"The most dangerous communist in the United States" : a biography of Herbert Aptheker / Gary Murrell ; with an afterword by Bettina Aptheker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murrell, Gary, 1947- author.

Contributor:

Aptheker, Bettina, writer of afterword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Historians--United States--Biography.

Historians.

African Americans--Historiography.

African Americans.

Communists--United States--Biography.

Communists.

Aptheker, Herbert, 1915-2003.

Aptheker, Herbert.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963--Friends and aassociates.

Du Bois, W. E. B.

Communist Party of the United States of America--Biography.

Communist Party of the United States of America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (468 p.)

Place of Publication:

Amherst, [Massachusetts] ; Boston, [Massachusetts] : University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"When J. Edgar Hoover declared Herbert Aptheker 'the most dangerous Communist in the United States,' the notorious FBI director misconstrued his true significance. In this first book-length biography of Aptheker (1915-2003), Gary Murrell provides a balanced yet unflinching assessment of the controversial figure who was at once a leading historian of African America, radical political activist, literary executor of W.E.B. Du Bois, and lifelong member of the American Communist Party. Although blacklisted at U.S. universities, Aptheker published dozens of books, including the groundbreaking American Negro Slave Revolts (1943) and the monumental seven-volume Documentary History of the Negro People (1951-1994). He also edited four volumes of the correspondence and unpublished writings of Du Bois, an achievement that Eric Foner, writing in the New York Times Book Review, called 'a milestone in the coming of age of Afro-American history.' As Murrell shows, Aptheker the historian was inseparable from Aptheker the leading Communist Party intellectual, polemicist, and agitator. During the 1960's, his ability to rouse and inspire both black and white student radicals made him one of the few Old Leftists accepted by the New Left. Aptheker had joined the CPUSA during its heyday in the 1930's, convinced that only through the party's leadership could fascism be defeated and true liberation be achieved: he ended his affiliation five decades later in 1991 after the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

An immigrant family's New York

The Red decade

"Double V"

The Aptheker thesis

Into the fires

Prelude to McCarthyism

The time of the toad

Are you now or have you ever been?

De facto dissolution of the Party

Revelations and disputations

Old Left and new

The dangerous enemy in our midst

Mission to Hanoi

"Let my name forever be enrolled among the traitors"

Aptheker and Du Bois

Publishing Du Bois

Yale historians and the challenge to academic freedom

The American Institute for Marxist Studies

Conflict and compromise

Black power and the freeing of Angela Davis

An assault on honor

Party control

Renewal and endings

Rebellion in a haunted house

Comrades of a different sort

Now it's your turn

Afterword / by Bettina Aptheker.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781613763599

161376359X

OCLC:

928807943