Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist - Softcover

Haywood, Harry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0930720539 ISBN 13: 9780930720537

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1978

Synopsis

Black Bolshevik is the autobiography of Harry Haywood, the son of former slaves who became a leading member of the Communist Part USA and a pioneering theoretician on the Afro-American struggle.
The author’s first-hand accounts of the Chicago race riot of 1919, the Scottsboro Boys’ defense, communist work in the South, the Spanish Civil War, the battle against the revisionist betrayal of the Party, and other history-shaping events are must reading for all who are interested in Black history and the working class struggle.

About this title

About the Author

Harry Haywood was born in South Omaha in 1898, the son of sharecroppers and former slaves. He joined the African Blood Brotherhood and later the Communist Party in 1925, lived in Moscow in 1926 where he met leading world revolutionaries including Ho Chi Minh, and there developed his major theoretical contribution, the theory of self-determination for African Americans in the black belt of the South. He became the head of the Communist Party's Negro Department and member of the Politburo during the period when it was organizing the black unemployed, sharecroppers in the South, and defending the Scotsboro Boys. He was in the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, was a rank and file seaman and union activist, wrote the black power classic "Negro Liberation" in 1949, and was finally expelled from the Communist Party in 1959. He moved in the inner circles of communists and progressives; Paul Robeson and Dashiel Hammett contributed to his support while writing "Negro Liberation." After that he influenced new generations of black radicals and intellectuals. Haywood died in 1985.

From the Back Cover

"Black Bolshevik is the powerful story of one Black man's search for answers...from growing up in Omaha, to Minnesota, to Chicago, to Harlem, to France and World War I, to Africa, to Moscow, and back to Harlem USA...Struggling every step of the way, this is not merely a search for answers for 'self,' but answers for all oppressed people whom Franz Fanon has called 'the wretched of the earth.'"-John Oliver Killens, novelist

"This is the first extensive autobiography of a Black member of the American Communist Party...This book needs to be read for the lessons it teaches for today."-John Henrik Clarke, Prof. of African History, Hunter College of CUNY

"Harry Haywood's autobiography is indispensable for students of the history of the Communist Party and of Afro-American radicalism."-Mark Naison, Prof. of Afro-American Studies, Fordham University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 1978
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0930720539
• ISBN 13: 9780930720537
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 736