Black Activism in the Red Party

Kaitlyn D. Henderson is a policy researcher and advocate, focused on workers' rights and economic inequality. Dr. Henderson worked at Oxfam America and the Aspen Institute following the completion of her Ph.D. in Latin American history at Tulane University, where she received the Peter T. Cominos Memorial Award for her dissertation.

• Introduction; 1. Intersecting activisms: the convergence of Black political actors in the Communist Party; 2. Race, discrimination, and the Constitution of 1940; 3. Tactical failures and ascending Auténticos; 4. Anti-communism and revolution: the Communist Party navigates the 1950s; 5. The Party's final fight for racial equality; Epilogue.

'Provocative and illuminating in both method and argument, Henderson's book rediscovers the tumultuous twentieth-century struggles of Cuba as the Communist Party evolved into a central site for contesting racial discrimination and the search for Black Cubans' equality, from its founding in the 1920s to the consolidation of Communist Party rule under Fidel Castro in the early 1960s. Black Activism in the Red Party is a bold and welcome contribution to scholarly and public debates on the complex, often unexpected relationship between demands for justice from the political margins and the co-optational nature of state power.' Lillian Guerra, University of Florida and author of Heroes, Martyrs and Political Messiahs in Revolutionary Cuba, 1946–1958