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Article: Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression.
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- June 24, 1991
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Communist International's "Third Period," decreed by Stalin in 1928, has long been notorious for its equation of social democracy with fascism, as well as its implausible declaration that the Negroes of the Black Belt counties of the American South constituted an "oppressed nation" with a "right of self-determination"--a claim that had never been put forward by blacks in the United States. Despite the distinct air of unreality about the Third Period line, the American South served as a key proving ground for Stalin's new policy, and the American Communist Party was ordered to go to work organizing Southern black sharecroppers, whom they had previously ignored.
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