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A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the "long Civil Rights movement," this book 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, the author 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, the author 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.

Introduction: writing black working-class history from way, way below -- Shiftless of the world unite! -- "We are not what we seem": the politics and pleasures of community -- Congested terrain: resistance of public transportation -- Birmingham's untouchables: the black poor in the age of civil rights -- "Afric's sons with banner red": African American Communists and the politics of culture, 1919-1934 -- "This ain't Ethiopia, but it'll do": African Americans and the Spanish Civil War -- The riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black cultural politics during World War II -- Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: "Gangsta Rap" and postindustrial Los Angeles

This essay questions a key takeaway from the Ferguson/Gaza convergence that catalyzed the current wave of Black-Palestinian transnational solidarity: the idea that "equivalence," or a politics of analogy based on racial or national identity, or racialized or colonial experience, is the sole or primary grounds for solidarity. By revisiting three recent spectacular moments involving Black intellectuals advocating for Palestine—Michelle Alexander's op-ed in the New York Times criticizing Israeli policies, CNN's firing of Marc Lamont Hill, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's initial decision to deny Angela Davis its highest honor—this paper suggests that their controversial positions must be traced back to the post-1967 moment. The convergence of Black urban rebellions and the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war birthed the first significant wave of Black-Palestinian solidarity; at the same time, solidarities rooted in anti-imperialism and Left internationalism rivaled the "Black-Jewish alliance," founded on analogy of oppression rather than shared principles of liberation. Third World insurgencies and anti-imperialist movements, not just events in the United States and Palestine, created the conditions for radically reordering political alliances: rather than adopting a politics of analogy or identity, the Black and Palestinian Left embraced a vision of "worldmaking" that was a catalyst for imagining revolution as opposed to plotting coalition.

Discusses the return of class politics, specifically, the arrival of identity politics, to the forefront of US political & social discourse. It is argued that the populist movement has wrongly embraced the narrow self-interests of race, gender, sexual preference, & disability to the detriment of what should be the Left's loftier & more universal ideals of class unity. The basis of Enlightenment thought & its "gift" of modern racism are discussed as prelude to further examination of the exclusionary views of the neo-Enlightenment Left, which is unable to see how class movements led by women, blacks, homosexuals, or other minorities can speak for the goals of universal humanism. It is concluded that a rethinking of movements that have been summarily discounted by neo-Enlightenment leftists as being too particularistic instead already embrace at their core the common ideals, goals, & vision essential to class struggle. B. Wolfe

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Chapter 1: Wolf by the Ear -- Chapter 2: Freedom and Slavery -- Chapter 3: Reclaim Your Name -- Chapter 4: Getting Back to the World -- Chapter 5: Work (that Works for You) -- Chapter 6: Heroes and Ghosts -- Chapter 7: Family -- Chapter 8: Coworkers and Bosses -- Chapter 9: Community -- Chapter 10: Mental and Physical Health -- Chapter 11: Becoming Visible Men -- Chapter 12: What We Need -- Conclusion and Suggestions