Gendering Radicalism: Women and Communism in Twentieth-Century CaliforniaIn 1919 Charlotte Anita Whitney, a wealthy white woman, received one of the first Communist Labor Party membership cards for the charter group of the northern California Communist Labor Party. Less than a decade later in Berkeley, California, a Jewish woman named Dorothy Ray Healey became a card-carrying member of the Young Communist League. Nearly forty years later, in 1966, Kendra Claire Harris Alexander, a mixed-race woman, enlisted with the Los Angeles branch of the Communist Party, determined to promote class equality. In Gendering Radicalism, Beth Slutsky examines how American leftist radicalism was experienced through the lives of these three women who led the California branches of the Communist Party from its founding in 1919 to its near dissolution in 1992. Separately, each woman represents a generation of the membership and activism of the party. Collectively, Slutsky argues, their individual histories tell the story of one of the most infamous organizations this country has ever known and in a broader sense represent the story of all women who have devoted their lives to radicalism in America. Slutsky considers how gender politics, California's political climate, coalitions with other activist groups and local communities, and generational dynamics created a grassroots Communist movement distinct from the Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Europe. An ambitious comparative study, Gendering Radicalism demonstrates the continuity and changes of the party both within and among three generations of its female leaders' lives. |
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Gendering Radicalism: Women and Communism in Twentieth-Century California Beth Slutsky Limited preview - 2015 |
Gendering Radicalism: Women and Communism in Twentieth-Century California Beth Slutsky Limited preview - 2015 |
Gendering Radicalism: Women and Communism in Twentieth-century California Beth Slutsky No preview available - 2015 |
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89 Wellesley College activism activists African Americans agenda Alexander’s alliances American Communism American Communist Party Angela Davis Angeles arrest Bay Area became Black Bois Club California Communist California Party campaign Charlene Mitchell Charlotte Anita Whitney Class Letters classbased coalitions commitment Committee Convention conviction CORE CPUSA Criminal Syndicalism CSULBL Davis’s defense democratic Dorothy Healey Collection Dorothy Healey Remembers Dorothy Ray Healey equality female Feminism feminist folder Franklin and Kendra free speech friends gender groups Gus Hall Healey and Isserman Healey’s International interview by author Kendra Alexander Collection labor leadership leftist liberal Los Angeles mainstream membership nonCommunists Oakland oppression organizations pardon Party members Party’s People’s police political prison protest racial racism radical revolutionary role San Francisco Chronicle SoCalLib social Socialist Party Southern California Soviet Union struggles suffrage suffragists throughout trial twentieth century University Press vote W. E. B. Du Bois Wellesley College Whitney’s woman women workers workingclass World York