Johns Hopkins University Press Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation

Weigand (archivist, Smith College) recounts the heritage of the Communist Party in contemporary attitudes toward gender and race. She provides a look at the role played by leftist groups in the modern women's and civil rights movements between the 1930s and the 1950s. Drawing on the literature of the American Communist Party, FBI and other government files, unpublished letters and papers of Party members, and interviews with activists from the time, Weigand traces the development of a distinctive leftist strain within American feminism. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Drawing on substantial new research, Red Feminism traces the development of a distinctive Communist strain of American feminism from its troubled beginnings in the 1930s, through its rapid growth in the Congress of American Women during the early years of the Cold War, to its culmination in Communist Party circles of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The author argues persuasively that, despite the devastating effects of anti-Communism and Stalinism on the progressive Left of the 1950s, Communist feminists such as Susan B. Anthony II, Betty Millard, and Eleanor Flexner managed to sustain many important elements of their work into the 1960s, when a new generation took up their cause and built an effective movement for women's liberation. Red Feminism provides a more complex view of the history of the modern women's movement, showing how key Communist activists came to understand gender, sexism, and race as central components of culture, economics, and politics in American society. Red Feminism provides a more complex view of the history of the modern women's movement, showing how key Communist activists came to understand gender, sexism, and race as central components of culture, economics, and politics in American society. Autorid: Kate Weigand