Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. 1.2 lin. ft.

Summary

1. The Hosea Hudson Papers document this labor leader and communist organizer's political activities in Alabama and the Communist Party's attitude toward labor and the rights of African Americans.

Donor/Sponsor

1. Schomburg NEH Automated Access to Special Collections Project.

Subject

1. African American communists
2. Labor unions > Officials and employees > Southern States > Biography
3. African Americans > Social conditions
4. Iron and steel workers > Southern States > Biography
5. Communism > United States
6. African American communists > Southern States > Biography
7. Labor unions and communism > United States
8. African American labor union members > Southern States
9. Hudson, Hosea
10. African Americans > Southern States > Biography
11. Labor unions > United States > Political activity
12. Communist Party of the United States of America

Call number

1. Sc MG 168

Source (note)

1. Hudson, Hosea

Biography (note)

1. Hosea Hudson was active as a leading militant African American trade unionist and member of the Communist Party from 1931 to 1948, during which time he held prominent positions in both the Party and the United Steel Workers of America.

Processing action (note)

1. Inventoried at Rutgers University Libraries, Dept. of Special Collections
2. Transferred to Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
3. Accessioned
4. Cataloged

Author

1. Hudson, Hosea.

Title

1. Hosea Hudson Papers, 1941-1980 (bulk 1952-1958)

Biography

1. Hosea Hudson was active as a leading militant African American trade unionist and member of the Communist Party from 1931 to 1948, during which time he held prominent positions in both the Party and the United Steel Workers of America. Born the son of sharecroppers in Georgia in 1898, Hudson received little formal education. In his youth and during the early 1920's, he worked as a sharecropper first with his grandmother and later with his first wife. He become an iron molder in 1923 and for the next two decades worked in various steel foundries in Georgia and Alabama.
2. Hudson joined the Communist Party in 1931 and was soon elected a unit leader. During the Depression, he was instrumental in organizing various mass meetings of unemployed African American workers in Birmingham, several of which culminated in marches on the Birmingham City Hall. He enrolled in the Communist Party's National Training School, New York in 1934 where he developed his reading and writing skills and studied political economy and the history of the trade union movement. His role as a successful local communist organizer and his activism on behalf of African American representation in successive meetings and conventions of the Council of Industrial Organizations in Alabama led to his dismissal from various industrial plants in the South. Hudson was also an outspoken advocate of voting rights and anti-lyncing legislation in the South. In 1951 he migrated to the North and settled in Atlantic City, New Jersey with his wife.

Finding aids

1. Inventory available.

Connect to:

1. Finding Aid

Research call number

1. Sc MG 168