Robin D. G. Kelley: How Depression-era Communists Fought to Organize Alabama

[@selalewis9189]

Thank you for covering this topic as it is very personal for me. My maternal grandfather was born in Alabama and joined the Communist Party because they were the only ones who stood up and spoke against black men who were being lynched. He later moved up North and settled in Milwaukee in the late 1930s. This lead to my grandfather joining worker's unions and strikes. He was the first black sanitation worker to join the sanitation workers union in Milwaukee. This is history I wish more people knew. Black liberation also has this long tradition is socialism and the labor movement. Thank you again, comrades.

[@matthewmcree1992]

This lecture was strangely uplifting despite the concerted destruction of the Communist Party we all know happened. Solidarity is the strongest force for good in the universe and the story of the Alabama Communist Party's organizing efforts in the black belt shows that.

[@mxschopendour3000]

So glad to hear Robin Kelley's lecture! Hope he can come back to talk more about the influence of Cedric Robinson.

[@duchessofessex2550]

He is an Icon

[@BPudashen]

Amazing work. Such a valuable story and teacher.

[@mobybongo]

Excellent - thank you very much.

[@wyattpershing5232]

Something about this mans voice and speaking patterns that make him nice to listen to

[@jansenmtan]

21:00 what a shocking narrative to modern American ears!

[@mgtowp.l.7756]

Did You Know J. Edgar Hoover Of The FBI Was Half Black Half White? Also Hoover Was A "Transvestite."

[@lumpialogic1706]

when will jacobin delve into foreign policy?

[@JacobinMag]

We'd like to do more, but we also did an episode with Vincent Bevins on the Jakarta Method and another episode with Daniel Bessner on working class foreign policy broadly.

[@lumpialogic1706]

Jacobin Magazine hope you interview Vijay Prashad about China.

[@JoaoSantos-lv4rc]

i'm sorry if it sounds, callous; but bonding over getting chased by your machete wielding mother is pretty specialxD. i have benny hill musing and One Piece graphics in my head now lol. sorry. thank you also for the talk.

[@billhaywood3503]

I love this talk and I love Hammer and Hoe but let me challenge Prof Kelley a bit-- is Fanon lurking in your talk? Or to put it another way Is it not the case that the CP Alabama whatever their singularities WERE communists--that you may mention NM Roy but it is also true that the CP of Alabama DID carry pictures of Lenin Stalin Molotov etc and that there was a Soviet connection both ways however flawed and the USSR deserves some credit. Is it not true the CP of Alabama thought so? Hosea Hudson thought so as did others who on their deathbeds refused to go against Stalin for example--it seems to me whether you agree or disagree with those allegiances or connections --they merit a respect and recognition. I am making no endorsements; I am just pursuing some questions.

[@billhaywood3503]

looking for whatever happened to Eula Gray and also JW Davis one of the few white members or sympathizers (he was lynched)

[@newgtguy]

Just sharing an opposing side to communism (perhaps the one that happened in Russia is different than what you're talking about here). Regardless, a little balance can be a good thing. Has everyone read Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago"? He was actually there and experienced the Gulag. The video I have included shows many people who experienced Lenin, Stalin, etc. Millions died under the former communist regime. Here is a 1 hour documentary on Solzhenitsyn's book: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l5XGZGeiidR2j68

[@atwarwithdust]

“Marx eloquently described the poverty and suffering of the working class in England.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ “The barbarous depotism of the collective Czardom which reigns in Moscow can be taken to be as irrelevant to the question of the moral substance of Marxism as the life of the Borgia pope was to that of the moral substance of Christianity.“ - Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory’, 1981 “Every culture has its own brand of anti-Semitism. Solzhenitsyn is unquestionably in the grip of the Russian extreme right’s view of the Revolution, which is that it was the doing of the Jews.” - Richard Pipes, www.nytimes.com/1985/11/13/books/solzhenitsyn-and-anti-semitism-a-new-debate.html “I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.” - Pete Seeger, kzbin.info/www/bejne/aXOsp6SYrtCoa8k