New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism Between the Wars

by William J. Maxwell

Howard "Stretch" Johnson, a charismatic Harlemite who graduated from Cotton Club dancer to Communist Party youth leader, once claimed that in late 1930s New York "75% of black cultural figures had Party membership or maintained regular meaningful contact with the Party." He stretched the truth, but barely. In a broad-ranging, revisionary account of the extensive relationship between African-American literary culture and Communism in the 1920s and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231114257
• ISBN13: 9780231114257
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"