We get this message from the author: A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the "long Civil Rights movement," Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how Communists took on Alabama's repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality. The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. In this book, Robin D. G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party's tactics and unique political culture. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals

Thanks for sharing this quality combined piece. On March 22, 8000 Amazon workers in Italy will be going on strike! :- Over the last year, for those who maintain radical politics, anti-capitalist vision who were part of BLM to build a politics not tied to Democratic Party, when you look at that, those are the people who are not surprised by the attack on the capitol, by the sudden withdrawal of all these corporations that said "Black Lives Matter", all these corporate figures are there trying to buy our communities. They're not doing anything for their workers. And that is highly considerable.

This collection’s interviews were conducted by Robin Kelley as research for his book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. The book, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1990, documents the activities of the Alabama Communist Party in the 1930s and the impact of race and other cultural identities on the movement.

It was a powerful seminar nice to be there. We all should support this because A threat to a worker anywhere, is a threat to a worker everywhere. With Amazon, we have to look at it in a larger context. We have to recognize the economic shifts that have taken place in the U.S. South and globally. The South is one of the regions with the highest amount of foreign direct investment. We have to look at it as a strategic place to organize labor and for the working class to lead radical transformation. Movements make their stories. Right now, Bessemer workers are making history that we need to pay attention to.

Glad to see this is up on Youtube, too. It's quite inspiring to see so many forces on the Left rally to the call for solidarity with the Bessemer Amazon workers union campaign The employer tries to elevate the power that it has to stop the workers - from politicians, to high paid union busters, breaking the law with no consequence. That old adage that we can't beat the system is out there. What makes Amazon so dangerous is that there's a perception that because of the poverty in the South, the most oppressed and exploited communities dare not do something like try to organize a union. This is helping to shape a sharper working class consciousness for the Black liberation movement.