THEOTHERBLACKLIST

MARYHELENWASHINGTON

THEOTHERBLACKLIST

TheAfricanAmericanLiteraryandCulturalLeftofthe1950s

ColumbiaUniversityPress/NewYork

ColumbiaUniversityPressPublishersSince1893NewYorkChichester,WestSussexcup.columbia.eduCopyright©2014ColumbiaUniversityPressAllrightsreservedE-ISBN978-0-231-52647-0

LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationDataWashington,MaryHelen.

TheOtherBlacklist:theAfricanAmericanLiteraryandCulturalLeftofthe1950s/MaryHelenWashington.pagescmIncludesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.ISBN978-0-231-15270-9(cloth:alk.paper)—ISBN978-0-231-52647-0(e-book)1.Americanliterature—AfricanAmericanauthors—Historyandcriticism.2.Americanliterature—20thcentury—Historyand

criticism.Politicsandliterature—UnitedStates—History—20thcentury.AfricanAmericans—Intellectuallife—20thcentury.5.Rightandleft(Politicalscience)inliterature.6.ColdWarinliterature.I.Title.

PS153.N5W3492014810.9’896073—dc23 2013031563

AColumbiaUniversityPressE-book.CUPwouldbepleasedtohearaboutyourreadingexperiencewiththise-bookatcup-ebook@columbia.edu.

COVERDESIGN:JuliaKushnirskyCOVERIMAGE:CharlesWhite,Let’sWalkTogether,fromtheCharlesL.BlocksonAfro-AmericanCollection,TempleUniversityLibraries.

Referencestowebsites(URLs)wereaccurateatthetimeofwriting.NeithertheauthornorColumbiaUniversityPressisresponsibleforURLsthatmayhaveexpiredorchangedsincethemanuscriptwasprepared.

Forthenextgenerationofourtribe:DarionneWashingtonCordellWashingtonDenzelWashingtonCordajahWashingtonRodneyWashingtonSeanWashingtonAzariaWashingtonAliyahWashingtonOliviaKylaMitchellSolomonMitchellNathanielWilsonXavierWilson

Maytheyjumpatthesun.

CONTENTS

ListofIllustrationsAcknowledgmentsListofAbbreviations

INTRODUCTION

1.LLOYDL.BROWNBlackFireintheColdWar

2.CHARLESWHITE“RobesonwithaBrushandPencil”

3.ALICECHILDRESSBlack,Red,andFeminist

4.WHENGWENDOLYNBROOKSWORERED

5.FRANKLONDONBROWNTheEndoftheBlackCulturalFrontandtheTurnTowardCivilRights

6.1959SpycraftandtheBlackLiteraryLeft

EPILOGUETheExampleofJulianMayfield

Notes

WorksCitedIndex

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure0.1. PosterbyCharlesWhiteforthesecondconventionoftheNationalNegroLaborCouncil,Cleveland(1952)

Figure1.1. PagefromLloydL.Brown’sFOIAfile(1962)Figure1.2. One-ThirdofANationposter,LivingNewspapersoftheWPA

(1938)Figure2.1. CharlesWhite,AHistoryoftheNegroPress(1940)Figure2.2. CharlesWhiteatworkonmuralTechniquesUsedintheService

ofStruggle(c.1940)Figure2.3. FoundingmembersoftheCommitteefortheNegrointheArts(c.

1940)Figure2.4. ACNAawardsbanquetinNewYorkCity(1950s)Figure2.5. PagefromCharlesWhite’sFOIAfile(c.1951)Figure2.6. CharlesWhite,SojournerTruth(1949)Figure2.7. CharlesWhite,Exodus1BlackMoses(1951)Figure2.8. CharlesWhite,Let’sWalkTogether(1953)Figure2.9. MarionPostWolcott,Migrantworkerswaitingtobepaid,near

Homestead,Florida,FarmSecurityAdministrationphoto(February1939)

Figure2.10. CharlesWhite,HarvestTalk(1953–54)Figure3.1. PagefromChildress’sFOIAfile(1953)Figure3.2. Childress,WeddingBand(1973)Figure3.3. Childress,LikeOneoftheFamily,BeaconPressedition(1986)Figure3.4. AliceNeel’sportraitofMikeGold(1952)Figure3.5. AliceNeel’sportraitofPatWhelan(1935)Figure3.6. AliceNeel’sportraitofAliceChildress(1950)Figure3.7. HerbertAptheker,EwartGuinier,andAliceChildress(1975)Figure4.1. GwendolynBrooks,“AGatheringattheSouthSideCommunity

ArtCenter”(1948)Figure4.2. GwendolynBrookspresentstheLiteraryTimesAwardtoJack

Conroy(1967)Figure4.3. GwendolynBrooksinChicagoDailyNewsphoto(1957)Figure5.1. PagesfromFrankLondonBrown’sFOIAfile(1957)217–19Figure6.1. LloydL.BrownandLouisBurnhamatAMSACconference(1959)Figure6.2. LorraineHansberrygivingkeynoteaddressatAMSACconference

(1959)Figure6.3. LorraineHansberryatAMSACconference(1959)

I

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

HAVELIVED with this book for such a long time (twelve years, at last count) that the list ofpeople who have sustainedme has grown long, but remembering the generosity that hasbeen constant over these years is a great and humbling pleasure. The support of my

colleagues at the University of Maryland, College Park—Theresa Coletti, Kent Cartwright,ChristinaWalter, Bill Cohen, Bob Levine, Howard Norman, Jackson Bryer, Randy Ontiveros,John Auchard, David Wyatt, Martha Nell Smith, Zita Nunes, Merle Collins, Joshua Weiner,MichaelCollier,EdlieWong,KeguroMacharia,ShawnSaremi,andBarryPearson—hasbeencriticalinremindingmethatitonlycountswhenyouturnyourideasintoaphysicalobject.TheuniversityhasgenerouslysupportedmyworkwithnumerousresearchgrantsfromtheCollegeof Arts and Humanities, including the Distinguished Faculty Research Fellowship and travelgrantsfromtheUniversity’sDriskellCenterfortheStudyoftheAfricanDiaspora.MywonderfulyearinLosAngeles(2000–2001),supportedinpartbyafellowshipfromtheUCLAInstituteforAmericanCulture,enabledmetojump-startthisproject.

MyUCLAcrewwasthereatthebeginningofTheOtherBlacklistandsuppliedgreatmoralandintellectualsupport:RichardYarborough,whohasalwaysbeenmybestscholarlymentor,friend,supporter,andreader,andHarryetteMullen,whosurelyknowshowimportantshehasbeenas inspiration,cheerleader,generouscolleague,modelscholar,andexcellentLAculturaltourguide.GerardMaré ledmeon several hikes through themountainsof LA,whichhelpedgroundmeforperiodsofsilent,butt-to-chairwork.HeandKing-KokCheungprovidedmewithabeautifulLA retreathouse thatyear,overlooking thecanyon,aperfectplace towork. Iamverygrateful for thepeopleat themany institutionswhereIconductedresearch,especially totheUCLA institute, the staff at the SchomburgCenter for Research on BlackCulture, DianaLachatanere,andColinPalmer. Ihavealsoreceivedsupport fromtheUniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley, Bancroft Library (especially Susan Snyder), the Moorland-Spingarn Library ofHoward University (especially Joellen ElBashir), the Cleveland Historical Society, WesternReserve Historical Museum, Chicago Art Institute, the Chicago Public Library (especiallyMichaelFlugandthestaffattheVivianHarshCollection),andtheClevelandPublicLibrary.

Thanks to the “bunch of radicals”—Bill Maxwell, Jim Miller, Jim Smethurst, Alan Wald,Barbara Foley, Brian Dolinar, James Hall, and Bill Mullen—who encouraged, critiqued, readdrafts,keptmegoing,anddid theresearchthatmademinepossible.MarkPascale(ChicagoArt Institute) andDaniel Schulman, art scholars extraordinaire, shared their work onCharlesWhite andmade that chapter possible.DougWixon steeredme to the important relationshipbetweenGwenBrooks and JackConroy and shared his research generously. PeterClothiergraciouslysentmeallofhisbiographicalandcriticalmaterialonCharlesWhite.Thankstomyexcellent readers: Richard Yarborough, Zita Nunes, Cheryl Wall, Christina Walter, HarryetteMullen,JimSmethurst,AlanWald,BillMaxwell,JeanSammon,andPonchitaArgieard.CherylWallmaynotevenremember,butshereadearlydraftsof theLloydBrownchapterandgaveinvaluableadvice.PaulLauterhasbeen thereasa friendandmentorsincehe ropedme intotheYaleconferencein1976,andheencouragedandsustainedmyearlyworkonblackwomenwriters. The art historian Professor PatriciaHills read and commented on theCharlesWhitechapter with honesty and brilliant suggestions. The writers Paule Marshall and AliceWalkerhave always been my friends and supporters, the inspiration for my work on black women

writers,andexamplesofwomenwhotaketheirlivesandworkseriously.Many thanks are duemy Books98 crew for their deep respect for the literary word and

lovingresponsestowhatmusthaveseemedlikeaninterminablewritingprocess:ShirleyParry,Elizabeth (Ginger) Patterson, Jerome (JP) Patterson, Dominique Raymond, Kent Benjamin,SherryWeaver,MariMatsuda,ChuckLawrence,KarenOuten,YvetteIrving,JimMiller,ShaunMyers, andKaylen Tucker. TomyDissertationCrew: you are the reason I entered this fieldbackinthe1970sandthereasonIamstillhere:LauraWilliams,ShaunMyers,KaylenTucker,ShirleyMoody-Turner,SchuylerEsprit,ScottEklund,ChristopherBrown,RobinHarris,DanielHartley, Anne Carroll, Roberta Maguire, Kathlene McDonald, Nazera Wright, and KevinMeehan.

For the example and high standards they set by their superb scholarship: Lawrence P.Jackson,DougWixon,GeraldHorne,PennyVonEschen,KevinGaines,StacyI.Morgan,NikhilPal Singh, Barbara Foley, Michael Denning, Judith Smith, Jacqueline Goldsby, Robin D. G.Kelley, Dayo Gore, Erik McDuffie, Alan Wald, Jim Smethurst, Bill Mullen, Edmund Gordon,SterlingStuckey, andBillMaxwell (who introducedme to theart of tradingFOIA files). I amsurroundedhereinmystudywithyourbooksstackeduponallsides,urgingmetofinish.

For moving this project into digital shape, I owe so much to my research assistant andnewlymintedPh.D.,Dr.LauraWilliams.Therewereothers in thispast tenyears thatmovedthis production along with their scholarly, editorial, and technological expertise: Anne Carroll,SchuylerEsprit,ScottEklund,CeceliaCancellaro,T.SusanChang,andRobinEvans.

ForgivingmetotalaccesstotheCharlesWhitepapersandthusmakingtheCharlesWhitechapterandthecoverofTheOtherBlacklistpossible,IoweIanCharlesWhitebigtime.

Of the many people I interviewed, none was more inspiring than those intrepid activist-scholarsoftheLeft:JosephKaye,LloydL.Brown,PhillipBonosky,EstherandJamesJackson,Dorothy Sterling, Ernest Kaiser, Herbert Aptheker, Ruby Dee, Elizabeth Catlett, and JackO’Dell. Those precious hours interviewing this crew helped me formulate this project. From1996 until his death in 2001, writer-activist and friend Lloyd Brown sent me weekly letters,talkedwithmeonthephone,satforlonginterviews,andretrievedeverypieceofdataIaskedfor, givingmeamuchappreciated tutorial in leftist literary andpolitical history.EvelynBrownColbert answered every query about her husband, Frank LondonBrown.WilliamBranch andRubyDeegavemevaluableinformationandcautionedmeaboutromanticizingtheLeft.ErnestKaiserwrotemanyletters,all in longhandonyellowlegalpaper,filledfromtoptobottomwithcautions,critiques,anddirectives.ThankstotheChicagofolks,BennettJohnson,OscarBrownJr.,andMichaelFlug,whogavemeinvaluabledirectionandhelp.

To my Detroit crew, David Rambeau, Woodie King Jr., and Ed Vaughn (of the famedVaughn’sBookStore),andDudleyRandall,whopushedme to the leftwhen Iwasstill in thekindergarten of political thought. I still remember the support ofmyDetroit writing group, JillBoyer, Toni Watts, Betty de Ramus, Frenchy Hodges, Melba Boyd, and especially PauletteChildress for friendship over the years and the miles. Many thanks also to my DetroitMarygroveCollegecrewfor theirwiseandgeneroussupportof the literaryartsandoften fortheir spare bedrooms: Sister Barbara Johns, Lillian andDon Bauder, Kathy Tkach, KathleenKirschenheiter, Lorraine Wesley Tyler, Frank Rashid, and Rose Lucas. Many thanks to theBoston crew, my mentors in teaching, scholarship, and life: Mary Anne Ferguson, LindaDittmar, LoisRudnick, EvelynMoore,GeniiGuinier,MonicaMcAlpine, andCarolynCavenny.And,especiallyformydearfriendBobCrossley,whonamedthisbookTheOtherBlacklist.

ToAliceWalker,forlivingtheprinciplesshewritesabout.Manyyearsago,sheinsistedthatIwritetheintroductiontotheZoraNealeHurstonReader,arguing,againstmyresistance,that

Iwastheperfectchoiceforthatproject,andherencouragementhasmadeallthedifference.IamsuremyeditoratColumbia,PhilipLeventhal,knowshowmuchIappreciatehiswarm,

wise, and energetic support as this manuscript began the process of becoming a book. Heansweredeverye-mail, even the slightly hysterical onesonSaturdaynights, and keptmeontrackwhen thingsseemed tomeveryuncertain.WhitneyJohnsoncameonboardand joinedPhilipinurgingmeontotheend.

To my Cleveland crew, my sisters and brothers—Beverly, Myrna, David, Byron, Tommy,Bet, and Bernadette—whose ubiquitous question, “Aren’t you finished with that book yet?”prodded me back to my desk many times. Many thanks to my friend and earliest feministmodel, Lois Horn: She was my Sula when I was growing up in Cleveland, a woman withagency,power,generosity,andamindofherown.AndtomybelovedfriendPonchitaArgieard,whoseprofessionaltrainingasasocialworker,resistancetoofficialinstitutions,andwillingnesstoexploreopenedbothofustoaloveofart,music,andliterature.Mymother,MaryCatherineDaltonWashington,didnotget toseethisbookcometo life,butshewas, forallofhereightchildren,thefirstandbestmodelofhowtosticktoahardproject.Shegaveusunquestioninglove,gentlediscipline,andanexampleofextraordinarycourage.ToDarionne,Cordell,Denzel,andCordajahWashington: forgettingmeoutofmyheadand intocountlessswimmingpools,libraries, tobogganing trails, ice-skating rinks, museums, parks, baseball fields, and PTAmeetings—Iholdyouinthedeepheart’score.

ABBREVIATIONS

ACAG AmericanContemporaryArtGalleryAGLOSO AttorneyGeneral’sListofSubversiveOrganizationsAMSAC AmericanSocietyforAfricanCultureANLC AmericanNegroLaborCongressANT AmericanNegroTheatreAPC AmericanPeaceCrusadeAWP AmericanWomenforPeaceAYC AmericanYouthCongressBAM BlackArtsMovementCAA CouncilonAfricanAffairsCCF CongressforCulturalFreedomCCNY CityCollegeofNewYorkCCR CommissiononCivilRightsCNA CommitteefortheNegrointheArtsComintern CommunistInternationalCORAC CouncilonRaceandCasteinWorldAffairsCP CommunistPartyCPUC CommunistPartyUnemployedCouncilsCPUSA CommunistPartyoftheUnitedStatesofAmericaCRC CivilRightsCongressFEPC FairEmploymentPracticesCommitteeFOIA FreedomofInformationActFTP FederalTheatreProjectFWP FederalWritersProjectHUAC HouseUn-AmericanActivitiesCommitteeHWG HarlemWriters’GuildJSSS JeffersonSchoolofSocialScienceLAW LeagueofAmericanWritersLSNR LeagueofStruggleforNegroRightsMCPFB MidwestCommitteeforProtectionofForeignBornNAACP NationalAssociationfortheAdvancementofColoredPeopleNMU NationalMaritimeUnionNNC NationalNegroCongressNNLC NationalNegroLaborCouncilSAC SociétéAfricainedeCulture

SNYC SouthernNegroYouthCongressSSCAC SouthSideCommunityArtCenterSSWC SouthSideWriters’ClubSNYM SouthernNegroYouthMovementUE UnitedElectrical,Radio,andMachineWorkersofAmericaUEMWU UnitedElectricianandMachineWorkersUnionUPWA UnitedPackinghouseWorkersofAmericaUPWU UnitedPublicWorkersUnionUSIA UnitedStatesInformationAgencyWPA WorksProgressAdministrationWPUC Women’sPeaceandUnityClub

INTRODUCTIONThusthedebateaboutthedomesticcoldwar—includingwhattocalltherepressionthatwaspartofit—tellsusthatwhilethecoldwarmaybeover,itsghostslingeron.Andtheycontinuetohaunt.

—VICTORNAVASKY,THENATION,2001

RACE,RELIGION,THE1950S,ANDTHECOLDWAR

Icameofage in the1950s in theCatholicschoolsofCleveland,Ohio,placeswhere religion,the ColdWar, and racial integration converged and where the dangers of communism werebroughthome toCatholic schoolchildren in spectaclesas intenseanddramaticasmiraculousapparitions. We read anticommunist comic books in school, prayed en masse for theconversionofRussia, and feared the IronCurtainnot as symbolic imaginarybut as imminentthreat.BythetimeIlefttheeighthgrade,thenamesofCardinalMindszenty,theanticommunistcardinal of Hungary, and Louis Budenz, a former communist, Catholic convert, and paid FBIinformer,wereasfamiliarastheLittleFlowerandOurLadyofFatima.TheinstitutionalCatholicChurch in the United States was virulently anticommunist and supportive of Senator JosephMcCarthy, at least partly because religious persecution in communist countries was to theCatholic Church a real and present danger. The U.S. Catholic Church was also highlysegregated. There were separate seminaries and convents for black priests and nuns and,thoughIdidn’tknowitthen,therewerealsobehind-the-scenesstrugglesbyblackparentsandcommunity folk in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s that forced U.S. Catholic schools andorganizations to integrate. These disturbances never made it into any histories of Catholiceducation, but they were a part of black oral history. Since a major support for antiracistradicalisminthe1940sand1950swastheCommunistPartyandradicalsoftheLeft,theU.S.Catholic crusade against communism was accompanied by, and helped sustain for all thoseyearsduringtheColdWar,adeepsuspicionofcivilrightsactivism.

I was in elementary school when the 1954Brown v. Board of Education SupremeCourtdecisionwasmade,alandmarkdecisionthatnotonlywaspointedlyminimizedbytheCatholichierarchyofClevelandbutalsowasused tobolster itsanticommunist rhetoric.Amonthafterthe Brown decision, Cleveland’s major Catholic paper, the Catholic Universe Bulletin,complimented the court for its temperate choice in not trying to change “long establishedinstitutions and traditions over night” and for “taking the wind out of the sails of theCommunists.”Withoutanysuggestionofspiritualconcern for thesegregatedchildrenofGod,the editorial chided those “petty politicians” (read: civil rights leaders) for trying to makepersonalgainoutofa“pretendedwhitesupremacy”thatcouldnotexist,thewriterclaimed,in“the democratic atmosphere of America.” The editorial ends on this triumphal but prematureannouncementofnationalblackinclusion:The“studiedeffortstomakesecond-classcitizensofcertainminority groups [are] now out of our national picture” (June 1954, 4). NowonderwefortyorsoblackstudentsamongnearlyonethousandwhitesatSt.ThomasAquinasSchoolfeltwewerethereonwhitesufferance,outsidersamongthechildrenof Irish, Italian,andEasternEuropeanimmigrants,toleratedsolongaswelearnedtheimportantlessonsofassimilationandinvisibility.

TheconvergenceoftheColdWarandintegrationduringmyeducationmeantthatIimbibed

a version of black racial identity filtered through and shaped byColdWar politics. It was anantiblack,self-abnegatingformofracial identitybasedonwhitetoleranceandblackinvisibility.Black teenagers in the 1950s had so absorbed these “lessons of Jim Crow” that they hadadoptedahumoroustakedownforanyonewhosebehaviorwasconsidered“actingblack”(loudcolors, loud talking, uncouth behavior) and fell short of those elusive standards for whiteacceptance:“Youain’tready,”someonewouldsnap,whichwasshorthandfor“Youaren’treadyfor integration.” The worst epithet we could use to describe racial discrimination was theanemic term “prejudice”; we didn’t know then that race militants and leftists called it, moreaccurately, “white supremacy,” thus making clear that there was an organized racializedstructurebasedonpolitical,economic,andsocialoppression,notjustbadwhitebehavior,andthat the goal for black equality was not only changing minds and hearts but challenginginstitutions.

I begin with these personal reminiscences to highlight theways that a deep animosity toblack civil rights struggles ran like a vein throughout U.S. Cold War culture, preparing eventhose of us who benefited the most from civil rights militancy to be stand-up littleanticommunists.TheColdWarstrategiesthatwereusedtounderminecivilrightsandcivilrightsactivistsareperhapsmostobviousinthefilesoftheFBI,whereblacksandcivilrightsactivistswere the targetsofFBIprobes.The “equationbetween the redand theblack” (Caute1978,167)wassofixedinthemindofJ.EdgarHooverthatherecommendedthatthewriterRichardWrightbekeptontheSecurityIndexbecausehis“militantattitudetowardtheNegroproblem”signifiedaweakcommitmenttoanticommunism(Robins1992,285).Similarly,theFBIdeclaredthe once-acceptable James Baldwin “dangerous” in 1960 “as he became more vocal incriticizing segregation” and had participated in a rally to abolish the House Un-AmericanActivities Committee (HUAC) (Robins 1992, 346). People who were called before “loyaltyboards”wereroutinelyinterrogatedabouttheirpositiononracialequalityinwaysthatassumedcivil rightsworkwasasignofdisloyalty,a typicalquestionbeing: “Doyou thinkanoutspokenphilosophyfavoringraceequalityisanindexofCommunism?”(Caute1978,283).

THEBLACK-REDNEGRO

Yet until the recent outpouring of new scholarship, theColdWarwas figured aswhite in thenational imaginary and was routinely resegregated by Cold War scholars, who producedversions of the ColdWar that featured thewhite Hollywood Ten,white Red Diaper babies,white HUAC hearings,white red feminism, and awhite blacklist.1 On the other side of thiscultural divide, theBlackPopular Front—the “OtherBlacklist” ofmy title—has almost alwaysbeenmarginalizedinblackliteraryandculturalstudies.Thoughnearlyeverymajorblackwriterof the1940sand1950swas insomeway influencedby theCommunistPartyorother leftistorganizations,andalthoughtheLeftwasbyallaccountsthemostraciallyintegratedmovementofthatperiod,theterms“U.S.radicalism,”“leftwing,”“OldLeft,”“NewLeft,”and“communism”cametosignifywhitehistoryandblackabsence.

Blacks came to the Communist Party through various channels: through unions, labororganizations, and grassroots antiracist work; through theWPA or anticolonial work like thecampaignagainstSouthAfricanapartheid;throughcommunityandculturalgroupsliketheSouthSideCommunityArtCenterinChicago;andthroughthepeacemovement.Asthewitchhuntsofthe McCarthy Senate investigations and HUAC geared up, every kind of legitimate dissent,including teachers who tried to institute Black History Week in schools and unions that didantiracistwork,wastargetedas“subversive.”Theremayindeedhavebeenreasonstoopposecommunism,but thewaron radicalism thateventually turned into full-scaleMcCarthyismwas

ultimately “not about spies or celebrities or even grand inquisitors,” as Mike Marqusee soclearlyshows ina2004 review inTheNation. InMarqusee’s catalogueofColdWar targets,anticommunism was organized to obstruct any avenue of possible dissent: “factories andoffices, schools, local libraries, PTAs. Radio stations. Comic books. TV series.Advertisements.”And,Iwouldadd,itwasawaragainstblackresistance.Inthe1940s,whentheleftistEstherJacksonandherhusband,theblackcommunistJamesJackson,organizedtheSouthern Negro Youth Movement in Birmingham, Alabama, to fight segregation and blackpoverty, theirworkwasdismantledbythemachinationsofboththeKuKluxKlanandtheFBI,whichhaddeclaredwaroncivilrights.AsEstherretorts,“WewerefightingagainstwhiteracistbrutalityinBirmingham,nottakingordersfromMoscow.”2

No one could have convinced me as a twelve-year-old Catholic schoolgirl or even as atwenty-somethinggraduatestudentintheearly1960sthatcommunismmeantblackpeopleanygood.ButifIhadlistenedcarefullytotheadults,Imighthaveoverheardthemtalkingofunions,PaulRobeson,andcivilrights.TheOtherBlacklistismyattempttofinallyoverhearthoselong-forgotten, repressed conversations. They reveal important and elementary facts about theCommunistParty’spositionsonracethatbearrepeating:“TheCPwastheonlymajorAmericanpoliticalparty that formallyopposedracialdiscrimination; itdevotedconsiderableresourcestoanarrayofanti-discriminationcampaigns;anditcreatedararespaceforBlackleadershipinamultiracial institution” (Biondi2003,6).TheCPsignaled its commitment toblack liberationasearly as1928, at theSixthCongressof theCommunist International (Comintern) inMoscow,when,withtheencouragementofblackactivists,theCPmadeastatementinsupportofblackrights to fullequality.With itssloganof “self-determination in theBlackBelt” focusedonblackequality struggles in the U.S. South, the Party embraced both black nationalism and foughtagainst white supremacy, a dual project rooted in the belief that “antiracism should be anexplicit component of the anticapitalist struggle” (4).3 The CP’s antiracist history was thecatalyst for the writer-activist Julian Mayfield’s decision to join the CP while in his earlytwenties. As he recalled in a 1970 interview: “The Communist Party, it seemed to youngpeople, offered the best advantage, the sharpest weapon by which to attack the society….[So]wejoinedthemostpowerful,radicalorganizationwecould”(Mayfield1970).ForMayfield,like many other black activists, that choice was made primarily because of the CP’scommitmenttoracialstruggle.

GiventhepoliticalhistoryoftheCommunistPartyasfarbackasthe1920s,it isclearwhytheCPattractedblacks,especiallyduringtheDepression.Inindustrializedcities,whereblackswere at the bottom of industry’s discriminatory structures and were trying to organizethemselves as workers, the militant efforts of the communists to unionize workers, stopevictions,protestpoliceviolence, integrateunions,andgivepositionsofauthority toblacks inthe unionsmust have seemed like beacons of light. TheCP gained black support and blackconfidenceintheruralSouthbecauseofitsworkorganizingtheSharecroppersUnionandinthenorthern industrialcitiesbecauseof itsorganizingof the localCPUnemployedCouncils,whichfought forwelfarereliefandagainstevictions.Starting in the1920s, theCPcoordinatedwith,joined, or supported a range of black organizations: the American Negro Labor Congress1925), theLeagueofStruggle forNegroRights (which replaced theall-blackANLC in1930),theNationalNegroCongress(1935–1947), theCouncilonAfricanAffairs, theSouthernNegroYouth Congress (1937–1949), the American Youth Congress, and the Civil Rights Congress(1940–1955). The Chicago community activist Bennett Johnson described the Party as analmostordinaryaspectofthepoliticallandscapeinChicago,secondonlytothepolicyracketasthemost popular organization inChicago’s black communities in the 1930s: the policy racket

tookcareofblackentrepreneurs,andtheCommunistPartytookcareofthepeoplewhowereplayingthenumbers.HoraceCaytonwroteinBlackMetropolis,hissociologicalstudyofblackChicago, that in the 1930s the Party was such an accepted organization that when a blackfamily fearedaneviction, itwasnotunusual for them to tell theirchildren to runand “find theReds”(citedinStorch2009,113).

TheLeftplayedsuchanimportantpartinblackstruggleduringthe1940sthatscholarsrefertothatperiodastheBlackorNegroPopularFronttoindicatethatforblackstheclassicperiodof the Popular Front (1935–1939)4 extended well into the next decade and beyond (Biondi2003,6).IextendtheperiodoftheBlackPopularFrontto1959becausetheartistsinmystudycontinuedtoworkcollectivelyontheLeftinPopularFront–styleorganizations.WiththeimpetusofWorldWarIIandtheblackmilitancyitencouraged,theLeftgainedamuch-neededboostinthefightagainstracism.Thewarprovidedanicesetofideologicalslogans—representedbestby thePittsburghCourier’s “DoubleV” campaign (victory against fascismabroad and victoryagainstracismathome)andthe“Don’tBuyWhereYouCan’tWork”campaigns.ButitwastheCPandtheblack laborLeft thatsupplied thearmor for thoseslogans.Leftist labor leaders—likeFerdinandSmithoftheNationalMaritimeUnion;EwartGuinieroftheUnitedPublicWorkersUnion; leaders of the Communist-led United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers ofAmerica; the Left-ledNationalNegroCongress; and the leaders of theNationalNegroLaborCouncil,ColemanYoung(mayorofDetroitfrom1974to1993)andNicholasHood(whowouldserve as aDetroit councilman for twenty-eight years)—led the struggle for black jobs inwarproductionandinunionsandmadefairemploymentpracticescentraltotheirpoliticalagendas.Black leftists also keptwatch on the unfolding of events abroad asAsian andAfrican statesgainedindependence,aconnectionthatmanyscholarsseeasoneofthewaysinternationalismstimulatedblackAmericanmilitancy.Beyondthewar,AfricanAmericancivilrightsactiviststriedto internationalize black struggle with petitions to the United Nations: the NAACP’s 1947AnAppealtotheWorldandtheCivilRightsCongress’s1951petition,WeChargeGenocide,5bothofwhichofferedapowerfulcritiqueofAmerica’sinstitutionalizedracism.Thesewereleftinthedustbin: the U.S. State Department refused to allow these petitions to be presented to theworld body. Nonetheless, these strategies show that, in Biondi’s (2003, 8) words, “the left’swartime rhetoric, likemainstreamcivil rights rhetoric, cast racial justice in thenational [and, Iwouldadd, international] interest.” In his commencement address toVassarCollege in 1945,theleftistactorCanadaLeecalledthiskindofleft-wingpoliticalwork“equalitywithsignificance”(Biondi2003,21).

THEBLACKLEFT:DOWNTOWNCLEVELAND,1952

In1952inCleveland,theNationalNegroLaborCouncilhelditssecondconventionnotfarfromtheparochialschoolIattended.ColemanYoung,theNNLC’sexecutivesecretary,andNicholasHood, its president, addressed the convention with stirring speeches about the NNLC’sspectacularlaborvictories.YoungrecountedthestoryofthecapitulationoftheSearsRoebuckCompany,whichhad, for the first time,begun tohireblackworkers “inall categories”and toincludeblacksinallitsjob-trainingcourses.Hood’sspeech,ontheotherhand,emphasizedtheinternationalist focus of the civil rights movement, linking the struggles of black labor in theUnitedStateswiththefightinSouthAfricaagainstapartheidandthemovementsfordemocraticand economic rights in “Asia, Africa, the Middle East, [and] Puerto Rico” to “End WhiteSupremacyRule”(quotedinGordon1953,14).6Thedelegatesapprovedaprogramthatcalled

fora jobscampaign“toget jobsforNegroesinall industries,” togetonemillionsignaturesonthepetitionoftheFairEmploymentPracticesCommittee,andtoinclude“FEPCclausesinunioncontracts.” They also approved continuing the fight for repeal of the repressive Smith andMcCarranlaws,reaffirmed“solidaritywithliberationmovementsofcolonialpeoples,”andcalledfor “special actions in the interests of Negro women workers.” The NNLC got even morespecificaboutantiblacklaborpractices,withitsdelegateVickiGarvinremindingtheparticipantsthat therewas full-scale discrimination against blacks in industry, offices, department stores,publicutilities,andintheemergingcommercialairlineindustry.Thepoliciesoftheairlinesmeantthat they would hire no black pilots nor black flight attendants (then called “stewardesses”),pushingmanyoftheNNLC’s1,500delegatestoleavetheconventioncenterandstage“amassjobdemonstrationatCleveland’sdowntownairlineticketcounter”(Lang2009,172).TheNNLCalsomadesureitsconventionproducedaradicalculturalprogram.Asoneoftheinvitedguestsat theCleveland convention,PaulRobeson sang to the 1,500 delegates. The left-wing visualartistCharlesWhitewascommissionedtodothedrawingfor theconventionprogram,andhedid not disappoint.His drawing featured theStatue of Liberty as a blackwoman holding thetorch above a black couple, the man in overalls and the woman in the peasant dress of aworker. In his signature style, White enlarged the forearms of Liberty and of the couple tosuggesttheirstrength.Theirfaceslooktothefuturewithdeterminationandexpectancy.Fromtheconventionprogramdesignedbyaleft-wingartisttothespeechesbyHoodandYoung,theentertainment by Robeson, its internationalist perspective, and its civil rights demonstrationagainst the airlines’ racism, the NNLC’s 1952 convention was the epitome of a militant,muscular,andmoderncivilrightsagenda.FormulatedandcarriedoutindowntownClevelandatthePublicAuditorium,theconventiontookplacejustafewmilesfromwhereIwaslearningthatthefighttogainblackeconomicandpoliticalequalitywasacommunistplot.7

FIGURE0.1.PosterbyCharlesWhiteforthesecondconventionoftheNationalNegroLaborCouncil,Cleveland(1952).Source:C.IanWhiteandtheCharlesWhiteArchives.©CharlesWhiteArchives.

THEBLACKLEFTINAFRICANAMERICANLITERARYHISTORY

Inthe1960sand1970s,myanticommunisteducationcontinuedattheuniversitieswhereIwastrained in literary criticism via theNewCritical bibles of Brooks andWarren’sUnderstandingPoetry and Understanding Fiction. These Cold War–influenced productions assured theirreaders that the literary or cultural object could only be judged by its own internal formalqualitiesandmustbeseparatedfrom“outside”influenceslikehistoricalorpoliticalcontexts.SoIrecognizetheNewCriticalbiasesinthestunningabsenceofColdWarhistoryinmanyAfricanAmerican literary and cultural histories and anthologies. To take the most well-known andinfluential anthology as an example, the Norton Anthology of African American Literature(Gates and McKay 2004) labels the period from the 1940s to the 1960s as “Realism,

Naturalism,andModernism,”asthoughtheseformalliterarycategoriesemergedfull-blown,attheheightoftheColdWar,detachedfromtheideologicalandpoliticalpressuresofthatperiod.Furthermore, this labeling of a period in purely aesthetic terms is anomalous in the NortonAnthology;alloftheotherperiodsintheanthology—“TheLiteratureofSlaveryandFreedom,”“Literatureof theReconstruction to theNewNegroRenaissance,” “HarlemRenaissance,”and“The Black Arts Movement”—are anchored in their political, historical, social, and literarycontexts.ThatstructurebreaksdownwhentheeditorsconfronttheColdWarperiod,apatternof cultural amnesia that is understandable given the normalization of anticommunism in U.S.culture,thedemonizationoftheCommunistParty,andthetightreinsofsecrecymaintainedbypeoplewhoweresubjectedtoblacklistingandMcCarthyism.

TheNortonessaydoescatalogmanyof thepoliticalandsocial issues (atomicexplosions,fascism,WorldWarII,socialrevolution,laborissues,thefallofcolonialism,andthecivilrightsmovement) that the editors present as a part of the “sprawling mess of raw material” thatwritersdrewfrom,butitdoesnotpresentthesesocialissuesasinfluencingaestheticform.Theonlyrecognitionof thepoliticsofaesthetics is theessay’sdenunciatoryviewofsocialprotestas producing the “brutal realism and naturalism” of the work of Richard Wright. DistancingRalphEllisonfromhisownMarxistandprocommunistinvolvements,theNortonessayelevateshim as the figure of “artistic maturation,” whose highly acclaimed 1952 novel Invisible Man“unburdened [thenovel from] thenarrownaturalism”ofWrightand ledblacknarrative into thehigherrealmsofmodernism.Thiscriticalnarrativenormalizes1950sNewCriticalassumptionsthat literature was supposed to be preserved from ideology and dismisses the sociallyconscious literature of the 1930s and 1940s, in the words of the Norton editors, as “anexhausted mode.” Consider that during this political moment in the 1950s black writers andintellectuals were being intimidated, arrested, interrogated, indicted, jailed, deported, andblacklisted.Yettheabsenceofanyreferencetotheblacklist,theColdWar,thePopularFront,theassaultonPaulRobeson,W.E.B.DuBois’sarrest,theHUACinvestigations,thesilencingofLangstonHughes,thedenialofpassportstoRobesonandDuBois(amongothers),thelabelingofeverycivilrightsorganizationassubversive(includingtheNAACP),andFBIcensorship8bothmisses the richness (and messiness) of the literary and political debates of this period andconsolidatesaColdWarnarrativethatultimatelymarginalizedblackliteraryhistory.9

TheOtherBlacklistproposesacounternarrativethatbeginswiththeBlack-Lefthistorythatis missing in the Norton. Besides a kind of cultural and philosophical compatibility betweencommunism and African American literary culture that scholars like Alan Wald, JamesSmethurst,WilliamMaxwell,andBrianDolinar,AaronLecklider,andCherylHigashida(tonameafew)havesothoroughlydocumented,Waldmaintainsthat theLeftofferedblackwriters theinstitutional support that they could get nowhere else in white America: the publications andclubsandcommitteesthatwerecreatedforblackwriters(at least inpart)byPartymembersandwithPartysupport,spacesinwhich“Blackwriterscametogethertoformulateideas,sharewritings, make contacts, and develop perspectives that sustained their future creative work”(Wald2001,267).AsWald(andmanyothers)concludes,until the late1950s, these left-wingclubs,schools,committees,camps,andpublications “constituted theprincipalvenues” for theproduction of African American literary culture. As James C. Hall (2001, 19) insists, “noadequate history of post–World War II African-American cultural accomplishment can beundertakenwithoutafullaccountingofthepsychic,political,andothercostsofthecoldwar.”

Focusing closely on six artists who were aligned with the Left,The Other Blacklist: TheAfrican American Literary and Cultural Left in the 1950s proposes an alternativeliterary/cultural history, one represented by debates, conferences, symposia, institutional

affiliations,political commitments,FBI investigations,andgovernmentspyingnetworks. I viewthisprojectasamore inclusive,dynamic,anddialecticalmethodofdoingculturaland literaryhistory, one that is committed to documenting, though not uncritically, the central role of theCommunistPartyandtheLeftintheshapingofmid-twentieth-centuryAfricanAmericanculturalhistoryandaesthetics.Thesix figures inmystudy—thenovelistandessayistLloydL.Brown;thevisualartistCharlesWhite;theplaywrightandnovelistAliceChildress;thepoetandnovelistGwendolynBrooks; the novelist Frank LondonBrown; and the novelist, essayist, and activistJulian Mayfield—represent a range of experiences with the Left. Although Lloyd Brown andJulianMayfield are the only self-identifiedmembers of theCP in this study, all these figureswereatsomepointactivewithleftistorganizations.LloydBrown,JulianMayfield,andCharlesWhitewereopenlyandorganizationallyinvolvedwiththeCommunistPartyoftheUnitedStates;likeWhite,AliceChildresswasactivelyinvolvedwith,thoughnotnecessarilyanofficialmemberof theParty;GwendolynBrooks,who isalmostneverconnectedwith theLeft,wasapartofthe left-wingChicagoBlackCulturalFront in the1940sand1950s;FrankLondonBrownwasalso involvedwith theLeft in the1950s,mainly throughhis radicalunionwork in the left-wingUnited PackinghouseWorkers Union. By extending the period of the Black Popular Front toincludethe1950sandplacingtheseartistssquarelywithinBlackPopularFrontpolitics,Ishowhow, through their writing, painting, and activism, they carried the resistant traditions of theBlackPopularFrontof the1930sand1940s into the1950sandbecamea link to themilitantpolitics and aesthetics of the 1960s and 1970s. The Other Blacklist aims, therefore, tochallengetheideas,assumptions,andpracticesofcontemporaryAfricanAmericananthologiesthat tend to minimize or exclude altogether the role of the Left and the Communist Party inAfrican American cultural production. Rather than reduce the literature of the 1950s toaesthetics,Ireadthe1950sasadynamic,excitingperiodofdebate,amomentwhentheBlackLeft continued towork despite the pressures of theColdWar, and I intend to acknowledge,thoughnotuncritically, thecentralroleof theCommunistParty.This, then, is thequestionthatTheOtherBlacklist tries to answer:What happens if you put the black literary and culturalLeftatthecenterofAfricanAmericanstudiesoftheColdWar?

THEBLACKNATIONTHESIS:POLITICSANDAESTHETICS,TOGETHERAGAIN

First, it becomes necessary to acknowledge the central intellectual role of the CP in blackliterarystudies,beginningwithwhattheintellectualLeftcalledthe“blackbelt”or“blacknation”thesis. In 1928, at the SixthWorld Congress of the Comintern, the international CommunistParty considered the question: Do black people in the United States constitute a nation, anational minority, or a nation in the “black belt” South and a national minority in all otherregions? It passed the resolution asserting that African Americans in the black belt (thesouthern states) of theUnited States do constitute an oppressed nationwith a right to self-determination.Communistsoffered“Self-DeterminationfortheBlackBelt”firstasasloganfororganizingefforts inboth theNorthandtheSouth,whicheventuallyhelpedthePartyestablishthe Alabama Sharecroppers Union in 1931 and organize steelworkers and longshoremen insome southern cities.10 But the idea of black nationhood also appealed to African Americanwriters, including Langston Hughes, Lloyd L. Brown, Alice Childress, Richard Wright, RalphEllison,MargaretWalker,andChesterHimes,allofwhom,withvaryingdegreesofenthusiasm,embraced some aspects of the “black nation” thesis.RichardWright’swritings perhaps bestillustrate its appeal to writers and intellectuals. In his 1937 manifesto, “Blueprint for Negro

Writing,” Wright gave what is probably the most compelling and coherent statement of theappeal of the nation thesis for black writers. Insisting that black writing must focus on thefolklore,customs,andvernaculartraditionsoftheblackmasses,Wrighturgedblackwriterstoembracethenationthesistodiscoverandrepresent“thecollectiveconsciousnessoftherace”foundinthesetraditions—andalsotodosobecauseoftheirpotentialtoinspirepoliticalaction:

In theabsenceof fixedandnourishing formsof culture, theNegrohasa folklorewhichembodies thememoriesandhopesofhisstruggleforfreedom.Notyetcaughtinpaintorstone,andasyetbutfeeblydepictedinthepoemandnovel,theNegroes’mostpowerful imagesofhopeanddespairstill remain in the fluidstateofdailyspeech….Negro folklorecontains,inameasurethatputstoshamemoredeliberateformsofNegroexpression,thecollectivesenseofNegrolifeinAmerica.

(1382–1383)

Black leftistartists increasingly representedblackvernacular forms in their texts, includingfolklore,folkspeech,andcelebrationsofjazzandtheblues.BothWrightandRalphEllison—aswell asall thewritersexamined inTheOtherBlacklist andmost of theblackwriters atmid-century—incorporatedblackvernacular formsintheirworkasrepresentativeofa largereffortto embody and represent a unified and oppositional black community. While the CommunistParty’snotionofanAfricanAmericannation risingupwithin theAmericanSouthor formingacollectiveoppositional forcewasnever a realistic political goal (and in factwas ridiculedandrejected by many African Americans), the potential of an organized black community,particularly one that celebrated black culture and history, excited many of the leading blackintellectualsofthisera.FromMargaretWalkertoRalphEllison,blackwritersfoundtheirliterarydirection in reclaiming the “folk.”According to the cultural historianRobinD.G.Kelley, theseMarxist ideologiesthatvaluedtheblackworkingclass,recognizedtheaestheticvalueofblack“folk” culture and black history, and celebrated traditions of black resistance became both avehicle for black communist political operations and, most importantly for black writers, anaestheticimperative(1996,109).Ofcourse,asKelleyalsonotes,AfricanAmericans“broughttheir [own] grass-roots, race-conscious cultural traditions to the Party,” including their deepreligious beliefs—and, yes, thePartymay have tried to transmute every expression of blackcultureintocommunistrevolutionarysignificance,whichwritersoftenresisted.Butthepresenceandpowerof thenation thesis forblackwriters isclear. Ipoint thisoutasa response to theclaim of African American literary historians that “during the forties and fifties, as previouslyduringtheHarlemRenaissanceandearlierperiods,therewasnoconsciouslyformulatedblackaesthetic”(Hilletal.1988,1078).Fromthe1930stothe1960s,thatis,forasubstantialpartofthetwentiethcentury,AfricanAmerican literarycriticismandpracticewas, in fact,significantlyinfluenced by the formulas of the Marxist-Leninist nation thesis and its focus on black folkcultureasthebasisforanational,oppositionalculture.

THEBLACKBLACKLIST

Besides a philosophical compatibility between communism and African American literaryculture,which isespeciallyobvious in theways that theblacknation thesiswasdeployed foraestheticpurposes,theLeft,asAlanWaldhasobserved,offeredblackwriterstheinstitutionalsupport that theycouldgetnowhereelse inwhiteAmerica.Weavingbackand forthbetweenChicagoandNewYork,TheOtherBlacklistrevisitsscenesofmajorblackleftistactivityinthe1950s, where the subjects of my study encountered that left-wing support system, Lloyd L.

Brown andAliceChildress, in NewYork, andGwendolyn Brooks, Frank LondonBrown, andCharles White, along with artists and activists of the South Side Community Art Center, inChicago(althoughWhitewas fairlyperipatetic,spending time inMexicoandNewYorkbeforesettling in California). During the 1950s, Black Popular Front activists organized and workedwith freedom structures—like Robeson’s Harlem-based radical newspaper Freedom (1950–1955), which covered arts, culture, and politics on the national and international stage andreportedextensivelyonthegovernmentrepressionofradicalsandradicalthought,withthegoalof developing a politically informed and resistant black community. The arts-and-culture-centeredCommitteefortheNegrointheArts(1947–1954)producedplaysbyblackwritersattheprogressiveinterracialClubBarontheater,at437LenoxAvenueat132ndStreet,andtheseplaysmight thenbereviewedbyLorraineHansberry in the left-wingnewspaperFreedomandby the communist Lloyd Brown in the Marxist journalMasses & Mainstream, and proceedsfromtheboxofficemightgotobenefittheleft-dominatedCivilRightsCongress.BlackPopularFrontactivists foundedtheprogressiveAmericanNegroTheatre(where leftistartists includingAliceChildress,SidneyPoitier,HarryBelafonte,OssieDavis,andRubyDeegottheirstart)andproduced plays, some with subversive racial potential. The militant internationalist woman’sorganizationSojourners for Truth and Justice (1951–1952) protested against the injustices toblack women at the hands of the criminal justice system (Gore 2011, 65–89). In 1951, in asecond-floor loftat125thandSeventhAvenue inHarlem, thewhitecommunistPhilipBonoskyand the black leftist John Killens formed the Harlem Writers’ Workshop (later the HarlemWriters’Guild),whichencouragedandhelpedpublishprogressiveblackwriters.Black leftistsspent time at recreational spaces such as Camp Unity in Wingdale, New York, the firstinterracialadultcampintheUnitedStates,andCampWo-Chi-Ca,an interracialcoeducationalsummer vacation camp in Port Murray, New Jersey, both of which sponsored black culturalevents.Blackvisualartistsshowedtheirworkatgalleriessuchas thesociallyconsciousACAGallery,operatingthenatNinety-FirstStreetandMadisonAvenue,whichfeaturedtheworkofCharlesWhiteandJacobLawrenceatatimewhenmainstreamartgalleriesdidnotshowblackart. Black leftists were enrolled in left-wing educational institutions including the GeorgeWashingtonCarverSchoolinChicago,theSamAdamsSchoolinBoston,theJeffersonSchoolinNewYork,theCaliforniaLaborSchoolinSanFrancisco,andthePeople’sEducationalCenterinLosAngeles.ManyblackleftistsdidworkwiththeCPandinmanycasesdidthedangerouswork of defending leftist activists indicted under the Smith and McCarran Acts. Whenmainstream literary publications completely ignored black culture and black life, the Marxist,leftist, and communist journals covered, theorized, and critiqued African American culturalproduction: New Masses, Masses & Mainstream, the Sunday and Daily Worker,ContemporaryReader,andNegroQuarterly.Left-wingandMarxistpublisherslikeInternationalPublishers and Masses & Mainstream Press published these writers when the whitemainstream,andevenwhiteleft-wingliberals,wouldnot.11

Giventhishistory,Itakethelibertyofextendingthedurationofthe“BlackPopularFront”or“BlackCulturalFront,”orNegroCulturalFront,tohighlightthecontinuinginfluenceoftheblackliterary,cultural,andpoliticalLeftthroughoutthe1950s.Thesewerethespaces,whichuntilthelate1950s,asWald(2001,267)rightlyclaims,“constitutedtheprincipalvenuesinwhichmanyBlackwriters came together to formulate ideas, sharewritings,make contacts, and developperspectives thatsustained their futurecreativework.”12 Inotherwords,during theColdWar,whenblackswerenotevenablipon thewhiteAmericancultural radar, itwas in these leftistspacesoftheBlackPopularFrontthatAfricanAmericanliteraryculturewasdebated,critiqued,encouraged,performed,published,produced,andpreserved.13

THEBLACKPOPULARFRONT:RACERADICALISMINTHE1950S

Wehavetounderstandthat theU.S.government,with itsColdWarmind-set,wasnotonly inthebusinessof trying to repress theLeft; itwasalsoshapingdebatesover race, integration,and civil rights.14 Several excellent studies of the civil rights years expose the role ofgovernmentinterventionindeliberatelyconstructingaColdWarnarrativeofracialprogressthatundermined civil rights struggles.15 A case in point is the fate of the NAACP petition to theUnitedNationsin1947,“AnAppealtotheWorld,”inspiredandledbyW.E.B.DuBois,askingthatbody “to redresshuman rightsviolations theUnitedStatescommittedagainst itsAfrican-Americancitizens.”16 The petitionwas rejected afterU.S. opposition—which includedEleanorRoosevelt—because terms like “human rights,” “violations of theUnitedStates,” and “AfricanAmerican citizens” made it too radical for government sensitivities. The petition, however,became“aninternationalsensation”whentheSovietUniondemandedaninvestigation.ButtheStateDepartment’sresponsetowhatwasconsideredbothaColdWarwinfortheSovietsanda black eye for America was not action but pamphleteering. In the early 1950s, the U.S.Information Agency put out a pamphlet, The Negro in American Life, in order to portrayAmerican history as a story of democracy at work overcoming the evils of the past.17 Thepamphlet presented a “carefully crafted” portrait of race relations in theUnitedStates: blackand white children were pictured in totally integrated classrooms and housing projects. Incontrasttopastevilslikeslavery,“Negroes,”itclaimed,werenow“largelandowners,”“wealthybusinessmen,” “physicists,” “metallurgists,” and “chemists.” Moreover, the pamphletemphasized,educationwasliftinguptheNegro,makinghim“moreworthyofequaltreatment.”Thepamphlet’srosyviewofAmericanracerelationsinthe1950sisdepictedinitsfinalpictureof an integrated housing project. In what is a clearly staged photograph, black and whitecouplesandtheirchildrenareshowntalkingtogetheramicablyinsomeone’sbackyard,withthesuccess of the integration project underscored by the caption beneath the picture: “Theseneighbors in a housing project, like millions of Americans, are forgetting whatever colorprejudicetheymayhavehad;theirchildrenwillhavenonetoforget”(Dudziak2002,54).

The1954Brownv.BoardofEducationSupremeCourtdecision,whichwasargued,atleastpartially,onthebasisofthepsychologicalharmofracismtoblackchildren,wasessentialinthemass marketing of this story of racial progress.18 As several contemporary studies of theBrown decision show, the focus on “stigmatic harmas the essence of JimCrow” shifted thefocusofcivilrightsstrugglesawayfromthemoremilitanteconomic-andlabor-basedcivilrightsstruggles of the 1940s. Risa Goluboff’s study The Lost Promise of Civil Rights details thatshift, showing that “The NAACP’s victory inBrown fundamentally changed the scope of civilrightslawyeringandtheconstitutionalimagination”(2007,238).WhatthatmeantisthatracismaspsychologicalharmreplacedtheLeft’semphasisonlabor,unions,andeconomicinequality;theyoungstudent,ratherthantheadultworker,wouldbecomethe“centralfigureofAmericancivilrights”(250).Asthisconservative1950sracialdiscourse19continuedtopromoteafocusonsigns of “racial progress,” the race militancy of the Left would seem too radical, even “un-American,” and those leaders on the Left who continued to pursue amore radical attack onstate-sponsoredracialinequalitywouldbeharassedandblacklisted.

Conservativeintegrationistnarrativeshadfiltereddownintonationaldiscourseoncivilrightseven beforeBrown. In 1950, the editors ofPhylon, a journal of black literature and culturepublished at the historically black Atlanta University, sent out a questionnaire to major blackwriters, collegeprofessors, and intellectuals about the state of black literature andpublishedthose responses in the December 1950 issue as a symposium on race and literary

representation.ThethirdquestiononthequestionnairesuggestedthattheeditorswerefishingforaStateDepartment–approvedanswerthatwouldminimizeracialconflict:“Wouldyouagreewith those who feel that the Negro writer, the Negro as subject, and the Negro critic andscholararemovingtowardan ‘unlabeled’ future inwhichtheywillbemeasuredwithoutregardto racial origin and conditioning?” Several of the twenty-three respondents said that blackwritersand intellectualscould reach that “unlabeled future”andachievewhatwas thenwidelyreferred to as “universality” by minimizing blackness, race issues, and civil rights demands.Severalevenarguedthat“universality”requiredeliminatingblackcharactersandracialthemesaltogether, praising writers like Frank Yerby and Willard Motley for making their maincharacterswhite.20ExceptfortherespondentIraD.A.Reid,whotaughtatHaverfordCollege,alltheprofessorsinthesymposium,undertheprotocolsofstate-sponsoredracialsegregation,wereemployedat black institutions.Notoneof themacknowledged,however, that their ownpositions at these racially segregated institutions undercut the “race progress” narrative theypromoted.21 In a telling sign of Cold War pressures, some of the respondents reproduced,almost verbatim, the official State Department line that racism was “a fast-disappearingaberration,capableofbeingovercomebytalentedandmotivatedindividuals.”22

The symposium respondents were not alone in promoting conservative race politics.Hollywood’s“Negroproblemfilms”ofthelate1940sandearly1950s, like Intruder intheDust(1949),Homeof theBrave (1949),Pinky (1949),LostBoundaries (1949), andNoWayOut(1950),continuedthepracticeoffocusingonthepsychologicalanxietiescausedbyracismandby holding up highly successful “Negroes” (the black doctor in No Way Out and LostBoundaries, thenurseinPinky, theblackentrepreneur in Intruder in theDust,and thesoldierand soon-to-be-businessman in Home of the Brave) as signs of how racism could beovercome. In each of these films, race problems are ameliorated by the interventions of anonracistwhitepersonandahighlycompetentblackpersontackling“theNegroproblem”inhisorherown individual life. Incontrast to theLeft’sanalysisof racismasan ideology rooted insystems of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, conservative race texts presented raceproblemsaspsychologicalproblemsof individuals.TheColdWarhistorianPennyVonEschen(1997, 156–158)meticulously documents howColdWar politics helped initiate this “powerfulrewriting of ‘race’ in popular African American [and American] discourse” by shifting racialdiscourse from an analysis of institutional and historical racism to an emphasis on thepsychologicalandsociologicalmeaningsofrace.BykeepingthefocusonU.S.raceproblemsas rooted in colonialism and imperialism, the radical Left refused to sanction the StateDepartment’s propaganda that racismwas rooted in individual prejudices and needed only alargerdoseofAmericandemocracyfor its totalannihilation.VonEschenarguesthat itwas inthe interest of the United States to dissociate U.S. race problems from colonialism andimperialism. TheUnitedStates could then shift the spotlight away from the role of Americanracism as part of a global problem of racism and domination and turn it into a “domestic”problem, one easily overcomewith the application of American democratic values.ColdWarinternational politics, as well as Brown’s “remaking of Civil Rights,” thus helped produce adomesticatedversionofrace,onedisconnectedfromthestrugglesofothercolonizedpeoples,andonlyaminordisturbanceinthetriumphalstoryofAmericandemocracy.23

MyintentioninTheOtherBlacklist is toshowhowtheseartistsontheLeft—LloydBrown,AliceChildress,CharlesWhite,FrankLondonBrown,GwendolynBrooks,andJulianMayfield—through their writing, visual art, and activism disrupted these State Department–authorizedversionsofrace,racism,andintegration.Intheirliteraryandvisualtextstheychallengedthoseconservativeracenarrativesthroughthreemajorrepresentationalchoices:theyfocusedonthe

radioactive subject of racial violence as a product of white supremacy; they connected U.S.race issues to international systems like colonialism; and they represented the Left, includingtheCommunistParty, incomplexways—often,butnotalways,positively.Like theproletarianartistsofthe1930s,theartistsIwilldiscussinthisbookdeliberatelychosetodocumenthighlycontroversial racial subjects—not sufficiently “universal” by conservative 1950s norms—thatallowed them to produce a critique of white supremacy and white racist violence. Mayfieldrecalls the “big” Left political campaigns of the late 1940s and early 1950s that became thesubjectsforleftistwritersandartists:theTrentonSix,sixmensentencedtotheelectricchairin1949forkillingawhitemaninTrenton,NewJersey,despitealackofevidenceandevidenceofaframe-upandcoercedconfessions;theMartinsvilleSeveninVirginia,sevenyoungblackmenwhoweretriedandeventuallyexecutedfortherapeofawhitewoman;the1950RosaIngramcase,which involved amother and her two sons on trial for killing awhitemanwho tried tosexually assault Mrs. Ingram;WillieMcGee, on trial and executed inMississippi in 1951 forallegedlyrapingawhitewomanwithwhomhewassexuallyinvolved.Theseweresomeofthestorieshighlightedbytheleftistwritersandvisualartistsinmystudy,storiesthatallowedthemtopursuetheircritiquesofantiblack,class,andgenderviolence.Becausetheyunderstoodraceinaglobalaswellasadomesticcontext,theartistsinmystudyoftenrepresentedtheseissuesas part of an international process: Childress’s 1951 play Gold Through the Trees, forexample, juxtaposes the story of theMartinsvilleSevenagainst the 1948antiapartheidSouthAfricanDefiancecampaign,explicitlyexposingtheinternationalimplicationsofwhitesupremacy.

ThevisualartistCharlesWhitechoseashissubjects“theeveryday,ordinary,working-classpeople, themostAfrican looking, thepoorest, theblackest inour ranks,”whichcountered theimages of assimilation offered by the State Department. Besides his magnificent murals ofAfricanAmericanculture,Whiteproducedinthe1940sand1950spowerfulrenderingsofRosaIngramandhersonsandtheTrentonSix.Thesewerepublishedonly in leftistpublicationslikeFreedom,theDailyandSundayWorker,andMasses&Mainstream.Hecontinuedthatkindofpolitically focused art in the 1970s, donating his artwork in support of the campaign to freeAngela Davis. Lloyd Brown’s Iron City recounts the almost entirely unknown story of thequadruple lynching of two black couples in Monroe, Georgia, in 1946 and the story of theviolentcampaign to forceblacks from jobson the railroads;FrankLondonBrown’s1959 firstnovel,TrumbullPark,centersonthereal-lifestruggleto integratepublichousing inChicagointhemid-1950s.Hansberry’sandBrooks’searliestpoemswereabout lynchings,andBrooks’s1953novelMaudMarthaisdeeplyinvolvedinissuesofracialstruggle,women’sindependence,class,andlaborrights;Brooks’s1960volumeofpoetryTheBeanEatersincludespoemsaboutthe Emmett Till murder, the integration of Little Rock Central High School, and housingsegregation.

Childress, White, Brooks, Lloyd Brown, London Brown, and Mayfield all representedcommunismortheLeftasacomplex,meaningful,andofteneffectiveforceinAfricanAmericanlifeandwerethusabletodrawonleftistformsandleft-wingradicalcritiquesintheirexpressivework. They experimented with political drama, documentary montage, black cultural forms,political satire, and theatrical genres like theLivingNewspaper and theLivingTheater,whichhad been popular proletarian cultural forms of the 1930s. They were not afraid to addressissuesofclass,gender,andracethathadbeendeclaredpoliticallysubversiveduringtheColdWar. I maintain that these resistant notions of black subjectivity, which countered theconservative constructions of race we see in the reactions to the 1954 Brown v. Board ofEducation decision, in thePhylon symposium, and inmy Catholic school instruction, are thesignalachievementoftheseartistsontheleft.24

READINGFBIFILES,READINGANTHOLOGIES

BecauseJ.EdgarHooversuspectedthatanyoneworkingagainstsegregationorinthefieldofcivil rights also had communist ties, the FBI (in league with Joseph McCarthy’s PermanentSubcommittee on Investigations and HUAC) persistently targeted the black intellectual andculturalcommunityofthe1950s.TheliteraryhistorianWilliamJ.MaxwelllabeledHoover’sFBI,with only a bit of irony, a “publicly funded institution of literary study,” the only one,Maxwellinsists,thatalwaystookAfricanAmericanliteratureseriously(forthcoming,3).Ironyaside,theFBI’s spying on black Americans fromWorldWar I through the 1970s is best described as“consistentlyhostiletoAfricanAmericanaspirations”(Kornweibel1999,178);itwasanarmofthe federal government dedicated to spying, illegal searches, and deliberate intimidation andharassment of American citizens. The bureau’s files are full of deletions, redactions, andfalsified,fanciful,andhighlyeditedreportsgeneratedbyanarratorknownasthe“ConfidentialInformantofKnownReliability” (Robins1992,18),whichwasbuilt upoutof the testimonyofpaid(oftenunreliable) informers,someofwhomwerefriends,neighbors,and/orcolleaguesofthe subject.25 Recent investigations, for example, have uncovered evidence in the FOIA filesthat the famous civil rights photographer ErnestWithers, whowas close tomany civil rightsleaders, includingMartinLutherKingJr.,waspaidby theFBI tospyon themovementhesoexpertlyand,apparently,lovinglyphotographed.26

EventhoughFBIfilesonblackartistsandintellectualsarecrudetoolsforbiographicalandcultural research, they are also invaluable biographical aids, enabling scholars of the Left toexcavate thehalf-buriedhistoryof theblackblacklist.WilliamMaxwell’squip that “mosteverychaptergoesbetterwithanFBIfile”(ina2012e-mailtotheauthor)isahumorousbutaccurateappreciationofthevalueofthesefiles.IhaveeitherreadorhaveinmypossessionthefilesonLorraineHansberry,AliceChildress,LloydL.Brown,JulianMayfield,CharlesWhite,andFrankLondonBrown,whichincludepagesofirrelevantorbasicdatalikethesubject’sheight,weight,address,andmaritalstatusbutalsoproduceacomprehensiveandfairlyaccuratelistofBlackPopularFrontorganizationstheybelongedto,thepublicationstheywrotefor,andtheactivitiesthey engaged in. Apparently Gwendolyn Brooks escaped Hoover’s committees; the letter Ireceived from the FBI says there is no record of Brooks in their files, though that does notnecessarilymeana filedoesnotexist.27BecauseHoover decidedLangstonHughes’s poemswere “communistic,” the bureauput himon its list as far back as 1925, even though its owninformants said Hughes was not a communist. Knowing the obvious biases andunscrupulousnessofHooverandtheFBI, Ireadthesefiles judiciouslyandagainstmanyothersources,includingbiographicalmaterialonthesefiguresfromotherarchivalsources,myeight-year correspondence with Lloyd Brown (1995–2003), my own literary and cultural analyses,publishedinterviews,andtheoralinterviewsIconductedoverthepastfifteenyearswithpeopleclosetoorontheLeft:DorothySterling,LloydL.Brown,HerbertAptheker,EstherandJamesJackson,JackO’Dell,PhillipBonosky,BennettJohnson,OscarBrownJr.,JosephKaye,PauleMarshall,RubyDee,andElizabethCatlett.Thoughthesestaterecordscreatedthethreateningenvironment, which made everyone—even those only peripherally connected to the Left—cautiousandevasive,thefilesalsoprovidetheevidenceofthededicationofthesefiguresinmystudytopoliticalstruggleandaproudrecordof their refusal tobecompletelysilencedby theintimidatingpowerofthestate.

THEPORTRAITASMETHODOLOGY

I have been inspired by the model of the communist painter Alice Neel, who said that shepainted her highly individualized portraits of communists (including the one of thewriter AliceChildress that appears in chapter 3) because she wanted “to show everyone what a realCommunistlookedlike”(Allara2000,113).IseeeachindividualchapterinTheOtherBlacklistasa “portrait,” awayof illustrating theunique relationshipbetweeneachof theartists inmystudyandtheLeft.Iexaminethesesubjectsinsomedetail,lookingattheirintimatelives,theirfriendships,andtheirintellectualandinstitutionalnetworks,andItrytogivefullattentiontotheirsometimesambivalentandcontradictory relationships to theLeft.Usingarchivalmaterial,oralinterviews,biographies,andtheirFOIAfiles,aswellasbydoingclosereadingsoftheirwork,Ipiece together the tracesof theLeft in the livesofeachofmysubjects.Withall fiveartists Imake theconnections that reestablish their relationshipswith theBlackPopularFrontsof the1950s, ties that were lost either because these subjects deliberately distanced themselvesfrom their leftist pasts or because of the practices of contemporary literary and culturalhistories. These portraits allowme to trace the influence of the Left over a lifetime, showingthattheirengagementswiththeLeftcontinuedtoaffecttheirworkandtheirliveslongaftertheyhaddistancedthemselvesordisconnectedfromaformalrelationshiptotheLeft.

Obviously,thisisnotaninclusiveorcomprehensivestudy.Therearemanymorefiguresthatcouldhavebeenincludedundertheheading“1950sblackLeftradicalism”:RosaGuy,SarahE.Wright,ElizabethCatlett, FrankMarshallDavis, JulianMayfield, LorraineHansberry, JohnO.Killens,PauleMarshall—tonamebutafew.IwasdrawntothefivethatIdetailherebecausetheyallowedmetoshowarangeofrelationshipswiththeLeft.Becauseeachwasinterestedinformal experimentation in theirwork, they help provemy point that being on the Left did notpreclude modernist experimentation. Through my close readings of these selected lives andworks, I show the complexity of the intersectionof issuesof race, class, andgender amongwritersandartistson theLeft in the1950s.Myanalysesshow that these individual livesandworksareworthstudyingnotonlybecausetheyhavebeensuppressedbutalsobecausetheyconstituteamajorpartoftheBlackCulturalFrontthatcontinuedtoinfluence(somewouldsay“dominate”)blackculturalproduction throughout the twentiethcentury.Myhope is tocontinuethe effort to delegitimize the demonization of communism and the Left, which ideally willencouragefurtherinvestigationofotherwritersandartistsontheLeft.

LLOYDL.BROWN

LloydBrown’sprocommunistnovelIronCity(1950)andhis little-knowntwo-partessay“WhichWay for theNegroWriter?”—the firstwrittenasa challenge toRichardWright’sNative Son,the second written in response to the 1950 literary symposium in Phylon—direct us to thecontentious literaryandpoliticalstrugglesoverblackaestheticsduring theperiodof the“high”ColdWar. Iargue thatBrown’saffiliationwith theCommunistParty in the1950sallowedhimthe freedom to reject and expose the intellectual and aesthetic constraints on black writers,especiallythepressurefromblackliteraryconservativestoabandonblackcharactersandblackthemes.Ananomalyforthe1950s,Brown’s IronCity focusesalmostentirelyandaffirmativelyon black characters and refuses to eliminate or subordinate racial themes. And in a periodwhenmostblackwriterswerewritingconventional realistic fictionandwhenonlycertainkindsof elite modernisms were considered authentic, Brown inaugurated what I call a black Leftliterary modernism using left-wing literary and cultural texts as his models for formalexperimentation. The result is a remarkable novel that imaginatively integrates black folk

traditions, employs modernist experimentation, and makes its central characters radical Leftactivists. Inmy remappingof literary history, I put IronCity in dialoguewithRichardWright’sNativeSon, to challenge the latter’s status as the representative black proletarian novel andWright as the representative black Left writer. Furthermore, I propose that Brown’s essay“WhichWayfortheNegroWriter?”whichlinksblackwritersandartiststoaninternationalleftistintellectual community and professes faith in the militancy of black literary traditions, shouldbecomethestandardbearerofmidcenturyU.S.blackleft-wingliterarycriticism.

CHARLESWHITE

Following the interdisciplinary example of the 1950s Left, I include the visual artist CharlesWhite, themajorblack leftist visualartistof thepostwarperiod.As theywere for the literaryfigures inmystudy,CharlesWhite’sassociationswithcommunismaredownplayedor ignoredby most of his major biographers and art historians.28 I argue, however, that from the timeWhitejoinedtheWPAinthelate1930suntilheleftthePartyinthemid-1950s,theCPsuppliedthe institutionalandphilosophicalsupporthecouldgetnowhereelse.That institutionalsupporthelped sustain White in his commitment to an aesthetic that focused exclusively on blacksubjects. Themain text of chapter 2 is the 1953–1954 portfolio of black-and-white charcoaldrawings,CharlesWhite:BeautyandStrength,originally issuedbyMasses&Mainstream inlarge,ready-to-frameprintsasawayofmakingartavailabletoworking-classaudiences,“whoareusuallyunable toaffordsuchart,”accordingto itscatalogtext.Somearthistoriansarguethat this portfolio of highly representational art shows thatWhitewas under pressure to turnaway from themodernist experiments that characterizedhis bestwork in the1940s. I arguethatWhite’s determination to stick with a representational realism in his art, even though heknewthatdecisionwouldmeanhisexclusionfromthecanonsof“highart,”producedthekindofexperimentationthatArnoldRampersad(2002)associateswiththeworkofLangstonHughes—a black modernism that is accessible, deeply racial, and rooted in an African Americanaesthetic.

ALICECHILDRESS

From 1952 to 1955, Alice Childress wrote a column for Freedom, a Harlem-and Brooklyn-based international socialist newspaper. Childress’s “Conversations from Life” column inFreedom featuredanoutspokendomesticworkernamedMildred,slightlymorebourgeoisandmorepoliticalthanLangstonHughes’sworking-classheroSimplebutclearlyinthesamemold,putting political and social issues in the language of a black working-class Harlemite. In themostresolutelyleftisttermsinherFreedomcolumns,ChildresstookonMcCarthyismandColdWar liberalism, encouraged anticolonial struggles in Africa, and outlined a platform of laborrightsforblackworking-classwomen.

ButChildresswasfirstandforemostadramatist.Her1950playFlorence,her1951musicaldramaGold Through the Trees, and her 1955 Obie-winning play Trouble in Mind were allproduced in left-wing venues and represent Childress’s Left radicalism. Childress wroteFlorence in response to themenof theHarlemLeft,whoclaimedthatonlyblackmale issueswere central to racial problems. Childress’s anti-McCarthy stance runs like a thread throughTroubleinMind,aplay inwhichall threeof themajorcharacters try tohidetheir leftistpastsfor fear of being investigated.The full effect of that fear is revealedaseach is shown tobe

unwillingtotakeastrongpositiononracialviolence.Inchapter3IanalyzetheunpublishedplayGoldThrough theTrees, a remarkable production for its focus on issues at the heart of theBlack Popular Front of the 1950s: the South African Defiance Campaign, the central role ofwomen in political activism, the trial of the Martinsville Seven, and black involvement inunderground political work. Like Langston Hughes, Childress was formulating a sociallymodernist aesthetic, employing in Gold Through the Trees a montage-like structure thatcombinedpoetry,blackmusic,andhistoricaleventinwaysthatcomplementtheplay’spoliticalcritique.

GWENDOLYNBROOKS

AlthoughGwendolynBrookswasprobablynotamemberoftheCommunistParty,shewasanactive part of the cast of progressives, including many communists and communist-orientedgroups that formed the Black Left Cultural and Political Front in Chicago in the 1940s and1950s.Nonetheless,exceptforthenewscholarshipontheblackLeftbyBillV.Mullen,JamesSmethurst, and AlanWald, the biographical, autobiographical, and scholarly work on BrookshaserasedallsignsofherrelationshipswiththeLeft.Focusingonher1951essay“WhyNegroWomenLeaveHome,”her1953novelMaudMartha,andthepoetryinher1960collectionTheBeanEaters,IarguethatBrooks’swritingofthe1940sand1950sbearsthe“discursivemarks”ofleftistculturalandpoliticalinfluence.29MaudMartha isaself-consciouslymodernaswellasaleftistportrayalofayoung,female,dark-skinned,working-classintellectualwhoseexperienceof double consciousness is inflected by race, class, and gender. The work of black MarxistfeministssuchasClaudiaJones,AliceChildress,andLorraineHansberry,writing inFreedom,created the feminist space for this political bildungsroman. Brooks paired that leftist feministvisionwithherownbrandofblackmodernisminthenovel’srepresentationofconsciousnessasfragmentary,signifyingon“high”modernism.FocusingonMaudMarthaandTheBeanEaters,IchartBrooks’s radicalism from the 1930s through the 1950s, showing that itwas nurtured inSouthSideleftistcommunitiesandwasnotaproductofthe1960s.

FRANKLONDONBROWN

Though many of the writers at the 1959 First Conference of Negro Writers continued torepresent the legacyof theLeft in their fiction, I’vechosen to focus inchapter5on the1959novelTrumbullPark by the conference participant Frank London Brown. His novel has beenreadonlyasarace-basedcivilrightsnovel;itsLefthistoryhasbeenforgottenorignored.Thehistorian Sterling Stuckey (1968) was the first critic to note that Brownwas creating a newnarrative based on Brown’s own activist engagements in progressive unions and civil rightsprotests. Brown’s activism included participating in the desegregation of Chicago’s publichousingprojectcalledtheTrumbullParkHomes,whichbecamethesubjectofthenovel.WhenIwrote the introduction to the Northeastern University Press reprint, I calledTrumbull Park a“civil rights novel” because it seemed so clearly to be drawing on the Northern civil rightsmovement for both a subject and a method. The movement gave the novel a collectiveprotagonist, a community of couples acting (like most civil rights activists) in spite of beingfearful and unprepared. It inspired the novel’s representations of black musical traditions asassistingandnurturingpoliticalactionaswellasimagesofmassprotests,walk-ins,andsingingdemonstratorsthatexplicitlyanticipatetheaestheticsofprotestofthe1950sand1960s.Such

scenesand images inspiredmyown readingsof thenovelas civil rights fiction.Since then, Ihavebeguntoreconsiderhowthisemphasisonthenovelasacivilrights/racialnarrative,whichhas largelydominatedas themaincritical response toTrumbullPark,marginalizesor indeedentirely suppresses the novel’s leftist elements and has helped obscure Brown’s left-wingpolitics.ThoughImissedthemthefirsttimearound,thesignsofthatleftistaestheticarethereinthenovel’sfocusonacollectiveprotagonistandontheworkerandworking-classsolidarity,in its documentation of historical acts of racialized violence, its positive references tocommunism,anditsinternationalizingofblackpoliticalstruggle.

Brown’s leftist politics became apparent to me only as I read his FOIA file, which wasgenerouslysharedwithmeby theColdWarandblack literaryandcultural scholarWilliamJ.Maxwell. As with the other figures inTheOther Blacklist, Brown’s FOIA files are invaluablebiographical sources—because FBI agents were such exemplary models of surveillancescholarship. The files reveal Brown’s left-wing orientation as a civil rights activist; factoryworker; trade unionist with the United PackinghouseWorkers Union, a left-wing, communist-influenced, antiracist, predominantly black trade union; and supporter of women’s workplaceequality,allofwhichbecamecentraltohisartaswellashispolitics.Furthermore,theFOIAfileshowsthatbeyondhisunionorganizing,Brownwasinvolvedinotherformsofprogressiveworkthroughoutthe1950s:hegavespeechestoleft-wingorganizationsliketheMidwestConferencetoDefendtheRightsofForeignBornAmericans,affiliatedwithgroupsliketheWomen’sPeaceandUnityClub;AmericanWomenforPeace;andtheAmericanPeaceCrusade,alldesignatedas CP fronts. At the height of the Cold War, he demonstrated against a Senate InternalSecurityCommitteeprotestingthegovernment’sfailuretoprosecutethe1955raciallymotivatedmurderofEmmettTill.TheFBIalsodiscoveredapoliticalgenealogy forBrown,claiming thatBrown’s father, Frank LondonBrownSr. and hiswife,Myrtle L., a factoryworker, wereCPmembersforaboutsixyears,until1945,whenLondonBrownwouldhavebeeneighteen.

Though he was a defender of Paul Robeson and apparently supported Fidel Castro’scommunist revolution inCuba,Brownneverthelessexpressedanticommunist views inat leastonespeechhegavebeforeaprominentblackrealestateorganizationin1959,suggestingthatnew black postwar prosperitymay have encouraged, perhaps even required, a retreat fromradicalism.Onthecuspofnationalrecognition,Browndiedofleukemiaattheageofthirty-fourin1962,sowewillneverknowhowhisradicalismmighthaveplayedoutinthecomingdecadesofcivilrights,BlackPower,antiwarprotests,andwomen’srightsstruggles.GwendolynBrooks,who knew him well, eulogized him in a poem published inNegro Digest in 1962: “Of FrankLondonBrown:ATenantof theWorld”—memorializingBrownasa revolutionary “liberator,” afigurenot unlikeMalcolmX.As theBrookspoem indicates,FrankLondonBrownwasat thecenter of militant and progressive intellectual and political circles in 1950s Chicago—to hisfriends and comrades he was “Liberator,” “Armed arbiter,” and “scrupulous pioneer.” As awriter and activist, he cultivated and maintained these deep connections to his localcommunities, but his activism also produced a larger and more radical perspective—whatBrooks calls his “vagabond View”—that inspired his writing. Brown not only drew from civilrights (the side that is preserved) but also from leftist-front legacies (the side that has beenforgotten)andis,therefore,apivotalfigureinrememberingthesepoliticalandsocialformationsofthe1950s.Hisworkhelpsusteaseoutwhereblackradicalismcontinuedinthelate1950s;where it aligned itself with or distanced itself from the communist Left; where it became theradical vanguard; where it succeeded in holding on to its values of resistant, anticapitalist,interracial, internationalist blackmilitancy; andwhere it failed to adhere to those values. TheprojectofTheOtherBlacklist istoreassemblethoseclues,toreattachthesefiguresto leftist

radicalism,and, in theprocess, to reaffirm the radical imaginationandactivismof theculturalworkersoftheBlackPopularFront.

SPYCRAFTANDTHELITERARYLEFT

GiventhatHooverandtheFBIwereparticularlyinterestedinspyingonblackAmericanpoliticalactivity, which Hoover always considered subversive, black intellectuals and artists were ofgreat concern to him and his spy agency. The subjects of this chapter are the 1959 BlackWriters’Conference inNewYorkCityand theselectedpapers fromtheconferencepublishedthefollowingyearinaslimvolumecalledTheAmericanNegroWriterandHisRoots,editedbyJohn A. Davis. Billed as “The First Conference of NegroWriters,” it was sponsored by theAmericanSocietyofAfricanCulture(AMSAC)andheldattheHenryHudsonHotelinNewYorkCityfromFebruary28toMarch1,1959.Ostensiblyorganizedtogiveblackwritersaforumfordialogue, the AMSAC conference was secretly funded by the CIA, as revealed in the 1975FrankChurchSenateinvestigation.Attendedbybothconservativesandleftists,itrepresentsanimportantsiteofblackliterarydebateattheendofthe1950s,adebatethatwasobscuredbyJohnDavis,who used his opening editorial to downplay the presence and importance of theLeft.Because thepublished volumeof conferencepapersomitsmanyof the left-wing voicesthatspokeonbehalfofprotestwriting,Iusethischaptertoreconstructtheoriginalconferenceto include the presentations and commentary of AliceChildress, Lloyd Brown, Frank LondonBrown,JohnHenrikClarke,andLorraineHansberry.At thebeginningof the1950s itseemedas though the conservatives would hold sway, but even in 1959, as we see from thisconference,blackwritersand intellectuals continued to connectwith the ideasandstrategiesthatoriginated in theblackculturaland literaryLeft,evenas theirattemptswere framedandlimitedbygovernment-authorizedspies.

O

1LLOYDL.BROWN:BLACKFIREINTHECOLDWAR

ThetroublewithNegroliterature,farfrombeingthealleged“preoccupation”withNegromaterial,isthatithasnotbeenNegroenough.

—LLOYDBROWN,“WHICHWAYFORTHENEGROWRITER?”

NFEBRUARY20, 1962, in the vicinity of Forty-Third Street and Broadway inManhattan,two FBI special agents approached the activist and writer Lloyd Brown, seeking hiscooperation in their investigationof communistwritersandartists.According tooneof

theentries inBrown’sextensiveFreedomof Information file, theagents identified themselvesand asked if they could discuss “certain matters of apparent mutual interest” about the“communistconspiracy.”BythistimetheopenlycommunistBrownhadbecomeoutragedbytheattemptsoftheFBItointerviewhimandstatedthathewasnotgoingtodiscussanythingwiththeFBIuntilhe,alongwiththerestoftheNegrorace,gothisfreedom.HetoldtheagentsthattheyshouldbedownSouth investigating “thedeplorable conditionsunderwhichnegroes [sic]must live.” In their reportofBrown’sresponse, theagentsdescribedwhatmusthaveseemedtothemlikeastrangelyincongruousreaction:

BROWN ignored this conversation and stated, “I’m just a Mau-Mau without a spear. Go ahead, call me a ‘nigger’everybodyelsedoes.”BROWNcontinuedbyadvising theAgents to gobackand tellwhoever they tell that he is themeanest, rottenest s-o-b they evermet and that is theway he is going to be until he gets his freedom. [The reportconcluded:]InviewofBROWN’shostileattitudecoupledwithhisexpressedobsessionwithnegroinequality,norecontactiscontemplatedatthistime.

(U.S.FBI,LloydBrown,100-24616,2-21-62;emphasisadded)

FIGURE1.1.PagefromLloydL.Brown’sFOIAfile(1962).Source:U.S.FederalBureauofInvestigation.

ThisencounterwiththeFBIagents,whocontinuedtotrailhimforyearsevenafterhewasno longer associatedwith theCommunist Party,was typical. In all FBI attempts to interviewhim,hewas “hostileanduncooperative,”and, though theycontinued tohoundhimatwork, inthestreets,andathisNewYorkco-op,theyeventuallyconcludedthatfurthercontactwouldnotbecontemplatedbecause“hewasfirminhisrefusaltocooperateinanyway”(U.S.FBI,LloydBrown, 2-23-67). Besides Brown’s fearlessness before government spies, the incident is aremarkable for another reason. It dramatizes the emphasis in Brown’s work and life on therelationshipbetweenracialinjusticeandpoliticalradicalism.Tenyearsearlierin1951,whenhe

published his first novel Iron City with the Marxist pressMasses & Mainstream, it was soblatantly procommunist that Dalton Trumbo, one of the famously blacklisted Hollywood Ten,said thatpublishing thatbookduring theColdWarwas likesettingamatch tokerosene.ForBrown,however,thenovel’sradicalismwasnotonlyinitsnormalizationofcommunistsbutinitschallengeto1950sneoconservatism,whichurgedblackwriterstoabandonracematters,racialthemes,andsocialprotest. In thesameyearas IronCity,Brownpublishedhismanifesto onblackliterature,alsoinMasses&Mainstream.Thetwo-partessay“WhichWayfortheNegroWriter?” also argues vehemently for black writers to resist conservative attempts tomainstream black writing and eliminate racial protest. Brown published at least twenty-fouressaysandreviewsinMasses&Mainstream,coveringeveryaspectofblackculturefromjazztocivilrightstoracisminpsychoanalysis.1Between1948and1952,asthejournal’seditor,hereviewednearlyeverymajorbookwrittenbyablackwriter, includingChesterHimes’sLonelyCrusade(1947),SaundersRedding’sStrangerandAlone(1950),WilliamDemby’sBeetlecreek(1950), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), and Richard Wright’s The Outsider (1953).Strangely for such a prolific and observant reviewer, Brown never wrote about GwendolynBrooks’s1950spublications,eventhoughherwritingiseasilyaspoliticallyradicalashis.InhisreviewsBrowncontinuallycastigatedblackwriters forwhatheconsidered their “contempt fortheworkingclass,”their“Red-baiting,”andtheirfocusonpathologyinblackculture.Duringhistenureinthe1950sasaneditoratMasses&Mainstream,thatjournalpublishedmorearticlesbyandaboutblackwritersthananyotherjournalexceptforblackones,braggingintheir1952BlackHistoryMonthissueaboutthenumberofblackwritersintheirpages.2Brownevenshowsup in the correspondence of two of his public antagonists, Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray,though, quite unexpectedly, they found themselves on his side.3 Brownmight very well haveclaimedthetaunthethrewathisFBIinvestigatorsasthesignatureofhislifeandwork:hewasindeedaMauMaurebel,notwithaspearbutwithhispen.

Brownwassuchaubiquitouspresenceinliterary,cultural,andpoliticalcirclesinthe1950sthat it ishard toaccount forhisabsence fromcontemporaryblack literaryhistoryongroundsother thanhis left-wingpolitics. InmycorrespondencewithBrown,dating from1996until hisdeath in 2003, his letters describe close friendships with Langston Hughes, Alice Childress,PaulRobeson,W.E.B.DuBois,andtheFreedomwayseditorEstherJackson—leftistsall,butalso, likeBrown,oftenexcised from themain currents in theAfricanAmericanandAmericanliterature and culture they actually helped create. Brown’s literary friendships andcollaborations, which are important records of African American literary history, have almostneverbeendocumented.4

Throughout the 1950s, Brown worked closely with Paul Robeson on the newspaperFreedom, reputedly ghostwriting many of the columns attributed to Robeson. He was alsosomething of a ghost in LangstonHughes’s life.Hemadea special effort to supportHugheswhen Hughes was under attack by Senator McCarthy’s investigative committee, writing arebuttal to a negative review of Hughes’s work by James Baldwin in the New York Times(Brown 1959), but he always kept their “underground friendship” off the record so as not toconflict with Hughes’s precarious peace with Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-AmericanActivitiesCommittee (HUAC).When IronCitywaspublished,Hughes telephoned tosayhowmuchhelikeditandthathewassurethattenyearsearlieritwouldhavebeenaBook-of-the-Month selection. Hughes never wrote anything about the novel publicly, though he feltthatIronCity’scharacterHenryFaulconandBrown’sownJesseB.Simplewereclosekin. In1959,whenHughes’sSelected Poetry was published, Hughes phoned Brown to say that hewishedhecoulddedicate thebooktohim. Insteadhesentacopywith thisprivatededication

ontheflyleaf:“EspeciallyforLloydBrown—these30years(+)ofpoetry—Sincerely,LangstonHughes.”5 Brown’s procommunist politics havemade it easy for critics to dismiss him. He isalmost totally absent from contemporary versions of African American literary history, nevercited as an influential ancestor, his writings nearly always dismissed as communistpropaganda.6 But Imake specialmention of these ghostlike appearances of Lloyd Brown inAfricanAmericanliterarycirclestoestablishthatinthe1950s,evenasaspectralpresence,hemanagedtoplayamajorroleinblackculturalproduction.

ThischapterseekstoreestablishBrown’ssignificanceasbothnovelistandculturalcriticandtoshowthatCPaestheticswere,forhimasformanyradicalleftists,ultimatelymoreliberatingthanlimiting.WritingfromtheLeft,outsideoftheconfinesoftheJimCrowliteraryandculturalestablishments, and with the institutional and creative support of the Party, Brown had thefreedom to rejectmainstream literarymandates that tried to restrict representationsof blacksubjectivity.Indirectoppositiontotheassimilationistrhetoricoftheintegrationperiod,left-wingactivists and artists like Brown challenged the very structures that defined the limits ofintegration,exposing the termsofanalysis thatmadeblackwriters into the “Other”andblackwriting into “TheProblem.” In his powerful andalmost totally unknown1951essay-manifesto“WhichWay for theNegroWriter?” he insisted that the crusade of the black neocons in the1950stounblacktheNegroinliteratureandtoaimforacceptanceinthemainstreamwasnotsimply an aesthetic agenda but a response toColdWarmanipulations that exerted asmuchideological pressure on these writers as some claimed the Communist Party had on itsmembers.

While thecanonicalblack textsof the1940sand1950s—RalphEllison’s InvisibleMan, J.Saunders Redding’s Stranger and Alone, Chester Himes’s Lonely Crusade, and WillardMotley’sWeFishedAllNight—portraythePartyasadeceptiveandmanipulativeorganizationusing theNegro for itsownopportunisticends,Brownportrayedhiscommunistcharactersaspositiveforcesintheircommunities.BrownalsohadRichardWrightandBiggerThomasinmindwhen he wrote Iron City. The three politically informed working-class intellectuals—Faulcon,Zachary,andHarper,andtheworking-classLonnieJames—thecollectiveprotagonistsof IronCity—weredeliberatelyfashionedinoppositiontothemurderous, illiterateBiggerThomasandmeant to stand as themore representative black proletariat of the 1940s.7 By putting LloydBrown’sIronCityindialoguewithRichardWright’sNativeSon,IshowhowthefocusonWrightas the major figure on the Left distorts and minimizes the political and aesthetic value ofcommunistinfluenceonblackliteraryproduction.IncontrasttoWright,Brownembracedformalexperimentation, fashioning IronCityoutof thematerialsof leftistculture—documentary texts,1930s proletarian drama, black folk culture, and even surrealism. Precisely because BrownremainedfaithfultotheCommunistPartyandobjectedsopubliclyandarticulatelytoanyretreatfrompoliticallyengagedart,hecompelsustoquestionthoseerasuresthatenabledthishighlypolitical decade in U.S. history to become depoliticized in contemporary African Americanliteraryandculturalhistories.

LLOYDBROWNINBLACKANDLEFTISTCULTURALCIRCLES:“WHICHWAYFORTHENEGROWRITER?”

WhileBrownmayhavebeenignoredandmarginalizedbypost-1950s literarycritics,aseditorandwriter forNewMasses between1947and1953, hewasa knownquantity in the 1950sblackandleft-wingliteraryworld.Between1947and1954,Brownpublishedmorethantwenty-

fivearticlesandreviewscoveringblackliterature,civilrights,race,andinternationalissues.8ButitwashiscritiqueoftheAtlantaUniversity–publishedblackculturaljournalPhylonthatputhiminthecrosshairsofthe1950sblackliteraryestablishment.Inthewinterof1950,Brownreadtheliterary symposium that appeared in the December issue of Phylon, which contained onerespondent after another suggesting that fiction featuring racial issues, black characters, orblacksettingscouldnotbe“universal.”ForBrownthesymposiumwasarejectionofblacknessinexchange for thepromisesof integration: “Itwasachallenge toeverything Ibelieved in. Itwasasthoughtheyweretryingtowipeusout.I’mallforintegration,butonlyifit’sonthebasisofequality.”9ThePhyloneditorshadsentoutaquestionnaire to twenty-threeprominentblackwritersandacademics,askingthemtorespondtoseveral—clearlyleading—questions:

(1)ArethereanyaspectsofthelifeoftheNegroinAmericawhichseemdeservingoffranker,ordeeper,ormoreobjectivetreatment?(2)DoescurrentliteraturebyandaboutNegroesseemmoreorlesspropagandisticthanbefore?(3)WouldyouagreewiththosewhofeelthattheNegrowriter,theNegroassubject,andtheNegrocriticandscholararemovingtowardan“unlabeled”futureinwhichtheywillbemeasuredwithoutregardtoracialoriginandconditioning?

(AtlantaUniversityandClarkAtlantaUniversity1950)

Questionsoneandtwowerethrowaways;whatthePhyloneditorsmostwantedtohearaboutwasthat“unlabeledfuture,”whichtheybelievedwouldusherintheracialmillennium.

Inwhattheeditorscalled“amid-centuryassessmentofblackliterature,”Phylondevotedaspecialissuetotheresponsesoftwenty-threewritersandeducatorstothequestionnaire.Themostwell knownwereGwendolynBrooks,HughGloster,ArnaBontemps, LangstonHughes,Robert Hayden, Alain Locke, Margaret Walker, George Schuyler, Sterling Brown, WilliamGardner Smith, and J. Saunders Redding. The most prominent absent voices included fourwell-knownleftists:ErnestKaiser,W.E.B.DuBois,RalphEllison,andPaulRobeson;theoneexcommunistRichardWright;andthecommunistsLloydBrownandAbnerBerry.Twelveofthetwenty-threethatwereincludedwerecollegeprofessors,elevenofthemonthefacultyofmajorblackuniversities. IraDeA.Reid, thechairof theDepartmentofSocialScienceatHaverfordCollege, was the only black professor at a predominantly white school. The symposiumresponses range from the archconservatism ofGloster, a professor at Hampton Institute, toWalker’s subtle left-wing radicalism, to a postmodernist poem by Hayden that critiqued theracialessentializingofthesymposium.10Theconservativevoicesinthisissueareworthspecialattentionbecause theywere in theascendancy in theearly1950sandbecause theybecamethegroundsforBrown’sattack.

Pickinguponthedirectionofthethirdquestion,Glostersaidunequivocallythatthefocuson“racialsubjectmatter”hadhandicappedtheNegrowriter,retardedhis“cosmicgraspofvariedexperiences,”diminishedhisphilosophicalperspective,andluredhiminto“culturalsegregation.”He praised writers like Richard Wright for transcending the color line by identifying BiggerThomas with “underprivileged youth of other lands and races,” and he heralded Zora NealeHurston and Ann Petry for producing novels with no black characters. Like many of therespondents,GlostersingledoutWillardMotleyforhis1947novelKnockonAnyDoor,aboutanItalianyouth,which,hesaid,“[lifts]hisworktotheuniversalplanebyrepresentinghumanitythroughan Italianboy.”As ifgendersomehow transcended race,GlosterpraisedGwendolynBrooksandPetryfordealingwithwomen’sissues,whichhesaidarenotracialmatters,sincetheydealwithsuchwomanlyconcernsas“passion,marriage,motherhood,anddisillusionmentinthelivesofcontemporaryNegrowomen.”

Other respondents followed in Gloster’s footsteps, cautioning black writers to freethemselves from their “racial chains” by not writing about black characters. The novelist and

criticJ.SaundersReddingurgedtheNegrowritertoregister“human”ratherthan“racial”valuesby“testing them increaturesofhisown imaginationwhowerenotNegro.”CharlesNicholsofHamptonInstitutesawa“hearteningmaturity”inwriterswhowere“notprimarilyconcernedwithNegro life”andpredicted that theNegrowriterwas in theprocessofcomingofage “though,happily, not as a Negro.” Even Langston Hughes, whose entire literary output could bedescribed as culturally black, found it a “most heartening thing to seeNegroeswriting in thegeneral American field, rather than dwelling on Negro themes solely,” and he too praisedWillardMotley,FrankYerby,AnnPetry,andDorothyWestforpresenting“non-Negrosubjects”andtherebyliftingtheirworktoa“universalplane.”

Inhissymposiumessay,AlainLocke, the“dean”ofAfricanAmerican letters,deployedtheterm “universal”eleven times,admonishingwriters toachievea “universalizedparticularity,” tofindaway towriteabout race “from theuniversal point of view,” towriteof racial life but toconsider it from “the third dimension of universalized common-denominator humanity.” Full ofobfuscating terms and what seems like sheer terror over being left off the “universal”bandwagon, Locke’s essay ends with the declaration that “outer tyrannies” like segregation,prejudice,racism,andtheexclusionofblackwritersfromthemainstreamofAmericanliteratureandpublishingaresomuchapartof thepast that theyno longerposeaseriousproblemfortheblackwriter.Abandoninghis left-leaningpoliticsof the1930s,Locke insisted that theonlythings restrictingblackwriterswere “inner tyrannies”—“conventionality, repressions,and fearsofracedisloyalty.”11

A telling sign of Cold War pressures and anxieties is that the symposium respondentsreproduce, almost verbatim, the official State Department line that racism was “a fast-disappearingaberration,capableofbeingovercomebytalentedandmotivatedindividuals.”ThejournalistEraBellThompsonwrotethatintegrationandfullequalityforblacksweresocloseathand that writing about Jim Crow racism should be discarded as a relic of the past. Whiteeditors,sheclaimed,areonlyinterested“inthequalityofawriter’swork,notinthecoloroftheskin, andblackwritersneedonlybe ready to takeadvantageof theseopportunities.” “Whitejournalism,”shecontinued,apparentlyunawareoftheironyoftheterm,“hasalwaysbeenopento the Negro, but never to the extent that it is today.” N. P. Tillman of Morehouse Collegeagreedwith Thompson that therewas no bias in the book business: “The American readingpublic accepts a book by aNegro now onmuch the same basis as it receives a book by awhite author.” The Fisk University professor Blyden Jackson wrote with blithe optimism, “Allaroundtheairresoundswithcallsto integratetheNegrointoournational life.”Later, thepoetSterling Brown (1951, 46) would write that the Phylon group had turned integration into a“literarypassingforwhite.”

Bear in mind that these calls from the symposium contributors to erase blackness anddiscover the “universal” subject are not signs of a postmodernist move toward hybridity andmultiplesubjectidentities.Byminimizingracialidentityandracialstrifeandpromotingtheimageof a democratic and racially progressive United States, thePhylon group was offering raceinvisibilityasabargainingchipforAmericancitizenshipstatus.AsErnestKaiser,oneoftheleft-wingwritersabsentfromthesymposium,notesinalettertome,thePhylongroupwas“movingquickly to establish its non-left credentials [in order to]maintain its financial support from themainstream”:

Youunderstandthatthemagazinedoesn’twanttoembarrasstheCollegeandloseitssubsidy.By1948,theNAACP’smagazine,TheCrisis,wasattackingDuBoisandRobeson.Almostallmiddleclassblackpersonswerebecominganti-Communist in order to save their careers. The writers who contributed to the Phylon symposium are all collegeprofessorswhoarealsowriters.TheycouldseewhatwashappeningtoveryfamousblackslikeDuBoisandRobeson.

Theywerenotgoingleftatthattime.

IntheMarch-April1951issueofMasses&Mainstream,Brownleaptintoaction,publishing“WhichWay for theNegroWriter?”asa reply toandcritiqueof thePhylon symposium.Theessay served several purposes. It became a statement of Brown’s theory of black literatureand an opportunity for him to expose the ways Cold War ideologies were producing andmanipulatingtheworkofblackintellectuals.By1950,thepolicingofun-AmericanactivitiesandideasbyHUACwasinfullsway,withtheLeftbeingRed-baitedandanyideasassociatedwiththeLeft,includingcivilrightsandracialequality,discreditedascommunistic.Asearlyas1947,the attorney general had begun labeling organizations primarily involved in antiracist work“subversive,” and, in hearings conducted by Truman’s Loyalty Board, “advocacy of racialequalitywasanofficialjustificationforheightenedscrutiny”offederalemployees(Biondi2003,140).Thatblacknesswas itselfconsideredsubversive isborneoutby the rhetoricof the “un-American”investigatorycommittees.Anyoneactiveinanorganizationconcernedwithsocialorracial reform was automatically suspect. Advocating racial equality or civil rights or evenlistening to a Paul Robeson recording could be grounds for having one’s loyalty questioned.Witnesses in loyaltyhearingswereaskedsuchquestionsas “Doyou think thatanoutspokenphilosophy favoring raceequality isan indexofCommunism?” (Caute1978,282).Anymixingwith blacks, including interracial friendships and interracial dating, could be a sign of acommunist activity.When theHouse InvestigatingCommittee began in 1939 to dismantle theWPA’s Federal Theatre Project for alleged communistic tendencies, it was cited for having“mixedcasts” and for havingNegroesandwhitesdancing together (Mathews1967,265).Toprove communist influence in the project, one witness said she had been pressured by hersupervisor to date aNegro (Matthews1967, 289).Anyexpressionof discontent byNegroescouldandwouldbeinterpretedas“thefirststeptowardcommunism.”Thechairmanofanotheranticommunist investigative committee, Senator Albert Canwell of Washington, announcedconclusively,“IfsomeoneinsiststhereisdiscriminationagainstNegroesinthiscountry…thereiseveryreasontobelievethatpersonisaCommunist”(Caute1978,168).

ColdWar rhetoric around issues of racewas constructed through a vocabulary of codedterms.“Gradualism,”“moderation,”andafocusonracial“progress”definedthe“vitalcenter’s”positiononrace.12Successfulblacks likeMarianAndersonandJackieRobinsonwereheldupas indicators of racial progress, while civil rights activity was disparaged.WalterWhite, theright-leaning top man at the NAACP, which was targeted by McCarthy as too cozy withcommunists, suggested an evenmore potentway tominimize the threat of blackness. In anarticlepublishedinLookmagazinein1949andreprintedinNegroDigestthesameyear,Whiteadvocated immediate investigation into a new scientific discovery, “monobenzyl ether ofhydroquinone,” which promised to make blacks white. “Has Science Conquered the ColorLine?” claimed that once science perfected monobenzyl, the skin of every Negro could bechanged towhite.Whitequeriedhopefully, “WouldnotNegroes thenbe judged individuallyontheir ability, energy, honesty, cleanliness as arewhites?”Without even a hint of irony,Whitepredictedthatthischemicalcouldhitsocietywith“theimpactofanatomicbomb”andconquerthecolorline.

Noneof this black-and-Redbaiting surfacesexplicitly in thePhylon issue, butBrownwaspolitically wired to detect the ways that a seemingly innocuous phrase like “Negroesmovingtowardan‘unlabeledfuture’”signaledneither“unlabeling”norrealintegrationbutcapitulationtotheright-wingassaultonblackresistance.AsaneditorataMarxistjournalwheretheseissueswerebeingdebatedopenly,heandhiscolleagueswereinthedirectlineoffire,buttheywere

also freer and more willing to call things by their real names.13 In fact, one of the reasonsBrown’sMasses & Mainstream essay should be recognized as one of the central texts inAfricanAmerican literaryhistory is that itso thoroughlyunmasks thecodedColdWarrhetoriconrace.

AlthoughBrowncouldoftenbenarrowanddoctrinaireinhisrigidadherencetotheCPline,hisreplytothePhylonsymposiumreflectsthoseliberatoryaspectsofbeingopenlycommunist.“WhichWay for theNegroWriter?” became the ideological counterweight to themainstreaminfluences that inspired such docility in thePhylon respondents. Brown began his critique byconnectingthecriesforauniversalperspectivetoAmericanimperialismandtothedominationof the white ruling class who, he said, believe that “so-called inferior cultures must be re-molded to conform to the Anglo-Saxon ideal.” He insisted that “there is no contradictionbetweenNegrosubjectmaterialandNegroformsontheonehandanduniversalityontheother”and that any notion of universality that excludes black people, black life, and black forms issimply “an acceptance of the abysmal standards of white supremacy.” In opposition to thevoicesclamoring toeliminateblackness,Brownwrotedefiantly inhisessay: “Negro literaturehasnotbeenNegroenough.”

Aspartofhis largercriticalstrategy,Brown’sessaypresenteda trenchantanalysisof theracial politics of the 1950s publishing industry. As a member of theMasses & Mainstreameditorial staff, hewasable todraw frompolitically and factually informedsourcesabout “theconditionsofcommoditypublication.”TocounterThompson’sclaimsthatblackwriterswereonanequalfootingwithwhitewriters,Brownarguedthattheproductionandconsumptionofblackliterature was controlled by white capitalists and therefore that black writing was subject totheircategoriesandvalues.HepointedtothepublishingrecordoftheNewYorkTimes,notingthat “in thirty-two pages of reviews, articles, and advertisements in the Sunday, February 4,1950issueoftheNewYorkTimesBookReview,noworkbyablackwriterismentioned.”Hecontinued: “Noneof the best-sellers in theTimes is by aNegro, nor is there anymention ofNegrowriters inanyof thebooks recommended in theTimes.” Inhis critiqueof themassive1949 three-volume Literary History of the United States,14 Masses & Mainstream’s editor,SamuelSillen (1949), noted that “neitherNegrowriting nor theNegro peoplemerit a [single]chapter in thisworkofeighty-onechapters.”Levelinghis finalattackagainstPhylon’s fantasyof mainstream acceptance, Brown reminded his readers that Atlanta University’s journalPhylon, in which these conservatives were announcing the new day of integration, was asegregated quarterly published at a segregated university located in a state that wasrepresentedinCongressbywhitesegregationists.

PerhapsthemoststrikingaspectofBrown’sessayisthatinitheimaginedAfricanAmericanliteratureinglobaltermsandraceasaninternationalissue.TheblackAmericanwriter,hesaid,isunitedintheworldofimaginativeliteraturewiththose“writersofsocialism,nationalliberation,and peace” including the “immortal” Gorky, Lu Hsun of China, Neruda of Chile, O’Casey ofIreland,HikmetofTurkey,GuillenofCuba,NexoofDenmark,AragonandEluardofFrance—leftistwritersheconsideredgiantsoftheearth.In“WhatISawinMexico,”areportforMasses&Mainstreamonhis trip to theAmericanContinentalCongress forPeace inMexico in1949,Brownwasoneof the first tocite the “the twoAmericas,”noting that,despite thenumberofNegroesinLatinAmerica,thepeopleoftheSpanish-speakingAmericashavebeenstrangerstoblacksintheUnitedStates.Struckbyhowaconservativeculturalmainstreamhadmanagedtodenytheinternationalismofblackwriting,hecontendedthatatthemomentwhentheattentionof thewhole world was focused upon “Negro oppression and struggle in our country,” blackwriterswerebeingaccusedofwritingabout“‘narrowracialissues’orminorityquestions,”when

in reality, he reminded thePhylon readers and respondents, these are the subjects that are“boundupwithworldissues.”15

“HELLINPITTSBURGH”:THEMAKINGOFIRONCITY

AsideologicallygroundedasBrownwas,hedidnotsimplycraftacommunistversionofblackcultureoutofpoliticalpressureorfromtheCP’sblacknationthesis.BothheandWrightwereblack nation advocates, adhering for a time to that central tenet of the CPUSA, which from1928 until 1935 declared blacks a national minority whose culture should be representedpositively by communist and leftist writers. The Party’s black nation thesis was eventuallyrejected by black writers as unrealistic, but its respect and support for black culture was aneededantidotetothepressuresblackwritersfacedinthe1950stoabandonblackcharactersandracialthemes.

UnlikeWright’sexperienceswithabrutalJimCrow,Brownabsorbedanaffirmingsenseofblackculturefromhisearlyyearsinablackoldfolks’homeinSt.Paul,Minnesota.BorninSt.Paul in 1913, the sonof anAfricanAmerican father andaGermanAmericanmother,Brownand his brother and sisters were sent to an orphanage by their father after their mother’sdeath,whenBrownwasfour.BecauseofthemeagersocialservicesforblacksinSt.Paul,thesegregatedCrispusAttucksOldFolksHomeinSt.Pauldoubledasanorphanage.Listeningtothe ex-enslaved people sing spirituals and tell stories, these orphaned and quasi-orphanedNorthernchildrenheard thesongs, tales,andsayingsofblack ruralSouthern folk for the firsttime,andBrown’searlyknowledgeofblackfolkculturecamelargelyfromtheseelderlypeople,whosewarmthandcaringwasasourceof tendernurturinghenever forgot.The residentsofthe home recognized early on that hewas an extremely intelligent child and encouraged anddoted on him. Though poverty and segregation existed at the home, there was none of theterror of lynching and the life-threatening forms of Southern discrimination that Wright, incontrast, experienced growing up in Mississippi. Brown encountered black folk culture in adistilled form, dissociated from the material conditions of the Jim Crow South. His earliestencounterwithblackfolkculture,filteredthroughtheimaginativerecountingoftheeldersattheorphanage, was subsequently honed in the crucible of Marxist-communist ideology andreconstructed in his fiction as a source of collective strength, humor, and defiance (Nelson2001).

Though Iron City retains the sensibility of these early childhood experiences in a blackcommunity, the idea for Brown’s first novel came directly from his years as an organizer inPittsburghandwithhisseven-month incarceration in theAlleghenyCountyJail inPittsburgh in1941fortryingtogetcommunistsontheballot.ThePartysentBrowntoPittsburghbecauseitwasoneofthecentersofthesteel industryand,ashometoimmigrantsfromSlaviccountrieswhoweresympathetictotheLeft,fertilegroundforunionorganizing.Pittsburghalsoattractedthe attention of HUAC. Unlike ComradeWright, who entered the Party in 1932 via the JohnReedClub,whichhe joined inorder tobecomeawriter (Fabre1993,103),ComradeBrownjoined the Party in 1929, via the worker-oriented Young Communist League, to become anorganizer,and,bythetimehebecameapublishedwriter,hewasaseasonedPartyoperative.AdevotedCPmemberuntil he left theParty in themid-1950s,Browndidunionorganizing inConnecticut andOhio in the1930sand traveled to theSovietUnion in 1933onbehalf of theScottsboroNine.HewasparticularlydedicatedtoorganizinggarmentindustryworkersinNewJerseyandConnecticut,mainlyyoungwomenwhowerebeingpaidvery lowwagesbecause

theyworkedoutsideoftheunionizedareasofNewYork.OneofhisfirstactivitiesinNewHavenwas organizing a strike of young,mostly Italian women at the Lesnow Shirt Factory where,Brownreportedwithacertainprideintheirgallantry,thefathersandbrothersofthesewomenwould not allow the women to picket and instead walked the picket line for their wives andsisters.

Brown’sorganizingworkinPittsburghinthe1940sestablishedhisreputationasawriteranda radical.Heset IronCity inPittsburgh,which, in the1940s,was themanufacturinghomeofIronCity beer and the center of the steel industry,with a reputation for union organizing.By1947 theHUACwitch-hunthadbegun inearnest inPittsburgh,andas theColdWarhistorianDavidCaute(1978,216)writes,Pittsburghbecame“theviolentepicenteroftheanti-Communisteruption inpostwarAmerica”anda“hell” for radicals. In1948onecommonscare tacticusedagainstorganizerswasprintingthenamesofpeoplewhohadsignedapetitiontonominatetheProgressive candidate Henry Wallace for president in the major Pittsburgh newspapers,insinuating that both candidate and supporters were communists. The conservative andanticommunist Catholic Trade Unionists defeated the more radical United Electrical WorkersUnion, andby1950,HUACbegan the trials atwhich thenotoriousFBI informantMattCvetic(whowasthemodelfortheinformantinthenovelandeponymousfilmIWasaCommunistfortheFBI)implicatedhundredsofpeoplewhowerethenexpelledfromtheirunionsandfiredfromtheirjobs(Caute1978,216).WhileIronCity isset inthe1940s,adecadebeforePittsburgh’smajor anticommunist purge, the literary historian JamesSmethurst (2004) remindsus that itsdepiction of communists as the defenders of minorities, as union activists, and as men andwomen of integrity is also a response to the attacks on progressives and leftists who weregainingtractioninPittsburghinthelate1940sandearly1950s.BrownclearlywantedIronCityto represent both the Party’s power as well as the anticommunist attack, a reminder thatPittsburghas“hell” forradical leftistscut twoways:as thehistorianPhilipJenkins(1999,17–43) argues, the Communist Party in Pittsburgh attracted “hell” because it was especiallycreative,productive,wellorganized,andpoisedtobecomeaseriouspoliticalforce.16

BrownwenttotrialonAugust30,1940,fordistributingleafletsonbehalfofprogressiveandcommunistcandidates,sentencedtofourmonthsandafineof$200,andwassentalongwithhiscomrades to theAlleghenyCountyJailwhere,according tobothhimandhisFOIA file,hebegan tutoring “his seventeen fellow Communist party members” in American history andEnglish (U.S.FBI, LloydBrown,100-672,10-9-42).While in jailBrownalsomet, befriended,andformedadefensecommitteeforWilliamJones,ayoungblackmanondeathrowaccusedof murder. With their networks on the outside, including their wives, the jailed communistsfoughtforanewtrialforJonesandwonthreestaysofexecution,thoughtheyfinallylost.JoneswassenttotheelectricchaironNovember24,1941(Brown1952).

Brown’sexperiencesdefending Jones in thePittsburgh jail became thebasisof Iron City.Set in theAlleghenyCounty Jail, IronCity focuses on three black communists—PaulHarper,Isaac Zachary, and Henry Faulcon—convicted under the Smith Act, just as Brown and hisfriendswere, for violating election lawswhen they tried to get communist candidates on theballot.17Thethreebeginafriendshipwithafourthman,LonnieJames,framedbythepoliceandsentencedtodeath formurder.Thethreeblackcommunists—eachanordinary,working-classblackman brought to the Party by a desire for social, political, and racial justice—form thecollectiveprotagonistofthenovel.HarperisfromCleveland,ahigh-schooldropoutworkingatafactory during the Depression and caring for an invalid father while educating himself bydevouring library books, just as Lloyd Brown did. Zachary is a former railroad worker whomigratesnorthwhenSouthernwhiteunionistsstartaracewar to forceblackmenoff railroad

jobs. Faulcon, another Southern migrant modeled on Langston Hughes’s Simple character,works as a dining-room waiter and is radicalized as he tries to court the churchgoing LucyJackson, a political organizer working on the Scottsboro case. Convinced of Lonnie’sinnocence, the three communists, with the help of their wives, organize a Scottsboro-likedefensecommittee tosaveLonnie’s life.PublishedprivatelybyMasses&MainstreamPress,IronCitywassoldthroughsubscriptions,not instoresorbybookclubs,whichallowedBrownevenmoreroomtoasserthisradicalideas.ButevenwithintherelativesafetyoftheLeft,IronCitygeneratedcontroversy.SomeMasses&Mainstreamsubscriberssentthenovelbackandcancelled their subscriptions in fear of having a left-wing book in their possession (Bonosky2007).

THELIVINGNEWSPAPERASMODERNISTSOURCE

As unlikely as it might seem for a doctrinaire communist like Brown, who objected to the“surrealist horror” of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 modernist novel Invisible Man, Brown’s politicalradicalism actually led him to explore a range of formal experimentations in Iron City.NotwithstandingtheclaimsoftheliterarycriticArnoldRampersadthatMarxismandmodernismdon’tmix,Brownfoundradicalpoliticsandformalexperimentation—aslongasthelattercouldadvance his radicalism—entirely compatible. In true modernist fashion, Brown (1949b), forexample, took issuewith the left-wing jazzhistorianSidneyFinkelstein,whoclaimed that jazzwould have to progress from a “largely unwritten form” to “themore ambitious formsmadepossiblebymusicalcomposition.”Brownarguedfortheimportanceofmodernistimprovisation,insisting that “jazz is full of surprises”andhe fearedwhatwouldhappen to jazz if “notesandbars”replacedLesterYoung’s“wingedsaxophone.”Inhisliteraryproductions,Brownwaslessconsciouslymodernist,buthewas inspiredby the left-wing literaryand theatricalexperimentsof the1930sLeft, including theLivingNewspapersof the1930s,PopularFront documentarytechniques,aswellastheCP’sblackbeltthesis,whichencouragedtheuseofblackvernacularforms. Inventing his own idiosyncratic form of literary modernism in his first novel Iron City,BrowncraftedanovelthattheculturalcriticStacyMorgan(2004,248)calls“ahybridproductof documentary impulses and modernist literary influences,” showing that the protest novelcould be a flexible, innovative form, one not inexorably tied to the prescriptions of socialrealism.18

BrownreadilyacknowledgedborrowingLivingNewspapertechniquesfortheconstructionofIronCity:“NodoubtIwasinfluencedbythedocumentarycharacterofWPAartisticexpressionsin theThirties, suchas thepopularLivingTheaterproductionswhichbaseddramaoncurrentevents.”19Morethananyofhisotherborrowings,the1930sleft-wingculturalproductioncalledthe Living Newspapers was Brown’s primary influence. An offshoot of the Living Theatredevelopedby theWorksProgressAdministration (WPA) toput largenumbersofunemployedactorstoworkduringtheDepression, theLivingNewspaperwasakindofatravelingpoliticaltheater, a multimedia spectacle that dramatized current events or problems as a means ofprovokingaudiencestounderstandtheneedforactionandreformofpoliticalproblems(Jarvis2000,333).Distinctively innovative in formand intentionally theatrical, theNewspapersutilizedspectacular staging techniques, including film and projection, elaborate sets, short vaudevillesketches, music, song and dance, personified characters, and actual documentary materialfromcurrentnewspaperstoriesandpoliticaldebates.Becauseofthehugecasts—therewereoftenmore than twohundredactors in aproduction—stagedirectionswereelaborateandat

times confusing. During some performances, a character representing the “common man”wouldcomeoutof theaudienceanddemandanswers toacomplexsituation, likedecreasingmilitary spending in order to finance public housing, and he would then be given informationaboutcausesandpossiblesolutions.LikethosethatoriginatedduringtheRussianRevolutionof1919, first produced by the Red Army with troupes of actors performing stories fromnewspapers, the WPA’s Living Newspapers tried to reproduce the spirit of revolt that wascarriedoutintheinnovativeformsandtherevolutionarycontentoftheseRedArmyproductions(McDermott1965).

OneofthemostsuccessfulLivingNewspapers,entitledOne-ThirdofaNation,producedinboth New York and Philadelphia by the Federal Theatre, dramatized the problems of slumhousing, its titlereferringtothe“one-thirdof thenation”affectedbypoorhousing.Theset forOne-Third of a Nation featured a gigantic cross-section of a tenement building, which wasmadetocollapseonthetenantsateachperformanceandwassolargethatthestagehadtobereinforcedeachnight (Jarvis2000,333).AnotherLivingNewspaperproduction thatBrownremembersseeing in the1930s,which I havenotbeenable to locate,presented thedebateover social security and challenged the claims of the Hearst newspaper chain that socialsecuritywoulddepriveAmericansoftheiridentitiesbyrequiringthemtoweardogtags,therebyinstitutingatotalitarianstate.

Another defining quality of the LivingNewspaper was its use of ridicule,macabre humor,and other vaudevillian techniques to spotlight social problems. One Living Newspaper,Starsand Bars, which depicted the problem of black slum housing, featured a personified DeathleadingSyphilis,Tuberculosis,Pneumonia,andInfantMortalityinamacabrewaltzuntilthefourdiseases snatch the black children from their parents’ arms and toss them offstage into theaudience.Liberty Deferred, written by AbramHill and John Silvera, one of only three LivingNewspapersbyAfricanAmericanplaywrights,wasneverproduced,probablybecauseitsracialfocuswasconsideredtoocontroversial.ItfeaturedtwocouplesfromManhattan,onewhiteandoneblack,touringtheUnitedStatestolearnaboutblackhistory.

FIGURE1.2.One-ThirdofaNationposter(1938).Source:LivingNewspapersoftheWPA.

While touringManhattan island, they learnandargueabout thehistoryandcurrentstatusofAfricanAmericans,whileobserving almost forty scenes covering the early slave trade, the economics of tobacco and cotton production,constitutional and congressional debates on slavery, Denmark Vesey’s revolt, abolitionism, Harriet Tubman and theUnderground Railroad, the Dred Scott case, the Emancipation Proclamation, Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, JimCrow,andAfricanAmericansinthearmedforcesinWorldWarI.

(Nadler1995,619)

MostofLibertyDeferred isrepresentationalbut theending isentirelysurrealistic:ahugemapof the United States appears, “covered with little doors—one for each state—out of whichactors’headspop,inblackfaceforthesegregatedstates,andinwhitefortheothers”(Nadler

1995,619).Then,acharacternamedJimCrowstepsoutofthescenesandintotheframewiththetwocouples inordertodemonstratetothemthathispowertosegregateextendseventoNew York City. In a scene called “Lynchotopia,” lynching victims are “graded by theegregiousnessof theviolationsof theirconstitutional rights,”and thewinner is theonewho isdraggedtodeathacrossstatelines.20

ItiscriticaltonotethisrelationshipbetweenIronCityandthese1930sleftistculturalformsbecause those forms supplied both a form and a sensibility for Brown’s novel not ordinarilyassociatedwiththesocialrealismof1940sblackwriters.AsStacyMorgan(2004,41)writes,Brown’s contemporaries—Richard Wright, Chester Himes, Ann Petry, William Attaway, andMargaretWalker—weredeeplyskepticalaboutthepossibilitiesforblackAmericansintheU.S.capitalistic structure and represented the national landscape as “littered with irreparablyfractured American dreams.” But Iron City took on the spirit of those improvisatory leftistcultural forms. Sprinkled throughout Iron City, often unmediated by the narrative voice, are“documentary” pieces of evidence that require interpretation by the reader: newspaperclippings, passages from a chamber of commerce brochure, radio broadcasts, politicalpamphlets,tapedvoicesfromaprisonwiretap,prisonregulations,ascriptofprisoners’voices,andevenanextendedpostmodernistparodyofNativeSonthatdebunksthe“scientific”claimsfor the authenticity of its portrayals of the black underclass. There are direct historicalreferencestotheColdWar,includingtheSmithActandRed-baiting.The“conversion”storiesofthe three communistsdramatically reenactAfricanAmerican laborand radical history.At onepointinthenovel,thenarrator,likethe“Everyman”oftheLivingNewspaper,directlyaddressesone of the ex-prisoners and retells the story of a mass lynching that actually took place inGeorgia in 1946. Finally, Iron City’s utopian ending, a nonrepresentational surreal dream ofJudgmentDaythatcombinesasocialistlaborrallywithanAfricanAmericanPentecostalpicnic,represents the twin urges of Brown’s novel—one toward experimentation and one towardCommunistPartyaesthetics,bothmarshaledinsupportofblackculturalagency.

IRONCITY’SMODERNISTREVISIONS

Two“documentary”scenesin IronCity—therailroadstoryandthestoryofamasslynchinginGeorgiain1946—illustratethepoliticalandaestheticeffectsofBrown’smodernistadaptations.Like the multiple levels of the Newspaper, the railroad story told by Isaac Zachary (calledZach),arailroadworkerandunionman,mergesautobiographicalnarrative,bluessongs,blackbiblical stories, a historically based labor history, and a communist conversion narrative, allenablingBrownto transformZach’spersonal tale intoacollectivehistoryofblackworkers. Inthefirstscene,Zachisconfinedtosolitaryforrefusingtoallowaracistguardtotouchhim.Ashesitsinthedarkholeofsolitary,theimaginedsoundofaswitch-enginetakeshimbacktohislife in the South and to his dreams of becoming a railroadman. As Zach’s vernacular voicemergeswiththethird-personnarration,thenarrativerecountshisclimbuptherailroadhierarchyfrom“callboy”toenginewiper,brakeman,andfinallyfireman,apositionofpartnershipwiththealwayswhiteengineer.LikeaGreekchorus, themen in the roundhouse interjectwarnings toZachaboutthedangersofhisambitions:“Noson,notso longasyourskin isblack.Andjustrememberthisaslongasyou’reblackandliveinMississippi:there’sthreemainthingsCap’nCharliewon’t’lowyoutodo,andthat’smesswithhiswomen,voteintheelections,ordrivearailroad train” (Brown 1951, 153). Ignoring these warnings, Zach climbs up the ladder tobecomeafireman,stillwitha“crazyambitiontobeanengineer,”untilwhiteworkerssetoffa

“strangeand secretwar” inMississippi andother parts of theSouth (awar that lasted from1931to1934andwasnevercoveredinthenewspapers),literallyassassinatingblackmenwhorefusetoleavetheirrailroadjobs.Zachcontinuestofightuntilheisshot,andwiththedeathofhisdreamofblackequalityinrailroadwork,heandhiswifeAnnieMaegonorthtothecoalandsteel town of Kanesport, up the river from Iron City. During the 1932 presidential elections,when thechoice isbetween “one fat-facedandgrim inhishighchokingcollar, theother leanandsmilingathiscomingvictory,”someoneslipsZachtheposterofawhitemanandblackmanrunning forpresidentandvicepresidentof theUnitedStates.The twocandidates,WilliamZ.FosterandJamesW.Ford,who in factranontheCommunistParty ticket in1932,representthe interracialdreamofbrotherhoodZachcouldnot findon the railroad.Zach’sMarxist laborhistory conversion story ends with an image of the Glory Train, now the Communist PartyExpress,withequalaccommodationsforallpeople,headedforthePromisedLand.

This fictionalized account of the history of black railroad workers is also a historicaldocument, which is corroborated by Eric Arnesen inBrotherhoods of Color: Black RailroadWorkers and the Struggle for Equality. By 1900, Arnesen writes, “blacks constituted themajority of firemen, brakemen, and yard switchmen on the Gulf Coast lines; they made upsome90percentontheSeaboardAirlineandthemajorityofsuchpositionsonsomedivisionsoftheIllinoisCentral,theSouthern,andtheL&NrailroadsintheSouth,”andfromthe1890storoughly1930,theyoutnumberedwhitesaslocomotivefiremenonGeorgia’srailroads,“holding60percentormoreof thesepositions” (2002,24–25).ConfirmingZach’sstory,Arnesensaysthat blackswere barred fromwhite unions and frommost skilled positions aswhiteworkerscampaignedforrestrictionsagainstblackworkers.Butblacks,ironically,achievedseniorityandcompetence in positions that whites had disdained—as brakemen and firemen. When jobsbecame scarce, white workers were outraged that blacks were working while whites werebeing laid off, and they declared a race war, attacking trains staffed by black workers andsettingoffawaveofassassinationsofblackfiremenandbrakemenintheSouththatresultedinatleastthedeathsoftenblacks.Thisracistwaragainstblackrailroadmenmeantthatuntiltheearly1970s,blackswereeliminatedfromallbutthemostmenialrailroadjobsdespiteyearsofdemonstrated competence in railroad work. Arnesen makes a specific note about Brown’sattentiveness to historical detail in Iron City, writing that the “novelist Lloyd Brown wroteaccuratelyofMississippiblackfiremen”(2002,120).

Iftheintegrationistdiscourseofthe1950sdefinedidentityinpersonalterms,givingprioritytotheindividualandtoahopefulviewofU.S.democracy,Brown’srailroadstoryisrootedinthemilitant civil rights discourse of the 1940s, which gave priority to a collective vision thatemphasized class consciousness and a struggle against economic racism. In contrast to thefamiliar trope of the racist railroad journey inAfricanAmerican literature that generally takesplace in the interior of the train, the train story in Iron City occurs outside the train car andreveals a history of black agency and black achievement rather than black humiliation andlimitation. The original context for the interior train journey, provided by the 1896 Plessy v.Ferguson SupremeCourt case, was the aborted journey of the almost-white Homer Plessy,whoarguedhisrighttoafirst-classseatonaLouisianastreetcar.SimilarrailroadscenesoccurinCharlesChesnutt’s1901novelTheMarrowofTradition,W.E.BDuBois’s1903TheSoulsofBlackFolk,JamesWeldonJohnson’s1912novelAutobiographyofanEx-ColouredMan,NellaLarsen’s 1928 novel Quicksand, Ralph Ellison’s 1940s short story “Boy on a Train,” ToniMorrison’s1973novelSula,andmore recently JamesAlanMcPherson’s1998autobiographyCrabcakes.Thoughultimately there isacollectivemeaning to these interior trainstories, theyinitially focus on a relatively privileged individual deprived of respectability, agency, and

individualrights.ThesefictionalaccountsofaJimCrowtrainridefocusonattainingfreedomofmovementwithin the train as a “visiblemarker of social power and legitimacy” (Myers 2011,16), as though autonomy and independence could be achieved by egalitarian seatingarrangements ordered and supervised by white authority. Though we must remember theexampleofLangstonHughes’spoem“TheBalladofFreedomTrain,”whichopenswith“Who’sthe engineer on the Freedom Train / Can a coal black man drive the Freedom Train”(Rampersad 2002, 136), IronCity may be the only fictional text in black literary history thatturnsourattention to thishistoricallyabsentsiteofblackworking-class laborhistory,whereacollectiveandcostlybattleforeconomicmobility,equality,anddignitywaswagedonbehalfofanentireclassofblackworkers.

DOCUMENTINGGENOCIDE,AMODERNISTTROPE

Thesecond“documentary”sceneinIronCitydoneinthestyleoftheLivingNewspaperbeginswithadirectaddressbyavoicefromtheprison,probablytheelderlyHenryFaulcon,toHarvey“Army”Owens,whowasincarceratedwiththethreecommunistsforlarcenyandfailuretopayalimony,asentencethatiseventuallycommutedsothatArmycanbedraftedintoWorldWarII.Assuming the voice of the Everyman character of the Living Newspaper, Faulcon directlyaddressesArmy ina three-pageeulogythatpredicts theeventsofArmy’s lifeafterhe leavesprison:Armywill leavethewardecoratedwithribbonsandmedalsandwillgosouthtomarryhissweetheart,whosesisterwillmarryhisbest friend.Afteradoubleweddingceremony, thetwocoupleswillmaketheirwaybackhometoliveinalittletowninGeorgiawhere,someyearslater,onawarmspringnight,amobofwhitemenwillconfrontthemontheroad,dragthemoutof their car, line them up, and shoot all four at point-blank range, leaving their bodies somutilated that they have to be buried in closed coffins at a quadruple funeral. All of this isreported in a stream of consciousness, the narrator literally spilling out the words withoutstoppingas if overwhelmedby the savagery of themurders, thehelplessnessof the victims,andthechillinginevitabilityofSouthernraceterror:

Itisnothingbutalittleoldtownandbeforeyouknowityoucanwalkintothecountryandtheroadisspringyandthestarsarebigandheavyandthenightiswarmandyounglikethewayyoufeelandyourbuddyandhiswifeafewstepsbehindjusta-gigglingaboutsomesecrettheygotbutyouandyourwifegotyourownsecretstooandyoudon’thavetostudynoneaboutthem.Thenitwillbefourcarsstoppingwhentheheadlightsfindyouandthewhitemengettingoutandyousayingyouain’tdonenothingwrongbuttheygotshotgunsandthey’lllineyouupintheditchandkillyou.Fourshotgunswithbothbarrels.Youandyourwifeandhersisterandyourbuddy,andtheredclaywillberedderwhereyourbodiesarefound….Yourfuneral,Harvey,isgoingtobe“biggereventhanthedouble-weddingwas.”

(1951,218)

By the end of the eulogy, the narrative voice has become a collective narrator whoserelationship toArmy is now familial: “Goodby,HarveyOwens.Wewere proud to know you,son.”21

These two vignettes—Zach’s railroad history and Army’s lynching—serve different yetcomplementary functions in IronCity.Zach’sstorybecomesa lesson inboth thepossibilityofinterracial worker solidarity and the recurrence of class antagonisms. Army’s elegiac storyservestwopurposes:firsttoexposeSouthernwhiteracismandsecondtopointtotheleft-wingintertext,WeChargeGenocide,whichisBrown’ssourceforArmy’sstory.Thelynchingoffoursharecroppers, Mr. andMrs. Roger Malcolm [sic] and Mr. and Mrs. George Dorsey, whichtookplaceinMonroe,Alabama,ontheeveningofJuly25,1946,wasreportedinWeCharge

Genocide, a 225-page petition signed by nearly one hundred people and submitted to theUnited Nations in 1951 by two prominent left-leaning black intellectuals: Paul Robeson andWilliamPatterson.RobesonledadelegationtosubmitthepetitiontotheUnitedNationsinNewYork, and the Civil Rights Congress head Patterson, a ranking member of the CPUSA,presentedittotheUnitedNationsinParis.DeclaringthatracialviolenceagainstNegroesfittheUN definition of genocide, We Charge Genocide was part of the Left’s effort to useinternational pressure to exposeU.S. racism.The text immediately becamean embarrassingnarrative for the U.S. government, which tried vigorously to get well-known black leaders todenounce it. There are two contemporary documentaries about the 1946 quadruple lynching:Fire inaCanebrake:TheLastMassLynching inAmerica byLauraWexlerandSpeak NowAgainst theDay: TheGenerationBefore theCivil RightsMovement, by John Egerton, bothtestifying,asWexlerputsit,thatlynchingwasnotobsolescentinthe1940s.ThoughEgerton’sbookincludesthetestimonyfromamanwhoclaimsthatasayoungboyhehadwitnessedthelynchingbackin1946andwasterrorizedintokeepingsilentuntilhewasfifty-sixyearsold,thatclaimisdisputedbyWexler.Whatisevenmorestunningaboutthequadruplelynchingisthatitseems to havedisappeared fromhistory, even though itwaswidely condemned in 1946and1947, with protests across the country, including a rally of five thousand people in MadisonSquareGarden.Army’s storydoesnotend ingreater consciousnessbutwith thepotencyofSouthernracialterrorreaffirmedbytheextremeisolationandvulnerabilityoffouryounglynchedblackbodies,thusbecomingIronCity’scautionarytaleforthoseblacksthatexistoutsideoftheparametersofanorganizedworkers’movement.Brown’sdeliberate juxtapositionofthesetwovignettes,bothrootedinactualevents, leadstoandconfirmshisultimatepurpose,whichistoimagine black workers harnessing their skills—along with the strength, vitality, and dignity ofblackculture—tothepowerfulorganizationalengineoftheCommunistParty.

IRONCITY’SBATTLEROYALEWITHNATIVESON

Brown’s parody of Native Son was motivated by both a modernist playfulness and anantimodernist skepticism of psychology and psychoanalysis, and probably also becauseWright’s portrait of the brutal and illiterate Bigger Thomas supplied the perfect target forBrown.22 Brown’s attack on Wright in Iron City begins with a satirical rewriting of DorothyCanfield Fisher’s preface to the first edition of Native Son. Canfield Fisher, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection committee member and a Quaker liberal, was assigned to write thepreface, apparently withoutWright’s approval. In an attempt to psychologically diagnose theblack underclass, she compares Bigger Thomas and his family to sheep and rats in apsychological experiment, concluding that “Negro minority youth,” frustrated and angered byAmerican racism,exhibit similarbehaviorpatterns—becomingeitheraneurotic rat likeBiggeror, like his mother and sister, acquiescent and downtrodden sheep. According to Canfield,these psychological experiments show that “personality deficiencies in Negro youth” are theresultof livinginone’sown“intimate”culture,whereacceptablestandardsofbehaviorarenotdeveloped,aviewofblackculture thatWright replicated in thenovel.The resultingpathologycan thenbe considereda self-inflictedwound, a “personality deficiency,” not the effects of aracistsociety.23

In IronCity,Harper,Zachary,andFaulcon, thesamekindofblackproletarianswhowerethesubjectsofCanfield’s investigations,begananextendedriffridiculingtheCanfieldpreface.Harpertells theother twomenaboutanarticle in theSundayAmericancoveringa lectureby

the “noted lecturer and sociologist” Richard Canfield that illustrates the causes of blackdelinquency. As in the original Canfield preface, Richard Can-field claims that laboratoryexperiments with sheep and rats show how the animals become frantic, confused, andpathologicalBiggerThomaseswhentheirbasicneedsarethwarted.Thethreementhenbeginreferringto themselves ironicallyasratsandsheep.FaulconsaysthatBrotherhoodWeekwillhavetobechangedtoBeKindtoAnimalsWeek.ThenarratorjoinsinthesignifyingbycallingLonnieawildratmeetingwithavisitor.Brownsaysveryexplicitlyin“WhichWayfortheNegroWriter?”thatthiskindofblackhumoris“ironic”and“ambiguous,”with“asubtleandslyqualitythatdependsforitseffectuponacommonunderstandingthatcomesfromcommonexperienceandoutlook,”and,signifyingonRichardWright,hesays it isalwaysabsent fromthe“lifeless,abjectNegro-Victimcaricature”(1951b,56).

Brown’sunderminingofNativeSonismostclearlyseeninhisconstructionofthecharacterof Lonnie James. As a highly intelligent working-class man framed by racist police, Lonniepossesses the qualities Brown felt Wright had denied Bigger, including a sophisticatedunderstanding of the criminal justice systemanda resistant spirit. In contrast toBigger,whositsinthecourtroomwithhisheadbowed,deeplygratefultohiscommunistlawyer“Mr.Max,”Lonniestubbornlyrefuseshiswhitelawyer’sattemptstomakehimpleadguilty.“AfterwhatI’vebeenthroughI’mnotthankfulaboutanything.Notadamnthing,youhearme?AndIaintgoingtopleadguilty—notforyouandnotforanybodyelse.”TofurtheremphasizeLonnieastheanti–BiggerThomas,Brownrevises the tropeof thenewspaperclippings.WhenBiggerpicksupanewspaper during his attempted escape and reads the accounts of the police dragnetsurrounding him, he is in effect fatalistically holding in his hands the image of his ownentrapment, themap thatshows thepoliceclosing inonhim.On theotherhand,Lonnie,whopossesses,interprets,anddistributesthenewspaperclippingshehassystematicallyorganizedtoprovethatthepolicehaveframedhim,usesthenewspaperaccountsofhisarrestandtrialtobecomeanagentofhisowndefense.HehandsoverhisclippingstoHarper inordertoprovehis innocence and to enlist the communists to work on his behalf, and thus, in contrast toBigger,hedrawsaroundhimselfanever-wideningcircleofsupport.Fromthebeginningofhisnovel, Brown sets up an immediate sense of kinship between Lonnie and the three blackpolitical prisoners. Faulcon is surprised that Lonnie looks somuch likeHarper: “you and himcouldbekin.”Harper isparticularlydrawntoLonnieandbegins toseehimasason.DespitePartycriticism that IronCitywas too “nationalistic,”Brown insistedon representing thisblackworking-class solidarity, creatingan identificationwith and sympathy thatmakesLonniea farmoresympatheticfigurethanBigger,althoughitalsoinvitesthecritiquethatBrownwasintentonproducingan idealizedversionof therelationshipbetweenthePartyandtheblackworkingclass.Inhisconstructionoftheworking-classLonnie,framedbythewhite-dominatedandracistcriminaljusticesystem,andofthethreepoliticallyinformedworking-classintellectualsFaulcon,Zachary, and Harper, Brown is very deliberately positioning these four—rather than themurderous,illiterateBiggerThomas—astherepresentativeblackproletariatofthe1940s.24

COMMUNISTAESTHETICS:LIBERATINGORLIMITING?

Given Iron City’s formal innovations—its use of mass-media discourse and documentary, itsmixing of social realismwith postmodern parody, its collective protagonist, and even itsmildand provisional feminism—the novel challenges the prevailing view that modernism couldemergeonlyoutofestrangementfrompoliticalcommitmentor thatRalphEllisonwastheonly

black modernist of the 1950s (Lecklider 2012). In fact, the cultural critic Michael Denningargues in The Cultural Front that the documentary aesthetic of the 1930s and 1940s thatBrownadaptedforIronCitywasitselfa“centralmodernistinnovation”andthat,giventhemanykinds of innovations of Popular Front artists, the term “social realism” cannot adequatelyrepresent their aesthetics. These artists used many terms to describe their work, including“revolutionary modernism,” “new realism,” “proletarian surrealism,” “dynamic realism,” and“socialsurrealism.”Eveninthe1950satleastonereviewerofIronCity,J.SaundersRedding,writing in the Baltimore Afro-American, recognized that Brown was doing something trulyinnovative.TheconservativeRedding,whowascertainlynofriendoftheLeft,notedthatBrownwaspioneering inhisuseofwhatReddingcalled“race idiom.”Referring to thewaythethird-personnarrator in IronCity shares thesamevernacularspeechand idiomas thecharacters,ReddingpraisedBrown forgivingblackvernacular speechan “elasticity,”making it “a vehiclenotonlyofspeech(dialogue)butofnarrationandanalysis.”VirtuallyallofthecommentatorsonBrown’snovelsincethe1990srecognizeIronCityasanexperimentalnovel.AsIhavealreadyindicated, StacyMorganmakes the point that Brown’s “effectively crafted social realist text”constituted “not merely a mimetic reproduction of ‘the real,’ but rather a hybrid product ofdocumentary impulses andmodernist literary influences” (2004, 254). JamesSmethurst saysthat Brown consciously adapted left-wing literary and theatrical experiments in order torepresent “a fragmented mass or multiple working class subjectivity” (2004, 5). The literaryhistorianAlanWald, in his introduction to the newNortheasternUniversity reprint of Iron City(1994),contendsthatalthoughtheplotofIronCity retains itscommitmenttorealism,heseesthe novel’s surreal dream sequence and its references to popular culture as modernisttechniques.Wald,alongwithmanyotherscholarsof the literaryandculturalLeft,alsomakestheimportantobservationthatblackwriterswereoftenfreertoexploreformalexperimentationbecausetheParty,atleastforatime,allowedalevelofautonomy,andasheshowsinExilesfromaFutureTime,communistartistsoftendepartedfromPartyplatformsandfollowedtheirowndirections.25BrownconfirmsWald’spointaboutPartyflexibilityandsaysthateventhoughhewasoftencriticizedforhispoliticallyincorrectMarxism,hewasnevercensorednordirectlypressuredtowriteacertainway.26

If Saunders Redding grudgingly bestows the mantle of modernism on Brown, the blackleftist Ernest Kaiser in a 1949 Phylon article explicitly questions Brown’s commitment to amodernist sensibility. In “Racial Dialectics: The Aptheker-Myrdal School Controversy,” KaisertakesonboththeliberalsintheGunnarMyrdalcampandtheMarxistswhofollowedtheleadingcommunistHerbertApthekerfortheirfailuretoincorporatethefindingsofthenewsciencesofanthropology,sociology,andpsychologyintotheirstudiesofrace.IftheMyrdalSchoolrefusedto acknowledge the significance of racism, theMarxists,with their unwavering belief that thesocialist revolution would end racism, were, according to Kaiser, equally simplistic. Mainly,however,KaisercritiquesMarxistsforrefusingtoallowblackpeopleacomplicatedpsychology.Lumping together three well-known Marxists—Lloyd Brown, W. E. B. Du Bois, and HerbertAptheker—Kaiser accused themall of failing to take into account “the great strides that hadbeen made in the field of social psychology by sociologists, anthropologists, andpsychologists,”andhe took themto task for theirnaïveassumption thatblackshavesurvivedAmerican racism as “little angels even under terrific oppression.” As did the two famouspsychoanalystshereferstointhisessay,ErichFrommandKarenHorney,Kaiserbelievedthatthe competitiveness of American capitalist society led to isolation and insecurity for allAmericans,blackandwhite.Inparticular,Kaiserclaimedthatblacks“asexploitedworkersandfarmersundercapitalismandasNegroesjim-crowedandsegregated”were indeedsubject to

certain forms of neuroses. In this article, Kaiser refers specifically to a lecture Brown gavecalled “NegroCharacter inAmericanLiterature toContemporaryWriters,”which is no longeravailableandapparently chanted theParty lineabout the inviolableblackpsyche,andKaiserarguesthatBrown,likeDuBoisandAptheker,wasdeliberatelyturninghisbackonthefindingsofmodernpsychology.

A closer look at the final dream sequence at the end of Iron City allows for a finalassessment of Brown’s willingness or unwillingness to depart from Marxist orthodoxy or toadmittheambiguitiesanduncertaintiesthatmarklifeinaracistsocietyandinamodernisttext.As the novel comes to an end, Lonnie James’s defense committee receives word that theSupreme Court has new evidence and will reconsider Lonnie’s appeal. In this state ofsuspensionbetweenuncertaintyandhope,thenovelabandonsitssocialrealistmodeandshiftsto a surreal dream world. Once again, we see how Iron City is indebted to the stylistictechniquesoftheLivingNewspaper.TheconclusionoftheLivingNewspaperLibertyDeferred,whereJimCrowjumpsoutoftheframe,isstrikinglysimilartothelastsceneinIronCity,whichbeginswithFaulcondreamingthatheseestheHollow,theblacksectionofIronCity,crumblingin a “silent slow-motion disaster.”One scene after another dissolves dreamlike into the next,until theHollow is transformed intoaplushgreenvalleysurroundedbya forestandawindingriverunrollingthroughthemountains.Faulconhearswhathethinks isGabriel’s trumpet,whichturnsintoasoundlikeLouisArmstrongplaying“SunnySideoftheStreet.”Faulconimaginesamillion people seated before him, and, in the tradition of the socialist speaker, he plans toproclaimthebeginningofanewmillenniumofracialandgenderequality.Butbeforehespeaks,heorderstherichwhitepeopletotherear,theblackworkingclasstothefront,andwomentobeseatedonanequalbasiswithmen.FolkfigureslikeJohnHenryandStackaleeappearinthethrongalongwithpeople fromFaulcon’s life,whobecome radiantly transfigured.His reluctantloverSister Lucy Jacksonappears, “tall andblackandbeautiful”—andnowmorewilling thanresistant.Lonniestandsbeforetheassembledcrowd,“proudandfree,”asFaulconannouncesthatLonnieisgoingtobe“athirty-gamewinnerfortheIronCityStars,”whowillneverbelastagain. With Zachary as the engineer, the Glory Train takes off with everyone on board butFaulcon,whostaysbehindwithLucyJackson.AlthoughthesurrealdreamandthereferencetotheLouisArmstrongsongsuggestacomparisonwiththeInvisibleMan’sdrug-inducedrantinahole,IronCity’sdreamscape, like theendingsof thesociallyconsciousLivingNewspapers, ismeantasa triumphantvisionofchangeenablednotbyan individualconsciousnessbutby theenergiesofblackcommunalandsocialisttraditions(Smethurst1999).

ButwhathauntsIronCity’s“authentic”MarxistendingandinfactbetraysBrown’sunderlyinganxieties is the very real execution of Jones ten years earlier. Since Iron City is based onJones’scase,whichendedwithBrownandhis fellowcommunistsunable tosavehis life, it isimpossible to read the ending of the novelwithout remembering the original story, especiallysinceIronCity trains thereader toactasan interpreterof textsand toconnect theeventsoftheliterarytexttoextraliterarydocuments.Infact,Brownprovidedthosedocumentsina1952Masses &Mainstream article, “The Legacy ofWillie Jones,” which nostalgically reviews theletters Joneswrote to him and to the outside defense committee before his death, a set ofletterspointedlygiventoBrowninPittsburghthedayafterareceptionhonoringthepublicationof IronCity.Moreover, the imagesof this last scene in the novel are taken frombiblical andreligious conceptions of Judgment Day. Brown may even be betraying the remnants of hisCatholic education at Cretin High School in St. Paul, where he was probably introduced toCatholicteachingsontheLastJudgment,whichareverypreciseanddetailedabouttheendoftheworldandcloselymatchFaulcon’sdream.Theworldwill notbeannihilated,according to

Christiantheology,butwillchangeinformandappearance; lovedoneswillbereunitedthoughtransfiguredintoaspiritualform;trumpetswillannouncetheevent.IfFaulcon’sdreamisaboutlifeafterdeath,itis,ipsofacto,alsoaboutdeath.Itis,infact,athree-pagepassagesaturatedwithimagesofdeath,particularlywiththeimageofthenewlytransfiguredLonnieJames,“whowillneverbelastagain”andwhoseghostlydoppelgangerWillieJoneshasprecededhimontheGlory Train. Iron City’s victorious ending is both formally and politically unsatisfying, the oneplaceinthenovelwhereBrown’sallegiancetoPartypoliticsseemstoviolatehisartisticvision.

InmyattemptstomakeafinaldeterminationaboutIronCity’saestheticposture,Iturntoatwo-part article entitled “Communists in Novels” by Brown’s close colleague, Masses &Mainstream’s editor Charles Humboldt, the man Brown said was his “principal guide as awriter.”27Ascommunistswerebeingprosecutedunder theSmithAct, thePartymovedawayfrom its relatively liberal Popular Front policies toward amore rigid orthodoxy, demanding agreater allegiance to Marxist principles of art—a position that seems to have beenspearheaded by the cultural critiques of the arch-conservative Andrei Zhdanov. ZhdanovismdemandedthatwritersconformtoSovietsocialistrealismasamodelfortheircreativeworks,and its demands “ushered in a new conservative phase” of the communist movement(Hemingway2002,221). Ineffect, thatphasemeantproducinganart thatwasantithetical toanything considered bourgeois culture or not in the service of the proletarian movement.Zhdanovismwasalsoantitheticaltoanysignsofmodernism,anditmandatedanartdominatedbyasetofpoliticalrulesaboutthecorrectportrayalofcommunists,thedangersofformalism,and the necessity of representing “the inspiring Socialist culture of the Soviet Union”(Hemingway2002,208).InlightofthesedebatesoverthedirectionofMarxistandcommunistart, Humboldt in “Communists in Novels” attempted to put forth careful criteria for theacceptablecommunistheroinfiction;hiscriteriawalkacarefultightropebetweenacceptingtheZhdanovhard lineandencouragingfullcreativeexpressionforwriters.Brownwascertainlyatthecenterofthesedebatesoverwhethercommunistswereorshouldbe“aestheticsocialists”or “revolutionary socialists” subordinating art to politics, and it is likely that on some level hewasstrugglingwiththeseissuesashewascraftingIronCity.

Clearly,HumboldtwasnoZhdanov.Heargued for the inclusionofFreudian insightsaboutcharactersandforconstructingacharacterwith“fullness,”bywhichhemeantcomplexity.Butdespite his expansive and progressive understanding of the purpose of art, he too proposed“ourrequirementsfortheCommunistcharacter.”Inconstructingthecommunisthero,Humboldtdeclares,thewritershouldminimize“everythinginhismake-upthatmightalienatehimfromhisallegiance, lessen his love, weaken his comprehension, drive him to error, desertion orrenegacy[sic]”andmaximize“whateversustainshim,giveshimintellectualclarity,expandshiscapacityforloveandloyalty,increaseshisresourcefulnessandenergy”(62).Humboldtinsertedenoughqualificationsintohisargumenttoallowthewritersomeartisticflexibility,butintheendhe admonished writers to portray communist characters who “speak the language of theworking class,” are able “to master the forces that overcome others,” and can “resistoppression instead of being crushed by it”; in other words, he called for “artists in uniform”(Guilbaut1984,130).28

Readtogether,theRedding,Kaiser,andHumboldtarticlesunderscoremycontentionthataleftist influencewas both limiting and liberating forBrown.AsRedding observes, Iron City ismoderninitsexperimentswiththevernacularvoiceandnarrativestyle.But,asKaiserasserts,it is antimodern in its refusal to imagine for its characters the complexities of a modernpsychology.HumboldtsuggeststhatBrownwassomewhereinbetween,attemptingtobalancethe rigidZhdanovianhard linewith themore flexibleHumboldtianone.Browndidnotabandon

his attempts to create a progressive social protest novel, but his heroes in Iron City werecorrectenoughtohavebeenratedA-listcommunistcharacters.

Brown’sownproblematicrelationshipswithinthePartydonotsurfaceinanyofhiswritings.HehaddifficultieswithPartyleaders,particularlyEarlBrowder,whoseeffortstoliberalizeandAmericanize thePartydisturbed theMarxist-LeninistcampthatBrownfavoredandresulted inBrowder’souster fromParty leadership in1945.According toBrown’s friend, thewell-knowncommunist writer Phillip Bonosky, Brown “survived” Browderism and went on to supportBrowder’s successor, William Z. Foster. Bonosky says that Brown was suspicious of theParty’seffortstopushhimintoleadershippositionshefeltunqualifiedforandeventuallycameto believe that hewas being used byParty leaders and refused a nomination to theCentralCommittee.In1998,BrownwrotetothehistorianEricFonerandincluded,almostgratuitously,thatheknew“theCPleadershipwouldreadilydistorttherecordfornarrowpartisanreasons.”Buthewasnevernaïve, reportsBonosky, andsowasnot disillusionedby theactionsof theParty leaders—including theKhrushchev revelations—though he did quietly leave theParty inthe early 1960s, continuing thereafter to refer to himself as “a communist with a small c.”29None of this ambivalence is represented in Brown’s novel or in his essays, and none of hiscommunist characters reflect the complexities suggested by his own experiences with theParty.30

WhatIhavetriedtodointhischapteris,first,toreinsertBrownandtheliteraryLeftatthecenter of 1950s African American culture to revise the notion that this was a decade ofaccommodation and retreat from the militantly left-wing 1930s and 1940s and, second, tochallengetheway thisperiod is reconstructed inmerelyaesthetic terms—forexample,as theperiodof“Realism,Naturalism,andModernism,”astheNortonAnthologyofAfricanAmericanLiterature (Gates and McKay 2004, 1355) puts it. Black literature of the 1950s is moreaccurately described, as Brown makes clear, as a debate with multiple voices andperspectives,arguingoverblackrepresentation,overthenatureandfutureofprotestliteratureandthepoliticsofform,overgenderandsexuality,overcommunismandanticommunism,overintegrationversusblackcivil rightsmilitancy—debates inwhichanembattledLeftwasactivelyinvolvedintheproductionanddefenseofAfricanAmericanculture.HoweverlongLloydBrownhasbeenconfined towhatSmethurst (2004)calls the “isolatedculturalcirclesof the left,”hisnovel,essays,andradicalactivismplayedacentral role in the literaryandculturaldebatesofpostwarblackculturalproduction.31ForitsunmaskingofColdWarmanipulations,Brown’sworkought to be considered an essential counterintelligence tool for contemporary historians ofblacklife,literature,andculture.32

I

2CHARLESWHITE:“ROBESONWITHABRUSHAND

PENCIL”Soyou’renotonlytouchingtheblackness,you’retouchingtheLeft…

—FRANCESBARRETTWHITE,1951

N1940,CHARLESWHITEcompletedhisthirdlargemural,AHistoryoftheNegroPress,1anine-by-twenty-foot oil painting commissioned by theAssociatedNegroPress, to represent thehistoricalprogressoftheblackpress.ThemuralwasexhibitedatthehugeAfricanAmerican

Exhibition of the Art of the American Negro, which was held at the South Side ChicagoColiseum in July 1940 to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the EmancipationProclamation (Mullen 1999, 75). At the time White was at the Mural Division of the IllinoisFederalArtProject,whereheworkedwith two left-wingartists,EdwardMillmanandMitchellSiporin. Organized by two Howard University professors—Alonzo Aden, the curator ofHoward’sart gallery,andAlainLocke,aprofessorofphilosophyandmajorAfricanAmericanculturalcritic—the1940exhibitionwasamilestonefor thetwenty-two-year-oldWhite.Hewonacclaim and a first prize for his mural, which, until it was either lost or destroyed, was ondisplayintheofficesoftheChicagoDefender.

Themural featureselevenmalefiguresengagedintheproductionofblacknewspapers. Inthecenterofthelefthalfofthemuralarethethreetitansoftheblackpress:JohnRussworm,the founder of the first black newspaper in 1827, Freedom’s Journal, holds a series ofbroadsidesspreadoutbeforehim.AbovehimandtohisleftisFrederickDouglass,thefounderof the1847abolitionistpaper theNorthStar,witha fullheadofwhitehairandbeardandhisarmaroundaformerslave.Centeredattheapexofthistriumvirate,toDouglass’sright,withhissignatureprofessorialblack-rimmedglasses,vest,andtie, isT.ThomasFortune,theeditorofthemilitantNewYorkAge,foundedintheearly1880s.AtthebottomleftisamanreadingthepaperandanotherwiththetorchthatWhiteoftenusedtorepresentmilitantstruggle.Thefourfigureson the right sideof themural represent thecontemporaryblackpress.Oneman inareporter’strenchcoat,hispresspasstuckedintotherimofhisfedora,takesnotesonatablet.Tohisrightaphotographerholdsalargeflashbulbcamera,andtohisleftistheoperatoroftheprinting press standing next to themachine that spins out the news of the day. Themural isbalancedwithamansettingtypeonthefarleftandthemodernprintingpressontherighthalf.In thisearlywork, thevisualchronicleof thehundred-yearhistoryof theblackpress,White’sinvestment in the modern is clearly on display, in the swirling lines that give a sense ofdeliberatebutacceleratingmotionofprogress, in the largeandangularstylizedhands, in thegeometric lines repeated in the facial featuresofeachof theelevenmen,and in theway thehistoryof thepress iscompressed into thissinglevisualmoment.Butwhat ismostmodern inthedrawing is the relationshipbetween themenand themachines: theelevenmen—printers,callboy,mechanics,photographer,andreporter—allaretotallyatease,calmlypoisedbefore,incontrolof,andhelpingproducetheforcesofmodernityunleashedbythemachines(Clothiern.d.).2

FIGURE2.1.CharlesWhite,AHistoryoftheNegroPress(1940).Source:PhotographbyFrankJ.Thomas.CourtesyoftheFrankJ.MorganArchives.

White’sbiographerPeterClothierwasthefirst tocallmyattentiontowhatherefers toasthe mural’s “stylistic contradictions,” the tension between representational realism andmodernistexperimentation(68).3OntheonehandweseeWhite’smodernisttendenciesintheenlargedhandsandarmsand in themural’s themeofblackprogress,but themural isclearlyrepresentational, the narrative easily accessible, the figures only slightly stylized. The muralservesasan interpretivecontext forunderstandingadecades-long interplaybetweenWhite’ssocial realismandhiscommitment toamodernistart.WhileWhite’scriticsmostoftensituatehim within an African American cultural context because of his desire to historicize andcelebrateblackculture, fewacknowledgehisaffiliationswith theLeftandwith theCommunistParty. I argue that we cannot understandWhite’s work, especially his commitment to socialrealism,without consideringhow these “stylistic contradictions” are rooted in his dual role asartistandpoliticalactivist in thecontextofaU.S.andan internationalLeft, specificallyduringthe 1940s and 1950s. IfWhitewas leaning towardmore experimental forms in hiswork, hewould eventually have to decide if and how these forms could bemade compatible with theradical Left’s advocacy of a democratic people’s art predicated on the political potential ofbeautiful,realistic,accessibleimagesofblackpeopleandblackculture.

ItisimportanttoemphasizethatWhite’scommitmenttoablackculturalaestheticpredatedhis affiliation with the Communist Party. As far back as his teenage years in Chicago hedescribesdiscovering thebeautiful black faces inAlain Locke’s 1925TheNewNegro, whichconfirmed his fascination with blackness. White’s close friend, the writer John O. Killens,insisted thatbeyondcelebratingblackness,Whitewas intentonestablishinganewaesthetic:“ThepeopleCharliebrings to lifeareproudlyandunabashedlyblack folk,Africans,with thicklipsandbroadnostrils.HerearenoCaucasianfeaturesinblackface,butproudblacks—biggerthanlife,inepicandheroicproportions”(1968,451).AnotherofWhite’sclosefriends,theartistTomFeelings,anevenmoreperceptivecritic,addsthatWhite’saestheticwasattentivetoclassaswellasrace:

Thoughhisactiveinterestledhimtodrawandpaintgreathistoricalfiguresfromblackhistory,IbelievethatinmostofhisartworkCharlesWhitepurposelychosetodepicttheeveryday,ordinary,working-classpeople,themostAfrican-looking,thepoorest,and theblackestpeople inour ranks.Theoneswhobyallaccountswere the furthest fromthecountry’swhitestandardsofsuccessandbeauty.

(1986,451)

In effect,Whitewas constructing a black radical subjectivity, a visual analogueof the radicalworkbeingdonebyblack leftistwritersthatwouldeventually forcehispersonalandaesthetic

crisiswiththeLeft.Publicly andprivately,White espoused the ideals ofMarxism, and, at least until 1956, he

wasinvolvedwiththeinstitutionsthattheCommunistPartyledorinfluenced—associationsthatsupportedbothhispersonal idealsandhisart.4Duringhismore than fortyyearsasanartist,WhitecreatedavisualarchiveofmorethanfivehundredimagesofblackAmericansandblackAmerican history and culture. His portraits of historical figures including Frederick Douglass,John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Leadbelly, and Paul Robeson have becomesignatures of his artistic legacy. His greatmurals, such asTheContribution of theNegro toDemocracy in America (1943), A History of the Negro Press, and Five Great AmericanNegroes (1939–1940),arealmost immediatelyrecognizableasWhite’swork.Hedevelopedahighly respected reputation inbothblackandwhitecommunitiesbecauseheworked tomakehis art more accessible—financially as well as aesthetically—to working-class people. Heproducedhis1953–1954 folio of six prints in abeautiful but inexpensiveedition, publishedbytheMarxistMasses&MainstreamPress. In the 1960s, he contractedwith the black-ownedGoldenStateMutualInsuranceCompanyofLosAngelestoillustratetheircalendarsinordertoinsure thathisartwouldbe found inblackhomes, restaurants,barberandbeautyshops,andplaces where working-class blacks would see it, doing more than any other artist of hisgeneration to put art in the hands of the black andwhite working class (Barnwell 2002, 84;Clothiern.d.,vii).

White’sfocusonordinarypeople,ontheblackworker,andonblackresistancewasdeeplybound up with his progressive political engagements. He wrote for and illustrated theDailyWorker and the Sunday Worker, New Masses, and Masses & Mainstream, all of whichnurturedhisdevelopingpoliticalactivismaswellashisaesthetic formation.Alongwithhisfirstwife,therenownedsculptorandartistElizabethCatlett,hetaughtclassesatthecommunist-ledAbrahamLincolnSchool inChicagoandat theLeft-ledGeorgeWashingtonCarverSchool forworkingpeopleinHarlem.HisinternationaltravelsandinteractionswiththeLeftinMexico,theSoviet Union, and Germany helped establish his international reputation. He studied art inMexicowiththeMexicancommunistsDiegoRivera,DavidAlfaroSiqueiros,andJoseClementeOrozco5andininterviews,articles,andprivateconversationsdescribedthosecollaborationsasimportant tohisgrowthbothasanexperimentalartist andasanartist on theLeft.6 The firstmajor critical study of his work by the communist critic Sidney Finkelstein was published inGermanybyasocialistpublisher.HismajorU.S.exhibitionsinthe1940sand1950swereattheleft-wing AmericanContemporary ArtGallery, run by a left-wing director, HermanBaron. Hemethissecondwife,thesocialworkerFrancesBarrett,atacampforthechildrenoftheLeft,CampWo-Chi-Ca (Workers’ ChildrenCamp),where shewas a counselor and he taught art,andwhentheymovedtoNewYorkinthe1950s,heandFranwereactivemembersoftheLeft-dominatedCommittee for theNegro in theArts.7 Inshort, in the1940sand1950s, thecriticsreviewingWhite’swork, thegallery showinghiswork, thepublisherspublishinghiswork, andthemajorbiographerandcriticscommentingonhisworkwereallLeft-identifiedandnearlyallalignedwiththeCommunistParty.

While the institutional support of the Left was important in supporting an already formedaesthetic, White began, in the mid-1940s, to explore the formal techniques of modernistabstraction. Less than a decade later, as the mainstream art world shifted radically in thedirectionofabstraction,Whiteembraced thesocialist realism favoredbyPartyartcriticsandturnedaway—atleastduringtheperiodofthehighColdWar—fromhis1940swork,whichhadso effectively (and affectively) combined a politically charged realism with a degree ofmodernistexperimentation.IbelievethatthisshiftprecipitatedacrisisforWhiteandthat,even

as he appeared to be in close alignment with the Party’s views on art, that crisis wasexpressedinhiswork.InthischapterIlookathowcrisisisencodedinhisartandtrytoassesstheassetsandliabilitiesofWhite’slong-termaffiliationwiththecommunistLeft.Withthehelpofthe interviewsWhite and others gave toPeterClothier in the 1970s and 1980s, this chapterinvestigates, although inconclusively, how this combination of black cultural politics,modernistaesthetics,andleftistradicalismplayedoutinWhite’sworkandlife.

The secondgoal of this chapter is to challenge those studies that omit, obscure, or elideWhite’s radicalism. I understand the black-Left relationship inWhite’s life (as in others) as acomplicated one of support and conflict, anxiety and influence, love and theft, eventuallyresolved,at leastpartly,byWhite’smovetoblackculturalnationalisminthe1960s.Icarefullyexamine the tensions thatdevelopbetweenWhiteand theLeftduring theColdWar,as leftistartcritics,contendingwiththerepressionsoftheColdWar,becamemorerigidintheirideasofwhat constituted a progressive and politically acceptable art practice. To some extent, thissoundslikeanoldtaleofthedeclineoftheLeftandthesubsequentturnoftheblackleft-wingradical artist to black nationalist and civil rights movements,8 a shift precipitated by whatRichard Iton (2010, 33) describes as the Left’s “chronic inability to reckon with blackautonomy.”9 But White’s story is definitely not one of leftist manipulation and betrayal but ararely told story of a highly nuanced, personally and professionally productive, sometimesdifficult and vexed, but ultimately life-long relationship with the Left that was still vital whenWhitediedin1979inAltadena,California.10

ANARTISTINCHICAGO’SBLACKRADICALRENAISSANCE

Bornin1918inChicago,thechildofasinglemother11—White’sfather,towhomhismotherwasnotmarried,diedwhenhewaseight,andhismotherdivorcedhisstepfatherwhenhewasten—White came of age in “Red Chicago” during the 1930s, when the Communist Party haddevelopedabroadbaseandbecomeanacceptedorganizationintheblackcommunity(Clothiern.d., 6, 27). The Chicago community activist Bennett Johnson claims that “the two mostimportant andactive organizations inChicago’s black community in the early 1930swere thepolicyracketandtheCommunistParty, theformertakingcareofblackentrepreneursandthelattertakingcareofthepeoplewhowerebuyingthenumbers.”12ItisquiteclearwhythePartyattractedblacks inChicago, especially during theDepression. In an industrialized city,whereblackswereat the bottomof industry’s discriminatory structures andwere trying to organizethemselves as workers, the militant efforts of the Communists to unionize, stop evictions,integrateunions,andgivepositionsofauthoritytoblacksintheunionswerebeaconsoflighttothe African American community. Horace Cayton writes inBlackMetropolis, his sociologicalstudy of blackChicago, that in the 1930swhen a black family feared an eviction, itwas notunusualforthemtotelltheirchildrentorunand“findtheReds”(Storch2009,113).13

Inoneoralautobiography,Whitesaysthatasachildhespentagreatdealoftimealoneinthe library,wherehediscovered thebook thatchangedhis life,AlainLocke’s1925anthologyTheNewNegro,whichincludedhundredsofpagesofliteraturebyandaboutblacks,aswellasblack-and-white drawings and full-color portraits of famous black writers and activists.14Already a precocious artistic talent, White was taken with the visual aspects of this text,especiallythose“wonderfulportraitsofblackpeople”bytheGerman-bornHarlemRenaissanceartistWinoldReiss: “I’dnever seenblacksquite thathandsome. It blewmymind.”15 ThroughTheNewNegrohesayshediscoveredanaffirmationofboththetremendousartistictalentof

blackpeopleandtheirinherentbeautyanddignity.Duringhismanysolitaryvisitstothelibrary,Whitealso foundaworldof blackpoets,writers, andactivists, includingFrederickDouglass,HarrietTubman,DenmarkVesey,NatTurner,andPhillisWheatley,sowhenheencounteredthetotal absenceof anyblackhistorical figures inahistory classatChicago’s thenmostlywhiteEnglewoodHighSchool,hewasnotonlydisappointedbutconfrontational.Whenheaskedhiswhitehistoryteacherwhythesepeoplewereomittedfromthehistorytextbook,hewastoldtosit down and shut up (1955, 36). White experienced other incidents of educational racism;these became catalysts for his developing racial consciousness. His drama teacher told himthat he could helpwith sets but that therewerenoacting roles for black students.Whenhewasawardedtwoscholarships—onefromtheChicagoAcademyofFineArtsandonefromtheFrederickMizenAcademy—hewasrejectedbybothinstitutionswhenheshowedupinpersontoaccept.AllofWhite’sbiographersremarkonhisdeepeninginvolvementinblackculturallife,and these encounters with racism must be counted as a part of that development. Finally,throughthehelpofoneofhis teachers,heappliedforandwonafull-tuitionartscholarship toChicago’sSchooloftheArtInstitute,wherehewasexposedforthefirsttimetotheformalartworld(Clothiern.d.,17).16

IfWhite’s black cultural consciousness is forecast in these school experiences, it was analternative neighborhood school that directed him to the political and cultural Left. In 1933,whenhewasaboutfifteen,hesawanannouncementintheDefender forameetingoftheArtCraftsGuildoftheSouthSide,buthewassoshyhefirsthadtowalkaroundtheblockinordertogetupthenerve“togotothesestrangepeople.”17Hefinallyknockedonthedoorandtoldthemhewantedtojointheartclub—theArtCraftsGuild.18TherehemetwhatwouldeventuallybecomeChicago’sblackprogressiveartcommunity.LedbytheartistsMargaretBurroughsandher future husband Bernard Goss, the Art Crafts Guild was a distinctively community-basedgroupthatincludedvisualartists,sculptors,writers,anddancers,amongthemCharlesSebree,EldzierCortor,JosephKersey,CharlesDavis,ElizabethCatlett,GeorgeNeal,RichardWright,GwendolynBrooks, andKatherineDunham.With littlemoney, the visual artistsworkedout aplanforNeal,theseniorartistamongthem,totakeclassesattheArtInstituteofChicagoandthen come back and teach the group what he’d learned. When the Works ProgressAdministration (WPA)ofPresidentFranklinRoosevelt’sNewDeal targeted theSouthSideofChicagoin1938forfederalassistancetobolsterthearts,BurroughsandGossplayedamajorroleintheplanningforafederallysupportedpubliccenterforblackartthateventuallybecamethe South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), which is still operative on Chicago’s SouthSide. The improvised studios and converted back-alley garages of theArtCraftsGuildweretransformedintoaSouthMichiganAvenuemansion,remodeledbyarchitectsanddesignersoftheIllinoisArtProject,allowingpoorandstrugglingblackartiststobesupported,atleastforabrieftime,withfederaldollars.

Thoughblack left-wingvisualartistsarealmostalwayspeggedassocial realists,BernardGosssuggeststhattheSSCACartistswereself-consciousmodernistsfromthebeginning.Ina1936essay,“TenNegroArtistsonChicago’sSouthSide,”writtenforMidwest:AReview,Gosswritesthat,havinglearnedtoreadandwriteandtostraightenourhair,andhavingdiscoveredartschools,“Webecamemodern.”Intheattempttorepresentthisnewculture,Gosssaysthegroup “practically all agree[d] silently on the doom of Conservatism.” A kind of artisticmanifesto,theessaydescribestheSSCACgroupasartistsinsearchof“theidentityofanewculture,”influencedbyAfrica,bycontinentalEurope,bytheNativeAmericanIndian,and,Gossadds,someofthesenewidentitieswouldberacial,somenot.Whattheyhadincommonwasthat all felt that modernism conferred upon them a sense of creative freedom, which Goss

describes in terms that evoke the energy and play of childhood: “that consciousness [ofmodernism]givesusagreaterspaceforrompingthanwehadattheacademicschool”(18).

If the SSCAC was a wonderful social community, it was also radicalizing forWhite bothpoliticallyandaesthetically.Whenhebeganto takepart in theNegroPeople’sTheatreGroupat the SSCAC, first by designing and building sets and later as an actor, he was alreadybeginning to speak the language of a leftist radical. He wrote to the communist writer MikeGold on December 28, 1940, asking Gold to include something about the “Negro in theTheatre”inhiscolumninNewMassesandsharingwithGoldthedifficultiesoftryingtobuildaninterracial,massmovementtheater:

Wearetryingtobearealpeople’stheater,butourgreatestdifficultyisinattractingamassNegroandwhiteaudience….WefoundthatlargenumbersofNegroesreallywantedtoseethestuffthat’sinthemoviesandwishedtoavoidhavingtheirproblemsasaminoritygroupinthiscapitalisticworldshowntothemandsolutionspointedout.Ofcoursewewerecalledradicalandeverythingelse.Butourgroupofyoungpeoplehavegrowntounderstandthattheseepithetsarethrownatwhosoeverorwhatsoeverspeaksfortheworkingman.

(Clothiern.d.,38)

Whitewasalsobeginningtopaint inthestylethatwouldidentifyhimasamanoftheLeft.FatigueorTiredWorker,aDepression-eradrawingcompleted in1935,whenWhitewasonlyseventeen years old, shows a sleeping black laborer bent over a rough-hewn table, hiswearinesscaptured in the“shouldershunchedagainstasharpconcern,”19 the furrowedbrow,andhisheadrestingheavilyinthecrookofhisarm.Theenlargedhands,whichwouldbecomea White signature, the muscular shoulders and head, and the determined set of his mouthconvey,even insleep,bothexhaustionandstrength.Theslightdistortionof thenatural figureindicates thatWhite is already interested in adoptingmodernist techniques in his work, and,evenmoretothepoint,theseexpressivetechniquesenabledhimtoconveyadeepsensitivitytotheplightoftheworker.

WHITEANDTHEILLINOISWPA

Forabout threeyears,beginning in1938,Whiteworkedon theWPAIllinoisFineArtsProject(WPA/FAP),movingbetweentheArtsSectionandtheMuralDivisionof theFAPandstudyingMarx, Lenin, andEngelswith his fellowWPAmuralists,EdwardMillmanandMitchellSiporin.WithMillman andSiporin, he also studied thework of the radicalMexicanmuralists, anotherinspiration,particularlyafterWhitevisitedMexicoin1946and1947,thatdrewhimtotheLeft.Burroughsreports thatwhileWhiteworkedwith theWPA,hewasamemberofandattendedmeetingsofboththeArtists’UnionandtheJohnReedClub,anorganizationofleft-wingwritersand artists. White remembered that black artists easily qualified for a job with the WPAbecause theysoclearly fulfilled the “pauper’s requirement”ofbeingdestitute: “You firstwentdown to the Works Progress Admin. office. You declared yourself bankrupt, or destitute, Imean,andstatedthatyouneededsomeeconomicaid….Theyinturn,oncehavinginvestigatedand found thiswas true, then youwere placed—they sought to place youona job suited toyourabilitiesandsoforth.”20White’smostmemorableWPAexperiencewasthesit-downstrikeatWPAheadquarters toprotest theartsupervisor’s refusal tohireblackartists.Although thestrike resulted inpolice interventionandarrests, it also spawned the formationof theArtists’UnionthatWhitesaideventuallybecameverystrong,and,in1938,itformallyaffiliatedwiththeCongressofIndustrialOrganizations(CIO).21AccordingtothearthistorianAndrewHemingway

(2002),theleadingfiguresintheArtists’Union,whichbeganastheUnemployedArtistsGroupwithintheJohnReedClubin1933,werePartymembersorfellowtravelers,and,thoughtheirconstitutionclaimedthegroupwasnonpolitical,theirpublicpronouncementsaboutthesolidaritybetween artists and workers, their class-inflected rhetoric about hope for a new world, andtheirhistorywiththecommunist-alignedJohnReedClubssuggestotherwise.BythistimeWhitewas seriously studying art andMarxismwithMorris Topchevsky (Toppy) on theWPAand atChicago’sAbrahamLincolnSchool(Clothiern.d.,47).WhatBurroughsandotherleftistscalled“the defense of culture”—to preserve art for the people, not for the elite—became White’smantra for the rest of his life, a commitment to a representation of black people that wouldcounter the stereotypical images of blacks and that questioned their absence in art and tomakingartthatspoketoandwasavailabletotheworkingclass.

In1941WhitemetandmarriedCatlett,whohadcometoChicagotostudyceramicsattheArtInstituteandlithographyattheSSCAC,andalthoughCatlettclaimedinaninterviewin1984thatthecommunistsintheSSCACtriedunsuccessfullytorecruither,sheadmittedtohermostrecent biographer that by themid-1940s both she andWhite were working closely with theParty (Herzog 2005, 39). Their involvement in Chicago Popular Front organizations like theNationalNegroCongress(NNC),acommunist-initiatedorganizationactiveinChicago;thethen-progressiveblacknewspaper, theChicagoDefender; theSouthSideWriters’Group, foundedby Richard Wright; and the Abraham Lincoln School, directed by the communist WilliamPattersonindicatesthattheseedsofthecouple’scommitmenttoprogressivesocialissuesandtoanart focusedontheblackworkingclasswerenourished in theseNegroPeople’sPopularFrontcollaborations,soaptlydescribedbytheculturalhistorianBillMullenascharacterizedby“animprovisatoryspiritoflocalcollaboration,‘democraticradicalism,’classstruggle,andrace-based ‘progressivism’” (1999, 10).White came of age in and was wholly at home with thisbrandof improvisatory,collaborative,community-and-race-based radicalism thatallowedhimtodevelopfreelyasanartistandasapoliticalthinker.

Asistrueof the literaryfigures inmystudy,White’sassociationswithcommunismandtheLefthavebeendownplayedor ignoredbyhismajorbiographersandbymost literaryandarthistorians,withtheexceptionofAndrewHemingway,whosecomprehensive2002criticalstudyidentifiesWhite’s communist connections (173). References to the Left or to the CommunistPartyinWhitescholarshipareoftenfilteredthroughthelanguageofanticommunism.InWhite’smost recent biography, for example, the author Andrea Barnwell says of the Civil RightsCongress, amerger of the NNC, the International Labor Defense (ILD), and the CommunistParty, that it was a “group suspected of affiliating with the Communist Party” (2002, 44,emphasis added), thatWhite continued working and collaborating with other left-wing artists“despite thedangerof beingaffiliatedwith progressives” (42, emphasis added), and that he“sympathized with the Communist Party’s aims” (42, emphasis added), all of which suggestthatWhitehadonlymarginalandtenuousrelationshiptotheParty.

Ina2008 interview,White’sclose friendEdmundGordon,professoremeritusofsociologyatColumbiaUniversity,offeredthiscarefullywordeddescriptionofWhite’sleftistpolitics:

HeclearlyidentifiedwiththeLeft,thoughhenevermentionedtomethathewasamemberoftheParty.Inthosedaysyoudidn’tgoaroundtalkingaboutbeingintheParty.Ineversawaso-calledPartycard,butitwasnosecretthathispoliticswereLeft,andinhismorecandidmoments,Iamsurethathewouldsayhebelievedinsocialism.HecertainlywasverygratefultotheLeftfortheirsupport.WhenhewenttoEasternEuropeandtheSovietUnion,I’msurehissupportforthattripcamefromthatsource.22

The commentary onWhite’s political radicalism suggests that, even fifty years later,White’s

relationship to thePartycanbeconstructedonlyasphilosophicaland ideologicalaffinitiesbutthat any institutional or organizational relationship to theParty is still suspect anddangerous.Nonetheless,aswithallthefiguresinTheOtherBlacklist,thoseinstitutionalandorganizationaltiesarecriticalforunderstandingthedevelopmentanddirectionofWhite’sart.

THE1940SMURAL:TECHNIQUESUSEDINTHESERVICEOFSTRUGGLE

Between 1939 and 1940, while working on the WPA, White completed three of his greatmurals,FiveGreatAmericanNegroes(1939–1940),AHistoryoftheNegroPress(1940),andTechniquesUsedintheServiceofStruggle(1940),alldoneaspartofaprogressivePopularFront agenda of expressing social-democratic ideals. But it wasWhite more than any otherprogressivemuralistwhowasdevotedtoinscribingblackresistanceinhisrepresentationsofademocraticAmerica.Besides embodying the ideals of theBlackPopular Front, two of thesemurals—AHistoryoftheNegroPressandTechniquesUsedintheServiceofStruggle—showWhite following the example of theMexicanmuralists and the other left-wingWPA artists incombiningformalexperimentationwithavisionoftheblacknationalhistoryofstruggle.

In contrast to the sense of relentless and progressive motion inA History of the NegroPress,White’sother1940mural,TechniquesUsed in theService ofStruggle, depicts blackstruggle checked by racist brutality. Techniques was variously labeledChaos of Negro Life(Barnwell2002),ChaoticStageoftheNegro,PastandPresent,andbyWhiteasRevoltoftheNegroDuringSlaveryandBeyond.Theseconflictingtitlesreflectthewayviewers,usedtothemore pacific WPA style, which generally represented an America of peace, progress, andprosperityandrarely includedpeopleofcolororracialstrife,mayhavebeenunsettledbythisraw depiction of racial violence.23 The thirteen figures on the panel constitute a historicaltableauofbothblacksubjugationandblackresistancetoslavery,peonage,sharecropping,andlynching.Onthe far rightsideof the leftpanelablackman,bentoveralmost tohisknees, isheldinshacklesandchainsbyawhiteoverseer,theonlyfiguresphysicallyseparatedfromtheothers.24Slightlyrightofcenteralynchedbodyhangsfromatreethatsurrealisticallycomesupoutofthegroundandisblastedoffatthetop,withitsonebranchcurvedaroundtothehangedman’sneckasifithasgoneinsearchofhim.Inthecenterofthemural,asinseveralofWhite’smurals, there isablack family,withawomanholdingachildandnext to themthemanof thefamily, lookingbackinanguishtowardthewoman,hisarmsstretchedout infrontofhim.NexttohimtheenlargedheadofJohnBrown,asifloomingoutofhistory,seemsdisconnectedfromBrown’s foreshortened arm,which holds a rifle and is intertwinedwith the hand of the blackfather. On the left side of themural are figures that continue the theme of black resistanceculture:amanwithaguitarstandingnexttoironbarsofajailcell,whomightsuggestanotherleftistsymbol,thefolksingerLeadbelly,andanothermanholdingupabook,asignatureimageWhiteused to represent thepowerof literacyandeducation.At thevery topof the triangularcomposition a man, perhaps a preacher, holding an open book at a lectern or pulpit, looksdown angrily on two men who are turned toward each other with questioning and skepticallooks,as ifdismissing the illusionsof religion.Theoverallnarrativedepicted in the intertwinedandintersectingbodiesisthatblackprogresshasbeenblockedbytheforcesofracism,thatinthefaceofmassiveracialviolence,despitethe“techniquesofstruggle,”thereisnoexit.

FIGURE2.2.CharlesWhiteatworkonhismuralTechniquesUsedintheServiceofStruggle(c.1940).Source:ChicagoPublicLibrary,SpecialCollectionsandPreservationDivision,WPA132.

WhatmakesWhite’smuralexceptionalisthecentralplaceWhiteaccordsblackpeopleandblack resistance in the narrative and its unrelenting representation of racist brutality.25 Eventhough in 1940 White had not yet traveled to Mexico, Techniques demonstrates that theMexican muralists’ focus on social and political justice and on indigenous people, achievedthrough formal experimentation had already begun to influenceWhite. The artist and formerWhite student John Biggers specifically cites the influence of Millman and Siporin26—andthrough them, theMexicans—onWhite’swork.Biggers thought that thework tookon “anewabstractquality,anewkindofstrengthasaresultofworkingwiththesetwoguys”(quotedinClothier n.d., 14). Not only were the Mexican artists using their art to fight for the sameprogressive and radical values as the artists inWhite’s circles—against poverty, racism, andexploitation—butalso, in theirvisionsofafuture, theyfeatured indigenousblacks inprominentandpowerfulpositions.Whilemuchof the influenceof theMexicanscame toWhite indirectlythroughSiporinandMillman,weknowthroughBurroughsandWhitethatthepoliticalandartisticworkof theMexicanswasdiscussed inAfricanAmericancommunitycentersandthat los tresgrandes (Rivera,Orozco,andSiqueiros)werewell known in theUnitedStates. Letmepointout that throughout the 1950s,White never visualized black resistance in such stark, defiant,and bitter terms as he did inTechniques. As an example of “a marked increase of stylizedfeatures” (Clothier n.d., 60) in his work, Techniques exemplifies the direction that wouldeventually precipitate a collision course with the Left and a clear shift away from stylizationtowardgreaterrepresentationalrealism.Duringthe1940s,however,Whitecontinuedtofocusonblackhistorical themesand topursue themethodsof formal experimentation that allowedhim not only to craft a distinctive style but also to communicate through visual narratives ofracialinjusticethepower,agency,anddignityoftheblacksubject.

THESOUTH,THEARMY,THEHOSPITAL,ANDTHEMEXICANEXPERIENCE

ThesixyearsofWhite’slifefrom1943to1949wereemotionallytumultuousbutprofessionallyrewarding.In1942heandCatlettmovedtoNewYork,wheretheybothworkedattheleft-wingGeorgeWashingtonCarverSchool inHarlemand, in thesummer,at the leftistCampWo-Chi-Ca, founded by the Furriers’ Union for leftist workers and their families to support interracialcooperation. He continued his work as an editor forMasses & Mainstream and the DailyWorker. In 1943 he received a two-thousand-dollar Julius Rosenwald Fellowship, which heused to travel with Catlett throughout the South, “studying and painting the lives of blackfarmersandlaborers”andvisitinghisextendedfamily(Barnwell2002,29).Healsointendedtostudy inMexico, but thedraft boarddeniedhis request. In 1943heandCatlett alsowent toHampton Institute inHampton,Virginia,whereWhitecompleted themuralTheContributionoftheNegro toAmericanDemocracy,whenhewas still only twenty-five years old. In linewithPopular Front politics, themural represented a homegrown defense of American democracymadepossiblebyblackactivism.AsRiveradidwithhis inclusionof apictureof LeninonhisRockefellermural inNewYork,27White includedacovertsignofhis leftistpolitics.Alongwiththe avenging black angel and revolutionary heroes Crispus Attucks, Nat Turner, DenmarkVesey,SojournerTruth,FrederickDouglass,and the runawayslavePeterStill (whocarriesaflagwiththewords“IwilldiebeforeIsubmittotheyoke”),Whitedepictedtheblackleft-wingNationalMaritimeUnion (NMU)activistFerdinandSmith,whowaseventuallydeported forhisradical activism, and placed him next to Paul Robeson, whose arm, shaped like a powerfulwoodenmallet,completesthemural’s(andWhite’s)revolutionarydesigns.

White’sart-makingcametoanabruptendwhenhewasdraftedin1944.Heservedayearin the armed forces, where he contracted tuberculosis while he was working to stop theflooding of theMississippi andOhioRivers; he then spent two years in a hospital in upstateNewYork.Whenheappeared tobe recovered, hewentwithCatlett toMexico to studyandworkwiththeMexicanartists.If theMexicanshadapowerful influenceonWhitefromseveralthousandmilesawayintheearly1940s,theyearandahalfthatWhiteactuallyspentinMexico(1946–1947) invigorated that influence and accounts for the most politically charged andstylisticallyinnovativeartofhiscareer.InMexico,hesayshefeltforthefirsttimeinhislifelikeamanwhocouldgoanyplace:“NobodycouldcarelesswhatI lookedlike.”28Duringthistime,Whitebegan tounderstandwhatheconsidered themajorproblem inhis lifeasanartist: thedichotomy between his political ideals and his personal artistic goals. He thought that theMexicanartists,withtheirstudiosinthestreets,hadsolvedthatproblem:

SoIsawforthefirsttimeartistsdealingwithsubjectsthatwererelatedtothehistoryandcontemporarylifeofthepeople.Theirstudiowasinthestreets,theirstudioswereinthehomesofthepeople,theirstudiowaswherelifewastakingplace.TheyinvitedtheMexicanpeopletocomeintoevaluatetheirwork,andtheysoughttolearnfromthepeople….Theydidn’tlettheirimaginationrunrampant.Theysolvedtheproblemofthiscontradictioninacollectiveway.Isawartistsworkingtocreateanartaboutandforthepeople.Thathadthestrongestinfluenceonmywholeapproach.

(Clothiern.d.,56)

TheMexican influence is especially evident in all ofWhite’s 1949 drawings, which aremoreovertlypoliticalandstylisticallymoredaringthanhisother1940swork.The1949piecesinthe1950exhibitionattheACAGallery includeportraitsof fourhistorical figureswhowerestaplesof leftist representational insurgency (John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, andHarriet Tubman) and three historical drawings (The Ingram Case, The Trenton Six, andFrederick Douglass Lives Again or The Living Douglass), which show that expressionistic

techniqueswerebecomingpartofWhite’sstylisticexplorations.29Letmedescribe twoof themost well known of White’s 1949 expressionistic drawings. The Ingram Case, which wasreproducedintheDailyWorkeralongwithanarticle,“TheIngramsJailed—America’sShame,”focused on a prominent civil rights cause supported by the left-wing Civil Rights Congress.RosaLee Ingram—awidow, tenant farmer, andmother of fourteen children—and twoof hersons were sentenced to death in Georgia in 1948 for themurder of their white tenant farmowner, who, she claimed, had sexually assaulted her. InWhite’s drawing Rosa and her twosonsarebehindmassivebars,withRosalookingoutbeyondthe jailcellandhersons lookingpleadingly toward her, onewith his arm reaching over the head of his brother as if to try totouch hismother. Hands are prominent in this drawing.One son clutches the barswith bothhands,butRosa’srighthandreachesbeyondthebarsandisballedintoafist.Herotherhandlightly touches thebar,andbotharmsareenlarged.Theshadingsofblackandwhiteon theirfaces emphasize both their blackness and their suffering, and the light from Rosa’s eyessuggestsgriefandweariness.Thebarsofthecellseemtobelaidonthebodiesofthesethreefigures,bothholdingtheminthecellandweighingthemdown.Buttheswirlingblackandwhitelines of the mother’s dress and her fists on the bars undercut the painting’s sense ofdesperatenessand suggest the tenaciousnessofRosa Ingram’s fight to freeherself andhersons. In response to public opinion about the harsh sentences,Mrs. Ingram’s sentencewaslaterchangedtolifeimprisonment.CivilrightsgroupsfromthemainstreamUrbanLeaguetotheleft-wing Sojourners for Truth and Justice fought to free Ingram, and largely because of theeffortsoftheCRC,theIngramswereeventuallyfreedin1959(Horne1988,212).

InTheTrentonSix, done in black inkandgraphite onpaperboard,White features the sixmenwhowereaccusedof killingawhiteman inTrenton,NewJersey, and sentenced to theelectric chair, despite a lack of evidence and proof of a frame-up and coerced confessions.Thirteen years after the near lynching of the nine Scottsboro men, the same antiblack mobviolence prevailed in the northeastern city of Trenton. After the widow of themurderedmannamed blackmen as the killers, theNew JerseyEvening Times carried an editorial entitled“The Idle Death Chair,” as if black suspects automatically required putting the chair to use.BecauseoftheeffortsoftheCRCandBessieMitchell,thesisterofoneoftheframedmen,thesentenceswerereversedbytheSupremeCourtand,inasecondtrial,fourofthesixmenwerefoundinnocent.Inthemidstofherfighttofreeherrelatives,whenMitchellwasaskedwhysheturned to a group as controversial as the Communist Party, she replied, “God knows wecouldn’tbenoworseoffthanwearenow.”IntheWhitedrawing,Mitchell isthecentralfigure,standing in front of a barbedwire fence that encloses the sixmen, her enlarged hands andmassivearmsinagestureofprotectiveness,power,andpleading.Onehandpointstothemenbehind the fence, allowing the viewer tomove past Bessie to themenwho face outward atnothinginparticular,asthoughacknowledgingthedesperationoftheirsituation.Bessie’seyesare sad but determined, gazing upward as though she is capable of doing whatever isnecessary to freeherkinsmen.Howeverconservative these techniquesmayhaveseemed to1950s mainstream art critics smitten by abstraction, they represented a black avant-garde.Deployedintheserviceofblackresistanceandonbehalfofleft-wingcauses,theseimagesofwhiteoppression,blackanger,andleftistpoliticalagencyconstitutedamodernistassaultonthenationalimaginaryofJimCrowAmerica.

A fewmainstreamart critics praisedWhite’swork precisely because it combined a blackaestheticwithstylisticexperimentation.IntheNewYorkTimesreviewofhisfirstone-manshowin September 1947, White’s work was described with an emphasis on form: “He paintsNegroes,modelingtheir figuresinboldblockymassesthatmighthavebeencutfromgranite.”

Therevieweralsocommentedontheeffectofmergingstylizedtechniqueswithablackculturalsensibility:“SomethingofthethrobbingemotionofNegrospiritualscomesthrough.Arestrainedstylizationofthebigformskeepsthemfrombeingtoooverpowering.Thisisverymovingwork”(Horowitz 2000, 19). What White was doing in these 1949 pieces—combining stylisticexperimentation with meaningful social content—was entirely consistent with the work andthinking of many socially concerned artists. According to the cultural historian Bram Dijkstra(2003, 11), these artists “link[ed] the technical innovations of modernism to a working-classthematicaspartofapassionatecommitmenttotheprinciplesofsocial justiceandcommunityratherthantofeedtheindulgenceofprivateobsessions.”Bytheearly1950s,however,criticson theLeft began toassess thestylizationsofWhite’sworknegatively.Despite the fact thatThe Living Douglass had appeared on the front page of the Sunday Worker, SidneyFinkelstein, the major art critic of Masses & Mainstream, found the piece problematicallyexperimental,because,hesaid,thestylizationofthehumanheadandbody“stilllingers”(1953,43–46), a clue that thewinds of changewere blowing and thatWhite’s experimentations, nomatter howmuch they throbbed with black emotion, would no longer find favor with certainPartycritics. In these1949and1950drawings,black identity is representedasanaspectofhistorical narrative and therefore as contingent, open-ended, andmutable. In the portraits ofblacks White would formulate after 1950, he made changes in both his style and hisrepresentationsofblackidentitythatcorrespondwiththecommentaryofsomeleftistartcriticsintheDailyWorkerandMasses&Mainstream.Theresultisarepresentationofblacknessthatis far less inventive and innovative than these dynamic 1940s combinations of black subject,blackresistance,andmodernistaesthetics.

THECOMMITTEEFORTHENEGROINTHEARTSANDTHEBLACKLEFTRENAISSANCEINNEWYORK

The changes in White’s personal life in the late 1940s and early 1950s deepened hiscommitment to the Left. In 1946 he went through an acrimonious divorce from Catlett, whomarried the Mexican artist Francesco Mora, whom she met while in Mexico. White thenreturned to the hospital for another year of treatment for a recurrence of tuberculosis, andwhenFrancesBarrett, theyoungcounselorhehadgotten to knowat the interracial left-wingCampWo-Chi-Ca,cametovisithim in thehospital, theystruckupa friendship thateventuallyledtotheirmarriagein1950.Intheloveletterstheywrotetoeachotherbeforetheirmarriage,thereisevidencethattheirpoliticalcommitmentswerepartofwhatdrewthemtogether.Charliewrote to Fran in 1950 that their “deep and tremendous faith in love, people, and Marxism”wouldbe“asolidfront”intheirinterracialmarriage(Barrett-White1994,22).

Fran and Charlie moved to New York City in 1950 and, despite the looming McCarthyonslaught,becamepartofadynamicworldofleftistintellectualandpoliticalactivity.Whitewasaneditor atMasses&Mainstream and had already had two exhibitions at theACAGallery,bothNewYork–basedleft-winginstitutions.MajorLeft-ledandLeft-influencedunionslikeUnitedElectrical, United Public Workers Association, the Furriers’ Union, and the National MaritimeUnion (NMU)wereall located inNewYork.The communistsBenDavisandPeterCacchionehad been elected to the New York City council, and the communist VitoMarcantonio was aNewYorkCityrepresentativetoCongress.WhiteworkedopenlyonthepoliticalcampaignsofbothDavisandMarcantonio,donatedhisarttosupporttheirwork,andwasfriendswithmajorblack left-wingfigures likePaulRobeson,W.E.B.DuBois, theCRCheadWilliamPatterson,

and the NMU vice president Ferdinand Smith. Also headquartered in New York during thisperiod were important and influential leftist publications like AdamClayton Powell’sPeople’sVoice, the Marxist journal Masses & Mainstream, Robeson’s newspaper Freedom, thecommunist newspapers The Daily World and The Sunday World, and black left-wingorganizationsliketheCouncilonAfricanAffairs,theCRC,and—mostimportantlyfortheWhites—theCommitteefortheNegrointheArts.

Duringthisperiod,whichFranWhitecalled“thisCNAtime”and“anotherRenaissance,”30theWhitesmade thedecision tomove fromTwenty-FourthStreet to710RiversideDriveuptownbecause theywanted tobeclose to theblackcommunityandbecause “all theCNAactivities[were]uptown.”31Founded in1947byPaulRobesonandotherson theLeft,with thegoalof“full integration of Negro artists into all forms of American culture and combating racialstereotypes,” theCNAwasamilitantlyblack,politicallyMarxist, sociallybourgeois, interracialcultural organization that was, perhaps, the most successful black/Left collaboration of NewYork’sBlackPopularFront,thoughitisalmosttotallymarginalizedinleftistliteratureexceptforits venomous portrait in Harold Cruse’s 1961 critique of the Left, The Crisis of the NegroIntellectual.PhillipBonosky,awhite communistwhostarted theHarlemWritersWorkshopatthe request of black writers in CNA, remembers it as “our organization,” but CNA’sinterracialismwascertainlyproblematicforsome.Someblacksfeltthatwhiteshadnoplaceinablackorganization,andblackwomenwereoftendisturbedbythenumberofblackmenontheLeftwhowerewithwhitewomen(Barrett-White1994).Nonetheless,theorganizationattractedawideswathofblackNewYorkartists.TheartistErnieCrichlowwasCNAchairmanin1950,and Elaine Jones, the first black timpanist for the New York Philharmonic Symphony, andSidney Poitier were vice chairs (Barrett-White 1994, 57). Lorraine Hansberry reviewed CNAactivities inFreedom (May1952), andTheDailyWorker provided extensive coverage of theCNA’sactivities,includingitsfoundingconferenceanditsannualNegroHistoryCostumeBall,apublic fundraising dancewhere attendees dressed as figures from black history. TheWhitessold tickets toandattendedCNA’s first theatricalproductionheldat theClubBaronat132ndand Lenox Avenue, featuring Alice Childress’s production of Langston Hughes’s Just a LittleSimpleand twoone-acts,Childress’splayFlorenceandWilliamBranch’sAMedal forWillie.Onephotographofa1950sCNAeventat theManhattanTowersHotelhonoringblackculturalactivists shows an integrated crowd that demonstrates that during its short history (1947–1954), theCNAwasa vital part of theNewYorkPopular Front.Seated on the dais are thehonoreesRobesonandDuBois;JamesEdwards,starofHomeof theBrave;Hughes, poet,playwright, and librettist; the actors FrankSilvera and FrediWashington;Mary LouWilliams,composer and arranger; TheodoreWard, playwright; Janet Collins, dancer; Shirley Graham,writer;LawrenceBrown,composer;andCharlesWhite,whosesoloshowat theACAGalleryhadclosedinFebruaryofthatyear.32TheCNAwasnotofficiallytiedtotheParty,butby1948,when theattorneygeneral targeted theCNAasasubversiveorganization,membership in theorganization insured theblacklistingof several of itsmost famousmembers, includingPoitier,RubyDee,andOssieDavisandHarryBelafonte.33

FIGURE2.3.PhotographoffoundingmembersoftheCommitteefortheNegrointheArts(c.1940).Lefttoright:WalterChristmas,RuthJett,CharlesWhite,JanetCollins,FrankSilvera,ViolaScottThomas,ErnieCrichlow.

Source:C.IanWhiteandtheCharlesWhiteArchives.©CharlesWhiteArchives.

FIGURE2.4.PhotographofaCNAawardsbanquetinNewYorkCity.Lefttorightondais:thedancerJanetCollins;theactorJamesEdwards;thelaboractivistThelmaPerkins;Dr.W.E.B.DuBois;LangstonHughes;theactorFrediWashington;thevisualartistCharlesWhite;theactorFrankSilvera;theplaywrightAliceChildress;LawrenceBrown,theaccompanistforPaulRobeson;RuthJett,theexecutivedirectorofCNA;thehistorianJohnHenrikClarke;oneunknownwoman;andthevisualartist

ErnieCrichlow.Dateunknown(1950s).Source:C.IanWhiteandtheCharlesWhiteArchives.©CharlesWhiteArchives.

OneofthereasonstheCNAbegantoexcitesuchinterestinthe1950swasthattheintimateand visualmedium of television appeared almost simultaneously with the high ColdWar andfurtherexposedtheextentofU.S.culturalapartheidanditsprofoundexclusionofblackartists.Fran remembered that when she and Charlie got the first television set and their friendsgathered at their apartment to watch variety shows, their first reaction was a stunnedawarenessof thedeliberatelydiscriminatorypoliciesof thisnewmedium(Barrett-White1994,55–57). In a September 1949Masses &Mainstream article, “Advertising Jim Crow,” whichcritiqued theadvertising industry’s racistpractices, theCNAwriterWalterChristmas reportedthat in his informal two-week survey of magazines from the New Yorker to the SaturdayEveningPost, he found “a strangeworld” beingperpetrated inU.S.magazines, one inwhichthe words “labor” and “poverty” were absent and where blacks appeared only as smilingservantsor fearfulAfrican “natives.”Christmasalso reportedonamoresystematicsurveyofthe advertising industry done by the CNA in 1947, which estimated that of twenty thousandpeople in the industry, “exactly thirty-six were Negroes, for the most part used in minorcapacities,mainlymenial,”butnever representedaspartofAmericansociety.Negroeswere“simplynotshownasapartofAmericanlife,”neveras“typicalAmericans”attownmeetings,incrowdscenes,orevenonArmyrecruitingposters(Christmas1949,55).34

LOVEANDRECOGNITIONINEASTBERLIN

In 1951, theCNAchoseWhite to represent theorganizationat theWorldYouthandStudentFestival for Peace in East Berlin as part of the Young People’s Assembly for Peace, whichorganized the “Friendship Tour” to Europe, whereU.S. peace groupswouldmeet with otherlaborandpeacegroups.35WhitewasgivenagalasendoffwithacocktailpartyhostedbytheCNAonJune27,1951,attheACAGalleryonEastFifty-SeventhStreet,andtheCNAsurprisedhim by raising the money to send Fran, who joined him in Paris. In the twenty-eight-pageinterviewwithClothierin1980,FranWhitedescribesthetouringreatdetail,elaboratingonthepolitical as well as personal significance of the weeks they spent in Europe and the SovietUnion.TheFriendshipTourwasslatedtobegininParisandculminateintheThirdWorldYouthandStudent Festival inEastBerlin, but at theRussianEmbassy in France, theWhitesweregivenvisasandtoldmysteriouslyonenighttogetreadytoboardatrain,whichtookthemtoLeHavre,wheretheyweremetbypeoplewhotookthemtoaPolishsteamship.Onboardweredelegations from every country, including those of theEastern Bloc. Theywere picked up inEast Berlin, where the entire city was given over to this two-week festival. They met the“socialist leadership” from around the world, including the famous Turkish communist poetNazimHikmet.TheyweretakentoseethecampsatAuschwitz.Then,asmysteriouslyastheappearanceofthenighttrain,fifteenoutofthefortymembersoftheU.S.delegation,includingtheWhites, were chosen to go to Poland and Moscow. In Moscow, they were treated likedignitaries and given exceptional hotel suites filled with fruit and wine and chocolates. Theytouredfarms,factories,theBolshoiBallet,musicconservatories,artgalleries,andartschools.Fran White says that they were treated “royally” in the socialist countries, where evenschoolchildren talkedaboutWhite’swork.Theyreturned to theUnitedStates,shesays in theClothier interview,with a deepeningunderstanding that to “bring socialism to theU.S.”wouldrequire“asocialmovementofthecountryandnotjustafewpeoplewiththeideas,”thatithadto be understood as “shaped by the geography, history, and ethnic group of each specificcountry.”But theyalso faced criticism from thosewho “would battle himon socialist realism,

because he did not find it ridiculous” (Clothier 1980–1981, 24). Fran emphasized they werebothimpressedwithwhattheyhadseenintheSovietUnion.Charliewasespeciallytakenwithhowethnicgroupswereallowedtodeveloptheirownculture,andFranwasimpressedbytheSoviet treatment of children: “I don’t care what anybody tells me about socialism,” shereported.“ThechildrenwerethehappiestchildrenthatI’veeverseen”(24).Intheinformalandfree-wheeling atmosphere of the 1980 interview, Fran seems eager to express their elationover the enthusiastic embrace ofWhite’s art in socialist countries, but in her autobiography,publishedfourteenyearslaterin1994,thatrespectandadmirationforsocialistpoliticsismutedorabsent.

The Whites’ European trip, which followed in the footsteps of Du Bois, Hughes, andRobeson,isessentialinunderstandingthechangesinWhite’slife,hisart,andhispoliticalviewsafter 1951. Gordon says he is quite sure that the trip was sponsored by the Left,36 whichaccounts for the increased attention White received from the communist press when hereturned to the United States. The trip also immediately triggered White’s FOIA file. In herautobiography,Fransaystheyweregreetedat theairportupontheir returnbyasummonstoappearbefore theHouseUn-AmericanActivitiesCommitteeandbya request from theStateDepartmenttosurrendertheirpassports.Withinafewmonthsthesummonswasunexpectedlywithdrawnand theirpassports returned,butneitherof theWhiteswascalled to testifybeforeaninvestigatorycommittee.Evenso,anFBIinformantkeptclosetrackofWhite’sactivitiesonthetrip,referringtohiminonefileas“CharlesWHITE,colored,allegedlyanAmericancitizen”(U.S. FBI, CharlesWhite, 100-38467-5) and carefully recording the public statementsWhitemadeabouthisexperiencesat theWorldFestival, includinghisamazementat the friendlinessof the youth of Korea and other socialist countries. White’s FOIA file also details hisassociations with Left-leaning or Left-led organizations, includingMasses &Mainstream; theNew York Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions; the Jefferson School of SocialSciences; theGeorgeWashingtonCarverSchool inNewYork; theDailyWorker; his supportfor clemency for Ethel and Julius Rosenberg; his attendance at a Cultural Freedom rally toprotest the banning of the prounion filmSalt of the Earth; and his relationship with the ACAGallery,addingthattheACAwas“devotedtotheworkofsociallyconsciousartists”(U.S.FBI,CharlesWhite,NY100-139770).AccordingtotheFOIAfile,theWhiteswerefollowedcloselyin Moscow and were “seen at the Bolshoi Theater fraternizing with persons believed to beNorth Korean or Chinese Communists” (6. NY 100-102344). One section of his file, labeled“AFFILIATIONWITH THE COMMUNISTMOVEMENT,” summarizes all the reasons the FBI used to justifycallingWhite a communist, including having “numerous books relating to Communism” and asculpturedbustofStalin inhisapartment,his “praiseofRussia,”and“thepredominantuseofred in subject’s paintings” (NY 100-102344, 5). Unlike the files of Lloyd Brown and AliceChildress, a great deal has been redacted in White’s file, and the constant repetition ofinformationand theFBI’sdependenceon theDailyWorkerandMasses&Mainstream for itsreportssuggestthattherewaslittleonWhitethatcouldnotbefoundinobviousandpublishedsources. Whether or not theWhites were aware of this intense surveillance, the trip had aprofoundeffectonWhite: inaspeechat theBerlinYouthFestival,whichwas reprinted in theDecember23,1951,Worker,Whitesaid,“Iam33yearsoldandIonlyfeltthefeelingofbeingarealmanwhenIwasintheSovietUnion.”

WhenFranWhite tries toexplain inherClothier interviewhow this tripaffected thembothpersonally and politically, her statements are often contradictory, possibly an indication thateveninthe1980s,theiraffiliationwiththeLeftwasstillanareaofanxiety.ClothieraskedFranabout their relationshipwith theParty: “Partyaffiliationon return?”Reflectingherhesitancies,

sheansweredbothnegativelyandaffirmatively:

No,wehadbeensoclosebeforethetrip,yes,wewantedtobringsocialismtotheUS.Werealizedinrealitythatithadtobeasocialmovementof thecountryandnot just trueofa fewpeoplewith the ideas….All of thepreachingand theliteraturewasnotgoing tomakethechange…. I think thatwhenhecamebackwasprobablywhenhebegantohavedifferenceswiththecommuniststhatheknew(TOOSIMPLISTIC)[sic]…youcouldsensethatsocialismwasshapedbythecountries,by thecircumstancesandthegeography, thehistory, theart….Andthenwhenhegothomethey[otherabstractartists]wouldbattlehimonthesocialist realism,becausehedidn’t find it ridiculous….I think thatwasoneof[Charles’s]mainbattleswith the leftmovement,was that youdon’t let theartist and youdon’t let theblackuse theirresourcestodeterminethepast.

(24–25)

FIGURE2.5(a).PagefromCharlesWhite’sFOIAfile(c.1951).Source:U.S.FederalBureauofInvestigation.

FIGURE2.5(b).PagefromCharlesWhite’sFOIAfile(c.1951).Source:U.S.FederalBureauofInvestigation.

In this somewhat rambling but affecting narrative, Fran tries to describe an issue thatplaguedmanyblackleft-wingactivists:Howdoesonecraftanindependentblackleftistpoliticswithinthelarger,mostlywhite-controlledLeftmovement?37ShesaysthattheyhadbeenclosetoParty“affiliation”beforethetripbutthatdifferencessurfacedwhentheyreturned,withWhitebattlingthecommunistsononeside—who,inFran’sterms,werenotallowingblackartistslikeWhite touse their resources “todetermine thepast”—andhisartist friendson theotherside,because they found socialist realism “ridiculous” and wondered why Charlie didn’t. Fran’sresponseprovidesmoreevidencethatWhite’sconflictswiththePartygobackasfaras1951,eventhoughhispublicstatementsatthetimeseemedtotallyinlinewithCPdoctrine.Ultimately,FranWhite’s interview reveals how unsettledWhite was both by the radical course he wastakingbybeingopenly identifiedwith theLeft andalsoby theLeft’s refusal to let “theartist”and “theblack”determine their owncourse.38Whenshesays in the interview, “so you’re notonly touching blackness, you’re touching the Left” (27), Franwas describing poeticallywhatshesawasthe integrationbetweenWhite’spolitical idealsandhisartisticgoals.Butshealsoput her finger on another aspect of conflict for a politically conscious black artist.During theMcCarthyera,blackness—orblackmilitantactivism—couldbeconsideredsynonymouswiththeLeftandthereforediscreditedas“communistic.”

In contrast to Fran’s hesitancies, White’s description of the trip in hisDaily Worker andMasses&Mainstreamarticles39was rhetorically and politically self-assured.He said that hebegantofeelasenseofagreementwithotherworldartiststhat“thegreatforward-movingtideofartwasrealism,”despitewhatotherswereclaimingasthe“new.”Asaresultofthistrip,hebegan to “see international questions as the primary concern of all people.” The Americanpeopleneeded tobeable to identifywith theAfrican,Chinese,andAsianpeoples,which,hesaid, was not only a theoretical issue for him but one that should be a part “of my actualpainting and graphic work.” The “character and world view of the working class, itsinternationalism,andoptimism”wouldnowplayamajorroleinhiswork.Hesaidthathopemustbe revealed even in scenes “exposing the harshness of life of the common people.” Mostimportantly,Whiteannounced thathehadnowchosen “realism”ashisguidingaesthetic. InaDecember 1951 interview in theDailyWorker, he praised Soviet art as “the greatest in theworld.” In one Daily Worker installment, White continued to speak against “formalism,”Freudianism,andsubjectiveart:

“There is no longer any problemof formalism in theSovietUnion,” saidWhite. TheSoviet artist stopped concerninghimselfwithhisinneremotions,withFreudianism,alongtimeago.Todayhisworkreflectswhatthemassesofthepeoplearestruggling for.Hisprimaryaimasanartist is to “bringout inhiswork thewhole feeling,aspirationandgoalof themassesofworkingpeople.”

White continuedwith statements supporting socialist realism and the Party’s position againstformalism:

“Youcan’tevenconceive,”saidWhite,“ofanartthatportraysamanlikeStalinwhoisbelovedbyalltheSovietpeople,oranheroicwomanlikeZoya, intermsofplanes,angles,andstylization, itwouldbeatrociousanddishonest.Besides itwouldbeimpossibletobringouttheheroismofZoyaandStalinexceptthroughSocialistRealism.”

(Platt1951b)

WhatultimatelyencouragedtheSovietartisttorejectformalism,Whitedeclared,wastheclosecontactbetweentheartistandthepeople:“Allhisassignmentscomefromthepeople.Whenapieceofsculpture iscommissioned fora factoryand the factoryworkersdon’t like it, they lettheartistknowaboutitrealquickandhehastogiveitanotherreworking.”Later,aswewillseefromWhite’sstatements in the1970s,hewouldseriouslyquestion the ideaofanartistbeingtetheredtothewillofthepeople.

White made these statements, which aligned him with communist aesthetics—specificallywith themore rigid cultural policies adopted under the hard-line Zhdanov40 phase—at a timewhenhehadachievedsomethingofanameforhimselfintheU.S.artworld.By1952hisACAopeninghadbeen favorably reviewed in theNewYorkTimes, hewas the firstblackartist toexhibitonFifty-SeventhStreet,hewasawardedagrant from theAmericanAcademyofArtsand Letters, and his painting of Preacher had been bought by the Whitney Museum for itspermanent collection. He had produced stunning WPA murals for black colleges anduniversities, mounted exhibitions at galleries and universities all over the country, and hadseveral solo exhibitions at theACAgallery inNewYork.What is clear fromall his narrativesabouthis trip is thatpartlybecauseofhis relationship to internationalcommunism,White felt,quite accurately, that for the first time in his artistic career he had been given the kind ofrecognitionthatblackartistsrarelyreceivedintheUnitedStatesinthe1950s.41HereturnedtotheUnitedStateswith “aboundvolumeofsomeofhisworks inhandand tolda friend, ‘theysure know how to put things together.’” It was, his friend and writer Douglas Glasgow

commented, a “marvelous experience for him in the sense of that kind of recognition,” arecognitionclearlyenabledbyhisaffiliationswiththeCommunistLeft.42

IDEOLOGICALREPRIMANDSANDAESTHETICCORRECTIONS

White’sgrowingstatureintheartworldwasaccompaniedbycloseattentionfromcriticsontheLeft.Thatattentionwaspositivethroughthe1940s,butbythelate1940sandearly1950s,theParty began to change its position on visual aesthetics. By 1945, under the leadership ofWilliamZ.FosterandunderthepressuresofColdWar,abesiegedParty,no longerwillingtopursue the flexible strategies of the Popular Front, returned to the hard-line position that“Progressivearttoday,insideandoutsidetheSovietUnion,isthatofsocialrealism.”Theterm“realism” became ubiquitous in Party criticism in the 1950s, taking on the power of arevolutionary rallying slogan even as it remained a vague and elastic aesthetic concept. A“realistic” art pitted the Left against what was considered the “antihuman” formalism of theavant-garde,whichincludedanykindofstylizedart,abstraction,orexpressionism.FortheLeft,the geometrical figures, vague curving shapes, and smears of paint from the abstractionistswereaformofmilitantself-aggrandizement,asetofformalgimmicksdevoidofsocialthoughtor purpose and designed to appeal to the elite, a form of pessimism that would make theindividual feel helpless. Progressive artists, on the other hand, were encouraged to build up“stronghopesfortheworkingclassandpresenttheeverydaylifestrugglesofworkingpeople.The human figure should be represented in a recognizable form as a means of conveyinginspiration and hope, not for expressing personal idiosyncrasies.” The term that wouldencapsulatetheseprincipleswas“socialistrealism.”43

AsWhitebegantochangehisstyle,leftistartcriticsquestionedhisformertendencytowardabstractionandapplaudedhismovetowardsocialrealism.Inhisreviewofa1951showattheACAGallery,theAfricanAmericanartcriticJohnPittmansingledoutWhiteforavoiding“emptyabstractions” and showing pride and confidence and honest directness of the worker” andspecifically namedWhite’s art “socialist realism” (1951). The view that White’s work before1950hadbecomeunacceptablesurfacesina“SymposiumonCharlesWhite,”a1954meetingof theVoksArt Section inMoscow,March 18, 1954, reported on inMasses &Mainstream.One commentator, D. Dubinsky, an engraver, praises the 1954 portfolio but issues a sternwarning about White’s “shortcomings,” which are, in his view, White’s failure to represent afigurerealistically. In1955, thecommunistartandmusiccriticSidneyFinkelstein,perhapsthesingle most important promoter of White’s early career, published (in German) the first full-length critical study of White’s art, Charles White: Ein Kunstler Amerika, with forty-threeillustrationscoveringthe1940sand1950supto1954.WhileFinkelsteincelebratedWhiteasanexceptionalartist,heusedthetexttodocumentthecommunistrequirementsfora“realistic”art.Inhisarticlesintheleft-wingpressofthe1950sandinhisbook,FinkelsteincritiquedthemuralTechniques Used in the Service of Struggle as too experimental, demonstrating theantimodernist position the Party would adopt in the 1950s.44 Finkelstein admitted that heobjected to this mural because of what he called the contradiction inherent in a style thatconveys “high tension and excitement,” which makes it “more difficult to disclose the innersensitivity and psychological depth of the humanbeingswhoare the subject” (1955, 23–24).Whatpreciselyconstituted “innersensitivityandpsychologicaldepth” remainedsubjectiveandoblique.

Similarly,WhitewaspraisedbyCharlesCorwin,theDailyWorker’sin-houseartcritic,asa

progressivesocialartist.Then,inthemiddleofhisFebruary20,1950,reviewofWhite’sshowin theDailyWorker, Corwin inserted a paragraph that began ominously: “We have severalsuggestions we would like to offerWhite, even as we applaud the correctness of his basicorientation.”WhatfollowsisalistofcorrectionstoWhite’sdeparturesfromapprovedmodelsofsocial realism.The flat,angular linesofWhite’s figures,saysCorwin,are “cold,”and there isdanger that his stylemay become “static” andmeaningless. Corwin continues: “Inmany thecharacteristicmoodisatorturedreposewithupturnedeyesandfurrowedbrows,”andthereisadangerof thepicturebeinganimatedwith“superficialdevices.” It isdifficult toferretout thecovertmeaningsofCorwin’scritiquebecauseitspoliticalandideologicalundercurrentsobscurewhat is ostensibly an aesthetic evaluation. What Corwin admits only obliquely is that this“corrective” is an attempt to influence artists who have strayed from the righteous path ofsocialistrealismintothetemptationsofformalism.

In their campaign against abstract art, Party art critics—Corwin, Finkelstein, and,occasionally,theAfricanAmericancriticJohnPittman—maintainedanespeciallyvigilanteyeonWhite. In their commentsabouthiswork, thesecriticsdeliberately tried todirectWhiteawayfromexperimentalismtowardrealism.Thatpressureisparticularlyevident intheirassessmentof thedrawingsofHarrietTubmanandSojournerTruth thatWhitecreatedbetween1949and1951and illustrates what was being encouraged by the art critics in theDailyWorker in theColdWarclimateofthe1950s.45

InWhite’sSojournerTruth, there are still traces of cubist influence in the enlarged handsthatseemsculptedintoblocksofwood.Thefigure’srighthandiscurvedinthedirectionoftheviewer as if in warning or self-protection; the eyes are illumined. Her left hand is raised,carryingWhite’ssignature torch (orwhip),andbotharmsandhandsareshaped likewoodenmallets.HereTruth is an enigmatic figure,whomight bemale or female.Her face seems toemerge from her draped robe, making her seemmythical and mysterious, an avenging OldTestament prophet.The lookonher face is elegiac, andher eyesare large, stern, and sad.Writing in the 1951DailyWorker,Corwin found an image like this unacceptable, because ofwhatheclaimedwasitsunreadability:hecalledthe1949cubist-stylefigureofHarrietTubman,which is similar to the Truth drawing, “unapproachable,” “almost mystical,” and “God-like,”revealing,perhaps,hisdiscomfortwithherpower.

FIGURE2.6.CharlesWhite,SojournerTruth(1949).Source:PhotographbyFrankJ.Thomas,CourtesyoftheFrankJ.MorganArchives.

FIGURE2.7.CharlesWhite,Exodus1BlackMoses(1951).Source:PhotographbyFrankJ.Thomas,CourtesyoftheFrankJ.MorganArchives.

Incontrast, inExodus1BlackMoses, the1951Tubman isclearly female,withshortenedthoughstillstylizedhair,herhandraisedandpointingthewaytofreedomforthegroupofblackpeoplefollowingher.ComparingthistoWhite’s1949Tubman,Corwinsays,“Theaustere, theenigmatic, the depressed are replaced by a courageous optimism and confidence.” This“approved”TubmanseemedtoalleviateCorwin’sanxietiesandtensionscreatedbytheearlierone.Thefaceissofter,thereisthehintofasmile,andherplaceattheforefrontofthegroupandherenlargedheadsuggestthemovementtowardvictory,asdoesamaninthebackgroundwith his arms upraised. Because the face of this Tubman is more “realistically” drawn, themysteriousness and ambiguity of images like the first Tubman and the Sojourner Truth arereplacedbyatriumphantimageoftheMosesofherpeople,afigureofcomfortratherthanofconfrontation.ForCorwin (1951), theeliminationofanysignsofabstractionwasproofof theefficacyoftheLeft’scorrectionsandofWhite’sartisticmaturity:

Whitehasgrownmuchduringthesepasttwelvemonths,andit isinjustthoseelementswhichweremostcriticizedayearagothatWhitehasmadethemostevidentadvance.White’ssubjectsareagainfromNegrolifeandhistory,buttheyaremorethanjustdescriptive,forthemonumentalityofWhite’sforms,alliedwiththestyleoftheMexicansocialpainters,transformshissubjectsintolargesymbolsofoppression,thestruggleandtheyearningforfreedomoftheNegropeople.Therewasearlier a tendency for thesemonumental symbols to become formalizedand static.During thepast year,however,White, by humanizing his forms and clarifying his content is succeeding in giving human substance to hissymbols.

(Corwin1951,11)

BythetimeheexhibitedthethirdHarrietTubmaninthe1954ACAGalleryshow,Whitehadcreatedanimageshornofmostofhisexperimentaltechniques,nowtakingwhathecalledthe

pathtorealism,whichmeant representing thehumanfigureasanatomically “correct,”withoutexpressionisticdistortions.This1954Tubmanimageattemptstoportraythesocialist idealsofoptimism and “hope for the future” rather than the bleak realities of segregation and racismevident in earlier drawings like The Trenton Six and The Ingram Case or in the earlierTubmans.Thehandsarenolongertheenlarged,geometricformsthatresembleweapons.Theeyeshaveapenetratinglookbutarenotdistorted.StandingnexttoTubmanisSojournerTruth,who is shown in profile. Both figures wear the determined look of freedom fighters. Theirbeautiful and serene faces are familiar and recognizable. The suggestion of judgment, ofwarning, of blame in the 1949 Tubman and Truth is gone, as is what Finkelstein (1953, 20)called the “high tensionandexcitement” thathe thoughtmade it “moredifficult todisclose theinnersensitivityandpsychologicaldepthofthehumanbeings.”Whilethe“approved”Tubmanisaccessible and inviting, the “tension and excitement” of the experimental Tubman and Truth,contrarytoCorwinandFinkelstein,isbothrevolutionaryandmodern.

In the veiled statement he issued to other progressive artists who were dallying withexperimentalism,CorwinusedWhiteasbothamodelandawarning:“ThestepswhichCharlesWhitehastakenthisyeartowardstheoftenstatedidealofsocialrealismmakesthisexhibitiona valuable object lesson to progressive artists and public alike as well as a very pleasantexperience”(1951,11).Whiteseemstohavebeendeliberatelysingledouttobeanexample.Inthe Corwin articles from February 1950 to March 1953, White was presented as an artisttempted by the sirens of abstraction, who, after accepting this critical advice, reaffirmed hiscommitmenttopoliticallyapprovedartisticpractices.

White’sformerstudent,theartistJohnBiggers,likemanyofWhite’sartistfriends,wasbothdismayed and perplexed with this turn toward realism: “It was almost as if he was workingbackward into the future… the early work with its marvelous abstract qualities… was somagnificent,heleftthatandwentbackintorealism.Idon’tknowwhatcausedthis.”46AsWhitehimself knew only toowell, the black cultural and social worldwas neither immune from norunpreparedtodealwiththeanxietiesofthemodernworld,buthechose,at leastforthebriefperiodof thehighColdWar, towork in the socialist realist art tradition,which favored thoserepresentations of black subjects that were recognizable and optimistic, rather than thedynamic, multifaceted, and psychically complex modern people and communities WhiteencounteredinbothChicagoandHarlem.Aswewillseelater,thisperiodproducedaprofoundcrisis forWhite,but italsoproducedportraitsofblack lifemorecomplexand interesting thantheyseematfirstglance.WhatIwanttoteaseoutinthenextsectionofthischapteristhewayinwhich the 1953–1954portfolio revealsWhite’s uneasewith theParty’s attempts to controlthe direction of his art and the covert resistance he employed in his art to forestall thatcontrol.47

THE1953–1954PORTFOLIO:BLACKARTISTINUNIFORM?

By the timeMasses & Mainstream published the 1953–1954 portfolio, The Art of CharlesWhite: A Folio of Six Drawings, White’s radical departure from his earlier experimental artseemed complete. There are at least two explanations for the changes. One is that thesechangeswerealignedwith theviewsofartcritics inWhite’s left-wingcircles,and theother isthat thesechanges reflectedWhite’sowndesires foranart thatwould reachordinarypeopleand that he could best reach that audience through realism.White’s friendBill Pajud, the artdirectorattheGoldenStateMutualInsuranceCompany,explainedthatthereasonWhite’sart

waschosenfor theGoldenStatecalendarwas that “Charleswas theoneblackartist Iknewwhowas literal enough in his drawing to be accepted by people who had not any aestheticappreciation” (Clothier 1980–1981, 62). The portfolio of six black-and-white lithographs wassoldthroughsubscriptionforthreedollarsandthroughbookstoresandartshopsinlarge(13"x18"), ready-to-frameprints,with thegoal ofmakingart available toworking-classaudiences,“whoareusuallyunable toaffordsuchart.”48Thesixdrawings—TheMother,YeShall InherittheEarth,Lincoln,TheHarvest,Let’sWalkTogether,andDawnofLife—were introducedbyleftistartcritics,whoframedthefolioinalmostexclusivelypoliticalandnonaestheticterms.49IntheprefacetotheportfolioRockwellKentsaysthat the lithographsactually transcendartandembody“peace,love,hope,faith,beauty,anddignity.”InthefirstoftwoMasses&Mainstreamarticles on the portfolio, “CharlesWhite’s Humanist Art,” Finkelstein equatesWhite’s shift torealismwith“lovefortheworkingpeople.”50In“CharlesWhite:BeautyandStrength,”theartistPhilip Evergood is the only Left critic to comment on the technical aspects of the portfoliodrawings,buthetooseestheirmajorachievementastheproductionof“happy,hopefulfaces”that can “counteract the fears, the uncertainty which are to be seen in so many faceseverywherearoundtheworldtoday”(1953,39).ExceptfortheportraitofLincoln,thedrawingsintheportfoliorepresentworkersandtheworkingclass,stoicintheirdignity:amotherinfarmclothescarryinganinfantinYeShallInherittheEarth;twomuscularfarmworkers,bothintentlyfocusedonthejobaheadofthem,inHarvestTalk;ayounggirlinDawnofLife,herhandsheldupprayerfullyasshereleasesawhitedoveintothesky.TheMothershowsonlythefaceandhands of amiddle-agedwoman, her enlarged hands covering nearly a third of her face andfoldedaroundaclothasifinprayer.Thewearylinesaroundhereyesandherhalfsmileportraytheenduranceofawomanwhohasknownandsurvivedhardtimes.

Taken together, the foliodrawings representaversionof “the folk” intended to further theLeft’sgoalofpresenting theworkerasstoic,dignified,beautiful,and, importantly,accessible.One sees here the black belt thesis deployed in visual terms—in the black proletariat as anoppressedbut resistantworker, inblackcultural referencesexpressed inChristianmythology(YeShallInherittheEarth),inthereferencestoblackspirituals(WalkTogetherChildren),andintheruralsettings(HarvestTalk).IncontrasttothenarrativeenergyanddynamismofWhite’s1940s image of a Living Frederick Douglass and the indictment of racist injustice in TheTrentonSixandTheIngramCase, thefoliomovesawayfromhistoricizednarrativetoamoreaestheticizedversionofwhatRichardPowellcalls“theever-ambiguous”folk(1997,65).

ThougheveryWhitebiographerandcritic,aswellasmostofhisfriendsandfellowartists,noted the “shift” in his work after 1950, only Andrew Hemingway attributes it to White’scommitment to the ideals of the Communist Party. Dijkstra argues that White abandonedexpressionistic“distortions”becauseherealizedthat“genuineemotionexpressedhonestlyanddirectlyneeded littlehelp fromtechnicaldevices”(2003,196).Barnwellgoessofaras tosaythat thismarked shift inWhite’swork from the “sharp angles of cubist art” to the “bold, fullyarticulated, rounded forms” could be attributed in part to “the romance, tenderness, andsupportthathefoundinhisnewmarriage”(2002,51).BarnwelldoesacknowledgethatanotherpossibleexplanationforthechangemayhavebeenthatWhitewasdeveloping“newstrategiestocombatthediscriminationthatplaguedworking-classpeopleworldwide”(51),butshedoesnotmentionthefactthatthese“newstrategies”weretheoneslistedintheCommunistParty’sart platform. These unsatisfying and in some cases far-fetched explanations illustrate thereluctanceofcriticstoacknowledgetheextentofWhite’scommunistties.51

ButIwanttofocusontwoofthedrawingsintheportfolio,Let’sWalkTogetherandHarvestTalk, because they disrupt the portfolio’s easy legibility insisted on by Kent, Finkelstein, and

EvergoodandalsobecausetheycomplicatemyowntendencytoprivilegeWhite’searlier,morestylizedpaintings.TheartistErnestCrichlow,White’s friend,says inhis interviewwithClothierthatWhite,likemanyprogressiveartists,had“mixedfeelingsaboutbeinglimitedtothekindofart thatwas coming out of the eastern democracies at the time” (Clothier n.d., 85) and thatWhitewasconcernedaboutthiscurtailmentofhisartisticfreedom:“Butyou’dliketohavesomecontroloverhow[yourart]ispresented,andmostofthetimeyoudon’t.Thatwashisconcern”(86).Crichlowcontinues:White“wasmainlysympathetictothatschool[theLeft]andIthinkhemay have suffered for it,” but, Crichlow notes, being with the progressive media had itsadvantagesforWhite’swork:“Ithinkit’swidelyknownandyou’dhavetogivealargecreditforthat to the progressivemedia, and in the various ways they spread his work internationally”(86).Crichlow’s view thatWhite’s turn toward realismwasa “curtailment of artistic freedom”pointstoWhite’sdilemma—ofbeingbothenabledandconfinedbyleftistnetworks.Butatleasttwoof thedrawings in theportfolio,preciselybecause theirmeaningsareambiguous,canbereadasWhite’sdeliberateandcodedresistance to thepressuresof theLeft. Ibelieve thataclose reading of these two drawings, Let’s Walk Together and Harvest Talk, supports myargument that White’s struggles with the Party’s designs for a politically inflected art wereexpressedcovertlyinhisart.

Though thedrawingLet’sWalkTogetherwas used in leftist publications to signify protestand black unity, nothing in the drawing confirms the relationship of the seven people in thedrawingortheirpurposeforbeingtogether—aretheyafamily,aunion,agroupoffriends?Isthis an informal gathering or a planned event? Is there any evidence that they are actuallywalking?WhileWhite showsoff hiselegantdraftsmanship in thehauntinglybeautiful facesofthese seven black people, he insured that the purpose of this gatheringwould not be easilyaccessible.Theyoungmanintheforegroundleftisdressedinaworker’sjacket,pants,andacapand,becauseheisfrontandcenter,appearstobethemainfigure.Butthemainfigureofwhat?Thematronlywomanonhisleft,dressedmoreformally,hasherhandonhisarm,andanolder man, the only one directly engaging the viewer, rests his hand on the young man’sshoulder,asifinsomekindofsupportorrecognition.If,asSmethurstsuggests,theoldermanis the figure of the folk singer Leadbelly, then his hand of support on the younger man’sshoulderisWhite’scodedgestureofaffiliationwiththeLeft.52Thecroppeddrawinggiveslittleclueaboutthesefigures.Twoofthemenarewearinghatsandappeartobeworkers,butthewomen’sdressesareofsofter,moredelicatematerial thatmightbeappropriate forachurchevent. All look expectant but uncertain, as if tamping down any unwarranted optimism. Butoptimismaboutwhat?Onlyonefigure,themiddle-agedmanonthefarleftwithhishandontheshoulderoftheyoungman,looksdirectlyattheviewer,buthisexpressionisskeptical,asiftochallengeanyattempttodecipherthedrawing’smeaning.Fiveofthefiguresarefacingforwardwith their eyes focused down or slightly away from the viewer, so that they do not visuallyengage the viewer. Thewoman on the far right faces away from the viewer and toward thegroup with a slight enigmatic smile, which further reinforces the sense of the intimacy andprivacy of the group, leaving the viewer to speculate onwhat, other than their racial identity,mightconstitutethegroup’sunity.JohnO.Killens(1986,452)suggeststhemanydifferentandeven prophetic meanings this drawing elicits: “Walk Together would appear to prophesy theheroismofRosaParkandEdNixonandMartinLutherKing,Jr.,andRalphAbernathy,of fiftythousandblack folkwhowalked togetherhand-in-hand in theMontgomerybusboycott, somethreeor fouryearsaheadof the time ithappened.”What’s importanthere is that thedrawinginvitesmultiple interpretations,superseding the insistenceof leftist critics thatmeaninghad tobeclearandunambiguous,and,ultimately, thedrawingbetrays,at leastsubversively,White’s

continuingmodernistinclinations.

FIGURE2.8.CharlesWhite,Let’sWalkTogether(1953).Source:C.IanWhiteandtheCharlesWhiteArchives©CharlesWhiteArchives.

HarvestTalk is anevenbetter exampleofWhite’s coded intentions in theportfolio.Whitehad most probably seen in Richard Wright’s 1941 Twelve Million Black Voices the FarmSecurityAdministrationphotographsof ruralpoverty takenbyMarionPostWolcott.Hechoseasamodel forhisdrawingtheonecaptioned inWright’sbook,“Thebossessendtheir trucksforus.”Inthephotograph,agroupofimpoverishedwhiteandblackdaylaborersinruralFloridawait in line to be paid for their day’s work. The figures in the photo are placid, as thoughawaitingtheirfatesaswellastheirpaychecks.It isalmostimpossibletoreadanyemotionontheir facesor intheirbodies.Theyarefastenedtothetaskathand—collectingtheirwages—and,apparentlydisconnectedfromoneanother—perhapsjusttired—asalllookstraightahead,nooneengagedinconversation.Inthecarnearbyisawhiteman,probablyoneofthebosses,who looksonat thecrowd impassively,withaslight suggestionof threatshouldanythinggetoutofcontrol.

Iftheintentionof1930sdocumentaryphotographywastoregistervisuallythebrutalimpactof social and economic oppression, White had something else entirely different in mind.Obviously engaged by the image of the worker, White lifted one figure, the tall black manwearinga fedoraandcarryingasmallpackage inonearm,outof thephotograph,outof theisolationandlocked-inspaceofthecrowdedline,andontotheopenrurallandscapeofHarvestTalk. The man on the right in the drawing so closely resembles the man in the WolcottphotographthatheisundoubtedlyWhite’smodel.Whiteincorporatesthesamefoldsinhisshirt,aswellasthewornfedoraatophishead.Inbothphotographanddrawing,theman’sleftarmisbentattheelbowataninety-degreeangle,hisrighthandisenclosedinhisleft,andhewearsasteely-eyed look of determination, but the farmer’s overalls are gone, and the facialexpressionsofWhite’smensuggestfreedomfighters,notfarmers.Whateverthefarmerinthe

Wolcottphotowasholdinghasbeenomitted;heisnowemptyhanded,histwohandsmeetingeach other in a gesture that portends but does not disclose his intentions. The twomen areshown standing together, facing outward as wheat and trees wave in a strong wind, bothseemingly unfazed by the brewing storm. The two men in this drawing, perhaps brothers,possibly cultivating their own land, are in stark contrast to the people in the photograph,sandwiched together in a line that is directed by the invisible presence of awhite boss. Thepowerfullymusculararmsofbothmenareonlyslightlyexaggerated,almostapproximatingthesizeoftheman’sinthephotograph.

FIGURE2.9.Migrantworkerswaitingtobepaid,nearHomestead,Florida.MarionPostWolcott,FarmSecurityAdministrationphoto.

Source:FarmSecurityAdministration.

FIGURE2.10.CharlesWhite,HarvestTalk(1953–54).

Source:C.IanWhiteandtheCharlesWhiteArchives,andtheArtInstituteofChicago.©CharlesWhiteArchives.

What appears to be a farm setting in theWhite drawing is deceptive. No crop, barn, orfarmhouse ispictured,andthescythebeingsharpenedby thesecondman isananachronismsince by the 1930s farmerswould have used tractors for harvesting, not hand-held scythes.What looks like a sharpening blade might also be a hammer, so White may be covertlysuggesting an image of hammer and sickle. Moreover, if visual representation has been ahistoricallyproblematic for theblacksubjectandblackartist,HarvestTalkpoints tosoundasanotherpossibilityforblackexpressivenessandresistance.Despiteitstitle,whatever“talk”hastakenplacebetweenthesetwomenisnowover.Bothmenarelookingintothedistance,notateach other, and neither is speaking. Sound is represented in the drawing as the threateningstorm and the sharpening of the anachronistic scythe—an ominous sound, as if the “harvesttalk” White meant to convey is the sound of black insurgency that, in my reading, probablyincludedhisown.53Theominoussoundsofabrewingstormandasharpenedscytheenablearereadingof thedrawingas farmoresubversiveand “modern.” In sucha representation, theblack working class cannot be viewed as idealized symbols but as modern workers with acomplexpsychology.ReadinrelationtotheWolcottphotograph,HarvestTalk isnotautopiandepiction of a proletarian ideal but a challenge to the domination of the workers in thephotograph.

Given his desire for an art that transformed the representations of black people andaddressedracialinequality,itseemsthatWhitechosebothstrategicallyandoutofconvictiontoremainwith the Left.Nonetheless, a story inHoraceCayton’s 1965autobiographyLongOldRoad reveals White’s private ambivalence about the Party’s influence on his work. Caytonnarratesanencounterthatoccurredaround1956betweenWhiteandawhiteleftistplaywrightnamedRollo,whichrevealsWhite’sopenanimositytowardtheLeft.Cayton’srecountingoftheincident begins with Rollo claiming that the Left was “making real progress on the Negroquestion”(386).White’svolatileresponsesurprisesbutgratifiesCayton,whobythemid-1950shad become anti-Left. According to Cayton, White replies that the sit-ins, boycotts, andfreedomridesgoingonintheSouthareevidenceofa“newNegromovement”thathasnoneedof left-wing leadership. White continues: “The only revolution I believe in is a Negromovement…. I’m sick of this working-class jazz and sick of white leadership, too, for thatmatter….Left-wing-leadership?Thatwentoutwiththewar,thankgoodness”(386).AsidefromthefactthatCayton’sretellingofthisincidentishighlyinterpretive,thenarrativereflectsWhite’sallegiancetothenewblackmilitancygeneratedbythe1955Montgomerybusboycottundertheleadershipof the youngandcharismaticMartin LutherKing. It also verifiesmysuspicion thatbeneathWhite’soutwardacquiescencehechafedattherestrictionshefeltundertheleadershipofthewhite-controlledLeft.

ABSTRACTION’SPOLITICSVERSUSPOPULARFRONTAESTHETICS

White’s turn to social realism is particularly surprising given that he was at the center of amassiveshiftintheartworldinthelate1940sasabstractartbecamehegemonic.54Thougharthistoriansdisputethischaracterizationofabstractartas“hegemonic,”eventhelanguageusedto describe the ascendancy of abstract art in the late 1940s and early 1950s reveals howmassivea changewas takingplace.Abstract artwas said to have “swept into the lead,” itspractitioners “swarmingallover thestage,” “dazzling” theartworldand “dominating” theNew

York art scene,” sweeping social realism, it was hoped, into oblivion. The art historianBramDijkstra labels the move to abstraction as “The Corporate Take-Over of American Art” andremindsusthattheerasureofthesocialrealismoftheWPAwasliteralizedwhenthousandsofpieces of WPA art, many by prominent artists, were discovered in 1943 lumped into dirtybundlesinthebackroomofasecond-handbook-shoponCanalStreetinNewYorkCity(2003,9). Inthisperiodofabstraction’sascendancy,White’sdecisiontoturntosocialistrealismwasviewed by other artists as a “decline” and by some as “ridiculous.” Clothier says thatWhitemusthavealsoheardthefashionableforcesofabstractioncalltohimasanartistwhosoughtto achieve recognition beyond his already achieved distinction as a “Race artist.” However,Whitealsofeltstronglythatpartofhislargermissionwastorepresentwhathereferredtoas“hispeople,”andhecametoaccept thatmodernistabstractionproducedart thatcouldreachonly a few people, whereas he wanted to create an art that black working people couldunderstand.55

EventhepopularblackmagazineEbony,hardlyknown for itsdevotion tohighmodernism,diditsparttoelevatemodernistabstractionanddiscreditsocialrealism.Addingitsownuniquespin toavant-gardeart’sdisdain for contentormeaning,Ebony insisted, in an unsignedApril1958 article, “Leading Young Artists,” featuring twenty-four mostly avant-garde AfricanAmericanvisualartists, that theeliminationofa racializedsubjectwasnecessary inorder forblackstobeacceptedasan“integral,representativepartofnativeAmericanart.”WithstrikingsimilaritiestotheintegrationistrhetoricofthePhylonsymposiumeightyearsbefore,theEbonyarticleassertedthatbymovingawayfromtheblackracialsubject,artistslikeJacobLawrence,EldzierCortor,RomareBearden,CharlesSeebree,andMarionPerkinshad“carriedtheNegropainter’shistoricalefforttolifthimselfoutoftheracialcategory”alittlefurthertowardachievingstature as “American artists of the first rank.” Ironically, as the art historian Richard Powellrelates in his study ofmodern black artists, in 1947,more than ten years before theEbonyarticle, several major black artists, including the black abstractionist Romare Bearden, hadconvinced the InternationalBusinessMachinesCorporation “to abolish all racial references inthecatalogueof theirart collection,”hoping thatsuchamovewould further the integrationofblack artists in the mainstream art world, an effort that Powell (1997, 105) says totallybackfired: When Harold Rosenberg, “one of Abstract Expressionism’s most articulatespokespersons,wasaskedinthe1960stonameafewoftheleadingAfricanAmericanartists,heallegedlybrushedofftherequest,sayinghedidnotknowofany.”

What was paramount for White, even more than the Party loyalty expressed in thesechanges inhiswork,was theobligationhe felt tomakehisartaccessible to “simpleordinarypeople”likehismother,who,unlikehisartistfriendswhowere“gettingexcited”byit,couldnotunderstandhisexperimentalwork.IntheClothierbiography,WhiteuseslanguagethatacceptstheParty’srejectionofabstractionanditsemphasisonform:

Ibegantoseearoundmethebeginningof thedevelopment inAmericanartofabraking [sic]away fromclarity in theideasintotherealmofobscurityintermsofideas…afterIhadworkedouttheideaofwhatIwantedtosay,[I]begantodevotemyselftothequestionoftheplacingofshapes,theplacingof lines,todealingwiththequestionofspaceinanabstractsenseuntilfinallywhateventuallywouldwindupwaswheretheformwaspredominantoverthecontent[sic].

Clothierasks,“Whywereyousoinfluencedbytheform?Didyouconsiderthatmodern?”Whiteresponds:

No,itwasn’tthat,Iwastryingtoachievepower,power,strengthandIfeltthatinordertoachievecertainstrength,youexaggeratedcertainformsoutofproportionthatyoumadelinesthatwerestronglydiagnal[sic],forinstance,andsacrifice

therealisticshapeofthethingforthesakeofmakingupathingexaggeratedandthereforetheemotionalpoweritseemedtomewasmoreajar.Butmotherreactedtothis,andIfoundmoreandmorethatverysimpleordinarypeoplewhosawmyworkwas[sic]alittlemoreconfusedbyitandtheintellectuals,myartistfriendsandwritersandmusicianfriendswereallgettingexcitedaboutit.Sothere’sacontradictionhere.

(20)

The word “power” seems to have a dual meaning for White: first, of trying to acquirepersonalpowerthroughhismanipulationofform,andsecond,oftheemotionalimpactofhisarton the viewer. Though neither is an undesirable goal for an artist,White admits that hewastrying to distancehimself fromboth, confessing that he, too, in a quest for power, hadbeenobsessedwithissuesofformovercontent.WhatwasparamountforWhite,evenmorethanthePartyloyaltyexpressedinthesechanges,wastheobligationhefelttomakehisartaccessible.But it is hard to accept White’s conclusion that drawings like The Trenton Six,The IngramCase,Frederick Douglass Lives Again, or the 1949 Harriet Tubman would have been toopowerful or beyond the imaginative capacity of black viewers, since even the least educatedamongthemwasusedtonegotiatingonaregularbasiswiththesophisticatedpowersofstate-sanctionedracism,nottomentionthesophisticateddissonancesandcomplexrhythmsofblackmusic.

BEYONDTHESILENCESOFTHECOLDWAR

After hismove toCalifornia in 1956,Whitemovedaway fromany close associationwith theParty,thoughhisFOIAfilecontinueduntil1968.HewashiredtoteachattheOtisArtInstituteinLosAngelesandbecamechairoftheDrawingDepartmentin1977.WhileatOtis,Whitedidaseriesofinterviewsinwhichhespokemoreopenlyabouthiswork.Sortingthroughthepublicand private statements he made during these last years of his life sheds light on hiscomplicated relationship to thePartyand tosocial realistart. In thismore “open” time,Whitebegins what I view as a kind of downloading of his repressed feelings about the politicalpressuresofhisLeftperiodonhisart.

Ina1970interviewwithanOtisstudent,fiveyearsaftera1965blackmilitantprotestonthecampus known as the “March uprising,” the student tells White that representational art isconsideredbytheteachersatOtisasartthat“belongswiththeoldladies[at]artfair[s]doingflowerpots,”thatanartistcannotmakeavalidstatementanymoreifhestudiestheanatomyofthehumanfigureandincorporatesthatintohisart.Respondingtothestudent,Whitedoesnotdefendhisartistic choices to the student but relatesa storyabout hismeaningful encounterswithabstractartistsinthelate1940s.AfterthewarhelivedinGreenwichVillagefornineyearsandgottoknowandto“establishacertainrapport”withtheartistsdestinedtobecomefamousas abstractionists—Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, and Willem de Kooning.Despitehisown representational focus,he tells thestudent,hewasdealingwithverydifficultformalproblemsandwas“fortunate”tohavetheseassociations.56 Iquotehiscomment to thestudentatsomelengthbecauseithasneversurfacedinanyarticleonWhiteandbecauseheismorecandidandreflectiveabouthisartisticstrugglesinthe1970sthanhewas,orcouldhavebeen,inthe1950s:

We[White,Pollock,anddeKooning]usedtogetdrunktogether,andIfoundthatagreatdealoftheirthinkingrubbedoffonme.Agreatdealof theirexplorationat thetime—nowtheywerenot thatwellknownat that time, theyweremostlyknownamongstartistsandadmiredamongstartists,certainlyJacksonPollockwassortofhalfwayignoredfora long[time]—andDeKooning,butithelpedmeconsiderablyinmygrowthtobeexposedtotheseguys,tobeabletoseewhat

theyweredoingandhearwhattheywerethinking,onaone-to-onebasis.Itenlightenedmetremendously.Itbroadenedmyhorizons,notnecessarilyinwhatmygoalswere,becausemygoalswereprettywelllaidoutformeintermsofwhatIwantedtodo.Theformformewasthere,ready.ButIbegantostudywhereaFranzKlein[sic]wasat—andIbegantofindthatFranzKleincouldhelpmeinhisformalresolutionofproblems…andhewasaninvaluableteacherforme,andhestill is.Unfortunately,artistswhodealintherepresentationalcansometimesbevery,veryone-sided.Theycanonlyseeandappreciatethatwhichislivingwheretheyare.

White tells the student that he finds theworkof themodernistsMarkRothko, Jasper Johns,and Roy Lichtenstein “exciting.” “Our tastes,” White says, “are very catholic, that is to say,broadandinclusive.”Andhesaysthatheisalwaysdealingwithformalproblems,“andmostofthese problems are very abstract.” Nothing in his Daily Worker or Masses & Mainstreamstatementsinthe1950ssuggeststhathehad“acertainrapport”withtheverymodernistswhowouldhavebeenanathematothePartyintellectualsorthathethoughthehadanythingtolearnfromthemabout“formalresolutionofproblems.”

Inanotherinterviewdoneinthe1960sorearly1970s,Whiteseriouslyquestionedhisformerroleasasocialprotestartist:

Whatisimportanttomeisthatstudio…thatisimportant,thatisthekeythingatthemomentI’mdoingit.Thatisthemostimportant thing.What I feel.Notwhatotherpeople feel. Idon’tevencarehow they reactevenwhen I’msitting in thatstudiocreatingsomething.That’simportanttome.It’smyonlymeansoftryingtounderstandmyself.ItriedtoandIfoundout a few things. I took part in movements. I took part in organizations, active roles in organizations. I traveled. Iexchangedideas,philosophies,thoughts.Igotintofistfightsalmostwithpeopleoverideas.Andthenalonginlateryears,Ifoundthatartwasmyonlymeansofunderstandingmyself,myonlymeansofgaininganydepthwasformetofinditoutinthatstudio,tofindoutwhatwasgoingoninsideme.57

Incontrasttohisearlierinsistenceonthemassesofpeoplejudginghiswork,Whitesaysthatinlateryears,hefoundthat“artwasmyonlymeansofunderstandingmyself,myonlymeansofgaininganydepthwasformetofinditout inthatstudio,tofindoutwhatwasgoingoninsideme.”Instrikingcontrasttowhatheprofessedasaleftistsocialprotestartistinthe1940sand1950s,heconcludesthattheartistdoesnotandcannotrepresentthemasses:

He’snotamassfigure.He’snotaReverendKingorAbernathy.He’snotanyofthesepoliticalfigures.Hisisalonelyjob.Hesitsinastudio.Heisthesoleproducer,judge,evaluator,everythingofhisworkofart.Ittakesnootherpeople,likeaplay.Itisnotacollectiveeffortofmanypeopletoputonafinishedproduct.Theartistisalonelyfigure.

I italicize these comments to emphasize what a shift they represent from the politicalstatementsWhitemade in the1950s.Whenwe lookatWhite’s life in the circleof theSouthSide Community Art Center, with the WPA, teaching in the Abraham Lincoln and GeorgeWashingtonCarverschools,workingwiththeCNAinNewYork,orasaneditoronthestaffofprogressive journals like Masses & Mainstream, we see the artist joined with others whoshared values, community, a lively social world, a devotion to important social and politicalideals,andabeliefthatthroughtheirpoliticalandculturalworktheycouldtransformtheworld.It may be that White’s later determination that “the artist is a lonely figure” is as much acommentaryon the lossof thesesustainingcoalitions,collaborations,andunited frontsof the1940sand1950sasitisabouttransformationsinWhite’spersonalartisticjourney.

Yet evenafter theWhitesmoved toCalifornia in themid-1950sandaway from the leftistcircuitsoftheradical1940sand1950s,thesePopularFrontidealsandpracticesstillremained.Ashehaddone inhisearlyworkaspartof theLeft’scrusades to freeRosa Ingramand theTrenton Six, White indicted the U.S. criminal justice system in his late 1960s work with theWanted Poster series, which used pre–Civil War posters advertising slave auctions and

rewardsforrunawayslavestoportraytheplightofcontemporaryAfricanAmericans.In1970,when the neocommunist political activist Angela Davis was arrested and charged withinvolvementinamurder-kidnappingplot,Whitecontributedoneofhislithographs,LoveLetterI,tobeusedasanimageintheliteratureprotestingDavis’sincarceration.TheimagewasmadeintoapostcardandonesenttoGovernorRonaldReagan.58OneofthelastnoticesinWhite’sFOIA file records indicates that friends from the Communist Party and the Left in Californiaweregatheringtosupporthim.DaltonandCleoTrumbosoldlandtotheWhitesinPasadenaforanominalsumofmoney.When theWhiteswereshortof funds, theiroldCNA friends—HarryBelafonte and Sidney Poitier—made loans and contributions to the Whites and purchasedWhite’s art.59 Even the collection of personally designed, Left-inflected Christmas cards theWhitesreceivedovermanyyears, fromHarryandEugenieGottlieb,LilaandAntonRefregier,GwenandJakeLawrence,LangstonHughes,NevilleLake,WilliamandSophieGropper,DaltonandCleoTrumbo,PhilipandJuliaEvergood,andPaulandEssieRobeson—cardsFransavedall of her life—represent on an intimate level the continuation of a Left community inWhite’slife.60 One FOIA file reports that there was a great deal of concern from Partymembers inCaliforniaabout“WHITE’Shealthcondition”andsaysthat“theParty”feelsresponsibleforhim.The informant adds that “the Negro comrades” especially feel quite strongly that caring forWhite is “a responsibilityof themovement”andsuggests takingupacollection toestablisha“sustainer fund” forhim. InanotherFOIAentry, the informantat theApril1958meetingof theSouthern California District Communist Party of Los Angeles says that the members wereurged to support an upcoming exhibition ofWhite’s work because, as the informant reports,“WHITEwasoneof us.” It is fitting thatWhite’s lifetime commitment to represent a complexblacksubject,whichwasenabledbythepublicsupportofaleftistcommunity,shouldendhereinthisintimatecircle,withhisleft-wingcomradesjoinedtogethertosupporttheartist,thistimewithpersonalactsofloveandloyalty.61

I

3ALICECHILDRESS:BLACK,RED,ANDFEMINIST

Americain1956,baby….Communist?Black?Youonlyneededtowhisperitonce.

—SARAPARETSKY,BLACKLIST

WeareallgoingtosuffermuchmoreuntilwewakeupanddefendtherightsofCommunists.

—ALICECHILDRESS,CONVERSATIONSFROMLIFE,1952

N1950,WHENAliceNeel,awell-knownvisualartistandapublicly involvedcommunist,addedthewriterAliceChildresstoherportraitsofcommunists,nearlyallof themwhiteandmale,she was acknowledging Childress as one of the most important left-wing women of the

1950s (Allara 2000, 112).Neel’s portrait ofChildress is almost completely unknown, but it isoneof theclues that Ihave followed touncoverChildress’s leftist identity,and I returnat theend of this chapter to speculate on what it reveals about Childress. Despite her fairly opentraffic with the Left, including the Communist Party, Childress has almost never beenconsidered in the context of theorganizedLeft.1Unlike her literary Left counterpartsRichardWright,RalphEllison,andLangstonHughes,allhighlyvisible inblackliteraryandLeftstudies,Childress, who remained openly connected to the Left throughout the ColdWar and for sixdecades produced an aesthetics that reflect her radical politics, has only recently beenincluded,thoughstillonlymarginally,inpostwarAfricanAmericanliterarycanons,andneverasaradicalleftist.2

Yetfrom1951to1955,theperiodofthehighColdWar,shecontributedaregular—and,insome instances, procommunist—column to Paul Robeson’s international-socialist newspaperFreedom, maintaining close ties with Robeson even whenmany others were running fast todistancethemselves fromhim.HerradicalmusicalGoldThrough theTrees,performedat theleft-wingClubBaron in1952,was infusedwith theHarlemLeft’s international consciousness,which asserted a relationship between U.S. racism and colonialism.3 Her 1955 Obie-award-winningplayTroubleinMind,thoughitwasproducedinthemainstreamtheater,ispermeatedwith imagesof theblacklist.Blacklistedherselfby1956,Childressappealedtoher friend, thetopcommunistHerbertAptheker,whohelpedherpublishhernovelLikeOneoftheFamilywiththepro-communist InternationalPublishers.Even theplaysandnovelsshepublishedbetween1966and1989continuethatradicalperspective,thoughinmorenuancedandsubtleforms.Her1966playWeddingBand,producedoff-Broadwayin1972andthenasaprimetimespecialonABC in 1974 (starring the acclaimed Ruby Dee), critiques conservative notions of race andintegrationthathadinfiltratedblackcultureduringtheColdWar1950s,aswesawinthe1950Phylonsymposium.InAHeroAin’tNothin’butaSandwich,a1973novelaboutathirteen-year-oldheroinaddict,whichbecameafeaturefilmin1978starringCicelyTysonandPaulWinfield,the historical figures cited asmodels for the youngmain character areMarcusGarvey,PaulRobeson,HarrietTubman,MalcolmX,W.E.B.DuBois,MartinLutherKing—andKarlMarx.Childress’s final two novels, one in which the Left figures prominently as part of the maincharacter’s political education and the other structured by Cold War imagery, show the

continuedimportanceoftheLeftinherwork.HighlyreticentaboutheraffiliationswiththeLeft,Childress’s fiction,drama,andessays—andherextensiveFBI file—constitute theonly recordwehaveofanextendedrelationshipbetweenablackwomanwriterandtheorganizedLeft.

FIGURE3.1.PagefromChildress’sFOIAfile(1953).Source:U.S.FederalBureauofInvestigation.

CHILDRESS’SFOIAFILEASLITERARYHISTORY

While Childress was evasive about her left past, her FOIA file is unambiguous. Far more

enterprising and thorough than most literary historians, the “confidential informant of knownreliability” reported carefully onChildress’s political activity from 1951 to 1957, even offeringsomeanalysesofChildress’s literaryproductions.4We learn fromherFOIAfile thatChildresstaughtdramaticartsatthecommunist-influencedJeffersonSchoolofSocialScience;spokeata rally for the blacklisted Hollywood Ten in 1950; walked in the annual communist May DayParade;sponsoredatheaterpartytobenefittheprogressiveUnitedElectricalWorkersUnion;joinedthecampaigntorepealtheSmithAct;entertainedatanaffairgivenbytheCommitteetoRestore Paul Robeson’s Passport; sponsored a call for a conference on equal rights forNegroes in the Arts, Sciences, and Professions; raised money “for the benefit of the SouthAfricanResistanceMovement”; andwasoneof the foundersof theSojourners forTruthandJustice,amovementforNegrowomenagainstlynchterrorandtheoppressionofNegropeople—all of which were designated “subversive” activities by the FBI (Goldstein 2008). Theagent/informerreportedonChildress’spublicationsinMasses&Mainstream,theDailyWorker,andFreedom, and on her work with the left-wing Committee for the Negro in the Arts, anorganizationChildresshelpedinitiate.TheinstitutionsthatChildresswascloselyassociatedwithduringthefifties—Masses&Mainstream,ClubBaron,theJeffersonSchoolofSocialScience,Freedom,SojournersforTruthandJustice,theAmericanNegroTheatre,theCommitteefortheNegro in the Arts—constituted a major part of the Harlem Left, a cultural front that shapedChildress’spersonalandpubliclifeandcontinuedinHarlemthroughoutthe1950s,longafterthe“official”PopularFrontwasconsidereddead.5

There are conflicting accounts about Childress’s relationship to the Communist Party(CPUSA), and her official membership in the Party cannot be verified with any certainty. In1950,theFBIidentifiedherasamemberoftheHarlemRegionalCommitteeoftheCommunistParty. But, according to her friend LloydBrown, an open communist in the 1950s,Childresstriedtokeepherleft-wingaffiliationshiddensoasnottohandicapherselfasawriterandasanactor,andhebelievedthatChildressdeliberatelyrefusedtojointheCommunistParty,“makingitapoint tobeanonmemberwhocoulddoasshepleased”(phone interviewwith theauthor,October 2002). Another source (Sterling 2003) says that Childress actually was a PartymemberandthatsheattendedPartymeetingsinaunit inNewYorkwithhiswife,anactress.TheculturalhistorianJamesSmethurst(2012)offersthisexplanationfortheambiguousnessofChildress’sCPconnections: “Another reasonChildressmighthaveremainedanon-member inthe1950sisthattheinfrastructureoftheCPinHarlemwasingreatdisarrayduetotheeffectsof McCarthyism, factional infighting, and a number of leaders going underground. Somemembers of the Harlem section of the CP said it was hard even to find a representative towhomyou couldpay yourParty dues.”Childress’swritings leaveanumberof clues that shewas familiar with and may have been a part of the Party in Harlem, and Lloyd Brownmaintainedthattherewereonly“technicaldifferences”betweenChildressandPartymembers:“She was with us on all important issues” (2002). Whatever her official status with theCommunist Party, Childress did not acquire her FOIA file and her leftist credentials byshadowingRobeson,assomecriticshavesuggested,butbecauseofherownextensive,well-earnedpoliticalrésumé(Harris1986,xxvii).

RECONSTRUCTINGCHILDRESS’SLEFTISTPAST

WhencriticsrediscoveredChildressinthe1980s,sheseemedtoberetrievableonlywithintheboundariesof raceandgender,neatlyconfined to thecategoriesof “liberal,” “feminist,” “race

militant,” “didactic black activist,” even “sentimental realist” (Harris 1986; Jennings 1995;Schroeder 1995, 334).Onewriter, improbably, accounts forChildress’s devotion toworking-class characters as the result of her modest beginnings as a self-supporting high schooldropout—all of which are accurate, if limiting, descriptions. In groundbreaking biography ofChildress,LaViniaDeloisJenningsdoesnotmentionChildress’s left-wingpolitics,buteven inthe 1990s, very little had been documented aboutChildress’s political leftist past.6 Thus it isunderstandablethatinheranalysisofChildress’s1952playGoldThroughtheTrees,which isvirtually a textbook of 1950s Harlem leftist politics, Jennings (1995, 5) attributes the play’spolitical viewpoints to Childress’s “personal encounters with racism in America and herheightened sensitivity to apartheid in SouthAfrica.”Whatwe know now is that the playwasproducedinleftistvenues(ClubBaron),thatitwasreviewedinleft-wingpapers(DailyWorker),andthatitsanticolonialistandantiracistthemeswerehallmarksoftheblackLeft.ThesignsoftheLeft inChildress’splayTroubleinMind,whichwasproducedinthemidstofthehighColdWar,aremoredifficult todetect,asign thatChildress’s leftistpoliticswereagrowing liabilityand that she was savvy enough to employ camouflage. The play’s racial issues—the 1955Emmett Tillmurder and “the turbulent civil rightsmovement” (27) took center stage formostcritics, but images of the HUAC and McCarthy investigations are woven throughout andstructuretheentireplay.Inher2006introductiontoChildress’snovelAShortWalk,whichshewrote after Childress’s relationship to the Left had been fairly well documented, Jenningsdescribes Childress’s early writing career as “concurrent with the early years of the UnitedStates’ civil rights movement, the black liberation movement, and the women’s liberationmovement” (6), thus omitting the entire leftist context for the work Childress produced from1949tothe1960s.

If Childress’s left-wing politics are hard to pin down, some of the blame can be laid onChildressherself.Shebeganrevisingherpersonalhistorywithseveralautobiographicalessayswritten in the1980s, specifically a1984essay “ACandle in aGaleWind.” In this essay sheconstructsherselfasaloner,inspiredtowriteaboutthemassesbecauseofherownpersonalexperiences and determination, citing slavery, racial discrimination, her family and personalhistory,andherself-determinationtoexplainherproletarianconcerns—withnoreferencetotheHarlem Left or Karl Marx.7 She says she moved beyond “politically imposed limitations,”teachingherselfto“breakrulesandfollowmyownthought,”whichmaybeanindirectreferencetoherability to resistbothParty ideologyand theconservativemainstream.Although there isan oblique reference to McCarthyism in her admission that she was subjected to “a doubleblacklistingsystem,”shemaintainsthroughouttheessaytheposeofembattledloner,declaringthat “a feelingof being somewhatalone inmy ideas causedme to know I couldmore freelyexpressmyself as a writer.” She explains her affinity for “themasses” as a totally apoliticalattractionto“losers”: “I turnedagainst thetideandto thisdayIcontinuetowriteabout thosewho come in second or not at all—the four hundred and ninety-nine and the intricate andmagnificentpatternsofaloser’slife.”8

“ACandleinaGaleWind”isafarcryfromChildress’searlieressay“ForaNegroTheatre,”first published in theMarxist journalMasses&Mainstream in February 1951, then reprintedwithanenhancedMarxisttitleinthecommunistDailyWorkeras“ForaStrongNegroPeople’sTheatre.”Writtenandpublishedduringheryearsworkingat theAmericanNegroTheatre, thisessayrepresentstheclosestChildressevercametoapublicdeclarationofherleftist identity.NotonlydoesChildress’stitlemimicthewaysthattheterm“thepeople”wasusedbyradicalsin the 1930s and 1940s to signify the working classes,9 but the Daily Worker reprint isaccompaniedbyaprofessionallydoneheadshotof theglamorous thirty-somethingChildress

thatsuggestsshemusthavebeencomfortablebeingpublishedinacommunist-identifiedvenue.Theessayalso reveals thealwaysevidenthesitanciesand fissures inChildress’s relationshipwith the Left, which she believed helped hermaintain the political and artistic independence.She says in the essay that she came to accept the notion of a “people’s theatre” after a“heated discussion” with the black radical left-wing playwright Theodore Ward, with Wardarguingthattherewasa“definiteneedforsuchatheatre”andChildress,despiteherownlongrelationshipwith theAmericanNegroTheatre,expressing the fear thataseparate theater forNegroesmightbecome“aJimCrow institution.”Thatshewasneverentirelycomfortablewiththediscoursesof theLeftbecomesclearas theessaysets forthherowndistinctivebrandofblack-centered left radicalism.Withoutcommitting toWard’svision—sheagreesonly thatshe“understands”hisposition—Childressproposesa “Negropeople’s theatre” thatwill first of allcombat the racist practices of mainstream theater: black students limited to “Negro” roles,whitestudentsneveraskedtoperformblackroles,blackcultureandhistoryignored,AmericanblacksdeniedaccesstotheirAfricanheritage,onlythosetechniquesdevelopedbywhiteartistsrecognized—acatalogthat leadshertohopethatapeople’stheaterwilldevoteseriousstudyto “the understanding and projection of Negro culture.” Her vision of this new theater ismulticultural,black-centered,andinternationalist:itwill,shesays,beconcernedwiththeworldandpossessedofthedesire“fortheliberationofalloppressedpeoples.”The“Negropeople’s”theater will take advantage of “the rich culture of the Chinese, Japanese, Russian and alltheatres,” and it will study “oppressed groupswhich have no formal theatre aswe know it,”because,shesays,“Wemustneverbeguiltyofunderstandingonlyourselves”(63).

Whatmakes theessayso important is that it showsChildress in theprocessofadaptingand revising the cultural andpolitical imperativesof theLeft, something shewoulddo for therestof her creative life.Childressenvisionedheraudienceasapolitically sophisticatedblackworkingclass: “domesticworkers,porters, laborers,white-collarworkers,people inchurchesand lodges… thosewho eat pig’s tails, and feet and ears… andwho are politically savvyenoughtowatch tosee ifsomeforeignpower isworrying therulersof theUnitedStates intogiving a few of our people a ‘break’ in order to offset the propaganda.” For Childress, “thepeople” was a racialized “my people,” a phrase that, in the more doctrinaire period of the1930s,might haveearnedher a reprimand for putting racebefore class solidarity.Departingeven further from the Left’s working-class emphasis, Childress also claims as “her people”thosewhodrinkchampagne,eatcaviar,andwearfursanddiamondswithaspecialenjoyment“because theyknow thereare thosewhodonotwishus tohave them.”Childress’sbrandofradicalismdidnotseparateherfromthefur-wearingorfur-aspiringblackmiddleclassbecauseherexperienceofU.S. racismwasmoredeeply felt than interracialclasssolidarity.AtoneoftheCNA’swriters’workshops,whenPaulRobesonsuggested thatChildressmight improveastory about black workers by bringing in a union, she told him she couldn’t make that storybelievablebecauseshedidn’tknowofanyunionsfightingfortherightsofherpeople(Bonosky2009,34).InalettershewrotetoLangstonHughesin1957,ChildresstookHughestotaskforhis stereotyping of the blackmiddle class as “snobbish strivers” and told him that she couldverywell“dowithout”hisradicalLeftpoemslike“MoveOverComradeLenin”andhis“strainedreference[s]tothe‘workin’class,”becausetheydidnotringtruetoherasa“realreflectionofNegrolife”(Childress1957).10

Yet Childress’s racialized radicalism did not separate her from leftist radicals or frominterracialwork.Themodelsshecitesforthisnewtheaterattheendofheressaywerethreeof themost radical cultural groups of the 1950s, all of which she was involved in—Harlem’sUnity Theatre, the CNA, and the interracial New Playwrights theater group (where Childress

wasaboardmember),formedbythecommunistMikeGold,theblacklistedscreenwriterJohnHowardLawson,and the left-wingwriterJohnDosPassos, the latter twoorganizations listedprominentlyontheFBI’sSecurityIndex.

Given theevidenceofChildress’sclose ties to theLeftand to theCommunistParty, Iusethis chapter to reread her literary, cultural, and political work to show how her idiosyncraticradicalism allowed her to incorporate black cultural traditions and a critique of race, gender,and sexuality with the radical international-socialist views of theHarlem Left. If Ralph Ellisonused hiswritings in theColdWar 1950s to “wrestle down his former political radicalism,” asBarbaraFoley(2010,2)argues,Childresswaswrestlingintheoppositedirection,movingfromthe more overt social protest of her early radical work to the subtle and complex leftistsensibility most evident in her 1966 playWedding Band. As I show in chapter 1, the 1950Phylonsymposium’sdismissalofprotestwritingand itsefforts toexcludeblacknessandraceissuesasnotsufficientlyuniversalgained traction in the1950sunderColdWarconservatism.Childress’s black internationalism and black radicalism was deployed to repudiate thoserestrictions, allowing her to explore more expansive and complex ways to represent blacksubjectivity, an example of what Alain Locke meant when he claimed during his short-livedradicalperiod that “aLeftist turnof thought”canproduce “a realenlargementofsocial [and Iwouldaddaesthetic] consciousness” (quoted inWald2001,277). I trace thedevelopmentofChildress’s social and aesthetic consciousness, first through her own biography and thenthroughhertwoColdWarproductions,the1952playGoldThroughtheTreesandhercolumnsinFreedom, which were the basis for her 1956 novel Like One of the Family, and, finally,through three post–ColdWar productions, her 1966 playWedding Band and two novels, AShortWalk(1979)andThoseOtherPeople(1989).

CHILDRESS’SHOMEGROWNMARXISM

Asher friends’ testimoniesandherownwritingsattest,Childresswasan idiosyncratic leftist,andthatwassurelyencouragedbyherunconventionalgrandmother.BorninCharleston,SouthCarolina, in1916,Childressmovedbriefly toBaltimoreafterhermotherand fatherseparatedwhenshewasfive,andthentoNewYork(theylivedon118thStreetbetweenLenoxandFifthavenues in Harlem), where she was raised by her maternal grandmother Eliza Campbell, arelationshipsheconsideredoneofthemost“fortunate”thingsinherlife,accordingtoElizabethBrown-Guillory (quoted inMaguire 1995, 249). Formally uneducated and the daughter of anenslaved woman, Childress’s grandmother introduced her to New York culture, from artgalleries toHarlem churches; cultivated her imaginative life; and nurtured her desire towrite,telling Alice, even as a young child, to imagine stories about the people and places theyencountered and to write down her important thoughts so that they could be preserved(Maguire 1995, 49). She attended elementary school in Baltimore and junior and senior highschoolinNewYorkCityandcreditsmanyofherteachersforencouragingherwriting.TheNewYorkCityhighschoolsheattended,WadleighHighSchool,wasfoundedbyLydiaF.Wadleigh,anearlycrusader foreducation forgirls;as the firsthighschool inNewYork forgirls, itmayhavebeenanotherplacethatencouragedherindependence.Hergrandmother’sinterestinhercultural educationmay have pushedChildress to do some amateur acting, and her FOIA filerevealsthatshewasactiveintheaterasfarbackasjuniorhighschoolwiththeUrbanLeagueand with the Negro Theatre Youth League of the Federal Theatre Project (U.S. FBI, AliceChildress,100-379156,March20,1953).IfChildresswasworkingoractingintheNegroYouth

League, thenshewasalmostcertainlyexposed to radicalpolitics,anaffiliation that suggestsshe was formed politically at an early age by her associations with the Left as well as bygrandmotherlyinfluence.

After both hermother and grandmother died in themid-1930s, Childresswas left on herown and forced to leave high school after two years. Because Childress was notoriouslyreticentaboutrevealingherprivatelife,weknowvery littleaboutherbetween1935and1941(Maguire 1995, 31). However, we do know from several biographical sketches that shesupported herself working at odd jobs as a machinist, domestic worker, saleswoman, andinsuranceagent (J.Smith2004,295).Childress (thenAliceHerndon)marriedAlvinChildress,alsoanactor,mostfamousforhisroleinthe1950sAmos’n’Andytelevisionshow,withwhomshehadonechild, Jean, in1935.Shealsocontinuedacting in leftist community theater.OnechapterinhernovelLikeOneoftheFamily indicatesthatshewasquitefamiliarwiththeFTPand the project actors. In one conversation with her friend Marge, the character Mildreddiscusses the “Negro problem” films of the late 1940s and reminds Marge that the FederalTheatre years (1935–1939) were a kind of golden age for black actors: they played inproductionsincludingTurpentine,Noah,SweetLand,andMacbeth.Mildred’sfamiliaritywiththeproductionsandactorsofthe1930sand1940sindicatesthatherauthormayhavebeenapartof the project, but Mildred stops Marge from talking about the Federal Theatre becauseMildredfearspeoplewillfindouttheircorrectages,arelevantcommentforChildressbecause,likeMildred, shewas hiding her real age, claiming 1920 rather than her actual birth date of1916 (Maguire 1995, 31; Jennings 1995, 1).11 The Federal Theatre closed in 1939 underaccusations of “un-American propaganda activities” most probably earned because of itsprolaborstands,itsprogressivepoliticsonsocialissues,anditsinterracialcasts.

In 1941, two years after the close of theFederal Theatre,Childress joined theAmericanNegro Theatre, founded in 1939 by the actor and blacklisted revolutionary trade unionistFrederickO’NealandthewriterAbramHill,toidentifyandencourageblacksintheater.12InthevisionofO’NealandHill, theANT,followingintheprogressivepathof theFTP,wasorganizedas a cooperative where actors, playwrights, directors, and stage crew would workcooperatively and, in contrast to the professional theater, “[share] expenses and profits” anddevelopartistsandplaysfortheblackcommunity.TheANToperatedforthefirstfiveyearsofitsexistenceinthebasementofthe135thStreetbranchoftheNewYorkPublicLibrary,whichseated125people,eventuallyaddingtheStudioTheatertotrainyoungartists,twoofwhom—SidneyPoitierandHarryBelafonte—becameinternationallyknown.

Childress spent the next eleven years at theANT,working usually four nights aweek, asdemandedbyANTpolicy.BecausetheANToperatedlikeanartsacademy,Childresshadtheopportunitytoperformalltherolesinthetheater,includingplaywright,director,manager,actor,stagehand,andeven,atonepoint,unionnegotiator.Her life in the1940swasalmostentirelyconsumed by the theater. She learned how to erect sets, coach new actors, do makeup,design costumes, and direct shows, and, whenever she could get a role, she acted in off-Broadwaytheater(Jennings1995,3).AlongwithfellowactorswhostartedattheANT—RubyDee, Ossie Davis, Poitier, and Belafonte—she starred in several of ANT’s most popularproductions,eventuallylandingapartintheall-blackcastofAnnaLucasta,ANT’sfirstbig-timecommercial success. Written by the Polish-American playwright Philip Yordan, Lucasta wasoriginallyaboutaPolish family,but,withYordan’spermission, theplaywasrevisedbyAbramHill for a black cast, and it was the all-black ANT production that caught the attention ofproducers,who took it toBroadway in1944 for957performances,earningChildressaTonynominationforherroleastheprostituteBlanche(Branch2010).Poitier,Childress,Dee,Davis,

andotherANTmembers joined the traveling companyofLucasta, which toured theMidwestandEastCoast.Theyoung,self-identified“leftofcenter”PoitiersuggestsinhisautobiographythatitwasonthislongroadtourthatChildressbecamehispoliticalmentor:“Sheopenedmeuptopositivenewwaysof lookingatmyselfandothers,andsheencouragedme toexplore thehistoryofblackpeople(asopposed to ‘colored’people).Shewas instrumental inmymeetingandgettingtoknowtheremarkablePaulRobeson,andforthataloneIshallalwaysbegrateful”(2007,121–122).By1955,thetravelingfour—Poitier,Dee,Davis,andChildress—wouldallbeblacklistedfortheircloseassociationswithRobeson,theCommitteefortheNegrointheArts,and the ANT. When Lucasta was made into a Hollywood film in 1958, starring Eartha Kitt,Sammy Davis Jr., Rex Ingram, and Frederick O’Neal, the part of Blanche was given to theunknownClaireLeyba,andChildresswaspassedoverfortheroleforwhichshehadgarneredaTonynomination,mostlikelybecauseofherleft-wingassociations.

In 1951, the same year that Childress became a regular columnist for Freedom, herhusband Alvin, now an instructor at the ANT, was offered the role of Amos Brown, thephilosophicalcabdriverinthecontroversialAmos’n’Andytelevisionseries.BothAliceandAlvinweremakingvery littlemoney,soa television rolemeant thepossibilityofhitting itbig,but italsomeantbothaphysicaland,eventually,anideologicalseparation.AlvinwasworkingontheWestCoast in theglamourworldofHollywood,andChildresswasworking inNewYorkwiththeANTandwiththepeopleatFreedom,allofwhomwerehighlycriticalofAmos’n’Andyforitsdemeaningportrayalofblackculture.Childresshassaidverylittleabouttheirdivorce,sayingonlythatthemarriage“wasjustsomethingthatshouldn’thavebeen”(Branch2010).Shewas,however, so adamantly opposed to Alvin’s decision to stay in the series that she announcedpubliclyataforumonblackplaywrightsheldattheUniversityofMassachusetts–Amherstinthelate1980s thatshehaddivorcedhimfor taking theAmos’n’Andy role.Aswewillsee in the“Spycraft” chapter, Childress was as firm in her rejection of the CIA as she was about herhusbandplayinginAmos’n’Andy.13

GOLDTHROUGHTHETREES

In1952,Childressproducedhermost clearly identifiably leftist play, the radicalmusicalGoldThroughtheTrees,andstagedit inaculturalcontextsoradicalizedthat it immediatelycaughtthe attention of the FBI. Almost without exception the commentary onGold has ignored itsradical implications, but, if literary historians missed the significance of the play, the FBIcertainlydidnot.TheFBI reportwasextensive,observing thatonMay20,1952,Goldwouldbeproducedbytheleft-wingCommitteefortheNegrointheArtstobenefittheleft-dominatedCivilRightsCongress(theCRCboughtoutthehouseforoneperformance),thattheplaywouldbeperformedat theprogressive-interracialClubBaronat437LenoxAvenueat132ndStreet,andthatitwasreviewedfavorablybyLorraineHansberryintheleft-wingnewspaperFreedomand by Lloyd Brown in theMarxist journalMasses &Mainstream. As the leftist affiliation ofeach of these institutions and individuals shows, by the early 1950s Childress was fullyembedded in theHarlem Left community, which supported the play as it ran for twomonthsuntil,accordingtoChildress,theleadswerehiredawaytodotheEuropeantourofPorgyandBess.

Childress’s experiment with radical musical theater came the closest to providing whatMichael Denning says in The Cultural Front was missing in other Popular Front musicals: amarriage of dramatic narrative, left-wing politics, and African American music. Countering

Denning, Smethurst insists that a worthy precursor to Gold certainly must be LangstonHughes’s Don’t You Want to Be Free, which combined dramatic historical narrative, leftistpolitics, and African American music, and Childress was certainly familiar with Hughes’stheatrical work. Experimenting formally, Childress composed the lyrics and orchestrated themusic and dance for the show, incorporatingAshanti dance, aBantu love song,West Indianshoutsandsongs,drumming,andAfricanAmericanbluesandgospelsingingtoaccompanytheplay’shistoricallybased,politically left-wingdramaticsketchesthattracethehistoryofAfricanpeoples fromancientworlds to the1950s. If itssweepingcoverageof thousandsofyearsofhistory compromised dramatic unity, there were nevertheless three scenes of real dramaticpowerinGold.

Act1 features the fugitiveHarrietTubmanworkingwith twootherwomen inaCapeMay,NewJersey,laundryin1852toearnmoneyforherundergroundtrips.OnesceneinAct2issetinaprison,whereayoungmanisontrialfortherapeofawhitewomaninMartinsville,Virginia,in1949.Basedon theactual trialof theMartinsvilleSeven, thescene isnarrated through thevoice of the man’s mother and ends with the singing of the plaintive and politically charged“Martinsville Blues,” written by Childress. A woman narrator introduces the last act with apowerfulmonologueonthebrutalitiesofcolonialism,whichsetsupthefinalscene:SouthAfricain the 1950s, as three young activists meet to plan their part in the South African DefianceCampaign.

TwoofthesketchesinGold—theHarrietTubmansceneandthesceneinSouthAfrica—arestoriesofreluctantactivistsdiscoveringincollectiveresistancethecouragetobeinvolvedinanunderground movement, and these mirror Childress’s own political life in the 1950s. TheTubmansceneisparticularlynotableinthatrespect: it featurestwowomen,CeliaandLennie,workingwithTubman in the laundryat a luxurious seasideCapeMay resort helpingherearnmoneyforhertripstotheSouthtorescueenslavedpeople.Accordingtothehistoricalrecord,Tubman followedapatternof seasonalmigration, earningmoneydoingdomesticwork in theNorth during the springand summerand thenheading south in the fall andwinter, “when thenightsarelonganddark,”toexecuteherraidsonslavery.Celiahasbecomedespondentoverthe heavy laundry work and fearful of their mission: she says the idea of working for theunderground “sound so good in themeetin’where itwas allwarmand friendly,” but she hasbeguntorealizethedangersofbeing involvedwithawantedfugitive. Inapowerfullyaffectivespeech toencourageCelia to remaincommitted,Harrietuses thebodyasa tropologicalsite,tellingCelia to imagine that thebrokenskinonher knuckles iswarmsocksandboots for anescapingmanorwomanandthatthecutsmadebythelyesoapisababythatwillbebornonfreesoil.TryingtoexplaintoCeliathetranscendentfeelingsofcrossingintobothphysicalandpsychological freedom,Harriet tells her thatwhen she crossed that line, “Therewas a gloryovereverything.Thesuncomelikegoldthroughthetrees”(7).Thecivildisobedienceofthesethreewomenmay certainly havebeenadisguised reference toChildress’s ownundergroundwork,sinceby1952,accordingtoherfriendandleadingcommunistHerbertAptheker,whohadgoneintohiding,Childresstoohadcrossedthelineintosubversiveandillegalactivity.ApthekertoldmeinaninterviewthatduringtheworstdaysoftheMcCarthyperiodChildresslethimuseheruptownapartmentformeetingswithundergroundcommunists.Thiscouldhavemeantajailterm for Childress. Since this is not mentioned in her files, I conclude that the FBI neverdiscoveredthefullextentofChildress’sradicalpolitics.

TheMartinsvillesectionopenswithamonologuebythemotherofoneofsevenyoungblackmenaccusedof rapingawhitewoman inMartinsville,acase thatbecameamajorcause fortheLeftwhen theLeft-ledCivilRightsCongressbeganmasspublicprotests for therepealof

the death sentences and linked the CRC’s fight for the lives of the seven men to theconstitutional rights of the CPUSA. Unlike the Scottsboro case, there was no question thatRubyFloydhadbeenbrutallyraped,thatallsevenmenhadbeenpresent,andthatatleastfourhadapparentlyparticipatedintherape.DesperatelytryingtoavoidanotherScottsboro,Virginiaauthoritiesproduced“procedurallyfairtrials,”buttherewas,nonetheless,thelingeringsmellofScottsboro: All blacks were dismissed. There was an all-white and all-male jury in all seventrials.Confessionswereobtainedwithoutbenefitof counsel,andsomeof themenmayhavebeenintoxicatedatthetimeoftheirconfessions.Thejuryinonecasetookonlyhalfanhourtosentencethedefendanttotheelectricchair.InthelargestmassexecutionforasinglecrimeinU.S.history,allsevenmenwereexecutedon twodays,February3and5,1951,despite themassprotestoftheCRC.14

Themother inGold narrates her son’s life throughmemories that show she had alreadyanticipatedtheinevitabilityoftraumainhislife.Whenhetoddledoutintotheroadasaninfant,or caught his finger in his wagon, his screams prefigured the harm she knew she would beunable to prevent.Once he is older, those fears are realized as the young boy inadvertentlytriestopayatthewhitecounterinthegrocerystoreandhastobewhippedintosubmissiontosegregation.At theendofhermonologue,themothercradlesanimaginarybabyinherarms,andasinglespotlightisturnedonthefaceofaman,nowbehindbarssinging“TheMartinsvilleBlues”:“Earlyonemorning/Thesunwashardlyhigh/Thejailersaid,Comeonblackboy/Yougonnalaydownyourlifeanddie./Lord,Lordy,Laydownyourlifeanddie.”Asecondverseissungbythecondemnedmantohismother,andanother isdirectedto“MissFloyd,” thewhitewomanwhoserape is thecauseofhisdeathsentence.At theendof the“MartinsvilleBlues,”the singer counts slowly to seven, inserting dramatically after each count the names of theseven executed men, a chant much like the one in Langston Hughes’s Scottsboro Limited,where the count is to eight for eight of the nine Scottsboro men sentenced to death. TheMartinsville sectionwas not only an elegy for the dead but a song of protestmade possiblebecauseoftheLeft’sactivismthatfirstfoughttopreservethelivesoftheMartinsvillemenandthenprovidedthespacetolamenttheinjusticeoftheirfate.

Gold’s final scene, set in apartheid-era South Africa, is introduced by the narrator in amonologuethatcallsattentiontothewaythebodyofthecolonizedbecomestherawmaterialfor the productions of empire, showing again the Harlem Left’s deep consciousness ofcolonialism’stiestoEuropeanandAmericaninterests:

AndtheshipsthathadsailedawaywithgoldandivoryreturnedtoAfricaladendownwithGermanmuskets,BritishandPortuguese guns…Frenchweapons… and American blasting powder…. Theseweaponswere for the purpose ofhuntingelephant….Oh…yes….Theydidhuntelephant….Seventy-five thousandayear…andeverypoundof ivorycostthelifeofoneAfrican….AndIheardthedelicatestrainsoftheMoonlightSonataplayedonthatsameivory.

Attheendofthemonologue,threeyoungSouthAfricanrevolutionariesareshownmeetinginashanty inJohannesburgwhere theymakeplans to join therebellionagainst theapartheidlaws. John, his friend Burney, and Ola, the woman he loves, speak to one another of theirpersonal experiences with apartheid history, citing the pass laws, the mine accidents, thecompulsorylaborpolicies,andtheprisonfarmstheyhaveendured,buttheyalsoreportontheencouragingnewsofanewallianceamongAfrican,Indian,andColoured,alldemandingrepealof the “special laws.” In a scene taken directly from the African issue of Freedom, Burneyrecalls the time thatAfricanwomen layon theground, formingahumancarpet in the road topreventpolicetrucksfromtakingtheirmentojail.Johnannouncesthatthecampaignofpassiveresistancewill begin onApril 6, the anniversary of the arrival of the firstDutch settlers,with

mass demonstrations and protests against the pass laws. The three say goodbye to oneanother, fully expecting to be imprisoned or killed, but with the knowledge that “through theresistancetheworldwillhavetomove”(act2,7).15

According to the historian Penny von Eschen, activists like W. E. B. Du Bois, AlphaeusHunton,Robeson,and,wemustadd,ChildressdeepenedtheirinsistenceontheplaceofAfricaintheconsciousnessoftheHarlemLeftwiththeirsupportof theDefianceCampaign,knowingfullwellthatthiswasadangerousmatch-up(1997,116).InthemidstoftheproductionofGold,the Harlem Left experienced the full brunt of repression: The Council on African Affairs’sdirectorDr.Hunton receivedaone-year jail sentence for contempt for refusing todivulge thenamesofcontributors,Robeson’spassportwaswithdrawn,DuBoiswasarrestedandindictedfor trying to get signatures on a peace petition, and Childress was unable get her workpublishedinthemainstreampress(Plummer1996,191).Veryshortlyafterthe1952productionofGold,membersof the theatercommittee,under thepressuresofMcCarthyism,“‘panicked’and padlocked the door of the Club Baron themselves” (Duberman 1988, 703n29).Nonetheless, they all retained their commitment to linking African and African Americanstrugglesandforegrounding leftistpoliticalcausesthatChildressmakesexplicit inGold. If theundergroundinEllison’sInvisibleMan—afarmorecelebrated1950sblackliteraryproduction—was a site for self-induced psychological paralysis, Childress’s black undergrounds werescenes inspired by a militant black international diasporic consciousness that imaginedstrategies for action, not retreat. In her focus on the outlawHarriet Tubman, theMartinsvilleprotest,andSouthAfricanrevolutionaries,ChildresswasnotonlydrawingfromthewellofLeftsymbols, she was continuing her quest to represent blacks outside of the narrow, limitedimagesofblacksintheAmericanimaginaryofthe1950s(Schaub1991,104;Schrecker1998,375–376).16

CHILDRESS,FREEDOM,ANDCLAUDIAJONES

In contrast to the autonomous self she constructs in her 1984 autobiographical sketch, all ofChildress’s work is permeated with images of community. In the essay she wrote forFreedomways in1971abouther lifeasawriteronPaulRobeson’snewspaperFreedom, shesituatedherselfat thecenterofaculturallycohesiveblack left-wingcommunity,withRobesonworkingintheofficesat53West125thStreet,alongsidethedynamic,youngcommunisteditorLouisBurnham.Thebuildingalsohoused theCouncilonAfricanAffairs,withofficesoccupiedbyAlphaeusHuntonandW.E.B.DuBois.Asshenarrates,Childress imaginesherself asakind of roving camera, watching “Paul taking visitors to the offices of Du Bois and Hunton,”hearingtheir“deepandearnestconversationaboutAfrica”(1971,272).Sheremembersactorsandmusiciansandneighborhood“Harlemites”droppingintotalktoRobeson,EslandaRobesonintroducingyoungartiststoBurnham,DuBoissittinginhisofficemakingaplantocompletehisdream of The Encyclopedia Africana, and a twentysomething “Lorraine Hansberry typing apaper for Robeson.” Childress shared an office with Robeson, Hunton, Burnham, andHansberry,whereshewrotehermonthly“ConversationsfromLife”columnsforFreedom,oneofthemostpopularfeaturesinthepaper(Childress1971,272–273).

In this idyllicmemoir,Childressomits the veryColdWar history shewasa part of.OnceRobesonwasblacklisted,thepaperwasunabletoraisethefundstocarryonandpublisheditsfinalissuein1955,butChildressstayedwithFreedomuntiltheveryend.Shewrotemorethanthirty columns called “Conversations” that featuredMildred Johnson—an outspoken domestic

worker,Harlemite,andspiritualcousintoLangstonHughes’sJesseB.Simple.Speakinginthefirst person, often to her friend Marge, usually a silent listener, other times to her whiteemployers,andsometimesdirectlytothereader,Mildredspeaksonarangeofsubjects,fromthe importanceofNegroHistoryMonth toSouthAfrican independencestruggles.17Mildred ismoreofaconsciousness-raisingdevicethanHughes’sSimple,butlikeHughes,ChildressgaveMildred strong ties to the black community, an ease with vernacular speech, and a militantracial perspective, all intended to create an identification between Mildred and her working-classblackreaders. In1956,Childressrevisedandexpandedher“Conversations”andturnedthemintothenovelLikeOneoftheFamily,andbecausecriticalattentionhasalwaysfocusedon the novel, these antecedent texts—theFreedom columns—have been ignored, excising inthe process another connection betweenChildress and the Left. Failing to trace theMildredstories back to these Popular Front columns, critics could not situate the author or herprotagonistinthecontextofColdWarpoliticsandwereeasilyledintolimitingMildredJohnsonto racewomanor “sassyblackdomestic” (Harris1986). It is important,however, to read theMildredmonologuesas they first appeared,not isolated in theautonomousandstatic text ofthenovel but as textsproduced in themidst ofColdWar tensions, ina left-wingnewspaper,dramatically transformed by their dialogic relationship to the other stories and writers in thepaper.

In theJanuary1954 issue, forexample,Childress joinedRobesonand theotherFreedomcontributors to launch an attack on the antiblack subtext of the HUAC and McCarthy witch-hunts.MildredcallsMcCarthyismaformoflegalizedterrorinwhicheveryonefromtheArmy,tothepostoffice, toordinaryhousewiveswasbeing investigated,andshepredicts, “weareallgoingtosuffermuchmoreuntilwewakeupanddefendtherightsofCommunists.”Throughoutthecolumn,Childress/Mildredputsthemajorideasofthepaperinthelanguageofanordinarypersoninthecommunity, tryingtoget themtounderstandtheMcCarthypurgeasaneffort tosuppress thought and dissent that will affect them: they will have to “raid the libraries andremoveallbooksthat therulingbody in the landdeemsunfit…suppressallmoviesthat theythinkunfit…closeoffeveryavenue they thinkunfitandputawayordoawaywithallpeoplewhohavesuchideas,closeallchurchesandsocialgroupsthatholdsuchideastheseideasandpurge every home in the land to root out such ideas.” In another “Conversation,” againdeploying Mildred as her political spokesperson, Childress affirms her support for Robeson,whoby1954wasunderattack.WhencautionedbyawhiteemployerthatherinvolvementwithRobeson will only cause her trouble, Mildred relates a folk tale about Old Master and hisslave/servantJim,withthesubtextthat“trouble”fortheenslavedisrootedintheracismofOldMaster. Revising themeaning of “trouble,” Mildred ends the tale by saying, “Somebody hasmade trouble forme, but it ain’t PaulRobeson.And themore he speaks the less trouble I’llhave.”ThereisanotherreasontoreadChildress’sMildredstoriesinaLeftcontext.ItbringstolightanimportantcollaborationbetweenChildressandClaudiaJones,thesecretaryoftheCommunistParty’sNationalWomen’sCommissionand,atagethirty-five,thehighest-rankingblackwomanintheCPUSA.NotonlywasJonesasubstantialpresenceintheblackleftistHarlemcommunity,butin1949shepublished,intheleftistjournalPoliticalAffairs,animportantessayaboutblackworking-classwomen,“AnEndto theNeglectof theProblemsof theNegroWoman,”which IbelievehelpedinspireChildress’sMildredcharacter(Davies2008,79).NoonehasdocumentedtherelationshipbetweenChildressandJones,buttheyalmostcertainlykneweachother.Theytraveledinthesameleftist-progressivecirclesinHarlemandknewmanyofthesamepeople.18

According to the Freedomways editor Esther Jackson, Jones lived with Lorraine HansberrywhenshefirstcametoNewYork,andChildressbecameactivewiththeHarlemCommitteetoRepealtheSmithActatthesametimethatJoneswasbeingthreatenedwithdeportationundertheSmithAct.BorninTrinidadandraisedinHarlem,JoneswasapartofthegroupcalledtheSugar Hill Set, a group of artists and intellectuals in Harlem that included Hansberry, theRobesons, LangstonHughes, andChildress (Dorfman 2001). After being deported under theSmithAct,Jonesdied inLondon in1964atage forty-nineand, inhonorofherpoliticalwork,wasburied inHighgateCemetery literally tothe leftof thegraveofKarlMarx.19The focusonRobeson in Childress’s life and work has obscured this radical left feminist influence on theconstructionoftheMildredcharacter.

Jones argued that blackwomen, as themost oppressed group in America and the leastorganized,were themostdeservingofattention from theLeftandshouldbeat thecenterofleftist theorizing and strategizing about labor issues. Instead, she wrote, progressive leftistswere guilty of “gross neglect of the special problemsofNegrowomen.”With facts gatheredfrom theU.S.Department of Labor, Jones set out to catalogue the evidence.Blackwomen,she wrote, represented the largest percentage of women heads of households, having amaternity rate triple thatofwhitewomen,and theywerepaid less thanwhitewomenormenand were excluded from virtually all fields of work except the most menial and underpaid,namelydomesticservice.Asdomesticworkers,blackwomenwerenotprotectedbysocialandlaborlegislationnorcoveredbyminimumwagelegislation.Workinginprivatehouseholds,theycould be forced to perform any work their employers designated, sometimes standing oncornersinvirtualslave-marketstylewithemployersdrivingbyandbiddingforthelowestprice.Despite these real-life roles black women were playing as workers, mothers, heads ofhouseholds,andprotectorsoftheirfamilies,Jonesshowedthatthemediacontinuedtoportraythemas “a traditionalmammywhoputs thecareofchildrenand familiesofothersaboveherown.”Theconditions inNegrocommunities that resulted from thosedisparities in incomeandemploymentwere,Joneswrote,withasuresenseofirony,an“ironcurtain.”

In “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman,” Jones also took hercritique to those private spaces where discrimination against black women by progressiveswent unremarked. She cited instances where white women progressives called adult blackwomen “girls,” or complained that theirmaidswerenot “friendly” enough, or drew the lineatsocial equality, or, on meeting Negro professionals, asked if they knew of “someone in thefamily”whocouldtakeajobasadomestic(60).WhileleftistcriticsoftenciteMikeGold’sstoryofablackwomanwho“coulddancelikeadream”(quotedinMaxwell1996,91)asevidenceofthe Party’s integrationist stance, Jones tells the story of black progressive women at socialaffairs being rejected for not meeting “white ruling-class standards of ‘desirability’” like lightskin, discovering that discrimination existed even on the dance floor,where neitherwhite norblackmenwerefillinguptheirdancecards(60).

Freedom beganmonthlypublication inNovember1950and ranuntilAugust1955,when itfolded from lackof fundsandunderColdWarpressures.20 ItseditorwasLouisBurnham,anopencommunist,andappearing regularlywerecolumnsbyPaulRobeson,EslandaRobeson,DuBois,VictoriaGarvin,YvonneGregory,Hansberry, andChildress. It sold for ten centsanissue,onedollarforayear’ssubscription,andfollowedaconsistentformat,withthemottoofthe paper under the masthead pointing to the internationalist-socialist focus of the paper:“Where one is enslaved, all are in chains.” Each issue had front-page news followed byinformationaboutunionandcivilrightsactivities.PaulRobeson’scolumn,“MyStory,”startedoffeach issue on page 1 and often linked the various stories toRobeson’s personal activities.21

Thethirdpageusuallyfocusedoninternationalnewsandemphasizedsolidaritywithpeopleofcoloraround theworld.Therewere regularcontributionsbothbyandaboutRobesonandDuBois. While gender was not as consistently raised as race, class, peace, and internationalsolidarity, therewasanunderstanding thatgenderwasaseparateand important issue.BothChildress and Hansberry, who became an associate editor after one year, and othercontributors,includingBeulahRichardson(laterBeaRichards),CharlesWhite,ShirleyGrahamDuBois,ThelmaDale,LloydBrown,andthelaborleaderVickiGarvinandatleastfifteenotherwomenlaboractivistshelpedshapethepaper’sblack-leftist-feministviewpoint.22

Childressmadeanenlightened,politicallyconsciousMildredthecenterofhernarrative,asiftoshow,asJoneshadpointedout,thepossibilitiesofleadershipintheverywomenwhiteandmale progressives were excluding. In one extended narrative on the importance of hands,Mildredpays tribute toworkingpeopleby focusingon thephysical labor required tobring theobjectsofeverydayuse intoexistence—fromthe tablecloth thatMildredsaysbegan in“somecottonfieldtendedintheburningsun,”tothenailpolishherfriendMargeisusing.WhenMildredencountersawomanwhoisangryat“themstep-ladderspeakers,”areferencetoCommunistParty’straditionofstreet-cornerspeeches,shegivesasermononthevalueof“discontent”thatintroducesherreaderstotheLeft’scontributionstotheirsocialwelfare:“Discontentedbrothersandsistersmade littlechildrengotoschool insteadofworking in thefactory,”and“agangofdissatisfiedfolk”broughtustheeight-hourworkday,women’srighttovote,theminimumwage,unemploymentinsurance,unions,SocialSecurity,publicschools,andwashingmachines.Inherexcellent introduction to the 1986 reissue of Like One of the Family, the literary historianTrudier Harris correctly identifies the signs of Mildred’s radicalism. Harris says that Mildredconfronts racial injustice, eradicates symbols of inequality, fights for labor rights, advocatescollective resistance, and “radically violates every sort of spatial boundary.”Harris concludesthatChildress’smilitancycanbetracedtoNatTurner,FrederickDouglass,SojournerTruth,andHarrietTubman.SinceChildresswasalivein1986andnoteagertobeidentifiedasaleftist,itmay have been prudent to attribute her politics to nineteenth-century radicals, but that againelidesChildress’s left-wing politics andmissesMildred’s twentieth-centuryMarxism.With theMildred character articulating the issues in Jones’s essay, Childress and Jones and Mildredwere the three most important voices on the Left theorizing and representing black womenworkersinthe1950s.ContrarytothecriticswhoreducedMildredtoa“sassyblackdomestic”orignoredChildress’sradicalleftistprofile,ChildressmeantforMildred(likeJonesandherself)tobeavoicethatprovidedblackwomenwithatheoryoflaborrights,authorizationfordissent,andalanguagetospeakagainstinjustice;inotherwords,abonafidewomanoftheLeft.

BEYONDTHEBLACKPOPULARFRONT:AWEDDINGBANNED

With the CNA and the Freedom family disbanded, she and her friends under surveillance,blacklisted, jailed, Red-baited, and/or deported,23 Childress began writing her 1966 playWeddingBand:ALove/HateStoryinBlackandWhiteinaperiodofcrisis.24WhenthejournalFreedomwayswas founded in1960,as thesuccessor toFreedom,Childress,alongwithhercompatriotsontheLeft—LouisBurnham,W.E.B.andShirleyGrahamDuBois,CharlesWhite,John O. Killens, Lorraine Hansberry, Elizabeth Catlett, and Margaret Burroughs—joined theeditorialstaff,aclearsignal that theywerestillwilling tobe identifiedwith theLeft.While thejournal was dedicated to continuing the internationalist-socialist aims of Freedom, it alsoreflectedaspiritofblackradicalismthatallowedthemtoremainengagedwiththeLeftandgive

priority to black struggle. Freedomways’s founders were so intent on maintaining “both therealityandappearanceofblackcontrol” that theyrefusedtoask the leadingwhitecommunistHerbertApthekerto jointheeditorialboard,“adamantly” insistingthatthejournalbeorganizedand runentirelybyAfricanAmericans.25Forblack leftistswhowere increasinglydistrustfulofwhite-dominated institutions, the highly inspirational influence of the Southern civil rightsmovementledbyMartinLutherKingJr.andtheemergenceofthecharismaticblacknationalismofMalcolmXmadethetransitionfrom“theRobesonera”tothecivilrightsera(Iton2010,61)almostanecessity.

Evenasblackactivistsmadethistransition,veryfewleftanydocumentationoftheinternalconflict created by this move. Two of Childress’s generation who did produce suchdocumentationare theactorandactivistOssieDavisand theexcommunistactivistandwriterHunter (Jack) O’Dell. In a private letter written in 1964 to his long-time friend, the blackcommunistWilliam (Pat)Patterson,published in2007byDavis’swifeactorRubyDee,Davisdescribes his anguished decision to move away from the Left, a departure triggered by aconflictoverplansforthememorialforDuBois,whichDavisviewedasanexampleofthewhiteLefttryingtocontainblackauthority.HebeginsbyremindingPattersonofhissincereandlong-termallegiance to theLeftevenwhen itwasdangerous: “Iwason theoutsidewithRobesonandDuBois.” Including his dear friendPat in his list of heroes, hewrites, “My heroeswereHunton,Davis,Patterson,RobesonandDuBois.”Nonetheless,Davissayshenowunderstandsthat it isnecessary tobreakaway from“GreatWhitePapa,”and, in the full-dress rhetoricofblacknationalism,heconcludesthatatthismomentoftheascendancyofthe“Negrostruggle,”the Negro people are now the “vanguard” and must break away from the Left in order todiscover “our own separate manhood and dignity” (205). In his 2000 essay “Origins ofFreedomways,” O’Dell describes a similar epiphany. By the mid1950s, O’Dell writes, “themechanismsof theColdWarStatewerenowinplace”—loyaltyoaths, theAttorneyGeneral’sSubversive List, investigative committees,RedSquads in police departments, blacklists—andthen, hewrites, “along cameMontgomery—one of thosemoments of awesome significance”thatdemonstratedthepowerofcommunityactionandthe“joyfulspiritofunselfishcommitment”mobilizedaroundapropositionwithuniversalappeal: “Better towalk indignity than to ride inhumiliation”(5).O’DellrealizedthatjoiningReverendKinginblackmovementpoliticswasakindofredemptionfromtheincreasingisolationoftheLeft.ReadingDavis’sletterforthefirsttimein2009,O’Dell said that hisown feelingsabout thedecision to leave theCommunistPartyandjoin King’s movement echoed Davis’s. That was such a necessary and organic shift, headmitted,“Iwasn’teventornaboutit.”26

Childressmadenosuchdramaticpronouncementsabout leaving theLeft,and, thoughshewasdeeplyaffectedbythefervorandchallengeofthenewcivilrightsmovement,shedidnotbecome closely identified with either King or Malcolm X, as Davis and O’Dell did. In anunpublished nonfiction piece called “Harlem on My Mind,” Childress left no doubt that hercontinuing interest in radical political change would take a blacker and more internationalistdirection.Inhernotesforthispiece,shemappedoutablackhistoricaltrajectoryforherfuturework that included the formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, FidelCastro’s postrevolutionary stay at Harlem’s Hotel Theresa, Rosa Parks’s defiance ofsegregation laws,and“thebirthofababy intheWest Indies”namedFrantzFanon,who,shewrites,was“destinedtocallforablackrevolutionthatwouldbestudiouslyreadbyHarlemites,Africans,West Indians,andSouthAmericans.”Astheseunpublishednotes indicate,Childresswas intellectually engaged in the fierce political currents of the early 1960s, but her typicallyiconoclastic response to this newera of black political strugglewasWeddingBand in which

she imagines “the indigenous current of blackmilitancy” in the figure of a Southern working-class black woman and situates that woman in an intimate relationship with a working-classwhiteman(Singh2005,184).

Notunexpectedly,blacknationalistsopenlyreviledWeddingBand.Childress’sclose friend,thewriterandfellowleftistJohnO.Killens,writingtwentyyearslater,cameclosetocallingheraracetraitorforportrayingablackwomanlovingawhiteman:

Childress’sotherwritingsseemedtohaveatotalandtimelyrelevancetotheBlackexperienceintheU.S.ofA.;WeddingBandwasadeviation.Perhapsthecritic’sownmoodorbiaswasatfault.Foronewhowasinvolvedartistically,creatively,intellectually,andactivelyinthehumanrightsstruggleunfoldingatthetime,itisdifficult,eveninretrospect,toempathizeoridentifywiththeheroine’sstruggleforherrelationshipwiththewhiteman,symbolicallytheenemyincarnateofBlackhopesandaspirations.Nevertheless,again,at theheartofWeddingBandwas theelementofBlackstruggle,albeitastruggledifficulttorelateto.Asusual,theartandcraftsmanshipwerefine;themessage,however,appearedoutofsyncwiththetimes.

(1984,131)

FIGURE3.2.CoverofChildress’sWeddingBand,publishedbySamuelFrench.Source:Copyright©1973byAliceChildress.UsedbyspecialpermissionofFloraRoberts,Inc.,andSamuelFrench,Inc.

WeddingBand so unnerved Killens that he conflated Childress (the writer involved in artisticstruggle) and her main character Julia (the heroine struggling in an intimate interracialrelationship),reflectingtheanxietyamongblacknationalistmenoverinterracialdesirebetweenablackwomanandawhiteman(Childress1973,8).27

Iwant tochallengetheviewthatWeddingBandwasa “deviation” fromChildress’searliercommitmentsandthathermessagewasoutofsyncwiththetimes”andshowthatherearlierinvestments in radical black leftist politics also animate this play.28 Childress clearly had the

contemporarymomentinmindassheconstructedaplaythatturned1950sintegrationismonitshead. Inwhat thehistorianPennyvonEschencallsanew “rewritingof raceand racism”andtheculturalhistorianNikhilPalSinghcallstheraceprojectofthe“U.S.racerelationscomplex,”ColdWar liberalism, in reaction to the leftist radicalismof the1940s, reinterpreted raceasapsychological disorder rather than a system of economic, political, and social structures andpracticesconnected to thesubjugationofminoritypeoplesallover theworld. Inopposition tothe Left’s analysis of racism as located in systems of domination—slavery, colonialism, andimperialism—racismcouldnowbeunderstoodinthemetaphorofa“disease,”oranaberration,or thepersonal “prejudice”ofunenlightened individuals,whichcouldbeovercomeby talented,motivated,educatedblackswitha “fightingspirit” (VonEschen1997,153–159).Postwarcivilrightsmilitancy,with its emphasis on the blackworker, its focus on the relationship betweenracism at home and colonialism abroad, and its advocacy of black equality, was beingconveniently and systematically replaced by the integrationism of the 1950s or what thecommunist Ben Davis called derisively “a new race discourse of individual success stories,”which were designed to undermine the militancy of the fight for jobs and freedom for themassesofblacks.29AtthesametimethatracialintegrationwasbeinghailedasasignofNegroprogress, integratedunions,with theirstrongrecordofantiracialwork,werebeingdecimatedbyanticommunisthitsquads,and interracial relationshipsandsupport forNegroequalitywerebeingdesignatedun-Americanbygovernment investigativecommittees.With theblack radicalLeft weakened by investigative committees, blacklists, subpoenas, arrests, and jail terms,racism became domesticated, diverted into Cold War narratives of racial progress andindividualachievement.WeddingBand’sfocusonthecollectiveandoncommunitysolidarityandblackprotest, itscritiqueofwhite raceprivilegeandAmericannationalism,and itsskepticismabout the possibilities of interracial alliances contested these State Department–authorizedversionsofintegrationandquestionedtheentireprojectofColdWar-styledintegration.30

FIGURE3.3.CoverofChildress’sLikeOneoftheFamily,BeaconPressed.(1986).Source:ArtbyLeslieEvanswithpermissionfromLeslieEvans.

Wedding Band opens on Julia Augustine’s first day in an unnamed small black SouthCarolinacommunity,wherethebackporchesandbackyardsofseveralhousesarecontiguous,bringing Julia together with three other blackwomen and their families:Mattie and her loverOctober,whoisawayinthemerchantmarines,andtheirdaughterTeeta;LulaandheradoptedsonNelson, a soldier home on leave from the army; and Fanny, the owner of all these littlebackyard houses. Julia, a thirty-five-year-old, working-class seamstress, living in domesticserviceawayfromfamilyandfriends,hasmovedhere,hopingthatthiscommunitywillaccept—or at least tolerate—her relationship with a white man, Herman, a forty-year-old GermanAmericanbaker,whomshemeetswhenshebuysbreadinhissmallbakery.InSouthCarolinatheycannotbe legallymarried,butChildressdepicts theirunionasbindingandstableandasordinary asany ten-year-oldmarriage.At their private anniversary celebration,HermangivesJuliaaweddingringonachainsinceshecannotwearitpublicly.Byfocusingonaten-year-oldunion,Childressdispensedwiththemajorpremisesof theconventional interracial lovestory—passing, sexual seduction, titillating courtship, erotic sex, the exotic other, effectivelydeeroticizing the romance plot so as to focus on the politics of an interracial love affair.Childressseemstohaveanticipatedthe1967SupremeCourtdecisionLovingv.Virginia,whichdenouncedlawsbanninginterracialmarriagenotasprivate infringementsbutaspublicactsofviolence that confined, excluded, and violated entire black communities (Childress 1967, 17–21).31

Attheendofthefirstact,HermanfallsillwithinfluenzainJulia’shouse,triggeringthepublicimplications of their interracial relationship: it is against the law inSouthCarolina for awhiteman tobe found living—ordying—inablackwoman’shouse.Though the lovestorybetween

Julia and Herman is foregrounded in the film version of the play, the stage version (andmyreading) centers on Julia’s interactions with the people in this backyard community (Maguire1995,53–54).WhenJuliawantstocallthedoctorforHerman,FannywarnsherthattheentirecommunitywillbepunishedifHermanisfoundinherhouse.MattieandLulawilllosetheirjobs,Nelsonwillnotbeabletomarchintheparade,andthedoctorwill file legalpapers.AsFannywarnsher:“That’spolice.That’sthework-house….Walkintothejawsofthelaw—they’llchewyouup”(act2,scene1,35).

Julia andHermanare thus forced to encounter the public racial history theywere able toevadewhenJulia lived in isolatedplaces,but,more importantly, in thisnewblackcommunity,Julia experiences the collective troubles and racial anger that make their former evasionsimpossible. Their relation-ship—nowmediatedby thematerial conditions of this impoverishedblackcommunityandincidentsofracialconsciousnessraisingthatformthecentralactionoftheplay—is a set up that allows Childress to present her very carefully constructed intellectualargumentsaboutrace,class,gender,andcollectiveresponsibility.

Significantly, Julia’s first public act in this new community is to read Mattie’s letter fromOctober.WhenMattie, who cannot read, asks Julia to read the letter fromOctober, Julia’svoice merges with October’s as he relates his encounters with racism in the military:“Sometimespeoplesayhurtfulthings’boutwhatIam,likecolorandrace”(19).AnditisJulia,not October, who thus hears and participates in the call-and-response with Mattie’s defiantvernacular:“Tell’emyoumybrown-skinCarolinadaddythat’swhothehellyouare”(19).Later,Lula tells Julia about the time she got down on her knees and played the darky act in asegregatedcourtroom inorder tokeepher sonNelsonoff thechaingang.Unschooled in thewaysofracialresistance,Juliaresponds inavoiceofclass-basedgentility:“Oh,MissLula,alady’snotsupposedtocrawlandcry,”andLula,disdainingJulia’sairs,retorts:“Iwassavin’hislife” (57). Inaclear repudiationofKillens’saccusationof racedisloyalty,Childress(1967,20)says she was also intent on representing a strong blackmale voice to counteract the usualparadigmsof interracialstories:“Thecolonel’ssweetheartneverseemedtoknowanymenofherownrace,andthosepresentedwereusuallyslack-kneedobjectsofpity.Thiscausedmetoseeanadmirableblackman in thecenterof thedrama,onewhocouldsupplyacounterpointstory with its own importance, a man whose everyday existence is threatened with thepossibilityofa lifeanddeathstruggle.” In themostchargedencounterbetweenJuliaand thiscommunity,Nelsoncomeshomesmoldering inangeroverbeingattackedbySouthernwhitesforwearinghisuniform inpublic, remembers Julia’swhite lover, andnarratesabitter paralleltaleof interracialsex: “Theysetuson fire ’bout theirwomen.Stringusup,pouronkeroseneandlightamatch.Wouldn’tImakeabrightflameinmynewuniform?…I’mthinkin’’boutblackboyshangin’fromtreesinLittleMountain,Elloree,Winnsboro”(41).32

Julia’sencounterswithMattie,Lula,andNelsonenablehertofinda“racial”voice,whichsheusestoendthesilencesHermanhasimposedonher.33Itisalsoimportanttonotethatintheseencounters between Julia andHerman, whiteness becomes a racial category, and the racialgaze is rerouted and focused onwhite race privilege. In the past, when Juliawould begin asentencewith“Whenwhite-folksdecide,”Hermanwouldinsistthat“white”bedeleted:“people,Julia, people” (28). When she reminds him that his mother once accused him of loving a“nigger,”hechastisesher for rememberingsomething thatwassaidsevenoreightyearsago(25).Herman saysheonlywants “to leave the ignoranceoutside,” not to allowdifference tothreaten their love,evenashisown racializeddescriptionsofJuliaas “thebrowngirl”who islike “the warm, Carolina night-time” reaffirm his privileged status as the unmarked, universalsubject(41).Heinsiststhathisfolks,strugglingGermanAmericans,plainworking-classpeople,

lookeddownuponandexploitedbyelitewhites,cannotbeblamedforslaveryorsegregation.HisfatherlaidcobblestonewalksuntilhecouldbuythebakerywhereHermanmakesameagerliving: “What’smyprivilege…I’mwhite…did itgivemefavorsandfriends?…nobodydid itforme…youknowhowhardIworked.Wewerepoor….Nobigname,noquality”(61).Withonly a tenuous hold on their white American identity, Herman’s mother Frieda and sisterAnnabelle, in an attempt toward offwartime anti-German attacks by otherAmericans, haveflagsflyinginthefrontyard,red,white,andblueflowersplantedintheback,anda“WEAREAMERICANCITIZENS”sign in their frontwindow(24).AlthoughHerman isdisgustedby theirjingoism, he admits that his father joined a Klan-like organization, and he can still recite theracistspeechesofJohnC.Calhounhelearnedasachild(hedoessowhileheisdeliriouswithfever). Despite this history, Herman insists that their lives are essentially personal storiesdisconnectedfromrace.Juliatellshimshedoesnotblamehimforthepastbutforthesilenceshe has imposed on her: “For the one thingwe never talk about…white folks killin’me andmine.Youwouldn’tletmespeak….Wheneversomebodywaslynched…you’nmewouldeataverysilentsupper.Ithurtmenottotalk…whatyoudon’tsayyouswallowdown”(62).WhenHermandefendshisfatherasahardworkingmanwho“neverhurtanybody,”Juliaanswershimin the present tense—“He hurts me”—undercutting Herman’s evasion of responsibility for asystemthatcontinues toprivilegehimandhis familyand tohurtJulia. Inanewly freedvoice,she rejectsHerman’s description of her as “not like the rest” and claimsa collective identity:“I’mjustlikealltherestofthecoloredwomen”(61).

Childresshadalreadybegun tocritiquepostwar interracial stories inherFreedom column“About Those Colored Movies,” where she exposed the interracial films Pinky and LostBoundaries as duplicitous attempts to evade the larger issues of economic and politicalinequalities by foregrounding black anxiety and helplessness.34 We might consider that thenear-universalacclaimforHansberry’sRaisinintheSunin1959wasatleastpartlyattributableto its optimistic portrayal of black progress toward integration and that Wedding Band’sinsistence on confronting the violence and repressed traumas of our “decidedly interracialhistory,” rather than romance orNegro progress,was not likely to go down as easilywith apublicbeingpreppedforadecidedlyrosierracialstory(Singh1999;2005).Childress,however,set her interracial romance on the terrain of power, represented in large part by theoppositional interactionsbetweenHermanandJulia.Hermansays it’s “the ignorance,”andhewantstoleavetheignoranceoutside,asiftherewerean“outside”wherewhitesupremacyandblack inequality did not exist. Julia insists on erasing that imaginary line, and “disturbing thepeace”withhernarrativesofblackstruggleandahistorygroundedinracialdiscriminationanddomination.35Herman’sownershipofthebakery,hisinsistencethatwhiteremainanunmarkedcategory,andhisgeographicmobilityliterallyandsymbolicallyrepresentracialprivilege;Julia’senslavedancestors,hersexualizedbrownskin,andhervulnerablehomelessnessareasignofher status as the racialized other; thus, Wedding Band becomes an analogue to, and apowerfulcritiqueof,theracistconstructionofU.S.racialsubjects.36ButmylargerpointhereisthatWeddingBand’sportrayalofwhite racial violenceandprivilege, its focuson theworkingclass and on communal responsibility, and its rejection of the Negro progress story areevidence of the oppositional leftist politics that informed Childress’s political thought andcreativeproduction.

WeddingBandmarksChildressasawriterofbothPopularFrontandColdWarcultures.Wecanread theplayasanallegoryofChildressasanartistand leftistactivistat theendofthe1950s.HercharacterJuliaisafancyseamstressandthus,likeChildress,aworking-classblackwomanartist.Astheplaywright’snotesindicate,Juliamovesintothecenterhouseinthis

smallblackcommunity,where“oneroomofeachhouseisvisible,”placingherundercontinualsurveillance by all the neighbors (Childress 1966, production notes 5). Fanny, the landlady,does,infact,spyonherwhensheisalonewithHerman,andsheinformsonJuliatoHerman’sfamily.Considering that during theMcCarthy investigations, any kind of interracial connectionwastantamounttodeclaringoneacommunist,thereisanotheroverlapbetweenChildressandJulia.Forbeinginvolvedinterracially,Juliaisblacklistedbybothwhitesandblacks,and,underSouth Carolina law, her interracial relationship, like Childress’s communist affiliations, wascriminalized.Herman’sdeathattheendoftheplay,aswellashisinabilitytorelatetoanyoneinthisblackcommunity,signalsthattheirinterracialalliancehasprovedneithersafenorenduring,andJuliahandsherweddingbandtoMattie,saying,“YouandTeetaaremyfamilynow”(64).ItisnottoomuchofastretchtoseethissceneasChildressquestioningtheinterracialalliancesof theLeftandattempting toestablish,asshedid inherworkafter1966,adeepersenseofconnectednesswithblackcommunityandblackculture.Keepinmind,however,thatattheendof theplay,Julia remainsboth insiderandoutsider,andChildressrefusesanyclaimthatJuliacanbecome “authentically”onewith the “folk.”EvenasJuliaassertsaspiritualunitywith thepeople in thisSoutherncommunity, theweddingbandonachain,her tenyearswithHerman,her status as a skilled seamstress, and her ability to speak for the community preclude anyeasy identification with that community. Once again we see how much Childress’s work isinfluencedbyherinvolvementwiththeLeft.AsshedidwithherMildredcharacterinthepagesof Freedom, she recast the militant-intellectual-worker as a woman; she represented thereconnection of that figure with the folk community as partial, difficult, and provisional; and,mosteffectively,shedrewfromtheLeft’suncompromisingcritiqueof1950sraceliberalismasapowerfulsourceofliteraryandculturalself-determination.37

CHILDRESS’SLEFTLEGACIES:ASHORTWALKANDTHOSEOTHERPEOPLE

Even inher final twonovelspublished in the1970sand1980s,a leftistsensibility isevident inChildress’s representation of black subjectivity. Her 1979 novel A Short Walk continues theoppositionalpoliticsandaestheticsofherearlierwork.38Whateverherambivalenceabout theLeft’s interracial focus, her final literary productions suggest that that she believed thatinterracial struggle, so central to leftist politics, was crucial to political empowerment. Anepisodicand impressionisticbildungsroman,AShortWalk traces the lifeofCoraJames from1900 to the end of World War II. That time frame allowed Childress to insert a positiverepresentationof theCommunistparty, replaying theLeftof theDepression1930s,when thecommunists organized interracialUnemploymentCouncils, challenged segregation, and foughtevictions,makinghistoric gains for theParty in black communities. In contrast to theevictionscenethatappearsinseveralblacktexts—mostfamouslyEllison’sInvisibleMan,whichdepictscommunistsasstrangeandduplicitousoutsiders—ChildressusestheevictionsceneinAShortWalktonormalizecommunists.Coradescribestheencountersbetweentheevictedblacksandthecommunistactivistsaspartofaninteractiveandpersonalrelationship:

FolksfromtheCommunistPartycomearoundafterthemarshallleaves,knockthelockofftheapartmentdoorandmovethepeoplebackintotheirplace.Makesthelandlordmadcausehehastopaythemarshalleachtimeforputtingthingsout.TheneighborschipinandbuycontainersofbeerfortheCommunistPartyandalsobringoddsandendsoffoodtomakeupa“welcomehome”partyfortheevicted.

(281)

Usingtheaffectiveandintimatetermsofaninsiderfamiliarwithcommunistcultureandpractice,CoradescribestheCommunistPartyasanorganizationwithnaturallyoccurringdisagreementsandmisunderstandingsaswellaswithaffectivebondsbetweenblacksandwhites.

After theeviction,Cora’s friendEstelle invitesher toacommunist cellmeeting,whichsheattendsat firstwith trepidation,only todiscover thataso-calledcell ismerelysomeone’s flatwhere there are readings and discussions of politics and an exploration of real antagonismsbetween blacks and whites. At one meeting when a Negro comrade is angered because awhitecomradeactshigh-handedandusesmanyunnecessarilybigwords,Partyleadersinitiateadiscussionabout theproblemsofwhitechauvinism,aphraseusedbytheCommunistParty.WhentheyshowCoratwobookletsonTheWomanQuestionandTheNegroQuestion,Corachallengesthewaygenderandracearesubordinatedtoissuesoflabor:“Iaskedwhythewordquestionwasin itatall,”because,shesays,whentheydealwiththeissueofunemployment,theydon’trefertoitas“TheUnemploymentQuestion”(290).ThoughCoraisfrustratedbytheParty’shesitanciesontheseissues,shedefendscommuniststoafriendwhochargesthattheyarejusttryingtouseblackpeople:“‘WhatthehellyouthinktheRepublicansandtheDemocratsdoinwith us?’She [Cora’s friend] fell out laughin. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘They can showCommunistswhatusin isallabout!’” (290).AtaChristmaspartygivenbyCora’s friendMarion,bothblackand white communists join in the celebration, bringing their guitars, singing work songs, andattempting“toputsocialmeaningtotheblues”(299).

In a departure frommostmainstreamAfrican American literature prior to the twenty-firstcentury, A Short Walk openly represents queer sexuality. Childress ends the novel with ahomosexualcross-dressingperformancebyCora’sfriendMarion,whowinsthefirstprizeatthecross-dressingHamiltonBall, an expressive and colorful spectaclewhere no one can tell thedifferencebetweenwomenandmenandwherewhitesandblacksofallclassesmingleinopendefiance of official norms. As a novel that violates hegemonic prescriptions about sexuality,class, race—and the Communist Party—A Short Walk might arguably be consideredChildress’smostoppositionalandradicaltext(Washington2007,Higashida2009).

In her final literary production,Those Other People, a young-adult novel about a young,white, gaymale computer instructor that Childress published in 1989, she returned again toissuesof interracialismand leftist politics,which for her always seemed to bepaired. In thisnovelChildressextendedandrevisedthelessonsoftheHarlemLeftFront,whichwasrelativelyinattentive to issues of sexuality, by putting queer sexuality at its center. The novel isconstructed in aRashomon-style plot, in which all the characters are given a point of view,thoughit ismainlytoldthroughtheperspectiveofthemaincharacter,JonathanBarnett,agayteacheratasmall-townhighschool.OnceJonathanwitnessesasexualassaultononeof thefemale students by another male teacher, he becomes the target of an antigay communitytryingtosuppressthestoryoftheassault.Hefindsanallyinoneoftheblackstudents,TyroneTate,who is trying to resist theelitismofhisupper-classparentsand to fight thesmall-townbigotry of the mostly white school and town. Tyrone’s militant uncle, Kwame, becomes animportantmentor,handingoutlessonsaboutblackprideandaracialanalysisthatundercutsthebourgeoisvaluesofTyrone’sparents.39

ImagesofMcCarthy-era surveillanceand containment structure thenovel.While Jonathanwavers between revealing his sexual identity and testifying against the teacher, school andcommunityofficialsattempttoprotecttheaccusedteacher,andanonymouscallersthreatentorevealJonathan’ssexualidentityifhetestifies.Thepeopleintheschoolcommunitytrytoavoidbeingsummonedtotestifyunderoath,knowingthatthiscontroversycanruinreputations,costjobsif theyhavetheir“nameandfaceontelevision,”orevenincurphysicalreprisals(162).At

considerablerisktohisreputation,UncleKwamesecretlyobtainsthetapesJonathanneedstosupport his testimony and slips them to Jonathan. Jonathan’s decision to reveal his sexualidentity and to testify against the attacker is thus enabled by a militant black activist. All of“thoseotherpeople,” joinedtogether incollectiveresistance,replaypracticesofsolidarityandcouragethatwereacriticalaspectoftheinterracialHarlemFront.Obviously,memoriesoftheMcCarthy-HUACwitch-hunts were never far fromChildress’s consciousness, and in this finalliterary text, she offered this legacy to her young-adult readers, the next generation: anexampleofpoliticalstrugglemodeledinlargemeasureonthe“radicalresistanceculture”oftheLeft,throughwhichaninterracialfrontresiststhepowerofarepressivestate.

FIGURE3.4.AliceNeel’sportraitofMikeGold(1952).Source:©TheEstateofAliceNeel,courtesyofDavidZwirner,NewYork/London

ALICECHILDRESSANDALICENEEL:PORTRAITINAMBIGUOUSRED

Childress turns up in yet another leftist community. From the 1930s through the 1950s, thepainterAliceNeelbeganherportraitgalleryofcommunistsbecause,shesaid,inthefaceofthedemonizing of theParty, shewanted “to show everyonewhat a realCommunist looked like”(Allara2000,113).She includedChildress in thisgallery,but thatpainting issodifferent fromher portraits of white leftists it seems at first to be another misreading of Childress. Neelrepresents three white communist men—Pat Whelan, a waterfront organizer; Art Shields, alabor journalist; and the writer Mike Gold—in almost archetypal leftist terms.40 Whelan and

Shields are shown seated in front of a neutral plain background, at their desks, browsfurrowed,eyesintenselyfocused.Whelan’shandsareclosedindefiantfists,andShields’sarehookedpurposefullyintheloopsofunbeltedtrousers.Theirangular,leanbodiesexpressakindofintensitythatsuggeststheirpoliticalcommitment.Neel’s1952portraitofGoldshowshimathisdeskwithacopyofNewMassesinitsredcoverandanissueoftheDailyWorkeropentohis column “Change theWorld.”EvenNeel’s 1970sportrait of a radicalwhitewomanactivistIrenePeslikissignifiesherpolitics.Peslikisisdressedinjeansandablacktanktop,seatedinanarmchairwithonearmthrowncasuallyoverthetopofthechairtorevealahairyarmpit,“heraggressivelyundemureposeandunsmilingface[casting]Peslikisasaserious-mindedradical,”apointunderscoredbythetitleofthepainting,MarxistGirl.41

FIGURE3.5.AliceNeel’sportraitofPatWhelan(1935).Source:©TheEstateofAliceNeel,courtesyofDavidZwirner,NewYork/London;andtheWhitneyMuseumofAmericanArt.©

TheWhitneyMuseumofAmericanArt.

FIGURE3.6.AliceNeel’sportraitofAliceChildress(1950).Source:©TheEstateofAliceNeel,courtesyofDavidZwirner,NewYork/London.

FIGURE3.7.Lefttoright:HerbertAptheker,EwartGuinier,andAliceChildressatKrausThompsonpublicityeventforthepublicationofthefirstfivevolumesofthecollectedworksofW.E.B.DuBois,publishedbyHerbertAptheker(1975).

Source:CourtesyofBettinaAptheker.

Neel depictedChildress in profile, seated on a cushioned chair gazing out of awindow—mostprobablyinNeel’sstudio.Sheiswearingadarkblueformal,straplessdressandalargegoldmedallionaroundherneck,appearingregalanddistant(lookingabitlikeQueenElizabeth,onecommentatorsuggested)andraciallyindeterminate.Behindheronadelicateredtableisapitcherofyellowflowers,suggestingabourgeoiswomanofcomfortablemeans.Insteadofthethree-quarter or full pose of her white subjects, Neel painted Childress in profile so that wecannot read her face, and in costume so that her social self seems entirely fictionalized.LookingforsomesignofChildress’sradicalismintheportrait,IconsideredthatNeelmayhaveintended for the swatches of red in the painting—the red table behindChildress, the red hatperchedonherhead,redlipstick,redchair,andrednailpolish—tosignalherleftistpolitics,butthereiscertainlynothingelseinthepaintingthatdoes.

WhatwemustfinallyconcludeisthatChildress’sportrait incostumeactuallymakesNeel’scase—that you can’t tell a communist by looking—that identity, including Left identity, ismultiple, complex, contradictory, and performative, a point supported by AlanWald’s (2001)criticalstudyofthemidcenturycommunistmovement,whichremindsusthattheLeftwasfullofcontrarians likeChildressandNeelwho refused to conform toorthodoxy.Neel,who loved toplay with contradictions, quite cunningly captures the complex, idiosyncratic Childress, whoneverfit inanygrooves,whoinhersixdecadesofradicalresistanceandculturalandpoliticalworkstayedfirmlywiththeLeft—onherownterms—puttingblackworking-classwomenatthecenterofherworkandportraying themas leftistactivistsand thinkerswhen theconventionalimageoftheLeftwasawhiteman.

Childress’sradicalpoliticsmayhaveearnedherplaceinNeel’scanon,butitcosther(alongwith the Harlem Left) an official place in the canons of African American literary history.Although, aswith other leftistwriters,Childress’swork is often dismissed by critics asmeresocialprotest,andalthoughRalphEllison isgenerally theonly1950sblackwritergranted themantleofmodernist,IarguethatChildressandotherleft-wingwritersandartistsofTheOtherBlacklistwerealsoexperimenters—socialmodernists,touseMichaelDenning’sterm(1996)—andthattheirformalandsocialexperimentationswere,particularlyinChildress’scase,enabledby their leftist political grounding. As one of the most prolific writers of the Harlem Left,Childress demands that we rethink what is lost when we label the period 1940 to 1960“Realism,Naturalism,andModernism”andomittheBlackLeft.Foronething,itmeansthatwecannottakeaccountofhowtherepressionsandintimidationsoftheColdWarconstructedtheliterary and cultural production of that period. It means obliterating the dynamic politicalorganizationsandculturalproductionsoftheLeft. ItmeansthatwelosethelinksbetweentheLeftmilitancyofthe1930stothe1950sandtheblackmilitancyofthe1960sand1970s.Italsomeans that we lose one of Childress’smost important aesthetic contributions: she reset themeaningofthetropeofthe“underground,”reimaginingitasboththediscursiveandtheactualspaceofpoliticalresistance.

G

4WHENGWENDOLYNBROOKSWORERED

ButIhavejudgedimportanttheverydifficultcreationofpoemsandfictionwhichevenacenturyagowere—andarenow—bearersofahotburden.

—GWENDOLYNBROOKS,NEGRODIGEST,1966

WENDOLYNBROOKSCAME of ageasawriter inChicagowhen theCommunistParty hadalready established a militant presence and voice in support of black civil rights.Howeverminimalherearlyleft-wingpoliticalaffiliationsmighthavebeen,scholarsofthe

literaryLeft identifyBrooksat thecenterof theChicagoNegroLeftFront in the1940s,whichthe literaryhistorianBillMullen (1999,10)describesas “independentof theCommunistPartybut largely symbiotic with its popular front objectives and aspirations.” Although Brooks wasprobably never a member of the Communist Party, there are always a fair number ofcommunists and leftist radicals dotting the landscape in the reports of her cultural and socialactivities inthe1940sand1950s.TheliteraryhistorianJamesSmethurst(1999,165)situatesBrookswithinmost of the important cultural networks of the Left—from the Left-ledNationalNegro Congress and the League of American Writers to the Left-influenced South SideCommunityArtCenterand theLeft-ledUnitedElectricianandMachineWorkersUnionand totheleft-wingeditorsandwriterswhopromotedherearlycareer.Eventheblacknationalistpoetand critic HakiMadhubuti, though he disparages its significance, acknowledges that the LeftwasatleastabriefstoponBrooks’scareerpath:“Shewasabletopullthroughtheoldleftismof the1930sand1940sand concentrateonherself, her peopleandmost of all her ‘writing’”(2001,82).1Theconsensusamongscholarsof theLeft is thatBrookswasapartofabroadcoalition ofmainly black artists,writers, and community activistswhoweremaking their ownhistory of radical black struggle, which exceeded, transformed, and expanded CommunistParty–approvedaestheticsbutcannotbedivorcedfromitsinfluenceandsupport.WhatIhopeto show in this chapter is that in herwork of theColdWar 1950s,mainly in her 1953 novelMaudMarthaandinseveralpoemsinher1960poetryvolumeTheBeanEaters,writteninthelate1950s,Brooksmanagedtobalanceablackleftistpoliticalsensibilitywithaninvestmentinmodernist poetics that produced, during theColdWar1950s,what I call,with somecaution,her leftist race radicalism. I ampursuing this course formany reasons, the first inanswer toBrooks’sowncalltopoetstorememberthepast,nomatterhowcontroversialorproblematic:“Thinkhowmanyfascinatinghumandocuments therewouldbenow, ifall thegreatpoetshadwrittenofwhat happened to thempersonally—andof the thoughts that occurred to them,nomatterhowugly,nomatterhowfantastic,nomatterhowseeminglyridiculous!”Iamthereforepiecing together these fragments of Brooks’s leftist past, much of which she herself leftunrecorded. I want to show her work as an example of the long left-wing literary radicalismthat,especiallyforBrooks,extendedintothe1970sandhasbeendwarfedbytheattentiontoherblacknationalistperiod,whichseemedtorequireseveringallconnectiontoaleftperiodinwhichshewasacentralplayer.

BROOKSINTHECHICAGOBLACKPOPULARFRONT

Brooks’sownstatements,particularlyinherfirstautobiography,ReportfromPartOne(1972),haveerasedormaskedsignsofherrelationshipwiththeLeft.2Thefriendsandcolleaguesshesocialized with in the 1940s and 1950s—artists and writers like Elizabeth Catlett, CharlesWhite,TedWard,LangstonHughes,MargaretTaylorGoss(laterMargaretBurroughs),FrankMarshallDavis,PaulRobeson,andMarionPerkins—leftists,communists,and fellow travelers—arerememberedinone-and-a-halfpagesinReportfromPartOneas“merryBronzevillians,”with no reference to their politics; theymaybe party guests and partygoers but neverPartymembers. Consider how Brooks carefully parses her political leanings in an essay aboutBronzevilleshecontributedtothe1951issueofthemainstreammagazineHoliday.Thoughshecovers a wide range of issues of black life in Bronzeville, beginning with the stories of theeconomicallydepressedandtheconsequencesofpovertyonchildren,sheopenswithacritiqueoftheassumptionsunderlyingtheterm“Bronzeville”:“somethingthatshouldnotexist—anareasetasideforthehaltinguseofasinglerace.”In“anotherpictureofBronzeville,”shedepictedtheexcitingpartiesthere,specificallynotingthatshedidnotmeanthe“typical”blackbourgeoisones,which she called, ironically, “soulless,” but the “mixed” parties that includedwhites andblacks.Though,asinReportOne,shedoesnotlabelthempolitically,manyoftheguests,likethehost, thesculptorMarionPerkins,wereavowedcommunistsordeeplyLeftenough tobeconsidered fellow travelers: Ed and Joyce Gourfain, Willard Motley, Margaret and CharlesBurroughs. Joyce Gourfain was a former lover of RichardWright, and both Gourfains knewWright from their days in the John Reed Clubs; both were certainly Communist Partymembers.3BothMargaretandCharlesBurroughswereclosetotheParty,andBrookshintsatthatinReportOne,describingMargaret’sradicalismwithadictionarydefinition:“thenarebel,[who] lived up from the root” (1972, 69). Lester Davis, named in the Brooks article as aChicagoteacher,photographer,andjournalist,wasalsoat thetimetheexecutivesecretaryoftheChicagoCivilRightsCongress,aposition thatwouldhavegonetoaCPmemberorcloseally.RichardOrlikoffwasaleftistattorneywhodefendedanAbrahamLincolnBrigadememberagainstHUAC.AlsothereweretheAfricanAmericanphysicistRobertBragg,lateramemberofthe faculty of the material science department at Berkeley, and his wife Violet. In the oralinterview Bragg did for the Berkeley archives, describing himself as “a closet radical,” hespeaksofhisattraction tocommunismandhisearly friendshipwithBrooks,probably throughthe NAACP Youth Council. The only reference Brooksmakes to the politics of thesemostlyleftistmerrymakers is a series of ironic andmocking comments that imply but downplay thepolitical tenor of their conversations. In her signature elliptical commentary on theirconversations,Brooks reports that “Greatsocialdecisionswere reached.Greatsolutions, forgreat problems” were debated over “martinis and Scotch and coffee” (1972, 68). In thephotograph that accompanies the front page of theChicago article, Margaret Burroughs isshownstrummingherguitar“forherartist-writerfriends,”andBrooks,whomaywellhavebeeninthataudience,was,asweseefromthesealternative“reports,”atleastforatimeinthelate1940sandearly1950s,quitecomfortablysituatedwithinthe intimatecirclesof theseChicagoMarxistbohemians.

OneofthemajorBrooksbiographers,herfriendGeorgeKent, insiststhatBrookswastoothoroughly“attachedtothecertaintiesofherupbringing,Christianity,andreformistmiddle-classdemocracy” tohaveespousedradicalism,butevenheadmits thatshewaswithin theorbitofthe Left artists and writers during the 1940s. In her apprenticeship years, Kent notes thatBrooksjoinedtheNAACPYouthCouncil,whichhesayswas“themostmilitantorganizationforblackyouthexceptfororganizationsoftheLeft”(1990,42).AsaYouthCouncilmember,KentsaysBrookswasspiritedalongby themorepoliticallyengagedmembers,suchasher friend

the artist and writer Margaret Taylor (later Goss, then Burroughs), who, along with Brooks,joined inantilynchingprotests,marchingalongwith theotherprotesters through thestreetsofChicago,wearingpaperchainsaround theirnecks tosymbolize the racialviolenceof lynching(44). That protest became the catalyst for one of Brooks’s earliest social protest poems.Margaret Burroughs, a lifelong friend, lists Brooks among the organizers of the one-day“InterracialSouthSideCulturalConference”in1944,whichincludedBurroughsherself,aswellas other black leftists—the poet Frank Marshall Davis, the sculptor Marion Perkins, NegroStory’s editor Fern Gayden, the playwright Ted Ward—and the white radical artists SophieWessellandElizabethMcCord.According to theculturalhistorianBillMullen,whenBurroughsrecorded her recollection of the conference, she referred to all of its participants asprogressive, which she said in a later unpublished letter to Mullen meant “Left wing toCommunist,”which,apparently,includedBrooks(1999,101–102).

DespiteherfriendshipwithBurroughs,MullensaysthatBrooks“escaped”identificationasawriterontheLeft,andhereadsBrooks’s1940spoetryasmaintainingaskepticalandanxiousdistancefromthepoliticalandculturalcurrentsoftheLeft,asBrooksherselfdid.WhileIhavenotbeenabletolocateanyFOIAfileonBrooks,theFBIhadherinitssights.IntheFOIAfileofherfriendBurroughs,agentsaccusedBurroughsof introducingBrookstotheLeft-ledNationalNegroCongressand theNationalLaborCouncil and trying to radicalizeher friend: “MargaretwouldlaterfindthattheFBIhadkeptafileonherbeginningin1937andhadlabeledherasoneofthoseattemptingtoinfluenceGwendolynpolitically”(Kent1990,55).

I amnot trying to turnBrooks intoacommunist,but I insist thather left-wingconnectionsare an important part of her biography and essential to understanding the trajectory of hercreative work. Like both Mullen and Smethurst, I am skeptical of any version of Brooks aspoliticalingénuetaggingalongonBurroughs’smoreradicalcoattails.Whateverhermotivationsfordeflectingattention to thestoryofherearly leftistpolitical life,shesustainedanumberofleftist affiliations in the 1940s that furthered her literary career. Shewasmentored by leftistwritersandeditors,includingEdwinSeaver,afounderoftheMarxistjournalNewMassesandaformer literaryeditorof theDailyWorker,who includedworkbyBrooks inhisCrossSectionanthologies in themiddle and late 1940s (Smethurst 1999, 165). Another important left-wingconnection forBrooksduring the1940swas the communist-ledLeagueofAmericanWriters,formedwhen theCPdisbanded the JohnReedClubs. In hismemoir of the League,FranklinFolsom, the league’s executive secretary and a communist, lists Brooks in his memoir as amember,alongwithLangstonHughes,RichardWright,ArnaBontemps,CounteeCullen,FrankMarshall Davis, Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker, and the openly communist Ted Ward andClaudeMcKay,allofwhomwouldhavebeenconsideredon theLeft in the1930sand1940s(Franklin 1994, 75). By her own account, Brooks was deeply involved in the South SideCommunityArtCenter(SSCAC),acenteroftheChicagoblackLeft,whereshestudiedpoetryandmodernismunderawhitementor,thepoetand“upper-classrebel”InezCunninghamStark(Melhem 1987, 9). Lawrence Jackson notes that she moved in intellectual crowds with anumberof leftists:TedWard,FernGayden,Davis,andEdwardBland,all formermembersoftheSouthSideWritersClub,whichhadbeenfoundedbyRichardWrightinhiscommunistdays(206).4WhenHarper’saskedforWright’srecommendationforBrooks’sfirstvolumeofpoetry,he wrote back to the editor Edward C. Aswell, on September 18, 1944, recommending thebookhighly,askingforonelongpoemtounifythecollection.Healsorecognizedandconfirmedthepoems’engagementwithaMarxistaestheticsthatdemandedafocusonblackculturalandcommunal life:“They[thepoems]arehardandreal,rightoutofthecentralcoreofBlackBeltNegro life in urban areas” (cited in Fabre 1990, 185).When she turned to autobiography in

Report from Part One, Brooks represented her life in the 1940s and 1950s in terms ofmarriage, children, poetry, and parties, the only clue to her leftist life being the communists,leftists,fellowtravelers,andradicalswhoattendedthoseparties.IfBrookswassimplynaïve,and Idoubt thatshewas,shecertainly tookherearlypolitical lifeseriouslyenough todeflectattentionawayfromhersubstantialtiestotheLeft.

FIGURE4.1.PhotoofGwendolynBrooks,“AGatheringattheSouthSideCommunityArtCenter”(1948).

BROOKS’SEARLYLEFTISTPOETRY

If we document Brooks’s writing career from the late 1930s during her Negro Popular Frontperiod,ratherthanstartingwithherfirstpublishedvolumeofpoetryin1945,theearlytracesofthe Left in her writing are evident. In 1937, when she was just twenty years old, Brookssubmittedher firstpoem,“SouthernLynching,” to theNAACPjournalCrisis,which, in linewith1930sPopular Front politics attacking racism, produced features on lynching in almost everyissue in the 1930s. Published in the same year that Burroughs was allegedly “radicalizing”BrooksandwhenBrookswasengagedinantilynchingprotests, thepoemisaligned, inthemeand tone, with Negro Popular Front politics. In this poem, there is none of the detachednarratorialconsciousnessthatSmethurstdescribesascharacteristicofBrooks’spoetryof the1940sand1950, almost no signof the narrative distanceand indirectness of her later style.The narrator describes the lynched body in detail: dried blood on rigid legs and long / Stiffarms,”thestillopeneyesstareas“merrymadmen”laughandsing.ThepoemalsoanticipatesBrooks’suseofironyinitsintertwiningofthebloodybody,thelyncherssinging,andtheimageof the soft pale evening darkening, with its night-breeze “flow[ing]” and the “first faint star”glowing “coldly” above the “strange and bloody scene.” The desecration of the body iscompletewhenoneof the lynchers “treats” his youngchild to “a souvenir / In formof blood-embroidered ear.” But the poem ends with the focus on another “youngster,” the son of themurderedman,waitingforhisfather’sreturn:

Backinhishoveldrear,apair

ofjuvenileeyeswatchanxiouslyForalovedfather.Tardy,he!Tardyforeverarethedead.Brownlittlebaby,gotobed.

Here the speaker’s focus on the grisly details of the lynching scene allows no distance

between the speaker, the victim, and his attackers, and, in typical social protest style, thespeaker’semotional investmentalsodemandsthereader’sempathyandmoraloutrage. IcanfindnoevidencethatBrookseverreferredtothispoeminhercommentaryaboutherworkorinherpublicreadings.AsakindofBrooksianrepresentationalhistory,however,Brooks’slynchingpoems help mark the the movement of her work from leftist social protest to modernistformalism, as “Southern Lynching” is clearly in the vein of 1930s social protest. Two otherlynching poems, “TheBallad of PearlMay Lee,” from her first published volume,A Street inBronzeville (1945), and “ABronzevilleMother Loiters inMississippi.Meanwhile aMississippiMotherBurnsBacon,” fromTheBeanEaters (1960), based on the lynching of the fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, suggest the modernist directions of her work. In both of these laterpoems, which she regularly included in her public readings, Brooks is thoroughly modernist,revisingaconventionalform—theballad—andofferingafeministslantthattakesonthealmostalwaysabsentviewpointofthewomanvictim.“MississippiMother”istoldfromthepointofviewofthewifeofoneofTill’skillers,herselfamotheroftwosmallchildren,somewhatstunnedbyhernewroleasthewifeofachildkiller.Emmett’smother,Mrs.MamieTillBradleyinreallife,“loiters”astheBronzevillemotherthroughoutthepoem,themotherofthekilledboy,theimagethewhitemothercannotignore.

“TheBalladofPearlMayLee”wasfirstpublishedintheleft-wingNegroQuarterly in1944(Jackson2010,205)editedbycommunistAngeloHerndonandRalphEllison inhisproletariandays.Thepoemtakestheviewpointoftheblackwomanwhoseloverislynchedbecauseofhisinvolvement with a white woman and includes the almost inadmissible representation of theblackwoman’ssexualjealousyanddesiretobeavengedbyherlover’smurder.AsJacquelineGoldsby (2006,1–4)hassosuperblyargued inASpectacularSecret:Lynching inAmericanLife and Literature, the Pearl May Lee lynching poem shifts the focus of the conventionallynchingstoryinseveralcrucialways:itissetintheNorth,itnarratestheblackwoman’sangeroverher lover’sdesire for “the tasteofpinkandwhitehoney,and itprotestsnotwhite racialviolencebutablackman’sdesire forwhiteand light-skinnedwomen,which, in thiscase,hasputPearl’sloverinthecrosshairsofawhitelynchingmob.Yet,evenasthePearlMayLeeand“Bronzeville Mother” poems challenge the admittedlymasculinist protest tradition, both recalland revise the politics of the cultural Left that brought racially instigated lynching to theforeground and made it a centerpiece of leftist protest. These markers of Brooks’sindebtednesstothe1930s(and1940s)Leftstillremaininherwork,buttheseconnectionshavedisappearedfromnearlyallBrookscommentary,includingherown.5

ThegreatandirretrievablelossisthatwewillneverhaveBrooks’sownprobingexplorationofherplaceinacommunityofliteraryandvisualartistscommittedbothtosocialchangeandtoformal experimentation within the community-based orientation of the Chicago Left CulturalFront.ThatcommunitymadetheChicagoNegroCulturalFrontaparticularlyhospitableclimatefor an artist interested in combining artistic experimentation and a radical black perspective.Manyof the friendsandcolleagueswithwhomshesocializedandworked,suchas thevisualartists Elizabeth Catlett and Charles White and the writers Langston Hughes and MargaretBurroughs, labored to balance their political and social concernswith formal experimentation.

They did so with varying degrees of success and, in the case of White, against leftistresistance tomodernistexperimentation.Brookswasmore fortunate.Her firstbookofpoetrywasreviewedbyasociallyconsciousleftistimagistpoet,AlfredKreymborg,whomanagedthatbalancing act skillfully in his own work and recognized Brooks’s own attempts. Kreymborgpublisheda rave reviewofAStreet inBronzeville in theMarxist journalNewMasses.Callingthe volume “original, dynamic, and compelling,” “one of themost remarkable first volumes ofpoetry issued inmany a year,” and “a rare event in poetry and the humanities,” Kreymborgpraised Brooks’s ability to “regard her people objectively in the face of every temptation topleadacause inwhichshe isdeeply involved” (1945,28).Repeatedly remarkingonBrooks’s“technical skill” and “inventiveness,” Kreymborg flew in the face of Marxist orthodoxy, whichdisparaged1950sartcriticismasvaluing “chicesthetic forms”and “formalgimmicks” thatdidnot “inspire ‘progressive thinking’ and revolutionary social change” or “strong hopes for theworking class.”6 Kreymborg’s timing was auspicious: the review was published when formalexperimentationwasstillseenfavorablybyNewMassescriticsandjustbeforetheascendancyof socialist realist orthodoxy in the early 1950s.7 Brooks responded to the review in a 1945letter to her friend and leftist activist-writer Jack Conroy, saying that she had been “veryfortunate” in the reviews of the volume, specifically citingKreymborg’s review: “Therewas averygenerousoneinNewMasses,September4,byAlfredKreymborg.”Theyear1945wasaverygoodone for socially conscious imagist poets likeKreymborgandBrooks,and itwasamomentwhenBrookscouldanddidbaskinthisrecognitionandacclaimfromtheLeft.8

ERASINGTHELEFT

Why, then, besides Brooks’s own reticence, has her relation to the Left been so difficult toestablish?Inconsideringthisquestion,Iamquiteawareoftheculturalamnesiathatdevelopedin the 1950s as the Cold War made it dangerous to acknowledge ties to the Left.9 Thatamnesiawasnotonlyrestrictedto the“disappearing”ofvariouspoetsorgroupsofpoetsbutalso,asSmethurstnotes,appliestoourabilitytothinkorrethinkthelegacies(andcontexts)ofpoets, for example William Carlos Williams, Hughes, Brooks, Kenneth Fearing, MurielRukeyser,MargaretWalker, andRobert Hayden, all of whomwere part of the Left PopularFrontinthe1930sand1940s.Foranumberofreasons,Brooks’s“occluded”relationshiptotheOldLeft ismoredifficult to teaseout than that ofmost of theAfricanAmerican literaryLeft,someofwhomhaveunusuallyopenpastandpresenttiestotheLeftandotherswholeftbehindobviousclues.ButifBrookshas“escaped”identificationasawriterinfluencedbytheLeft,thatmisconceptionhasbeenmosteffectivelyfacilitatedbythesagaofBrooks’s1967“conversion”to black nationalist radicalism (Smethurst 1999, 151)—a conversion tale that I believe to beapocryphalandmisleading—andthat,mostproblematically,requiredtherewritingofherearlierleft-wing radicalism. Brooks’smore public movement toward black cultural nationalism in the1960s and the elision of her connections to the Left have helped veil these earlier politicalaffiliationsandpartly explain thedull conventionality ofBrooks’sautobiographical narratives. Iargue that in our failure to appreciate Brooks’s connections to the leftist cultural front of the1940s,wealsoloseasenseoftheinnovativerelationshipBrooksforgedinherworkbetweenaLeft-inflectedideologyandamodernistformalpoetics.

The “rewriting” of Gwendolyn Brooks’s post-1950s political life by critics and reviewersreadsas follows:anapoliticalBrooks,havingbeenhighlyesteemedand richly rewardedbythewhiteliteraryestablishmentforherearlywork,isbaptizedintoblackculturalandpolitical

nationalism by the young black militants she meets for the first time at the Second BlackWriters Conference at FiskUniversity in 1967; having rejected her earlier connectionswithand submission to the white liberal consensus, she discovers her blackness and herradicalismwithinthe(masculine)armsofBlackPowerandblacknationalism.Brooksherselfpromoted this story in her 1972 autobiographyReport from Part One, describing the 1967conference inalmostmythical termsasan“inscrutableanduncomfortablewonderland”wherethe“hotsureness”oftheblackradicals“beganalmostimmediatelytoinvade”herandhernew“queenhood in the new black sun” qualified her, finally, to enter “the kindergarten of newconsciousness.”10

WhileBrooksundoubtedlyperceivedtheblackconsciousnessmovementsofthelate1960sand 1970s as life changing, as they were for many blacks of that period, the continual anduncritical recitation of the “conversion” narrative disconnects Brooks from her earlier politicalcontextsand,indeed,evenfromherownremarksatthe1967conference.Brooks’simmersioninthebaptismalwatersofthe’67conferencemayhaveeventuallycausedhertoreevaluatetherelationshipbetweenherartandAfricanAmericanpoliticalstruggle,butduringher timeat theconferencesheheldfirmtoherearlierposition,rejectingwhatshecalled“race-fedtestimony”inart.Inherpreparedpresentationattheconference,Brooksacknowledgedtheimportanceofrace in black art: “every poet of African extraction must understand that his product will beeither italicized or seasoned by the fact and significance of his heritage. How fine! Howdelightful!”But,sheinsisted—andthiswassaidwhileshewasstillattheconference,“Icontinueviolently tobelieve [that]whatever thestimulatingpersuasion,poetry,not journalism,mustbetheresultofinvolvementwithemotionsandideaandinkandpaper”(quotedinKent1990,199).Inwhatmightbeconsideredastatementofherownpoeticcredoandamodernistrestatementof Du Bois’s double consciousness, she argued for the “double dedication” of black poets,addressingthe“two-headedresponsibility” theymusthave inorder torespondtothe“crimes”theycoverbutalsotothe“quantityandqualityoftheirresponsetothosecrimes.”

Brookseventuallyexpressedherannoyancewiththesepronouncementsaboutthe“change”in her work. In a 1983 interview with Claudia Tate, when asked if any of her early worksassumean“assertive,militantposture,”Brookssaysemphatically,“Yes,ma’am….I’mfightingformyselfalittleherebecauseIbelieveittakesalittlepatiencetositdownandfindoutthatin1945 Iwassayingwhatmanyof theyoung folkssaid in thesixties” (Tate1983,42).Later inthesameinterviewBrooksrepeatsthatshe is“fightingformyselfa littlebit”asshemovestoreshape the critical readings of her early work. Still later she says she is “sick and tired ofhearing about the ‘black aesthetic,’” because “I’ve been talking about blackness and blackpeopleallalong”(45–46).11

THEEVIDENCEOFTHELEFT

ButifBrooks’stiestotheLeftcanbediscernedinthefriendshipsshedeveloped,inhersociallife,andinheraffiliationswithLeftorganizations,whatislessclearandmoreimportantishowtochartthesetiesinherwork.Despitepublicstatementsthatdistanceherfromthepoliticsandaestheticsof theLeft, IarguethatBrooks—likeHughes,FrankMarshallDavis,MelvinTolson,LorraineHansberry,JulianMayfield,SarahE.Wright,JohnO.Killens,andmanyothersthatarerarelyconnectedtotheLeft—wasinfluencedbytheaestheticsofthePopularFrontandthatwecan see that influencemost clearly in her struggling over the problem of how to negotiate arelationship between social realism and modernist experimentation. Brooks’s attempt to

balance social concerns and modernism aligns her with other quite devout leftists, many ofwhomhad“similarlycomplicatedrelationships”to“high”modernism.12Contrarytoconventionalaccounts of artists on the Left, many felt that they had to balance their political and socialconcerns with the problems of realism versus formal experimentation. As I have shown inchapter 2,White faced these issues in the 1950s as the Communist Party began to take amorerigidstanceintheirdemandsthatartadheretoprinciplesofsocialistrealism.Thepainterand sculptorElizabethCatlett, on the other hand,more easily accommodated her social andpolitical concerns with modernist art techniques, almost certainly because of her location inMexicoamongMexicanmuralists—DiegoRiveraandFranciscoMora(hersecondhusband)—whose communist politics did not precludemodernist experimentations. InRethinking SocialRealism: African American Art and Literature, 1930–1953, the cultural historian Stacy I.Morgantracesthewaymodernistinnovationrunsthroughtheworkofallthewriterstraditionallyassociatedwithsocialrealisttraditions.Whilethesesocialrealists—amongthemthepoetsandwritersFrankMarshallDavis,AnnPetry,RobertHayden,LloydBrown,andGwendolynBrooksand the visual artists Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, and John Wilson—were intent onrepresenting social change in their art and using art for social change, they were alsoexperimenting withmodern forms. In fact, asMorgan shows, African American visual artistsexposedtothenewmediaandmaterialsthroughtheFederalArtsProjectweregiventheirfirstopportunityforexperimentation.

ReadingBrooksback into a leftist political andartistic community enablesus to track thecontinuities and discontinuities in her political and aesthetic development rather than beingforce-fedthetaleofhersuddenandunprecedentedconversiontoblacknessandradicalism.AstheculturalhistorianJamesSmethurstshowsinTheNewRedNegro,asuperbanalysisoftherelationshipbetweenblackwriters,formalexperimentation,andPopularFrontculturalagendas,Brooks’s concern with issues of class, race, and gender oppressionmarks her as someoneworkinginPopularFronttraditions(Smethurst1999,179).WiththeaidofthelensofaslightlyLeft-tilted political biography, we can see that she wasworking out the formal and thematicissues thatwere important tomanyblackPopularFrontwriters:howto represent theAfricanAmerican vernacular voice; how to represent African American working-class and popularculture;how to incorporatebothhigh literarycultureandsocialprotest;andhow to representclass, race, gender, and community.Theseare the signsofwhatBillMullen (1999) calls the“discursivemarks”oftheculturalandpoliticalLeft.Evenif,asMulleninsists,theyareincodedand revised forms, theyprovide theevidence thatBrooks’spolitical commitmentswerebeingformedatleastthreedecadesbefore1967.

BROOKS’S1951LEFTISTFEMINISTESSAY:“WHYNEGROWOMENLEAVEHOME”

InMarch1949, fiveyearsaftersomeofherclosestencounterswith theLeft,Brookswasonherwaytobeingrecognizedasamajorpoeticvoice.Shepublishedasecondbookofpoetry,AnnieAllen; receivedanexcellent five-pagereviewbyStanleyKunitz in themagazinePoetry;and,in1950,wonthePulitzerPrizeforthatvolume,thefirstAfricanAmericantowintheaward.At some point during the years 1947 to 1950, Brooks separated from her husband, HenryBlakely,alsoapoet,andhadtoconsiderhowshewouldmanagefinanciallywithayoungchild,sonHenry Jr. (Melhem 1987, 82). By 1951, she had reunitedwith Henry and had a secondchild,Nora.Atthirty-fouryearsoldand,perhaps,withthememoryofthatseparationandwhatitmeant tobeaneconomicallydependentwife,shepublished theessay“WhyNegroWomen

LeaveHome”intheMarch1951issueofNegroDigest.Itdealtwiththeinequalitiesfacingblackmarriedwomenathomeandatwork.Under thebright lightsofmainstreamfameandpraise,Brooks’s left-wingconnectionswerehardlynoticed,so it isnotsurprising that this little-knownessaywasneverconnectedtothe1940sCommunistPartydebatesoverwomen’sissues,notevenby leftist feminists.13AsKateWeigand (2001,100)argues inRedFeminism, thePartytook a progressive stand on black women’s rights, arguing for black women’s permanentaccess to industrial jobs and protection against all forms of discrimination. InParty literatureand in Party-sponsored educational forums, the Party featured articles about blackwomen’shistory,andinLeft-organizedschools,classestaughtbyprogressiveblackwomenlikeLorraineHansberry, Claudia Jones, andCharlotta Bass focused on black women’s achievements andstruggles, with the aim of empowering black women and making them central to the Party(109).AsWeigandsums itup, “Communist leaderspushedrank-and-filemembers [especiallyin the1950s] toacton theirbelief thatallprogressivepeoplehadapersonal responsibility tosupportblackwomen’sstrugglesand towelcomeblackwomen into themovementwithopenarms” (111). Communists, often those in black-dominated unions, worked to improve wagesand conditions for black women workers, especially domestics, and to denounce the malechauvinism of left-wing writers and activists during the 1940s and 1950s that ignored theseissues.Left-wingunionsalsohadahandinpromotingblackculturalproduction.Theleft-leaningUnited Electrical and Machine Workers Union, through the efforts of the black ChicagocommunistIshmaelFlory,fundedtheprizegivenbythejournalNegroStory,aprizeBrookswoninthe1940s(Smethurst1999,165).

BrookscitesanumberofreasonsinthisessaythatNegrowomenwereconsideringleavingtheirmarriages,amongthemgold-digginghusbands, in-law interference,male impotence,andtheirhusbands’affairswithotherwomen(ormen).Butthecentralemphasisoftheessayisontheliberatingexperienceofawomangoingtoworkduringthewar,earningherownincomeandexperiencing“thetasteoffinancialindependence”:

her employer handed her money without any hemming and hawing, lies, rebukes, complaints, narrowed eyes—andwithouttellingherwhatafoolshewas.Shefeltclean,straight,tall[adescriptionBrookswoulduselaterforMaudMartha],andasifshewereapartoftheworld.Shewasnow“afellowlaborer,”deservingofrespectandtact.

Thelanguageandrhetoricoftheessayhastherhetoricalringofthecommunistmovement’spositiononthe“WomanQuestion,”whichhammeredonthe“tripleexploitation”ofblackwomen,challenging them to “guard against male supremacist behaviors, to adopt egalitarian genderroles, and to live out their politics in their day-to-day lives at work, in their interpersonalrelationshipsandathome”(Weigand2001,113).Thesesubjectsweremostablytheorizedbythehigh-rankingblackcommunistClaudiaJonesinherground-breaking1949essay“AnEndtotheNeglectof theProblemsof theNegroWoman,”whichalsochallenged the failureofwhitecommunists to put their theories into action. In the left circles ofNegroQuarterly, the SouthSideCulturalArtCenter,theNationalNegroCongress,orhangingoutwithherfriendMargaretBurroughs,BrooksmightverywellhavereadJones’sarticle(Weigand2001,113).

But,incriticalways,Brooks’sessaydepartsfromtheradicalleftistcritiquethatemphasizedissuesofunionization,class inequalities,solidaritywithotherwomen,demands forchanges intheworkplace,and theultimategoal—freeingwomen forpolitical struggle.Brookswasmoreinterestedincastingheracuteeyeonthepsychologicalabusesinmarriagesandpartnershipsthat do not often surface in politically left-wing material. Brooks lists the things a financiallyindependentwomanisabletodo:buyapairofstockingswithoutherhusband’scurses,buyher

motheror fatheragiftwithouthishystericallyshouted inquiries, takeacollegecourseorbuyherchildanovercoatwithouthavingtoplanastrategiccampaignorconfronthiscondescendinghandout.She is aware of the emotional and psychic cost towomenof staying in loveless ordisappointingmarriagesbecauseoffinancialdependenceontheirmalepartners.Despitewhatleftistsmight have considered the bourgeois concerns of the essay, Brooks calls formen totreatwomenas“fellowlaborers”inlanguagethatevokesthepoliticsandpracticesoftheLeft.“WhyNegroWomenLeaveHome”beginstochartBrooks’sironicrelationshiptotheLeft.Yes,shewoulddrawonthelanguageandideologyoftheLeft,butalwaysinherownidiosyncratic,racialized terms. She could not assume the privileged positions of a white leftist feminist asempoweredagent,norcouldsheassumetheroleofprotectorofblackwomenintheindustrialunionized workforce. She was a writer, a poet, an aspiring working-class black intellectualwoman, a figure that could only be seen as anomalous in the 1950s, as her working-classwomenneighborsremindedher.

MAUDMARTHA:BLACKLEFTISTMODERNISTFEMINISTNOVELOFTHECOLDWAR

Brooksbeganworkingonherfirst(andonly)novel,MaudMartha,asearlyas1944,and,withthehelpofGuggenheimawardsin1946and1947,submittedthemanuscript,whichhereditorat Harper’s rejected as “too hampered by a self-consciousness more suited to poetry thanprose” (Melhem1987,80).Moresubmissionsandrejections followeduntil finalacceptance in1953.Originally entitledAmericanFamilyBrown and constructed as a series of poems, thenovel still demands to be read as onewould read a highly complex, tightly structured poem.Composed of thirty-four short, imagistic chapters14 that rely on a combination of stream ofconsciousness, interior monologue, free indirect discourse, dreamscapes, chapter headingsthatframeandorderthenarrative,andcrypticandunresolvedchapterendings,itrepresentsablack urban landscape not as realist landscape but as imaginative space, an allegoricallandscape. Each chapter is filtered through the poetic, highly perceptive, sometimesclaustrophobic self-consciousness of a black female subject. As the novelist Paule Marshallreminds us,MaudMartha is the first American novel in which a dark-skinned, working-classblackwomanwithacomplex interior lifeappearsasamaincharacter(seeWashington1987,403–404).CloselyparallelingBrooks’s life, thenovelcoversMaud’s life fromagesixorsevenuntil she is inher late twenties, roughly from1924 to1945.Brooksdescribed thenovelasahybrid, part autobiography and part fiction: “Much that happened to Maud Martha has nothappened tome—andshe isanicerandbettercoordinatedcreature than Iam.But it is truethatmuchinthe‘story’wastakenoutofmyownlife,andtwisted,highlightedordulled,dressedupordown” (Brooks1972,191).The final chapter, “back from thewars!” is fairlyoptimistic,withMaud,thoughdisillusionedwithmarriage(thedomesticwar),awaitinghersoldierbrother’sreturn fromthewarandcontemplating thebirthofhersecondchild—scenes thatwerebasedonBrooks’sownexperiences.

MAUDMARTHAAS“GHETTOPASTORAL”

Though there are now several leftist revisionist studies of Brooks’s poetry,Maud Martha isnearlyalwaysreadasunattachedtoanypriorleft-wingcontexts.TheculturalhistorianMichaelDenning suggests three reasons for not seeing its radical possibilities: its lack of an “explicit‘political’narrative,”its“ethnicorracialaccents,”andtheLeft’sfailuretorecognizethechanging

natureofthe“working-classauthor”(1996,235).Criticsdidnotreadahighlyintellectualblackwoman—either author or subject—as an “authentic” representative proletarian. Brooks wasidentifiedasablackwriterorawomanwriter,notasaworking-classwriter—andMaudMarthadid not seem to fit (and, in fact, did not fit) the requirements of the conventional proletariannovel.ThecriticandwriterLloydBrown,forexample,aprolificreviewerofblackwritersfortheleft-wingpressthroughoutthe1950s,madenomentionofBrooks’swork.15

Inaninsightfulandexpansivetheorizingoffictionhecalls“ghettopastorals,”DenningshowsthatBrooks’s 1953novel fits quite comfortably in theblack cultural Left—asanovelwith theproletarian outlook and by a writer socialized in a working-class family and community (asBrooks was) but aspiring to an intellectual life. Like other writers of the ghetto pastorals(RichardWright,TillieOlsen,PhilipRoth,JackConroy,HisayeYamamoto,andPauleMarshall,tonamea few)Brooks is resistant toold forms,dissatisfiedwith thedemandsofnaturalism,andincreasinglydrawntoexperimentalmodernistfiction.Strugglingforindependencefromtherealismandnaturalismof thenovel, thesewritersneededa form,Denningargues, thatcouldaccommodate thecontradictionsof their lives: thegeographicandpsychological limitationsofethnicityor race, theiruncertainandenigmatic futuresduringastill-segregatedColdWarera,andthechangingnatureoftheirworking-classlives(1996,230–258).16

While I am in agreement with Denning on Maud Martha’s leftist identity, I find myselfthroughout this chapter in an ongoing and as yet unsettled dialogue with Bill V. Mullen,specificallywithhisreadingofBrooks’spoetrybeforethepublicationofMaudMarthaasmorelikely to exemplify a flexible and less militant definition of the leftist cultural front.17 MullensituatesBrooks,asIdo,atamomentafterthewarwhenblackandwhiteradicalsalikecouldenvision and expect critical and commercial success, thus experiencing along with thoseprospects “troubling uncertainty about the myriad dilemmas facing black American writers,activists,andculturalworkersafter thewar”(Mullen1999,179).MullencontendsthatBrooksinserts“stopgapmeasures”inherpoetrythatcritiquecapitalismbutdonotenableradicalism,insomecasesproducingcharacterswhohavenowaytoapprehendorformthekindofcollectiveresistancethatmighthavebeenavailableintheradicalcollectiveoftheSouthSideCommunityArt Center. The stasis that is characterized by employing “Prufrockian” (Mullen’s term)modernist themesofalienationanddislocation, imagesofpassivity, andparalysisandstalledprogress does not evoke themilitant resistance of a traditional leftist politics; instead, thesemodernist effects register Brooks’s “ironic relationship” to the black cultural politics of theChicagoFront.WhilekeepingMullen’sreservationsinmind,ImaintainthatBrooks’scritiqueofrace,gender,andclassinthisnovel,writtenattheheightofColdWarrepression,isasignofradicalism,andIaminclinedtoagreewiththeliteraryscholarJohnGery(1999),whosaysthatBrooks’suseofparody“toconveythedeepambiguitiesfacingthosewholiveinblackghettos”isa“politicallyaggressive”andradicalmove.AsGerynotes,wehavetoreadherradicalisminthis novel in the ways she combines modernist formal devices with subjects usually alien tomodernism to expose “the very rhetorical structures of thought by which those oppositionsstubbornlypersist”(54).

BrooksestablishesMaud’sworking-classstatusinlanguagedesignedtoemphasizeMaud’sfinelytunedaestheticsensibility.Herchildhoodhomehas“wallsandceilingsthatarecracked,”tablesthat“grievedaudibly,”doorsanddrawersthatmakea“sick,bickeringsound,“highandhideous radiators,” and “unlovely pipes that coil beneath the low sink” (Brooks 1953, 180).Althoughherparentsarebuyingthehouse,wheretheyhavelivedforfourteenyears,thefamilywaitsinfeartoseeifMaud’sfather,ajanitor,asBrooks’sfatherwas,willbeabletoextendthemortgagefromtheHomeOwners’LoanAssociation,staffedandowned,nodoubt,bywhitesin

thisJimCrowworld.Whatshedesiresandfears losing isnotsimplyhomeownershipbut“the“shaftsandpoolsof lights”thatcreatethe“lateafternoonlightonthelawn,”“thegracefulandemphatic ironof thefence,”“thetalkingsoftlyontheporch.”Asteenagers intheearly1940s,Maudearnstendollarsaweekasafileclerk,andhersisterHelen,fifteendollarsaweekasatypist (176),salaries thatwereseveraldollarsbelowtheminimumwage,which, in1940,wasforty-threecentsperhour.Asamarriedwoman,MaudandherhusbandPaulmoveintoathird-floor furnished kitchenette apartment, as Brooks did, two small rooms with an oil-clothedcovered table, folding chairs, abrownwooden iceboxanda three-burner stove, onlyoneofwhich works, and a bathroom they share with four other families. The roaches arrive; the“Owner”willnotmakeanychanges;thecouplewillhavetobesatisfiedwiththeapartment“asitis.”Maud’sdisappointmentwithhusbandandmarriageisthelogicalandinevitableadjuncttothegray,drab,andunsatisfyingconditionsofthehomePaulisabletoprovide,sodifferentfromthe traditions of “shimmering form, hard as stone” she had imagined for herself. As shethoroughlyexamines theways inwhichworking-classpovertyerodesamarriage relationship,Brooks’ssocialconcerns,aestheticallyrendered,pervadetheentirenovel.

What distinguishesMaud from other black proletarian fictional characters is that she is adeveloping intellectual as well as being a proletarian; she is familiar with both working-classpovertyandwithmore intellectualandacademicpursuits.Maudmakesspecific references tothe allure of such university literary canons as Vernon Parrington’s three-volume study ofAmerican literature,MainCurrents inAmericanThought,a fixture inU.S.graduateschools inthe1940sand1950s.WhenMaudrefersto“EastofCottageGrove,”thatsameracialdividinglinebetweenblackandwhitethatconfinesBiggerThomasinRichardWright’sNativeSon,itisnotmainly in termsof physical space.Seen through theeyesofMaud’s secondbeau,DavidMcKemster, east and west of Cottage Grove signify the cultural, intellectual, physical, andimaginary spaces of black limitation and white control that thwart the desires of an aspiringblackintellectual,includingherself,thoughshespecificallynamesher“secondbeau”:

WheneverhelefttheMidway,saidDavidMcKemster,hewasinstantlydepressed.EastofCottageGrove,peoplewereclean,goingsomewherethatmattered,nottalkingunlesstheyhadsomethingtosay.WestoftheMidway,theyleanedagainstbuildingsandtheirmouthswereopeningandclosingveryfastbutnothingimportantwascomingout.WhatdidtheyknowaboutAristotle?

(44-45)

McKemsteraspires to college, tomovingaway from theSouthSide, toan intellectual lifewherehewouldnotonlyreadParrington’sMainCurrentsinAmericanThoughtbutcouldtossitaroundcarelesslyasonewouldafootball—asheassumesprivilegedwhitesdo.McKemster’sdesire for access is undercut by his marginalized existence on Chicago’s South Side. He isashamed of hismother, who takes in washing and says “ain’t” and “I ain’t stud’n you.”Withironicemphasisontheelitismoftheword“good,”thenarratortellsusthatMcKemsterwantsagood dog, an apartment, a good bookcase, books in good bindings, a phonograph withsymphonic records, some good art, those things that are “not extras” but go “tomake up agoodbackground”(188).InstrikingcontrasttoCarlSandburg’stributestothelustiness,power,and dogged vitality of the Windy City, the narrator (always through Maud’s consciousness)informsusthatMcKemster’slifeontheSouthSideisnot“colorful,”“exotic,”or“fascinating”buta place where “on a windy night” he (and perhaps Maud too) feels “lost, lapsed, negative,untended, extinguished, broken and lying down too—unappeasable” (187). The poet andliteraryscholarHarryetteMullenremindsusthathereBrooksisemployingtherhetoricaldeviceofsynathroesmus,whichconsistsofpilingupadjectives,oftenasinvective,tomodifyanoun.18

Buried under this stack of adjectives,McKemster seems to lose any intrinsic qualities and ispsychologically demolished by that overwhelming accumulation of negatingmodifiers until thefinaladjective.Thefinalterm,“unappeasable,”shiftsthetonetofocusontheneedanddesiresof the “loser” rather than on his state of abjection, thus saving him from total annihilation. IfBigger’s crude references towhite power structuresmore accurately describe the effects ofwhiteracialpowerandblackpowerlessness,Brooks’scritiqueisaimedpartlyatMcKemster’sownpretensionsbutmostseverelyat the integration ideologiesof theColdWar1950s,whichpromotedthenotionthatasblacksachievedsufficientintellectualandculturalweighttheycouldbecome candidates for integration, even as the economics of segregation were rigidlymaintained. Clearly, however, this narrator knows the meaning of and how to deploysynathroesmusandthushowtoassertherownpower.

Chapter24, “anencounter,” thesecondDavidMcKemsterchapter,almostcertainlymeantto suggest the story “An Encounter” in James Joyce’s Dubliners, aligns Brooks with aquintessentialmodernist.Followingthepatternoftheotherthirty-threechapters,thechapteriselliptical,aboutsixpageslong,narratedalmostentirely infreeindirectdiscourse,andfocusedrelentlesslyonMaud’s interiorreactions,endingabruptlywithoutconclusionorresolution.Nowa young married woman and mother, Maud runs into McKemster on the campus of theUniversity of Chicago, where they have both gone to hear “the newest youngNegro author”speak.WhenMcKemster sees twoof hiswhite college friends, heproposes that they go tooneofthecampushangouts,andoutofsenseofobligationinvitesMaud,whomheintroducesformally as “Mrs.Phillips” to his “good good friends.”McKemster and his friends proceed tocarry on a conversation, which the narrator, channeling Maud’s inner thoughts, describescaustically as “hunks of the most rational, particularistic, critical, and intellectually aloofdiscourse” (272), intowhich theyweavewords like “anachronism, transcendentalist, cosmos,metaphysical, corollary, integer,monarchical” (274),wordsnotedby the third-personnarratorbutintendedtorepresentMaud’sresentmentasoutsideraswellasherownprivatesatisfactionthatshetooknowstheseterms.

Theentireencounterisconstructedaroundthequestiontheyoungwhitewoman(nicknamedStickie) poses about the young Negro author they’ve come to hear: “Is he in school?” Thequestion issubtle,posedintheargotof thecollegeinsiders,andintendedtoconsolidatetheirintellectualsuperiority.Itissuchaloadedquestionthat,beforeitcanbeanswered,thenarratorintervenes, inserting afterStickie’s question a veiled reference to theWilliamCarlosWilliams“red wheelbarrow” poem: “on the answer to that would depend—so much.” Here Brooks’sreveals her own knowledge of modernism and her critique of it. She adds a dash between“depend”and“somuch”asiftoalertthereaderthatsheisquotingfromandalsorewritingtheWilliams poem. Remember that the poem depends on a series of material images: “a redwheel/barrow/glazedwithrain/water/besidethewhite/chickens.”Butthere’snoconcreteimage in the Brooks chapter—the question evokes the elitism and snobbery through whichpeople like Maud are excluded or included. The chapter suggests that the young woman’squestion, “Is he in school?” allows these insiders to consolidate their power, giving them thepower tomeasure the youngNegrowriter’s importance—for insiders both in andoutside thetext.

David answers “Oh, no,” and, assuming authority, assures his audience that the youngNegroauthor“hasdecided”that“thereisnothingintheschoolsforhim,”thatthoughhemaybebrilliant,mayhave“kickedParringtonorJoyceorKafkaaroundlikeafootball,”“heisnotrootedinAristotle, inPlato, inAeschylus, inEpictetus”—theclassicaltraditionalists.(“Asweare,”thenarratoradds.)This interaction ischanneledthroughMaud’s interiorconsciousnessinorderto

conveyMaud’s feelingsofdisplacement in theuniversityworldand thecoded termsbywhichheroutsiderstatusisconveyed.Inthiscase,“somuchdepends”notonourappreciationofthematerialobjectsofthephysicalworldasintheWilliamspoembutinsteadonourabilitytoreadandcritiquetheassumptionsofhierarchicalcategoriesandvocabulariesofexclusion.WhatwedoknowisthatBrooksintendedthesenarrativetechniquestorepresentaprotagonist“lockedout”ofwhite/male/upper-class traditions.Deliberately reversing thegodlikepowers typicalofmale narrators and claiming her own insider authority, Brooks is also critiquing the male-dominatednaturalistictradition,inparticularthesocialrealismoftextslikeWright’sNativeSon—and Twelve Million Black Voices—with its reliance on representations of a static blackcollectivity.19 The language of gesture in Maud Martha forces us to develop our skills ofobservationandtolearntoreadafaceorgesturewithouttheprivilegedaccesssanctionedbyrealistictraditions—asoneisrequiredtoreadJoyceorWilliams.Hersilenceheremayindeedrequireustoreadbacktotheaccumulatedinjuriesshehasenduredasablackfemaleworking-class intellectual throughout her life, as the chapter ends abruptly with a single-sentence,unmediated comment by the narrator: “The waitress brought coffee, four lumps of sugarwrapped in pinkpaper, hotmincepie.”On theother hand,whatMaudhasordered replacessilence with her hot awareness (and perhaps even her own assumptions of a modernistsmackdownofherso-calledbetters)ofboththeconfectionerycondescensionatthetableandherowndisguised,repressed(minced)anger(275).20

MAUDMARTHAROUGHSUPTHESMOOTHSURFACESOFCOLDWARCULTURE

Brookswasworkingbothsidesof thepoliticaldivide in the1950s.As Ihave indicated in thefirstpartof thischapter,Brooksdevelopedasawriterandactivist in the leftist circlesof theSouth Side Community Art Center while working with a group of black writers and artistscommittedbothtosocialchangeandtoformalexperimentation.Beginningin1941,theirpoetryinstructor was Inez Cunningham Stark, “an elegant upper-class rebel from Chicago’s ‘GoldCoast,’” a modernist poet herself and boardmember atPoetry, who obviously helped sendBrooks inmodernistdirections(Melhem1987,9).Theminutesof the1944boardmeetingsoftheSSCAC,whereBrookswasapparentlyworkshoppingherfirstnovel,suggeststhatBrooks,now formally committed to a modernism in her poetry, was working out her method andintention forher firstattemptatwritinga fictionalnarrative.As theminutes indicate, theclasswas working that year on fiction concerning personal interracial relations, and Brooks isspecificallymentioned:

Theattemptisbeingmadeinthese[meetings]topresentthepsychologicalstory,toshowwhatisinthemindsofthepersecutedorthepersecutingif[sic]JimCrowismisdepicted,togetinsidethementalconflictwhichissetupindividuallybythisthingcalledrace.Anumberofnewwritersaredevelopinginthisgroup,twomenworkingontheirfirstnovels,ajournalistortwo,andthewinnersofbothfirstandsecondprizesforpoetryinthisyear’sMidwestpoetryawards,oneofwhom,GwendolynBrooks,hasherfirstbookofpoetry,AStreetinBronzeville[sic],releasedthislastmonthbyHarpersBrothers.21

At the same time that she was workshopping at the leftist SSCAC, where race andmodernismcomfortablycoexisted,Brookswasalsonegotiatingwithherwhiteeditor,ElizabethLawrence,and readers (probablywhite)atHarpers,asshe tried, from1945 to1951, together novel accepted. Lawrence conveyed to Brooks the readers’ discomfort with Brooks’streatmentofrace:“Onereaderlikedthelyricalwritingbutwasdisappointedbythesociological

tone and patent concern with problems of Negro life” (quoted inMelhem 1987, 81). ThoughBrooks proceeded to make changes, her editor continued to express concern about herrepresentations of race: “It was proposed that the unpleasant experiences with whites bebalanced by a positive encounter to justify the hopefulness she [MaudMartha] retains” (83).Lawrence thought that the hopefulness in the novel should be tied to Maud’s “positive”experienceswithwhitesratherthantoMaud’sgrowingawarenessofandresistancetoracism.Inthefinalletterofapprovalforpublication,Lawrenceusedthecodedterm“universal”towarnBrooksagainsttoomuchemphasisonracialissuesand“possiblestereotypingofwhites”inherfuturewriting:“Shehopedthatthepoet’sfutureworkwouldhaveauniversalperspective”(83–84).Lawrencesuggestedanotherchangethatconfirmsherbiases.InthechapterwhereMaudis reading, Brooks had originally chosen a book by Henry James, one of Brooks’s favoritemodelsforwritingfiction,butLawrencecalledthatselection“improbable,”soBrookschangedit to the more popular and less highbrowOf Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham.WemightcalltomindherethatBrooksmeantforherprotagonisttobearaciallymarked,working-class,modernintellectual.BrookswaswellawareofthewayLawrencewascodingrace,but,rather than softening her racial critique, she instead inserted a series of racially markedchapters. I argue that she was deliberately refusing the ColdWar consensus on race—thatblackwritersshouldminimizeracialidentityandracialstrifeinanefforttoachieve“universality.”

The editor’s pressure onBrooks to soften her racial critique has to be understood in thecontextoflate1940sandearly1950sraceliberalism.InherremarkablestudyofU.S.postwarracial change, Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in New Racial Capitalism(2011), theculturalhistorianJodiMelamedcritiquesthewaysthatnewpostwarracialorders,which she calls “official antiracist liberalism,” emerge during the Cold War, ostensibly topromote racialequalitybut inactuality toserveas technologies “to restrict thesettlementsofracial conflicts to liberal political terrains that conceal material inequalities” (xvi). Meant veryclearly to repress and supersede the race radicalism(s) of the 1940s, “official antiracistliberalism”operatedtostymieraceradicalismandtosubstituteanofficialraceorderthatwouldignore material inequalities, restrict the terms of antiracism, promote “progress” narratives,and, inmy terms,depoliticizeantiracistwork.Melamedargues that literary texts,oftenunderthe guise of protest narratives, were deployed to do this kind of race neutralizing—first,represent; then, destroy. As many scholars of the ColdWar make clear, this kind of liberalantiracismsoldwell intheeraofColdWarcontainment,anticommunism,McCarthyism,HUACinvestigations,andFBIspycraft.AsIshowinchapter5,theCIAwasoperatingdomesticallyaswell as internationally to carry out its policies of containment and repression, diligently anddeviouslyinfiltratingandmanipulatingAfricanAmericanculturalinstitutions.ColdWarideologies,often disseminated through the culture industry, permeated every facet of American life,particularly the media. In the massive drive to insure and justify the elimination of left-wingdissent,anticommunismwassuccessfully installedasapermanent featureofU.S.democraticidealstoundercutpoliticalradicalismfurther.

Considering Melamed’s argument that literary texts were also purveyors of racialcontainment, there is even more reason to appreciate Maud Martha as politically radical.Certainly,BrooksrefusedAfricanAmericanoptimismaboutracialprogress.Takentogether,thethirty-fourchaptersinMaudMarthaformatextualindictmentofthe“Negroprogressnarrative,”aschapterafterchapterrevealsMaud’sdiscontent,impotence,andangeroverChicago’sracialregime: she endures and repulses a racial slight at themillinery shop (a potent reminder ofblack women’s treatment in downtown department stores during Jim Crow); a whitesaleswoman tries tomakeasale in theblackbeautyshopand inadvertently says, “Iworked

likeanigger toearn these fewpennies”;whenMaudgoes toworkasadomesticduring theDepression,herupper-classemployertreatsherlikeachild;attheWorldPlayhouse,sheandherhusbandPaulexperiencethemselvesas“theonlycoloredpeoplehere”;onthecampusofthe University of Chicago, she encounters the elitism of university whites and blacks; and,finally, in that revered public spectacle of 1950s hegemonic whiteness—visiting Santa at thedowntowndepartmentstore—shefinallyrecognizesandvoicesherstifledragewhenthewhiteSantadismissesherlittledaughter.Inwhatmayseemonlyaminimalexpressionofheranger,sherevokeshisculturaltitleandauthority:“Mister…mylittlegirl istalkingtoyou.”Theentirecity, fromthedowntowndepartmentstore to theuniversitycampus,servesupammunition forMaud’sracialcritique,producingamilitantrhetoricalanaloguetotheblackLeft’smilitant1940scampaigns to “desegregate themetropolis.” If the culture of the ColdWar was designed toproducesmoothsurfacesforU.S.consumption—imagesofdomesticfamilytranquilitywiththewoman’splaceinhomeandfamily,goodwars,andtheharmonyofracialintegration,interracialcooperation,andblackdocility—MaudMarthadisruptsoneveryfront.

BEYONDTHE1950S:THELEFTINTHEBEANEATERS

BrookssubmittedthemanuscriptofTheBeanEaters,herthirdvolumeofpoetry,toHarpersinDecember 1958, and the editors “enthusiastically” accepted it for publication (Melhem 1987,100). The black nationalist poet and criticHakiMadhubuti dismissedTheBeanEaters in his1966 essay onBrookswith one line, “TheBeanEaters is to be the last book of this type,”inferring thatBrooks’s subsequent poetrywouldmark thebeginningof her political and racialconsciousness.Brooksherselfdubbedthebookher“toosocial”volumebecauseithadalmostimmediatelybeen identifiedas “politically” charged—even “revolutionary,” andshehadahardtimegettingitreviewed(Madhubuti2001,87;Brooks1983,43).Infact,BrookssaysthatTheBeanEaterswasa “turningpoint ‘politically,’ its civil rightspoemsand its pointed critiquesofclassprejudiceandracialviolencesostartlinglydifferentfromherearlierworkthatthereviewerforPoetrywrotethatithadtoomuchof‘arevolutionarytendency’andwastoo‘bitter’”(Brooks1983,43).22 Brooks’s biographerMelhemnotes that fully one-third of the thirty-five poems inTheBeanEaterswere“distinctlypolitical”(1987,102).

InviewofthepoliticaldirectnessofTheBeanEaters,itisstunningthatsomanyofBrooks’scritics insistedthatshebecame“political”onlyafter1967andthatherpoemsfromthe1940sand1950swereapoliticalanddirectedatawhiteaudience.InTheBeanEaters,writtenduringthe1950sandpublishedin1960,Brooksinitiatesallthethemesthatcriticsassociatewithherblacknationalistperiod.Moreover,shegoesbeyondthecategoryof raceto include issuesofgender, class, and war. Brooks’s subjects inThe Bean Eaters are nearly always black andworking class, and her relationship to these subjects compassionate, though, as always,Brooks’s use of an ironic, mocking voicemakes it impossible to draw any easy conclusionsabout the aims of her critiques (Gery 1999, 44–56). Beyond that compassion is herdetermination to expose the way conventions of respectability, Christian norms, racism, andclassism dominate and oppress working-class and racialized subjects. Her subjects in TheBean Eaters are as follows: an elderly devoted couple eating their beans in “rented backrooms”andfingeringthemementosthatbespeakalifeofpovertyandlifelongfaithfulness;theracialandclassviolencedirectedatayoungcouplewhomakeloveinalleysandstairways;theChicagoblackworkingclassdrinking theirbeer in theestablishmentsonceanenclave for therich;EmmettTill,“ablackishchild/Offourteen,witheyestooyoungtobedirty”andamouthof

“infantsoftness”;thepoolplayerswholiveinurbanghettos,expectingshortandbrutallives;thehomemakerMrs.Small, trying tomanagebreakfast forher six, anabusivehusband,and thepaymentforthe(white)insuranceman;the“brownish”girlsandboysofLittleRock,caughtinastormofracehatredfromthewhitemothers;“thoseLoversofthePoor”who“crosstheWaterin June,” “Winter in Palm Beach,” and cannot endure an actual encounter with the poor; theemptinessofmiddle-classconsumption;RudolphReeddyinginordertoprotecthisfamilyandhome fromwhite racial violence; and, finally, an antiwar poem that critiques thewar aims ofgenerals, diplomats, and war profiteers and assails the people’s desire for war. I list thesesubjectsinsomedetailasfurtherproofofthepolitical,racial,andclassissuesBrookstookoninher1950swork.

IconcludethischapterwithadiscussionofthreepoemsinTheBeanEaters thatbear thesigns ofBrooks’s leftist poetic sensibility, two ofwhichmake specific references to the Left.Thefirst,entitled“Jack,”IassumetobeaboutBrooks’sleftistradicalfriendJackConroy,andtheother,“LeftistOratorinWashingtonPark/PleasantlyPunishestheGropers,”theonlypoemin which she actuallymakes a direct reference to the Left. Almost nothing has been writtenaboutBrooks’s long-termfriendshipwithConroy, identifiedbytheliteraryandculturalhistorianAlanWald(2001,269)as“pro-Communist”ora“fellow-traveler.”Thatfriendship—bothliteraryandpersonal—isestablished in the lettersbetween the twowrittenbetween1945and1983.Conroy’sbiographerDouglasWixonsaysBrooksmetConroyattheSouthSideCommunityArtCenter.AliceBrowning,astudent inConroy’swritingclass,askedforConroy’shelpwhenshestartedNegro Story, and Brooks was there at Browning’s house for meetings with Conroy(Wixon 1998b, 426n37). Conroy’s close relationships with and support of black writers arealmost unprecedented. His friendship with the black writer Arna Bontemps spanned twentyyears and produced several collaborative works, including the 1945 social history of blackmigration,TheySeekaCity,aswellasseveralbooksforchildren.Heseemstohavebeenaubiquitous presence and a beloved friend and colleague among black writers, includingBontemps,Browning, FrankYerby,WillardMotley,MelvinTolson,FrankMarshallDavis—andBrooks.

The lettersbetweenBrooksandConroybegin in1945,shortlyafter thepublicationofherfirst volume of poetry. In the first letter of September 14, 1945, which is mentioned above,Brooks confides in Conroy that she is pleased with “a very generous” review ofA Street inBronzevilleinNewMasses.Brooks’sgreetingschangefrom“Mr.Conroy”inthe1945letterto“Jack”insubsequentletters,astheirfriendshipdeepens.23Wixonsaysthat“GwendolynBrooks(among others) was a frequent guest at the parties given by Jack and Gladys on GreenStreet”(1998b,462).Inaletterfrom1962,ConroyasksBrookstoautographMaudMarthaandAStreet inBronzevilleandconfides inBrooksabout the troublesgettinghisbookspublishedbecauseofhisblacklisting:

FIGURE4.2.GwendolynBrookspresentstheLiteraryTimesAwardtoJackConroy(1967).Source:PhotocourtesyofDouglasWixson.

Thetroubleisthey[hisbooks]weretranslatedandpublishedfreelyseveralyearsagoandIwasneverpaidanything.InRussiatheyhadahugesale.NowIseetheRussiansarewillingtopayAmericanauthors,andIhaveputPfefferonthetrailofmy lost rubles.Don’tknowwhether Iought toaccept themornot, forMcCarthy isnotdeadbutonlysleepeth.Besides,EastlandandWaltersseemtohavetakenoverwheretheRepublicansleftoff.24

Inanother letter remarkingonBrooks “rusticating”at thewriters’ retreatYaddo,Conroysayshe is going to look in on her husbandHenryBlakeleywhile Brooks is gone.25 Later in 1967,Brooks,bynowaPulitzerPrize–winningpoet, presentedConroywith the first LiteraryTimesPrize,praisinghimfor“hisaidandencouragementtoyoungwritersandhisoverallcontributiontoAmerican literature,particularlyhisnovelTheDisinherited” (Wixon1998b,482),whichshecalled a “classic.” Brooks obviously felt an extraordinary sense of kinship with Conroy. Sheadmiredhisdevotiontotheworkingclass;hisunpretentiousness;hiswarinessof ideology;hismulticultural,multiracial friendshipsandcollaborations;andhis loveofparties.Whilenothing inthesearchivesprovesthatBrookswasaPartymemberoreventhatshecouldbeconsideredontheLeftinthe1940sor1950s,thisfriendship,almosttotallyundocumentedinanycriticalorbiographicalworkandstrangelyunremarkedoninBrooks’sownwork, isfurtherevidencethatBrookswasnostrangertotheLeft.

Since the poem “Jack” appears to be about someoneBrooks knew, and since it reflectsqualitiesonemightassociatewithConroy,IreadthepoemasadescriptionofJackasakindofsecularsaint. Itopenswitha typicalBrooks irony,appearingat first tohonorJack inreligiousterms,callinghimamanof“faith.”Knowing,ofcourse,thatConroywasaMarxist,Brookshasrevised “faith,” inserting instead an economic metaphor: he is not, the first line tells us, “aspendthriftoffaith”butonewhocarefullydolesouthisfaithwith“askinnyeye,”waitingtoseewhetherornotthatfaithis“boughttrue”or“boughtfalse”:

Andcomesituphisfaithboughttrue,Hespendsalittlemore.Andcomesituphisfaithboughtfalse,It’slonggonefromthestore.

Notreligiousinanysenseofaformalcreed,thisman’s“faith”isanethicofintegritybasedonan ideal of justice whose results must be observable, not on the abstractions of traditionalnotionsof“faith.”AfterConroy’sdeath,Brookstookatriptohishometown,Moberly,Missouri,wherehemoved in1965after leavingChicago, togivea talkabouthim.Wixondiscusses thevisit in his biography of Conroy and says it clearly demonstrated Brooks’s close ties to herfriend(1998,482).

Inadditiontothispoemdedicatedtoanopenlyleftistradical,Brooks’sLeft-inflected“LeftistOrator inWashington Park / Pleasantly Punishes the Gropers,” suggests her familiarity withscenes inWashingtonSquarePark,wheremilitantlyblackandLeft soapboxorators regularlyspoke.AsaresultofthedemographicchangesfollowingWorldWarI,whenAfricanAmericansmovedintothearea,WashingtonSquareParkbecameasiteofracialtensionandconflictinthe1920s and 1930s, and by the late 1950s, the park had become the (un)official dividing linebetween theblackSouthSideandwhiteHydePark (Brooks1983,41).BillMullennotes thatWashingtonSquarePark,borderingtheBlackBelt,hadalongreputationasthe“SouthSide’spublicflashpointforspeechesanddemonstrationsbyblackGarveyites,Communists,unionists,andotherradicals,”(Mullen1999,67),and,intheearly1930s,itattractedthousandsofblacksto hear its political speakers, even some black women speakers.26 According to the culturalhistorianBrianDolinar, in the late1950s,whenBrookswaswritingTheBeanEaters poems,the parkwould have attracted amostly black audience.27 There are stories of largeGarveyparadesinWashingtonPark,andtheblackhistorianHammurabiRobbgavesoapboxoratoriesthere.28 Brooksmight have known the park as a black cultural site because it is specificallynamed in Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, when Bigger Thomas drives the drunken JanErlone andMaryDalton aroundWashingtonPark as part of their desire to experience blackspace. As Jan and Mary embrace, Bigger “pulled the car slowly round and round the longgradualcurves”anddroveoutoftheparkandheadednorthonCottageGrove.29

InBrooks’spoem,theleftistoratoracknowledgesthatheorsheisengagedinathanklessand hopeless task, trying to fire up the audience in this “crazy snow,” an audience that isrushing togetoutof thecold, fearfullyaware that “thewindwillnot falteratany time in the /night.”Atthebeginningofthepoem,thespeakeriscompassionatetowardtheselisteners,the“PoorPale-eyed”(not“Pale-skinned),knowingthatthey“knownotwheretogo.”Awareofhis(or her) own ineffectiveness, the orator seems resigned to the reality that he cannot offerenoughinspirationtocompetewiththewintryweatherorreachthisaudienceof“gropers”witha vision capable of stirring them. Speaking in the voice of a religious prophet, however, heblames their indifferenceonmore thansimplyaneed toget inoutof thecold,butalsoonafailure of vision: “I foretell the heat and yawn of eye and the drop of the / mouth, and thescreech / Because you had no dream or belief or reach.”While the poet understands these“gropers,” like the folks in Brooks’s “kitchenette building,” as people under the harsh andinsistentmaterialrealitiesof their lives, thespeaker’ssympathy isfor the leftistorator,whoiscommittedtoremainingoutinthecoldtryingtoreachthepeople,andperhapssheevensharesthe orator’s desire to punish them “pleasantly” for their obstinacy. Even if the “thrice-gulpingAmazed”listenersarenotentirelyindifferenttothespeaker’smessage,thepatternofthreesinthepoem(“thrice-gulping”;“theheatandyawnofeye,”“thedropofmouth,”and“thescreech”;“nodreamorbeliefor reach”; “werenothing,” “sawnothing,” “didnothing”)pointsperhaps tothe threedenialsofChristbyPeterandaharsher rebukeof thecrowdasnotonly indifferentandpreoccupiedbutalsoasbetrayersofthemselvesandofalargercause.Astheoratortriestoreachareluctantandindifferentaudience,itisstrikingtonotethatthenarrator’ssympathyis

evokedforboththeunheedingcrowdandthedeterminedbutineffectual“leftistorator.”30Wecanonlyspeculateaboutwhatisactuallysaidbytheleftistorator,the“I”ofthepoem,

in his address to theWashington Park crowd, since his actual speech is unnarrated, but hespeaksinseveralregistersthatwouldappealtoablackaudience—asapoliticalvoice,asthevoice of a religious prophet, and as the poetic voice. In her reading of the poem, Brooks’sbiographerD.H.Melhemassumesthattheaudienceiswhiteandthattheoratoriscastigatingthemfortheirapathyandlackofconviction(1987,118).Butinthelate1950s,theparkwouldhave been a predominantly black or interracial gathering center and that audience almostcertainlynotentirelywhite.31Moreover,Brooksdeliberatelyemployswhiteness to refer to theweather and thus anticipates then forestalls any easy identification with race. In Brooks’scritique, the “Pale-eyed” listeners seduced into indifferenceandcomplacencyandunwilling toact,isarecurringthemeinherpoetryandnotnecessarilyraciallyinflected.32

Two more poems from The Bean Eaters I read as representative of a “Left” politicalsensibilitybecausetheyshowBrooks’sprofoundalignmentwith thosedisadvantagedbyclassandrace.Thefirstpoem,entitledwithBrooksianirony“ALovelyLove,”isaboutthefirstsexualexperienceoftwoyoungpeoplewhoselivesaresuchthattheencountertakesplaceinanalleyorstairway.Thepoemopenswithan imperative:“Let itbealleys.Let itbeahall…Let itbestairways and a splintery box.”Rather than the imaginative space of the conventional sonnetwhereloveisaccordeddignityandmeaning,thespacetheseloversoccupyfortheir illicit lovecreates a disturbance: it is a place that “cheapen[s] hyacinth darkness,”where there is “rot”and“thepetalsfall.”

Theelegiacmoodandbitterwisdomof thepoemarecreatedby thespeakeraddressingherorhislover,speakingofthewaytheir loveaffair ischeapenednotbytheir lovemakingbutbyugly“epithetandthought”thrownbythose“janitorjavelins”that“rot”and“makepetalsfall.”As she has done repeatedly throughout this period of her “high” modernist experimentation,Brooks revisesahighmodernist form—thesonnet—tocritique those traditionsand togive tothepoorthetrappingsofpoeticform.

Thespeaker,however, is resistant to thedefamationofherexperience,and tohonor thatexperience,she(orhe)endowsitwiththeeleganceandfragranceof“hyacinth”(the“hyacinthdarknessthatwesought”).Thespeaker,smallenoughtobe“thrown”down,then“scraped”byher or his lover’s kiss and “honed” as one would sharpen a tool, is not caressed in thisencounter. Nonetheless, the act entails more than the awkward and inadequate moves of ayounglover;heorshesmilesawaytheir“shocks”inanattempttobereassuring,andthepoemshowsthatboththeseinexperiencedyoungpeoplehavebeenunsettledbytheirsexuality.Inthethird quatrain, the speaker compares this love and the possible birth itmight produce to thebirth of Christ and, in a caustic comparison, names Christ’s birth “that Other one,” chargingreligiousmythwith both irrelevance and otherness: thisCavern is not themythic cave of theChrist child, and there are no “swaddling clothes,” no “wisemen,” and no blessed birth. Thebirthrightoftheloversisonlythefeelingthattheymustrunbeforetheyarecaught,probablybythose people whose “strict” rules, both religious doctrine and social norms, would condemntheir lovemaking inalleysandstairways: “Run /Peoplearecoming. /Theymustnotcatchushere/Definitionlessinthisstrictatmosphere.”

Thereisanotherreferenceinthecouplettothestrictconventionsofthesonnetform.Byitsrepeated references to those public, dark, and indecent locales, the poem, like the couple,violates the lovelier love traditionally associated with the sonnet. In this space outside ofconventions, the couple is “definitionless,” without standards or traditions reserved for those“lovelier loves”sanctionedbymyth,convention,andpoetictraditions.So,whattomakeofthe

title,“ALovelyLove,”andtheopeningtag“Lillian’s”beneaththetitleofthepoem?Isthispoema tribute to someone named Lillian and to Lillian’s “lovely love,” perhaps her first sexualexperience?Brooks is, of course, subverting the traditions that have historically omitted girls(andboys)likethesetwo.

In a conversation with the literary critic Aaron Lecklider, I became aware of the genderambiguity of the poem. Since the only gender signifier is the reference to “Lillian’s” thatprefaces the poem—the poem invites a queer reading,with the two young lovers possibly asame-sex couple. Under the terms of a homophobic culture, two gay lovers would also belabeled “Definitionless.”This lexiconofdevianceand transgressiveness in thepoemsuggeststhat inpushingagainst theboundariesof respectabilityBrooksmayhave intendedtoalign thepoemwithsexualaswellasclassdevianceinthenarrator’sembraceofthetwolovers.IwouldarguethataqueerreadingofthepoemisfurtherevidencethatBrookswasclearlycapableofthe political deviance, boldness, and indifference to conventional norms required for anembraceoftheLeft.33

“TheGhostattheQuincyClub”isacompanionpoemto“ALovelyLove,”withBrooksagaintakingontheissueofclassandthe“darkfolk”omittedfrom,marginalizedby,anddiscardedbywhite patriarchal traditions. The Quincy Club is an old upper-class establishment, a genteelsocialclubof“Tea”and“Fathers,”ownedanddominatedbythewhitemaleelitethatexcludedblackandJewishfolk,wheretheAfricanAmericanDuSableMuseumisnowlocated.Thepoemopens with a vision of the past, with one of the genteel (“Gentile”) daughters of the formerQuincyClubfathersdriftingdownthestaircaseandwaftingintothehallsof“polishedpanels”intheir“filmystuffsandall.”

The poet-narrator is blunt and sarcastic, sneering at these “Gentile” daughters turned,presumably by their fathers, into “filmy downs,” “filmy stuff,” “Moth-soft” and “off-sweet”—ephemeral, insubstantial, and easily snuffed out. Their “velvet voices” are described here asmovingalmostasthoughdirectedbyametronome(“lessened,stopped,rose”)—that imposesonthemanexactandpreciserhythm.Theenjambmentbetweenthefirstandsecondlineinthisstanzaforcesthe“velvetvoices”togivewaytothe“Rise”ofthe“raucousHowdys,”thosenewraw sounds that now, with energy and swagger, perhaps with vulgar curse, challenge andreplace theold, theprivileged, and thewhite. In the current arrangement of things, “TeaandFather”arereplacedby“darkfolk,drinkingbeer.”

BothofthesepoemsenactakindofleftistrecodingofthespacesofBrooks’sChicago.Sherejects the soft, the off-sweet, the demure, the very image often imposed on her ownautobiographical persona. One could read these final lines as Brooks’s silent, suppressedpoliticalvoice—raw,raucous,challenging,vulgar,andcoarse,rejectingtheoldorderjustastheculturalLefttriedtodo.

Black left-wingculturalworkerswereunder intensepressureby1953(thesameyear thatBrooks’s friend Langston Hughes was summoned to appear before McCarthy’s SenateInvestigative Committee) to distance themselves from radical left-wing affiliations. I placeBrooksasbothan insider andanoutsider in theColdWar literary realm,awriter aiming forliterary recognition, perhaps even insider status, but also writing a novel and poetry thatsubverts the conservative racial politics of theColdWar 1950s. Shewas not immune to theallure ofmainstream success. Along with the publication ofMaudMartha, Brooks had beenselectedbyMademoiselle asoneof its ten “Womenof theYear.” In1949, she received thePulitzerPrize,and,in1957,shewasselectedbytheJesuitsofChicagoasoneoftheirhundredoutstandingChicagoans,tocelebratetheirhundred-yearanniversaryoftheJesuitsinChicago.In aChicagoTimes article, she is listed for the award as “Mrs.GwendolynBrooksBlakely,

poetandauthor.”IntheTimesphotographBrooksisattiredinawhiteformalgown,seatedinthe center of the front row along with the civic leaders, businessmen and women, socialworkers,laborleaders,lawyers,authors,anoperaimpresario,philanthropists,sportsleaders,scientists,andeducators.Dr.PercyJulianandDr.RoscoeGilesappear tobe theonlyotherblacksinthephoto.Theentireissuewithphotograph,whichBrookskeptallofherlife,issavedintheBrooksarchivesattheUniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley.Onthefrontpageofthatissue,Brookswroteinhersignature,strong,boldhandwriting,“SaveThisAlways.”

I understand Brooks’s black nationalism as essential to the development of her aestheticandcritical toherownpolitical formation,andperhaps itwasBrooks’sexpiation forwhatsheconsideredwritingforawhiteaudience.Butthischapterunderscorestheproblemofdismissingormarginalizing the radicalpolitics in thisearlierwork.Letme illustratewithanexample fromthemarginaliaBrooksappendedtoanarticleintheDecember1970issueoftheblackleft-wingjournalLiberator. Inaneditorial entitled “BigBrother,” theeditorDanielH.Watts rejected thesurging tide of black nationalism, arguing that “the rhetoric of Black Power was becoming a‘gospel’ of authentic blackness thatWatts said ignored the “very nature of our diversity” andcouldresultinour“becomingslavestoaninhumaninstitutioncalledoneness.”Theonethingwedon’tneed,pleadedWatts,is“anOrwellianBlackBrother.”Brookswasobviouslyincensedbythiseditorial,asisclearfromthedoublemarginaliashewroteonthesideandatthebottomofthe page. In her large bold handwriting, she demanded, “How about anOrwellian Big BlackBrotherhood,” using the same term Ellison used to signify the Communist Party in InvisibleMan. Indoubleunderlining,shewrote, “Wecan’tafford indulgence in this ‘diversity’stuff rightnow. It hadbetter be ‘oneness’ rightnow”—with quotationmarks around “oneness.”We seehereBrooks’scommitmenttotheblackpowernationalismofthe1970s,whichdidindeedoftenattempt to suppress difference under the guise of black unity and, inmany instances, eithercelebratedortoleratedthemaledominanceandhomophobiaoftenassociatedwithnationalism.

Brooks’spublicembraceofblacknationalismhascertainlyhelpedobscureandunderminethe power of her earlier political commitments and aesthetic innovations. BothMaudMarthaandThe Bean Eaters suggest something of what we lose in the dismissal of Brooks’s pre–blacknationalistwriting.ThebodyofworkBrooksproducedinthe1940sand1950s, formallychallenginginwaysthatcreatenewmeanings, is informedbymanycategoriesofcritique,notjustrace;itisproletarian,militantlyraceandclassconscious,feminist,andantiwar,opentoallformsofdiversity,rejectingthekindofideologicalrigiditythatproducesthe“oneness”shelateradvocated. Brooks herself insisted for years that black writers have all kinds of wonderfulmaterial inblack life toworkwith,but that they, likeallwriters,have tocreateandworkwithformalelements—inherwords,theyhaveto“cookthatdough.”Theefforttodothathardwork—to struggle with language, to create something “linguistically and stylistically” beautiful,meaningful,andchallenging,shouldneverhavebeendismissedaswriting forwhite folksorakind of racial shortcoming. In the final analysis, we must take our cues from Brooks’s ownpoliticalandaestheticdefenseofherearlyarchive,offeredretrospectivelyin1966:“butIhavejudged important the very difficult creation of poems and fiction and essays which even aquarterofacenturyagowere—andarenow—bearersofahotburden.”ThatburdensurfacesinBrooks’shot,militant,andleftist,poeticvocabularyandstyle.34

FIGURE4.3.GwendolynBrooksinChicagoDailyNewsphotocommemoratingJesuitcentennialinChicago(1957).Source:CourtesyoftheBancroftLibrary,UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley

I

5FRANKLONDONBROWN:THEENDOFTHEBLACKCULTURALFRONTANDTHETURNTOWARDCIVIL

RIGHTSHow,then,shouldAmericanliteraturedealwiththesepeople,crushedforcenturiesbeneathaninsufferableweightofexploitation,calumnyandderision,yetalwaysrising,theirpresenceandtheirstruggleevermockingthestridentpretensionsofthenation?

—LOUISE.BURNHAM,THEGUARDIAN,1959

Iwantedtomakeithiptobesociallyconscious.

—FRANKLONDONBROWN,1960

NORDERTOreevaluateblackColdWarliteraryproductionattheendofthe1950s,Iturntoalittle-knownnovel,TrumbullPark,byanotherChicagoan,FrankLondonBrown,published in1959.IfRalphEllison’s1952novelInvisibleManwasthequintessentialblackColdWartext

of the early 1950s, distinguished for its highmodernism and its disillusionmentwith the Left,thenBrown’snovel,apoliticallyengagedand formally innovative formofsocialprotest,mightbeconsidered the representativeblackColdWar textat theotherendof the1950s (Schaub1991, 94). Deeply immersed in and defined by the cultural and political collisions of thatmoment—civilrightscoalitionism,insurgentblacknationalism,Leftinterracialalliances,andFBIsurveillance—TrumbullPark forcesanengagementwith the literaryandculturalpoliticsof theColdWar1950s.1

The cultural and literary historian AlanWald was the first to suggest that, given Brown’sconnections with a radical union and the publication of his novel during the period ofMcCarthyism,TrumbullParkshouldbereadasablackColdWartext(1995,488).SpurredbythisnudgefromWaldandbythediscoveryofBrown’sFBIfile,IbegantolookmorecloselyatBrown’sradicalpoliticsandtoreadthenovelnotinthelimitedregisterofhiscivilrightsactivismbut in the light of his leftist radical résumé, as a reflection of the tensions of the late 1950sbetweencivil rights,blacknationalism,andtheradicalLeft, tensionsall tooevident inChicagoblack politics. As the literary historian Bill V. Mullen reminds us in the conclusion ofPopularFronts, his studyofChicago’sblackLeft, by the1950sand1960s, black/Left allianceswerealreadyshowingthesetensions:“(white)biglabor,theCommunistParty,andtheOldLeftwerechallenged and in many ways superseded by civil rights coalitionism, insurgent blacknationalism, and interracial alliances under black political leadership” (1999, 202). AswewillseefromaclosereadingofhisFBI file,Brown’spolitical lifeandhisworkreflect thiseclecticmixture.Hewasactiveincivilrights,innationalistcircles,andinradicalgroups,andalloftheseelements percolate in his novel, colliding and conflicting in some cases, overlapping andintersectinginothers.

Brown’s radical politics probably began as far back as his years at Roosevelt College,known in the 1950s as “The LittleRedSchoolhouse” because of themany left-wing activists

there, where hemet and became friendswith the former congressmanGusSavage,HaroldWashington (the first blackmayor of Chicago), and the community activist Bennett Johnson,amongothers.TheRooseveltgrouppursueditsnationalisticaimsthroughtheChicagoLeagueof Negro Voters, which whites were not allowed to join, although periodically, according toJohnson, they worked with the white Left. The group insisted on calling themselves“progressives”because,Johnsonsays,“leftist”automaticallymeantcommunist,and“wewerenot Communists. We were progressives.”2 Both Johnson and Brown worked closely withcommunists like Ishmael Flory and Claude Lightfoot, who were staples of the ChicagocommunistLeft.3Whateverpolitical labelhe favored,Brownwasactive inseveralunionsand,most importantly, served for two years (1954–1955) as program coordinator for Chicago’sDistrict 1 of the UPWA, described in all accounts as vibrant and eclectic: a left-wing,communist-influenced,antiracist,black-ledtradeunionthatworkedonbehalfofblackwomen’sequality and was one of the few CIO-led unions that refused to purge communists from itsranks,4consistentlyproducingcooperationbetweenthenationalistsandtheLeft(Halpern1997,241).5

Withthishistoryinmind,wemightbeabletoseeTrumbullParkasacultural,historical,andformal hybrid bearing a complicated mixture of the political traditions that help produce thenovel’saesthetics.Whetherornotcriticswereastuteenough to recognize them, thesignsofliterary andpolitical Left are everywhere in thenovel. Thenovel’s focuson collectivepoliticalstruggle, its documentary-styledepictionof racialized violenceandblack resistance, its focuson and identification with the worker and working-class solidarity, its oblique references topolitical surveillance, and its call to uniteU.S. civil rights battleswith global struggles againstwhitesupremacyrepresentedby the1955BandungConferenceare literarystrategiescloselylinked to the proletarian fiction of the 1930s and to the antiracism of the black cultural frontnarratives like the short stories Ellisonwrote in the 1940s. They display some affinity to theracialandethnicfocusofwhatMichaelDenningcallsthe“ghettopastorals.”Denningdescribesthe ghetto pastoral as a form of proletarian literature that was part naturalist fiction, partpastoraltaleoftheethnicworkingclass,usuallywithoutafocusontopicalpoliticaleventsandgenerally written by writers who had grown up in the working class (1996, 230–258). ThusGwendolyn Brooks’s 1953 novelMaud Martha fits the pattern of the ghetto pastoral morecloselythanBrown’snovel,whichfocusesonpoliticalstruggle,butbothBrooks’sMaudMarthaand Trumbull Park bear signs of these cultural and literary traditions of the Left, althoughneither texthaseverbeenconsideredwithin leftist literary traditions. I readBrown’snovelaspartofamoreexpansiveandflexiblesocialprotestaesthetics,oneproducedand inspired,atleastinpart,byhisleftistaffiliations,whichIdocumentthroughhisnewlydiscoveredFreedomofInformationAct(FOIA)file.WhatIhopetoshowisthat,eveninthelate1950sastheLeftwas crumbling under the onslaught of McCarthyism and the word “communism” had clearlybecomeapejorative,blackwritingcontinues tobe influencedby leftist cultural strategiesandideologies, thus reflecting how deeply the cultural aesthetics of the Left permeated AfricanAmericanculturalproduction,evenastheColdWarcriticsandthoseof latergenerationstriedtoseparateblackandred.6

The idea forTrumbullPark (1959)wasbornwhenBrownandhiswifeEvelynmovedwiththeirtwochildrentoChicago’sTrumbullParkHousingProjectinApril1954,justamonthbeforetheBrownv.BoardofEducationSupremeCourtdecision.ThehistorianSterlingStuckey7saysinhis reviewof thenovel (1968) thatBrownwasmotivated towritebyhisexperienceof the“newmilitancyintheNorth,”encouragedbytwoimportantSupremeCourtdecisions,whichsetthestagefor thebattle inTrumbullPark.8By1954, theChicagoNAACP,buoyedby the1948

SupremeCourt decisionagainst racially restrictivehousing covenants,9 had targetedTrumbullPark for integration. Though the Brown family wasmotivated by a personal decision to findaffordablehousingfortheirgrowingfamily,Brownwasnostrangertopoliticalactivism.Hewasanorganizer in the left-wingUnitedPackinghouseWorkersUnionandactive incivil rightsandnationalistorganizations.Evenwhenhewasgravelyillwithleukemiainthesummerof1961,hejoinedthewade-inatChicago’sRainbowBeachonLakeMichigantoprotestthepolicybarringblacks fromswimming there. Inan interviewafter thepublicationof thenovel,hewasexplicitaboutthenationalistaimsofhisnovel,describinghismaincharacterLouis“Buggy”MartinasakindofEverymanwhocouldencourageblackpoliticalchange:“IfIcouldgettheNegroreaderto identifyhimselfwith thisman, then,at theendof thenovel, the readerwouldbesworn tocourage—ifthetrickItriedtopullonNegroreadersworked”(Brownlee1960,29).

Thenovelisnarratedinthefirst-personbyLouis“Buggy”Martin,anairplanefactoryworkerwho,asBrowndid,movestoTrumbullParkwithhiswifeHelenandtwodaughters.Motivatedby the desire and need to get out of a tenement apartment, and with the assistance of theChicagoHousingAuthority,theMartinfamily(liketheBrowns)joinsseveralotherblackfamiliestointegratetheproject,buttheyarecompletelyunpreparedfortheintensityofracistviolence.With almost total autobiographical consistency, the events in the novel closely align with thehistorical facts recounted inArnoldR.Hirsch’s (1995) extensive investigative article “MassiveResistanceintheUrbanNorth:TrumbullPark,Chicago,1953–1966.”Withthetacitapprovalofthe police and housing officials, whomade no arrests and did little to stop the harassment,whitescarriedonpsychologicalwarfareagainsttheblackfamilies,throwingbricks,stones,andsulfurcandles through theirwindows;congregatingonstreetcorners inhostilegroups;puttingout hate sheets; andmaking it dangerous for black families to use any community facilities,includingstores,parks,andchurches.Themobsweresothreateningthatblackswererequiredtosignpolice logstoget inandoutof theirapartmentsandhadtobedrivenbyarmedpoliceescort, in filthypolicewagons, topointsofsafetybeyond theprojects,where theycould thenboardpublictransportation.FortheentirethreeandahalfyearstheMartins(liketheBrowns)livedinTrumbullPark,whitemobsdideverythingintheirpowertomakelifeunbearablefortheblack families and to sabotage the desegregation effort. At night themobs set off explosivedevices,whichwentoffinthree-to-fiveminuteintervalswithflashesanddeafeningthunder.ThejazzmusicianOscarBrownJr. reported thatwhenhevisited theBrownsduring this time, theonlypersonwhodidn’tjumpateveryexplosionwastheBrown’snewborninfant:“Thenewbabywas so acclimated to the sound that she apparently thought theworld exploded every threeminutes.”10 The Brown family fought the battle for Trumbull Park from 1954 to 1957, untilBrown’swifeEvelynwaspregnantwiththeirthirdchild,aboywhodiedforty-fiveminutesafterhewasborn,whichEvelynblamesonthestressofthoseyears.Notingtheironyofbeingcalled“communists”and“un-American”bythewhitemobsthatassaultedthemdailyandnightlyintheproject,Evelynwroteinhermemoirofthisperiod:“WeweremoreAmericanthananyone,andwewerebeingattackedbypeoplewearinglongdressesandbabushkas,callingus‘niggers’inaforeignaccent”(Colbert1980,1–4).11

Since several other black families joined the Brown family in this struggle, Brown wascompelled by the actual experiences of the Trumbull Park protestors to resist the single-protagoniststoryandtocreatethenovel’scollectivenarrativefocus.Thesevenreal-lifecouplesinvolved indesegregatingTrumbullParkareportrayed in thenovel,probablyaccurately,asadistinctly unorganized, contentious group whose political positions range from not wanting tooffendwhites to planning to arm themselves and shootwhites on sight. For the first severalmonths,thecouplesliveinterrorandshame,allofthemreluctanttochallengethemobs,which,

withthecollusionofthepolice,gatheraroundtheirhomesatnight,chantingracialepithetsanddetonatingexplosives.Inresponse,thecouplesinitiallyboarduptheirwindows,eat insilence,andsleepinfear.Theyareforcedtorideinandoutoftheprojectsinpolicewagonsandsignlogbookseverytimetheyenterorleave,asiftheyaretheonesguiltyofacrime.Finally,witheach one of the characters encouraging the others, themen andwomen together, almost incounterpoint, collectively perform their first acts of defiance: Helen begins, shouting to thepolice that theywillmeetwhenever theywant andwithout permission. Buggy’s voice followshers,ErnestinebacksHelenup,ArthurandMonajointhem,andthenNadineandTerry.Theseunlikely“soldiersofTrumbullPark”graduallybecomeemboldened:Ernestineleadsthewayoutof the house through “the ring of uniforms and plainclothes,” refusing to sign the log booksdespitepolicethreats.Intheclaustrophobicconfinesofthehousingproject,themaincharacterandhisfamilylearntostanduptowhitemobviolence,thoselessonsofleadershipandcourageenabledentirelythroughcollectivestruggle.

After Brown’s death in 1962 at age thirty-four, Trumbull Park fell into obscurity. (Brownwroteonlyoneothernovel,TheMythMaker,whichwaspublishedposthumouslyin1969.)Outof sync with the literary integrationist moment and too early to be a part of the Black ArtsMovement,TrumbullPark remained out of print until its 2005 publication in theNortheasternUniversity Press series edited by Professor Richard Yarborough. Although there are manyreasons for Trumbull Park’s obscurity, we must acknowledge that writers who championedsocial protest, as Brown did, were almost surely writing themselves and their work intoobscurity, victims, they would be called, of a naïve faith in ideology and in the efficacy ofliteratureasapoliticalandculturalweapon.ThesocialprotesttraditionrepresentedbyRichardWrightwaswrittenoffasan“exhaustedmode”(GatesandMcKay2004,1360)contaminatedby its relationship to Marx, Lenin, the Communist Party, race, and the absence of highmodernist technique. Ifweunderstand the1950sasaColdWarstandoffbetween theUnitedStatesandtheSovietUnion,whichmadeacceptablethegovernmentrepressionofliberalsandleftists,ofthoughtaswellasacts,ofspeechandthewrittenword,thenitiseasytoseethatitwas a short walk to subscribing to the official conservative line (also known as the liberalanticommunistline)thatartshouldbefreefromanysocial,political,orhistoricalcontext.Inoneof the most moving personal accounts of this period, the author and, more importantly,publisherAndreSchiffrinwrites in hismemoirAPolitical Education:Coming of Age in ParisandNewYorkthattherehasneverbeenanyrealcalculationoftheextent,damage,andterrorofpostwarpersecutionof liberal thought:progressivebookstoreswerebuggedand forced toclose,themailofordinaryAmericanswasintercepted,J.EdgarHooverspreadasteadydietof(often false) information to newscasters and newspapers, the left-wing press disappeared,writersandfilmmakerswereblacklisted,unionsweredestroyed,andnearlyeverymainstreampublicationintheUnitedStatesbecamewisetowhatwasacceptabletotheFBIandtheStateDepartmentandpublishedaccordingly.Schiffrinconcludes:“alllearnedtoacceptandinternalizethelessonsofMcCarthy”(2007,98–103).

Those lessons were well learned by the scions of the elite literary establishment, whodominated1950s literary cultureandhelped facilitate the1950s turn fromsocial realism toaconservativemodernist aesthetics, a story that has been rehearsedmany times and ismorecomplicated than I canpresenthere.Suffice it to say thatoneof thecasualtiesofColdWarpolitics was literature or films that too aggressively engaged social, racial, and/or politicalconcerns. Literary productions that rose to the top of the mainstream charts exhibited thequalities approved of by the New Critics—complexity, irony, paradox, and ambiguity—whichbecamethemeasureofliteraryvalue.Socialprotestwaspresumedtohavenoneofthese,and

Trumbull Park’s deep concern with race and civil rights would havemarked it as too tightlytethered to political issues and not eligible for consideration by theNewCritics.12 As HarveyTeres notes in his study Renewing the Left: Politics, Imagination, and the New YorkIntellectuals, ignoringraceandthepoliticalandculturallifeofAfricanAmericanswasstandardprocedure“fromthe1930stothe1960s” foramajorNewCritical literary journal likePartisanReviewaswellasfor“nearlyeveryotherwhitepublicationinthecountry”(1996,213).

BlackculturalcriticswerealsoofthisColdWarculturalmindset.AttheFirstConferenceofNegroWritersin1959andintheearlierPhylonsymposiumin1950,severalmajorblackcriticssuggested that the elimination of black characters and racial concerns was the price of theticket into themainstream. In his two early essays, “Everybody’s Protest Novel” (1949) and“ManyThousandsGone”(1951),JamesBaldwinborrowedliberallyfromthecodewordsoftheNewCriticism to claim that “only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger,darkness,canwefindatonceourselvesandthepowerthatwillfreeusfromourselves”(1949,1701).Lookingforcomplexityandambiguityinalltherightplaces,Baldwinestablishedhissolidstanding in New Critical discourse and helped pound another nail in the social protest coffin(1949, 1699). Ralph Ellison’s National Book Award–winning Invisible Man was measuredworthybyitsembraceofNewCriticalaestheticvaluesandbyitsdistancefromsocialprotest.What the cultural historian AndrewHemingway says in his study of visual artists on the Leftapplies equally to literary artists of the 1950s: the barrier between critical success in theculturalmainstreamanddoingsociallycommittedartbecame“impermeable”(2002,146).

Still,inthecivilrightsatmosphereofthelate1950s,theColdWarculturalmachineswerenolonger quite so powerful as they had been in the early and mid-1950s. Brown’s first novelgarnered a fair amount of literary attention in important literary and cultural venues andwasreviewed in major newspapers and magazines. The New Yorker called it a “vigorous andexciting first novel.” The South African writer Alan Paton, the author of Cry, the BelovedCountry, wrote a featured review on the front page of the April 12, 1959,Chicago TribuneSundaybooksupplement,claimingthatTrumbullPark,thoughitwouldshamewhiteAmericans,wasa story of courageandnot hatred.VanAllenBradley, the literary editor of theChicagoDailyNews,praisedboththeauthorandthepublisherforthecourageittook“tobringthisbookintobeing” (1959).Even inpartsof theSouth thenovelwasenthusiastically received.Writingfor theMontgomeryAlabamaAdvertiser, Bob Ingram (1959) said that though the storywasfictionalized,its“feelingofwhiteagainstblack”was“toorealnottobetrue.”

Langston Hughes (1959) praised the new author in Jet for writing about “his ownpeople”—“theirwarmth,theirhumor,theirlanguage,theirblues”—withloveandfordocumentingracialstruggle.13WhentheChicagopoetGwendolynBrooks,whoknewBrownwell,eulogizedhim in a poem published inNegroDigest, “Of Frank London Brown: A Tenant of theWorld”(1962, 44), she imagined him in nationalist terms as a religious mystic and a prophet ofrighteousfury,notunlikeMalcolmX.WhileBrooksdroppedhintsofamoreexpansivepoliticalview in her description of Brown as a “tenant of the world,” reviews of his novel viewed italmost solely as a civil rights/nationalist text.14 Indeed, the images in the novel of marching,singingblackprotestorsandwhite-black integrationbattlesseem todemanda readingof thenovelasacivil rights/racialnarrative,andsuchscenesand images inspired the initialswellofcriticalinterestbutcreatedsomethingofacriticalbindforthenovelaswell.AlongwithBrown’sself-proclaimed commitment to progressive black activism and to social protest writing,commentaries about Trumbull Park that could not or would not evaluate the novel asideologically nuanced and/or formally innovative sealed the novel firmlywithin the confines ofU.S.racialprotestfiction.

I suggest that understandingTrumbullPark asa lens throughwhich to read theanxietiesand ambivalences produced by the Cold War can help us confront our amnesia about thatperiod.IproposeamultilayeredreadingofTrumbullPark thatshowsushowtoreadthisandotherblacktextsoftheColdWar,whichareoftensubmergedundertheall-purposeheadingof“socialprotest.”15AsatextproducedattheculturalcrossroadswhentheinstitutionsoftheLeftwerecrumblingunder thepressuresofMcCarthyism,as thecivil rightsactivismof the1950swasstrugglingtoemerge,andasthepowerfulcoalitionsofthecivilrightsandblacknationalismwereactivating,TrumbullPark respondstoacomplexculturalandpoliticalmoment.TheColdWar mafia was playing a serious game of hardball, and these pressures had seriousconsequences.AfterLangstonHugheswaschastenedbyMcCarthy’sinvestigativecommitteeinthe spring of 1953, he hurried that following summer to remove all references to the mostfamousAmericanNegrointellectualW.E.B.DuBoisfromhiscollectionofbiographicalessaysFamous American Negroes. In return for his complicity and silence, as we learn from hisbiographer Arnold Rampersad, Hughes was allowed to “survive on acceptable terms as awriter” (2002, 229–231). Later that decade, the FBI dropped in to review a production ofLorraine Hansberry’s 1959 playRaisin in the Sun and reported in her file that the play hadpassed bureau inspection—Raisin was not communistic, the agent reported, but by the timetheplayopenedseveralcontroversialsceneshadalreadybeenscuttled.16PauleMarshall, theauthorof the1959novelBrownGirl,Brownstones,wasmysteriouslysummoned to theStateDepartmentaslateas1965fora“briefing”beforebeingapprovedforaculturaltourofEuropewithLangstonHughes.Shefoundherself inaKafkaesquescene,seatedinfrontofadeskonwhichtheStateDepartmentofficialhadplacedMarshall’s“extensive”FOIAdossier,containing,Marshall discovered, “a detailed account of my involvement in every political organization towhich I hadeverbelonged” (2009,5–6).Brown is representativeofmanypolitically engagedblack writers of the late 1950s—trying to construct a resistant black subjectivity and anoppositional cultural critique but also vying for mainstream acceptance, all while trying tomaintainasafedistancefromtheveryleft-wingradicalismthatinspiredtheirwork.

BROWN’SFBIFILE

It is impossible to imagine that as he began writing Trumbull Park Brown could dismiss orignorethebureau’sthreateningimplications,withitsfreedomtoinvadehisprivatelifeaswellasits power to destroy his reputation and censor his writing.Wewill never know the extent towhich Brown’s FBI encounters influenced the literary politics ofTrumbull Park, whether theyinducedwhatMaxwell calls “FBI-provokeddefiningprerevisions” (2003,62), butwedoknowthat he consistently thwarted the agents with his unwavering civil rights dedication and hisnoncommittal statements about communism. Reading Brown’s novel alongside his FOIA filedoes offer, however, an interpretive strategy for deciphering the novel’s tensions. Browncreatesaplotthatseesawsbackandforthbetweenablackcivilrights–centerednarrativeandone that is inflected by but constantly backgrounds its black leftist cultural front politics. TheFOIA filemakes it easier to spot this juggling act in the novel.What I want to do first is toexamine these tensionsby lookingatTrumbullPark andBrown’sFBI file as interactive textsthat, taken together, reveal the novel’s conflicting aims. Iwill first provide a brief synopsis ofBrown’s FOIA file, then closely read four scenes in which Brown stages a rhetoricalconfrontationbetweenanemergentblacknationalismand left-leaningpolitics,which I call thenovel’sduelingradicalisms.TheseduelsenacttheverytensionsIrefertoearlier—betweencivil

rights coalitionism, insurgent black nationalism, and left-wing interracial alliances, each of thefourscenesproducingthenovel’spalimpsestictracesofblack-Leftalliances.

Notwithstanding the FBI’s nefarious record of trying to turn leftists into enemy spies,Brown’s FOIA file, which William J. Maxwell, the pioneer scholar of black spycraft textualstudies,generouslysharedwithme,underscoresmyclaimthatBrownwasamanoftheLeft.Ifthe leftist cultural front was constituted, as Bill Mullen argues, as a “coalition of liberals,radicals,tradeunionists,farmers,socialists,blacksandwhites,anti-colonialistsandcolonized,”(1999,3) then theonlygroupmissing fromBrown’scoalitionwas farmers.Brown’sFOIA file,dating fromMarch 21, 1956, presents an extensive résumé of what the FBI considered his“subversive” activities with peace activists, union organizers, the foreign born, civil rightsprotestors, communists, and dangerous periodicals. Among those activities cited were hismembership in the NAACP, his work as union organizer for the UPWA and later for theprogressiveTextileUnion,andhisone-yearsubscription to thecommunistpaperTheWorker.Additionally, the bureau cited Brown’s membership, including his signing of the nominatingpetition in 1950, in the Progressive Party—a group the FBI considered in league with theCommunistParty.17ThesuspicionthatBrownmayhavebeenacommunistwasraisedseveraltimes inhis file,withno firmevidenceexcept that thedescriptionof “aNegromale,27-yearsold,active in theNAACP,memberof thePackinghouseUnion,andreaderofCommunistdailypaper, ‘The Worker,’ [sic]” listed on the CP registration of the Illinois-Indiana CP District,matchedBrown’s.18

TheFBIinformantalsocaughtBrown’sspeechesatmeetingsoftheMidwestConferencetoDefendtheRightsofForeignBornAmericansonMay4and17,1955,wherehewasrecordedas stating that his unionwouldwork for the repeal of the infamous 1950McCarranAct thatgavetheattorneygeneralthepowertoinvestigate“un-American”activities.BrownattackedtheMcCarranActinparticularforitsuseagainstthoseunionswhose“mostactiveunionmembersareofforeignbirth,”anattacktheFBIwouldsurelyhaveconsidered“subversive”foritssupportofunionistsand foreigners(U.S.FBI,FrankLondonBrown,13).TheinformantaddedonMay19,1955,thatBrownhadstatedinhisspeechthat“everyone,whethertheybeforeignbornornative,shouldenjoytheBillofRightsandactionshouldbetakentoarousethepublicandinformthemofthedangerswithintheWalter-McCarranLaw[sic]”(14).ThepeacegroupsBrownwasaffiliated with—the Women’s Peace and Unity Club, American Women for Peace, and theAmericanPeaceCrusade—werealldesignatedbytheFBIasfrontsfortheCP.Anotherreportshows Brown speaking on March 26, 1957, at the International Women’s Day Dinner andProgramattheKenwood-EllisCenter,sponsoredbythe“Communistfront”WPUC.

The FBI file supports my claim about the links between Brown’s civil rights activism andleftist radicalism, since Brown used this meeting to detail what he called the “unbearable”conditionsatTrumbullPark.According to the report,Brownwent even further, arguing, in anobvious reference to hisTrumbullPark ordeal, “thatmembers of aminority group receive noprotectionwhilegoingtoandfromwork,andthat theywere insultedandassaulted frequentlyand[he]furtherstatedthattheUnitedStatescouldnotcondemnothernationsfordiscriminationof raceswhen this nation restrainsNegroes, Chinese, andMexicans under police rule” (28).What is important formypurposes is that thisFOIAfile,howevervenal themotivationsof theFBI, is theonlydocument thatgivesusasenseof theextentofBrown’s left-wing radicalism.The FBI even uncovered a politically radical genealogy for Brown. According to the files,Brown’sfather,FrankLondonBrownSr.,wasa“SoldererintheTinCopperWareUnion758oftheradicalMineMillWorkersUnion,CIOBranchSouthSide-WashingtonPark;5thWard,CookCounty.” It asserts that he and his wife,Myrtle L., a factoryworker, wereCPmembers for

aboutsixyears,until1945,whenBrownJr.wouldhavebeeneighteen.

FIGURE5.1(a).PagesfromFrankLondonBrown’sFOIAfile(1957).Source:U.S.FederalBureauofInvestigation.

FIGURE5.1(b).PagesfromFrankLondonBrown’sFOIAfile(1957).Source:U.S.FederalBureauofInvestigation.

WhatmayhavebeenthefinalstrawfortheFBI’ssecuritysensitivitieswasademonstrationon October 7, 1955, at the U.S. Customs House in Chicago, where Brown was “one ofapproximately 37 persons” protesting a session of the subcommittee of the Senate InternalSecurityCommittee,whichwasinvestigatingthesendingofcommunistpropagandathroughthemails.Theinformant“ChicagoT-1”(thetwentyinformantsinBrown’sFOIAfilearenumberedT-1 to T-20) reveals that Brown was one of the people carrying signs in the demonstrationreading, “This committee should investigate Mississippi,” “Mississippi is the real threat tointernalsecurity,”and “SenatorEastland,whokilledEmmettL.Till?”19As theseprotest signsmake clear, Brown was motivated by the racial inequalities reflected in the hypocrisy of aSenateinvestigativecommitteepowerfulenoughtomountanationalandinternationalcampaignofsurveillanceofcommunistsbutunabletoend(orevenproperlyinvestigate)racialterrorintheSouth,20 or, for that matter, in Chicago. This 1950s picket demonstrates the existence of apowerfulcivil rights/radicalLeftcoalition,but thesingularracial focusof theprotestsignsmayalsoforeshadowtheinstabilityofthatunity.TheFBI,however,didnotdrawanyfinedistinctionsbetween radical civil rights activists and radical leftists. Brown’s picketing of the Senateinvestigative committee leddirectly to theFBI’s decisiononNovember6, 1956, that “FRANKLONDONBROWNbeplacedon theSecurity Index.”21Anotherundated report cautioned that

theinvestigationofBrownshouldbe“assignedtomatureandexperiencedagentpersonnel,andcareshouldbetakensoasnottogivetheimpressionthattheBureauisinvestigatingthelaborunionactivitiesof———,”thenamesblackedout.

FIGURE5.1(c).PagesfromFrankLondonBrown’sFOIAfile(1957).Source:U.S.FederalBureauofInvestigation.

Brown’s FOIA file, dated from 1955 to 1957, was in the works before he began writingTrumbull Park. He might not have been aware of the extent of his FBI surveillance, whichpreventsmefromreadingthenovelasanextensivedialoguewiththe“F.B.Eyes,”asWilliamJ.Maxwell soeffectively readsClaudeMcKay’swork.22However,Brownwas contactedby theFBIforaninterview,andhisskillfulfencingwiththeFBIinthisparticularreportmayhavebeenthe pilot for the scene of FBI surveillance that appears in the novel.OnMay 22, 1957,withBrown safely out of Trumbull Park, which the FBI considered the potentially embarrassingterritoryofunleashedblackrage,bureauagentscontactedBrownnearhisnewhome(at308WestNinety-Fifth)and informedhim that theywere interested in “thesubversive infiltrationofunionsasisbeingconductedbytheCommunistParty(CP).”Browninvitedthemintothehouse,wheretheyquestionedhimabouthisknowledgeofCPactivity;heclaimedtohavenone.TheywarnedhimofCP tacticsandasked ifhewouldbewilling to “aid theFBI.”Brown’sanswersare at first evasive, then more direct, but always cagey. At first he says he is primarily

concerned with supporting his family through his work as organizer for the Textile WorkersUnionofAmericaandthathisaimistobecome“personallywealthy,”forinthatway“thecolorlines fall.”Whenasked ifhecouldaid theFBI,herefuses,saying thathecouldnotspare thetimefromhiswritingandthat,furthermore,“theFBIhadfailedhimin1955”whenhe“broughttothe attention of the FBI and other Federal and local agencies what he thought to be theinjusticesoftheTrumbullParksituation.”Becauseofthat,evenifhehadfeltsoinclinedtohelptheFBI, “hewasnotwilling” todoso in1957.Theagentsapparentlybelieved that theyhadexplainedtoBrown’ssatisfactionwhytheFBIcouldnothave intervened inTrumbullPark,andthereportblithelyassumesthat“hecouldnowunderstandwhynoaidcametohimandrealizednowthatsuchasituationcanonlybealteredbyanactoflegislation”(2).Throughoutthethree-hour interview, Brown was “very cordial and listened attentively.” He was “receptive to theremarksoftheagentandwascourteous,exhibitingnohostilitywhatsoeverduringtheinterview”(3).TheagentsdoseemdismayedaboutBrown’s “completelyapatheticattitude towards theCommunist exploitation of the Negro” and correctly conclude that the fight to desegregateTrumbull Park was a defining moment in Brown’s life: “It is the opinion of the agents thatBROWNwillalwaysrationalizeeveryaspectofhislifehenceforthinthelightof‘TrumbullPark.’”ThereportsaysthatBrownterminatedtheinterview,saying,“Hewouldnotappreciateanotherinterview.” The report ends: “BROWN is completely unreceptive to further discussion,”indicatinginsomanywordsthathewouldneverbeaCommunistPartymember“inasmuchastheCommunistPartycoulddonothingofvalueforhiminordertohelphimadvancefinanciallyorsociallyorinhisfightforequalrightsforpeopleofhisrace”(2).AswithcommentshemadeintheChicagoDefenderafter thepublicationofTrumbullPark, theFBI interviewsuggestsanambivalentpostureonBrown’spartthatmakesitdifficulttoassesswhetherhisanticommunistcomments were motivated by desires for upward mobility or were a serious critique of theLeft’s problematic relationship to black activism—or if theywere simply amaneuver to avoidcensure.On theotherhand, though these filesoftensupply informativebiographicalmaterial,onealwayshastoreadFOIAfilesskeptically,aspotentiallyunreliable,biased,anddeceptive,but one also has to read Brown as both character and author in the FBI text, a seasonedpoliticaloperativededicatedtoblackstruggle,bitteraboutthelackofFBIsupportfortheblackfamiliesfacingwhitemobsinTrumbullPark,producingforthe“F.B.Eyes”23hisownequivocal,mocking,andsubversiveperformance.

READINGFBIFILESANDTRUMBULLPARKASINTERACTIVETEXTS

ThroughoutTrumbullPark,thedirectlinksbetweenblackculturalaestheticsandthediscoursesof the literary Left are always undercut as Brown dances around these signs of the novel’sassociationswith theLeftand theCommunistParty.Throughout thenovel,Brownusesblackvernacularculturalforms—blues,jazz,blackvernacularspeech—assignsofoppositionandasa vehicle for producing class and race consciousness. This fusion inTrumbull Park of blackvernacularcultureandpoliticalstrugglemightbeconsidered,metaphorically,thesoundtrackforwhat isknownastheblackbelt thesis.Adopted in1928bythe internationalCommunistPartyas“TheCominternResolutionontheNegroQuestionintheUnitedStates,”theblackbeltthesisarguedthatblacksinAmericaconstituteda“communityofculture,”sharinglanguage,territory,economic life, and psychological makeup, and this thesis explicitly designated blacks in theAmericanSouthas“anoppressednation”withthe“therightofself-determination.”24While theCommunist Party’s notion of an African American nation rising up within the American South

wasneverarealisticpoliticalgoal(andinfactwasridiculedbymanyAfricanAmericans),25thepotentialities of an organized black community—particularly one that celebrated black cultureandhistory—excitedmanyoftheleadingblackintellectualsofthisera.AfricanAmericanwritersofthe1920s,1930s,and1940s,includingLangstonHughes,RichardWright,RalphEllison,andChesterHimes,whowereaffiliated in varyingdegreeswith communism,saw thepossibilitiesfor black cultural advancement in this embrace of black cultural forms.26 As part of a leftisteffort toembodyaunifiedblackcommunity,blackartistson theLeft increasingly representedblackvernacularculture in their texts throughthe incorporationof folkloreandacelebrationofjazzand theblues,believing that thiskindofcollectiveconsciousness,whichhad itssource inblack cultural traditions, could create the potential for political action. One example of theinfluenceoftheblackbeltthesisinBrown’snovelisthestagingofthefinalwalk-inscene,whentheTrumbullParkgrouprefusestorideinthesafetyofthepolicevansbutdecidestostanduptothewhitemobs.Narratedasacollectivechant,thewalk-inscenefeaturesitsmaincharacter—an “ideologically transformed” urban industrial worker—unitedwith the other Trumbull Parkprotestors,beltingoutaJoeWilliamsbluessong thatenables theirpolitical resistance.Thus,while thenovel’s credentials asa civil rights text seemnever in doubt,TrumbullPark is alsoinvestedinproducinganarrativebornofleftculturalvalues.

But if Brown aligned his work with traditions of social protest, his novel breaks with theformulasofsocial realismasdefinedbyRichardWright in the1930sand1940s.Despite thesimilaritieswithWrightinthenovel’sexaminationofclassexploitationandurbanracialviolenceandWright’s presence in Chicago leftist culture in the 1930s and 1940s, neitherWright norNativeSonappearasanythingbutfainttracesinBrown’sliteraryandculturalframework,andneitheriscitedbyBrownasaliteraryorpoliticalinfluence(Graham1990).IncontrasttoNativeSon’sBiggerThomas,TrumbullPark’smajorblackcharactersareseveralblackworking-classmarried couples based on the original Trumbull Park protestors. Over the course of theirdesegregation battle, they move from racial shame and fear to their first acts of politicalmilitancy, fromexperiencingblacknessas inferiority tomanifesting itspowerto inspirepoliticalaction—acleardeparturefromWright’sbleaknaturalism.Brownwasconsciousofhisroleasamodern, if not modernist, writer, consulting books on writing and citing artists as diverse asGwendolyn Brooks, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and TheloniousMonk as influences. Brown creditsMonkasamodernistmodelbecauseofthe“daringinexecutioninhiswork,”specificallycitingMonk’s conscious experimenting with combining “traditional blues and abstract bop as twofeaturesofareallydifferentmusic,”astrategythatBrowntriedtoemulatewith“jazz-orientedlanguage”inhisfiction(Brownlee1960,30).Thereareseveralplacesinthenovelwheremusicisanemotionalorpsychologicalbarometerofacharacter’s interior lifeorwhere it isused tosignifyorinspirecollectiveaction(Graham1990).27Atotherpointsinthenovel,Browndepartsentirelyfromconventionalnarration.Inaremarkablesceneabouthalfwaythroughthenarrative,thenarratordisruptshisownmale-privilegednarrativevoice,explicitlyquestioning thewayhehas representedwomen up to that point, after which the novel shifts its focus to women aspoliticalactivists.Likethemusicalavant-gardistand incontrast towhat is typicallyconsideredsocial protest, Brown plays with and occasionally dispenses with conventional realism, atechniquehewouldprobablyattributetohislessonsfromMonk.Heoftenreadhisshortstoriesontheradiotojazzaccompanimenttocapturethatspiritofimprovisationinhisfictionbecause,hesaid,“Iwantedtomakeithiptobesociallyconscious”(quotedinBrownlee1960,30).

LetmereturnheretothefourscenesIcallscenesof“duelingradical-isms,”eachofwhichjuxtaposesblackculturalorpoliticalnationalismandanimageofleftistinterracialradicalismbutrefusestheimplicationsofthelatter.Inthemidstoftheracialturmoilthefamilieshaveendured,

Buggy is listening toa church radioprogramand finds in theexuberanceof theblack churchmusicanunusualsenseofconnectionwithSouthernblackculture(whichseemsstraightoutoftheCP’sblacknationthesis),amuch-neededantidotetotheracialhatredheisexperiencinginTrumbullPark:

Ifelthappyinmybones,likeIhadjustbeensentamessagefromhome.Fromhome?Idon’tknowfromwhere.MaybefromtheSouth;maybefromthepast;maybefromthosepeopleIusedtoseeinHelen’sfather’sNegrohistorybook,withthatthick,bushyhairfixeduptheresomekindofway,andthosethickcurlymoustaches,andthatproudlookthat’sjustbeginningtogetbackinstyle.

(223)

Thesepictures from theNegrohistorybooksconjure forBuggyboth thosepublicportraitsofnineteenth-century black leaders like Frederick Doug-lass, with “bushy hair” and “that proudlook,” and also contemporary black nationalists, complete with Afro hairstyles and militantpolitics. Moreover, Brown’s nationalism surfaces throughout the novel, especially in thenarrator’s comments on the beauty of black faces. Buggy’s descriptions of Helen are aspolitical as they are poetic: “Deep dimples in her cheeks looking like great comma marks.Eyebrows like black rainbows curving around those deep-set night-time eyes, looking brownthenblack,andnothingbutsoul inthem”(122).InanotherpassagedescribingbothHelenandhermotherashaving“rich-brownskin”and“coarse,glossyhair”(221),theintenttocounterthenegative images of black skin and hair is obvious. On a larger political level, Buggy’sstatements of solidarity with the few black police officers allowed to patrol Trumbull Park isanother instance of both his and Brown’s nationalist intentions. One black policeman isdescribed as “tired and pained and wrinkled with some way-down-deepmisery” (140), and,almostagainsthiswill,Buggyisforcedtoacknowledgetheirsharedhistory:“Iknewthatitwasmymisery, thathismiserywasmine.Therewassomething in that tired face thatwaskin tome”(140).

ButevenasBuggytriestosolidifyhissomewhattenuoussenseofblackconsciousnesswithimages of blackmilitancy, the novel shifts abruptly in the next chapter to ameeting betweenBuggy and Arthur, another black resident, andMr. O’Leary, a white Trumbull Park neighbor,who, Arthur says, has something they both need: “Knowledge, Daddio, knowledge. Mr.O’Leary’sgot it”(234).Mr.O’Learyturnsouttobeatruewhiteally,attackedbytheTrumbullParkmobs that view him as a “nigger lover,” thus forcingBuggy to revise his feelings aboutwhites: “Herewasamanwhowaswhite,whohad toputwoodenboardsagainsthiswindowjustasArthurhad” (235).O’Learygives the twomen informationabout the largerplotbehindtheTrumbullParkbattle,explaininghowspeculatorsweremanipulatingtheriotsandplanningtoturntheTrumbullParkprojectsintoaprivateinvestment,chargeblackshigherrents,andexploitblacklabor:“Therearenoaccidentsinsociety,”hetellsBuggy,and,inhisrefusaltoacceptthestatus of universal (white)American, he too claimshis noncitizenship: “where ismyAmerica,boys? I’m seventy-three years old. And I’m an outcast, for trying to be an American.” Thechapter ends with a moving image of O’Leary as a kind of revised American icon. He isdepictedstandinginthedoorwayasBuggyandArthur leave,holdingakerosenelampto lighttheirwayoutintothenight,“thatlampliftedhighinhisoldhand—aperfecttargetforanybodywhowantedtothrowanything inhisway”(244).Theimageof theStatueofLibertyasa left-wingwhite radical lighting theway forblackcivil rightsactivistsdoesdoubleduty, suggestingthe ironic revision of anAmerican democratic icon and the image of interracial solidarity.Mr.O’Learyneverappearsagain,andthecourageof theblackresidents isenabledmainlywithinthe context of the family and the black community; nonetheless, that struggle is affirmed

throughoutthenovelbythesegesturesofsupportfromallieslikeO’Leary.28Buggy’s personal experience with O’Leary is replicated on a larger scale in the novel’s

representation of a protest march on City Hall in support of Trumbull Park’s desegregation.Thoughthenovelgivescreditto“theNegroBusinessmen’sSociety”forplanningthemarch,theprotest march on Trumbull Park that was organized in October 1955 by the NAACP isdescribed in the investigativearticleascomprisingabroadcoalitionofactivists,attractingfivethousand participants from labor, religious, and civic organizations, including thousands ofpackinghouseworkers.Though theFOIA informantmayhavebeenconflating theCPand theleft-leaning United Packinghouse Workers Union, which was actively involved in thedesegregationofTrumbullPark, theFBI reported that theCommunistParty “hasaproject inforcenow toagitateon theTrumbullPark situation” (U.S.FBIFrankLondonBrown14).Themarch described in the novel has all the elements of this kind of coalitional politics. Severalcharactersapplaudthemarchasanexampleofmassactionfrom“theolddays”(Brown1959,337). Singing “We Shall Not BeMoved” and even improvising some of the stanzas, a largediverse crowd of demonstrators marches to City Hall, carrying picket signs, some wearingbadges that read “Picket Captain.” Brown’s description of the protestors draws explicitly onimagesofprogressiveorganizing:“therewerepeopleinlinewhoweredressedup;therewerepeoplewearing jackets fromunions; therewereold ladieswithclothcoatsandbabushkas….Negromen, Negro women; white men, white women, Mexicans; all sorts of people.” Buggywonders to himself: “Where had they come from?Why were they there? They didn’t evenknowme.Whyweretheysoconcerned?”(339).Asablackairplanefactoryworkerinthemid-1950s inoneofChicago’sunionizedplants,Buggywould,of course, knowwho thesepeoplewere,asBrownobviouslydid.Whensomeonegiveshimapicketsign tocarry,Buggysays it“seemed like they had rehearsed all this somewhere before,” suggesting that both he andBrownhavememoriesofthesourcesofthismassprotest.GivenBrown’spositionasaUPWAorganizer during this period, and that Brown himself had organized and participated in suchprotests,Buggy’snaïvetéaboutthepoliticalmeaningofademonstration,inwhichamultiracial,unionized,working-classcollective is joined inmassprotestagainstsocial injustice, isanotherinstanceof the text attempting tomaintainan ideological neutrality that disguises its left-wingcontexts.Moreover, while there were actually two demonstrations against the Trumbull Parkmobsduringthedesegregationeffort,onesponsored inMay1955bythe“NegroChamberofCommerce” and another by the militant Chicago NAACP in October, the novel attributes itsmarch to a fictional “Negro Businessmen’s Society,” which sounds too suspiciously like the“NegroChamberofCommerce,”as ifBrown isagain tryingtoshifthisallegiancesfromleftistpoliticalactiontoblackcapitalism.

Inanotherinstanceofthetensionbetweenblackcivilrightsnationalismandleftistinterracialradicalism,thenovelimplicitlyrejectsthelatter.OneofthewomenintheTrumbullParkgroup,MonaDavis,isaskedby“somekindofbusinessmen’ssociety”tospeakattheGreaterUrbanChurch(astand-inforChicago’sGreaterMetropolitanChurch)toenlistcommunitysupportfortheTrumbullParkresistance.Thissceneframespoliticalangerinacollective,publicspacethatisreminiscentofcivilrightsimagerywith“white-robedmenandwomensittinginthechoirbox”and speakers orating in the call-and-response tradition of the black church. The preacherbegins the meeting with a sermon about “the evil forces that feed on discord among theworkingmenandwomenofourgreatnation!”Thesermonshifts,almostimmediately,intobothChristian and Marxist messages, but it headlines the more obvious rhetoric of left-winginterracial proletarianism. The preacher denounces the forces thatwould “turnNegro againstwhite,” “brother against brother.” Calling for the congregation to recognize that “our white

sistersandbrothers”willsufferwhen“theyallow themselves tobe fooled intobreaking rankswithus”and that theywill onedaydiscover “who is really responsible forwhite slums,whiteunemployment,whitehopelessness,whitedespair!” (329), the speech reflects the interracial,working-class politics of the leftist cultural front. But the black church crowd and Buggy areunmovedbytheseimagesofblackandwhiteworking-classunity,andBuggyresponds:“Thereweren’ttoomanyamensaftertheselastwords.Thedaythisbigmantalkedaboutseemedtoofaroffforanyofustosee,toofarofftometomakegoingbacktoTrumbullParkanyeasier.Icouldn’t see any of the twisted faces in the mobs out in Trumbull Park waking up anddiscoveringanyenemybutmeandmyfolks”(329).

In contrast to thepreacher’s failedsermon,Mona’s speech to thechurchcrowdhasbothmenandwomencrying.ShemovinglyretellsthestoriesofwhiteviolenceandblackheroisminTrumbullPark,endingwithadefiantpledgethat“itwilltakemorethanbombsandmobstogetus out of Trumbull Park,” which sets off an uproar from the church, “Say it louder! Say itlouder!” (Frank London Brown anticipating James Brown). The chapter endswith the churchaudienceshoutingtheirsupportforMona’sspeech,completelyupstagingthepreacher’searlierhomilyon interracialsolidarity.Whileonegoalof theduelingradicalismsistoshowwomenaspolitical actors, the main result is to showcase the inadequacy of the Left’s articulations ofworking-classunity—asignal ofBrown’s own reluctance to endorse theLeft fully. In this keymoment, however, the novel’s internal split becomes obvious: civil rights activism trumpsinterracial labor solidarity. One has to note, however, the irony of the text’s avant-garderepresentationsofblackwomen,giventhatitalsosecond-classestheLeft,whichadvancedthemost progressive policies and ideas onwomen’s equality. TheCPUSA, the left-wingNationalNegro Labor Council, and leftist unions like the UPWA produced major initiatives for blackwomen’s equality in the workforce, even while black women’s issues were absent frommainstream1950scivil rightsdiscourse. In fact,Brown’s friend, theunionistOscarBrownJr.,reported inan interview that “the resolution to increaseblack female leadershipand to recruitmore women into the union [the UPWA]” was “at the heart of what was being done by thePackinghouseWorkersUnion.”29

ThenovelendswiththeTrumbullPark“walk-in”whenBuggyandhisfriendHarryrefusetorideinthepolicewagons,choosinginsteadtowalkintoTPfacingthemobs.Heleninitiatesthewalk-inbysingingoutthefirst lineofaJoeWilliamsblues,“Ain’tnobodyworried!”andBuggyanswers with the next line, “And it ain’t nobody cryin’!” This call and response serves as acounterpointtothetauntsofthewhitecrowd.WhenBuggyimaginesthemcallingout“Wedareyou towalk, nigger!”, he singsout a line from the songand imitates JoeWilliams’s “longhipstrides”: “Noooooo-body wants me. Nobody seems to care!” Finally, when Buggy and hisbuddy Harry have made their way through the mob without backing down, the words comepouringout,withHarryjoiningin.ThesedefiantblackandbluesresistanceoftheJoeWilliamssongcreatesanantiphonalrelationshipbetweenmusicandaction,muchasitdid inmanycivilrights demonstrations. The contrast with the self-induced paralysis of Ellison’s protagonist atthe end of InvisibleMan30 is significant. The invisible man sits in his well-lighted and newlydesegregated underground, high on reefer or sloe gin, contemplating the meaning of hisinvisibilityashevibratesinhissolitarycavetothesoundsofLouisArmstrong’spaeantoblackinvisibility:“WhatdidIdotobesoblackandblue?”31Incontrast,TrumbullParkendswiththissmall,courageousactofresistance,enabledbycommunalsupportandthevernacularenergyofWilliams’sblues.Inscribedinitalicsonthefinalpageofthenovel—“Everyday,everyday…Well,itain’tnobodyworried,anditain’tnobodycryin”—thewordsofthesongareunmediatedby any character, so that the blues voice, the characters’ voices, and the authorial voice are

collapsed into one, an example of the novel’s formal and thematic commitment to collectiveaction.

Wemust remember,however, theway thisantiphonalchantborrows fromanother featureofleft-wingliteraryexperimentationfromthe1930sand1940s—themasschantpopularizedbytheWorkersTheaterinthe1930sand1940s.AstheliterarycriticJamesSmethurstpointsout,themass chant often occurred at the end of aWorkers Theater production to represent “afragmented mass or multiple working class subjectivity [coalescing] into a relatively unifiedconsciousness” (2004, 4). In two prominent Popular Front adaptations of the mass chant,CliffordOdets’sWaitingforLeftyandLangstonHughes’s1937revolutionary“poetry-play”Don’tYouWanttoBeFree,Odets’splayendswiththecast—andgenerally theaudience—chantingtogether,“STRIKE,STRIKE,STRIKE,”andHughes’sendsinachorussinging“FIGHT,FIGHT,FIGHT.” The singing represents a newly emboldened collective, a resistance to whitesupremacy, and a new psychological spirit. Thus Trumbull Park represents once again thenovel’s investments in simultaneous gestures toward both civil rights and black popular frontaesthetics.32

Ifwepushbacktothesceneinthenovelthatimmediatelyprecipitatesthe“walk-in,”weseethepervasivethreadofleftistculturecontinuingtoanimatethenovel’svision.InthepenultimatechapterofTrumbullPark,thenovelabruptlyand,seeminglyhaphazardly,insertsareferencetothe 1955 conference of African and Asian nations held in Bandung, Indonesia. Trying toencourageBuggytocontinuetheirresistance,HelentellshimthatshehasheardaradiostoryaboutBandung,where,shesays, “awholebunchofcoloredpeople fromallover theworld—Africa, India, China, America, all over—are getting together to figure out how to keep frombeing pushed by all the things that are happening in the world… how to do some pushingthemselves,howtomake thewagongo theway theywant it togo” (412).Butnotonlydoesshe connect their struggle to the larger international network of leftist political activismrepresented by the Bandung Conference; she also connects it to the Southern push fordesegregation,byimmediatelyaddingthatthissamekindof“pushing”isgoingonintheSouth:“theradiotalksabouthowdownSouthNegroesarepushing,tryingtogettheSupremeCourttooutlawsegregation inschools.Everywhereeverybody isdoingsomething—everybodybutus,Buggy”(412).BandungalsorepresentsHelen’srefusaltosettleforthebourgeoislifestylethatthenewpostwar prosperity seemed to promiseblacks: “I don’twant a Lincoln or evena furpiecelikesomepeoplehave.Ijustdon’twanttositbyandwatchlifepassmebywithoutdoingsomething about it” (412). Immediately after this conversation, Helen and Buggy begin theirplansforthedramaticanddangerouswalk-in,asiffinallyfreedbyenvisioningBandungasthelifeline enabling them to break from the limited nationalism of a U.S.-based integrationstruggle.33

TheBandungreferenceisthematicallyimportant,eventhoughitisincludedtangentiallyandeventhoughHelenisallowedtomisleadinglyinclude“America”amongtheinvitednations,whentheUnitedStateswas “pointedly”not invited.34The twenty-ninenations thatconvened inApril1955atBandungwereananticolonial,antiracistcoalitionrepresentingnearlyallofAsiaandsixcountriesofAfrica;thereferencesignalsthenovel’sglobalawarenessofliberationmovements.The Bandung allusion also suggests that these Chicago nationalists were concerned withinternational issues,and, to thatend, they formedadhocallianceswithcivil rightsgroupsaswell as with the interracial Left.35 Helen’s reference to Bandung, which expressly links “thesoldiersofTrumbullPark”toaninternational,anticolonialgatheringofnonwhitepeople,isevenmore telling considering that by the end of the 1950s, Cold War politics had effectivelydisconnected themainstreamcivil rightsmovement fromBandung’s internationalizing focuson

thecolonizationofpeopleofcolor(seeVonEschen1997).

TRUMBULLPARK’SREVERSESURVEILLANCE

Inonechapter inTrumbullParkBrown insertsacovertallusion toFBIsurveillancepractices,indicatingthathewascapableofhisownundercoverstrategiesand,asMaxwellassertsaboutClaude McKay, may have been intentionally writing back to the FBI. In this chapter a“mysteriouswhiteman”namedHiramMelangevisitsBuggy’sTrumbullParkhomeatamomentdescribedinthenarrativeasamomentofstasis,whennothing“frantic”orunusualishappening(276).Melange jokes that his namemeans “hodgepodge,” thoughBuggydoubts that it is hisrealnameandwondershowheknowseverythingabout theTrumbullPark incidents, includingBuggy’s position as the leader of the protests. He carrieswith him a letter that Buggy says“looked like it was from the Attorney General,” a letter informing Melange that “you [i.e.,Melange] are not aCommunist.” Buggy is stunned: “Here is a cat that’s so twisted he don’tknowwhatheis—hastoasksomebodyelsewhatheis,andthencarrypapersaroundwithhimso he can prove to other folks what he is—or isn’t” (279). Melange, a card-carryingnoncommunist,isfurtherdiscreditedbythetext’sdescriptionofhimasmanwitha“greatsmileonhisbigredface,”hairlikethat“limpsilkyblondehairyouusuallyseeonwhiteactressesandmodels,”amanwhousestheterm“Nig-groes,”soundinglikeBuggy’sforemanatwork,sayingsomething that is “half nigger, half Negroes” (277). Thus the depiction of Melange as anuntrustworthyperformerandhisself-descriptionasa“hodgepodge”suggestthatBrownmeanstoouthimasanundercoveragent,liketheagentsinterviewinghim;itseemsstraightoutofhisFOIA file.There is furtherconfirmationofhissuspiciousstatuswhenMelangeconfesses thathe has come to warn Trumbull Park families not to let “these forces ruin the beauty of themagnificent courage you’re showing out here!” (280). Those “forces,” Melange informs hisincreasinglyincredulousaudience,are“theCommies,ofcourse!”Melangeistotallyundercutinthisdepictionofhimasduplicitousandineffectual,butnooneinthegroupconfrontshisstatusasapossiblegovernmentagent.Attheend,theTrumbullParkmenassailhimonlybecauseofhis racial insensitivities. When Buggy asks him, “And when has your wife ridden a patrolwagon?”(279),Melange ismomentarilystunnedbythereality that theblackpeople, includingwomen, are subjected to such indignities. Nothing more is said about the implications ofMelange’svisit in thischapter—nothingto indicate thatBrown’sownscrutinyby theFBImightprovidetheinsightmissinginthischapter,andnothingtoindicatehowtheintervieweesreacttothisattemptedintimidation.ThechapterpointstoBrown’sawarenessofthepowerandubiquityofsurveillanceevenasitcaststheputativeFBIfigureasinept.Butthenovelneverpursuestheimplicationsofthissurveillance,whatitmeansfortheTrumbullParkcivilrightsstruggles,howitaffectsBuggy’spoliticaldecisions,orhowitmightinformorimpedethedirectionofhispoliticalwork.RefusingtobringtothesurfacetheimplicationsofHiramMelange’svisitmayhavebeenanotherwayforBrowntoavoididentificationwiththeLeft,asifthenovel’ssilenceaboutanFBIthreat could insure its escape from the “tarnish” of communism—black insurgency could betoleratedsolongasitwasnotred.

BROWNWRITESFORTHEDEFENDER

When Brown began writing for the ChicagoDefender after the publication of his novel, hisnewspaperarticles showhimmovingaway from,evenundercutting, his leftist affiliations.We

mightwell askwhyacivil rights, radical unionactivist shoulddisablehis connectionswith theLeft. There are several answers. In the mid-1950s, as many black leftist activists movedtowardthecivilrightsmovement,amongthemJulianMayfield,JackO’Dell,CharlesWhite,andAlice Childress, they found the experience of their newfound black cultural consciousness,middle-classmobility,andpolitical independence fromtheLeftquiteexhilarating. InBlack IsaCountry: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy, Nikhil Pal Singh prompts us toremember that black political and intellectual activists hadmany reasons at this moment fortheir ambivalence toward the organized Left: “Black struggles,” he argues, had come topossessavibrancythatno longerrequiredexternalmediation”(2005,119).Butwealsoneedto read the Chicago nationalists’ reluctance to use the word “leftist” and Brown’s politicaldisavowals as signs of Cold War anxiety. As the cultural historian William J. Maxwellpersuasively argues in his study of the FBI’s obsessive interest in black literary production,therewasnothingtheFBIfearedmorethanAfricanAmericanpoliticalresisters linkingupwiththe Left. In Maxwell’s words, such a coalition constituted “the dead center of the radicalintersection that the FBI most feared, the crossroads where African American resistancebargainedwiththedevilofworldcommunism”(2003,41).TheintersectionoftheColdWarandcivil rights, as Mary Dudziak and Penny Von Eschen, among others, argue, meant that civilrightsgroupshadtomakeclearthattheirreformeffortswerewithintheboundsof“acceptableprotest”andnotconnected to theLeftor theCommunistPartyor inanyway threatening the“Americanness” of the struggle (Dudziak 2002, 11). AndBrownwas certainly aware, as onechapter inhisnovel indicates, thathewasundersurveillanceby theFBI. I suggest,however,that the blindness to Brown’s left-wing radicalism and theColdWar implications ofTrumbullParkalsoreflecttheunexamineddiscomfortofBrown’sreadersandcriticswithblackandredalliances. I am in agreementwithDenning thatwhenweencounter textswith racial or ethnicinflections—“ghetto pastorals” and proletarian Leftmodels (1996, 235)—we tend to overlookandareencouragedtooverlookthesetracesof theLeft: inotherwords, the“black”narrativetrumps the proletarian one. The tensions of Brown’s novel are therefore both historic anddiscursive: they are first embedded in the cultural and political moment as the civil rightsmovement collides with an increasingly nationalist politics, which also collides with—or inMullen’sterm,“supersedes”—theLeft,which isundernational threat.ThesetensionsarethenreenactedinTrumbullParkandthenagain inthecriticalresponsestothenovelthatrefusetoacknowledgeordonotrecognizeitsleftistleanings.36Brown’spublicationofTrumbullParkwiththeconservativeRegneryPressandthepublicColdWar–inflectedspeechhegavetothewell-heeled Dearborn Real Estate Board the same year his novel was published signify that thebalancingactbetweennationalistconcerns,leftistpolitics,andanemergingblackconservatismhad by 1959 become a delicate and precarious enterprise.37 Once his novel was published,BrownbegantoappearmoreofteninthepagesoftheChicagoDefender,bothaswriterandsubject,duringtheveryyearsthattheDefenderwasflauntingitsanticommunistcredentialsandadopting the politics of what A. Philip Randolph called “black Americanism”—in other words,interpolatingblacksintotheAmericannationalnarrative.AttheMay19,1959,banquetfortherealestateboard,BrowngaveamanifestlyColdWarspeech,asreportedonintheDefender,thatdistancedhimfromtheprogressivepluralismandclassconsciousnessoftheBlackPopularFrontandfromtheaimsof1940scivilrightsmilitancy.Inthisspeech,Browndeclaredthatthebattle over racial violence was a “duel to the death” between the two adversaries, SovietRussia and the United States. Having now recast the United States as the defender ofdemocracy andminority rights, he asserted, “weare locked in combatwithSovietRussia totest whether our system of democracy is superior to their system of dictatorship” (Brown

1959). Sidestepping the continuing spectacles of U.S. racial violence aswell as internationalracialviolencesupportedbyU.S.policiesandpractices(thesupportofSouthAfricanapartheid,forone),BrownarguedthatbyshowingoursystemofgovernmentsuperiortotheSoviets,byoutproducing and outmaneuvering them, Americans could defeat the “bigots and tyrantswhohave a vested interest in keeping their feet on the minorities’ necks.” This argument, whichpresumes(orpretends)that“bigotsandtyrants”and“theU.S.”areseparateandoppositionalentities, defies the reality of Brown’s own recent experiences trying to integrate a housingprojectthatwassegregatedwiththesupportandcollusionofthefederalgovernment.

Surprising and troubling given Brown’s radical union work, his public defense of PaulRobeson, his collaborations with people on the Left, and his celebration of the CubanRevolution, the speechechoes the increasingly anticommunist politics of theDefender, whichthroughout the 1950s began to parrot the FBI’s position on “subversives” and to support theU.S.government’sdescriptionofworldpolitics.In1955,theDefendercolumnistLouisE.Martindenounced the communists Benjamin Davis and Robeson for being too “intoxicated” bycommunism to recognize its danger to black Americans. He then explained that communismfailedtotakerootinblackcommunitiesbecause“everythingtheNegroeverdreamedaboutisrighthere in theUnitedStatesandhehasalways felt that if only racial discriminationwereeliminated this would be Utopia.” I italicize this passage not because I think it representsBrown’spoliticsbut to indicatehowsmoothlyanticommunismwasbeing interpolated into civilrightsdiscourse. Incontrast to theDefender, theeditorials inRobeson’sFreedom throughoutthe 1950s relentlessly exposed the parallels between U.S. racial violence and South Africanapartheidaswellas theroleof theUnitedStates in fomenting international racialexploitation.WhetherBrown’santicommunistspeechwasmerelytacticalor,lesslikely,actuallyrepresentedagenuinepoliticalchangeofheart,itarticulatedanuntenablepositionforablackradicallaborandcivilrightsnationalist.InanotherexampleofBrowntryingtojugglehispoliticalallegiances,he journeyed toCuba in1959during theheightof theCubanRevolution,and, thoughhewasthere ostensibly as a neutral reporter, his friend Bennett Johnson recalls that he spent “hisdaylight hours with Batista supporters, and his nights with adherents of Fidel Castro” andJohnsonmaintainsquite resolutely that “[Brown]was,withoutadoubt, sympatheticwithFidelCastro.”38

BillMullendescribestheendofthe1950sasamomentwhenthepossibilitiesof“sustainedprogressive or radical black cultural work” of Chicago’sNegro People’sCultural andPoliticalFront were also being undercut by the emergence of a growing black entrepreneurial andconsumer class” (1999, 202). Adam Green (2007) argues that black Chicago entered intomodernityduringthe1940sand1950s,becomingmodernmarketconsumersambitiousforandto some extent constituted by their participation in the new consumer economy. As a newlysuccessfulwriterworkingfortheglossypicturemagazineEbony,posingwithmoviestars,andcontemplatingamoviedealforhisnovel,BrownwasfirmlypositionedtoenterChicago’sblackmiddle class. In the three-page spread in the black picture magazineSepia celebrating thenovel’s release,Brownwasshown inshotsathomewithhiswifeanddaughters; inhisstudywriting;atChicago’sVal-JacAfricanartshop,whereartistsandwriterscongregated;andatacocktailpartydiscussinghisbook,asitwas“headingtowardthebestsellerlist,”withfilmstarLana Turner. In the article’s cover photograph, he is standing on the steps of a downtownChicago federal building, dressed impeccably in a lightweight summerbusiness suit anddarktie, holding a leather briefcase as though about to enter his office.Wemight recall here thescenefromjustafewyearsearliercapturedinBrown’sFOIAreport,whichalsodescribeshimstandinginfrontofafederalbuildingindowntownChicagonotwithabriefcasebutholdingaloft

a protest sign that denounced the government investigation being held there and, as his fileindicates,courtingFBIreprisal.

AlthoughBrownseemstobedancingaroundhisassociationswiththeLeftandtheCP,wemaybeabletounderstand,throughafigurelikeBrown,howdiverseandsometimesconflictingaffiliations shaped a nationalist consciousness. In his history of the UPWA’s relationship toMartin Luther King Jr. and civil rights, the historianCyril Robinson reports that therewas animportantpracticalreasonblackUPWAorganizersdidnotfallforanticommunistrhetoric:“Whydidn’t the charges of communism make much difference? The people who were mostvociferousinpushingthatline,lookingundereverybedforared—blackfolksdidn’tgetcaughtup.Wewantedtogetfree.Wedidn’tcarewhohelpedus.Thevastmajorityoforganizingcamefromblacksandtheywouldnotbestoppedbyideologicalwarfare”(2011,39–40).

Brown’s friend and his predecessor as program coordinator at UPWA, Oscar Brown Jr.,verifiesBrown’s strategic political allianceswith communists.While he insisted that the unionwas not communistwhen Frank LondonBrownwas program coordinator,Oscar Brown saidthat the UPWA and London Brown “worked well with left-leaning people like Charlie Hayes,LeonBeverly, andSamParks.”39 In addition,OscarBrown himselfwas sent by the union toorganizesupport for theTrumbullPark families, so therewasat leastoneofficial andknowncommunist in the Trumbull Park struggle. In the FOIA file on Frank London Brown, theinformant, “Chicago T-20 … advised on December 23, 1957, that he had known FRANKBROWN Jr. personally while he was District Number 1 Program Coordinator of the UnitedPackinghouse Workers of America Union, and that the persons with whom he had contactconsidered him to be a ‘left winger.’”40 Oscar Brown confirmed this assessment of LondonBrown’sleftistpoliticalleanings:“[I]triedunsuccessfullytorecruitBrowntotheParty;hedidn’tjoinbuthewasveryleft.”41

Itmaybe thatTrumbullPark is, finally, lessaboutsuppressing theLeft thanaboutBrowntrying, against the odds, as it turns out, to fashion an eclectic leftist, interracial, internationalblacknationalismoutofapotpourriofpolitical ideasandpracticeshe feltwouldadvance thecauseofblackliberation.Weavingbackandforthbetweenablacknationalistfocusonidentityandpoliticalresistanceandacommitmenttothecrossracialradicaldemocraticaimsofearliercultural frontaesthetics,TrumbullPark, aswell asBrown’s life story,might best be seenasactsofnegotiationbetweentheconflictingformationsofpublicandcounterpublicspheresthatincludedblackcultural nationalists;multiracial political andcultural fronts; antiracist, interracialradicalunions;thecommercialpublishingindustry;blackconsumerculture;andtheomnipresentF.B.-Eyes. In the final analysis, however, enough of the improvisatory politics and aestheticsand resistant black consciousness of Brown’s Cold War generation, though up against theformidablerepressivepowerofthelastthreeforcesonthatlist,wouldremaintoenkindlesomesparksinthenext.

W

61959:SPYCRAFTANDTHEBLACKLITERARYLEFT

Sodearfriend,Imustperhapsgotojail.Pleaseatthenextred-baitingsessionyouhear…rememberthis“Communist.”

—LORRAINEHANSBERRY,“LETTERTOEDYTHE,”1951

YouscratchablackmanintheCommunistpartyandyou’regoingtofindablackman.

—JULIANMAYFIELD,INTERVIEWWITHMALAIKALUMUMBA,1972

ITH THE EXCEPTION of Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks, all the writers of The OtherBlacklist were gathered at the Henry Hudson Hotel in New York City in 1959 toparticipate inwhatwasbilledas “TheFirstConferenceofNegroWriters.”Held from

Friday,February28,toSunday,March1,1959,thelavishlyfundedthree-dayconferencewasmodeledafterthePresenceAfricaineconferencesoftheParis-basedSocietyofAfricanCultureand sponsored by an offshoot of SAC, the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC),whosestatedgoalwas to facilitate “linksbetweencultureandpolitics inAfricaandAmerica”(“The American Society of African Culture and Its Purpose”). The following year, selectedpapers from thatconferencewerepublished inaslimvolume,using theconference themeasits title,TheAmericanNegroWriterandHisRoots,andeditedbyAMSACPresidentJohnA.Davis, a professor of government at the City College of New York.1 As Davis stated in hispreface, thebroadpurposeof theconferencewas“toassess[theprogressofNegrowriters]andtheirrelationshiptotheirroots,”with“roots”suggestingonlyaslightnodtowardthe“Africa”inAMSAC’sself-description,sincealltheparticipantswereAmerican.2Justasaquestionnairehadshaped the1950Phylon symposiumadecadeearlier and steered its participants into anarrow self-reflection, the AMSAC “roots” themewas designed to circumscribe and limit thespeakers, obscuring a contentious debate that emerged at the conference between theconservativeintegrationists(alsoknownasanticommunistraceliberals)andtheleftistradicals.Theresultingbook,whichomits,edits,andmarginalizesthecommentsandspeechesofsomeof themost radicalspeakersat theconference,bothsubdues thosedebatesandbecomes, Iwillargue,anotherexampleoftheimaginativeandideologicalbattlesoverrepresentingraceintheColdWar1950s.

I beganTheOther Blacklist to challenge the ways African American literary and culturalhistorieshavedownplayed,ignored,minimized,oromittedtheinfluenceoftheCommunistPartyandtheLeft inAfricanAmericanculturalpracticeof the“high”ColdWar1950s. Indoingso, IhavetriedtocorrectthetendencyinAfricanAmericanstudiestotreatcommunismandtheLeftaspejorativeor irrelevantor to confine theLeft’s influenceonblackwriting to the1930sand1940s.It isespecially importanttoavoidtheamnesiathatMcCarthyism,theFBI,andtheCIAhavepromoted.AtatimewhenbeingontheLeftorintheCommunistPartyguaranteedliteraryextinction, thewriters and visual artist ofmy study—and, in this chapter, the outspoken Leftspeakers at the AMSAC conference—continued to articulate a leftist aesthetic and politics.They challenged State Department–authored versions of integration. They furthered the

resistanttraditionsoftheBlackPopularFrontandthe1940scivilrightsmovement.Theyspokeup loudly, clearly,andoften insupportofa literatureandpoliticsof socialprotestand, in theprocess, supplied a political and aesthetic vocabulary for the Black Arts Movement of the1960sand1970s.3

Since fewscholarshave takenup the taskofa revisionaryhistoryof this conference, thetask I have set for myself is to piece together as much as possible of the original AMSACconference, lookingbehind thescenesandbetween themarginsat theoriginalspeeches, thephotographs,andthepoliticalandculturalcontextsoftheconference,which,Iargue,showhowthe published volume was reconstructed to align smoothly with AMSAC’s political agenda.When the entire conference is studied, including the missing speeches and comparing thepublished volumewith the conferencepresentations,we can see that itwas clearly a site ofideologicalcontest.Thiscomparative interpretivestrategyallowsus to reread theconferenceandthepublishedvolume(andultimately1950sblack literaryhistory)asathree-waydialecticbetween an embattled internationalist Left (represented by John O. Killens, Julian Mayfield,Sarah E. Wright, Lofton Mitchell, Frank London Brown, Alice Childress, and LorraineHansberry)determinedtoadvanceblackculturalandpoliticalself-determination;aconservativeflank (Saunders Redding and Arthur P. Davis), promoting narrow national definitions ofintegrationandrace;andU.S.-governmentsponsoredspyoperations(JohnDavis,theCIA,theFBI, and Harold Cruse, working undercover), authorized to monitor and contain blackradicalism.4

Thesignsofthatstruggle—betweenconservatives,liberals,radicals,andgovernmentspies—are embedded in the AMSAC conference, but the task of interpreting these signs ischallenging. Nearly the entire original cast of players in the AMSAC conference, with theexceptionofWilliamBranchandSamuelAllen,diedbeforeIcompletedmystudy.SomeoftheconferencespeecheswererewrittenfortheRootsvolume,and,atleastinonecase,anentirelydifferent paper was submitted to the published volume. With the exception of Hansberry,originaldraftsand revisionsofconferencepresentationsare,as faras Iknow,notavailable.5Documentationof theconferenceplanningandorganization isspottyandsparse.Someofthemost prominent blackwriters, including JamesBaldwin, Robert Hayden, andPauleMarshall,whose firstnovel,BrownGirl,Brownstones,waspublished later thatyear,didnotattend theconference.HaroldCrusesaysthatRalphEllisonrefusedtoattendbecausehewantedtoavoidKillens,whohadwrittenanegativereviewofInvisibleMan.

LangstonHughesspokeon“Writers:BlackandWhite”withadouble-voicedironyandbarelyconcealed bitterness that distanced him from his former militancy, perhaps the result of hisearlier shakedown by McCarthy. He tried to caution writers that the publishing industry is acrass, commercial, white-controlled enterprise that sees blackness through the eyes ofcommerce and partly through its own racism, a perilous and unpredictable course for blackwriterstonavigate.Ablackwriter,Hughesinsisted,mustworkharderandwritebetterbutstillwill not be able to count on the success white writers expect. Replicating the crazycontradictionsofrace,heendswiththisfinalparadox:“Ofcourse,tobehighlysuccessful inawhiteworld—commerciallysuccessful—inwritingoranythingelse,you reallyshouldbewhite.Butuntilyougetwhite—write.”Therewouldbenoappearancebythehighlysought-afterwriterRichardWright,whowasinvitedtocomefromParistogivethekeynotebuteventuallydeclined,soHansberry,justthreemonthsawayfromherspectacularBroadwaysuccess,agreedtofillinforhim.

It is important to take into consideration the silences and self-censorship of the left-wingparticipants,whodidnotopenlyidentifyasLeftorcommunist.Moreover,asLangstonHughes

remindedtheaudience,therewerenoblackliteraryjournalsofthe1950swherethesedebatescould have been expanded and explored in greater depth; thus we are, to some extent,confined to and dependent on these limited articulations provided by the published volumeoftheAMSACproceedings.Butoneofthegreatvaluesofthevolumeisthatitallowsustoteaseoutandforegroundtheleftistideasandpositionspresentedattheconference,andsince,asIarguethroughoutthisbook,it isthoseidealsandideasthatencouragedpoliticalandaestheticfreedom for blackwriters,we are lucky to have theAMSACarchives, however tarnished byeditorialemendationsandCIAsnooping.

FRAMINGTHE1959CONFERENCEINTHEROOTSVOLUME:EDITINGOUTTHELEFT

TheepigraphsbyMayfieldandHansberrythatopenthischaptersuggestthat1959—theyearof the AMSAC conference—represented a crossroads moment for black leftist writers. Incontrastto1959,Hansberryin1951wassofartotheleftthatshewasfullypreparedforandexpectedtogotojail.Butby1953,withtheRedScareintensifying,HansberryleftherpositionatRobeson’s newspaperFreedom and applied for jobs at various publications, including theNewYorkTimes,cautiouslyreferringtoFreedominherapplicationas“asmallculturalmonthly”and listing her position there as associate editor at a “New York Publishing company”(Hansberryn.d.).WhenHansberry’s1959hitplayRaisinintheSunopenedonBroadway,evenher FBI informant could find no evidence of communist thought and concluded in the report,“TheplaycontainsnocommentsofanynatureaboutCommunismassuchbutdealsessentiallywithnegro[sic]aspirations”(U.S.FBI,LorraineHansberry,February5,1959).Inthenextfewyearsbeforeherdeathin1964,Hansberry,likemanyblackleftists,wasdrawntothecivilrightsmovement and in 1964 wrote the text for the civil rights pictorial volume The Movement:DocumentaryofaStruggleforEquality.Mayfieldbecameacommunistin1956,evenasitstopleadersweregoingunderground,becauseheconsideredtheCommunistPartythemostradicalorganizationhecouldjoin.Buthealsofeltstronglythatblacknationalism,whichwasatthecoreofhis radicalism,existed inuneasy tensionwithhis leftistaffiliations.ForMayfieldneither theU.S.Leftnor theU.S.civil rightsmovementwas revolutionaryenough: thecommunistsof the1950swereaproblembecause,incontrasttothe1930s,they“hadnorealeffectontheblackcommunity,”andcivilrightsorganizationswerebecausetheyhadturnedawayfromthemilitantstrategies of the black freedom struggles of the 1940s (Mayfield 1970). Tensions betweenblacksand theLeftwereexacerbated in the late 1950sas theLeft sufferedmajor setbacksunder the Red Scare and McCarthyism and as many black intellectuals and activists wereincreasingly drawn to the black freedommovement. Complicating these issues for the leftistradicalsattheAMSACconferenceisthatAMSACandtheconferencewerefundedbytheCIA,andmanyoftheparticipantssuspectedasmuch.Theconferencethusbecameaforumwherethese tensions were played out and where, contrary to conventional notions of a quiescent1950s, the black Left squared off against the conservative integrationists, prefiguring—andhelpingproduce—theblackculturalmilitancyofthe1960s.

DespiteassimilationistvisionsandCIAcollusions,theconferenceorganizingcommitteethatPresidentDavisassembledwasstrikinglyleftwing,astrategicchoicethattheculturalhistorianLawrenceJacksonmaintainswasabrilliant tacticalmoveon thepartofDavis tocamouflageAMSAC’s covert politics (2007, 721). Davis chose the left-wing novelist and HarlemWritersGuild director John O. Killens to chair the organizing committee, and Killens stacked thecommittee with his friends, including Mayfield, the leftist historian John Henrik Clarke, the

progressive playwrightsWilliamBranch and LoftenMitchell, and the leftist writer and activistSarahE.Wright. The conferencealso includeda number of left-wingwriters as speakers orpanelists, including the playwright Alice Childress, the Chicago novelist and union organizerFrank London Brown, the recent McCarthy target Langston Hughes, and the playwright andactivistLorraineHansberry.Thoughtheymayhavebeenintheminority,theconservativeswerewell represented by the Howard professor Arthur P. Davis and the writer-scholar SaundersRedding,whowerepreparedtoscrapanyvestigesofsocialprotest,which for themwasrifewithovertonesofMarxistsocialconsciousnessandracialmilitancy.6Theleftistlineupbecameamajorconcernforatleastoneex-communist,HaroldCruse,theauthoroftheLeft-bashingTheCrisisof theNegro Intellectual,whodraftedseveral pagesof neatly typednotes, apparentlyforKillens,entitled“AMSACWritersConferenceNotes”(n.d.), inanefforttodisplacewhathecalledthe“Marxistorientedsphereofculturalactivities”of theconference.Thoughthere isnoevidence of Cruse having any final say over the program, he warned Davis that the “lineupreflectstooheavilythepointofviewwhichisknowntobefavorabletothosewhiteleftwing”andthat itwouldgive the impression “thatAMSACalsoagreesofficiallywith thispoint of view inliterature and racial politics.” Cruse then proposed that Childress, Mayfield, Mitchell, andBranchshouldbeshiftedabout,dropped,andreplacedsothatapanelonsocialprotestanditsdiscussionofthetopic“moredemocraticallyreflectsabroadercross-sectionofviews”(Crusen.d.).

InlightofCruse’swarningstoKillens,itisnotsurprisingthat,whenJohnDaviscreatedtheRootsvolume,heeditedoutthelivelyandcontroversialpanelonsocialprotest,specificallythepapersinsupportofsocialprotestgivenbyAliceChildressandFrankLondonBrown.TheonlyevidencewehaveofthatpanelisinthepapergivenbyLoftenMitchell,whichrefersspecificallyto “the panel on social protest” and the controversy it produced. Because the final Rootsvolumedoesnotcorrespondtotheconferenceorganization,Ihavenotbeenabletodeterminetheexactformatoftheconference,butthetableofcontentsintheRootsvolumeindicatesthatthe speeches covered the following topics: “The Negro Writer and His Relationship to HisRoots,”“IntegrationandRaceLiterature,”“MarketingtheProductsofAmericanNegroWriters,”“RoadblocksandOpportunities forNegroWriters,”and “SocialResponsibilityand theRoleofProtest.”InafurtherneutralizingoftheLeft,DavisopenedthevolumewithaprefacepromotingoneofthehallmarksofColdWarideology—thatracialtroublesaredisappearing:“Itisatributetoboth theNegrowriterandAmerica that thisproblem [blackwriterswriting foranon-Negroaudience] isbeingresolved,althoughmuchremainstobeachieved”(iii).Davisaddedthat thegoalsofblackwriterswere “being true to their roots,accomplishedanduniversal in theirart,socially useful, and appreciated by a significant public.” Of course, the leftist writers at theconference argued that black writers, if they followed Davis’s list, risked becoming sociallyacceptable and politically irrelevant or, as Mayfield put it in his talk, on their way “into themainstream and oblivion.” Davis did not refer to that debate. In another example of themanipulationsandomissionsbehind thescenesof thepublishedvolume,LorraineHansberry’sclosingaddress,arguably themost radical speechof theconference,wasexcluded from thefinalRootsvolumeandnotpublisheduntil1971inTheBlackScholar.DavisalsoomittedJohnKillens’s “Opening Remarks,” which Killens’s biographer Keith Gilyard (2010, 141) says“echoed [the radical leftists] W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Alphaeus Hunton,” withKillens proclaiming that “the American Negro’s battle for human rights mirrored the broaderstruggleofcoloredpeoplesthroughouttheworldagainstcolonialism.”

FIGURE6.1.PhotoofLloydL.BrownandLouisBurnhamatAMSACconference(1959).Source:CourtesyoftheMoorland-SpringarnResearchCenter,HowardUniversity.

Surprisingly, Davis included a series of photographs, including some taken at theconference,thattestifyvisuallytothepresenceoftheLeft.Ontheopeningpagesoppositethetitlepage,underthecaption“TheManyPosturesoftheAmericanNegroWriter,”therearesixcandidsnapshotsofWilliamBranch,FrankLondonBrown,SarahE.Wright,LangstonHughes,andagrouppicturewithseveralparticipantsandJohnDavisattheconference.Atthebottomright-hand side are pictures of the two open communists, thewriters LloydBrownand LouisBurnham,neitherofwhomwasinvitedtospeak,listeningintentlytotheproceedings(Burnhamwith one hand shielding his face from the camera). They were apparently sought outdeliberatelybytherovingcamera,sincethereareseveraldifferentshotsofthemintheAMSACfiles, though neither was featured on the program. The six members of the “ConferencePlanning Committee” are shown in headshots on the following page, looking dignified andserious.Therearetwopagesofphotographsattheendofthevolume:RichardGibson,ablackexpatriatewriter, shownwith thecivil rights leaderArthurSpingarn;AliceChildressgiving thepaper that was omitted from the published volume; a group picture with Saunders Redding,Arna Bontemps, his son Paul, Irita Van Doren (the influential book editor of the New YorkHeraldTribune),andSpingarn.Fillingone-eighthof thepageat thebottomisapictureof themissing “Panel on ‘Protest Writing,’” with the American flag conspicuously displayed in thecenter. Finally, on the last page, under the highly ambiguous and self-congratulatory caption“TheConferenceCloseswithaNoteofSuccess,”therearethreephotographsthatpointtotheimportanceofLorraineHansberry’spresence:oneshowsherstandingbeforealightedpodium,giving theclosingaddress;one isagroupshotwith fourmen—Hughes,Redding,JohnDavis,andBontemps;and, finally, the last is aphotographof theaudienceat the “closing session,”where Hansberry received a standing ovation for the speech that was omitted from thepublication.

FIGURE6.2.PhotoofLorraineHansberrygivingkeynoteaddressatAMSACconference(1959).Source:CourtesyoftheMoorland-SpringarnResearchCenter,HowardUniversity.

FIGURE6.3.PhotoofLorraineHansberryattheAMSACconference(1959).Source:CourtesyoftheMoorland-SpringarnResearchCenter,HowardUniversity.

These photographs certainly document the existence of the AMSAC conference and itsparticipants, but they also subtlymanipulate our view of the conference. As ShawnMichelleSmith(2004,7)observes,aphotographicarchiveisneverneutral:

Evenasitpurportstosimplysupplyevidence,ortodocumenthistoricaloccurrences,the[photographic]archivemapsthe cultural terrain it claims to describe. In otherwords, the archive constructs the knowledge itwould seemonly toregisterormakeevident.Thusarchivesareideological;theyareconceivedwithpoliticalintent,tomakespecificclaimsonculturalmeaning.

In thiscase,manyof thephotographs—particularly the formalportraits—aresostaid that thebook looks likeaChamberofCommercebrochure. Inallof the images, themenare insuitsandties,dressedformallyforwhatisclearlyadowntownaffair.Unlessweknowthesubjects’affiliationswith theLeft, thephotographsobscure theconference’s radical tone.TheAMSACphotographs, then, can be read as both a historical record of the event and as evidentiarytracesthathintatwhatishidden,manipulated,ordistortedinthewrittentext.

BLACKWRITERSANDTHECIA

With thesepolitical-literarydebates inmind, Iwant to turnbriefly to the relationshipbetweentheCIAandAMSAC.7By1959,theCentralIntelligenceAgency’sinfiltrationofAmericanculturalinstitutionshadbeenoperatingformorethannineyears.Throughitsmajorpropagandavehicle,afrontcalledtheCongressforCulturalFreedomestablishedin1950,theirmissionononefrontwas to counter the Soviet Union’s programs of cultural propaganda; a second aim was toconduct “culturalwarfare” inorder todisciplineAmericanart andartists for theworkofColdWarculture.AstheBritishjournalistandCIAhistorianFrancesStonorSaunders(1999)reports,theCongress forCulturalFreedom(CCF)maintainedoffices inParisandBerlinaswellas inthe United States, operating under a structure that mirrored that of the Communist Party—involving fronts,spynetworks,clandestinemoney transfers,committed ideologues,and fellowtravelers.FrontsliketheFarfieldFoundationwerefairlyeasytosetup:“arichperson,pledgedtosecrecy,wouldallowhisorhernametobeputonletterhead,andthatwouldbeenoughtoproduce a foundation” (1999, 127). The foundation would then funnel money to approvedorganizations, essentially employing a spying network, ostensibly to expose the dangers oftotalitarianism,whileexportingthecultureandtraditionsofthefreeworld(126).Atsomepointduringthe1950s,allof themajor foundations—Ford,Rockefeller,andCarnegie—operatedas“funding cover” for CIA funds (135), and Ford and Rockefeller, specifically, according toSaunders,“wereconsciousinstrumentsofcovertUSforeignpolicy”(139).Bytheearly1960s,Stoner reports thatFordhad funneledaboutsevenmilliondollars to theCongress forCulturalFreedom(142).8

The extent of CIA operations in U.S. culture, the magnitude of its influence, and itsexpansive reach into literary, musical, and visual arts is, in Stoner’s estimation, astounding.Over seventeen years, the CIA pumped “tens of millions of dollars into the Congress forCultural Freedom” (1999, 130). With fronts like the Farfield Foundation, the NormanFoundation,andEncountermagazineinplace,theCIAproceededtosponsorartandsculptureshowsand literarydebatesandconferences inEuropeandtheUnitedStates.Theypublishedthe anticommunist essay collection The God That Failed and sponsored an arts festival inEurope,which theFrenchcommunistpress labeledU.S.“ideologicaloccupation.” In thevisualarts, there were collaborations between the CIA and private institutions like the Museum of

Modern Art. The CIA contributed to art exhibits in Europe and organized cultural festivalsthrough theCIA-sponsoredCongress forCulturalFreedom,establishing theCCFas “amajorpresenceinEuropeanculturallife”(107).ThepresenceoftheCIAandtheinvolvementofmajorfiguresintheartandliteraryworldsandgovernmentofficials,allconnectedwithandsupportedinsomewaybytheCIA,makeitimpossibletooverlookthefactthattheCIAwasamajorforceinU.S.culturethroughoutthe1950sand1960s.

But, according to Hugh Wilford (2008), the CIA appeared to have had its greatesteffectiveness in literature,where“the linkbetweenmodernismandtheCIAappearsclearest,”especially “in the covert subsidies to littlemagazines such asPartisan Review” (116). In hisextensivestudyoftheCIA’srelationshiptoAMSACandblackliterarywork,WilfordshowsthatAMSACwas“theCIA’sprincipalfrontorganizationintheAfricanAmericanliterarycommunity,”intended, Wilford asserts, to ensure that black political thought would stay firmly within theboundariesofacceptableformsofanticommunism(200).

Wilford identifies twoCIA concerns behind its involvement with AMSAC. The first was toensure a flow of information about the emerging independence movements in colonialdominated countries, especially in Africa, and to steer these emerging independencemovementsawayfromcommunistinfluence.ThesecondwastocountergrowingcivilunrestintheU.S.South,sparkedbywhiteresistancetothecivilrightsmovement.Thisunrestwasbeingbroadcast throughout theworld and used by the Soviet Union to score propaganda victoriesagainst the United States as the site of racial violence against blacks. The U.S. StateDepartment was looking for—and found—blacks willing to advertise a positive view of U.S.race relations to counter the images being shipped abroad of dogs attacking children inBirmingham and white adults heckling children trying to go to school, but the government’spromotionofAfricanAmericanintellectualswasmostcertainlycontingentontheirdistancefromtheLeft(Wilford2008,199;Plummer1996).

On February 20, 1975, theNewYorkTimes reported that theManhattan-based NormanFoundation, a CIA front, had directed $50, 000 to the American Society of African Culture.ManymembersofAMSACweresuspiciousthattheCIAmightbeinvolvedinit,butthatdidnotdeter them from participating in the organization. With offices in New York in the tony EastForties (where otherCIA front officeswere located) and a spacious Fifth Avenue apartment“for use as guest quarters” (Wilford 2008, 206), AMSAC had the CIA’s signature written alloverit.As“moneyflowedin”forAMSACoperationslikeannualconferences,festivalsinAfrica,bookpublications,andexpenses-paidtravelstoAfricaandEurope,itwouldnothavebeenhardto figure out those connections.9William Branch said that members wondered where all themoney was coming from since no one was asked to pay dues or asked to sponsor anyfundraising events. Branch (2010) says that the rumors began almost immediately: “For anumberof years therewere thoseofuswhohadsuspicionsabout themoneysupporting theorganization.Weweretolditwascomingfromvariousfoundations.Certainlyitwasnotcomingfrom themembers because there were no dues.” In a letter in the AMSAC files at HowardUniversity’sMoorland-SpingarnCollection,theBostonUniversitysociologistAdelaideCromwellHill reported that she remembered the exact time and place that someone suggested CIAsponsorship of AMSAC, and she makes clear that CIA involvement was intentionally notdocumented(citedinWilford2008,213).WhenYvonneWalker,oneofAMSAC’sstaffers,wasinterviewed,she reported thatshewassurprised thatshehad tobecheckedby theFBIandrequiredtoswearanoathofsecrecy.AlthoughDavisdeniedthelinktotheCIA,Walkersays,“Dr.DavisinformedtheCIAoneverythingthatwasgoingon,”andshewassurethat“they[theCIAofficers]helpedtosteersomeoftheplans”(quotedinWilford2008,214).AlthoughDavis,

aswellastheotherofficersontheExecutiveBoard,knewabouttheCIAconnections,heneveracknowledgedhisconnectionswiththeCIAoritssponsorshipofAMSAC,evenaftertheywereestablishedbytheNewYorkTimes.10

TheleftistsattheconferencewerenotunderanyillusionsaboutAMSAC’sfunding.Duringabreakintheconference,LloydBrownchattedwithhislong-timefriendLangstonHughesatthehotel bar, remarking, “With its ample supply of free drinks of the best brands, the sponsorsseemedverywell funded.”Hughes replied, “Bysomebodywithawhole lot of dough.”Brownresponded, “Yes, and he can print all the money he needs.” Hughes merely shrugged andaskedBrownifheplannedtogoalongtotheupcomingconferenceinAfrica,alsosponsoredbyAMSAC.ButBrownhadnotbeenaskedtogo,“forthesamereasonIhadnotbeenaskedtobeoneofthespeakers—mylongassociationwithPaulRobeson”(1996interviewwithauthor).And,hemighthaveadded,hisopenmembershipintheCommunistParty.TheAMSACsponsor,Brown noted, “appeared from nowhere and vanished the sameway” (1996), but, of course,these issues surfaced again in the 1970s when AMSAC was named in the Senator FrankChurchreportasaCIA-fundedorganization.

WhatmustbeaddressedistheeffectofCIAinfluenceduringitsunimpededseventeen-yearcampaign to control U.S. culture and, more specifically, the black literary and cultural Left.Wilford (2008,116)wonders “howwritingmighthavedeveloped inColdWarAmericawithoutthe ‘umbilicalcordofgold’ thatunitedspyandartist,”a reflection thathas implications for thedirectionofAfricanAmericanwritinginthe1950sand1960sandspecificallyfortheFirstNegroWritersConference.Anyreadingoftheconference,then,mustaccountforhowthespeakers,the conference program, and the published volume, directed and edited by Davis, wereinfluencedby thepresenceandpowerofU.S.governmentspiesand,evenmore to thepoint,howAfricanAmericanliteraryandculturalproductionofthe1960sandbeyondcontinuedtobeshapedbythesecollaborations.

THELEFTVERSUSTHE“NEWNEGROLIBERALS”ATTHEAMSACCONFERENCE

Aclose readingof theconference is telling.11Conferenceparticipants discussedanumber ofissues for black writers—from how to write for themainstream to how to form autonomousinstitutions—but thedominant issueof theconferencewas the roleofprotest literature in thisnew era of “integration,” an issue clearly radioactive in the climate of the 1950s becauseprotest writing had been associated with the Left and with a militant critique of Americandemocracy and race.12 Thosewho favored “integrationist poetics” (HoustonBaker’s term forthose who advocated assimilation rather than black nationalism) objected to protest in bothformalandhistoricalterms,definingitassynonymouswiththenaturalismofRichardWright,asplacinganexcessivefocusonracialproblems,andsometimessimplyastheinclusionofblackcharactersassubjects.Theirantiprotestpositionwas,ofcourse,buttressedyearsbeforebyJames Baldwin’s brilliantly argued attack onWright and naturalism in the 1951 essay “ManyThousandsGone”aswellasbytheColdWaraestheticsthathaddemotedsocialrealismandnaturalism in favor of amodernist (nonracialized) aesthetic. Ironically, that position was alsosupportedbyWrighthimself in1957, ina lecturehedelivered inRome,“TheLiteratureof theNegro in theUnitedStates,” inwhichWright—the formercommunist—optimisticallypredicted,on thebasis of the1954SupremeCourt rulingagainst segregation in education, thatAfricanAmericanwriterswouldmoveintothemainstreamandturnawayfrom“strictlyracialthemes.”13

Whereas Lawrence Jackson (2010) says that theAMSAC conferencewas a clear signal

that “the old guard was giving way and that the future generational conflict” would find itsdefinition in the language of “assimilation versus black nationalism,” I read its integrationiststance as heavily favored in 1959, since the members of the “old guard” had the winds ofanticommunism, theColdWar liberalconsensus,U.S.globalsuperiority,andCIA interventionsat their backs. The old guard’s integrationist politics are perhapsmost ably demonstrated inArthur P. Davis’sRoots essay. Davis—a professor at Howard, a Southerner, an eighteenth-centuryBritishliteraturespecialist,andoneoftheauthorsofthepioneering1941anthologyofblackliterature,TheNegroCaravan:WritingsbyAmericanNegroes—wasinhisearlyfiftiesin1959 and one of the old guard. He castigated the protest tradition as unnecessary andburdensome in this new “spiritual climate” of integration, presumably ushered in by the 1954Brownv.BoardofEducation decision.Davisdeclared, prematurely as it turnsout, that,withthe Brown decision, the enemy had capitulated, and so the black writer could no longer“[capitalize] on oppression” (35). Thus he urged writers to drop this “cherished tradition” ofprotest,abandon“Negrocharacterandbackground,”“searchfornewthemes,”“emphasizetheprogress towardequality,” “playdowntheremainingharshness inNegroAmerican living,”andmove “towards the mainstream of American literature” (39). Segregation, he predicted, willpass, like the “Inquisitionor theHitlerera inGermany,”and thenblackwriterswillbeable to“writeintimatelyandobjectivelyofourownpeopleinuniversalhumanterms”(40).Withoutusingtheterm“modernism,”Daviscitedtwomodernists,MelvinB.TolsonandGwendolynBrooks,asexamplesofblackwritersworkingin“thecurrentstyle,”whichhesaidheadmiredbecausetheydidnot,inhisopinion,engageprotestaestheticsbutfeaturemiddle-classcharactersandstresslife “within the group,” not “conflict with outside forces” (37). To authorize his stand againstprotest poetry,Davis citesAllen Tate’s Anglocentric backhanded praise of Tolson,who, Tatehadwritten,represents“thefirsttime…aNegropoethasassimilatedcompletelythefullpoeticlanguageofhis timeand,by implication, the languageof theAnglo-Americanpoetic tradition”(39). Davis’s misreading of Brooks, Tolson, and Tate is instructive. Both Brooks and Tolsonwere leftistmodernists, and neitherwould have sanctionedDavis’s position on social protestnorconsideredTate’scommentacompliment.14

A fellow traveler in Davis’s ideological camp was the scholar-critic Saunders Redding, aprofessorat thehistoricallyblackHampton Institute inVirginia; theauthorofseveralbooksofliterary criticism, two autobiographies, and the 1950 novel of black alienation,Stranger andAlone (aprecursor toRalphEllison’s InvisibleMan);andoneof the foundersofa traditionofAfricanAmericanliterarycriticism.Additionally,andsurelyofgreatimporttoRedding,hewasamember of the editorial board of thePhiBetaKappa journalAmericanScholar. As ReddingcontributedregularcolumnsonblackliteraturefortheBaltimorenewspaperAfro-American,hebecame, according to his biographer Lawrence Jackson (2007), “themostwidely readblackliterarycriticintheUS.”

In thespeechReddingsubmitted for theRootsvolume,hepresentedblack literaryhistoryasasteadyevolutionfromoldtraditionssetbyleaderslikeBookerT.Washington,throughthe“artiness” of the Harlem Renaissance and the political “alienation” of communism, to a finalrestingplaceinuniversality,aconcept,hesaid,thatwillenabletheblackwritertounderstandhis relation to a common human identity (8). With this view of racial history as inevitableforward progress, Redding minimized racism as “the actions of a few men,” producing“insupportable calamities for millions of humble folk” (2), and he predicted that when blackwriters throw off their fixation on race, they would be able to ascend to the towers of“universality,”where,presumably,allwhitewriters resided,swaddled in thatall-embracingbutelusivehumanity. In his recent work on black intellectuals of the 1940s and 1950s, Jackson

argues for understanding Redding as a far more complex thinker than his AMSAC essayreveals,asophisticatedcriticwho,Jacksonsays,embracedarangeofpositions:“amodernistimpatient with older patterns of race relations,” a bourgeois with a desire for mainstreamapproval,andaracemanwhovaluedblackracialtraditions(2010,718).

However,thatsophisticationandsubtletywasnotondisplayinhiscommentsattheAMSACconference. In that limited forum, Redding was lofty and erudite, showing off his impressiveknowledge of literary history and hinting at but failing to elaborate his position that blackAmerican writers were part of a “complex and multifarious” American culture and were,therefore,onlyAmericanwriters. Inwhatappears tobe thespeechheoriginallygaveat theconference,published in1964ashis “KeynoteAddress,”Reddingmuchmoreexplicitlystateshiscontroversialposition that there isnoseparateAfricanAmericancultural traditionand thatAmericanliteratureisthe“bough”andAmericanNegroliteraturemerelythe“branch.”Inapointthat would have been evenmore problematic for the AMSAC audience, ReddingmaintainedthatmuchofAmericanNegro literaturewassupportedby “pathogenic” forces that created intheAmericanNegrowriter“illnesses,”“self-hatred,”“alavishimitation,”and“preoccupationwithman’sdoomratherthanwithman’sdestiny”(283).Smallwonder,then,thatReddingretractedthisessayandsubmittedthetamerversiontotheRootsvolume.15

Theleftistsattheconference,whoappeartohaveoutnumberedtheopposition,objectedtoboth the spirit and the letter of the speeches given by Davis and Redding. Despite theirnumbers, however, we must remember that the Left carried the burden of Cold Warrepressions,and theirpresentationsare,notsurprisingly, fullofcoded termsandsilences.Tomake sense of those, we need to keep in mind the precarious position of the black Left in1959. By that year the institutions that had supported black left-wing cultural production hadbeendecimatedthroughallsortsofRedScaretactics,chiefamongthembeingnamedto theAttorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO), a totally arbitrary list thatallowedtheattorneygeneraltodeclareanorganizationsuspectwithoutanylegalproceedings.One of the most effective and innovative leftist cultural organizations of the 1950s, theCommittee for the Negro in the Arts, was dead in three months after being designated“subversive” by the AGLOSO (Goldstein 2008, 67). Robeson’s pioneering leftist newspaper,Freedom, which gave Lorraine Hansberry her start in journalism, featured Alice Childress’spopular “Conversations fromLife”columns,andgenerallycoveredand reviewedculturalworkon theLeft,wasdisbanded in1955underColdWarpressures.The theatercommitteeof theClub Baron, where Hughes, Childress, and Branch had produced plays, was closed in the1950sbecauseofthethreatofaMcCarthyinvestigation.BlacklistedwritersincludingChildress,SarahWright, andMayfieldwereunable to get theirworkpublished for a time in the1950s.Hugheswas calledbefore aSenate investigation committeeand forced to disavowhis leftistwriting.Justayearbeforetheconference,theFBItriedtogetSarahWrightfiredfromherjobasabookkeeperinaprintingfirm,advisingheremployerthatWrightwasknownas“anadmirerofPaulRobeson,”herhusband,JoeKaye,said inan interview. (Herbossrefused to fireher,even though he was anticommunist.) We might also consider another reason for the Left’scircumspection:bothAMSACanditslavishlyfundedconferenceweresponsoredbyCIAfundsfunneled through a phony setup called theNormanFoundation.GivenCIA surveillance, alongwithblacklisting,congressional investigations,arrests,anddeportationscarriedoutduring the1950s, it isnotsurprising that thesewriterscouchedtheir leftistpositions incarefullyguardedterms.16

If therewasanythingwriters on theLeft understoodwell, itwas that thesedebatesoverprotest literature and over representations of black subjectivity were State Department–

authorizedstrategiestodeterminethekindofblackliteraryproductionthatwouldbesanctionedand promoted in the era of Cold War containment. The left-wing speakers rejected theconservatism of Redding and Davis because that conservatism prescribed a racial, political,andaestheticlitmustestforblackwriters.Inviewofthe1960sBlackArtsMovement,however,theLeftseemstohavewontheday.Butwhiletheleftistwritersarguedhotlyforthecontinuingimportance of protest literature, they failed to examine the implications of the term socialprotest, presenting it as though itsmeaningwere stable, unitary, andself-evident.AlongwithexternalpressuresfeltbytheLeft,thefundamentalproblemwiththeLeft’ssupportofaprotesttradition was that they did not or could not define it in formal terms. So a term like “socialprotest”floatedaroundtheconference,acquiringdifferentmeaningseachtimeitwasused.Theconservatives,ontheotherhand,werearmedwithconcreteanddetailedreasonsforrejectinganddiscreditingprotestwriting.Theleftistspeakersseemparticularlystumblingintheireffortsto defend social protest and social realism, perhaps because of the political implications ofsocial protest and the climate of the ColdWar. But perhaps the speakers on the Left weresimply reluctant to formulate a formal orthodoxy. For the leftist writers at the AMSACconference, social protest was a flexible term, reflecting the kind of pugnacious stance theyassumed in their defense of black writers’ freedom to explore black subjectivity in all itsdimensions.Inactualfact,theydidnotimposeanyformalrequirementsonwritersanddidnotinsist on some form of (Richard) Wrightian naturalism. Their own work ran the gamut frommodernismtosocialrealism.

The opportunity to debate the importance of protest literature at the AMSAC conferencewas particularly important, given that in the late 1950s there was no progressive or blackcultural journalwhere these issuescouldhavebeendebatedmoreextensivelyand thatwhitepublications, including theputatively liberal journalPartisanReview, ignored blackwriting andracial issues almost totally.17 Together the three AMSAC participants—Mayfield,Wright, andHansberry—constituted the progressive wing at the conference, each of them resisting thedomination of the conservatives and trying to carve out an autonomous and politicallyprogressive space for black writers. All three were close to or members of the CommunistPartyatone time.Mayfieldwas,at the time,a thirty-year-oldnovelistand radicalactivist;hehadjoinedtheCommunistPartyinthemid-1950s,whenthePartywasatitsmostendangered.Unfazedbyitsdecline,Mayfieldconsideredit“themostpowerful,radicalorganization”thathecould join,andheremainedactivewith thePartyandtheHarlemLeft throughout the1950s.18SarahWrightsaidlaterthattheonlyreasonshedidnotjointhePartyisthatnooneaskedher.Herhusband,JoeKaye,identifiedhimselfinaninterviewasanactivecommunistanddescribedWright as deeply involved in events sponsored by the Communist Party as well as inorganizations thatopenlysupportedPartycauses.Hansberry joined thePartyasastudentattheUniversityofWisconsin(Anderson2008,264).

Mayfieldtookontheconservatives,arguinginhispaper,“IntotheMainstreamandOblivion,”that integration into themainstreamconstituted“oblivion” for theblackwriter.Mayfielddirectlyaddressed thepanelonsocialprotest, rejecting theclaim that socialprotest “hadoutlived itsusefulness” because the Negro artist was on the verge of acceptance into the American“mainstream,”aword,Mayfieldnotedwithsarcasm,heardrepeatedlyattheconference(30).Mayfieldbeganbyexaminingthepoliticaluseoftheword“integration”asaployfor“completelyidentifying the Negro with the American image” (30). In a direct challenge to Davis’sintegrationist stance, Mayfield says that for the black writer “to align himself totally to theobjectives of the dominant sections of the American nation” would be to limit himself to “thenarrownationalorbit,”acceptinguncriticallyallthattheAmericannation-statestandsfor.Urging

blackwriters to remain critics of the nation, sensitive to “philosophical and artistic influencesthat originate beyond our national cultural boundaries,”Mayfieldwas the only speaker at theconference to place black writers in an international context and to identify the transnationalColdWarpoliticsbehindtheincreasingemphasisonintegration:

Now,becauseofacombinationof internationalanddomesticpressures,asocialclimate isbeingcreatedwherein,atleast in theory,he [theNegro]maywin the trappingsof freedomthatothercitizensalready take forgranted.OnemaysuggestthatduringthisperiodoftransitiontheNegrowoulddowelltoconsiderifthebestuseofthesetrappingswillbetoalignhimselftotallytotheobjectivesofthedominantsectionsoftheAmericannation.

(31)

ThoughMayfield’s talk drifts off at the end into a pessimistic and inept conclusion about theblackwriterremainingin“thepositionoftheunwantedchild,”hecametheclosestofanyofthepresenters toexposing theColdWarpoliticsbehindAMSACand thecodedmeaningsbehindtheconservatives’rejectionofsocialprotest.

In her presentation, the thirty-year-old activistSarahE.Wright,whose1955 experimentalpoetryvolumeGiveMeaChildandhercriticallyacclaimed1969novelThisChild’sGonnaLivehave been nearly erased from black literary history, echoed the radical critiques of AliceChildress,Mayfield,andHansberry.Theintegrationists,shemaintained,supporteda“dominant[white] aesthetic [that] does not accommodate the judgment, values, or needs of the Negropeople,letalonetheNegrowriter.”Wright’sfocusonthe“aesthetic”andhercritiqueoftheNewCriticism are important. While Wright addressed a number of practical issues—like gettingblackbooksintopubliclibrariesandurgingblackartiststousepoliticalpressuretogetschoolsand libraries topurchaseandusebooksbyblackauthors—shewas theonlyspeaker todealwith the politics of aesthetics and the only one besidesMayfield to connect these issues toCold War politics. She argued that it was crucial to understand how the construction of“protest”writingwasmanipulatedbythepoliticsoftheacademy,andshespecificallyimplicatesthe theoriesof theNewCriticism inColdWarstrategies.Blackwriters,sheasserted, “shouldexpose thosestandardsofaestheticswhichareoftendeliberately,butmoreoftenunwittingly,conceived to destroy artistic vitality. The new critics’ plea for self-contained writing that willcause readers tomoveonlywithin the experience of the compositionmust be recognized byNegrowritersasaforcedestructiveofrationalrelationstolife”(63).

Wrightmadeexplicit the assumptionsof theNewCriticism that artmust be (or could be)divorced from the political or the social, that it could be, in other words, a “self-containedaestheticobject”distinguishedbyqualitiesofcomplexityandambiguitythatmockthesimplisticandmoralisticaimsofprotestwriting.Arguingclearlyasa leftist,Wright identifiedthis ideaofart as “destructive” and pointed to the need for an alternative aesthetic, naming the Left-influencedHarlemWriters’GuildofNewYorkCityas“aninspiringexample”ofthetypeofforumnecessarytoaidblackwritersin“formulatingameaningfulaesthetic.”Butitisworthnotingthatthe conservatives at the conference had the institutional-theoretical support of the NewCriticism,which, asSmethurst (2012, 3) remindsus, “hadby this time completely dominatedliterary studies in U.S. academia, giving them a coherent aesthetic underpinning that theintellectual-artistic Left did not have.” Wright’s critique had little forcefulness since it had noequivalentsystematictheoreticalsupport.Hervalianteffortstodiscreditthereigningaesthetic-theoreticalMafiawaslikecarryingathimbleofwatertoaforestfire.

THEMISSINGHANSBERRYKEYNOTEADDRESS

Inkeepingwithhiswell-deservedreputationforiconoclasmandpersonalvendetta,thehistorianHaroldCruse claimed in his 1967bookTheCrisis of theNegro Intellectual, typically withoutanydocumentation, thatLorraineHansberry’skeynotepresentationat theAMSACconferencewasso“inappropriate” ithad tobeomitted fromthepublishedvolume.Crusemayhavebeenright that the radicalism of her speech, though it might seem subdued to a contemporaryreader,was too far to the left foreditorDavis.RobertNemiroff,Hansberry’sex-husbandandestatemanager,saysthatthespeechwasomittedbecauseHansberrydidnotedititintimeforpublication,whichseemsanunlikelyexplanationforexcludingthekeynoteaddressbythestarof the black literary world. It seems more likely that Hansberry’s use of terms like “whitesupremacy,”hercritiqueof1950scivil rightsstrategies,andherdirect references to theColdWar, lynching, the1955BandungConference,and “paid informers”soalarmedDavisandhisCIAsponsorsthatheusedtheexcuseofhertardinesstobanthespeech.

Thetextofthespeech—ultimatelypublishedmorethanadecadelaterinTheBlackScholar—makes clear that Hansberry was not simply targeting the conservatives in her remarks.Instead,sheseemstohavebeenaimingatthelargeraudienceofanticommunistliberals,whomshe addresses indirectly, referring to a conversation she had with “a young New Yorkintellectual,anex-Communist,ascholarandaseriousstudentofphilosophyandliterature”whois cynical about any possibility for political change. I takeHansberry’s entire speech to be arefutation of the claims that art and ideology must be kept separate—the “end of ideology”positionofdisenchantedpostwar liberal intellectuals.19Shebegan thespeechwith thesimpleassertion that all art is “social,” by which she meant ideological, and by attacking themainstream media—including film, television, theater, and the novel—which, she says, wereintent on masking their own ideologies. In a bulleted list, she named the “illusions” that themainstreammediaperpetratewhileclaimingtobeideologicallyneutral: Mostpeoplewhoworkforaliving(andtheyarefew)areexecutivesand/orworkinsome

kindofoffice; Womenareidiots; Peoplearewhite; Negroesdonotexist; Thepresentsocialorderishereforever,andthisisthebestofallpossibleworlds; Warisinevitable; Radicalsareinfantile,adolescent,orsenile;and Europeancultureisthecultureoftheworld.In other words, Hansberry’s list critiques themedia for producing an ideology that promoteswhiteness as normal, represents blacks as Other, discredits radicalism, and defines culturefromanEurocentricperspective.

Hansberrywasnotadvocatingasimplistic reverse ideology thatwouldrepresentblack lifein a positive light. She challenged the Negro writer to reject the cultural values of “whitesupremacy” thatdevalueblackspeechandblackexpressiveproduction,butshealso insistedthattheblackwritershouldfearlesslypresent“allofthecomplexitiesandconfusionsandback-wardnesses of our people”—including the “ridiculous money values that spill over from thedominant culture,” “the romanceof theblackbourgeoisie,” and “color prejudice”amongblackpeople.

Hansberry’s leftist politics aremost apparent in her prescient critique of 1950s civil rightsstrategy.Whileshepassionatelyremembered“theepicmagnitude”offiftythousandNegroesin

Montgomery,Alabama,andninesmallchildrentryingtogotoschool inLittleRock,Arkansas,she challenged what she considered the “obsessive over-reliance upon the courts, [and a]legalistic pursuit of the already guaranteed aspects of our Constitution,” which, she said,“preoccupies us at the expense ofmore potent political concepts.” LikeMayfield,Hansberryremindedheraudience that theLeft’spre-Brown (theBrownv.BoardofEducation SupremeCourt decisionof 1954) racial justice struggles, built out of a coalitionof tradeunionists, civilrights organizations, left-wing groups, and communists, were focused on economic inequitiesandlaborrights,noton“asimplequestforintegration”(Biondi2003,7)setintomotionbytheBrowndecision.Thesocialistaimsoftheseearliercivilrightsmovementswere,inHansberry’swords,“morepotentpoliticalconcepts”constitutedtoinsure“vasteconomictransformationsfargreaterthananyourleadershavedaredtoenvision”and“equaljobopportunity,themostbasicrightofallmeninallsocietiesanywhereintheworld.”

InThe Lost Promise ofCivil Rights, one of themost trenchant critiques of theNAACP’spursuit of desegregation in education, the legal historian Risa L. Goluboff (2007) essentiallyvindicatesHansberry’s(andMayfield’s)criticismofthepoliticallimitsandideologicalconstraintsoftheNAACP’slitigationstrategy.AsGoluboffshows,whentheNAACP“channeled[their]legalenergy” exclusively toward fighting the harmful effects of discrimination in public schooleducation, theyturnedtheenergiesofcivil rightsstruggleawayfromitsearlier focuson laborrights, insuring that “psychologically damaged schoolchildren and the state-sponsoredsegregated school [would become] the icons of Jim Crow” (2007, 4; see also Von Eschen1997).But therewerea few, likeHansberry,Mayfield,Childress,LondonBrown,andWright,whowerewilling in1959 tocritiquewhathadbecomeby theendof the1950s theColdWarorthodoxy on race, on civil rights, and on African American cultural work. Going still further,HansberryseemedtobedroppinghintsofthecollusionofartistswiththeCIA,anotherpossiblereason her speechwas jettisoned: “And until such time [as these changes are realized], theartistwhoparticipates inprogramsofapology,ofdistortion,ofcamouflage in thedepictionofthe lifeandtrialsofourpeople,behavesasthepaidagentof theenemiesofNegrofreedom”(138).Connectingblackracialissuestoaninternationalcontext,Hansberrysaidthatshewouldtell the people of Bombay, Peking, Budapest, Laos, Cairo, and Jakarta (referring to theBandungConferenceandtheHungarianuprisingagainsttheSovietUnion)thatNegroesarenot“freecitizensoftheUnitedStatesofAmerica,”thatherpeopledonot“enjoyequalopportunityinthemostbasicaspectsofAmericanlife,housing,employment,franchise,”andthat“thereisstilllynchingintheUnitedStatesofAmerica.”BrieflyreferringtotheRedScareinherownlife,Hansberrysaidthatshewasthevictimofaphysicalassaultmotivatedbyboththe“racialandpolitical hysteria” of the Cold War, a war she called “the worst conflict of nerves in humanhistory.”

Aswecansee fromthenumeroushandwritten revisionsshemadeon theoriginalcopyofthisspeech,20HansberrywasstitchingtogetherthemosaicofpoliticalconceptsthatconstitutedtheblackculturalandpoliticalLeftinthe1950s,showingitasanarticulateandincisivevisionoftheblack freedomstruggle. It isstrikingafter reading thisspeech—foryearsonlyavailable inthe 1971 issue ofBlack Scholar—to turn to the final page of theRoots volume and to thephotograph of Hansberry standing before a well-lit lectern and speaking into a rather largemicrophonebeforeaverylargeaudience,whichgaveherastandingovation.Thephotographisasurprisingreminderoftheabsenceofherremarksfromthatpublishedvolume.If,asGilyard(2010,142)notes,HansberryspokemoremilitantlyinthisspeechthansheallowedanyofhercharactersinRaisinintheSun,itmayhavebeenthattheHenryHudsonHotel,evenunderCIAsurveillance, was, ironically, a more receptive space for that militancy than the theaters of

Broadway.

THECONFERENCE’SAFTERMATH

AMSAC, as I have shown, had unquestionably derivedmajor sustenance from the “umbilicalcordofgold”providedbytheCIA.Inhis1971memoirs,JulianMayfieldbegantocontemplateuneasilythewillingnessoftheblackLefttobelessthanvigilantaboutthelargessederivedfromtheirrelationshiptoAMSAC.HewasdisappointedwiththenationalistsattheconferenceforsoeasilymakingatrucewiththeAMSACestablishmentandwrotetothepoliticallyandculturallyprogressiveBlackWorld editorHoytFuller in theearly 1970s, confessing toFuller in a soul-searching moment that there was only one of his colleagues on the Left who consistentlyquestionedthatrelationshipandrefusedtoaccepttheperksbeingoffered:

Lestsomeoneelsehastentopointitout,IshouldconfessherethatapparentlybothHoytFullerandI,alongwithalotofothers,workedunwittinglyfortheC.I.A.whenweweremembersoftheAmericanSocietyofAfricanCulture,AMSAC.Inthoseinnocentyears,therewasonlyonewriterIknew,AliceChildress,whodemandedtoknowwherethemoneywascoming from, and consistently stayed away from those fine receptions/and boat rides for [Leopold] Senghor, [Jaja]Wachuuandthelike.21

In a letter to JohnHenrik Clarke,Mayfield again remarked that Childress’s singular examplecontinuestodisturb,pushinghimtoconsiderthepricetobepaidbythosewhowillinglyallowedthemselvestobeinnocentdupes:

Howitworks,Idon’tknow,butIamremindedofthoseprettydayswhenwewerebeingsponsoredbyAMSAC,and,tothebestofmyknowledge,onlyAliceC.[Childress]asked,“Whereisallthemoneycomingfrom.”WhenatajointlectureatBostonin1961,IremindedSauders[sic]ReddingofourC.I.A.connection,hedidn’tseemtoknowanythingaboutit.Nowthat I have todoR.Wright [RichardWright]more thoroughly, I realize that, like thepoor, theF.B.I. and theC.I.A. arealwayswithus.Theproblemiswhathappenswhentheysendinthebill.22

Even though these are privatemusings,Mayfield is one of the very fewwriterswilling toadmithiscomplicitywiththeCIA.Certainly,asweseeintheFrankLondonBrownchapter,thedesire for inclusion and normalcy made it more difficult for black artists to critique whitesupremacy,especiallywhenitcameinthe“pretty”disguisesofwhatNikhilPalSinghcalls“thematerialandsymbolicnetsoffundingandprestige”(2005,151).Despitethat,Mayfieldwasatleast willing to contemplate the bill that would come due and what it would cost him. In theepilogue, I turn briefly to Mayfield’s creative work, specifically his 1961 novel The GrandParade, to see if and how he was able to resolve these tensions. Mindful of what JamesSmethurst and AlanWald call “the continuities” of radical politics and poetics that paved theway for themilitantwritingof the1960s, I lookathowhe representedandexpandedprotestwriting and continued to produce a “black literary Left.”While I am also interested in askinghow his left-wing literary and cultural orientation may have enabled or inhibited formalexperimentation, I ammost interested in how black Left radicalism’s powerful critique of theconservative politics of theColdWar 1950s, gave artists likeMayfield the freedom to resistconservative notions of integration and race that energetically sought to limit expressions ofblacksubjectivity.

W

EPILOGUE:THEEXAMPLEOFJULIANMAYFIELDThinkhowmanyfascinatinghumandocumentstherewouldbenow,ifallthegreatpoetshadwrittenofwhathappenedtothempersonally—andofthethoughtsthatoccurredtothem,nomatterhowugly,nomatterhowfantastic,nomatterhowseeminglyridiculous!

—GWENDOLYNBROOKS,1938

ECANONLYwishthatGwendolynBrookshadheededherownwordsandallowedsomeoftheghostsofherColdWarpastoutofthecloset.Whensheandtheothersofhergenerationofblackleftistactivist-artistslookedbackonthehistorytheyhelpedmake,

they were reluctant to tell the story of their part in creating it. Some were communists andsomeweren’t, but if they stoodupagainstMcCarthy’switch-hunts,HUAC investigations, andSmithActandMcCarranactreprisalsagainsttheLeft,oreveniftheymerelysupportedcausesidentifiedwiththeLeft,theycouldcountonbeingblacklistedandharassed.EventhoughAfricanAmericanartistsontheLeftproducedmanyofthemajorthemesandformsofAfricanAmericancultural production from the 1930s to the early 1950s—a radical protest tradition—AfricanAmericanculturalhistorieshaveoftenhelpedobscuretheircontributionsbyerasingorevadingLefthistoryorbyforegroundingthenegativestoriesoftheCommunistParty.

The new scholarship on the black Left, deeply researched and theoretically smart, hasadvancedourknowledgeandunderstandingandbeguntoreversethosepracticesoferasure,butwhatisstillmissing,andwhatI longfor,arethepersonaltestimoniesofblackleftistswhowere there in themidstof theactivist1940sandtheColdWar1950s, thekindofeyewitnesstestimony and private reflections that they tucked away to protect themselves from furtherintimidation and reprisals.1 The editor and left-wing activist Esther Jackson writes, “Peoplewonderwhythesethingsaren’tknown,”butshe, likemanyothers,alsohesitatedtoadmithercommunistties,inpartbecausered-scaretacticscanbeandstillareusedtomenacethemandtheirfamilies(interview,March30,1998).Inanefforttocorrectwhatshecalls“thissilencingofhistory,”thehistorianGwendolynMidloHallwrotemeane-mailblisteringtheNewYorkTimesfordenyingthecommunistaffiliationsofthevisualartistElizabethCatlettintheir2012memorialtribute:

ThatNYTimesarticle [April3,2012]aboutElizabethCatlett’s tiestotheCommunistParty isabsurdclaimingshewaspersecutedbecauseherex-husbandwasamemberoftheCommunistPartybutshewasnot.IknewherverywellwhenwelivedinMexicobetween1959and1964.ShewasamemberoftheCommunistPartythroughoutherlifeinboththeUSAandMexico.SheisallovermyFBIfilesastheliaisonbetweentheUSrefugeesfromMcCarthyism(includingDaltonTrumbo)livinginMexicoandtheMexicanCommunistPartywhichisabsolutelytrue.Infact,shehelpedmegetarticlesaboutRobertF.Williams’flightfromtheFBIinMexicannewspapers,whichhelpedRobandMabelWilliamsandtheirtwosonsescapetoCubaviaMexico.Shewasnotonlyagreatartistshewasavery influentialCommunist.HerhusbandFrancisco(Pancho)MorawasalsoaCommunistasweremostofthegreatartistsandmuralistsofMexico.Itispasttimetoputastoptothissilencingofhistoryandacceptwhatcommunistsdidtoempowertheexploitedoftheearthduringthetwentiethcentury.

The exasperation we hear in Hall’s insistence on Catlett’s leftist history underscores thereason thereareonlya fewautobiographicalaccountsof theblackLeftandso fewwilling toallowusaccesstothepersonal, intimate,andmultivalentstoriesof theirexperiencesofbeingon theLeftduring theColdWar.Such imaginativenarrativesof theselfmighthelpunderminetheknee-jerkreaction thatpaintscommunismasdemonicandcommunistsas traitors,butwe

also see the dangers of such revelations—consider the red-baiting discourse that continuesaliveandwell in2012,withridiculousattacksonthecurrentU.S.presidentasa“socialist”or,worse,“acommunist.”2Nearlyevery figure I interviewed forTheOtherBlacklistwashesitantaboutusingtheword“communist,”includingCatlettherself.3

Inthisepilogue,Ireturntoafigurewhoappearsbrieflyinchapter6,JulianMayfield,oneofthespeakersatthe1959AMSACBlackWritersconferenceandthemostoutspokenabouthisradicalaffiliations.Mayfieldleftseveralautobiographicalsketches,amongthemanunpublishedinterviewandasemiautobiographical1961novel,TheGrandParade, bothofwhichdescribeMayfield’sradicallifeandserveasanalternativevisionofcommunismthatcounteractsthoseofdisaffected communists like Richard Wright. As a thirty-year-old novelist and radical activistliving inNewYorkCity,Mayfield joined theParty in the late 1940s becausehe considered it“themostpowerful,radicalorganization”hecould join,eventhoughhefelt thathehadmissedthegreatmomentoftheParty’spowerinthe1930s.Inaseventy-five-pageinterviewgiventoayoung student, he brilliantly evokes the passion that Party involvement inspired and honestlyexploreshis disappointments.He says theParty attractedpeople like him “whowere young,idealistic,andwhowerelookingforaplaceinwhichtochangeAmericansocietyasdrasticallyaspossible.”Nothing, inhisestimation, cameclose to theParty for that kindof revolutionarychange(1970,box552-21).HewasproudoftheworkhedidinthePartyonthebigcampaignsto free theMartinsvilleSeven,WillieMcGee,andMrs.Rosa Ingramand in trying to fight theexecutionof theRosenbergs.4 In contrast tomost communist conversionnarratives,MayfieldsaysthathewasdisappointedwiththePartybecauseitwas“notrevolutionaryenough.”WhenthePartyleaderswerearrestedandpleadedinnocent,Mayfieldsaysthetragedywasthattheywereindeedabsolutelyinnocent—“weneverconspiredtooverthrowthegovernment”(552-18).“OurenergieswentintotryingtoreformAmericansocietyasit isconstitutednow,”and,intheend,Mayfieldbelieved,“wehadno—norealeffectontheblackcommunity”(552-17).

Like many other black leftists, including Jack O’Dell and Ossie Davis (see chapter 5),Mayfield left thePartybecausehefelt thathisblacknationalismwouldalwaysexist inuneasytensionwithhis leftistaffiliations,andhe feltcompelled toswitchhisenergiesand loyalties toblackstruggles.Thatbreak fromtheParty is reimaginedas thecentralevent in the lifeofhismaincharacter,Alonzo (Lonnie)Banks, inTheGrandParade. There are several reasons forthe importanceof thisnovel.First, itspotlights themoment in the1950swhen theblackLeft,including Mayfield, moved away from communism and toward the emergent civil rightsmovement. Another reason for its importance is its delineation of the emotional and psychiccostof renouncing theParty,amove that is fraught, foradedicated radical likeLonnie,as itwasforMayfield,withasenseoffailureandloss.InitsrepresentationofthePartyasaflawedbutcriticalandeffectiveorganization,TheGrandParaderecallsandrevisesWright’sversionofleaving the Party and shows how caricatures of the Communist Party and anticommunistcensorship narrowed the range of black political critique. The novel is also unique in itsexamination of the political maneuverings of the 1950s integration movement. In The GrandParadetheintegrationmovementisdepictedasacollisionofpoliticalinterestsvyingforpower:liberalpoliticians,blackpoliticalactivists,whiteracistgroups,and,ofcourse,governmentspies,renamed in the novel, with intentional irony, the BS, or Bureau of Security. Finally, the novelperforms something rare in autobiographical accounts of black ex-communists: it veryspecifically cites the example of Soviet oppression under Stalin as a reason for Lonnie’sdeparture fromtheCP,acritique that radicalswereoftenreluctant toraisebecause itplayedintotheanticommunistdiscourse.AsAlanWaldnotesinhisreviewessay“‘TripleOppression’to‘FreedomDreams,’”“EvenamongthoseAfricanAmericanswhodepartedtheParty, in1956if

not earlier, the horrible facts of Stalinist oppression are never cited as a reason for theseparation—the books report only grievances around lack of attention to anti-racism orpersonalgripes”(AgainsttheCurrent,January/February2013,25).

WegetarareviewoftheCommunistPartyinTheGrandParade.Lonniedescribeshislifein the Party as rich, full, exciting, exhausting, and intellectually challenging. Above all, it is ameaningful life in community, with Lonnie serving in the important position of educationaldirector. Signaling 1956 and the Khrushchev revelations about the Stalinist regime, the novelbegins with Lonnie’s ouster from the Party for refusing to retract a report called “TheAmericanizationoftheCommunistPartyoftheU.S.A.”CitingtheKhrushchevreportonStalin’satrocities, the reporturges theCPUSA tocall for “ideologicaland tactical independence fromtheSovietUnion”and to “repudiate theRussianswhenever theywerewrong justas itdid theUnitedStates.” Lonnie’s report is consideredanathema,andhe is ejected from theParty forrefusing to retract it (147).Thoughhestandsonprinciple,heunderstands theenormityofhisdecision. He is relinquishing his dream of rising in the Party to become a member of theNationalCommitteeandendinga long-enduringrelationship toacommunityofcomrades: “Hewasoutof theParty.TherealizationstruckLonniewith full forceasheopenedhiseyes.Theknowledgewassoawfulinitsenormitythathewascertainhewouldneverbeabletolivewithit”(121).Iknowofnoothernarrativethatdescribeswithsuchemotionalpowerandhonestythepain of being “cast out of the Communist family,” of losing what the Party had meant tosomeone being absorbed in struggle, invigorated by the Party’s intellectual demands, andsupportedbyone’scomrades.

DespitethenuanceandpowerofMayfield’snarratives,thecommunistconversionnarrativewearemostlikelytoencounterisWright’s1944autobiographical“ITriedtoBeaCommunist,”whichwas reprinted in 1948 in theCIA-financed volumeTheGod That Failed.5 TheCP thatWright describes is composed of venal, distrusting, anti-intellectual blacks jealous of hisintelligence.When he is eventually brought up on trumped-up charges of being an “unhealthyelement” (134),Wright “standsalone”beforeaParty that is secretive,underhanded,corrupt,domineering, and vicious. In the endWright is thrust out of theParty and feels the sense ofisolationand loneliness thatLonnieexperiences,butWright concludes thathemust followhisownpath—to “hurlwords into this darkness andwait for an echo.”Wright’s self-portrait, thewriterwiththesingularability“tosendotherwordstotell,tomarch,tofight,tocreateasenseof thehunger for life,” isan imageof the “exaggeratedself”—toparaphrase the literarycriticRobert Stepto’s term—alienated from the Party hierarchy but woefully unconcerned with therankandfile.

In contrast to Wright’s noble solitariness, Lonnie is standing at the end of The GrandParade in themidstofacrowdofblackdemonstratorsprepared toengage ina fight for therightofblackchildren to integrate thepublicschools. Inwhat isclearlyanelegy for theLeft,Lonnie remembers at this point in his life the ability of the communists to organize and leadmassstruggleand theexample theysetof courage.Lonnie’sgreatest regret is knowing thatthelossof theCommunistParty insuresthatsomeofthegreatestorganizersandfighterswillnotbeapartof thecivil rightsstruggles: “At last therewasa realmassstruggleamong theNegroesbuttheCommunistshadbeenscatteredtothefourwinds”(366–367).

The novel’s examination of the school integration struggle ends with another scene thatillustrates the value of the radical traditions I’ve identified throughout The Other Blacklist.Focusedon the younggirlMildredas the central figure in the integration struggle, this scenepays tribute to theway a leftist perspective could spot the tricks played by race liberalism’sostensiblebenevolence.Mildredisdepictedathernewschoollisteningintentlytotheprincipal’s

welcomingaddress.ShesitsamongherclassmatessilentlypromisingherselfthatshewillearnA’s in all her subjects so that she can prove her ability. In the final line of the novel—“andMildredsangwithalltherest”—Mildredisshownstandingandsingingwithabandon,alongwithall theotherstudents, “Mycountry ’tisof thee /Sweet landof liberty” (448).This isclearlyasceneMayfield intendednot tochampion thenation’sgrudgingacceptanceof theMildredsofAmericabutasbitterpoliticalcommentaryonintegrationist ideology.Onecanonlyunderstandthis scene if we see it as Mayfield’s critique of race liberalism: the black girl, studying andsinging for legitimacy, has been assigned her role as the newly racialized and restigmatizedintegratedsubject,nowretooledforthemodernintegrationistnarrative.

This sceneand this novel constitute the ending ofTheOtherBlacklist. LikeMayfield, thefive artists of TheOther Blacklist countered the conservative integrationist narratives of the1950s that reinforced rather than subverted white supremacy. They were able to do sobecause their art and activismwas rooted in themilitant discourses of the 1940s civil rightsmovement and in the values of the Left that gave priority to a vision that emphasized classconsciousness and the struggle against economic racism. Whether they were ambivalentcommunists, reluctant radicals, wary fellow travelers, and/or committed leftists, they linkedthemselvestothepassionandpowerofaradicalvisionandaradicalactivism.TheirworkwasanimatedbyandenabledbyavisionthatrefusedthetermsofraceliberalismpromotedbytheU.S.mainstream.TheycritiquedtheLeftevenastheybelievedinmanyofitsgoals.Intheendtheywereartists on the Left on their own terms, experimenters and protestors in both theiractivismandtheirart.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1.ThelistofscholarsI includeinthesection“DesignandMethodology”representsthecontemporaryColdWarscholarsofAfrican American literary history and the Left who have begun to reverse this trend. Even as late as 2001, Cold Warscholarshipcouldelidetheimportanceofrace.NoneofthenineessaysinRethinkingColdWarCulture(KuznickandGilbert2001)isaboutrace,andracedoesnotsurfaceinitsintroductionasafeatureofthis“rethinking.”

2.EstherJackson,interviewwiththeauthor(March30,1998).3.WhiletheCommunistParty’snotionofanAfricanAmericannationdevelopingintheAmericanSouthwasneverarealistic

politicalgoal(andinfactwasridiculedbymanyAfricanAmericans),itwas,nevertheless,apowerfulparadigmthatinfluencedAfricanAmericanculturalproductionfordecades.

4. ThePopularFront isprobablybestunderstoodas thatmoment in thehistoryofU.S.communismwhen theCP formedallianceswithothergroupssympathetictotheidealsandaimsofcommunism.IntheUnitedStates,theCPbecameinvolvedininstitutionslikeunions,civilrights,andliteraryandculturalorganizationsanddownplayeditssectarianidentity.ManyofthepeopleontheLeftbecametargetedas“fellowtravelers,”meaningthattheywereontheLeft,sympathetictotheidealsofcommunism,butnotmembersoftheParty.

5.Thehistoryofthisdocument,aswellasitspredecessor,“AnAppealtotheWorld,”isexhaustivelydocumentedinAnderson(2003).

6.ThesestatementswereinstarkcontrasttothepositiontakenbytheU.S.delegationtotheUnitedNations,which,duringthe1940s,ensured thatAmericanracismwouldremainadomestic issue.Anderson(2003)brilliantly traces theway that theinternational struggle for black equality became “Soviet-tainted” and therefore could be “repudiated as subversive,communistic,andeventreasonous”(6).

7.Foradescriptionoftheconvention,seeGordon(1953).8.ThemostextensivestudyoftheFBI’swaronpositiveportrayalsofblacksintheColdWarisNoakes(2003).Accordingto

Noakes’sresearch,thecontestoverhowblackswouldbeportrayedinHollywoodfilmsbeganinearnestduringWorldWarIIastheRooseveltadministrationbecamealarmedthatstereotypicaldepictionsofblacks“threatenedtounderminethemoraleof blacks at a time when their loyalty and labour were needed to win the war.” At the same time, the NAACP beganpressuringHollywoodto“depicttheNegroinfilmsasanormalhumanbeingandanintegralpartofthelifeofAmericaandtheworld.”Despitetheseefforts,astudyconductedin1942bytheOfficeofWarInformationconcludedthat“blackcharacterscontinued tobeportrayedas ‘basically different fromother people, as takingno relevant part in the life of thenation, asaffecting nothing, contributing nothing, and expecting nothing.’” When the NAACP stepped up its fight against racialdiscriminationinfilm,theFBIunderJ.EdgarHooverdecidedtoshowthatsuchracialmilitancywasmoreevidenceofCPinfluenceinHollywood.OneFBIreportobjectedtothepositiveportrayaloftheonlyblackcharacterinthe1947filmBodyandSoulbecauseitupsettheracialhierarchy:“Thenegroappearsasafine,upstandingindividual incomparisontoeveryoneelseinthecast.”AccordingtoreportsbytheFBIunderHoover,exploringracialthemeswasasignof“excessivecriticismofAmericanlife”andpossiblytreasonous.ForHooverandtheFBIunderhisreign,racialprogresswaspurelyandsimplyasignof“communistagitation,”andtheycontinuedthroughoutthe1950stomonitor,investigate,andcensorfilmswiththemesofracialprotestorthatportrayedblackspositively.

9.SeeSchaub(1991,91–115)forathoroughanalysisoftheimpactofpoliticalandideologicalpressuresonAmericanfictionproducedduringtheColdWar.Focusedontheartisticcontrolexertedbyleftistliberalsinthe1950s,SchaubexaminestheNewCritics’disillusionmentwiththeLeftandtheirturntowardtheconservatismofthe“VitalCenter,”intheirdeterminationtoatone for what they considered their misguided innocence. Schaub argues that Invisible Man was part of this newconservatism:“TheclosefitbetweenEllison’sanalysisoftheblackAmericansituationandtheanalysisofhumannaturesetforth in theconservativediscourseof thedominantcriticismwasatonceamajorsourceof thenovel’ssuccessand itsinfamy.”(92).

10. Yetblackmembership in thePartyneverexceededmore than two thousandevenat theheightof itspopularity,after itsdefenseoftheScottsboroBoys.TheNAACPwasinitiallyreluctanttosupporttheninedefendants,pooryouthsaccusedofgang rape, for fear that theywereunsympathetic; the International LaborDefense, theCPUSA’s legal apparatus, led thedefense and garnered impressive international support for the cause. As the fascist threat to the Soviet Union becameincreasinglyapparentinthemid-1930s,theCPabandoneditsinterestintheblack(Southern)proletariatinfavorofabroadercoalitionofblacksfromallclassesaspartofthePopularFront(theinternationalleftistmovementopposingfascism).

11.InRenewingtheLeft,HarveyTeresreportsthatafteronereviewofRichardWright’sNativeSonin1945andthepublicationofafewessaysandstoriesbyJamesBaldwinin1949andtheearly1950s,PartisanReview,themajoranticommunistleftistpublicationintheUnitedStates,almostcompletelyignoredraceandblackwriting.TeresconcludesthattheabsenceofblackvoicesinsuchpublicationsasPartisanReviewis“dueonlypartlytoblatantlyracistattitudesonthepartofwhites.Itisalsotheoutcomeofseveraldecadesofwhiteprogressivesympathy fromafar,whichdidnot involvesustainedcontactwitharepresentativerangeofblackexperience”(1996,228).

12.Wald,alongwiththecircleofCulturalFrontscholars,e.g.,Smethurst,Mullen,Dolinar,Duffy,andGore,amongothers,would

allagreeonthisformulation.13.See,forexample,Teres’s(1996,228)commentonPartisanReview.14.I’veborrowedtheterm“raceradicalism,”whichIdiscussinmoredepthintheepilogue,fromJodiMelamed(2011,xvii).15.SeeDudziak(2002),VonEschen(1997),Singh(2005),Anderson(2003),andGolubuff(2007).16.Thefulltitleofthisbook-lengthpetitionisAppealtotheWorld:AStatementontheDenialofHumanRightstoMinoritiesinthe

CaseofCitizensoftheUnitedStatesofAmericaandanAppealtotheUnitedNationsforRedress(1947).17.Dudziak(2002,49)datesthispamphletas1950or1951.18.TheliteraryandculturalhistorianShaundraJ.MyersforegroundsanotherwaythatBrownwaspsychologicallyandpolitically

limiting:“Thedecision’sreachwouldeventuallybebroadandpenetrating.MostAmericanshaveexperienceditsideologicalimpact; thesocialpoliciesspawnedbyBrownand the implicit ideals itconveyshaveshaped theverycoreofourbeliefs,values,self-perceptions,andsocialrelationships.NotonlyhasBrownbeenthedominantidealofracializationforthepast50years,ithasalsobeen,asIarguehere,aninconspicuousbutkeymeansofnationalizingAfricanAmericans,ofcontainingthemwithinandbindingthemtothenation”(2011,8).

19.Mostscholarsrefertotheseideasasexamplesof1940sand1950sraceliberalism,ratherthanracialconservatism,asIinsistonnamingit.Forthepost–WorldWarIIperiod,whenJimCrowwasstillthelawoftheland,thosewhoadvocatedracialintegration,wanted toendJimCrow,andsupportedmild formsof racial reformwereconsidered the “liberals.”Melamed(2011)calls themantiracist race liberals.Butevenblackswhowerenotpartof the intelligentsiaknew that these “liberal”ideaswerenot efforts at real equality andwouldnot have called these ideas liberal.Among theadults inmy family andneighbors,manyofwhomwereunionmembers,theywouldhavebeenconsideredatbestconservative.

20.TheserespondentswereHughGloster,SaundersRedding,andAlainLocke.21.AtlantaUniversitywasdependentonsubsidiesfromthestateofGeorgiaandmoneyfromwhitedonors.Anyinstitutionthat

wasindebtedtowhitefoundationsorwhitephilanthropywaslessthanwillingtocritiquethese“official”policystatementsonraceprogress.Perhapsthemostimportantexampleofthewayraceliberalspromotedaconservativeracialnarrativeinthe1940s and 1950s (under the name of racial “liberalism”) is the almost universal acceptance of Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944documentAnAmericanDilemma.SeeSingh(2005,142–151)foroneofthebestcritiquesofMyrdal’sstudyasanexampleof“mid-centuryAmericanliberalism”designed“toeducateblacksintotheacceptableformsofpoliticalthinkingandbehaviorwithintheU.S.context.”

22.Thesymposiumistreatedatlengthinchapter1.ThemostconservativevoiceswerethejournalistEraBellThompsonandProfessorHughGlosterofHamptonInstitute.

23. Jodi Melamed’s (2011, 15) formulation is useful here. She shows how “racial liberalism” maintains power through itsmanipulationofrace“asacultural,psychological,orsocialproblem—asamatterofignorance,irrationality,feeling,orhabit—tobecorrectedinthenameofliberal-capitalistmodernityratherthanasinternaltoitspoliticalandeconomicstructures.”

24.“Artistsontheleft”isareferencetothetitleofAndrewHemingway’s(2002)studyArtistsontheLeft:AmericanArtistsandtheCommunistMovement,1926–1956.

25.Robins’s(1992)invaluabledocumentationofFBIproceduresforcollectinginformationexposestheunreliabilityofFOIAfiles.Agentsrevealedthattheyreceivedconflictingandfalseinformationthatnonethelessgotrecordedinthefiles.Asoneagentput it: “Reportorial accuracywas seldom a consideration. Almost everyone in the organizationwas usually afraid to tellHooverthetruthforfearofupsettinghim—andforfearoftheinevitablepunishment.Asaresult,Hooveroftenhadtorelyoninformationthathadbeensugarcoatedforhim”(18).

26.Seehttp://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/sep/12/photographer-ernest-withersfbi-informant/.27.Onecanneverbesurewhetherafileexistsornot,accordingtoRobins(1992,18).Somearehidden,somelistedunder

“deadfile,”andotherssimplyirretrievableforvariousreasons,someofthembureaucraticmismanagement.28.AndrewHemingwayisamajorexception.29.Theterm“discursivemarks”isfromMullen(1999).

1.LLOYDL.BROWN:BLACKFIREINTHECOLDWAR

1.Browndescribedtheseessaystomeincorrespondencethatspannedtheyears1995through2003.2.Masses&Mainstream,intheir1952BlackHistoryMonthissue,printedalistoftheblackwriterspublishedin1951:Abner

Berry,LloydL.Brown,LouisE.Burnham,AliceChildress,EdgarRogieClark,W.E.B.DuBois,JamesW.Ford,YvonneGregory,LorraineHansberry,CharlesP.Howard,JohnHudsonJones,WilliamL.Patterson,PettisPerry,JohnPittman,PaulRobeson,EdStrickland,RooseveltWard,WesleyRobertWells,CharlesWhite, andDoxeyWilkerson.Except for blackpublications, nomagazinesor journals, even leftist journals likePartisanReview, published blackwriters regularly in the1950sor1960s.“IfwelookattherangeofAfricanAmericanwritingfromthe1930stothe1960s,weseethatnearlyallofitwasignoredbyPartisanReview,nottomentionnearlyeveryotherwhitepublicationinthecountry”(Teres1996).Tereslistsallthemass-circulationmagazinesand“middlebrowmagazineslikeHarper,Esquire,VanityFair,andSaturdayReview”andfindsthatnoneofthem“gaveanyseriouscommitmenttopublishingblackwriters”(212–213).SinceTeresdidnotexamineMasses&Mainstream,hedoesnotincludeitshistoryofpublishingblackwriters.Hemingway(2002)saysthatMasses&Mainstreamoftenachievedasophisticatedlevelofculturalcritique.

3.SeeMurrayandCallahan(2000).MurraywritestoEllisonaboutTheMarkofOppression ineitherJanuaryorFebruaryof1952:“PersonallyIfinditjustabouttheworstthingontheNegrosince,well,sincetheywerejustifyingwhitesupremacywiththeBible.NotimetogetintowhatIthinkofitnow,butImustsaythatIfindmyselfincompleteagreementwithLloydBrown’sreactiontoitin(ofallplaces)MassesandMainstream,Oct51,withafewobjectionsofmyown”(26).

4. There isagrowingbodyofworkon IronCity, includingManning (2009),Smethurst (2004),Lecklider (2012),andWald’s

forewordtotheNortheasternUniversityPresseditionofIronCity(Brown1994).5.Brown,lettertotheauthor,August10,1996.6.InTheNegroNovelinAmerica,oneoftheearliestandmostinfluentialAfricanAmericanliteraryhistories,thecriticRobert

Bone(1958,159)begantheprocessofdismissingBrown,callingIronCity“apropagandatractinspiredbytheFoleytrialandwrittenbyaPartystalwart.”NotonlyisBone’sattackpoliticallymotivated,buttheeventsofIronCityhavenorelationshiptotheFoleytrialsofsuspectedcommunists.

7.Brown,lettertotheauthor,July18,1996.8.Brownalsocompletedasecondnovel,YearofJubilee,thatwasneverpublished.ThenovelisakindofsequeltoIronCity,

withsomeofthesamecharactersappearinginnewroles.ThenovelisespeciallyvaluableasafictionalizedhistoryofurbanrenewalinmajorU.S.cities,exposingthewaysthoseurbanplansweredesignedtoeliminateblacksfromcertainvaluablepiecesof city land in the cities.Typical ofBrown’s fiction, thepolitical andhistorical eventsarebasedonactual stories,includinganaccountofaracialmassacreinArkansas.Perhapsthemostinterestingaspectofthenovel,however,arethereferencestoRalphEllison’sInvisibleMan,whichsuggestthatBrownwasintentonextendingthecritiquehehadmadeofEllison’snovel inhis1952review inMasses&Mainstream.Like InvisibleMan,YearofJubileeopenswithaprologue,asermonatachurchinIronCity.Setin1952,thenovelfeaturesaportraitofamanwithhisblueeyesstaringthroughrimlessglasses(like InvisibleMan’sBrotherJack),ariotscenenear theend,andaseriesofspeeches that thenovelshowsasdesigned tomanipulate and control. Themain character Val is saved from the police during a riot by amanwho livesclandestinely inabasementapartmenthidden from thepoliceandon thewallsofwhichare lithographsof famous racepeople.Valisgivenatalisman,adeerfootknife,byamanwhosesonwaskilledintheArkansasriot,muchlikeBrotherTarp,whogivestheInvisibleManalegirontoremindhimofslaveryandofTarp’sresistantspirit.ThesimilaritiestoEllison’snovelwereundoubtedlyBrown’sdeliberatefictionalrebukeofwhatheconsideredthereactionarypoliticsofInvisibleMan.

9.Brown,lettertotheauthor.10.InthepoemHaydencontributedtothesymposium,“ThemeandVariation,”hespeaksinthevoiceofanarratorcalled“the

stranger,”watchingandwonderingaboutallthatisbeingproposedinthissymposiumandmusingontheinstabilityofreality(“slytransience/flickeringalwaysattheedge/ofthings”).Incontrasttotheattemptsofothersymposiumrespondentstotheorizeabout representationsofblackness,Hayden’sstrangersays that reality isa“striptease”andthatGod isHoudini,presidingoveraworldinwhichtherealitytheyseektopindownisever-changing.OnesensesHayden’simpatiencewiththesymposium’scatalogofadvice forblackwriters,believing,ashedid, that theartistmustalwaysconfront this “changingpermanence.”WhenHaydenrevisedthepoemforhis1966volumeSelectedPoems,heretainedthetitlebutmademinorchangesinthepoem.

11. InhisbiographyofGwendolynBrooks, thecriticGeorgeE.Kentpresentedanastutecriticismof thePhylon symposium,whichsupportsmyclaim thatscholars likeAlainLockewereemployingasetofshifting terms in theirattempts todefine“universality.”Kentargues that another level of concealment is representedby the symposium’sattempts to formulateastandard for “universality”while refusing to acknowledge that theywere negotiating for acceptancewith a “skeptical andremote”audience,awhiteliteraryestablishmentwithallthepowersofjudgmentandreward.Ifonehasto“transcendracialexperienceinordertoachieveuniversality,”Kentargues,thenbeing“Negro”isexcludedfromtherealmofuniversality(1990,100).

12.Inhis1949bookTheVitalCenter:ThePoliticsofFreedom,theculturalcriticandhistorianArthurSchlesingerusedtheterm“vitalcenter”todescribewhatheconsideredthenecessarybalancebetweentheradicalismoftheleftandtheconservatismof the right. ThoughTheVital Center could pass during the 1950s as amoral corrective to both the right and the left,reclaiming democracy from both communism and fascism, contemporary critics like Thomas Hill Schaub (1991) haveexamineditsmoralisticargumentsasmasksforitsownformofconservatism.

13.AsBarbaraFoleyhasshowninher2006essay“FromCommunismtoBrotherhood:TheDraftsofInvisibleMan,”beforehisanticommunist conversion,RalphEllison represented theCommunistParty (called theBrotherhood in thenovel)withaninsider’sknowledgeofthePartyandwithakindoftenderrespect.Onepassageaboutthenon-HarlemBrotherhood,whichEllisonomittedfromthenovel,almostperfectlydescribesBrown’sdepictionofPartyactivistsinIronCity:“TheywerelikenootherpeopleIhadeverknown.Iliked…theirselflessacceptanceofhumanequality,andtheirwillingnesstogettheirheadsbeatentobringitafractionofastepcloser.Theywerewillingtogoalltheway.Eventheirwageswentintothemovement.AndmostofallIlikedtheirwillingnesstocallthingsbytheirtruenames.Oh,Iwastrully[sic]carriedaway.ForawhileIwasputtingmostofmysalarybackintothework.Iworkeddaysandnightsandwasseldomtired.Itwasasthoughwewereallengaged in a mass dance in which the faster we went the less our fatigue. For Brotherhood was vital and we wererevitalized”(Foley2006,169–170,emphasismine).

14.“Themostambitiouscollectiveefforteverattemptedinthefieldofliterarystudies,”accordingtoSillen(1949).15.SeealsoDudziak(2007)andvonEschen(1992).16.Inchapter2ofTheColdWaratHome:TheRedScareinPennsylvania,1945–1960,PhilipJenkins(1999)givesathorough

descriptionandanalysisoftheroleoftheCommunistPartyinlaborpoliticsinPittsburgh;however,IagreewithJerryHarris(1999),whonotes inhis reviewofTheColdWaratHome that Jenkins “comesdangerously close to justifying the anti-Communist hysteria.” Treatinganticommunism, justifiably critiqued for its scattershot accusationsagainstAmericans, itseffortstounderminetheNewDeal,itsthwartingofresistancetoAmericancapitalism,anditscreationofanatmosphereofterrorassomehownotallthatconsequential,asJenkinsdoes,isalarmingaswellasahistorical.

17. AtBrown’s trial,witnesseswere intimidated into falsely testifying that theyhadbeenmisled intosupportingcommunists.Witnesseswereasked,“Didyouknowyousignedapetitiontoputatraitorontheballot?”andwhenthewitnessesanswered“No,”thepolicehadanairtightcaseagainstthecommunists.

18.SeeWald’sforewordtoBrown(1994),Rampersad(2005),Denning(1996),andFoley(2006).

19.Brown,lettertotheauthor,January23,1999.20. Nadler (1995) notes that even though some black LivingNewspapers were actually written, not a single onewas ever

produced,whichheattributesbothtoconsciousandunconsciousracismandtoRed-baiting,whichdenouncedcivilrightsactivityascommunist.

21.TheprecursortextforthiseulogyisWelbornVictorJenkins’s1948epicpoemThe“Incident”atMonroe,whichalsofeaturesadirectaddresstothedeadvictims:“Goodbye,Dorothy,youandWillieMae,andGeorge,theSoldier-boy,andRoger—.”ThesimilaritiesbetweenJenkins’spoemandBrown’srevisionofitarestriking.Bothusedirectaddress,speakingtothevictims.Bothsummon imagesof the lawand theFBIasdeliberately impotentand representastrikingly leftistpolitical viewpoint.BrownmightverywellhaveusedJenkins’sbook,withitsextensivephotographsofthearea,assourcesforhisdescriptionsofthemurders.

22.TwoyearsafterJamesBaldwin’snowfamousandcontroversialattackonNativeSoninhis1951essay“ManyThousandsGone,”BrownusedIronCitytoconstructaparodyofNativeSonfarmoredevastatingthanBaldwin’sessayinitscaricatureof both the novel and themain characterBiggerThomas.WhileBaldwin criticizedNativeSon because it lacked, in histerms,thequintessentialNewCriticalqualitiesofcomplexity,ambiguity,andparadox,BrownfoundNativeSonobjectionablebecauseofitsdependenceontheverymodernepistemologiesthatBaldwinembraces(Morgan2004).

23. Brown had good reason to feel suspicious of scientific studies, which he felt were often based on unconscious andunexaminedbeliefsinblackinferiority.Ina1951Masses&Mainstreamessay,“Psychoanalysisvs.theNegroPeople,”hedenounced theuseofpsychoanalysisby liberalsas “theNewLook in racism.”Published in thesameyearas IronCity,Brown’sessayreviewedTheMarkofOppressionbytwoColumbiaprofessors,Dr.AbramKardinerandDr.LionelOvesey(1951),whoclaimedintheirpsychoanalyticstudyoftwenty-fivenorthernurbanNegroesthatguiltandself-hatredwerepartofthe“basicNegropersonality.”Browncouldhardlyfindenoughpejorativesforthebook,callingit“apseudo-scientificrationaleforeveryphaseofcapitalisticactivity fromsellingTVsets topromoting imperialistwar,”acombinationof “stupidity,classsnobberyandwhitechauvinistarrogance,”and“arationalefortheoppressivesystemofwhitesupremacy.”Alarmedattheefforttousepsychologyandpsychoanalysistoexplainracialdisparities,Browninsistedthatthe“marksofoppression”wereon scarred backs, not in scarred psyches, and that the attempt to enlist psychology to explain away the political andeconomiccausesofthevictimizationandbrutalityinblacklifewasa“reactionaryideologyandtoolofcapitalism”beingusedagainsttheNegropeople.ThisisthereviewthatMurraywasstunnedtofindhimself inagreementwith.SeealsoSchaub(1991).

24.Brown,lettertotheauthor,July18,1996.Instarkcontrast,thewomeninNativeSonareuniformlyportrayedasblindandhelpless victims in a narrative world that most contemporary critics would agree, as Arnold Rampersad writes, is“fundamentally hostile to women, especially black women” (Rampersad 2005, xxii). While the women remain minorcharacters in Iron City, with little attention to their development as characters, they were consciously created as theantithesis of the female victims inNative Son. Among his communist characters, Brown includes the shrewd politicaloperativeLucyJackson.WooedbyFaulcon,LucyinsiststhathebecomemoreactiveintheScottsborodefensethatshehasorganizedatherchurchbeforesheconsentstohiscourtship.WhentheLonnieJamesdefensecommitteegetsunderway,thewivesandfemalepartnersjoininthecommunityofsupport.Charlene,PaulHarper’swife,doesthedetectiveworktofindevidence of his innocence and skillfully subverts the police wiretaps when she confers with her husband at the prison.Brown’s class consciousness is more clearly evident than his attention to gender issues, but he was familiar with thedebatesamong leftists over “TheWomanQuestion,” andhe lines up squarelywith theParty’s progressive positions ongender in IronCity’scarefullydesignedportrayalsofwomenaseffectivepolitical leaders.AsBarbaraFoley (2003;2006;2010), andother feminist criticshaveshown, the legacyof theLeftwith regard togender is contradictory.SeeDeborahRosenfelt(1981),DorothySterling(2003),KateWeigand(2002),andPaulaRabinowitz(1991).Rosenfeltsays,however,thatleftistwomenwritersoftenfoundthePartyagenuinesourceofencouragementandawayofbeingconnectedtoa largerintellectual,international,andpoliticalcommunity.

25.ThevisualartistAliceNeel,forexample,didasshepleasedwithherart,and,astheartcriticandNeelbiographerPamelaAllara(2000)says,NeelmanipulatedthePartyhardlinebyconfessingthatshewasjustabadcommunist.

26. Redding’s reviewandBrown’s vernacularexperimentationsprecedeby twenty-fiveyears JohnWideman’s (1976)astutearticleontheuseofblackspeechinAmericanfiction.WidemancritiquesthetraditioninAmericanfictionthatdevaluesblackspeechbyconfiningtheblackvernaculartotheoral,nonliteratespeechofblackcharactersandframingitwiththestandard-Englishnarrationthatsignifiesliteracy.WhileIdoubtthatReddingwouldhavegonesofarastocallBrownamodernist,hedid implicitly creditBrownwithbringing in thenewbybreaking theold fictionalpatterns that limitedanddemeanedblackspeech.

27.Humboldt’srealnamewasCharlesWeinstock.Brown’scommentsabouthimwereinalettertotheauthor(August3,1996),inwhichBrowndescribedHumboldtastheonewhoguidedhiswriting.

28.GuilbautrecountstheintensedebatebetweenRogerGaraudyandLouisAragoncarriedoninthepagesofthecommunistartreviewsLettresfrancaisesandArtdeFranceovertheissueofart.In“Artistessansuniformes,”GaraudysatirizedAragon’ssupportfor“party-controlledart,”insistingthatitwasamethodofforcingartists“towearauniform.”

29.Brown,lettertoEricFoner,August31,1998.Inpossessionoftheauthor.30.Bonosky,telephoneconversationwiththeauthor,February9,2009.31.TheliteraryandculturalhistorianAaronLecklider(2012)presentsanotherremarkablebutunnotedaspectofthemodernist

politicsofIronCity.LecklidershowshowBrowndisruptsthepatternofleftistacceptanceofanantihomosexualnarrativeofsexualperversion,deployedmainlyasameansofarmingtheLeftagainstthethreatofanticommunism.Leckliderarguesthat, rather thanmarginalizingsexualdifference,Brown’snovelperformsanamazinglyprogressiveand lyricaldefenseofsexualdifference,claimingitasoneofthesitesofdefianceagainststate-sanctionedrepressionandviolence.

32.Inalonginterview(2009)withtheauthor,PhillipBonosky,whoknewLloydBrown,suggestssomeoftheinternalstrugglesBrownhadwith theCommunistParty.Bonoskysaid thatBrownwasmorealienated from theParty thanhewouldadmitpublicly. At one point he was nominated for the Central Committee but, according to Bonosky, didn’t take the positionbecausehefelthewasbeingusedbytheParty,particularlybytwomembershedidnottrust,wholaterdefected.BrownfeltlikethenominationwasahostilemoveparticularlyatapointintheColdWarwhenapublicpositionasacommunistwasa“tickettojail.”BonoskysaidBrownfelt“thatjailbirdtingle”anddecidedtorefusethenomination.Brownwasnotdisillusionedby the 1956 Khrushchev revelations about Stalin because, Bonosky says, his faith was in the Party, not always in theleaders.Buthedidquietly leave thePartyand thereaftercalledhimselfa “communistwithasmallc.”Thiscomplexandproblematic relationshipbetweenBrownand theParty isnotevident in the fictional representationsofcommunists inhisnovel.

2.CHARLESWHITE:“ROBESONWITHABRUSHANDPENCIL”

1.Oneblack-and-whitephotographistheonlyvisualdocumentationofthemural.ThephotoisattheChicagoPublicLibrary,HaroldWashingtonCenter.

2. Iam indebted toPeterClothier for this readingofAHistoryof theNegroPress. Inhisunpublishedmanuscript,CharlesWhite:ACriticalBiography,heisthefirsttonotethemodernismofthisworkandthewayWhitehasstructuredittorevealthemodernisttonethroughstylizedmovement,heavilystylizedfigures,thepowerofthemachines,andthejuxtapositionofmenandmachines.Clothieralsonoted“thestylisticcontradictions”inWhite’searlyworkthatheidentifiesasaconflict inWhitebetweenrepresentationalrealismandabstraction(65).MorethananyothercommentatoronWhite’swork,Clothierhistoricizesthe“stylisticcontradiction”inWhite’swork,tracingthatcontradictionbacktowhatthearthistorianJamesPortercalled“thediversifiedlegacyofAfricanrealism”inWhite’swork.White’sfascinationwiththisdualheritagemayhavebeenformedwhenhediscoveredthe“traditionofstylizationandabstraction”inAfricanartinAlainLocke’s1925TheNewNegro,thoughclearlyhewasalsoinfluencedbytheMexicanSchool,asIwriteaboutlaterinthischapter.Citing“White’scontinuingbattlebetween realismandabstraction,”Clothier alsoattributesWhite’s conflict to the strugglebetween “the fashionableforcesofabstraction”oftwentieth-centurymainstreamartcultureand“thesenseofsocialobligationto‘represent’hispeople”(88).

3.PeterClothier’sunpublished,partiallycompleted,twelve-chaptermanuscript,CharlesWhite:ACriticalBiography,basedonaseriesofprivateinterviewshedidwithWhiteinthe1980s,isoneoftheearliestandbestcriticalassessmentsofWhite’swork.Clothier,thenewdeanattheOtisArtInstituteinLosAngeles,California,metWhiteattheinstitutein1977andwasintroduced to his work at the retrospective in Los Angeles that same year. Clothier says he was overwhelmed by therhetoricalandvisualeloquenceofthework,whichhehadneverbeforefullyappreciated.WhiteagreedtobeinterviewedbyClothier,but,becauseofWhite’spoorhealth,thoseinterviewsconsistedofonlyfivesessionsandsevenhoursoftapebeforeWhitediedonOctober3,1979.

Whenhe beganhis research for a biography ofWhite,Clothier discovered an entire black artworld—artists, critics,historiansofart,greatcollections,patrons,“acosmopolitanworldbetterknowninEuropethaninthecountryofitshabitat.”ClothiergivesthebestdescriptionofhowtosituateWhiteintheconflictingvaluesoftheartworldinpostwarAmerica.HenotesthatWhite’slifelongpreoccupationwastodrawportraitsofablacksocialworld,amodeofrepresentationthatleadingartists inEuropeandthose in theUnitedStatesworking in theEuropeantraditionhadabandonedbythe1940s:“What isclear, though, is that thesheerenergyand themainstreamacceptanceof thisdirectionsweptartists likeCharlesWhitetemporarilybeyondthepaleofmajorcriticalattention.”ClothierdoesnotdealwiththepossibilitythatWhite’sleft-wingpoliticalcommitmentstotheidealsofworldsocialismandcommunismalsocontributedtohismarginalization.

4. WhenWhite’swife,FrancesBarrettWhite, said inan interview, “You touchblackness…you touch theLeft,” shewasdescribingpoeticallywhatshesawastheintegrationbetweenWhite’spoliticalidealsandhisartisticgoals.

5. Severalof theMexicanmuralistsmayhavebeenadirect influenceonWhite.Orozco’s1930spublicmuralTheTableofBrotherhood(orFraternityofAllMen),showingablackmaninsuitandtieseatedattheheadofatablearoundwhicharerepresentativesofallraces,wasonviewattheNewSchoolforSocialResearchinNewYork(LeFalle-CollinsandGoldman1996, 74) and probably seen byWhite. Rivera’smassivemural of automobile production,Detroit Industry (1932–1933),commissionedbyEdselFordandpaintedontheentrancewallsoftheDetroitMuseumofArt,featuresblacksprominentlyasworkersontheassemblylineandwasalsoondisplayintheearly1930s.OneofRivera’smurals,theDisembarkationoftheSpanishatVeracruz(1929–1951),showingSpaniardsbrandingAfricansandIndiansworkinginchainsasslavelaborersandhangingfromtreesasCatholicmonksprayover them,hasallof thequalitieswesee inWhite’sTechniquesUsed in theServiceofStruggle.Thesurreal lynchingtree, theblackmanchainedandbeatendownbyawhiteoverseer, theroundedfigurespiledononeanother,theenlargedhands,andtheDali-esquelandscape,withpartsofalogcabinjuttingintothesky,allsuggesttheinfluenceoftheMexicanSchool.LikeRivera’sindigenousMexicans,thepeopleatthecenterofWhite’sartwere,asFeelingsdescribedthem,“themostAfrican-looking,thepoorest,theblackestpeopleinourranks.”

TheMexicanschool:ConsideringthatWhitemademanyconsciousdecisionsinhis1940sworkto“emulatethetenets,techniques,artprocesses,and themesof theMexicanSchool,”hisquestioningof formalexperimentation isall themoreincomprehensiblesincetheMexicanartistswere,asLeFalle-CollinsandGoldman(1996,70)maintain, firstandforemostformalexperimenters:“TheMexicanmovementofthe1920s—incontrasttothevisualclichésofSovietsocialistrealism—was a true avant-garde, preceding or paralleling similar movements throughout Latin America that fused the stylisticinnovationsofEuropeancubism,futurism,andconstructivismwithformalinnovationsderivedfromtheirlocalaboriginalandAfricanpopulations,expressinginthismannertheirownnationalrealitiesandphilosophies.”

Forallsortsofreasons—includingthepoliticalclimateinMexicothatviewedtheseartistsaspartoftheculturalwingof

the revolution, their national identity secured by the government, and the collective spirit created by the revolution—theMexicanswerefreertoquestionandrejectthedemandstoconformtotheParty’sstandardsofart.Siporin,oneofWhite’smentors,declaredthat,likeallyoungrevolutionaryartists,hewasbothatwarwithmodernismandapartofit,buthealsomovedinthedirectionofExpressionism,hesaid,inordertorepresentinhiswork“thedynamismoftheactualitywithwhichIdeal” (Hemingway 2002, 160). It is also instructive to remember that Catlett stayed on in Mexico and continued in thedirectionofapoliticallyengagedmodernistartforthenextsixtyyears.

6.SeeClothier(n.d.),Barnwell(2002),Killens(1986),andBrown’sFOIAfile.InmyinterviewswithElizabethCatlett,shesaidthatbothsheandWhitewereclosely identifiedwiththeLeftandtheCommunistParty inthe1940sand1950s.ElizabethCatlett,interviewwiththeauthor,NYC,October24,2004.

7.ThoughthewriterandcriticHaroldCrusewasamemberofCNA,Crusesneered(withoutdocumentation)thatbecauseofitsexclusivity,“peopleintheHarlemculturalcircles”referredtotheCNAas“TheCommitteeforSomeNegroesintheArts.”And,inhistypicalknee-jerkreactiontothewhiteleft,Crusepilloriedthegroupforits“whiteleftwingpatronageandcontrol”(1967,211,216).In“HarryBelafonteandtheSustainingColdWarRadicalismoftheBlackPopularFront,1949–1960,”deliveredinNovember2012,attheAmericanStudiesAssociationannualmeetinginPuertoRico,theculturalcriticJudithE.SmithalsonotesthatCNAattractedasociallyverydistinguishedgroupofNewYorkers,butsherecognizesthe importanceofCNA’ssupportforblackpoliticalprotestinaneraofa“massiveculturalerasureofblackexperience”(6–7).

8. JackO’Dell,JulianMayfield,OssieDavis,GwendolynBrooks,LorraineHansberry,andCharlesWhite, tonameafew,alldescribethatmoveasessentially“organic,”accordingtoO’Dell,simplythenextstepforablackradical.TheexcommunistandwhitewriterDorothySterlingdescribedthecivilrightsmovementasthe“onebrightspotonthepoliticalhorizon”duringthedarkdaysof theMcCarthyperiod.Likeotherradicals,blackandwhite,whowere involvedduringthe1940s inAfricanAmericanequalitystrugglesasleftists,DorothySterlingbecameacivilrightsprotesterandorganizer.Shealsobeganwritingprogressive books about black history, many of them written for children. They were among the first children books tochallenge the color line in the publishing industry (Sterling 2003, 201–225). Seemy discussion of the turn toward blacknationalismandcivilrightsintheepilogueandlaterinthischapteronWhite.

9. Thisbringsup,of course,awide-rangingdebatewithdifferingcriticalopinions. I tend toagreewithHemingway,whoseconsiderationoftheseissuesiswelldocumented,extensive,criticallysharp,andmeasured.HenotesthatwhentheculturalcriticCharlesHumboldtdroppedoff theeditorialboardofMasses&Mainstream in1949, therewasaclear shift towardincludingfewerpiecesofmodernistart(2002,214).Humboldthadargued,asearlyas1946,thatahardlineonmodernistart“couldalienateabstractartists” (216). In theDailyWorker, the critic and visual artist JosephSolmandescribedabstractexpressionism as “a flight from reality,” but in other DailyWorker articles his approach was more nuanced, with anappreciationof theneed for formal sophistication forart tobeaesthetically “meaningful” (217).There isclearlyavibrant,energetic, sometimescontentiousdiscourse in theMarxistandcommunistart criticism throughout the1940s.But,whenAndreiZhdanovbecamethechieftheoristinStalin’sadministration,heinducedarightwardshiftthatresultedin“anextremeantipathytomodernism[becoming]derigeuramongtheParty’smostauthoritativeculturalspokesmen”(222).AccordingtothemajorMarxistartcriticandWhitebiographerSidneyFinkelstein,anartistlikeJacobLawrence,byflirtingtoodangerouslywithmodernism,hadbecomelimited.TheoneartistthatFinkelsteincontinuedtoapproveofwasCharlesWhite,who,inhisestimation,“camenearesttoanartthatcould‘speaktothecommonpeople’”(222).

10.Ihavenoevidenceof,noramIinterestedin,whetherWhitewasanofficialmemberoftheCommunistParty.Throughoutthischapter,IamverycarefultomakethedistinctionthatWhitewasassociatedwithcommunistorganizationsandworkedwithcommunistcritics,artists,andactivists.Iamnottryingtodeterminehisorganizationalstatus,butIdointendtochallengeandbreakwiththepracticeofeliding,omitting,and/orminimizinghisaffiliationswiththeCommunistParty.

11.IntheClothiermanuscript,ClothiersaysthatWhitewantedtoclearupthecircumstancesofhisbirthbeforehisdeathandthusrevealedinatape-recordedinterviewthathismotherwasnevermarriedtohisfather,afactthatWhitesaidwasneverdiscussedbetweenmotherandson(6).

12.Interviewwiththeauthor,April6,2005.13. Therearenumerousbooksabout the influenceof theCommunistParty inChicagoduring the1930s to the1950s; see

especiallyStorch(2009)andMullen(1999).14. White autobiographical notes, Archives of American Art (AAA), 3189–3195, and oral interviews, Charles White estate,

transcribed,September14,1970.15.Clothier,CharlesWhiteoralinterview,CharlesWhiteestate,transcribed,September14,1970,p.29.16.DanielSchulman(2004)maintainsthattheArtInstitute’spolicieswereconsideredliberalatatimewhenothersbarredblacks

fromattendingtheirinstitutionsortoleratedracism.Schulmanattributestheseprogressiveattitudestotheinstitute’sfoundingas “an instrumentofsocialupliftandcivic improvement”and to the influenceofCharlesHutchinson, thepresidentof theinstitutefrom1882untilhisdeathin1924,whofullysupportedthosepolicies(43).

17. White,MargaretBurroughs,PeterClothier,Robert Bone, andRichardCourage very specifically use the designationArtCraftsGuild,thoughothercriticscallittheArtsandCraftsGuild.

18.InterviewA,p.8,CharlesWhiteestate.Undated,typed,24pages.19.ThisisalinefromthepoetMargaretWalker’spoem“Memory.”Shedescribedtheeffectsofpovertyandunemploymentin

theseterms:

Icanrememberwind-sweptstreetsofcitiesoncoldandblusterynights,onrainydays;headsundershabbyfeltsandparasols

andshouldershunchedagainstasharpconcern;seeinghurtbewildermentonpoorfaces,smellingadeepandsinisterunrestthesebroodingpeoplecautiouslycaress;hearingghostlymarchingonpavementstonesandclosingfastaroundtheirsquaresofhate.Icanrememberseeingthemalone,atwork,andintheirtenementsathome.Icanrememberhearingalltheysaid:theirmutteringprotests,theirwhisperedoaths,andallthatspellstheirlivingindistress.

20.Clothier,CharlesWhiteoralinterview,CharlesWhiteestate,transcribed,September14,1970,p.52.21.Ibid.22.Interviewwithauthor,April1,2008.23.SeeSchulman(2009);RosenwaldCatalog.In1940,WilliamCartercalledthemuralChaoticStageoftheNegro,Pastand

Present. Incontrast toWhite’smurals,WPA-eramurals,whichweredisplayed inpublicplaces likepostoffices, libraries,andschools,wereapttoshowanunproblematicviewofAmericandemocracyatwork.

24. Since the figure is somewhat racially indeterminate, Stacy I. Morgan’s reading of the overseer figure as black isunderstandable.But,givenWhite’smilitantblackpoliticsandthehistoricalrecordofslaveryandsharecroppingintheU.S.South,itismorelikelythattheoverseerisawhiteman.

25. SeeHemingway (2002) for a discussionofWPAartists’ attempts to portrayprogressive ideals in their public artworks.EdwardMillman’sandMitchellSiporin’smurals for theSt.LouisPostOffice,portraying thehistoryofMissouri fromearlysettlementtoReconstruction,represent“theimageofdignifiedlabor”and“workers’powerandothertropesthatregistertheirprogressivepolitics.”Generally,however,muralistsdidnotviolatethedesireoflocalcommunitiesfor“anessentiallybenignvisionofAmerica”(169).

26.BothMillmanandSiporinhadbeentoMexicoandhadmetRivera,Orozco,andSiqueirosandworkedonmuralswithOrozcoandRivera.SeeClothier,CharlesWhiteoralinterview,CharlesWhiteestate,transcribed,September14,1970.

27.Rockefellerhadthemuraldestroyedin1934whenhediscoveredthepictureofLenininit.28.Healsosaid:“Anothereventwastotakeplacewhichwastohaveaverysignificanteffectonthisthing.Aneffectinapositive

way.IwenttoMexicotoworkforayearandahalf.”29. The1949portrait,FrederickDouglassLivesAgainorTheLivingDouglass,whichappearedon thecoverof theSunday

Workerin1950,isinthestyleofTheTrentonSixandTheIngramCaseandfollowsthesameformat,withcubistinfluencesobvious in theflat,elongated linesof thefiguresandthealmostarchitecturalqualityof thedrawing.ThemassiveheadofDouglass looms likeanOldTestamentMosesasheextendshisrightarm inaprotectivegestureoveragroupofelevenblackmen,allofwhomfitsnuglyunderitastheymovethroughabarbedwirefencethatappearstohavebeensnappedbyDouglass’spowerfulleftfist.Douglass’shandsandarmsareconstructedlikeablockofwoodoriron,suggestingagodlikepower.Oneofthemencarriesabookhighoverhishead,andonedressedinabusinesssuitcarriesascrollthatmightbeaproclamationoradocumentdemanding justice,bothsuggesting theweaponsused inbreakingdownoppressive forces.Hemingwaysays thepainting intentionallyevokesparallelswith “documentaryphotographsandnewsreel footageofNaziconcentration camps—even as [White] links the cause of these defendants with the historic struggle of Douglass’sgenerationforfreedomfromchattelslavery”(2002,150).

The hands of the figures in these 1949 drawings are massive and resemble mallets or blocks of iron. There is ageometricquality in theangularityof thefeatures,with thenosestriangulated, themouthsandeyesofeachfigure,whichseemtobebuiltofblocks,sosimilarthattheyarelessindividualizedportraitsthanabstractrepresentationsoffacesunderseverethreat.

30.BothofthesephrasesarefromFran’soralinterviewwithClothier(11)andreflecttheexcitementoftheirtimeorganizingandworkingwiththeCommitteefortheNegrointheArts(CNA).

31.Clothier,oralinterviewwithFranBarrettWhite,transcribed,Altadena,Calif.,October1980,12.32.AAA3191,215,1950.33.Idealwiththeblacklistingofblackartists,intellectuals,writers,actors,etc.ontheLeftthroughoutTheOtherBlacklist.Some

ofthisinformationontheblacklistingofblackartistsappearsineachchapter.Theleftistpoliticalactivismandsubsequentblacklisting of these figures are documented in their memoirs: Ossie Davis, Life Lit by Some Large Vision: SelectedSpeechesandWritings (2006);OssieDavisandRubyDee,WithOssieandRuby: InThisLifeTogether (2000); SidneyPoitier,ThisLife(1981),andTheMeasureofaMan:ASpiritualAutobiography(2007).

34.AttheFirstConstitutionalConventionoftheCNAonJanuary26,1952,thephotographerRoyDeCarava’sopeningspeech,poeticallyentitled“There’sapoeminourbread,astoryinourmeat,”invitedprogressiveartiststofightAmericanculturalJimCrowbyconsideringeveryaspectofblackculturebothworthysubjectmatterfortheirartandthegroundsforcounteractingwhiteracism.Heurgedthoseartistswhocomehometiredfromtheirdayjobstotrytoimaginehowaculturedespisedbytheoutsideworldcouldbetransformedthroughthesymbolicrepresentationsofpoliticallycommittedartists:

Openyourhearts!Feelthetenseness,thetenderness,theanguish,thejoythatcomesfrombeingblack.YouknowthatNegromanwalkingdownthestreeteventhoughyouneversawhimbefore.He’swithyou,know

him,ornot.Feelartist,feel.Singit,singer.Paintit,painter.Danceit,dancer.Writeit,filmit,it’syou,it’sme,it’sus.

Seeit,feelit,smellit.Thesmellofthebeautyparlorandstraighteningcomb,thelaundryandthepushcart.Hamhocksandcollardgreens,hopandjohn[sic]andpig’sfeet.Boiledpotatoes,corndumplingsandcodfishwithtomatosauce.Friedplantainswithchickenandyellowrice.Kidneys,chitterlings,lights,hogmawthatwasnogoodforthewhitefolks,butgoodenoughforusNegroesuntilsciencecamealongandsaidthattheyhadmorevitaminsandmineralsthanallthechoicecutsmostNegroesnevermeet.There’sapoeminourbread,astoryinourmeat!Useit!

White’sworkemblematizedDeCarava’s impassionedcharge touse thematerialsofblack lifeandculture inorder toreach ordinary blacks, and once he returned from a 1951 trip to Europe and the Soviet Union, he said in his publicpronouncementsthathewasevenmorefirmlyconvincedthatasocialistrealistartwasthewaytoachievethosegoals(AAA,boxno.3191,199–206).

35.MuchofthisisextensivelyreportedinFranBarrettWhite’stapedinterviewwithClothier(19–25).36.Interviewwiththeauthor,April1,2008.37.Fordiscussionsofthisquestion,seeSingh(2005,124)andthecorrespondencebetweenHoraceCayton,C.L.R.James,

andRichardWright.38.SeeCayton(1965)forthissamesentiment.39.Theseadmonitionsandadvicewerefeaturedinthefollowingarticles:CharlesWhite(1952;1955)andDavidPlatt(1951a;

1951b).40.Hemingway(2002,221)describesAndreiZhdanov’sroleasheadoftheLeningradCentralCommitteeandhisalignmentwith

StalininSovietpurgesasaparalleltohisroleashard-lineartcriticandtheorist.41.Clothier,oralinterviewwithDouglasGlasgow,transcribed,Altadena,Calif.,106.42.Ibid.43. Socialist realismandsocial realismareoftendifficult todistinguish. InSocialRealism:ArtasaWeapon, DavidShapiro

makessomedistinctionsthatarehelpful:socialrealism,thedominantAmericanartinthe1930s,aroseoutofthedesireofartiststousetheirartto“communicatesocialvalues”(28).Tothatend,artwouldserveasameanstofocusonthosevaluesthatcould transformsociety.Promotedby theMarxists,and facilitatedby thesupportofartprogramsof theWPA,socialrealismwasmeantofocusonandappealtotheworkingclass.Socialistrealism,promoted,paradoxically,asthePartywasindeclineintheUnitedStates,demandedamorepoliticallycorrectart,selectingaspectsofworking-classlifethatreflectedthepositiveaspectsoflifeunderSovietcontrol(28).InTheProletarianMoment,Murphytracestheshiftinthediscussionsofthe term“socialist realism,”noting that in itsearliest formulations,socialist realismstressed“the freedomof thewriter inregard to form, style and genre”(1991, 102). As Murphy shows, debates on art and literature among Marxists andcommunistsreflectedawiderangeofperspectives,andintheirinternationaldiscussions,socialistrealismwasdescribedinbroad,flexible,sometimescontradictorystatementsthatinsistedonupholdingsocialistprinciplesbutalsoallowedforartisticfreedom.

44.Inthesection“TheEndofDemocraticFrontAestheticsandtheEmergenceofZhdanovism,”inchapter9,“CulturalCriticismBetweenHollywoodandZhdanovism,”Hemingway (2002) outlines a history of the changes in leftist aesthetics that helpaccountfortheshiftsinWhite’sworkbetweenthelate1940sand1950s.ClearlytherewasarangeofopinioninMarxistartcriticism,andshiftingopinionsover theyears,withcriticsandartistsoneveryside.Anexampleof theseshifts is theartcriticismofJosephSolman,whoseartreviewsappearinNewMassesandMasses&Mainstreambetween1946and1948.Asophisticatedartistandcritic,Solmanwas,accordingtoHemingway,“adefenderofmodernismwithinMarxistcriticism”(217).IncontrastwiththeDailyWorkercriticMarionSummers(akaMiltonBrown),Solmanbelievedthat“Tobemeaningfulaestheticallyarthadtobeformallysophisticatedandinventive”(217).But,asleftistartcriticsandartistscommittedtothevaluesofdemocracy,pluralism,and thecollectiveconfronted thehegemonyofabstractartand thedominationof theartworldbyart dealers, critics, andgalleryowners, theyhad little choicebut to critiqueand rejectwhat theyviewedas thecorporatecontrolofart(101).

45. FranWhite’s interviewwithClothierprovidessome insight intohowWhite responded to thesecritics.Shenotes that theAfricanAmericanJohnPittmanwasacriticCharlieadmiredand learned from: “[Pittman]was theart critic that I thinkofanybodyover theyearsCharlie felt reallygavehimcluesas tohowhecouldgrow.Everybodyelseeitherpraisedhimornegatived[sic]him,JohnwastheonecriticthatwouldseemtohitsomechordinCharliethatwouldhelphimmovefromoneperiod, tomakechange thatheagreedwith,andhewould [be]almost feeling themandJohnwouldpinpoint them…He[Pittman]spentalongtimeinthesocialistpartofEuropeasacorrespondent”(10).

46.Clothier,oralinterviewwithJohnBiggers,transcribed,Altadena,Calif.,15.47.MyeffortstoassesstheassetsandliabilitiesinCharlesWhite’svexedrelationshipwithcommunismandtheCPrepeatthe

balancingactofmostscholarsoftheLeft.In“No‘GraverDanger’:BlackAnti-Communism,theCommunistParty,andtheRaceQuestion,” a thorough and balanced analysis of the problems and pitfalls of anticommunism for AfricanAmericansocial,political,andintellectualagency,EricArnensenconcludesthat“revisionisthistoriansonbothsidesoftheissueoftenfailtoconsiderthecomplexandindividualhistoriesofcommunismandtheCommunistParty.”HecitesA.PhilipRandolph’santicommunismasanexample: “RevisionisthistoriansmaynotacceptRandolph’s indictmentof thecommunistactivistswhose dedication and accomplishments they choose to celebrate. But they might fruitfully listen to the critique of—hisjeremiadagainst,really—thepartywhosesupportforthegoalsofendingracialdiscriminationandinequalitywasnotenoughtooffset its frequentlydestructive tendenciesand thegenuineharm itdid to thosewithwhom itdisagreed.Communists’

flaws—bornofavoluntaryacceptanceofanorganizationalstyleandvisionthatrequiredthemtosubmittowhatRandolphtermedan‘alienmaster’—werenotincidentalbutconstitutiveoftheirpolitics,atalllevelsoftheparty,atleastforthosewhochosetoremaininitsranks.ComingtotermswiththeCP’sunevenroleincivilrightshistoryrequiresustotakeseriouslythepragmatic,political,andethicalcritiqueslodgedbyanticommunistprogressives.Suchanengagementwill leaveuswitha‘fargrayerpicture,’butonethatcanmoreaccuratelyaccountforthelargertragedyoftheAmericanLeft”(2001,40).

48. SeeMasses&Mainstream. Obviously thiswas customary. Lloyd Brown’s 1951 novel IronCity also was sold throughMasses&Mainstreambysubscriptions.

49.SeeCorwin(1950),hisDailyWorkerreviewofWhite’sFebruary1950showattheACAGallery.IntheshowarepicturesofJohnBrown,Harriet Tubman,Gabriel Prosser, the Ingrams, the TrentonSix, two children holding broken toys, amotherawaitingthereturnofhersoldierson,afluteplayer,andabluessinger.ThereisalsoTheAwakeningandFrederickDouglassLivesAgain.“Theseformsareaslargeasthethemes,andtheyareunequivocal,strongandclear.”ClearlyCorwinapprovesofWhite’sart,andpresumablysodoestheCommunistParty.Morepraise:“ButWhiteshowsusonevalidwaythatanartistcanwork…[that]springsfromamilitantcontentandisdirectedinclear,simple,boldtermstotheeyesofthepeople.”ItiscleartoCorwinthatWhitehaschosenanartisticmethodandthemethattheCPUSAapprovesof—itsmilitancy,itsclarity,itsboldness.“HerepresentsNegroesofthepastandoftoday,whoarenotweakorcrushedorcaricaturedorcomic.Theyareheroic….thereisnodoubtingtheirdignityandtheirstrength.”Butthenhereistheclincher,thesuggestionofwhatheisdoingwrongthatCorwinbelievesmustbecorrected:“WehavecertainsuggestionswewouldliketooffertoWhite,evenwhileweapplaud thecorrectnessofhisbasicorientation.Hisstyle,with itspreciselymodeled,architectonic forms, isacoldone,whichmaybealright.It’sonewaytogetatthings.Butitoccasionallyrunsintothedangerofgoingdryorempty,wherethemodelingthinsoutor,especiallyinperipheralareas,wherethemeaningsarelost.Anotherdangerinsuchastyleisthatitmaybecomestatic,and thesepicturesoccasionallydo incontentaswellas form. Inmany thecharacteristicmood isatortured repose with upturned eyes and furrowed brows. The correlative danger is that the picture will be animated bysuperficialdevices,andofthistoo,Whiteshouldbecareful.Hesuccumbsattimestoakindofmannerisminwhichfiguresposeandgesture,butonedoesn’tknowwhy.”

50.Inboth“CharlesWhite:HumanistArt”andthecriticalbiographyCharlesWhite:AnAmericanArtist,Finkelstein(1953;1955)makesclearhisdisapprovalofWhite’smovetowardexperimentalism:“Inthelattertwomurals[HistoryoftheNegroPressandTechniquesUsed in theServiceofStruggle]amovemaybeobserved towardsastylizationofpaintinganddrawingtechnique.In‘TheNegroPress’itisseeninthelinesofthegarments,carryingonthehardlinesofthenewspapersheets,and tosomeextentalso found in thesharplyaccented linesof the faces. In ‘TechniquesUsed toFight’ it is found in thestylizedlinearpatternsofthegarments,facesandhair.ThisreflectstheimpactuponWhiteoftheexperimentaltechniqueswhichat thetimeclamoredfor theattentionofeveryartistwhothoughthimself tobe ‘advanced,’ ‘free,’ ‘modern.’…Yetacontradictioniscreated.While,inthesemurals,thestylizationoflineandofrhythmmakeforastrongimmediateimpactontheeye,affectingeventhesenseoftouch,creatingahightensionandexcitement,thesesamestylesmakeitmoredifficulttodisclosetheinnersensitivityandpsychologicaldepthofthehumanbeingswhoarethesubject”(1955,23–24;translatedfromoriginaltexts).

51. AsHemingway cautions, leftist critics andartists hadevery reason to be concernedabout the “hegemonyofmodernistabstraction”becauseof“itsauthorityinmuseumsandtheartpress,andthecorrespondingdevaluationoftraditionalskillsandalmostallvariantsofnaturalism”(2002,239).Thus,itisimportanttokeepinmindthattheartisticprescriptionsoftheLeft, however reductive,werea response tosomething thathad realpolitical consequences. Indeed,by1949, themajorvoicesinartcriticism,mostnotablyClementGreenberg,hadcanonizedabstractartistslikeJacksonPollock,whoseartofpure expressionism, devoid of any figuration or easily apprehended social content, was considered the only route to adistinctiveandexcellentU.S.arttradition(Hemingway2002,239;Guilbaut1984,161).TheriseofabstractionduringtheColdWarwenthand inhandwith theconsignmentofWPAart to the junkheap, thedismissalofsocially relevantartasmere“propaganda,”andtheblacklistingofthecreatorsofthatart.Whitewouldhavebeenparticularlyconcernedwiththisnewturnofeventsintheartworld,for,ifwhiteleftistartistswereworriedaboutfindingrecognitionandacceptanceinmainstreamartgalleriesandartjournals—nottomentionbeingblacklistedandjailed—ablacksocialrealistcouldhardlyhavefeltsanguineabouthisorherprospects.Hemingwayoffersabalancedviewofthemeritsofsocialrealismtoshowthatthe“cultureoftheleft”didindeedleaveanimportantlegacyinitsinsistenceona“realistic”representationofworkingpeople,blackdignity,andclassand racestruggle. Inhis finalsummationof theworksofpainters likeRaphaelSoyerandAliceNeel—and, IwouldcertainlyaddCharlesWhite—whoremainedcommittedtothevaluesoftheLeftevenaftertheylefttheParty,Hemingwayconcludes:“Whateverits[theCommunistParty’s]limitations—itofferedthemostsustainedcritiqueavailableofclass,racial,andsexualinequality”(247).

52.White’ssonIanWhitesayshedoesnotthinkhisfatherintendedtorepresentanyrealfiguresinthisdrawing.Phoneinterviewwiththeauthor,December2012.

53.Thislastpointaboutthe“sounds”thispaintingrepresentswasasuggestionmadetomebytheprofessorandliterarycriticKennethW.Warren.

54. Arthistoriansdisputethischaracterizationof theascendancyofabstractart.PatriciaHillsaysthat“all theartmagazinesincludingLife” show thatabstractart didnotbecome “hegemonic” in the late1940s.SeeHill’sessays inThe FigurativeTraditionandtheWhitneyMuseumofAmericanArtco-writtenwithRobertaTarbell.

55.AAAinterview,Box10.56.ThisinterviewisintheCharlesWhiteestate.57.AAAinterview,Box3,17.58.WhitepaintedthetophalfofthecardwiththeimageofablackwomanwithanAngelaDavis–styleAfro.Heplacedapinkrose

inthecenterofthebottomhalf.Usingblackandwhitecross-stitchingasthebackgroundfortheentirecard,hemadethepink

rosestandoutastheonlycoloronthecard.TheNationalUnitedCommitteetoFreeAngelaDavisandAllPoliticalPrisonerspublishedthecardandonewassenttoGovernorRonaldReagan.

59.ClothieroralinterviewofFranBarrettWhite(26/41).NotethatIamaddingdualpagenumbers,becauseInumberedtheentireinterviewconsecutivelytomakeiteasiertofindthesereferences.Inthemanuscript,eachinterviewisseparatelynumbered.

60.ThepoliticalnatureofsomeofthesecardsisrepresentedbytheoneDaltonandCleoTrumbosentbearingthephotographofa heavy-set, menacing, helmeted, and armedwhite police officer standing behind barbed wire, with the greeting “MerryChristmastoYou!inscribedonthebarbedwire.ThecardsareintheCharlesWhiteestate.

61.IamdeeplygratefultoCharlesWhite’ssonIanWhiteforallowingmeaccesstotheCharlesWhiteEstate,forpermissiontouse the images in thischapter,and forproviding thecover imageWalkTogether. Ialsowant toexpressmygratitude toColumbiaUniversityprofessoremeritusEdmundGordonforsharinghisextensivecollectionofCharlesWhiteartwithme;givingmeaprivate tourof theHeritageGallery, themajor repositoryof theCharlesWhitecollection;and for readingandcritiquingthischapter.MydeepestthankstothearthistorianDanielSchulmanforhelpinmyanalysisofWhite’sworkandforgenerouslyreadingandcommentingonthischapter.TheartcuratorMarkPascaleoftheArtInstituteofChicagoallowedmeaprivateshowingofHarvestTalk,andbothMarkandDannyalertedmetotherelationshipbetweenHarvestTalkand theFSAphotographbyMarionWolcott.Thanksalso to thearthistorianPatriciaHills,professorofAfricanAmericanStudies,BostonUniversity,whograciouslyreadandcommentedonthischapter.

3.ALICECHILDRESS:BLACK,RED,ANDFEMINIST

1.RecentscholarshipbyGore(2011)andMcDuffie(2011)expandsthediscussionofChildress’srelationtotheLeft.Thesetwostudiesconstitutethefirstcomprehensive,book-lengthhistoriesofblackradicalwomenof theUnitedStates(Washington2013).

2. SeeDavies (2008, xv). In her biography of Claudia Jones, Davies comments on these absences as examples of thetendency to “[deport] the radical black female subject to an elsewhere, outside the terms of ‘normal’ African AmericanintellectualdiscourseintheUnitedStates”(xv).

3. LaViniaDelois Jennings (1995, xv) saysGoldThrough theTrees was the first professionally produced play by a blackwoman.

4.AsWilliamMaxwell(2006)notesinhisessayonClaudeMcKay’sFBIfiles,unlikemainstreamliterarycriticisminstitutionsofthe 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover’s bureau always presumed the importance of black literary texts and traditions. Maxwell’sresearchonthesurveillanceandsuppressionofblack literaryworkandblackwritersprovidesevidencethatblack literaryproductionwashighlypolicedduringtheColdWarandtherefore,tosomeextent,shapedbystate-sponsoredcensorship.

5.ManyscholarsoftheU.S.LeftquestiontheacceptedperiodizationofthePopularFrontaslimitedtotheyears1935through1939.SeeSmethurst(1999),Wald(2001),Mullen(1999),andDolinar(2012).

6.Infact,thereislittlementionofthepoliticsofthe1950satallinJennings’sbiography,whichfocusesmorecloselyonliteraryhistoryandaesthetics.

7.TherelationshipofthisessaytoMaxwellAnderson’s1941anti-NaziplayCandleintheWindisworthconsidering.ChildressmightverywellhaveseenAnderson’splayabouttheGermanoccupationofFrancesinceitopenedinNewYorkandstarredthefamousHelenHayes,andshewouldhavebeendrawntoitsradicalpoliticalviews.

8.InhisstudyoftherelationshipbetweenBettyFriedan’sfeministpoliticsandherworkintheleft-winglabormovementofthe1940sand1950s,DanielHorowitz(2000)arguesthatFriedanreconstructedherselfinthe1970sasamiddle-classfeminist,omittingmuchofher radical leftistpast.Horowitzshows thatFriedandistancedherselfandherpolitics fromher leftwinglaborpastinherfamoustextTheFeministMystique,claimingthatherfeminismdevelopedinresponsetotheproblemsofmiddleclasswhitesuburbanwomen.Childressdidnotturnawayfromherleftistpolitics,butshedidnotforegroundherleftradicalism,whichisunderstandablegiventherepressionsoftheColdWar.

9.See,forcomparison,thecommunistcriticMoissayeOlgin’s(1927)essay,“ForaWorkersTheater.”10. See Childress’s letter to Hughes from June 3, 1957. She continues in the letter to scold Hughes for his reductionist

representationsofblackculture:“GinandwatermelonisasmuchapartofwhiteAmerica’sdietasanyotherfoodanddrink,and yet I got the feeling that it was a part of Negro Culture and we had been shamed into denying it. Where did thiswatermelonphobiastem from?Outof thinairdidwedecide tobecomeashamedofwatermeloneatingandgindrinkingbecausewelikedthesethings…andthusstampedthemasamarkofinferiority?Ithinknot.Thisshamecameoutofwhite-mouthedminstrelsgrimacingfrombillboardsoverasliceofmelon,CalendarsbearingdistorteddrawingsofNegrochildrensitting in themidst ofmelons, fromwhitewriters andartistswhoportrayedNegromenandwomenas gin-soaked, lazypeople.Ofcoursewehavearighttodrinkgin,Iagreewithyou.Butthereisnothing‘uppity’orfoolishaboutdrinkingscotch.Mustitbeoneortheother?MostrestaurantsandbarsintheSouthdonotallowNegroestositdownandeatanything,andwhatevermelonsorginsmaybesoldarethereforwhitecustomersonly.AsforaNegromanmakinglovetoawomanbyrepeating thewordswatermelonoverandover… I think theprotest thenbecomessoself-conscious that itdefeats theprotest.” In this same letter, Childress expressed her disappointment with Hughes for disavowing his writing in hisappearance beforeHUAC,which she called, dismissively, “one of those crazy committees.” In 1949, in response to anargumentwithSidneyPoitierandothermenof theHarlemLeft,whoclaimed thatonly issues involvingblackmencouldrepresent racial struggle, she wrote the 1949 female-centered play Florence, reputedly overnight, to prove that blackwomen’s liveswere justascentral to issuesofunderemployment, segregation,and racial violenceasmen’s (McDonald2012,187).From1949on,allofChildress’sworkwouldreflectablackfeministviewpointandablackculturalnationalismthatallowedher to incorporate, improveon,and,perhaps inadvertently,concealher leftistculturalpolitics.SeealsoBethTurner(1997,45).

11.Inaphoneconversationwithme,JenningstoldmeabouttheagechangeandalsosaidthatJean’sbirthrecordsare“sealed.”Furthermore,Jenningssaidshewasunableto locateamarriagecertificateforAliceandAlvinChildress inanyNewYorkborough,despiteChildress’snearlylifelongtenureinNewYorkCity.

12.ThehistorianMarthaBiondiidentifiesO’Nealasa“committedactivist”blacklistedalongwiththeactorsOssieDavisandDickCampbell(2003,177–178).

13. Some of the writing she did in the 1960s, particularly the 1966 playWedding Band, was aided by a two-year visitingappointmenttotheRadcliffeInstituteforIndependentStudyinCambridge,Massachusetts,whichshegotwiththehelpoftheleftistwriterTillieOlsen.

14.AreligiouswomanwhowasdistributingJehovah’sWitnessmaterialintheblackcommunityatthetimeshewasattacked,RubyFloydfledtothehomeofablackfamilywhotookhertothepoliceandlatertestifiedonherbehalf.And,ofcourse,therewasneverthepossibilityofanunbiasedtrialbecauseoftheconvictionoftheentirecommunitythatinaSouthernstateblackmenaccusedof rapingawhitewomancouldneverbeexonerated.TheNAACParguedthat thedeathpenalty for rape inVirginiawasreservedforblackmen,andtheCRCpleadedforexecutiveclemency,bothtonoavail.

15.AswiththeotherscenesinGold,musicisanimportantcounterpointtotheaction.ThesceneendswithJohndrummingashenamesaloudthepeopleandthingsheisfightinganddyingfor:“For…mymother…myfather…mysister…mypeople…Burney…forme…forthelittlechildren…freedom…”Then,asOlasmilesathim,perhapsforthelasttime,heslowsthedrumtoan“intensebutsoftrhythm”andadds,“forOla”(act2,9).Inoneinstance,theplaywasdescribedbyacriticasa“showcase” for both African and African American cultural traditions and, in another, as the descendant of theminstreltradition(Higashida2011).Hansberry’sreviewisparticularlyhelpfulbecause italludestotwoscenesthatwere lost in thearchived version—the scene of the Haitian rebellion led by “Father Toussaint” to overthrow the French planters andNapoleon’sarmy in1849andascenedepicting laborstruggles in theBritishWest Indies,bothofwhichmake theplay’sinternationalismevenmoreevident.HansberryalsonotesthatsomeofthebestactingintheplaywasbyChildressherselfplayingtheHaitianwoman,who,betweenshoutingoutherwaresforsale,isclandestinelybringingnewsandmaterialsfortherebellion.

16.InManyAretheCrimes(1999),SchreckersaysthatbecauseofthereportsonAfricabytheAfricanAmericanpressandtheworkof influential leaderslikePaulRobesonandW.E.B.DuBois,“thecivilrightsmovement[inthe1940s]hadaglobalperspective,” covering freedom struggles and strikes in Africa, denouncing imperialism, and linking American racism toSouthAfricanapartheid.WiththedestructionoftheLeft,however,“theblackcommunitysimplyletAfricadropoffthemap,”withtheresultthat“Americans,bothblackandwhite,knowlessaboutAfricatodaythantheydidinthe1940s”(375–376).OneoftheresultsofnotunderstandingtheselinksbetweenAfricaandtheLeft isthatblackintellectualsinthe1980sand1990sperpetuateviewsonAfricathatalmostamounttomyth.Inher1996dissertation,ElizabethBarnsleyBrownexplainsthethemeofAfricainChildress’s1970playMojoas“anobviousoutgrowthoftherevivaloftheBlackAestheticduringtheBlackArtsMovementof the1960s”(47)withnoreferencetotheglobalarticulationsof therelationshipbetweenAfricaandU.S.blacksinthe1940sand1950smadebytheblackLeft,specificallybyChildress.

17.ChildressmayhavebeguntoimagineherMildredstorieswhensheadaptedanddirectedLangstonHughes’SimplestoriesfortheproductionofJustaLittleSimple,presentedattheClubBaronin1950.

18.Forexample,accordingtoaphoneinterviewIconductedwithEstherJacksonin2009,LorraineHansberrylivedwithJoneswhenshefirstcametoNewYork.ChildressbecameactivewiththeHarlemCommitteetoRepealtheSmithActatthetimethatJoneswasbeingthreatenedwithdeportation.

19. SeeDavies (2008, xiv).Daviespointsout, however, thatwhileMarx’sgravebearsa “towering”bust ofMarx, Jones’s ismarkedbyonlyasimpleflatstone.

20.AccordingtotheFreedomfiles,thepaperwasdistributedthroughouttheUnitedStates,includingNorthCarolina,California,Detroit,Chicago,Seattle,Boston,Birmingham,andinalltheNewYorkboroughs.

21.Lamphere(2003)statesthatLloydL.Brownwastheghostwriterformany,ifnotall,oftheRobesoncolumns,whichRobesoncheckedandapparentlyapproved.ThisassertionwascorroboratedbyMartinDuberman(1988,393).

22.IwanttorefutetheattackonFreedommadebyHaroldCruseinhis1967TheCrisisoftheNegroIntellectual.HischapteronFreedomseemstohavebutonepurpose,andthatistodiscreditthenewspaperasanintegrationisttooloftheCommunistParty,divorcedfromanddisinterestedintherealitiesandneedsoftheblackcommunity.Cruse’scritiqueofFreedom isasignoftheemptyrhetoricandpersonalvindictivenessofCrisis.ThereisnoconsistentrevieworevaluationofarticlesandeditorialsinFreedom,justanunsubstantiatedclaimthatFreedomwasuninterestedinblackcultureor“thesocialproblemsofpeopleinghettoes,”whenevenacursoryglanceatthepapershowsthatitfocusedontheseveryissuesforitsentirefiveyears.Confrontedwiththeoverwhelmingevidenceofthepaper’sdevotiontoblackissues,Crusesimplyshiftstacticsandmanipulatestheevidence.UnabletoignoreFreedom’sextensivecoverageoftheWillieMcGeecase,CrusesimplyinsiststhatsinceveryfewNegroesinHarlemshowedupfortheWillieMcGeedefenserallyinHarlem,thatisevidenceenoughtoshow“whatlittleinfluenceFreedomnewspaperhadinHarlem.”WithnomentionoftheanticommunistassaultsonFreedomandtheblackLeftbyMcCarthyandHUAC,CrusesaysthatFreedomfailedbecauseof“thepoliticalandcreativedefaultoftheNegro leftwing intellectuals.”LloydBrownsays,andmanycriticsofCruseagree, thatCruseusedCrisisasaprivatebattleground tosettleoldscores,andhecertainly felt thathehadmany tosettlewith thewritersofFreedom,particularlyRobesonandHansberry.SeeSingh(2005)foranextendedanalysisofCruse.

23.AsthehistorianMarthaBiondiputsit,theColdWartargetingofblackleadersundertheSmithActmeantthat“anypoliticallinktoCommunistswouldhavethetaintofcriminalsubversion”(2003,144).

24.In1966,WeddingBandwassocontroversialthatChildresscouldgetitproducedonlyattheUniversityofMichigan.NoNewYorkproducerwouldtouchtheplayuntilJosephPappagreedtoproduceitatthePublicTheaterin1972,morethansixyearsafteritsopening.Then,onOctober26,1972,atthelastofthethreepressopenings—theonemostofthecriticsattended—

therewasahorrifyingmoment for thecastwhensomeone,reportedlywearingadashikianda turtlenecksweater,beganmakingloud,hostileremarksduringthelovescenesbetweenthetwomaincharacters,Herman,whoiswhite,andJulia,ablackwoman.RubyDee,whoplayedJuliainthePappproduction,saidthatthemoodoftheplaywasshatteredandthecastsodispiritedthattheydidnotevenattendthecastpartythatnight.Thereviews,expectedly,werelukewarm,butdespitethisuncertainbeginning, theplaywenton tobecome thestrongestofanyat thePublic thatseason,andPappbegan talkingabouttakingittoBroadway.

Asthismysteriousdashiki’dfiguresuggests,WeddingBandseemedtohaveappearedatthewronghistoricalmoment.AyearaftertheWattsuprising,withblacknationalismandblackpowerinthepoliticalascendancy,therewaslittlesympathy,evenon theLeft, for thedifficultiesofan interracialaffair,particularlyonebetweenablackwomanandawhiteman.ThenovelistJohnKillens,Childress’sfriendandfellowleftist,feltthatWeddingBandwasnotonlythewrongplayforaneraofintenseblackmilitantstrugglebutthatitwasabetrayalofChildress’sownpoliticalcommitment.

25.Thoughwhiteswereinvitedtowriteforthejournal,therulewasthat“nowhitescouldbeontheeditorialboard.”SeeBiondi(2003,265)andSmethurst (1999).EstherJackson, ina2009phone interviewwith theauthor,said thatApthekerwassofuriousthatherefusedtosubscribetoorreadthejournal,thoughbeforehediedhesentaletterapologizingtoJackson.

26.SeealsoBiondi(2003).27.ToforestallanyclaimthatsheidentifiedwithJuliabecauseofherowninterracialrelationship,Childress(1973,8)saysthat

shewasnotmarriedtoawhitepersonandneverhad“anykindofwhiterelationshipinmylife.”28.Childresssaidexplicitlyina1967articleinBlackWorld,“TheBlackExperience:WhyTalkAboutThat?”thatshehadpolitical

motivationsforwritingthisplay.29. InTo Stand and Fight, Biondi reports that Davis argued that “a new race discourse of individual success stories was

displacing attention from themore urgent problem of group retrogression.” Some blackswere getting high-paying, high-poweredjobsinindustryandgovernment,whilemostblackscouldnotgetajobtodriveamilkwagonorworkinanairplanefactory.Thesehigh-payingjobswere,Davisargued,“anattemptoftherulingclasstoheadoffandunderminethemilitantstrugglesoftheNegroworkersforjobsandfreedom”(quotedinBiondi2003,183).

30.SeeFrazierinSingh(2005,180),VonEschen(1997,158),andBiondi’s(2003,165,183)term.SeealsoCarteretal.(1956).VonEschen(1997,153–159)excellentlyanalyzesthewayraceandracismweresystematicallyreframedindomesticterms,thusdisplacingmoremilitantcivilrightsargumentsthatracismwasgroundedinsystemsofdomination.

31.Inthe1967SupremeCourtdecisionLovingv.Virginia, thecourtspecificallyusedtheterm“WhiteSupremacy”:“Thereispatentlynolegitimateoverridingpurposeindependentofinvidiousracialdiscriminationwhichjustifiesthisclassification.ThefactthatVirginiaprohibitsonlyinterracialmarriagesinvolvingwhitepersonsdemonstratesthattheracialclassificationsmuststand on their own justification, asmeasures designed tomaintainWhite Supremacy.We have consistently denied theconstitutionalityofmeasureswhichrestricttherightsofcitizensonaccountofrace.Therecanbenodoubtthatrestrictingthefreedomtomarrysolelybecauseofracialclassificationsviolatesthecentralmeaningof theEqualProtectionClause”(Lovingv.Virginia,1967,388,U.S.12).

32.ChildresssetWeddingBandin1918,theyearafterthe1917silentprotestparadeinNewYorkCityorganizedbytheNAACPtoprotestlynchingandtheyearprecedingtheRedSummerof1919,duringwhichracialattacksonblacksoccurredacrossthecountryinmanycities.Someoftheseraciallymotivatedattacksweredirectedtowardblackmeninuniform,butanewspiritofself-confidenceandself-assertionwasevidentasblackmenandwomen(RedCrossnurses)returnedfromfightingabroaddeterminedtodemandfirst-classcitizenship,andNelsonrepresentsthatspirit.InhisMay1919editorialforCrisis,W.E.B.DuBoisfirmlyexpressedthisnewspirit:“Wereturn/Wereturnfromfighting/Wereturnfighting.”

33.Thisparallelstheideaonpoliticalanger:“Angerbecomesapoliticalresourceonlywhenitiscollective”(Hedin1982).34.SeealsoSingh(2005,13).35.Formyfulldiscussionofthisphrase,seeWashington(1996).36.SeeSingh(1999).37. I am much indebted to James Smethurst’s meditation on and analysis of the relationship between the “narratorial

consciousness”andtherepresentationsofthe“folk”andtheliteraryLeft’srevisionsofthatrelationship.Inhischaptersthatconsider the poets Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Melvin Tolson, Margaret Walker, and RobertHayden,SmethurstemphasizeshowtheLeftoftenproblematizedconstructionsofthe“folk”:“Similarly,intheworkofmanyartistsoftheliteraryLeft,andthecriticalwritingsofmanyintellectualsassociatedwiththeCommunistLeft,theproblematicrelationoftheLeftintellectual-writertotheworkingclass(and,duringthePopularFront,tothepeople)israisedagainandagain. This is particularly true in the work of African-American writers, such as Brown and [Richard]Wright, where anidentificationwiththefolkisassertedalongwithavanguardrolefortheAfrican-Americanintellectual;thenthetwoassertionsarequestionedbothsharplyanduneasily.InthecaseofWalker,theformaldistinctionbetweenthe‘prophetic’poemsandthe‘folk’poemscallsintoquestiontheidentificationbetweenthenarratorialconsciousnessofthepoemstherepresentedand/orrecreatedfolks,thoughthiscommonaltyisneverquestionedbythedenotativesenseofWalker’spoems”(1999,185).

38.InmyreviewofAShortWalk(FeministPress,2007),Ifocusedonissuesofcross-dressingandqueersexualityinthenovel.SeeHigashida(2009)foranexcellentreadingofqueersexualityinthenovel.

39.AlanWaldtakesonthisissueofthetensionsbetweenblacksandwhitesontheLeftin“ThroughtheEyesofHaroldCruse.”40.Left-wingjournalsandillustrationstypicallyportrayedtheradicalasawhiteworking-classmale.ThemastheadofMasses&

Mainstream,forexample,showsamuscular,bare-chestedwhitemanholdingamalletinonehandandabookaloftintheother.

41.InthesummerissueofFeministStudies(2002),areproductionofNeel’sportraitofIrenePeslikisisonpage374ofDeniseBauer’sarticleandonthecover.

4.WHENGWENDOLYNBROOKSWORERED

1.LawrenceJackson(2010,196)putsBrooksinthechapteron“AfroliberalsandWorldWarII”andprovidessomeevidenceofBrooks’srejectionofradicalisminthelettersshewrotetohereditorElizabethLawrence“todefendheraesthetic”(210).IagreewithJacksonthatBrooksaimed“todramatizeherabilitytobelongtoaworldquitedifferentfromtheblackChicagoMarxistbohemia,”butthatmakesmypointthatearlyonshewasminimizingherleftistties.

2.Shepublishedasecondautobiographicalsketchin1996,ReportfromPartTwo.3.AlanWald,e-mailtotheauthor,November2012.4.SeeMullen(1999,228).Inseveralfootnotes,MullennotesthatShawandKent“ascribenonpoliticalmotivestoherwork,”

Shawinsistingthatshewasnaïve,believing“innocentlyinthebasicgoodnessofmanandofChristianity,thatintegrationwasthe solution to the blackman’s [sic] problems.”Mullen says that bothSmethurst andAnnFolwell Stanford (1992) try to“relocateBrooksasafiguremuchinfluencedbytheLeftculturalandpoliticalmilieuofthePopularFrontandNegroPeople’sFront”(228n6).MullenalsonotesthatBrooksexcludesherparticipationintheLeagueofAmericanWritersandinletterstoMullen“discountstheinfluenceofLeftistsandfellowtravelers”(228n11).

5.SmethurstmentionsbothpoemsinhisTheNewRedNegroandwrotetomeinane-mailthattheyshowanindebtednesstoPopularFrontculturalpolitics.

6.ThesewerethekindsofchargesthatwereleveledatCharlesWhite’sexperimentalartinthe1950sasleftistcriticismtookaturntowardSovietorthodoxy.PerhapsbecauseKreymborgwashimselfanexperimental imagistpoet,hewasparticularlysensitivetoBrooks’sformalexperimentations.Hegavebriefreadingsofseveralpoemsandwasespeciallyimpressedwiththetenwarsonnetsthatclosethevolume,callingthem“amongthefinestcontributionsanypoethasmadetowarpoetry”(1945,28).

7.HereIamfollowingAndrewHemingway’s(2002)argumentinthechapter“TheEndofDemocraticFrontAestheticsandtheEmergenceofZhdanovism”(219–223).

8.AlfredKreymborg,afriendofCarlSandburgandtheeditorofthe“littlemagazine”Othersbetween1916and1919,waspartof the Americanist avant-garde poetry circles that aimed for transformations in poetry that would move toward a moreinclusivemodernism.Kreymborg’spraiseofBrooksmaywellhavebeenexpiationforhisearliercruderacialviewsshowninhisreviewofJeanToomer,inwhichhepraisedToomerforexhibitingthat“franklylyricalstrainnativetothedarkyeverywhere”(quotedinNorth1994,149).Later,hemovedtotheleft,andthushismodernistcredentialsandleftistpoliticsmadehim,inmanyways,theidealreaderforBrooks’searlypoetry.

9.BrooksleftcluesaboutherdesiresforsecrecyandprivacyinherBancroftpapers.InthePoetryreview(January1967)ofSylviaPlath’s poetry,EleanorRossTaylor ends her review, “After TwentyYears,”with this statement about confessionalpoetry: “Theconfessionalpoemseemssoamiable, it iseasilyavailable to thereader; itmakesthepoet feelbetter;yet itusesthepoetshabbily;thepoemthatseemedtohimhisveryindividualitytendstofallintoaclinicaltype,anditsgraspofthereader deprives that reader ofone chief pleasure of poetry, the feeling of having come upon a silence, a privacy, uponintellectexistingunselfconsciouslysomewhereoutofreachofcamera.”Brookswroteonthecoveroftheissue,“Seepage262,” and then circled those lines I have italicized. I read thismarginalia as a caution to anyoneattempting to pin downBrooks’spoliticalorpersonalviewsandtosuggestthat,atleastbefore1967,Brooksmeanttocreateapoeticpersonathatcouldnotbeeasilyapprehended.

10.Attheriskofreifyingthemythofherconversion,Iwishtopointtosomeexamplesofitsreproductivevitality.Theintroductoryessays on Brooks in both theNorton Anthology of American Literature and theNorton Anthology of African AmericanLiteratureopenwithastoryofBrooks’s1967“shift”andthusreproducetheteleologyofa“new”Brooksthatemergesinthewake of the Fisk Black Writers Conference. Critics have been unable—or unwilling—to dislodge this conversion story.DismissingtheimportanceofraceandclassinBrooks’searlypoetry,onecriticclaimedthat“Brooks’slaterworktookafarmorepoliticalstance.Justasherfirstpoemsreflectedthemoodoftheirera,herlaterworksmirroredtheiragebydisplayingwhatNationalObservercontributorBruceCooktermed‘anintenseawarenessoftheproblemsofcolorandjustice’”(PoetryFoundationn.d.).ToniCadeBambara(1973)reportedintheNewYorkTimesBookReviewthatattheageoffifty“somethinghappenedtoBrooks,asomethingmostcertainlyinevidenceinIntheMeccaandsubsequentworks—anewmovementandenergy,intensity,richness,powerofstatementandanewstrippedlean,compressedstyle.Achangeofstylepromptedbyachange ofmind.” “Though some of herwork in the early 1960s had a terse, abbreviated style, her conversion to directpoliticalexpressionhappenedrapidlyafteragatheringofblackwritersatFiskUniversityin1967,”JacquelineTrescott(quotedinPoetryFoundationn.d.) reported in theWashingtonPost.Brooksherselfnoted that thepoets therewerecommitted towritingasblacks,aboutblacks,andforablackaudience.Ifmanyofherearlierpoemshadfulfilledthisaim,itwasnotduetoconscious intent, she said. But from this time forward, Brooks thought of herself as an African determined not tocompromisesocialcommentforthesakeoftechnicalproficiency(Bryant2007).

11. Such arguments encourage literary historians of the Left to reject the standard conversion narrative about Brooks. Forexample,asearlyas1987HoustonBakerdisputedthe ideaofBrooks’sascensiontotheenlightenmentof thenewblacknationalistaestheticandconcluded:“sheismorejustlydescribedasaheraldthanasanuninformedconvert”(28).

12. For discussion of the relationship of blackPopular Front and leftistwriters andmodernism, see especially Smethurst’s(1999)chapter“GwendolynBrooksandtheRiseof‘High”Neomodernism.”

13.In1987,Brooksagreedtopublishthisessayinmyanthology,InventedLives:ClassicStoriesbyandAboutBlackWomen,but she withdrew the essay before publication, saying that she did not want to publish an essay that focused ondisagreementsbetweenblackwomenandmen.

14.Reif-Hughescallsthem“snapshots,”butIrejectthattermbecausetheyfocusnotonthevisualbutontheinteriorlife.15.SeeBrooks’s1951essay“WhyNegroWomenLeaveHome.”

16.ThoughLawrenceJacksonsaysthatBrooks’sfirstbookofpoetryAStreetinBronzeville“provedthatthesocialrealistshadhittheirstride”(2010,205),neitherherpoetrynorMaudMarthacouldbeconsideredposterbooksforsocialrealism.Infact,asIwillshow,MaudMarthacanbereadascounteringthesocialrealismofRichardWright.

17.SeeMullen(1999).18.Mullen,personale-mail,October13,2012.19.ThescenewithBigger,Mary,andJaninadinerinNativeSonisavividcontrasttothedinersceneinMaudMartha.20.Melhem(1987,90)offersaparticularlyinsightfulreadingofthisending.21.RexGorleighcorrespondence,1945,ChicagoSouthSideCommunityArtCenterArchives,part1,box1,folder20.22.Significantly,WilliamDeanHowellsused“bitter”(1901)torejectCharlesChesnutt’sTheMarrowofTraditionin1901and,in

anageofcensorshipofblackanger,practicallydestroyedChesnutt’spublishingopportunities.23.ThelettersfromBrookstoConroyareinthecollectionofConroy’spapersintheNewberryLibrary;thosefromConroyto

BrooksareinherpapersattheBancroft.ThisletterisattheNewberry,Box4:189.24.ConroyletterfromJuly17,1962,toBrooks(Bancroft).25.Thisletter,datedOctober28,1955,isattheBancroftLibrary,inBox1:28.TherealsoisaphotographinConroy’spapersthat

showsBrookssittingnexttoMargaretTaylorandConroy’sson.26.In1952,whenRobesonwasdeniedthechancetosingatanychurchesorhighschoolsinChicago,hegaveafreeconcert

beforeacrowdoffivethousandinWashingtonPark,whichservedastheSouthSide’sforumforfreespeech.TheshowwassponsoredbytheCommitteefortheNegrointheArtsandtheGreaterChicagoLaborCouncil.Inadditiontosingingfavoriteslike“Ol’ManRiver,”RobesonpromotedhisFreedomnewspaper.Healsoaddressedthecrowdwithanappealforunity:“IfNegrofraternal,civic,religious,andsocialorganizationsjointogetherthisyeartheycouldforcethepowersinWashingtontograntfullcivilrightsstatustotheNegropeople.”QuotedinAmsterdamNews(June7,1952).BrianDolinar,e-mailtoauthor,April28,2011.

27.Dolinar,e-mailtoauthor,April28,2011.28. Inhis introduction to thenewly reissuedFederalWritersProjectTheNegro in Illinois, the literary historianBrianDolinar

(2013)notesthatalthoughWrightknewaboutthepark’spoliticalsignificance,hedidnotalludetoitinhisprojectreportdatedMarch27,1937:“Wrightgivesconsiderablespaceintheessaytotheeducationalandrecreationalactivitiesinthepark,butonlymakesbriefmentionofitssignificanceasanopenforum.WashingtonParkwasthecenterofblackpoliticalandsociallifeduringthe1930s.ItwaswheredebateswereheldbetweenSocialistsandCommunists,Christiansandnon-Christians,nationalistsandpan-Africanists. Itwaswhererallies,marches,andparadestookplace.AlthoughWrighthadspentmuchtimethere,heappearstohaveeditedoutanyradicalorracialcommentarythatwouldhavesentupredflagsindicatinghisownpoliticalviews.TodootherwisemighthavecosthimhisjobwiththeWriters’Project.”

29.Namedforthefirstpresident,theparkisthelargestofthefourChicagodistrictparkssurnamedWashingtonandwasonce,accordingtoBrooks,rechristenedMalcolmXParkby1960sradicals.

30. Many thanks tomycolleagueChristinaWalter for this insightabout thepoemand for thehoursshespent reading thesepoemsthroughthelensofherwell-trainedmodernisteye.

31.BrianDolinar,personalcorrespondence.32.Inthepoem“IXtruth”fromthe“Womanhood”sectionofAnnieAllen,Brookswritesinmetaphoricaltermsaboutthepeople’s

hard unwillingness to respond to the “fierce hammering” of change and challenge: “if the sun comes,” the poet-narratorprophesies,thosewhohavespent“solengthya/Sessionwithshade”willbeunabletorespondtotheurgenciesofthesun,preferringinstead“Tosleepinthecoolness/Ofsnugunawareness”(reprintedinBrooks1994,130).

33.ConversationwithProfessorAaronLecklider(AmericanStudiesAssociationannualmeeting,PuertoRico,November2012)towhomIamindebtedforthepossiblequeerreadingofthepoem.Convincingly,hearguesthatthecompleteabsenceofgendersignifiersrequiresustoconsiderthatBrooks’sradicalismmightextendtoherviewsonsexuality.

34.InalettertoNegroDigest(July1966),BrooksconfrontedandcorrectedastatementbyaStanfordstudent,RonMiller,thatBrookswasnotavailableforthecivilrightsstrugglebutwasratherasortofivory-towerpoet.TheconfrontationisdiscussedinKent(1990,193).

5. FRANKLONDONBROWN:THEENDOFTHEBLACKCULTURALFRONTANDTHETURNTOWARDCIVILRIGHTS

1.InhisintroductiontoInvisibleSuburbs:RecoveringProtestFictioninthe1950sintheUnitedStates,JoshLukinproposesintegratingtwomodelsfortheorizing1950scultureinordertoavoidimposingaunitaryviewonthedecadethatwouldfailtoaccount for or to include its historical realities. Lukinargues that viewsof the1950sas “the complacent decade”or the“decadeofconformity” ignorethatdecade’scomplexitiesanddiversities.Lukinadvisescombiningtwooppositemodelstocapture that diverseworld,which he calls the “ContainmentModel” and the “EmergenceModel.”The containmentmodelfocusesonthedecadeasdominatedbytheinstitutionalforcesthatbroughtusthepoliticalrepressionsoftheRedScare,ideological censorship,andsexualand racial conservatism.Lukin considers thecontainmentmodelbest representedbyLaryMay’s 1989anthologyRecastingAmerica:Culture andPolitics in theColdWar andElaine TylerMay’s 1988 studyHomewardBound:AmericanFamilies in theColdWarEra.Theemergencemodel, “acomplementaryschoolof thoughtemphasizing resistance,” is represented by such scholarship as Alan Wald on the work of leftists, Michael Denning’srecoveryofthePopularFront,BarbaraEhrenreichonmalerebellion,JohnD’Emilioongaymovements,andLeilaRubbandVertaTayloronfeminism(xiv).Whatisusefulaboutthisintegrativeapproach,especiallyinanalyzingfiction,isthatitavoidstotalizing the decade as entirely dominated by the repressions of theColdWar or by resistancemovements. Instead, itacknowledges the variety, diversity, contradictions, andoverlap in this culturalmoment and recognizesand recovers the

agencyofthoseinresistancework,particularlyincivilrightsstrugglesamongmarginalizedgroups.ThoughIdiscoveredthisbookasIwasfinishingworkonthischapter, Iwishtocallattentiontothismodelsince itdescribeswhat Iattempt inthischapteronTrumbullPark,whichissoclearlymarkedbythemesandimagesofbothcontainmentandwhatIcallresistance.

2.BennettJohnson,phoneinterviewwiththeauthor,January24,2004.3.BennettJohnson,e-mailtotheauthor,July9,2012.4.Thegroup’spoliticsinregardtocommunismwerequitecomplicated.TheUnitedPackinghouseWorkersofAmerica(UPWA)

wasformedin1943outoftheoldCIOpackinghouseunions.Leftists,communists,blackmilitants,andwhitetradeunionistsformedcoalitionsintheunionthatallowedtheUPWAtomaintainlocalcontroland,unlikeotherunions,tofightagainstthepurgeofcommunists,whowereanessentialpartoftheunion’sactivism.SeeHalpern(1997,chaps.6–7).

5.Theterm“packinghouseexceptionalism”wascoinedbyHalpern(1997)toindicatetheunion’sextraordinarycommitmentstoleftistpolitics,civilrights,andwomen’sequality.

6. SeeSmethurst (1999) formoreon thispoint. Iam indebted throughoutTheOtherBlacklist to thebrilliantscholarshipofSmethurstontheblackliteraryLeft.HeisespeciallyilluminatinginthewayhehistoricizestheaestheticpracticesoftheLeftandwithhisclosereadingsandtheoreticalinsightsonthepoetryofGwendolynBrooks,LangstonHughes,SterlingBrown,andtheentirepanoplyofBlackPopularFrontpoetry.

7.StuckeywroteacommentaryonthefirsteditionofTrumbullPark,publishedbyRegnery.8.Phoneinterviewwiththeauthor,April9,1997.9.Shelleyv.Kraemer(1948).10.Phoneinterviewwiththeauthor,May14,2004.11.AccordingtoEvelynBrownColbert,theBrown’sfourthchildandonlyson,FrankLondonBrownIII,wasbornthreemonths

aftertheyleftTrumbullParkanddiedforty-fiveminutesafterhewasborn;hisdeath,shebelieves,wasprobablycausedbythetremendousstressoftheirlivesduringtheiryearsinTrumbullPark.Personalinterviewwiththeauthor,January23,2004.

12.NewCriticism,namedafterJohnCroweRansom’sbookTheNewCriticism(1941),isaliterarymovementinNorthAmericanandBritishEnglishliterature.Themovementoriginatedinthe1920sanddevelopedthroughoutthefirsthalfofthetwentiethcentury as a pedagogical practice supposedly focused on objective literary study. New Critical theory insists upon thefollowing tenets: “autonomy”of the text, in thatmeaning isderivedonly from formand linguisticswithoutconsiderationofaspects outside of the text (e.g., authorial intent or historical context); paraphrase as damaging to the text’s autonomybecause,asarestatementofmeaning,paraphraseremainsexternaltothetext;“organicunity”ofthetextinthateachpartinforms themeaningof a complexwhole, yet thewholedetermines themeaningof eachpart; ironyas the fundamentalnatureof the text;andclosereadingas themethod toderive theessenceof the text (i.e., “irony,paradox,ambiguity,andcomplexity”).NewCriticismremainsinfluential,particularlythroughitslegacyofclosereading.Critics,however,accuseNewCriticismofpromotingpositivismandfailingtorecognizeoracknowledgepoliticalconnotations(Childs1993).

13.SeealsoLangstonHughesintheNewYorkHeraldTribune(July5,1959).14.SeemyforewordinNortheasternUniversityPress’s2005reprintofTrumbullPark.15.Smethurst,Maxwell,Wald,VonEschen,andDuffie,amongothers,havepioneeredthiskindofreading.16. WhenHansberry’splayopenedonBroadway,evenherFBI informant could findnoevidenceof communist thoughtand

concluded in thereport, “TheplaycontainsnocommentsofanynatureaboutCommunismassuchbutdealsessentiallywithnegro[sic]aspirations”(U.S.FBI,February5,1959).In“TheDisplacementofAngerandBlameinLorraineHansberry’sARaisinintheSun,”theliteraryscholarOdessaRosecitesfourscenesomittedfromtheBroadwayversionRaisin intheSun, omissions that she says reflect the antiradicalism of the play: (1) Travis kills a rat in their apartment, a scenereminiscentoftheopeningofRichardWright’sNativeSon;(2)BeneathacutsherhairintoanAfroinact2,scene1,causinggreatdisturbanceamongthefamily(eventhoughtheactorDianaSandsactuallyworeherhairinanAfro,shehadtowearawigfortheplay);(3)inact2,scene2,LenaandherneighborMrs.JohnsonhaveaconversationoverBookerT.Washington’sideology, in which Johnson clearly critiques white racism and predicts the violence the Youngers will face in their newneighborhood;and(4)theYoungerfamilyisattackedintheirnewhomebyanangrywhitemob,anautobiographicalscenethatHansberry’sownfamilyexperienced.Roseconcludes:“Raisin,asitappearedin1959,toldthestoryofagroupofpeoplethatjusthappenedtobeNegroes.Withsomeminoradjustments,thecharacterscouldhavejustaseasilybeenplayedbywhites.OmittingthesefourscenesmadeRaisinauniversalplayaboutuniversalpeoplestrugglingforuniversalgoals,ratherthanthestoryofthelifeoftheworking-classNegro”(7).

17.Seepage23ofBrown’sFOIAfile,particularlythefootnoteontheProgressiveParty.18.ThehistorianSterlingStuckeysaysthatBrownwas“ontheLeftpolitically”and“mayhavebeenintheCommunistParty,but

hedidn’ttalkthejargon,andIhavenoevidencethathewasamember”(April9,1997).19.OscarBrownJr.,aunionmemberandopencommunist,wroteinFreedomin1953thatthePackinghouseWorkersUnion

wassuccessfulindisruptingHUAC’sscheduledhearingsinthesummerof1953(Smith2004,302).ThisdisruptionofHUACisanexampleofacoalitionbetweenradicalleftistsandcivilrightsorganizers.

20. Brownwas sent asUPWAprogramcoordinator to cover the1955 trial of the twowhitemenaccusedof themurder ofEmmettTill.Hisshortstory,“IntheShadowofaDyingSoldier,”publishedintheSouthwestReviewin1959,thesameyearasTrumbullPark,isbasedonhisexperiencescoveringthistrial.AsinTrumbullPark,Brown’sfocusisalwaysontheinternalstruggleoftheblackresisters:theblackmenstandingoutsidethecourtroom,thelandladywhodefieswhiteauthorities,and,aboveall,Emmett’smother,MamieTill, andhis uncle,MoseWright,who testify againstwhiteMississippimen. Like thenovel,thestoryemphasizesthesmall,barelynoticeablechangesinanoppressedpeople,whooftenseemtoodefeatedtostruggle,astheysummonthecouragetomakechange.AdamGreen(2007)arguesthatTrumbullPark“confineditselftotheeventspriorto1955”andthatBrowndidnot“venturefurther[toexplore]theparallelswithanevenmoredisturbingeventofracialviolence: thedeathofEmmettTill inMississippi inAugust1955.”HadGreenbeen inspired to “venture further”—he

wouldhavediscoveredthatthisshortstorydoesindeedinterrogatethemeaningofTill’sdeathinpowerfulways.21.Thereportfiledonthatdaycoverstheinvestigativeperiod10–8,10–12,15–19,and22/56;seepages20and29.22.In“F.B.Eyes:TheBureauReadsClaudeMcKay,”Maxwell(2003)readsMcKayasakindofliterarydoubleagent,consciously

writingbacktotheagentswhoweresurveillinghim,andmaskinghisrevolutionaryintentionsin“politicizedformality.”Maxwelltakestheterm“F.B.Eyes”fromRichardWright’sunpublishedpoem“FBEyeBlues”(1949).Inthepoemthevoicelaments,throughclassicbluesrepetition,wakingtofindtheFBIhidingunderhisbedandinforminghimofwhatherevealedabouthisdreamswhilesleeping(Maxwell2003,40).

23.FromRichardWright’sunpublishedpoem“FBEyeBlues”(1949).24. Thiswaspublished in theDailyWorker (February12,1929).TheAfricanAmericancommunistHarryHaywood,amajor

figureintheCPUSAuntilhewasexpelledinthelate1950s,wasinvolvedindevelopingComintern’sblackbelt thesis.FormoreonAfricanAmericans,CPUSA,andthe“nationalquestion,”seeSmethurst(1999,21–25).

25.Theentiredebateoverthe“NegroQuestion”isrecountedinchapter5,“ANationwithinaNation,”inMarkSolomon’sTheCryWasUnity:CommunistsandAfricanAmericans,1917–1936(1998,68–91).SmethurstalsohasanextendeddiscussionofresponsetothenationthesisinTheNewRedNegro(1999,23–24).

26.AsLauraWilliams(2012,7)notes,Wright,inhis“BlueprintforNegroWriting”(1937)“indictedblackwritersasaneducatedclassfixatedon‘begging…whiteAmerica’toacceptblackhumanity.Demandingthatblackwriters‘donolessthancreatevaluesbywhich[their]raceistostruggle,liveanddie,’Wrightadvocatedtheproductionofsocialrealism,immersedinandevolving fromblack folklore, that ‘will embraceall thosesocial, political, andeconomic formsunderwhich the lifeof [theNegro]peopleismanifest.’”

27.Graham(1990)saysthatgrowingupinChicago,“oneofthemajorcentersofbebopmusicinthe1950s,”deeplyinfluencedBrown’slifeandhiswriting.Grahamsaysthatthenewmusicofbebop“basedonthesamerevolutionaryimpulsesasthewrittenliteratureofthethirtiesandforties”reflected“amoreassertivedynamicinculturalexpression.”ForthewritersandartistswhocameafterRichardWright, thismusic functionedasan “abstractexpressionofamilitantpoliticalmode thatwouldbecomeacentralthemeintheblackexperienceinthe1960s.”

28.Wald(2001,295)writesthatrepresentingfull-blowninterracialclasssolidaritywasdifficultbecause“interracialutopiawasnotpartoftheday-to-dayexperiencesofordinaryAfricanAmericans,”but,becauseofhisactivitiesinaprogressiveleft-wingunion,Brownseemstohavebeenwellpositionedtooffersucharepresentationofinterracialcooperation.

29.Phoneinterviewwiththeauthor,May14,2004.30.ThomasSchaubdescribesEllison’sprotagonist’smoveundergroundasaself-inducedparalysis(1991,104–115).31.Thesongcontinueswiththeselines,whichareomittedinInvisibleMan:“I’mwhite…inside…but,thatdon’thelpmycase

’causeI…can’thide…whatisinmyface.”32.Smethurst(2004)notessimilargesturestowardbothcivilrightsandblackpopularfrontaestheticsinLloydBrown’sIronCity.33.MalcolmXgaveliteraryandpoliticalprominencetotheBandungconferencewhenhereferredtoitinhisspeech,“NotJustan

AmericanProblem,butaWorldProblem,”givenatCornHillMethodistChurch inRochester,NewYork,onFebruary16,1965.HehailedBandungasthefirsttimeinhistorythatthedark-skinnednationsoftheworldhadunitedtorejectcolonialismandracismandtopromoteunityamongthecolonized.NoEuropeannationwasinvited,norwastheUnitedStates,theirveryabsence,heclaimed,signifyingthemastheworld’scolonizers.InTheColorCurtain:AReportontheBandungConferentce(1956),RichardWright,oneoftheattendees,givesafirst-handviewoftheconference.AdamClaytonPowell,thenaU.S.congressman,attendedtheconferenceandassertedthatfarfrombeingoppressed,NegroesintheUnitedStateswereaprivilegedgroup.AccordingtoLloydL.Brown,thepresspraisedPowellforhispatriotism,andCongresspassedaresolutioncommendingPowell(lettertotheauthor,October23,1998).

34. TheBandungorganizershad“pointedly”excluded“the twogreat, rivalcentersofpower in themodernworld,” theUnitedStatesofAmericaandtheSovietUnion(Romulo1956,1).

35. Denning argues in The Cultural Front that the nationalism of the black cultural front “was inflected with a popularinternationalism” thatemphasized thatethnicor racialstorieswerealways intended to lead to “the love for,and theunityamong,allpeoplesofallnations”(1996,132).

36. I want to thank Christopher Brown of the University of Maryland for this insight in how the marginalization of the Leftcontinuouslycirculates.

37.AccordingtoHenryRegnery’s1996obituaryintheNewYorkTimes,“Regnerypublishedsomeofthefirstandmostimportantbooks of the postwar American conservative movement.” The Times called it “one of only two houses known to besympathetictoconservativeauthors.”In1951,RegnerypublishedWilliamF.BuckleyJr.’sGodandManatYale.Twoyearslater,Regnery publishedTheConservativeMind, a seminal book for American conservatism during the period. In 1954,RegnerypublishedMcCarthyandHisEnemies,byBuckleyandL.BrentBozellJr.TheauthorscriticizedMcCarthybutweresympathetictohim,andMcCarthywaspleasedenoughwiththebookthatheattendedareceptionforthem.RegneryalsopublishedtwobooksbyRobertWelchintheearly1950s,bothofwhichcanbereadasanticommunist:MayGodForgiveUs,inwhichWelchaccusedmanyinfluentialforeign-policyanalystsandpolicymakersofbeingpartofaconspiracytofurthercommunism,andabiographyofJohnBirch,whoservedasan intelligenceofficerduringWorldWar IIandwaskilledbyChinesecommunists.

38.E-mailtotheauthor,September4,2011.39.Phoneinterviewwiththeauthor,May14,2004.40.Thisinformantgoesontosaythattheterm“leftwinger”inthisparticularcaseindicatedthatBrownwasaratheroutspoken

personwhowas always attempting to gain equal rights for the people of his race and that the term “leftwinger” in thisparticularcase“hadnootherconnotationwhatsoever.”

41.Phoneinterviewwiththeauthor,May14,2004.

6.1959:SPYCRAFTANDTHEBLACKLITERARYLEFT

1.I’llrefertothisastheRootsvolumethroughoutthischapter.2.ThequestionofAfricanhistory,culture,andindependencewereclearlythefocusofAMSAC.InAMSAC’stwenty-three-page

statementofpurpose,thecentralityofAfricatotheorganizationisconstantlyreiterated.Thestatementbeginsbydefiningtheorganizationas“agroupofAmericanNegroscholars,artists,andwriterswhohavejoinedtogethertostudyAfricanculture,”motivatedbyanawarenessofAfrica“swiftlyemergingasamajorparticipant inworldhistory.”OneofAMSAC’smissionswas “to establish contact and cooperation with African governmental representatives in new York, African studentorganizationsintheUSA,internationalorganizations,culturalgroupsandotherAmericanorganizationsprimarilyconcernedwithAfrica.”AMSACplanneda “Center ofAfricanCulture” inNewYork to facilitate interest inAfrica, andaFestivalwasplannedfor1960–1961tobeheld inAfrica.There is literallyonlyone line in theentirestatementofpurposethatreferstoAmericanNegroculture.See“TheAmericanSocietyofAfricanCultureandItsPurpose.”

3.InTheIndignantGeneration,LawrenceJackson(2010)statesthatthepaperstendedtoquestion,radically,thepsychological,cultural,anddevelopmentalvaluethatlayatthebottomoftheidealoffullyembracing—“integrating”—intoasocietythathadbeencontenttopersecuteAmericansofAfricandescent.

4.BrendaGaylePlummer’s(1996)assessmentoftheAMSACconferencemirrorsmyownconclusionthatmanyideologicalpositionswererepresentedattheconference:“RecordsofAMSACrevealthatinternalideologicaltensionswererifefromthebeginning,quiteapartfromCIAmeddling.Culturalnationalismcouldimposeandthendisguiseafundamentallyconservativeoutlook.Thisperspectiveneverdominatedbecausetimesweresimplychangingtoorapidly”(254).

5. Hansberry’soriginalspeech for theRoots conference is in theLorraineHansberrypapers,box66, folder4,SchomburgCenterforResearchonBlackCulture.

6. Iwant toacknowledgeKeithGilyard’s (2010)critique thatmy labelingDavisandRedding “conservative” is “reductionist”(350n20).However,Istandbymyassessmentoftheirpoliticseventhoughinsomecontexts,asGilyardnotes,theywouldbothbecalled“liberals”fortheirsupportofAmericandemocraticideals.EugeniaCollier(whoworkedwithDavisatHowardUniversity) and Julian Mayfield in his unpublished article “The Foolish Consistency of Saunders Redding”—as well asRedding himself in To Make A Poet Black,On Being Negro in America, and An American in India—offer very cleardocumentationofakindofpoliticsthatIconsider“conservative”:itoffersverymildrebukesofwhiteracistpractice,ishighlyindividualistic,anddesiresanaccommodationwithandassimilationintothewhiteAmericanmainstream.

7. Chapter 9ofWilford (2008), “IntoAfrica:AfricanAmericans,” is themost comprehensive studyofCIA involvementwithAMSAC.

8.InitsconcernforAfricanAmericanculturalproductionand/orracialissues,theCIAseemed,atfirstglance,tobeinterestedonlyincosmetictouch-upstoitsdiversityprogram.ItpaidforanextendedEuropeantouroftheoperaPorgyandBess, itlobbiedHollywoodto tampdownanyseriousconsiderationof racial issues,and iturgedfilmmakers toplantdignifiedandwell-dressedNegroes incrowdscenes.But therewassomethingmuchmore importantandsinisterafootwith theCIA’sinvestmentinblackculture.GiventhepotentialforaradicalblackpoliticstodevelopinthefaceofanincreasinglymilitantcivilrightsmovementintheUnitedStatesandgrowingindependencemovementsinAfrica,thequestionwashowtodiscredittheblackLeft, undermineany seriousdiscussionof theU.S. race issue,andcounterblack-Left support for newlyemergentindependentblackAfricannations.

9.InitsearlyheadydaysoflavishCIAfunding,theorganizationwassoflushwithmoneythatitwasabletopromisemembers“travelling[sic]adistanceof450milesormorefromanydirectiontoNewYork”areimbursement“equalto1/2thecostoffirstclassreturnair transportation,”according toan“Arrangements InformationSheet” in theAMSACpapers. Ifmemberschosecheapertransportation,literallyalloftheirtravelcostcouldbepaidbyAMSAC.Halfoftheconferencefeeof$21couldalsobereimbursed,andthebanquetfeewaspaidforbyAMSAC.AllparticipantswereaskedtoregisterwithAMSACattheConferenceHotel.

10.SeeAMSACpapers,Box9,#3.AMSAC’stiestotheCIAandthemoneyfromtheagencywereexposedbytheNewYorkTimesinaseriesofarticlesinFebruary1967.OnceAMSAC’stiestotheCIAwererevealed,Daviswashardpressedtogethisfundingrenewed.AsearlyasApril24,officialswereissuingmemosaboutAMSAC’s“presenttarnishedimage.”DavissentalettertoAssistantSecretaryofStateforEducationalandCulturalAffairsCharlesL.FrankelonJune9,pleadingnottobedroppedonthegroundsthattheimageoftheAmericanNegrowouldbeleftinthehandsof“blacknationalists,toSNCC,and to thosewhoexcite the rageof theNegropoorby referring to theAfricanand slavepast, to injusticesdoneand toempires lost; to those who feel they must ridicule American culture as a means of asserting their own validity” (6).Throughouttheletter,Daviswalksafinelineontheissueofintelligence,saying,“Whileitwouldbeexpectedthatsuchanorganization would cooperate with the cultural activities of the United States Government, there must be adequatesafeguards against such an organization being used for intelligence purposes.” However, AMSAC was on its way todissolution.BySeptember1,theinternalmemosabout“terminalemployeebenefits”and“lackoffundshere”showedthattheorganizationwasinitslastdays.

11.Thephrase“TheNewNegroLiberals”isLawrenceJackson’s(2010).12. See, forexample,AlainLocke’sessayswrittenbetween1936and1951, inwhichhebegan to refinedefinitionsofsocial

protest,making it clear that socialprotestwasa leftist term.This isparticularly clear in severalessayspublished in thecollectionofhisworks,TheCriticalTemperofAlainLocke(1983),including“TheNegro:‘New’orNewer:ARetrospectiveoftheLiteratureoftheNegrofor1938”;“OfNativeSons:RealandOtherwise,”whichoriginallywaspublishedinOpportunityinJanuaryandFebruary1941;“WisdomDeProfundis:TheLiteratureoftheNegro,1949”;“InventoryatMid-Century:AReviewoftheLiteratureoftheNegrofor1950”;and“TheHighPriceofIntegration:AReviewoftheLiteratureoftheNegrofor1951.”

13.Thelecture—whichwas,significantly,supportedbyCIAfunds—waslaterpublishedinWright’scollectionWhiteManListen.ThelectureserieswassponsoredbytheCongressforCulturalFreedom(CCF),whichFrancesStonorSaundersdeclareswas“thecenterpiece”oftheCIA’scovertculturalcampaignfrom1950to1967(Saunders1999,88–91;Wright,“LiteratureoftheNegro”104–105).

14.SeeVonEschen(1997,175–176).ShewritesthatAMSAC’s“mostimportantlegacylayintheareaofscholarship,”whichhelps make my point about the importance of the Roots volume as Cold War scholarship intended to shape AfricanAmericanliterarystudy.ShenotesanearlierpublicationbyAMSAC,AfricaSeenbyAmericanNegroScholars,publishedasaspecialeditionofPresenceAfricainein1958andrepublishedintheUnitedStatesin1963.Itminimizesracism,accusescommunists of manipulating racial issues in international contexts, and omits the anticolonial work of the black leftistinternationalistsDuBois,Hunton,andRobeson.

15. Foradiscussion, seeJulianMayfield’sunpublishedessay “TheFoolishConsistencyofSaundersReddingandOthers.”Redding’stalkoriginallywastitled“TheSanctionsoftheAmericanNegro’sLiteraryArt.”

16.ManymemoirsbyblacklistedandpoliticallyactivewriterstestifytotheleveloffearandintimidationoftheColdWarandtheeffectsofMcCarthyism.AndreSchiffrin’sAPoliticalEducation:ComingofAgeinParisandNewYork(2007)isoneofthemostinformativeabouttheeffectsofColdWaronthepublishingindustry.

17.InRenewingtheLeft,HarveyM.Teres(1996)devotesanentirechaptertothefailureofPartisanReviewtoexposeitslargelywhiteaudiencetoAfricanAmericanculturalexpression.Specifically,henotesthatthejournalincludednoarticlesonAfricanAmericanwritingandnoneonraceuntil1940.ThejournalproducednocoverageofraceandsegregationduringtheWorldWarIIyears,andtherewaslittlechangeinthatpolicyafterthewar.WhilethejournaldidlaterincludeanexcerptfromRalphEllison’s1952novelInvisibleManandpublishedJamesBaldwin’searliestessays,Teresconcludes:“IfwelookattherangeofAfricanAmericanwritingfromthe1930stothe1960s,weseethatnearlyallofitwasignoredbyPartisanReview,nottomentionnearlyeveryotherwhitepublication in thecountry.Among thewriterswhoproducednoteworthyworkduring thisperiodyetwhoseworkwasneverreviewedwereW.E.B.DuBois,LorraineHansberry,MargaretWalker,ArnaBontemps,SterlingBrown,RobertHayden,JohnO.Killens,WilliamAttaway,ChesterHimes,FrankYerby,AnnPetry,WillardMotley,DorothyWest,WilliamGardner Smith, FrankMarshall Davis,William Demby, John A.Williams, Owen Dodson, and J.SaundersRedding”(212–213).

18.Atthetimeoftheconference,hehadrecentlyreturnedfromPuertoRico,wherehelivedfrom1954to1958,workingwithhiswife,thephysicianAnaLiviaCordero,andthePuertoRicanCommunistPartyintheindependencemovement(Gaines2007,145).HealsohadworkedwithRobertWilliams’sarmedself-defensecivilrightsmovementinMonroe,NorthCarolina,inthelate1950s;hadgonetoCubatocelebratetheCubanindependencestruggle;andhadsignedapublicstatementagainsttheUnitedStatesforitsBayofPigsinvasionofCuba.WhenhewasindictedbytheFBIin1961forparticipatinginWilliams’sprogram,heandhiswifeescapedandleftforGhana,whereheworkedforPresidentKwameNkrumaheditingTheAfricanReviewafterGhanagained independence. It is interesting tonote that ina1970soralhistoryMayfield reported that,asaMarxistmaterialist,hewas“cynical”about“searchingbackintoourancestralroots,”andhesaidhehadlittlefaithinsuchthingsaslookingtotheAfricanexperiencefora“discussionofspiritualvalues”(Mayfield1970,552-30)sincehewasfullyawareofthecorruptioninAfricansocietiesthathadallowedforacollaborationwiththeslavetrade.

19.See,forexample,Schlesinger(1949).20.TheoriginalspeechisintheLorraineHansberrypapers,box66,folder4,SchomburgCenterforResearchonBlackCulture.21.SeetheAMSACpapers,box4,no.4,HoytFullerdraft(5).WachuuandSenghorwerepartoftheAfricancontingentsfetedby

AMSACwiththeirlavishfunds.22.Ibid.

EPILOGUE:THEEXAMPLEOFJULIANMAYFIELD

1.NewstudiesoftheblackLeft:Higashida(2011),Gore(2011),McDuffie(2011),andWald(2012).2.IreferheretotheassertionsthatBarackObamawasmentoredbyacommunistinHawaii.InhisautobiographyDreamsfor

MyFather,ObamamentionsamannamedFrankwhobecamehismentor.Obamamight havebeen referring toFrankMarshallDavis.Inthe1940sDaviswasamemberoftheCivilRightsCongress,theChicagoCivilLibertiesCommittee,andasupporterofHenryWallace’sProgressiveParty.

3.WhenIinterviewedCatlettinNewYork(October25,2004),shewasverycandidaboutherleftistpast,butsheinsistedthatInotnameheracommunist.

4. TheRosenbergswereexecuted in1952 forallegedly spying for theSovietUnion.Most think thatEthelRosenbergwasinnocentand thatevenherhusbandJuliuswasexecuted forpolitical reasonssinceexecutionswereusually reserved forspyingduringwartime,andtheUnitedStateswasnotatwarwiththeSovietUnion.

5. It is rarely noted that The God That Failed, an anthology of sketches by “prominent intellectuals” to document theirdisillusionmentwithcommunism,waspaidforandpromotedbytheCIA.

WORKSCITED

Allara,Pamela.2000.PicturesofPeople:AliceNeel’sAmericanPortraitGallery.Boston:UniversityPressofNewEngland.“American Society of African Culture and Its Purpose.” N.d. AMSAC papers. Moorland-Spingarn Center, Howard University,

Washington,D.C.Anderson,Carol.2003.EyesoffthePrize:TheUnitedNationsandtheAfricanAmericanStruggleforHumanRights,1944–1955.

NewYork:CambridgeUniversityPress.Anderson,Michael.2008.“LorraineHansberry’sFreedomFamily.”AmericanCommunistHistory7,no.2:259–269.ArchivesofAmericanArt(AAA).Smithsonian,WashingtonD.C.Arnesen,Eric.2001.BrotherhoodsofColor:BlackRailroadWorkersandtheStruggleforEquality.Cambridge,Mass.:Harvard

UniversityPress.——.2006.“No‘GraverDanger’:BlackAnti-Communism,theCommunistParty,andtheRaceQuestion,”Labor3:23–52.AtlantaUniversityandClarkAtlantaUniversity.1950.Phylon(FourthQuarter).Atlanta,Ga.:AtlantaUniversity.Baker,HoustonA.1987.“TheAchievementofGwendolynBrooks.”InALifeDistilled:GwendolynBrooks,HerPoetryandFiction,

ed.MariaK.MootryandGarySmith.Bloomington:UniversityofIllinoisPress.Baldwin,James.1949.“Everybody’sProtestNovel.”InTheNortonAnthologyofAfricanAmericanLiterature,2nded.,ed.Henry

LouisGatesJr.andNellieY.McKay,1699–1705.NewYork:Norton,2004.——.1951.“ManyThousandsGone.”PartisanReview18(November–December):665–680.Baldwin,KateA.2002.BeyondtheColorLineandtheIronCurtain:ReadingEncountersBetweenBlackandRed,1922–1963.

Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress.Bambara,ToniCade.1973.“ReviewofReportfromPartOne.”NewYorkTimesBookReview(January7).Barnwell,Andrea.2002.CharlesWhite.Petaluma,Calif.:Pomegranate.Barrett-White,Frances,withAnneScott. 1994.Reachesof theHeart:ALovingLookat theArtistCharlesWhite. NewYork:

Barricade.Bauer,Denise.2002.“AliceNeel’sFeministandLeftistPortraitsofWomen.”FeministStudies28,no.2(Summer):375–395.Bell,Bernard.1989.TheAfro-AmericanNovelandItsTradition.Boston:UniversityofMassachusettsPress.Bibby,Michael.1995.“ConqueringtheColorLine:BodyPolitics inAfricanAmericanPoeticsof theEarlyColdWar.”American

StudiesAssociation,Pittsburgh,Penn.——. 2006. “‘AMost Uncanny Vision’:Welborn Victor Jenkins’sThe “Incident” atMonroe.” Black Poetry Out of the Archive.

ModernistStudiesAssociationAnnualConference.DoubletreeHotel,Tulsa,Okla.(October20).Lecture.Biondi,Martha.2003.ToStandandFight:TheStruggleforCivilRights inPostwarNewYorkCity.Cambridge,Mass.:Harvard

UniversityPress.Bone,Robert.1958.TheNegroNovelinAmerica.NewHaven,Conn.:YaleUniversityPress.Bonosky,Phillip.N.d.“OdysseyofaWritersWorkshopinNewYorkCityinthe1950s.”Unpublishedmemoir.Inpossessionofthe

author.——.2007.Phoneinterviewwiththeauthor.Borstelmann,Thomas. 2001.TheColdWar and theColor Line: AmericanRaceRelations in theGlobal Arena. Cambridge,

Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress.Bradley,VanAllen.1959.“TrumbullPark,ElmStreetPoliticsandAP.”ChicagoDailyNews(April15).Bragg,Robert.2005.OralinterviewwithNadineWilmot.BancroftLibrary,UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley.Branch,William.2000.Phoneinterview.(October).Brooks,Gwendolyn.N.d.CommentsaboutConroy.BancroftLibraryBancMSS/83z.Carton1,Folder28.——.1937.“SouthernLynching.”Crisis(June):189.——.1945.LettertoJackConroy.JackConroypapers,NewberryLibrary,Chicago.——.1951.Holiday10,no.4(October):64.——.1951.“WhyNegroWomenLeaveHome.”NegroDigest(March):26–28.——.1953.MaudMartha.NewYork:Harper.——.1962.“OfFrankLondonBrown:ATenantoftheWorld.”NegroDigest(September).——.1966.NegroDigest.(July):49–50.——.1972.ReportfromPartOne.Detroit:Broadside.——.1983.InterviewwithClaudiaTate.InBlackWomenWritersAtWork,ed.ClaudiaTate.NewYork:Continuum.——.1994.Blacks.Chicago:ThirdWorld.——.1996.ReportfromPartTwo.Chicago:ThirdWorld.Brown, Elizabeth Barnsley. 1996. “‘Shackles on aWriter’s Pen’: Dialogism in Plays by Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry,

AdrienneKennedy,andNtozakeShange.”Ph.D.diss.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolina.Brown,FrankLondon.1959.“Brown’sSpeechSlapsHousing.”DailyDefender(May19).——.1959.TrumbullPark.Chicago:HenryRegnery.——.1969.TheMythMaker.Chicago:Path.Brown,Lloyd.1949.“WhatISawinMexico.”Masses&Mainstream(November):7–15.

——.1949b.“TrumpetsofJericho.”ReviewofSidneyFinkelstein’sJazz:APeople’sMusic.Masses&Mainstream (January):75–78.

——.IronCity.1951.Boston:NortheasternUniversityPress,1994.——.1951b.“WhichWayfortheNegroWriter?”Masses&Mainstream(March–April).——.1951c.“Psychoanalysisvs.theNegroPeople.”Masses&Mainstream(October):16–24.——.1952.“TheLegacyofWillieJones.”Masses&Mainstream(February):44–51.——.1952.“TheDeepPit.”ReviewofInvisibleMan.Masses&Mainstream(June):62–64.——.1952.ReviewofGoldThroughtheTrees.Masses&Mainstream(May):64.——.1959.“TheNegroWriter.”Lettertoeditor.SundayNewYorkTimesBookReview(May24).——.1997.TheYoungPaulRobeson:“OnMyJourneyNow.”Boulder,Colo.:Westview.——.1999.PersonalInterview.Brown,Sterling.1951.“AthleticsandtheArts.”InADocumentaryHistoryoftheNegroPeopleintheUnitedStates,vol.6:1951–

1959:FromtheKoreanWartotheEmergenceofMartinLutherKingJr.,ed.HerbertAptheker,17–54.NewYork:Citadel.Brownlee,Les.1960.“FrankLondonBrown—CourageousAuthor.”Sepia(June):26–30.Bryant,JackquelineImani.2007.GwendolynBrooksandWorkingWriters.Chicago:ThirdWorld.Carter,RobertL.,etal.1956.LoveofThisLand:ProgressoftheNegrointheUnitedStates.London:CEP.Caute,David.1978.TheGreatFear:TheAnti-CommunistPurgeUnderTrumanandEisenhower.NewYork:SimonandSchuster.Cayton,Horace.1965.LongOldRoad.NewYork:Trident.Cheng,Charles.1973.“TheColdWar:ItsImpactontheBlackLiberationStruggleWithintheUnitedStates.”Freedomways13,

nos.3–4:184–199,281–292.Childress,Alice.1950.Florence.Masses&Mainstream31(October):34–47.——.1951.“ForaNegroTheatre.”Masses&Mainstream4(February):61–64.——.1951.“ForaStrongNegroPeople’sTheatre.”DailyWorker(February16):11.——.1951.GoldThroughtheTrees.Unpublishedmanuscript.Childresspapers.Schomburg.——.1956.LikeOneoftheFamily:ConversationsfromaDomestic’sLife.Boston:Beacon.——.1957.Letter toLangstonHughes,June3.LangstonHughesCollection,YaleCollectionofAmericanLiterature,Beinecke

RareBookandManuscriptLibrary,YaleLibrary,NewHaven,Connecticut.——.1967.“TheBlackExperience:WhyTalkAboutThat?”NegroDigest16(April).——.1971.“TributetoPaulRobeson.”InPaulRobeson:TheGreatForerunner,ed.TheEditorsofFreedomways,272–273.New

York:Dodd,Mead.——.1973.AHeroAin’tNothin’butaSandwich.NewYork:Puffin,2000.——.1973.WeddingBand:ALove/HateStoryinBlackandWhite.NewYork:SamuelFrench.——.1973.InterviewbyAnnAllenShockley.AliceChildressPapers,MG649,SchomburgCenterforResearchinBlackCulture,

NewYorkPublicLibrary,Astor,LenoxandTildenFoundations,box1,folder6.Originalarchivallocation:SpecialCollectionsandArchives,JohnHopeandAureliaElizabethFranklinLibrary,FiskUniversity,Nashville,Tennessee.

——.1979.AShortWalk.NewYork:Coward,McCann,andGeohegan.——.1984.“ACandleinaGaleWind.”InBlackWomenWriters,1950–1980:ACriticalEvaluation,ed.MariEvans.NewYork:

Doubleday.——.1989.ThoseOtherPeople.NewYork:Putnam.Childs, Donald J. 1993. “NewCriticism.” InEncyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, ed. Irena R.Makaryk, 120–124.

Toronto:UniversityofTorontoPress.Christmas,Walter.1949.“AdvertisingJimCrow.”Masses&Mainstream(September).Clothier,Peter.N.d.CharlesWhite:ACriticalBiography.Unpublished.Altadena,Calif.:CharlesWhiteEstate.——.1970.Tapedoralinterview.“WestartinChicago.”CharlesWhiteestate.September14,1970.——.1980–1981.Oralinterviews.Altadena,Calif.:CharlesWhiteEstate.Colbert,EvelynBrown.1980.“TheWorksofFrankLondonBrown.”MAthesis,ChicagoStateUniversity.CommunistPartyUSA.1928.“TheCominternResolutionontheNegroQuestionintheUnitedStates.”DailyWorker (February

12).Corwin,Charles.1950.“CharlesWhite’sExhibitanImportantEventinArtWorld.”DailyWorker(February20).——.1951.“White’sExhibitIsValuableObjectLessontoProgressiveArtists,PublicSays.”DailyWorker(February26):11.Crossman,Richard,ed.2001.TheGodThatFailed.NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress.Cruse, HaroldW. N.d. “AMSACWriters ConferenceNotes.” Robert F.Wagner Labor Archives, Box 2, Folder 13. Tamiment

Library,NewYorkUniversity.——.1967.TheCrisisoftheNegroIntellectual.NewYork:WilliamMorrow.Davies, Carole Boyce. 2008. Left of KarlMarx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Durham, N.C.: Duke

UniversityPress.Davis,FrankMarshall.1992.Livin’theBlues:MemoirsofaBlackJournalistandPoet.Madison:UniversityofWisconsinPress.Davis, JohnA., ed. 1960.TheAmericanNegroWriter andHisRoots: SelectedPapers from theFirstConference ofNegro

Writers.NewYork:AmericanSocietyofAfricanCulture.Davis,Ossie.2006.LifeLitbySomeLargeVision:SelectedSpeechesandWritings.NewYork:Atria.Davis,Ossie,andRubyDee.2004.WithOssieandRuby:InThisLifeTogether.NewYork:Perennial.DeCarava,Roy.1952.“apoeminourbread…astoryinourmeat.”ArchivesofAmericanArt,Box3191,pp.199–206.Denning,Michael.1996.TheCulturalFront:TheLaboringofAmericanCultureintheTwentiethCentury.Brooklyn:Verso.Dijkstra,Bram.2003.AmericanExpressionism:ArtandSocialChange1920–1950.NewYork:Abrams.

Dolinar,Brian.2009.“IntroductiontoRichardWright’sWPAWritings.”SouthernQuarterly(Winter).——.2012.TheBlackCultural Front: BlackWriters andArtists of theDepressionGeneration. Jackson:University Press of

Mississippi.——,ed.2013.“Introduction.”TheNegroinIllinois:TheWPAPapers.Champaign:UniversityofIllinoisPress.Dorfman,Carl.2001.Interviewwithauthor.NewYork(May21).DuBois,W.E.B.,etal.AppealtotheWorld:AStatementontheDenialofHumanRightstoMinoritiesintheCaseofCitizensof

the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress (1947). Typescript. NAACP Records,ManuscriptDivision,LibraryofCongress(095.00.00)CourtesyoftheNAACP[DigitalID#na0095p1].

Duberman,MartinB.1988.PaulRobeson:ABiography.NewYork:Knopf.Dudziak,Mary.2002.ColdWarCivilRights:RaceandtheImageofAmericanDemocracy.Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversity

Press.Egerton,John.1995.SpeakNowAgainsttheDay:TheGenerationBeforetheCivilRightsMovement.ChapelHill:Universityof

NorthCarolinaPress.Evergood,Philip.1953.“CharlesWhite:BeautyandStrength.”Masses&Mainstream6,no.8(August):36–39.Fabre,Michel.1990.RichardWright:BooksandWriters.Jackson:UniversityPressofMississippi.——.1993.TheUnfinishedQuestofRichardWright.2nded.Urbana:UniversityofIllinoisPress.Finkelstein,Sidney.1953.“CharlesWhite’sHumanistArt.”Masses&Mainstream6,no.2(February):43–46.——.1955.CharlesWhite:EinKunstlerAmerikas(CharlesWhite:anAmericanartist).Dresden:VebVerlagDerKunst.Foley,Barbara.1997.“RoadsTakenandNotTaken:Post-Marxism,Antiracism,andAnticommunism.”SpeechgivenattheMLA

annualmeeting,December.——.2003.Spectresof1919:ClassandNationintheMakingoftheNewNegro.Chicago:UniversityofIllinoisPress.——.2006.“FromCommunismtoBrotherhood:TheDraftsof InvisibleMan.” InLeftof theColorLine:Race,Radicalismand

Twentieth-Century Literature of the United States, ed. B. V. Mullen and J. A. Smethurst. Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolinaPress,163–182.

——.2010.WrestlingwiththeLeft:TheMakingofRalphEllison’sInvisibleMan.Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress.Folsom, Franklin. 1994.Days of Anger, Days of Hope: AMemoir of the League of AmericanWriters, 1937–1942. Boulder:

UniversityPressofColorado.Gaines,Kevin.2007.AfricanAmericansinGhana:BlackExpatriatesandtheCivilRightsEra.TheJohnHopeFranklinSeriesin

AfricanAmericanHistoryandCulture.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.Garaudy,Roger.1946.“Artistessansuniformes.”ArtdeFrance9(November):17–20.Gates,HenryLouis,Jr.,andNellieY.McKay,eds.2004.TheNortonAnthologyofAfricanAmericanLiterature.2nded.NewYork:

Norton.Gery,John.1999.“SubversiveParodyintheEarlyPoemsofGwendolynBrooks.”SouthCentralReview:TheJournaloftheSouth

CentralModernLanguageAssociation16,no.1(Spring):44–56.Gilyard,Keith.2010.JohnOliverKillens:ALifeofBlackLiteraryActivism.Athens:UniversityofGeorgiaPress.Goldsby, Jacqueline. 2006.A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.Goldstein, Robert Justin. 2008. American Blacklist: The Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations. Lawrence:

UniversityPressofKansas.Goluboff,RisaL.2007.TheLostPromiseofCivilRights.Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress.Gordon,Eugene.1953.“NegroLaborIsAdvancing:TheSecondAnnualConventionoftheNationalNegroLaborCouncilDiscuss

ProgressandPerspectivesintheFightAgainstJimcrow.”JewishLife(February):10–14.Gore,DayoF.2011.RadicalismattheCrossroads:AfricanAmericanWomenActivistsintheColdWar.NewYork:NewYork

UniversityPress.Gorman, Paul G. 1996. Left Intellectuals and Popular Culture in Twentieth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North

CarolinaPress.Goss,Bernard.1936.“TenNegroArtistsonChicago’sSouthSide.”Midwest:AReview(December):17–19.Graham,Maryemma.1990. “BearingWitness inBlackChicago:AViewofSelectedFictionbyRichardWright,FrankLondon

Brown,andRonaldFair.”CLAJournal(March):280–297.Green,Adam. 2007.Selling theRace: Culture, Community, and BlackChicago, 1940–1955. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.Guilbaut,Serge.1984.HowNewYorkStoletheIdeaofModernArt.Chicago:UniversityofChicagoPress.“GwendolynBrooks.”2004.InNortonAnthologyofAfricanAmericanLiterature,2nded.,ed.HenryLouisGatesJr.andNellieY.

McKay,1623–1625.NewYork:Norton.Hall,GwendolynMidlo.E-mailtoauthor,September30,2012.Hall,James.2001.Mercy,MercyMe:African-AmericanCultureandtheAmericanSixties.NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress.Halpern, Rick. 1997.Down on the Killing Floor: Black andWhiteWorkers in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1904–54. Chicago:

UniversityofIllinoisPress.Hansberry,Lorraine.N.d.“Resume.”Schomburg,Box66.——.1951.“LettertoEdythe.”Schomburg,Box66.——.1952.“CNAPresentsExcitingNewDramaticRevue.”Freedom(May):7.——. 1959. “Closing Remarks.” AMSAC Conference. Reprinted as “The Negro Writer and His Roots: Towards A New

Romanticism.”InTheBlackScholar(March–April1971).——.1964.TheMovement:DocumentaryofaStruggleforEquality.NewYork:SimonandSchuster.

Harris, Jerry. 1999. CyRev: A Journal of Cybernetic Revolution, Sustainable Socialism, and Radical Democracy.http://www.net4dem.org/cyrev/archive/.

Harris, Trudier. 1982. FromMammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature. Philadelphia: Temple UniversityPress.

——.1986.IntroductiontoLikeOneoftheFamily…ConversationsfromaDomestic’sLife,byAliceChildress.Boston:Beacon.Hayden,Robert.SelectedPoems.NewYork:OctoberHouse,1966.Hedin,Raymond.1982.“TheStructuringofEmotioninBlackAmericanFiction.”Novel(Fall):35–54.Hemingway,Andrew.2002.ArtistsontheLeft:AmericanArtistsandtheCommunistMovement,1926–1956.NewHaven,Conn.:

YaleUniversityPress.Herzog,MelanieAnne.2005.ElizabethCatlett:AnAmericanArtistinMexico.Seattle:UniversityofWashingtonPress.Higashida,Cheryl.2009.“AlltheWorld’saMinstrelStage:AliceChildress,QueerFeminism,andBlackAnticolonialism.”Paper

presentedattheAmericanStudiesAssociationAnnualMeeting.——.2011.BlackInternationalistFeminism:WomenWritersontheLeft,1945–1995.Chicago:UniversityofIllinoisPress.Hill,PatriciaLiggins,etal.,eds.1988.CallandResponse:TheRiversideAnthologyoftheAfricanAmericanTradition.Boston:

HoughtonMifflin,1998.Hills, Patricia. 1980. The Figurative Tradition and theWhitney Museum of American Art: Paintings and Sculpture from the

PermanentCollection.Exhibitionco-curatedandcoauthoredwithRobertaTarbell.NewYork:WhitneyMuseumofAmericanArt.

Hirsch, ArnoldR. 1995. “MassiveResistance in theUrbanNorth: Trumbull Park,Chicago, 1953–1966.” Journal of AmericanHistory(September):522–550.

Hood,Nicholas.1953.“WorldFightAgainstJimcrow.JewishLife(February):14.Horne,Gerald.1986.BlackandRed:W.E.B.DuBoisandtheAfro-AmericanResponsetotheColdWar,1944–1963.Albany,

N.Y.:SUNYPress.——.1988.CommunistFront?TheCivilRightsCongress,1946–1956.Rutherford,N.J.:AssociatedUniversityPresses.——.1994.BlackLiberation/RedScare.Newark:UniversityofDelawarePress.Horowitz,Daniel.2000.BettyFriedanandtheMakingofTheFeminineMystique:TheAmericanLeft,theColdWar,andModern

Feminism.Amherst:UniversityofMassachusettsPress.Howells,WilliamDean.1901.“APsychologicalCounter-Current.”ReprintedinCriticalEssaysonCharlesChesnutt,ed.Joseph

McElarth,82.Independence,Ky.:Twayne,1999.Hughes,Langston.1959.[Untitled.]Jet(April2):59.Humboldt,Charles.1949.“CommunistsinNovels.”Masses&Mainstream(June):13–21;(July):44–65.Ingram,Bob.1959.“ANovelistStudiesTrumbullPark.”MontgomeryAdvertiser(April19).Iton,Richard.2010.InSearchoftheBlackFantastic:PoliticsandPopularCultureinthePost–CivilRightsEra.Oxford:Oxford

UniversityPress.Jackson,Esther.1998.Interviewwithauthor(March30).Jackson,Lawrence.2007.“IrredeemablePromise:J.SaundersReddingandNegroNewLiberalism.”AmericanLiteraryHistory

19,no.3(Fall):712–744.——. 2010. Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African AmericanWriters and Critics, 1934–1960. Princeton, N.J.:

PrincetonUniversityPress.Jarvis,ArthurR.2000.“TheLivingNewspaperinPhiladelphia,1938–1939.”JournalofNegroHistory85,no.4(Autumn):241–259.Jennings,LaViniaDelois.1995.AliceChildress.NewYork:Macmillan.Jenkins,Philip.1999.TheColdWaratHome:TheRedScareinPennsylvania.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.Jenkins,WelbornVictor.1948.The“Incident”atMonroe.Atlanta,Ga.:UnitedNegroYouthofAmerica,anOrganizedIncorporated

Charity.Jones,Claudia.1949.“AnEndtotheNeglectoftheProblemoftheNegroWoman!”PoliticalAffairs28,no.6(June):51–67.Kardiner,Abram,andLionelOvesey.1951.TheMarkofOppression:APsychosocialStudyoftheAmericanNegro.NewYork:

Norton.Kaiser,Earnest.1949.“RacialDialectics:TheAptheker-MyrdalSchoolControversy.”Phylon9,no.4:295–302.Kelley,RobinD.G.1996.RaceRebels:Culture,Politics,andtheBlackWorkingClass.NewYork:TheFreePress.Kent,GeorgeE.1990.ALifeofGwendolynBrooks.Lexington:UniversityPressofKentucky.Killens,JohnO.1984.“TheLiteraryGeniusofAliceChildress.”InBlackWomenWriters(1950–1980):ACriticalEvaluation,ed.

MariEvans.NewYork:Doubleday.——.1986.“CharlesWhite:ThePeople’sArtist.”GeorgiaReview40,no.2(Summer):451.Koestler,Arthur.1950.TheGodThatFailed.NewYork:HarperandBrothers.Kornweibel, Theodore, Jr. 1999.Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against BlackMilitancy, 1919–1925. Bloomington: Indiana

UniversityPress.Kreymborg,Alfred.1945.“NotableNewPoet[reviewofAStreetinBronzeville].”NewMasses(September).Kuznick,PeterJ.,andJamesGilbert,eds.2001.RethinkingColdWarCulture.Washington,D.C.:SmithsonianInstitutionPress.Lamphere,Lawrence.2003.“PaulRobeson,‘Freedom’Newspaper,andtheBlackPress.”Ph.D.diss.BostonCollege,2003.Lang, Clarence. 2009. “Freedom Train Derailed: The National Negro Labor Council and the Nadir of Black Radicalism.” In

Anticommunism and the African American FreedomMovement: “Another Side of the Story,” ed. Robbie Lieberman andClarenceLang,161–188.NewYork:PalgraveMacmillan.

Lecklider, Aaron. 2012. “‘Mann Act, Woman-Act, Being-Black-and-Talking-Back’: Intersections of Race and Sexuality in U.S.RadicalFiction.”PaperpresentedatRace,Law,andAmericanLiteraryStudies:AnInterdisciplinaryConference.Universityof

Maryland,CollegePark,March29.LeFalle-Collins, Lizzetta, and Shifra M. Goldman. 1996. In the Spirit of Resistance: African-American Modernists and the

MexicanMuralistSchool.NewYork:AmericanFederationofArts.Lieberman,Robbie,andClarenceLang,eds.2009.AnticommunismandtheAfricanAmericanFreedomMovement: “Another

SideoftheStory.”NewYork:PalgraveMacmillan.Locke,Alain.1983.TheCriticalTemperofAlainLocke:ASelectionofHisEssaysonArtandCulture.Ed.JeffreyC.Stewart.New

York:Garland.Lowney,John.2006.History,Memory,andtheLiteraryLeft:ModernAmericanPoetry,1935–1968.IowaCity:UniversityofIowa

Press.Lukin, Josh. 2008. Invisible Suburbs: Recovering Protest Fiction in the 1950s United States. Jackson: University Press of

Mississippi.Madhubuti,Haki.2001.“GwendolynBrooks:BeyondtheWordmaker—TheMakingofanAfricanPoet.”InOnGwendolynBrooks:

ReliantContemplation,ed.StephenCaldwellWright,81–96.AnnArbor:UniversityofMichiganPress.Maguire,Roberta.1995.“AliceChildress.”InThePlaywright’sArt:ConversationswithContemporaryAmericanDramatists,ed.

JacksonR.Bryer,48–69.NewBrunswick,N.J.:RutgersUniversityPress.Manning, Patrick. 2009. “The Communist Party, the Popular Front, and Reimagining ‘America’ in Lloyd Brown’s Iron City.”

PennsylvaniaLiteraryJournal(Winter).Marshall,Paule.2009.TriangularRoad:AMemoir.NewYork:BasicCivitas.Martin,LouisE.1955.“DopeandData.”ChicagoDefender(September10).Mathews,JaneDeHart.1967.TheFederalTheatre,1935–1939:Plays,Relief,andPolitics.Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversity

Press.Maxwell,William J. 1996. “TheProletarian asNewNegro:MikeGold’sHarlemRenaissance.” InRadicalRevisions:Reading

1930sCulture,ed.BillMullenandSherryLeeLinkon,91–117.Urbana:UniversityofIllinoisPress.——.2003.“F.B.Eyes:TheBureauReadsClaudeMcKay.”InLeftoftheColorLine:Race,Radicalism,andTwentieth-Century

LiteratureoftheUnitedStates,ed.BillV.MullenandJamesSmethurst,39–65.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.——. Forthcoming. FB Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature. Princeton, N.J.:

PrincetonUniversityPress.Mayfield, Julian. N.d. “The Foolish Consistency of Saunders Redding and Others.” Unpublished essay. Schomburg, Julian

Mayfieldcollection.——.1960.“IntotheMainstreamandOblivion.”InTheAmericanNegroWriterandHisRoots,29–34.NewYork:TheAmerican

SocietyofAfricanCulture.——.1961.TheGrandParade.NewYork:Vanguard.——.1970.InterviewwithMalaikaLumumba.Moorland-Spingarn,HowardUniversity.May3.McDermott,Douglas.1965.“TheLivingNewspaperasaDramaticForm.”ModernDrama8,no.1(May):82–94.McDonald,Kathlene.2012.Feminism,theLeft,andPostwarLiteraryCulture.Jackson:UniversityPressofMississippi.McDuffie,ErikS.2011.SojourningforFreedom:BlackWomen,AmericanCommunism,andtheMakingofBlackLeftFeminism.

Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress.Melamed,Jodi.2011.Represent andDestroy:RationalizingViolence in theNewRacialCapitalism.Minneapolis:University of

MinnesotaPress.Melhem,D.H.1987.GwendolynBrooks:PoetryandtheHeroicVoice.Lexington:UniversityPressofKentucky.Morgan,StacyI.2004.RethinkingSocialRealism:AfricanAmericanArtandLiterature,1930–1953.Athens:UniversityofGeorgia

Press.Mullen,Bill.1999.PopularFronts:ChicagoandAfrican-AmericanCulturalPolitics,1935–46.Chicago:UniversityofIllinoisPress.Murray,Albert,andJohnCallahan,eds.2000.TradingTwelves:TheSelectedLettersofRalphEllisonandAlbertMurray.New

York:ModernLibrary.Murphy,JamesFrancis.1991.TheProletarianMoment:TheControversyOverLeftisminLiterature.Urbana:UniversityofIllinois

Press.Myers,ShaundraJ.2011.“WorldsBeyondBrown:BlackTransnationalIdentityandSelf-NarrationintheEraofIntegration.”Ph.D.

diss.UniversityofMaryland,CollegePark.Nadler,Paul.1995.“LibertyCensored:BlackLivingNewspapersoftheFederalTheatreProject.”AfricanAmericanReview29,no.

4(Winter):615–622.Nelson,Paul.2001.“OrphanandOldFolks.”MinnesotaHistory57,no.7(Fall):368–379.NewYorkTimes.1967.AMSACPapers,Box9.February.Noakes,JohnA.2003.“RacializingSubversion:TheFBIandtheDepictionofRaceinEarlyColdWarMovies.”EthnicandRacial

Studies26,no.4(July):728–749.North,Michael.1994.TheDialectofModernism:Race,Language,andTwentieth-CenturyLiterature.Oxford:OxfordUniversity

Press.Obama,BarackH.2000.DreamsfromMyFather:AStoryofRaceandInheritance.NewYork:ThreeRivers.O’Dell,Hunter(Jack).2000.“OriginsofFreedomways.”——.2006.“Letter toWilliamPatterson.” InLifeLitbySomeLargeVision:SelectedSpeechesandWritings,byOssieDavis.

NewYork:Atria.Olgin,Moissaye.1927.“ForaWorkers’Theatre.”DailyWorker(April2).Paretsky,Sara.2003.Blacklist.NewYork:Putnam/Penguin.Pittman,John.1951.“CharlesWhite’sExciting‘NegroWoman’Show.”DailyWorker(February26).

——.1953.“TheArtofCharlesWhite:HeCombatstheRacists’Ideas.”(March1).Platt,David.1951a.“CharlesWhiteFindsUSSRCreatingFinestArt.”DailyWorker(December13).——.1951b.“SovietArtReflectsLifeofaHeroicSociety,SaysWhite.”DailyWorker(December14).Plummer,BrendaGayle.1996.RisingWind:BlackAmericansandU.S.ForeignAffairs,1935–1960.ChapelHill:Universityof

NorthCarolinaPress.PoetryFoundation.N.d.“Biography:GwendolynBrooks,1917–2000.”Poetry.http://www.poetryfoundation.org.Poitier,Sydney.2007.TheMeasureofaMan.SanFrancisco:HarperSF.——.1980.ThisLife.NewYork:Knopf.Posgrove,Carol.2005.DividedMinds:IntellectualsandtheCivilRightsMovement.NewYork:Norton.Powell,RichardJ.1997.BlackArtandCultureintheTwentiethCentury.London:ThamesandHudson.Rabinowitz,Paula.1991.LaborandDesire.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.Rampersad,Arnold.2002.TheLifeofLangstonHughes.Vol.2:1914–1967,IDreamaWorld.Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress.——.2005.IntroductiontoNativeSon.NewYork:HarperPerennial.Redding,J.Saunders.1939.ToMakeaPoetBlack.NewYork:CornellUniversityPress.——.1951.“ReviewofLloydL.Brown’sIronCity.”BaltimoreAfro-American(August4):4.——.1954.AnAmericaninIndia:APersonalReportontheIndianDilemmaandtheNatureofHerConflicts.NewYork:Bobbs-

Merrill.——. 1959. “The Sanctions of the American Negro’s Literary Art.” Reprinted as “Keynote Address, the American Society of

AfricanCulture,March,1959,”inRhetoricofRacialRevolt,ed.RoyL.Hill,279–285.Denver,Colo.:GoldenBell,1964.——.1962.OnBeingNegroinAmerica.NewYork:Bobbs-Merrill.Reif-Hughes,Gertrude.1990. “Making ItReallyNew:HildaDoolittle,GwendolynBrooks,and theFeministPotentialofModern

Poetry.”AmericanQuarterly42,no.3(September).Retman,Sonnet.2011.RealFolks:RaceandGenreintheGreatDepression.Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress.Robins,Natalie.1992.AlienInk:TheFBI’sWaronFreedomofExpression.NewBrunswick,N.J.:RutgersUniversityPress.Robinson, Cyril. 2011.Marching With Dr. King:Ralph Helstein and the United Packinghouse Workers of America. Santa

Barbara,Calif.:Praeger.Romulo,CarlosP.1956.TheMeaningofBandung.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.Rose,Odessa.1998.“PointingtheFinger:TheDisplacementofAngerandBlame inLorraineHansberry’sRaisin in theSun.”

PaperwrittenforEnglish628seminar,ReadingsinAfricanAmericanLiterature,UniversityofMaryland.Rosenfelt,Deborah.“FromtheThirties:TillieOlsenandtheRadicalTradition.”FeministStudies7(Fall1981):371–406.Reprinted

inListeningtoSilences:NewEssaysinFeministCriticism,ed.ShelleyFisherFishkinandElaineHedges.NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,1994.

Schaub,Thomas.1991.“FromRantertoWriter:Ellison’sInvisibleManandtheNewLiberalism.”InAmericanFictionintheColdWar.Wisconsin:UniversityofWisconsinPress.

Schiffrin,Andre.2007.APoliticalEducation:ComingofAgeinParisandNewYork.Hoboken,N.J.:MelvilleHouse.Schlesinger,ArthurM.1949.TheVitalCenter:ThePoliticsofFreedom.Boston:HoughtonMifflin.Schrecker,Ellen.1998.ManyAretheCrimes:McCarthyisminAmerica.Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress.Schroeder,PatriciaR.1995. “Re-ReadingAliceChildress.” InStagingDifference:CulturalPluralism inAmericanTheatreand

Drama,ed.MarcMaufort.NewYork:PeterLang.Schulman, Daniel. 2004. “‘WhiteCity’ and ‘BlackMetropolis’: African American Painters in Chicago, 1893–1945.” InChicago

Modern, 1893–1945: Pursuit of the New, ed. Elizabeth Kennedy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press/TerraMuseum ofAmericanArtandTerraFoundationfortheArts.

——.2009.“AfricanAmericanArtandtheJuliusRosenwaldFund.”InAForceforChange:AfricanAmericanArtandtheJuliusRosenwaldFund,ed.DanielSchulman,51–80.Chicago:SpertusMuseumandNorthwesternUniversityPress.

Shapiro,David.1973.“SocialRealismReconsidered.”InSocialRealism:ArtasaWeapon,ed.DavidShapiro,3–35.NewYork:FrederickUngar.

Sherwood,Marika.1999.ClaudiaJones:ALifeinExile.London:Lawrence&Wishart.Shiffman, Dan. 2007. “RichardWright’s 12 Million Black Voices andWorldWar II–era Civic Nationalism.”African American

Review(Fall).Sillen,Samuel.1949.“WritersandtheAmericanCentury.”Masses&Mainstream51,no.1(February):44ff.Singh,Nikhil Pal. 1999. Interrogating Racial Identity and Interracial Relationships in the 1940s and the 1960s. Commentary.

OrganizationofAmericanHistorians,Toronto,Canada.——.2005.BlackIsaCountry:RaceandtheUnfinishedStruggleforDemocracy.Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress.Smethurst,James.1999.TheNewRedNegro:TheLiteraryLeftandAfricanAmericanPoetry,1930–1946.NewYork:Oxford

UniversityPress.——.2004.“ThisTrainTakesonEveryNation:LloydBrown’sIronCityandtheCulturalColdWar.”PaperpresentedattheASALH

AnnualMeeting,Pittsburgh,Penn.——.2012.ColumbiaUniversityPressreader’sreport.Smith,JudithE.2004.VisionsofBelonging:FamilyStories,PopularCulture,andPostwarDemocracy,1940–1960.NewYork:

ColumbiaUniversityPress.——. 2012. “Harry Belafonte and the Sustaining ColdWar Radicalism of the Black Popular Front, 1949–1960.” Address to

AmericanStudiesAssociationannualmeetinginPuertoRico.Smith,MonaZ.2004.BecomingSomething:TheStoryofCanadaLee—TheUntoldTragedyofTheGreatBlackActor,Activist,

andAthlete.NewYork:FaberandFaber.

Smith,ShawnMichelle.2004.PhotographyontheColorLine:W.E.B.DuBois,Race,andVisualCulture.Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress.

Solomon, Mark. 1998. The CryWas Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936. Jackson: University Press ofMississippi.

Stanford,AnnFolwell.1992.“DialecticsofDesire:WarandResistiveVoiceinGwendolynBrooks’s‘NegroHero’and‘GayChapsattheBar.’”AfricanAmericanReview26,no.2(Summer):197–211.

Steele,Vicky.1950.“ChicagoSouthsideHailsPrize-WinningPoet.”DailyWorker(June2):9.Stepto,Robert.1977.“‘IThoughtIKnewThesePeople’:RichardWrightandtheAfro-AmericanLiteraryTradition.”Massachusetts

Review18,no.3(Autumn).Sterling,Dorothy.2003.FourScoreandMore.Portland,Me.:KingPhilip.Storch,Randi.2009.RedChicago:AmericanCommunismatItsGrassroots,1928–35.Chicago:UniversityofIllinoisPress.StonorSaunders,Frances.1999.TheCulturalColdWar:TheCIAandtheWorldofArtsandLetters.NewYork:TheNewPress.Stuckey, Sterling. 1968. “Frank London Brown.” In Black Voices: An Anthology of Afro-American Literature, ed. Abraham

Chapman,669–676.NewYork:NewAmericanLibrary.——.1969.“FrankLondonBrown—ARemembrance.”IntroductiontoFrankLondonBrown’sTheMythMaker.Chicago:Path.——.1997.Interviewwithauthor.April9.Tate,Claudia,ed.1983.BlackWomenWritersatWork.NewYork:Continuum.Teres,Harvey.1996.RenewingtheLeft:Politics,Imagination,andtheNewYorkIntellectuals.NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress.Turner,Beth.1997.“‘Simplifying’:LangstonHughesandAliceChildressRememberJesseB.Semple.”LangstonHughesReview

15,no.1:37–48.UnitedStatesFederalBureauofInvestigation.AliceChildressfileobtainedunderprovisionsoftheFreedomofInformationAct.

AssorteddocumentsdatedApril11,1951–April9,1957.Fileno.100-104258.——.CharlesWhitefileobtainedunderprovisionsoftheFreedomofInformationAct.AssorteddocumentsdatedApril10,1953.

Fileno.100-102344.——.FrankLondonBrown fileobtainedunderprovisionsof theFreedomof InformationAct.AssorteddocumentsdatedDec.

1955–Dec.1957.Fileno.1074998-000.——.LloydBrownfileobtainedunderprovisionsoftheFreedomofInformationAct.AssorteddocumentsdatedSeptember11,

1951–March16,1959.Fileno.100-24616.——.LorraineHansberryfileobtainedunderprovisionsoftheFreedomofInformationAct.AssorteddocumentsdatedSeptember

9,1960.Fileno.100-393031-44;NewYork100-107297.Von Eschen, PennyM. 1997.Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

UniversityPress.Wald,Alan.1994.ForewordtoIronCity,byLloydBrown.Boston:NortheasternUniversityPress.——.1995.“MarxistLiteraryResistancetotheColdWar.”Prospects20:479–492.——.2000–2001.“NarratingNationalisms:BlackMarxismandJewishCommunistsThroughtheEyesofHaroldCruse.”Science

andSociety64,no.4(Winter).——.2001.ExilesfromaFutureTime:TheForgingof theMid-Twentieth-CenturyLiteraryLeft.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorth

CarolinaPress.——.2007.TrinityofPassion:TheLiteraryLeftandtheAntifascistCrusade.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.——.2012.AmericanNight:TheLiteraryLeftintheEraoftheColdWar.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.——.2013.“‘TripleOppression’to‘FreedomDreams.’”AgainsttheCurrent(January/February):24–27.Washington, Mary Helen. 1987. “‘Taming All That Anger Down’: Rage and Silence in the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks.” In

InventedLives:NarrativesofBlackWomen,1860–1960,ed.MaryHelenWashington.NewYork:Doubleday.——. 1997. “Disturbing the Peace.” Presidential Address to the American Studies Association annual meeting. American

Quarterly.Washington,D.C.——.2002.“ReviewofAlanWald’sExilesfromaFutureTime:TheForgingoftheMid-CenturyLiteraryLeft.[UniversityofNorth

CarolinaPress,2002].”AgainsttheCurrent(September/October):41–44.——.2003.“AliceChildress,LorraineHansberry,andClaudiaJones:BlackWomen(Re)writethePopularFront.”InLeftofthe

ColorLine:Race,Radicalism,andTwentieth-CenturyLiteratureoftheUnitedStates,ed.BillV.MullenandJamesSmethurst,183–204.ChapelHill:UniversityofNorthCarolinaPress.

——.2005.ForewordtoTrumbullPark,byFrankLondonBrown.Lebanon,N.H.:NortheasternUniversityPress/UniversityPressofNewEngland.

——.2007.“ReviewofAliceChildress’sAShortWalk.”Obsidian:LiteratureintheAfricanDiaspora8(Spring/Summer):154–161.——.2011.“ReviewofDayoGore,RadicalismattheCrossroads:AfricanAmericanWomenActivistsintheColdWar[NewYork

UniversityPress,2011],andErikMcDuffie,SojourningforFreedom:BlackWomen,AmericanCommunism,andtheMakingofBlackLeftFeminism[DukeUniversityPress,2011].”Women’sReviewofBooks(July).

——.2013.“ReviewofBarbaraRansby’sEslanda:TheLargeandUnconventionalLifeofMrs.PaulRobeson [YaleUniversityPress,2013].”Women’sReviewofBooks(July/August).

Watts,DanielH.1970.“BigBrother.”Liberator.(December):3.Weigand, Kate. 2001.Red Feminism: American Communism in the Making of Women’s Liberation. Baltimore, Md.: Johns

HopkinsUniversityPress.West,Anthony.1959.“Books.”NewYorker(April25).Wexler,Laura.2003.FireinaCanebrake:TheLastMassLynchinginAmerica.NewYork:Scribner.White,Charles.1952.“EyewitnessReportonSovietArtbyanOutstandingNegroPainter.”DailyWorker(November23).

——.1955.“PathofaNegroArtist.”Masses&Mainstream(April):33–42.White,Walter.“HasScienceConqueredtheColorLine?”NegroDigest(December1949):37–40.ReprintedfromLook.Wideman,JohnEdgar.1976. “FrameandDialect:TheEvolutionof theBlackVoice inAmericanLiterature.”AmericanPoetry

Review5,no.5(September–October):34–37.Wilford,Hugh.2008.TheMightyWurlitzer:HowtheCIAPlayedAmerica.Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress.Williams, LauraC. 2012. “BraveNewNarratives: Postrace Identity and the African American Literary Tradition.” Ph.D. diss.,

UniversityofMaryland,CollegePark.Wixon,Douglas.1998a. “‘BlackWritersandWhite’:JackConroy,ArnaBontemps,and InterracialCollaboration in the1930s.”

Prospects23:401–430.——. 1998b. Worker-Writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern Literary Radicalism, 1898–1990.

Bloomington:UniversityofIllinoisPress.Wright,Richard.1937.“BlueprintforNegroWriting.”InNortonAnthologyofAfricanAmericanLiterature,2nded.,ed.HenryLouis

GatesJr.andNellieY.McKay,1403–1410.NewYork:Norton,2004.——.NativeSon.1940.NewYork:HarperPerennial,1996.——.1956.TheColorCurtain:AReportontheBandungConference.NewYork:World.——.1957.“LiteratureoftheNegrointheUnitedStates.”InWhiteManListen,104–105.NewYork:Anchor,1964.Young, Coleman. 1952. Report of Coleman Young to National Negro Labor Council. Ohio Historical Society Selections.

Unpublishedmanuscript.November21,1952.PAbox7301.

INDEX

Pagenumbersrefertotheprinteditionbutarehyperlinkedtotheappropriatelocationinthee-book.

Abernathy,Ralph,112AbrahamLincolnSchool,73,80abstractart,101–7,117–20;hegemonyof,116,293n51,293n54;shiftto,74,286n9actingblack,2–3activism.SeeblackactivismAden,Alonzo,69aesthetics:blackfolkculture,14–15;classconsciousnessin,72;ColdWar,253;CP,62–68,101–7;documentary,54–59,62;

politicsof,10–11;shiftfromsocialrealismtoconservativemodernist,211.SeealsospecificartistsandwritersAfricanAmericanExhibitionoftheArtoftheAmericanNegro,69AfricanAmericanliteratureandculture:L.Brownviewof,45;communismcompatibilitywith,11;FBIobsessionwith,233;history,

10–13;marginalization,11;principalvenuesfor,11–12,17;spyingonliteraryleft,31–32AGLOSO.SeeAttorneyGeneral’sListofSubversiveOrganizationsAlabamaSharecroppersUnion,13Allara,Pamela,283n25Allen,Samuel,241AmericanContemporaryArtGallery,74AmericanNegroLaborCongress,228AmericanNegroTheatre(ANT),133,134,135AmericanNegroWriterandHisRoots,The(Rootsvolume),31–32,311n14;J.A.Davisprefaceto,239–40,244–46;left-wing

speecheseditedoutof,242–49;Redding’scontributionto,255–56AmericanSocietyofAfricanCulture(AMSAC),32;CIAfundingof,249–50,252,264–65,310n9,310nn9–10;mission,309n2;

themeandgoal,240.SeealsoAMSACconferenceAmos‘n’Andy,133,135AMSAC.SeeAmericanSocietyofAfricanCultureAMSACconference(FirstConferenceofNegroWriters),29,31–32,239–65,245,247,248;aftermath,264–65;blackliberalsvs.

Leftat,253–60;CIA-black-writerrelationsand,249–53;CIAfundingof,32,243,263;conservatism,244,257;Hansberry’skeynoteaddressat,260–64;Hughesattendanceat,241–42,248;ideologicalbattleenactedat,241,309n4;integrationiststance,253–54;participantsandpoliticalspectrumof,241,242,244;photographarchive,248,263–64;reconstructionof,240–41;Reddingand,244,255–57;socialprotesttermin,257;topicscoveredin,245.SeealsoAmericanNegroWriterandHisRoots,The

AnnaLucasta(Yordan),134–35AnnieAllen(Brooks),178,303n32ANT.SeeAmericanNegroTheatreanticommunism:CatholicChurch,1–2;Leftdissentdispelledby,190;1950srace,religion,andColdWar,1–7;UPWAand,236apartheid,inSouthAfrica,7–8,21,139AppealtotheWorld,An,7,17–18,277n16Aptheker,Herbert,63,137,146,163,298n25Aragon,Louis,283n28Armstrong,Louis,65,229Arnesen,Eric,55–56,291n47art,69,118–20;BlackArtsMovement,240,257;CPcontrolof,101–7,283n25,283n28,290n43;DeCaravaonblackcultureand,

289n34;modernismconflictwithLeftviewsof,72;politicallycorrect,290n43;shifttoabstractionin,74,286n9;socialprotesttraditiondiscouragedin,210–11;WPAdismissalofsociallyrelevant,290n51.Seealsoabstractart;modernism,stylistic;socialistrealism

artcritics,CP,103artistsandwriters,left-wingblack,12;CPhardlineand,283n25;FBIFOIAfileson,22–24;progressive,101–2;reasonforfive

chosen,25;representationalchoicesof,21–22,108–9,184–85,189–90,225–26,307n28.SeealsoLeft;writers,black;specificartistsandwriters

Artists’Union,79–80ArtofCharlesWhite:AFolioofSixDrawings,The,108–15,111,292n49assimilation,blacknationalismvs.,253Aswell,EdwardC.,170AtlantaUniversity,19,277n21AttorneyGeneral’sListofSubversiveOrganizations(AGLOSO),256Attucks,Crispus,85

Baldwin,James,3,36,253,281n22“BalladofFreedomTrain,The”(Hughes),57“BalladofPearlMayLee,The”(Brooks),172–73,300n5BaltimoreAfro-American,62BandungConference,207,230–31,261,263,308nn33–34Barnwell,Andrea,81,109Baron,Herman,74Barrett-White,Frances(secondwifeofWhite,C.),74,89–90,94–99,122,285n4,291n45Bass,Charlotta,179BeanEaters,The(Brooks),191–203,302n22Bearden,Romare,117Belafonte,Harry,16,93,122,134Biggers,John,107bildungsroman,28–29,157Biondi,Martha,7,296n12blackactivism:ascommunismanddissent,4,257n6;CP-supportedorganizations,6BlackArtsMovement,240,257blackbeltthesis,13,50,222,307nn24–25BlackCulturalFront.SeeBlackPopularFrontblackculture:CIAcontrolof,250,310n8;DeCaravaonartand,289n34;mainstreampublicationsasignoring,16;Masses&

Mainstreamand,35–36;pathology,viewof,35–36,60.Seealsospecificartistandwriters;specificpublications;specifictopicsblackfolkculture,38,46–47;aestheticvalueof,14–15;Leftproblematizingof“folk”constructions,299n37BlackHistoryMonth,278n2BlackHistoryWeek,4blackintellectuals:Cruse’swritingon,42,90,244,260–61,297n22;McCarthyandHUACtargeting,22–23blackinternationalism,230–31;blackmilitancyspurredby,7;L.Brownand,45;AliceChildress,131;civilrightsmovementfocus

and,7–8blacklabor,CPinterestinruralSouth,276n10blackLeft.SeeLeftblackliberals:AMSACconferencepittingLeftagainst,253–60;raceliberalismof,190blacklist,black,15–17,289n33;ANTand,134;AliceChildresson,124,129;NewCriticismlackofreferenceto,11;uncovering,23blacklist,Conroyon,194.SeealsoFreedomofInformationActblackliteraryproduction.SeeAfricanAmericanliteratureandcultureBlackMetropolis(Cayton),6,76blackmilitancy,115,145,148,150,164,208,223;internationalismasspurring,7blacknationalism,298n24;assimilationvs.,253;internationaldimensionof,230–31,237;shifttocivilrightsmovementand,

286n8.Seealsospecificworks;specificwritersblacknationthesis,13–15,46,224BlackPopularFront,4,11,12,25,31,80,82,234;abstraction’spoliticsvs.aestheticsof,116–18;Chicago,80,166–71,

300n4;CPalliancesand,275n4;NewYork,93;1950sraceradicalismand,17–22,277n19;periodization,6,17,295n5;socialistrealismdemandsby,177.SeealsoCommitteefortheNegrointheArts;HarlemLeftFront

BlackPower,201blackradicalism,206;duelingradicalismsconcept,215,224,228;1950sBlackPopularFrontandraceradicalism,17–22,

277n19;White’stimeinChicago’s,75–79blacks:communismattractionfor,3–7;CPmembershipof,275n10;FBIwaronpositiveportrayalsof,276n8;presidential

candidatesonCPticket,55;railroadworkers,54–57;separationfromCP,270;tensionsbetweenLeftwingand,243.SeealsoAfricanAmericanliteratureandculture;artistsandwriters,left-wingblack;racism

BlackScholar,The,261,263–64blackvernacular,29,50,62,222,283n26blackwriters.SeeAfricanAmericanliteratureandculture;artistsandwriters,left-wingblack;writers,blackBlakely,Henry,178,201Bland,Edward,170“BlueprintforNegroWriting”(R.Wright),13–14,307n26BodyandSoul,276n8Bonosky,Philip,16,67,90,283n32Bontemps,Arna,39,169,193,246Bradley,VanAllen,212Bragg,Robert,167Branch,William,92,241,251Brooks,Gwendolyn:blacknationalismof,175,201–2;inChicagoBlackPopularFront,166–71,300n4;colleagues,166–67,173;

Conroyand,193–96;conversionnarrative,175–76,301n10,302n11;earlypoetry,171–74,300n5;erasure,174–76,301n9;evidenceof,176–78;FBIand,23,169;feministessayby,28,178–82,302n13;“ghettopastoral”critiqueof,182,207;Gloster’s

praiseof,40;Kent’sbiographyof,168,280n11;Kreymborg’sreviewof,173–74,300n6,301n8;leftistpoliticsof,12,28–29,39,165–203,170,194,254,300n1,303n32;lettertoNegroDigestfrom,304n34;modernismof,172,173,177,183,188–89,198;on“oneness,”203;poemeulogizingF.L.Brown,31;prizesawarded,178,195,200–201,202;queerreadingof“ALovelyLove,”199,303n33;working-classfictionofotherwriterscomparedto,184–85.SeealsoBeanEaters,The;MaudMartha

BrotherhoodsofColor:BlackRailroadWorkersandtheStruggleforEquality(Arnesen),55–56Browder,Earl,67Brown,FrankLondon,10,12,205–37;aestheticandpoliticaloverviewfor,29–31;Brooks’spoemeulogizing,31;Chicago

Defenderwritingof,232–37;ColdWarspeechof,234;deathoffourthchild,305n11;essaysandreviewspublishedby,35–36;FBIFOIAfileson,23,30,207,214–21,217–19,231–32,236;FBIinterviewwith,220–21;illnessanddeath,30–31;interracialcooperationrepresentedby,225–26,307n28;leftistaffiliations,207,228,232,233–34,237,306n18;as“leftwinger,”237,308n40;Maxwellon,231;nationalismof,224–25;newborninfantduringTrumbullexplosions,209;parents,30,217;posthumouslypublishednovelof,210;radicalpoliticsof,206;socialprotesttraditionand,213,223,224;Tilltrialcoveredby,306n20;UPWAmassdemonstrationsand,226–27,306n20;R.Wrightand,223.SeealsoTrumbullPark

Brown,John,73,83Brown,LloydL.,12,13,15,25,33–68;AfricanAmericanliteratureimaginedby,45;atAMSACconference,245,246;childhood,

46–47;closefriendships,36;communistcharacters,37–38;CPaffiliation,26,47–49,67–68,283n32;onCruse,297n22;FBIencounterwith,33,34,35,36;FBIFOIAfileson,33,34,35,48;asFreedomghostwriter,297n21;incarcerationof,47,48–49;onjazz,50;W.Jonesdefenseorganizedby,48–49;asMasses&Mainstreameditor,35–36,44–45;mentorof,66,283n27;modernismdebateoverworksof,62–68,283n26,283n31;modernistexperimentationsof,49–54,52;NativeSonresponseof,59–60,281n22;Phylonsymposiumresponseof,38–39,42,44–45;psychoanalysis,distrustof,64,282n23;Robesonand,36;trialof,48,281n17;unpublishednovelby,279n8;R.Wrightcontrastedwith,46.SeealsoIronCity;“WhichWayfortheNegroWriter?”

Brown,Oscar,237Brown,Oscar,Jr.,209,228,236–37,306n19Brown,Sterling,39Brown-Guillory,Elizabeth,132Browning,Alice,193Brownv.BoardofEducation,2,18–19,20,22,208,254,262,277n18Budenz,Louis,1Burnham,Louis,141,144,146,245,246Burroughs,Charles,167Burroughs,Margaret,77,80,84,167,168,169Cacchione,Peter,90Calhoun,JohnC.,154California,Whitein,118–22Campbell,Dick,296n12Campbell,Eliza,132“CandleinaGaleWind,A”(AliceChildress),128–29,295n7CanfieldFisher,Dorothy,59–60Canwell,Albert,43Carter,William,288n23Castro,Fidel,148,235CatholicChurch,1–2,65CatholicUniverseBulletin,2Catlett,Elizabeth,25,73,80,286n6;CPmembership,268,269,312n3;Whiteand,86,89Caute,David,47Cayton,Horace,6,76,115CCF.SeeCongressforCulturalFreedomCentralIntelligenceAgency(CIA):AMSACconferencefundedby,32,243,263;AMSACfundingby,249–50,252,264–65,310nn9–

10;blackwritersandAMSACrelationshipwith,249–53;culturecontrolby,250,310n8;Mayfield’scomplicitywith,265;R.Wrightvolumefinancedby,271,312n5

CharlesWhite:BeautyandStrength,27,108Chicago,208–9;AbrahamLincolnSchoolin,73,80;BlackPopularFront,80,166–71,300n4;blackradicalismin,75–79;

Defender,80,221,232–37;publichousingprojectin,29;T-1toT-20,218–19,237ChicagoNegroLeftFront,165Childress,Alice,12,15,29,123–64,151,163;aestheticsandoverview,27–28;AMSACfundingquery,264;birthandearlyyears,

132–35;blackinternationalismof,131;blacklisted,124,129;CNAinvolvement,126,130,135–36;CPUSAaffiliationambiguity,126–27;divorce,135;Douglassand,145;essays,128–30,131,140–41,295n7;FBIFOIAfileon,23,125,126–27,132;Freedomcolumn,27,135,140–43;Friedanand,295n8;genderissuestreatedby,158;Hughescriticizedby,130–31,295n10;Hughesnoveladaptedandproducedby,92,297n17;interracialismand,149–50,158–59,298n27;C.Jonesand,143–44,297nn18–19;leftistpolitics,123–24,129,148,294nn1–22,295n8;Leftlegaciesof,157–59;marriageanddaughter,133,296n11;Mildredstoriesof,141–43,146,156,297n17;modernismand,164;Neeland,24,160–64;Neel’sportraitof,123,162,

163–64;reconstructingleftistpastof,127–32;Robesonand,124,130,142;Rootsvolumeomissionof,246.SeealsoGoldThroughtheTrees;WeddingBand

Childress,Alvin,133,135Christmas,Walter,93Church,Frank,32CIA.SeeCentralIntelligenceAgencyCIO.SeeCongressofIndustrialOrganizationscitizenship,raceinvisibilityasbasisof,42CivilRightsCongress(CRC),7,81,87–88,90,136civilrightsmovement:Brownv.BoardofEducationimpacton,18–19,277n18;classconsciousness,56;coalitionism,206;

communismassociatedwith,2–4,275n6;CPuseof,251;globalperspectiveof,296n16;internationalistfocusof,7–8;shifttoblacknationalismand,286n8;Southern,146–47;waragainst,4,276n8.Seealsoraceradicalism

Clarke,JohnHenrik,264–65classconsciousness,72,108–9,184–85,193,203;civilrightsmovement,56;ColdWarspeechundermining,34Cleveland,NNLCconventionin,7–9,8Clothier,Peter,71,74,94,96,117–18,284n2CNA.SeeCommitteefortheNegrointheArtscoalitionism,206,226ColdWar,234;aesthetics,253;AfricanAmericanliteraryhistory,absenceof,10;culturalamnesiapromotedduring,174,213,

240;ideologies,2–3,186,188–91,245;Leftpressuredby,256–57,311n16;1950srace,religion,and,1–7;riseofabstractionduring,293n51;scholarship,3–4,275n1;TrumbullParkastextofblack,205–8,304n1;whiteimaginaryof,3–4

Collins,Janet,92,93“CominternResolutionontheNegroQuestionintheUnitedStates,The,”5,13,222,307nn24–25CommitteefortheNegrointheArts(CNA),16,74,92,121,286n7,303n26;AliceChildressand,126,130,135–36;First

ConstitutionalConvention,289n34;foundingmembersof,91;NewYork,89–93communism:AfricanAmericanliteraryculturecompatibilitywith,11;blackactivismasdissentand,4,257n6;blacksattractionto,

3–7;civilrightsactivismassociatedwith,2–4,275n6;conversionnarrative,175–76,271,301n10,302n11;interracialismand,156,157;journalsandpublications,16;leftartistsrepresentationof,22;racialdiscriminationbelieflinkedwith,43;TrumbullParkand,236–37.Seealsoanticommunism;specificartistsandwriters;specificorganizations

CommunistInternationalComintern,5CommunistParty(CP):abstractartcampaignedagainstby,101–7;aestheticsof,62–68,101–7;alliancesof,275n4;anti-

discriminationcampaignsof,5;artcontrolby,101–7,283n25,283n28,290n43;artcritics,103;artistmembersof,12;blackmembershipin,275n10;blackorganizationssupportedby,6;blackpresidentialcandidatesfrom,55;blacks’separationfrom,270;civilrightsmovementusedby,251;formalismrejectedby,99–100;formpreferredoverabstraction,117;Hemingwayon,293n51;Khrushchevrevelations,67,283n32;modernismantipathyandrightwardshiftof,286n9;philosophicalalliancewith,portrayed,81;inPittsburgh,48;politicallycorrectartdemandedby,290n43;ProgressivePartyasalignedwith,215;RedChicagoand,75;Southernblacklaborinterestof,276n10;UnemployedCouncils,5–6;YoungCommunistLeague,47.Seealsoblacknationthesis;specificartistsandwriters

CommunistPartyoftheUnitedStatesofAmerica(CPUSA),58,126–27,228,292n49;blacknationthesisascentraltenetof,46conferences.SeeBandungConferenceConfidentialInformantofKnownReliability,23CongressforCulturalFreedom(CCF),249CongressofIndustrialOrganizations(CIO),79,207Conroy,Jack,174,182,194;Brooksand,193–96conservatism,234,308n37;AMSACconference,244,257;modernistaestheticsand,211containmentmodel,Lukin’sproposedcombinationofemergenceand,304n1ContributionoftheNegrotoDemocracyinAmerica,The(C.White),73,85“ConversationsfromLife”(AliceChildress),27,141–43,146,156,297n17conversionnarrative,175–76,271,301n10,302n11Cortor,Eldzier,117Corwin,Charles,102–6,107,292n49CP.SeeCommunistPartyCPUSA.SeeCommunistPartyoftheUnitedStatesofAmericaCRC.SeeCivilRightsCongressCrichlow,Ernie,91,91,110Crisis,171CrisisoftheNegroIntellectual,The(Cruse),42,90,244,260–61,297n22CrispusAttucksOldFolksHome,46Cromwell,Adelaide,251–52Cruse,Harold,42,90,286n7;AMSACconferenceand,244;Freedomcriticizedby,297n22;onHansberry,260–61CubanRevolution,235culturalamnesia,174,213,240CulturalFront,The(Denning),62culture:CIAcontrolof,250,310n8.SeealsoAfricanAmericanliteratureandculture;blackculture;blackfolkculture;Black

PopularFrontDailyWorker,85,90,95,103,129,292;Cominternpublishedin,307n24Dale,Thelma,145Davis,Angela,22,121–22,293n58Davis,ArthurP.,244,254Davis,Ben,90,150Davis,FrankMarshall,25,168,170,177,193Davis,JohnA.,31–32,239–40,244–46,257Davis,Lester,167Davis,Ossie,16,93,134,147,270,296n12Davis,Sammy,Jr.,135DawnofLife(White),108–9DearbornRealEstateBoard,234DeCarava,Roy,289n34Dee,Ruby,16,93,134,298n24Defender,Chicago,80,221,232–37;Freedomcontrastedwith,235deKooning,Willem,119Demby,William,35demonstrations:Clevelandairlineticketcenter,9;Marchuprising,119;againstSenateInternalSecurityCommittee,218–20;

againstTrumbullParkmobs,227;UPWA,226–27Denning,Michael,62,136,308n35;ghettopastoralsconceptof,182,207,233;socialmoderniststermof,164Depression,75desegregation.Seeracialintegration;TrumbullParkDijkstra,Bram,88,109,116discursivemarks,178documentaryscenes,54–59,62Dolinar,Brian,11,196,303n28Dorsey,George,58DosPassos,John,131Dostoyevsky,Fyodor,223DoubleVcampaign,6Douglass,Frederick,69,70,73,76,85,288n29;AliceChildressand,145DuBois,ShirleyGraham,145,146DuBois,W.E.B.,36,39,56,90,92,146,163;arrestof,11;Hughesand,213–14;petitiontoUNledby,7,17–18,277n15Dudziak,Mary,233duelingradicalisms,215,224,228EastBerlin,94–101Ebony,116–17,236Egerton,John,59Ellison,Ralph,11,13,35,36,39,172;CPrepresentationof,280n13;asonlymodernistblackwriter,62;shortstoryonrailroadby,

56.SeealsoInvisibleManemergencemodel,proposedcombinationofcontainmentand,304n1“EndtotheNeglectoftheProblemsoftheNegroWoman,An”(C.Jones),144,180Engels,Friedrich,79eulogy:BrookspoemaboutF.L.Brownas,31;inIronCity,57,281n21Evergood,Philip,108,110,122Exodus1BlackMoses(White),105,105–6FairEmploymentPracticesCommittee(FEPC),9Fanon,Frantz,148FAP.SeeFineArtsProjectFatigue(White),78“F.B.Eyes,”220,237,307n22FBI.SeeFederalBureauofInvestigationFearing,Kenneth,174FederalArtsProject,177FederalBureauofInvestigation(FBI),12,97;blackactivismstoppedby,4;Brooksand,23,169;F.L.Browninterviewedby,220–

21;L.Brownencounterwith,33,34,35,36;censorshipnotreferencedbyNewCriticism,11;ConfidentialInformantofKnownReliability,23;GoldThroughtheTreesreport,135–36;Hansberry’splayinvestigatedby,214;obsessionwithblackliteraryproduction,233;SecurityIndex,131;TrumbullParkintertextualitywith,222–31;waronpositiveportrayalsofblacks,276n8;

Whitetrackedby,95,96.SeealsoFreedomofInformationActFederalTheatreProject(FTP),43,51,132,133Feelings,Tom,72,285n5fellowtravelers,80,193,249,273,275n4feminists,145,178–82,302n13;Marxist,28–29FEPC.SeeFairEmploymentPracticesCommitteefilms,19–20,155FineArtsProject(FAP),79–81Finkelstein,Sidney,50,89,107,108,292n50FireinaCanebrake:TheLastMassLynchinginAmerica(Wexler),59FirstConferenceofNegroWriters.SeeAMSACconferenceFirstConstitutionalConvention,CNA,289n34FiveGreatAmericanNegroes(White),82Florence(AliceChildress),27–28,92Flory,Ishmael,179,206Floyd,Ruby,138,296n14FOIA.SeeFreedomofInformationActFoley,Barbara,280n13folk.SeeblackfolkcultureFoner,Eric,67“ForaNegroTheatre”(AliceChildress),129–30Ford,JamesW.,55FordFoundation,249–50formalism,CPrejectionof,99–100Fortune,T.Thomas,71Foster,WilliamZ.,55,67,101FrederickDouglassLivesAgain(White),118Freedom,15–16,91,124;AliceChildresscolumnin,27,135,140–43;Cruse’sattackon,297n22;Defendercontrastedwith,235;

distribution,297n20;feminismand,145;Marxistfeministswritingin,28–29;publicationperiodandcontributions,144–45;P.Robesoncolumnin,144–45,297n21;successorto,146

FreedomofInformationAct(FOIA)files,22–24,294n4;onF.L.Brown,23,30,207,214–21,217–19,231–32,236;onL.Brown,33,34,35,48;onAliceChildress,23,125,126–27,132;inaccuraciesanddeletionsin,25,278n27;onP.Marshall,214;unreliabilityof,25;onWhite,95,97,98,118,122

Freedomways,36,140–41,146,298n25Freud,Sigmund,66Friedan,Betty,295n8FriendshipTour,94Fromm,Erich,63FTP.SeeFederalTheatreProjectFuller,Hoyt,264Garaudy,Roger,283n28Garvin,Victoria,9,144,145Gayden,Fern,168,170genderconsciousness,180,282n24,283n31;inFreedom,145;inAShortWalk,158Gery,John,183ghettopastorals,182,207,233“GhostattheQuincyClub,The”(Brooks),199–200Gibson,Richard,246Giles,Roscoe,201Gilyard,Keith,309n6Glasgow,Douglas,101Gloster,Hugh,39,40GodThatFailed,The(R.Wright),271–72,312n5Gold,Mike,78,144,160,161–62Goldman,285n5Goldsby,Jacqueline,172GoldThroughtheTrees(AliceChildress),21,27,28,124,128;FBIreporton,135–36;Martinsvillesectionof,138–39,140;music

in,138,296n15;Tubmanscenein,136–37,140Goluboff,RisaL.,18,262–63Gordon,Edmund,81,95Goss,Bernard,77–78Gottlieb,Adolph,119Gottlieb,Eugenie,122

Gottlieb,Harry,122Gourfain,Ed,167Gourfain,Joyce,167Graham,Shirley,93GrandParade,The(Mayfield),269,270–73Green,Adam,235Gregory,Yvonne,144Guilbaut,283n28Guinier,Ewart,6,163Hall,JamesC.,11–12Hansberry,Lorraine,16,25,28–29,91,136;atAMSACconference,242–43,247,248,258;AMSACkeynoteaddress,260–64;as

associateeditorofFreedom,145;CPmembershipof,258;FBIFOIAfileson,23;FBIreviewofplayby,214;C.Jonesand,143;mediacritiquedby,261–62

HarlemLeftFront,136,159,164,258,296n16HarlemWriters’Guild,16,260HarrietTubman(White),118Harris,Trudier,145HarvestTalk(White),108–15,114,293n53Hayden,Robert,39,40,174,280n10Hearst,WilliamRandolph,51Hemingway,Andrew,79–81,278n2,278n24,286n9,291n44;onabstractarthegemonyandCPcritiques,293n51;onNew

Criticismera,212;onWhite’sartisticshift,109Herndon,Angelo,172HeroAin’tNothin’butaSandwich,A(AliceChildress),124Higashida,Cheryl,11Hikmet,Nazim,94Hill,Abram,51,133Himes,Chester,13,35,222Hirsch,ArnoldR.,208–9history,AfricanAmericanliteratureandculture,10–13HistoryoftheNegroPress,A(White),69,70,71–72,82,284nn1–2Hollywood,19–20,276n8,291n44;Ten,35,126homosexualityandbisexuality,158–59Hood,Nicholas,6–7,9Hoover,J.Edgar,3,22–24,211,276n8,294n4Horney,Karen,63HouseUn-AmericanActivitiesCommittee(HUAC),3,4,11,36,159,295n10;blackintellectualstargetedby,22–23;Freedom

underattackof,297n22;in1950,42;Pittsburghtargetof,47,48;racismsubtextof,142;UPWAdisruptionofhearings,306n19;Whitessummonedto,95

Hughes,Langston,11,13,37,39,92,138–39,200;atAMSACconference,241–42,248;F.L.Brownpraisedby,213;Brown’sIronCityand,36–37,49;censorshipof,213–14;AliceChildresscriticismof,130–31,295n10;W.E.B.DuBois,and,213–14;Hoover’sviewofpoemsby,23–24;McCarthyand,36,213–14;Phylonsymposiumresponseof,40;railroadpoemby,57

Humboldt,Charles,66–67,283n27,286n9Hunton,Alphaeus,140,141Hurston,ZoraNeale,40IllinoisFederalArtProject,69incarceration,L.Brown,47,48–49InformationAgency,U.S.,18Ingram,Bob,212–13Ingram,Rex,135Ingram,RosaLee,21,86–87,121IngramCase,The(White),86–87,106,118integrationistpoeticsandpolitics,253–54,259–60internationalism.Seeblackinternationalisminterracialism:F.L.Browninterracialsolidarity,225–26,307n28;AliceChildressand,149–50,158–59,298n27;communismand,

156,157;infilms,155;interracialmarriage,152,299n31;racialintegrationand,150–51InvisibleMan(Ellison),11,35,140,201;Foleyon,280n13;NewCriticismand,212;TrumbullParkcontrastedwith,229,307n30;

YearofJubileereferencesto,279n8IronCity(L.Brown),22,308n33;documentaryscenesin,54–59;dreamsequenceatendof,64–65;eulogyin,57,281n21;gender

positionsin,282n24;Hughesand,36–37,49;leftistculturalformsrelationto,53–54;LivingNewspapersandmodernistexperimentationin,49–54,52,57;lynchingstoryin,57–59;modernistrevisions,54–57;NativeSonbattlewith,26,59–61;

NativeSondialoguewith,38,53–54;Pittsburgh“hell”asbasisfor,47–48;protagonistsin,38;railroadstoryin,54–57Iton,Richard,75IWasaCommunistfortheFBI,48“Jack”(Brooks),195Jackson,Blyden,41Jackson,Esther,4,36,143,268,298n25Jackson,James,4Jackson,Lawrence,170,244,253,300n1,309n3jazzimprovisation,50Jenkins,Philip,48,281n16Jenkins,WelbornVictor,281n21Jenning,LaViniaDelois,127–28,294n3,295n6Jett,Ruth,91JimCrow,41,188–89,191,263,289n34;Browndecisionand,18;lessonsfrom,2;post–WorldWarII,277n19JohnReedClub,47,79–80Johns,Jasper,120Johnson,Bennett,75,206Jones,Claudia,28–29,143–44,180,297nn18–19Jones,Elaine,91Jones,William,48–49,65Joyce,James,186Julian,Percy,201JustaLittleSimple(Hughes),AliceChildressproductionof,92,297n17Kaiser,Ernest,39,63–64,67Kaye,Joe,258Kelley,RobinD.G.,14–15Kennedy,JohnF.,167Kent,GeorgeE.,168,280n11Kent,Rockwell,108,110Khrushchevrevelations,67,271,283n32Killens,JohnO.,16,25,112,146;Rootsvolumeomissionofopeningremarksby,246;WeddingBandcriticizedby,148–50,153King,MartinLuther,Jr.,23,112,115,147Kitt,Eartha,134–35Kline,Franz,119Kreymborg,Alfred,173–74,300n6,301n8KuKluxKlan,4Kunitz,Stanley,178labor.Seeblacklabor,CPinterestinruralSouthLarsen,Nella,56Lawrence,Elizabeth,189Lawrence,Jacob,117Leadbelly,73,83,111Lecklider,Aaron,11,199,283n31,303n33Lee,Canada,7LeFalle-Collins,Lizzetta,285n5Left:abstractionistsviewedby,101,102;inAfricanAmericanliteraryhistory,10–13;AMSACconferencepittingblackliberals

against,253–60;anticommunismtodispeldissentfrom,190;artistandwriterrelationshipswith,24–25;artisticrepresentations,21–22,189–90,225–26,307n28;black-Lefttensions,243;L.Brownoninternationalwritersof,45;ChicagoNegroLeftFront,165;civilrightsmovementshiftof,146–48;ColdWarpressureson,256–57,311n16;culturalamnesiaanderasureof,174,240;discursivemarksof,178;downplayingofassociationswith,80–81;educationalinstitutions,16;“folk”constructionsproblematizedby,299n37;genderconsciousnessof,282n24;institutionalsupportofferedby,15–17;interracialalliancesof,156;IronCityrelationtoculturalformsof1930s,53–54;listofotherfiguresalignedwith,25;literarymodernismof,26;literaryvenuesof,11–12,17;modernismconflictwith,72;NewCriticismdisillusionmentwith,276n9;newscholarshipon,267–68;NewYorkCNAandblack,89–93;publications,21–22;Rootsvolumeeditingoutof,242–49;spyingonliterary,31–32;WorldWarIIboostto,6–7.Seealsoartistsandwriters,left-wingblack;feminists;specificartistsandwriters

“LeftistOratorinWashingtonPark/PleasantlyPunishestheGropers”(Brooks),193,196–98“LegacyofWillieJones,The”(L.Brown),65Lenin,Vladimir,79,85LesnowShirtFactory,47

Let’sWalkTogether(White),108,110–12,111Leyba,Claire,135liberalantiracism,190.SeealsoblackliberalsLibertyDeferred,51–52,64Lichtenstein,Roy,120Lightfoot,Claude,206LikeOneoftheFamily(AliceChildress),124,133,145,151;antecedenttexts,141–42Lincoln,Abraham,121Lincoln(White),108literarycriticism,educationin,10literaryleft.SeeLeftLiteraryTimesPrize,194,195literature.SeeAfricanAmericanliteratureandculture;artistsandwriters,left-wingblackLivingDouglass,The(White),88–89,288n29LivingNewspapers,49–54,52,57LivingTheater,50Locke,Alain,39,41,69,72,76LostPromiseofCivilRights,The(Goluboff),18LoveLetterI,122“LovelyLove,A”(Brooks),198–99,303n33Lovingv.Virginia,152,299n31LoyaltyBoard,42Lukin,Josh,304n1lynching,57–59,171–72;petitiontoUNbasedon,7,58–59Mademoiselle,200Madhubuti,Haki,165,191–92mainstream,16,258Malcolm,Roger,58MalcolmX,147,308n33Marcantonio,Vito,90Marchuprising,119Marqusee,Mike,4marriage,interracial,152,299n31.SeealsospecificartistsandwritersMarshall,Paule,25,182,214Martin,LouisE.,235MartinsvilleSeven,21,28,138–40,269Marx,Karl,79,128;Jones,C.,and,143Marxism,290n43;AliceChildresshomegrown,132–35;IronCityendinginlightof,65;Kaisercritiqueof,63Marxistfeminists,28–29masschant,229Masses&Mainstream,16–17,27,89,95,279n8;L.Brownaseditorof,35–36,44–45;Humboldt’sdeparturefrom,286n9;“The

LegacyofWillieJones”in,65;1951listofpublishedwritersin,278n2;Whiteaseditorof,85,90;White’s1953–1954portfoliopublishedby,108–15,111,292n49

“MassiveResistanceintheUrbanNorth:TrumbullPark,Chicago,1953–1966”(Hirsch),208–9MaudMartha(Brooks),22,28,182–87,203;ColdWarcultureand,188–91;NativeSonand,184,187,302n16;socialrealism

counteredby,177,302n16Maugham,Somerset,189Maxwell,WilliamJ.,11,23,30,215,220;onF.L.Brown,231;onFBI,233;onHoover,23,294n4Mayfield,Julian,5,12,25,176–77,233,269–73;atAMSAC,258–59;AMSACfundingand,264–65;CIAcomplicity,265;CP

membershipof,243,258,269,312n18;fileson,23;violencedepictedby,21;R.Wrightcontrastedwith,271–72McCarranAct,216,267McCarthy,Joseph,1,22–23;Hughesand,36,213–14;NAACPcriticizedby,43McCarthyism,4,127,129,138,159McCord,Elizabeth,168McGee,Willie,21,297n22McKay,Claude,220,231,307n22McPherson,JamesAlan,56media,Hansberry’scritiqueof,261–62Melamed,Jodi,190,277n19,278n23Melhem,D.H.,192,197methodology,portrait,24–25Mexicanmuralists,73–74,79,82,84,285n5,288n26

Mexico,WhiteandCatletttripto,86MidloHall,Gwendolyn,268Midwest:AReview,77migrantworkers,113Mildredstories,byAliceChildress.See“ConversationsfromLife”Millman,Edward,69,79,288nn25–26Mindszenty(cardinal),1Mississippi,secretwaronracein,55“MississippiMother”(Brooks),172Mitchell,Bessie,87–88Mitchell,Lofton,241modernism,stylistic:abstractionand,74,286n9;CPantipathyto,286n9;Leftviewsofartconflictwith,72;LivingNewspapers

and,49–54,52,57;shiftfromsocialrealismtoconservative,211;socialmodernists,164.Seealsospecificartistsandwriters;specificworks

Monk,Thelonious,223,224Mora,Francisco(Pancho),89,268Morgan,Stacy,50,53,62,177Morrison,Toni,56Mother,The(White),108,109Motley,Willard,19,40–41Movement,The:DocumentaryofaStruggleforEquality(Hansberry),243Mullen,Bill,80,165,168,178,183,196;F.L.Brownand,215;onendof1950s,235Mullen,Harryette,185muralists,WPA-era,288n23.SeealsoMexicanmuralistsMurphy,JamesFrancis,290n43Murray,Albert,36,279n3Myers,ShaundraJ.,277n18MyrdalSchool,63MythMaker,The(F.L.Brown),210NationalAssociationfortheAdvancementofColoredPeople(NAACP),208,299n32;AnAppealtotheWorldpetitionof,7,17–18,

277n15;TheCrisismagazineof,42;Hollywoodpressuredby,276n8;McCarthycriticismof,43;ScottsboroBoysstanceof,276n10;YouthCouncil,168

nationalism.SeeblacknationalismNationalMaritimeUnion(NMU),85,90NationalNegroCongress(NNC),80,180NationalNegroLaborCouncil(NNLC),7–9,8NativeSon(R.Wright),277n11;Baldwinobjectionsto,281n22;L.Brownresponseto,59–60,281n22;IronCitybattlewith,26,

59–61;IronCityindialoguewith,38,53–54;MaudMarthaand,184,187,302n16naturalism,253,257–58Neel,Alice,24;CPhardlinemanipulatedby,283n25;portraitspaintedby,123,160–64,162,300n41“NegroCharacterinAmericanLiteraturetoContemporaryWriters”(L.Brown),64NegroDigest,31,43,178,213,304n34NegroinAmericanLife,The,18NegroPeople’sPopularFront,80NegroPeople’sTheatreGroup,78NegroQuarterly,172,180NegroStory,179Nemiroff,Robert,261NewCriticism,11,211–12,259–60,315n12;biblesof,10;disillusionmentof,276n9NewJerseyEveningTimes,87NewMasses,38,78,173NewNegro,The(Locke),72,76NewYorkAge,71NewYorkCity,blackLeftandCNAin,89–93NewYorker,212NewYorkTimes,36,45,88,251,268;CIAAMSACarticlesin,252,310n10Nixon,Ed,112NMU.SeeNationalMaritimeUnionNNC.SeeNationalNegroCongressNNLC.SeeNationalNegroLaborCouncilNorthStar,71NortonAnthologyofAfricanAmericanLiterature,10–11,68

Obama,Barack,269,312n2O’Dell,Hunter(Jack),147,233,270Odet,Clifford,229OfHumanBondage(Maugham),189Olsen,Tillie,182O’Neal,Frederick,133,135,296n12One-ThirdofaNation,51,52oppositionalculture,blackfolkcultureforcreating,15Orlikoff,Richard,167Orozco,JoseClemente,73–74,84,285n5OtisArtInstitute,118–20packinghouseexceptionalism,305n5Pajud,Bill,108Papp,Joseph,298n24Parks,Rosa,112,148Parrington,Vernon,184PartisanReview,211–12,250,277n11,311n17Paton,Alan,212Patterson,William,58,80,90Perkins,Marion,117,167,168Perkins,Thelma,92PermanentSubcommitteeonInvestigations,23Peslikis,Irene,162,300n41petitions,toUN:AnAppealtotheWorld(NAACP),7,17–18,277n16;WeChargeGenocide(RobesonandPatterson),7,58–59Petry,Ann,40–41,177Phylonsymposium,19,22,25–26,39,278n22;citizenshipandraceinvisibilityangleof,42;onintegration,41;Kent’scriticismof,

280n11;racismrepresentedin,41;writerresponsesto,39–42,44–45Pittman,John,103Pittsburgh,IronCityasinfluencedby“hell”in,47–48PittsburghCourier,6Plessyv.Ferguson,56Poetry,178,188,192,302n22Poitier,Sidney,16,91,122,134,295n10policyracket,75PoliticalAffairs,143politics:ofaesthetics,10–11;integrationistpoeticsand,253–54,259–60;politicallycorrectart,290n43.Seealsospecificartists

andwriters;specificpoliticalpartiesPollock,Jackson,119PopularFront.SeeBlackPopularFrontportraits:asmethodology,24–25;byNeel,123,160–64,162,300n41;White’shistoricalfigures,73PostWolcott,Marion,112,113,113Powell,AdamClayton,308n33Powell,Clayton,90Powell,Richard,109presidentialcandidates,onCPticket,55ProgressiveParty,47–48,101–2,215.Seealsoracialprogressnarrativepsychoanalysis,racism,20,60,64,278n23,282n23publichousingproject,inChicago,29PulitzerPrize,178,195race:ColdWardictatesonrepresentationsof,189–90;invisibility,42;liberalism,190,253–60;1950sColdWar,religionand,1–7;

secretwaron,1931–1934,55;universalityconcept,19,44,190,255,280n11;vitalcenterpositionon,43,280n12racediscourse,individualsuccessstories,150,298n29raceradicalism,BlackPopularFrontand1950s,17–22,277n19racialintegration,309n3;ColdWarideologiesregarding,2–3,186;interracialrelationshipsand,150–51;intomainstream,258;as

passingforwhite,41;inschools,272;TrumbullParkastargetfor,208racialprogressnarrative,18–21,190–91,277n21;AMSACRootsvolumeon,245–46racism:communismlinkedto,43;CPanti-discriminationcampaignsand,5;educational,76;HUACsubtextof,142;liberalanti-,

190;Phylonsymposiumwriterson,41;psychoanalysisof,20,60,64,278n23,282n23radicalism.Seeblackradicalism

railroad,inIronCity,54–57RaisinintheSun(Hansberry),214,243Rampersad,Arnold,27,49,282n24Randolph,A.Philip,234,291n47Reagan,Ronald,122realism.Seesocialistrealism;socialrealismRedChicago,75Redding,J.Saunders,39,40,246,254,265,309n6;AMSACconferenceand,244,255–57;L.Brownmodernismupheldby,62,

63,67,283n26;Rootsvolumesubmission,255–56Regnery,Henry,308n37Reid,IraD.A.,19,39Reiss,Winold,76ReportfromPartOne(Brooks),166–67,170,175reversesurveillance,231–32“RiseofMaudMartha,The”(Brooks),28Rivera,Diego,73–74,84,85,285n5Robb,Hammurabi,196Robeson,Eslanda,141,144Robeson,Paul,9,11,39,42–43,73,90;L.Brownand,36;AliceChildressand,124,130,142;Freedomcolumnof,144–45,

297n21;Poitierand,134;UNpetitionpresentedby,58;WashingtonParkconcertby,303n26.SeealsoFreedomRobinson,Cyril,236Rockefeller,JohnD.,85,228n27Rollo,115Rootsvolume.SeeAmericanNegroWriterandHisRoots,TheRosenberg,Ethel,95–96,269,312n4Rosenberg,Harold,117,269,312n4Rosenberg,Julius,95–96Roth,Philip,182Rothko,Mark,120Rukeyser,Muriel,174SAC.SeeSociétéAfricainedeCultureSaltoftheEarth(film),95–96Sandburg,Carl,185Savage,Gus,206Schiffrin,Andre,211Schlesinger,Arthur,280n12scholarship:ColdWar,3–4,275n1;new,267–68.SeealsospecificartistsandwritersSchooloftheArtInstitute,Chicago’s,76–77schools:Chicago’sAbrahamLincolnSchool,73,80;Mexicanschoolofartisticexpression,73–74,79,82,84,86,285n5;Myrdal

School,63;racialintegrationin,272Schuyler,George,39ScottsboroBoys,49,87,276n10ScottsboroLimited(Hughes),138–39ScottThomas,Viola,91SearsRoebuckCompany,7Seaver,Edwin,169SecurityIndex,FBI,131Seebree,Charles,117segregation,4;inCatholicChurchof1950s,1–2;state-sponsored,19.SeealsoJimCrow;TrumbullParkSelectedPoetry(Hughes),37SenateInternalSecurityCommittee,30,218–20Senateinvestigativecommittee,4,200,219–20,256Sepia,236Shapiro,David,290n43SharecroppersUnion,5Shields,Art,161ShortWalk,A(AliceChildress),128,157–58Silvera,Frank,91,93Silvera,John,51Singh,NikhilPal,150,233,265Siporin,Mitchell,69,79,285n5,288nn25–26Siqueiros,DavidAlfaro,73–74,84

SixthWorldCongressoftheComintern,13Smethurst,James,11,48,62,260,265,305n6;onBrooks,165,177;onF.L.Brown,229;onL.Brown,68;onWhite,111Smith,Ferdinand,6,85,90Smith,ShawnMichelle,248Smith,WilliamGardner,39SmithAct,48–49,143,267SmithandMcCarranlaws,9,16socialistrealism,100–103,174,177,301n7;socialrealismdistinguishedfrom,290n43socialmodernists,164socialprotesttradition:AMSACconferencemeaningsanduseofterm,257;F.L.Brownand,213,223,224;asexhaustedmode,

210–11socialrealism,101,103,116,290n51;Brooks’scounteringof,177,302n16;shifttoconservativemodernistaesthetics,211;

socialistrealismdistinguishedfrom,290n43SociétéAfricainedeCulture(SAC),239SojournersforTruthandJustice,16SojournerTruth(White),103,104Solman,Joseph,291n44South:civilrightsmovementin,146–47;rural,13,276n10SouthAfrica,7–8,21,139SouthAfricanDefianceCampaign,28,140“SouthernLynching”(Brooks),171SouthernNegroYouthMovement,4SouthSideCommunityArtCenter(SSCAC),4,77,80,121,169–70,170,183;workshopminuteson,188–89SpeakNowAgainsttheDay:TheGenerationBeforetheCivilRightsMovement(Egerton),59Spingarn,Arthur,246spycraft,literaryleftand,31–32SSCAC.SeeSouthSideCommunityArtCenterStalin,Joseph,270–71Stark,InezCunningham,169–70,188StarsandBars,51StateDepartment:racismnarrativeof,41;state-sponsoredsegregation,19Stepto,Robert,271StreetinBronzeville,A(Brooks),172,173,193,194strikes,LesnowShirtFactoryinPittsburgh,47Stuckey,Sterling,29,208,305n7,306n18SugarHillSet,143Summers,Marion,291n44SundayWorker,88–89SupremeCourt,299n31symposium,Phylon’s.SeePhylonsymposiumsynathroesmus,185Tate,Allen,254Tate,Claudia,176TechniquesUsedintheServiceofStruggle(White),82–84,83,288nn24–25;varioustitlesof,82,288n23television,93Teres,Harvey,211,277n11,278n2,311n17“ThemeandVariation”(Hayden),280n10Thompson,EraBell,41Thompson,Kraus,163ThoseOtherPeople(AliceChildress),158–59Till,Emmett,30,128,172,192,219;trial,306n20Tillman,N.P.,41TiredWorker(White),78Tolson,MelvinB.,176–77,193,254Topchevsky,Morris,80TrentonSix,21–22,87–88,106,118,121trial:L.Brown,48,281n17;Till,306n20TroubleinMind(AliceChildress),28,124Truman,HarryS.,42Trumbo,Cleo,122Trumbo,Dalton,35,122TrumbullPark,29,208–10,221,225–27;communistsinvolvedin,236–37;UPWAinvolvementindesegregating,226

TrumbullPark(F.L.Brown),29–30,304n1;asblackColdWartext,205–8,304n1;blackvernacularin,222;duelingradicalismsin,215,224,228;ideafor,208;intertextualityofFBIfilesand,222–31;InvisibleMancontrastedwith,229,307n30;musicin,222,223,229,307n27,307n31;plotandautobiographicalbasisof,208–10;reversesurveillanceof,231–32;reviewsof,212–13

Truth,Sojourner,73,85,103Tubman,Harriet,73,76,103,145;inGoldThroughtheTrees,136–37,140;Whitedrawingof,105,105–7Turner,Lana,236Turner,Nat,76,85,145TwelveMillionBlackVoices(Wright),112Tyson,Cicely,124UN.SeeUnitedNationsUnemployedArtistsGroup,79–80UnemployedCouncils,CP,5–6unions,13,79–80,179,211,220;CIO-led,207;NMU,85,90.SeealsoUnitedPackingHouseWorkersofAmericaUnitedNations(UN):AnAppealtotheWorldpetitionto,7,17–18,277n16;WeChargeGenocidepetitionto,7,58–59UnitedPackingHouseWorkersofAmerica(UPWA),207,215–16,304n4,306n19;anticommunismand,236;F.L.Brownand,

226–27,306n20;TrumbullParkdesegregationinvolvementof,226universalityconcept,19,44,190,255,280n11unlabeledfutureview,39,44UPWA.SeeUnitedPackingHouseWorkersofAmericaUrbanLeague,87VanDoren,Irita,246vernacular.SeeblackvernacularVesey,Denmark,53,76,85violence,artistrepresentationsofracial,21vitalcenter,racialpositionterm,43,280n12VitalCenter,The(Schlesinger),280n12VonEschen,Penny,20,140,233,311n14Wadleigh,LydiaF.,132Wald,Alan,11,62–63,164,193,265;onF.L.Brown,206,307n28Walker,Margaret,13,39–40,287n19Walker,Yvonne,252Wallace,Henry,47–48war:againstblackrailroadworkersinMississippi,55–56;againstcivilrightsmovement,4,276n8;FBI,onpositiveportrayalsof

blacks,276n8;LeftboostedbyWorldWarII,6–7;Mississippisecret,againstrace,55.SeealsoColdWarWard,Theodore,129,169,170Washington,BookerT.,255Washington,Fredi,93WashingtonPark,196–98,303n26,303nn28–29Watts,DanielH.,201WeChargeGenocide(RobesonandPatterson),7,58–59WeddingBand:ALove/HateStoryinBlackandWhite(AliceChildress),124,146–56,149,296n13;blacknationalists’revileof,

148–49,298n24;controversialnatureof,298n24;interracialmarriagelawsand,152,299n31;Killenscriticismof,148–50,153;yearandcontextforsettingof,299n32

Weigand,Kate,179Weldon,James,56Wessell,Sophie,168West,Dorothy,40–41Wexler,Laura,59Wheatley,Phillis,76Whelan,Pat,161“WhichWayfortheNegroWriter?”(L.Brown),25–26,35–45;asPhylonsymposiumresponse,38–39,42,44–45;publishingof,

42;R.Wrightportrayalofblackculturecriticizedin,60white:imaginaryof,3–4;journalism,41;supremacy,3,21,261,272,299n31White,Charles,8,9,12,69–122,91,104,293n53;aestheticschangeandcriticismof,101–7,291nn44–45;anti-Leftsentiments,

115;onartistaslonefigure,121;artisticcrisisanddilemma,86,107,110;artisticshift,108–9,120–21,291n44;Barrett-Whitediscussionof,285n4;birthandparents,75,287n11;inCalifornia,118–22;inChicago’sblackradicalrenaissance,75–79;Christmascardsreceivedby,122,294n60;classconsciousnessaesthetic,72;communistassociationof,26–27,75,109,286n10,291n47;CPassociationdiscontinuedby,118;death,75;drawingsby,86–89,105,105–15,111;inEastBerlin,94–

101;exhibitions,69,74,86;onFAP,69;onFAPworkof,79–81;FBIFOIAfileon,23,95,97,98,118,122;FBItrackingof,95,96;onform,117–18;interviewwithOtisstudent,119–20;Leftalignmentof,15,71–75,81,286n6;Lockeinfluenceon,76;asMasses&Mainstreameditor,85,90;Mexicanschoolinfluenceon,73–74,79,82,84,86,285n5;modernisminworksof,71–72,78–79,88,284n2;NewYorkblackLeftrenaissanceand,89–93;1943–1949,85–86;1953–1954portfolio,108–15;1960sinterviewwith,120;portraitsofhistoricalfigures,73;reputation,73–74;secondmarriage,89–90;socialistrealismand,100–103;workingclassassubjectandaudienceof,108–9;WPAmembership,26–27,79–81.SeealsoHistoryoftheNegroPress,A;TechniquesUsedintheServiceofStruggle

White,Fran.SeeBarrett-White,Frances“WhyNegroWomenLeaveHome”(Brooks),28,178–82Wideman,John,283n26Wilford,Hugh,250–51Williams,Joe,228–29Williams,Laura,307n26Williams,RobertF.,268Williams,WilliamCarlos,174Winfield,Paul,124Withers,Ernest,23Wixon,Douglas(Conroybiographer),193WorkersTheater,229working-classrepresentation,108–9,184–85WorksProgressAdministration(WPA),26–27,77,290n43;FederalTheatreProject,43,51;FineArtsProject,79–81;Living

Newspapersof,49–54,52,57;sociallyrelevantartdismissedby,290n51WorldWarII,6–7,277n19WorldYouthandStudentFestivalforPeace,94WPA.SeeWorksProgressAdministrationWright,Richard,3,11,13–14,35,38,112,167,196,303n28,307n26,312n5;F.L.Brownand,223;L.Browncontrastedwith,46;

CIA-financedvolumeof,271,312n5;Glosteron,40;Mayfieldcontrastedwith,271–72;naturalism,253,257–58;“WhichWayfortheNegroWriter?”ascritiqueof,60;writers’groupfoundedby,80.SeealsoNativeSon

Wright,SarahE.,25,176–77,256–60writers,black:L.Brownonleftist,45;CIAand,249–53;ColdWardictatesonracerepresentationsby,189–90;ignoringof,

277n11;Masses&Mainstreamlistof,278n2;asmissingfromNewYorkTimesbookreviews,45;Phylonquestionnaireresponsesof,39–42,44–45;publications’lackofreviewsfor,311n17.SeealsoAfricanAmericanliteratureandculture;artistsandwriters,left-wingblack

Yamamoto,Hisaye,182Yarborough,Richard,210YearofJubilee(L.Brown),279n8Yerby,Frank,19,40–41,193YeShallInherittheEarth(White),108–9Yordan,Philip,134–35Young,Lester,9,50YoungCommunistLeague,47Zhdanov,Andrei,66,100,286n9,290n40;Hollywood-Zhdanovismcomparison,291n44