect of radical organizing at midcentury, despite Cold War pressures to adopt both an “idealized version of women’s domesticity” (2) and an anticommunist framework for organizing. Gore further asserts that where these women were concerned the 1950s were as much a “radical” moment as the 1930s or the 1960s. In fact, many of the women Gore studies sustained their activism throughout all three eras; in her words, they were “political long-distance runners” (8).

In Gore’s telling, the cadre of black women radicals excavated here all came to activism through similar forms of politicization. Some were uprooted by the Depression while others moved north during the Great Migration. Some came to activism through exposure to the 1931 Scottsboro case, while others were politicized during their entrance into the labor force and subsequently labor unions. Their movement into vibrant political and urban communities, however, collectively shaped their experiences. Gore argues “movement and travel” were “an important force shaping their development” (18). Additionally, each of the women noted in this collective biography helped form and sustain a network of black women radicals who moved in and out of organizations and philosophies as they served or failed to serve the needs of black women.

Through a close examination of a plethora of publications, ranging from the well-known New York Amsterdam News and The Crisis to leftist publications such as The Daily Compass, Masses and Mainstream, and the Party Organizer to the specifically black leftist publications Freedom and Freedomways, Gore traces both the actions and the theorizing of black women radicals from the 1930s to the 1970s. These journals show black women documenting their communal efforts to challenge, if not overturn, white supremacy, patriarchal norms, and black women’s subjugated labor status. Marvel Cooke, for example, challenged white women’s theorization of a collective women’s experience in leftist organizations. By writing an expose on black women domestic worker’s relationship to white women employers, Cooke exposed the ways white supremacy operated among women. Cooke followed this theme in her writing across three publications and nearly 20 years. Likewise, Ann Petry challenged assumptions of racial solidarity within heterosexual relationships with black men, penning “What’s Wrong with Negro Men?” in the 1940s. Here, Petry hoped to demonstrate the hypocrisy of black men who claimed progressive bona fides yet expected wives to be “the little woman” at home. Importantly, Petry links this dynamic (in Gore’s words) “to the economic circumstances of most black families” which “meant accepting a life of constant work and exploitation” (53). Gore reveals these publications as both historical documentation and an exercise in theorization. Black women radicals unflinchingly expanded ongoing debates in leftist organizations over the role of race and gender in formulating appropriate courses of action.

Black women’s efforts, however, were not relegated solely to the pages of leftist publications. Rather, their theorization, crafted through a lifetime of experience, often set the stage for their activism. Gore’s argument in this regard is most compelling and enjoyably read in chapters 3 and 4 where she focuses on specific people or a single event. The travails of Rosa Lee Ingram are the subject of chapter 3. The Ingram family found itself on the wrong end of...