AuthorMcDuffie, Erik S., 1970-
TitleSojourning for freedom : black women, American communism, and the making of black left feminism / Erik S. McDuffie.
PublishedDurham [NC] : Duke University Press, ©2011.
Descriptionxiv, 311 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
ISBN9780822350330 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN0822350335 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN9780822350507 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN0822350505 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Bib. NoteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted NoteContents: Black communist women pioneers, 1919-1930 -- Searching for the Soviet promise, fighting for Scottsboro and Harlem's survival, 1930-1935 -- Toward a brighter dawn : black women forge the Popular Front, 1935-1940 -- Racing against Jim Crow, fascism, colonialism, and the Communist Party, 1940-1946 -- "We are sojourners for our rights" : the Cold War, 1946-1956 -- Ruptures and continuities, 1956 onward.
Summary NoteSummary: Sojourning for Freedom portrays pioneering black women activists from the early twentieth century through the 1970s, focusing on their participation in the U.S. Communist Party (CPUSA) between 1919 and 1956. Erik S. McDuffie considers how women from diverse locales and backgrounds became radicalized, joined the CPUSA, and advocated a pathbreaking politics committed to black liberation, women's rights, decolonization, economic justice, peace, and international solidarity. McDuffie explores the lives of black left feminists, including the bohemian world traveler Louise Thompson Patterson, who wrote about the "triple exploitation" of race, gender, and class; Esther Cooper Jackson, an Alabama-based civil rights activist who chronicled the experiences of black female domestic workers; and Claudia Jones, the Trinidad-born activist who emerged as one of the Communist Party's leading theorists of black women's exploitation. Drawing on more than forty oral histories collected from veteran black women radicals and their family members, McDuffie examines how these women negotiated race, gender, class, sexuality, and politics within the CPUSA. In Sojourning for Freedom, he depicts a community of radical black women activist intellectuals who helped to lay the foundation for a transnational modern black feminism. -- Publisher description.
SubjectsAfrican American communists.
African American communists.
African American feminists.
African American feminists.
African American women -- Political activity.
African American women -- Political activity -- History -- 20th century.
Communistes noirs américains.
Féminisme noir -- États-Unis -- 20e siècle.
Feminismus.
Feminismus.
Frau.
History.
Kommunismus.
Kommunistische Partei.
Noires américaines -- Activité politique -- 20e siècle.
Politische Bewegung.
Schwarze.
USA.
USA.
Weibliche Schwarze.
LC Card Number2010-54508
Call Number/Copies 
 WRHS Research Library: E 185.86 M139 S65 2011
CA-1501570 c.1: LC class, closed stacks [status: NON-CIRCULATING]
[Record 29989]