Kelley, Robin G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression.Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.

Summary
Robin D.G Kelley’s Hammer and Hoe examines communist radicals in Alabama in the first part of the 20th century. These “unlikely radicals” built a communist party by themselves and were composed mostly of poor semiliterate, and religious blacks, and a small cadre of white folks – ranging from ex-Klansmen to former Wobblies. To get at their experiences, this book examines the communist political opposition through the lenses of social and cultural history. Kelley pays particular attention to “the worlds from which these radicals came, the worlds in which thy lived, and the imaginary worlds they sought to build” in order to understand how class, race, gender work, community, region, history, upbringing, and collective memory shaped the worldviews of these radicals. Their ideas shaped the communist parties local practices in Alabama and contrary to the communist debates (Draper, 1980s), Alabama communists developed strategies and tactics that had nothing to do with the international crises or the “orders” of the Soviet Union (xiv). This study not only highlights black radicals in the South, largely ignored, but also suggests “that racial divisions were far more fluid and Southern working class consciousness far more complex.” (xiii) It is a story about the rise and fall (invisible to visible to invisible) of the communist part in Alabama.