Working-Class & Party History

The new documentary by filmmaker Michal Goldman, "At Home in Utopia" is a great tribute to the Communist Party, though is not directly about the Communist Party nor is the assessment of the Party always favorable.

The film, part of PBS's "Independent Lens series, documents the history and legacy of the Bronx's United Workers Cooperative Colony, "the coops." The coops was a collectively owned housing cooperative developed by Jewish immigrants 80 years ago.

The New York Times wrote that the documentary captured the coops' "daring social experiment," which was rooted in social justice, racial integration and international solidarity.

But most of the founders of the coops and many of its residents for much of the development's history were members of the Communist Party. "At Home in Utopia" shows a unique glimpse into the lives of communist activists and members during the Depression, World War II and through the McCarthy "Red Scare." It documents their ideals, dreams, squabbles, mistakes and successes. In many ways the trajectory of the coops mirrored that of the Communist Party itself in that period.

While the documentary ultimately and hastily concludes that adherence to communism was the the downfall of the coops—which was sold into private hands after World War II—it reflects a deeper truth: that membership in the Communist Party never meant unanimity or oppression. This film helps expose the all-too-common lie that communists were automatons, unthinking tools who mindlessly carried out Moscow's orders. In fact, the motivations and actions of the radicals captured in the film are local and personal.

"At Home in Utopia" shows that communists differ and debate and are deeply independent and opinionated. Perhaps no better tribute could be made.

You can find local listing of broadcast times of the documentary on your local public television station.

There are also great photos and some clips from the film at the documentary's website.

Black History Month Special

Part of a series on African American communists in US history.

W.E.B. Du Bois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He encountered socialist ideas while he was studying in Germany, where he occasionally attended rallies of the German Social Democratic Party. A pioneer of U.S. sociology and prolific author, Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was the first editor of its journal the Crisis.

In 1961, after a lifetime of scholarship and activism, he joined the Communist Party USA, saying "Capitalism cannot reform itself. Communism—the effort to give all...what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute—this is the only way of human life."

He died in Ghana, West Africa, where he had moved to work on the Encyclopedia Africana. His death was announced from the podium at the March on Washington where Dr. King made his historic "I have a dream" speech.

For more information: 100th anniversary of The Souls of Black Folk

For more information: Application for membership in the CPUSA by W.E.B.DuBois

(Compiled by Kevin Lindemann)

Black History Month Special

Part of a series on African American communists in US history.

Gus Hall
Communist Party of the USA
New York, New York

On this first day of October 1961, I am applying for admission to membership in the Communist Party of the United States. I have been long and slow in coming to this conclusion, but at last my mind is settled.

In college I heard the name of Karl Marx, but read none of his works, nor heard them explained. At the University of Berlin, I heard much of those thinkers who had definitely answered the theories of Marx, but again we did not study what Marx himself had said. Nevertheless, I attended meetings of the Socialist Party and considered myself a Socialist.

(continued)

Black History Month Special

Part of a series on African American communists in US history.

Before working for the Communist Party, James Ford had been active in the labor movement, including working in the Chicago Federation of Labor. In 1929, he and William L. Patterson attended the Second Congress of the League Against Imperialism in Frankfurt, Germany. The following year, when the First International Congress of Negro Workers was convened in Hamburg, Germany, Ford became its secretary and opened an office in Hamburg, where he established relationships with African and Asian workers and helped them to organize.

When he returned to the US, he became the first African American to run for vice-president of the United States (he ran in 1932, 1936, and 1940).

Black History Month Special

Part of a series on African American communists in US history.

Jonnie Lumpkin Ellis, who was known by her adopted name "Pat", was born in Washington, GA. Her family moved to Orlando, Florida, where they worked picking oranges.

In 1939, Her brother-in-law, Taft Earl Rollins, returned to Fort Bragg, NC, unaware that a racist riot was raging. The Army sent his body back to Orlando with no explanation. The sergeant who accompanied the body had strict orders to keep the casket closed.

Jonnie defied the orders, opened the casket and saw that Rollins’ head had been
smashed in. It was a lynching, not an accident. Jonnie did not let the Army cover up the crime. She insisted on an open casket funeral.

Jonnie moved to Buffalo, NY with her family in December 1941, where she worked as a housekeeper for a communist couple. She soaked up their message of class struggle and socialism and joined the Communist Party.

(continued)

Black History Month Special

Part of a series on African American communists in US history.

Hosea Hudson was born in Wilkes County, Georgia. He worked as a sharecropper in what was then known as the "Black Belt" of Georgia before moving to Birmingham and working as a skilled iron molder. He became active in the movement to save the Scottsboro youth and joined the Communist Party in 1931.

As people the world over know, the celebration of May Day as a labor holiday began in connection with the events that transpired on and around May 1, 1886 in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, and that the Haymarket Square rally was itself part of a nationwide workers’ struggle for the eight-hour day...