The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: The Life and Times of a Black Radical
by Nell Irvin Painter

“Among the many exemplary qualities of this narrative and its hero is their lack of sentimentality. For Hosea Hudson, there is no romance of American Communism; instead, his relationship with the Communist Party is a model of mutual exploitation… . [A] marvelous book. Moving, fearful, and funny, Hudson and Painter’s Narrative is as valuable an American life as has ever been wrested from anonymity.” Benita Eisler, The Nation Born into a Georgia sharecropper family in 1898, Hosea Hudson moved to Birmingham, Alabama, to work in the steel mills in the turbulent 1930s and 1940s and became a member of the Communist Party as well as president of a CIO union local. It was a hard, dangerous life, to be black and communist and pro-union, and Hudson talked about that life to Nell painter, who brilliantly recreates it in this collaborative oral autobiography.