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Preface and Acknowledgments We Shall Be Free! seeks to break new ground in the scholarship of the African American Left. More specifically, it addresses a particular historical need to give voice to black Communists and to respect the intellectual contributions found in their protest writings.To be sure, a number of the “new historians” of American Communism have written about the history of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and race; however, few have provided an adequate forum for black Communists to speak for themselves over a wide range of vital issues. By focusing on seven historical figures, and the documents and essays they wrote, this book attempts to give voice to an important section of the African American community whose thought has been minimized, discounted , or overlooked altogether by the historical profession in general. The seven black Communists examined in this tome were chosen for their historical significance based on a long-term productive commitment to the party and “the cause.” I have omitted celebrity Communists such as Paul Robeson, who never joined the CPUSA, and relative short-timers such as Richard Wright, who eventually left the party. Also, I have not included more recent black Communists such as Angela Davis and Amiri Baraka. These two heavyweight notables, who are still contributing to American radical x ■ Preface and Acknowledgments history, deserve entire monographs. And no doubt, some graduate students and professional historians are currently working on projects that deal with their careers. Finally, there is in the epilogue an entry by W.E.B. Du Bois, who resisted joining the CPUSA until the end of his long life. The chosen seven black Communists—B. D. Amis, Harry Haywood, James W. Ford, Benjamin J. Davis Jr., Louise Thompson Patterson, William L. Patterson, and Claudia Jones—represent a diverse group in terms of their ideas, gender, backgrounds, and personalities. Nonetheless, there is unity in diversity. The unifying theme in their protest thought is the effort to foster a black “culture of resistance” to white racism and to the disvalues inherent in capitalism as an economic, social, and cultural system. Furthermore, in terms of a time frame, this book reveals the breadth and depth of the political and social dissent of key African American Communists from the Jazz Age through the Great Depression to the modern Civil Right Movement.What is more, the acute need for such a study lies in the present-day political situation in the early twentyfirst century. Today we have the nation’s first African American president addressing major issues of worldwide economic recession, numerous wars, and even genocide. Although President Barack Obama’s pragmatic policies in response to these problems fall within the mainstream of Western capitalism and political democracy, the hysterical American Right screams that the president is a foreign-born Communist or Socialist. Needless to say, no rational person could accept as true these paranoid fantasies. In light of these nonsensical allegations, it might be instructive to look at the well-documented historical record from the middle of the twentieth century, when reality-based tribulations such as depression, war, and genocide were actually addressed by genuine black Communists. Indeed, black Communists, from the 1920s to the early 1960s, were authentic American radicals who offered multifaceted ideas and analyses during an era of great change in U.S. and world history . Subsequently, because of race, gender, and ideology, most mainstream historians have ignored or distorted the voice of this segment of the African American community. From the Great Depression to World War II and the early years of the Cold War, Preface and Acknowledgments ■ xi black Communists fought fearlessly on the front lines in the black freedom struggle within the United States at the same time that they condemned white colonialism, global racism, and genocide. Few historians have focused in any meaningful way on what African American Communists—who were committed activists for social justice—had to say about these vital historical matters. This survey of the responses of African American Communists to the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War draws on many fresh sources from FBI files, as well as documents from Moscow . The holdings of the Russian State Archives of Social and Political History (formerly the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Contemporary History) are separated into a number of “fonds,” or collections. Research for this book concentrated primarily on one deposit, Fond 515, documents of the CPUSA. I have also used documents...

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