A review by lemmeseethtjawn
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression by Robin D.G. Kelley

5.0

Hammer And Hoe excels in it's depth of research on various organizations and organizers tied to the Community Party in Alabama and how they shaped larger organizations and political events during the Great Depression, as well as how their work influenced the next generation of activists during the Civil Rights movement. The work also does an excellent job showing the ramifications of major decisions by national-level Party organizers and the Comintern in Moscow; on many occasions, directives from these organs severely complicated or foiled local efforts at building the movement with a complex history and conditions that outsiders struggled to understand (or at worst, didn't care to understand), whip-lashing from one strategy or position to another. This book is for anyone that wishes to understand how activists from the past sought to overcome racism in their quest to build a better world.