Chan Davis, died last month at 96, faced down McCarthyite blacklists and imprisonment to pursue a brilliant academic career. Davis knew how to change and learn from political experience, but he always remained loyal to his socialist principles.
The postwar Second Red Scare successfully smashed the American left. But in the midst of its devastation, a small number of old leftists refused to be shut up by the climate of fear. Without their heroism, the New Left could never have emerged.
“The Fifties,” by James R. Gaines, a former managing editor of Time, People and Life, reminds us that a trip in time to much of America then would resemble “The Handmaid’s Tale” more than “Ozzie and Harriet.”
Reluctant Reformers addresses what I think of as the tripwire of U.S. politics: race. But it does so by examining how several social movements, including abolition, women’s suffrage, populism, progressivism, labor, the socialist and communist left..
A long forgotten if seminal early Richard Wright novel is brought back to life by Library of America for a new generation of readers.
When Angela Davis was arrested after two months on the lam in 1971, Michael Myerson interviewed her and a codefendant in jail — turning him into a prosecution’s witness. He was now in a tough spot: Could he defy the prosecution without going to jail
Reader Comments: Voting Rights; Trump Indictment; Defund the Police; Juneteenth; Lidice Remembered; NYC and Unions Sell Out Retirees; Before Stonewall - Readers Debate Portside post; Critical Race Theory; Anti-Racist Resources; and more....
This in-depth look by Vietnamese Communist Party's General Secretary on how he understands the process of building socialism provides insights too often ignored. Portside ran an excerpted version on May 24.
In legislatures across the country, Republican lawmakers are introducing bills to curtail what educators — in public schools and universities — can say and teach about racism and sexism. It's a new McCarthyism...
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