Author Description

Five Communist Black women, five stories to amplify, one century-long struggle for racial, gender, and working-class justice. In this volume of five short biographies, Melissa Ford details the lives of five Black communist women who have "fallen through the cracks" of labor, gender, and radical histories. Edna Griffin, Eleanor Rye Broady, Romania Ferguson, Mattie Lee Woodson Hawkins, and Maude White Katz were all powerful agents of change in the Black working-class struggle, from Chicago to Detroit to New York to Los Angeles. Their activism spanned decades, from the 1920s to the 1990s, yet their stories have been largely ignored by historians and activists. Their lives were interwoven with the CPUSA's tumultuous history, party politics, Red Scare tactics, and government surveillance, yet they continually worked to organize radical labor unions, anti-lynching campaigns, protest police brutality, lead anti-fascist movements, advocate for the unemployed, defend victims of sexual violence, align with Black Power activists, and more. They also knew how to build alliances with mainstream, moderate leaders and organizers, reaching across ideological lines to pursue and obtain workplace, community, and political victories. Building on recent scholarship as well as drawing on extensive archival sources, Their Example Will Inspire Us seeks to re-center Black women in the communist revolution over 100 years in the making. In this first-of-its-kind biography, Ford demonstrates how the stories of Edna, Eleanor, Romania, Mattie Lee, and Maude provide powerful lessons and legacies for us today.