The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: The Life and Times of a Black Radical

432 Pages·1993·10.614 MB·English

by  Hosea Hudson

NELL IRVIN PAINTER
CUze
NARRATIVE
I HOSEA
0
HUDSON
"[Al remarkable collaboration ....
Destined to become a
classic document of
the black experience
in the Great Depression:'
It's a whole lot of Hudsons around,
you just haven't never met them.
Hosea Hudson, 1978
For Hosea Hudson,
Black Communist Worker, at 79
The pungent odor of vapor rub and
Too many hours without sun
Or the season's quick wind
Through broken screens,
The compact chairs bursting their limits,
Stuffing exposed to
Bright, dim, gray ancestors across the walls,
The browning of a bare bulb on the table
Laden with Political Affairs -
Refrigerator clicks, hums low in a farther room,
As counterpoint, as low voice without judgment,
In the tape recorder's whirring:
"Not everyone can be in the Party.
The Party don't mind yo' havin' a friend ..
But they don't want you hopping from limb
to limb like no bantam rooster . . ."
The cassettes change.
Scene unfolds in mute significance.
Eyes along the wall, under table glass,
On a mantle's ledge
Become family:
"That's my mother."
(She is faint, unripe candidate
for his dark voice.)
"And the cousin I told you 'bout, her daughter,
an aunt - my mother's sister."
He is drawn back by the sharp fight of dogs:
"Every afternoon, every afternoon - but that weren't
my point. You see there ain't no such thing as
'higher-ups'. What you got is Democratic Centralism.
The majority decide and then all the bickering got
to stop."
Dogs crackle through the room,
Releasing violent eyes along the wall.
Avoiding the frame of his dead wife in coffin,
I inquire about the overalled black man and
Solemn black companion.
"Yes, sho, that's Sarg' Carfield,
his brother-in-law,
down in Baton Rouge.
Befo' he lost his strength."
The light dims and resumes:
'Tm old now, but I still believes."
From Houston A. Baker, Jr., No Matter Where You Travel,
You Still Be Black, 1979; reprinted by
permission of Houston A. Baker, Jr.

The Narrative of
HOSEA HUDSON
•
The Life and Times
of a Black Radical
Nell Irvin Painter
W. W. Norton & Company
New York• London
Copyright© 1994 by Nell Irvin Painter
Copyright © 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First published as a Norton paperback 1994
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Painter, Nell Irvin.
The narrative of Hosea Hudson, his life as a Negro
Communist in the South.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
I. Hudson, Hosea. 2. Afro-American communists
Southern States-Biography. 3. Afro-Americans-Southern
States-Biography. 4. Trade-unions-Officials and em
ployees-Southern States-Biography. 5. Iron and steel
workers-Southern States-Biography. I. Title.
HX84.H8P34 335.43'092' 4 [Bl 79-4589
ISBN o-393-3w15-9
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. IOIIO
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd
IO Coptic Street, London WC1A 1PU
I dedicate this to my late mother, Laura Camella
Hudson Blakley, who died in 1965. When the FBI was
running me around in the McCarthy period, she'd al
ways want to know how was I coming along, was we
making any progress. She had to slip and whisper to me.
Hosea Hudson
To Connie and Preston Williams and Jean and David
Layzer for their friendship through the Cambridge and
Philadelphia years.
Nell Irvin Painter

Preface
I FIRST SAW Hosea Hudson in June 1976 in Atlantic City, where he
lived in a small apartment behind a barber shop. I knew that Hudson
was nearly eighty years old, a retired ironworker from Birmingham,
Alabama, a longtime radical, but his youthful appearance impressed
me and my friend Nellie McKay before he said much more than
"Hello, ladies." After we exchanged introductory formalities, he re
cited without pause incidents from his life underground, until my
recording tape ran out. Then he invited us to have dinner with him.
He brought out a delicious chicken he had cooked, with vegetables
from his own garden. At the table he talked for three more hours,
and I cursed myself for not bringing more tape.
Driving back to my house in Philadelphia, Nellie and I spoke
little, awed and exhausted by Hudson's energy of recall. It was clear
then that I would have to go back to Atlantic City. But when I had
first learned about Hosea Hudson from Nellie's colleague, Mark
Solomon, I had no idea that we would meet more than once. Even
Hudson's writing gave me no clue to the charm and humor of his
life as he tells it. Obviously he had a great deal more to say, and I
wanted to hear it. Hudson readily agreed to my returning, and we
taped several more sessions before he started to pose some serious
questions.
When he asked about my politics I feared that would mean the
end of our work together, for although I admired his long years of
dedication to radical change in the face of opposition, I had to admit
that I was only a Democrat. To my surprise, Hudson was greatly
relieved. His worry was not that I might be a liberal, but that I might
belong to one of the groups he called "left-splinter," such as the
Socialist Workers Party. They were anathema to the Communist Party
vii