The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals.Īfter discussing the book's origins and impact in a new preface written for this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Kelley 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.

Kelley 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. In his classic Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression, historian Robin D.G. A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the 'long Civil Rights movement, ' Hammer and Hoe 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. Robin Kelley illustrates one of the most unique and least understood. 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. A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the long Civil Rights movement, Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how, during the 1930s and 40s. Hammer and Hoe documents the efforts of the Alabama Communist Party and its allies. A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the long Civil Rights movement, Hammer and Hoe 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.

Hammer and hoe kelley