History

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry, was one of the most relevant and famous playwrights of the 20th century. Her work was produced in the context of her struggle for equality and justice in her own life as an African-American woman in the United States, as well as her participation in the civil rights movement. What most people don’t know, and what U.S. history has attempted to erase, is that Lorraine Hansberry was also a leader of the communist youth movement.

Roy Rydell, sailor, communist, and teacher, died November 20th 2001 in New York City. On February 15th he would have turned 83 years old.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is truly one of the great working class heroes of the last century, a woman who touched thousands of workers' lives, who was a spirited radical speaker and champion of civil liberties. As a young woman, Flynn was a renown labor orator and member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and became nationally recognized for labor organizing and agitation. Later in her life, she was a leader of the Communist Party, USA, eventually becoming its National Chairperson, the only woman to have held that post.

Today, we celebrate May 1 as International Labor Day. That date was chosen to honor the eight martyrs of the Haymarket Affair and the cause they fought for, the "Eight Hour Day Movement."

The totalitarian Turkish regime revoked Nazim Hikmet's citizenship in 1951. According to a statement of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), those same forces that exiled Hikmet are today celebrating him. "They read his poems; they talked about how big poet he was. Their sole aim is to liquidate him, to defeat his ideas which they could while he was alive," said the statement. But why?

The Southern California YCL joined thousands of people in their march to Sacramento demanding that Gov. Gray Davis sign State Senate Bill 1736. SB 1736 would ensure the United Farm Workers (UFW) bargaining leverage in their contract negotiations with the California Growers. Si Se Puede! Yes We Can! Chants were carried amongst a sea of UFW flags and Aztec dancers.

Every year in the bitter cold mid-January, tens of thousands gather in the German capital of Berlin to commemorate the assassinated revolutionaries Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. What's the story behind the biggest annual march of the political left in this Central European country?