Kelley's account of African-American workers and Alabama communism

Why did the Communist Party appeal to African-American workers in Alabama?

That's Kelley's question. He isn't trying to settle whether communism is the correct ideology. He wants to understand how workers used the party to organize and why the relationship changed. Keeping that distinction clear helps us avoid turning a historical explanation into a debate about whether communism is good or bad.

The opening also gives us his measure of success: how well the movement interacts with a culture to support organization. Abstract principles aren't the whole story. A political movement can matter to people because of what it helps them do.

Paragraph 2 contrasts this approach with earlier scholarship. Historians defending the Popular Front of the 1930s and 1940s often emphasize democratic traditions and alliances between radicals and liberals. From that perspective, a broader coalition can look like progress.

Kelley asks a different question: how did it work for African-American organizing? From that perspective, the same period looks less favorable. A strategy that succeeds at bringing political groups together needn't serve every group's organizing needs equally well.

The earlier Third Period provides the contrast. Kelley thinks it better supported organization among African-American farmers and industrial workers, despite its wild, sectarian rhetoric.

How could rhetoric that members didn't take seriously still help attract them?

The next sentences separate two reactions. African-American party members avoided posturing and confrontation where they could. They didn't have to adopt every extreme stance. But the promise of a “new world” connected with traditions of struggle and hope for deliverance. Rejecting some political theatrics doesn't mean rejecting the possibility of a better future.

The idea of a powerful ally mattered too. Even distant Moscow could represent a source of support. The International Labor Defense's worldwide mobilization against lynch law helped give the party that image. This is more concrete than an attractive slogan: people could see an organization acting on an issue that mattered to them.

Paragraph 4 explains why the Popular Front lost some of that appeal. The party retreated from attacks on white chauvinism and placed less emphasis on local African-American political issues. In seeking moderate support, it became more cautious and less attractive as an ally in interracial conflicts.

That makes the decline understandable. If a party draws support partly by taking up a community's struggles, pulling back from those struggles can weaken the relationship. We don't need to assume that the workers never cared about communist ideas, or that the party simply abandoned racial issues for economics. The specific changes described are reduced advocacy and greater caution.

Then the final paragraph prevents us from making this explanation too simple.

Kelley doesn't blame the Popular Front's change in line for the entire decline. The new approach initially appealed to African-American communists because it seemed to offer additional ways to blunt repression. So it wasn't seen as useless from the start.

Internal factional battles also mattered, along with changes in agriculture caused by markets and federal government intervention. Farmers' opportunities to organize can change when the industry in which they work changes. The account therefore includes both political decisions and wider conditions.

Our first main-point prediction might focus on why the party lost support: it became less responsive to these workers' concerns, while other political and economic pressures contributed. That's useful, but the whole account is broader. Kelley also explains why the party appealed, how workers used it, and why measuring it through their organizing experience changes the familiar picture of the Popular Front.