Red Lives

Red Lives: Our Years in the US Communist Party (1950-2000) is the first collection of historical analyses and reminiscences by members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Communist youth movement in the US from the 1950s through the 1990s. The nearly fifty first-person testimonies bring to life a missing chapter in the history of US radicalism and demonstrate the influence of the post-World War II generation of Communists on social justice movements.

Most histories of US Communism end in 1956 when Red Lives just begins, when McCarthyism was on its final legs, the Civil Rights Movement was sweeping the American South and the whole country, the student movement was taking its first breaths, and a new generation of young people were seeking out socialists, communists, and the Communist Party in order to craft a radical, anti-establishment politics. At a time when the launching of Sputnik, the Cuban Revolution, other revolutions sweeping Africa, and the example of the Vietnamese people fighting for their freedom and independence were inspiring the world, one-third of the world was also socialist, led by the Soviet Union and China. The time was propitious for a new generation in the US to also be seeking out, and joining, the CPUSA. This first volume of Red Lives, Coming of Age in the Communist and Labor Movements, brings the stories of that generation to the forefront of American history at a time when narratives of resistance are more needed than ever before.