Forgotten Radicals: Communists in the Pennsylvania Anthracite, 1919-1950

(Paperback)

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This detailed investigation of Communists and their Party in the hard coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania, known as the Anthracite, draws on sources such as the central archives of the Communist Party of the United States to examine the origins, growth, and decline of the relatively small but active Marxist-Leninist organization that operated there during the first half of the th century.

Reviews

Exhaustively mining archival, newspaper, and secondary sources as well as over a dozen interviews, Howard has written a solid....study surely destined to be the last word on his subject.Summing Up: RECOMMENDED. Graduate students and faculty. -- R.J. Goldstein, Oakland University * Choice Reviews *
Howard investigates the "Anthracite Reds," who operated in the home ground of the Molly Maguires and the Lattimer massacre. He shows how conditions were ripe for members of the Communist Parts there to attempt to organize resistance to the overwhelming power of the mine owners, sustain unemployed miners in the Depression, support labor unions, and lead opposition to local fascist organizations before World War II. He also shows how the Cold War made it nearly impossible for a miner to declare himself a communist and remain in the anthracite. * Books News, Inc. *
Howard carefully tells the story of how the indigenous leaders and members of the anthracite party struggled to build their organization from 1919. Howard's narrative does not support either the traditional view of the party's subservience to the Cominternnor revisionist views of the part as a genuine form of American radicalism. Instead, Howard documents the rather stormy history of party line changes, as well as local issues championed by the largely immigrant workers who led the party in the anthracite region....As such,Forgotten Radicals makes a significant contribution to the literature on local Communist Party history and gives much to historians of the anthracite region, historians of the Communist Party, and labor historians in general. -- Samuel W. White, Assistant Professor, Labor Education Program, University of Missouri

Author Bio

Walter T. Howard is Associate Professor of History at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. Professor Howard holds a Ph.D. in History from Florida State University.