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Joshua B. Freeman, Ryan S. Pettengill. Communists and Community: Activism in Detroit’s Labor Movement, 1941–1956., The American Historical Review, Volume 126, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 1661–1662, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhab634
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Ryan S. Pettengill argues in Communists and Community: Activism in Detroit’s Labor Movement, 1941–1956 that historians have largely ignored the community-based struggles of Communists and their allies after World War II. Most studies, Pettengill notes, concentrate on the attacks on the Communist-aligned Left as the postwar Red Scare unfolded, while giving short shrift to its day-to-day campaigning. Using Detroit as a case study, he shows that the prewar Popular Front, though no longer called that, remained surprisingly robust until the beginning of the 1950s, when anti-Communist assaults effectively destroyed it.
Pettengill’s deeply researched book reveals how the influence of the Communist Party (CP) in Detroit, at least away from the workplace, rested on its ability to form alliances with organizations and individuals that brought their own stature and networks to joint efforts. Labor lawyer Maurice Sugar, fashion designer turned United Auto Workers (UAW) organizer Elizabeth Hawes, and minister Charles A. Hill were among the leaders with popular followings who worked with the party around particular issues (though, unlike the others, Hawes lacked deep Detroit roots and was more a national figure than a local one). Often such alliances entailed the creation of what usually are called front groups, but which Pettengill prefers to call “Communist ‘cooperative’ organizations” (28), a term more confusing than enlightening. In part through these groups, the Communist Left developed deep roots in working-class communities across the city, with ethnic halls, restaurants, churches, and barber shops becoming sites for discussion, proselytization, and mobilizing.
