{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","uuid":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","normalized_title":"crowdsandparty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","isbns":["9781781686942","9781781686720","9781781687666"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Crowds%20and%20Party","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/search"},"page":{"printed_page":142,"pdf_page":141,"physical_index":141,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"030650be1d76414c0a232849378baeb3dc6ecd04839fb344fba1dd95836adca3"},"chapter":"CROWDS AND PARTY","content":"When invited to his first meeting, Hudson was living in a company house, “stoolpigeon row,” that is, a block where all the houses were occupied by company people. Hudson was anxious when Al Murphy, a Party member recently fired from the foundry, approached his house in broad daylight with an armful of papers, including the Liberator, which argued for Negro self-determination in the Black Belt of the US South. “And here come this guy Murphy they done fired out the shop. He know he been spotted, they know who he is … He brought me papers, come strutting up the street, everybody know him, ain’t nowhere to hide, and he come there, leave me a paper.”<sup>33</sup> Hudson had known Murphy briefly when Murphy worked in the foundry’s coal room. He knew Murphy was involved with an organization defending the Scottsboro boys and that he had been in New York. Hudson had asked Murphy about meetings in Birmingham, but Murphy, suspicious, kept mum. And then he comes by Hudson’s house, openly, “strutting up the street.” Anyone can see him, and people know who he is. Murphy’s not afraid. Hudson says that he himself was “never scared of the Reds,” although other people were because of the risk of losing their jobs. Hudson wasn’t afraid of that either, having been fired multiple times. When he says that Murphy “come busting up to my house and yard with an armful of papers in broad daylight,” he isn’t contrasting Murphy’s confidence with his own fear. He associates it instead with the damage that people who are inexperienced in the Party can do to someone with a job and living in a company house. Hudson judges Murphy from the Party perspective to which Murphy himself introduced him. It’s as if Murphy embodies a set of different breaks and possibilities, breaks between employed and unemployed, housed and homeless, open and hidden, literate and illiterate, confident and cautious, developed and inexperienced.\n\nThat first meeting Hudson attended was in the small house of another worker from the shop. As Hudson tells it, “I didn’t say anything, but I’m a little let down, cause I’m looking for a big something, important people. And here’s the guys working in the shop with me, regular guys.” In this disappointing, unimportant setting, a small house with regular guys, Murphy outlines the role and program of the Party:\n\nthe Scottsboro case and the unemployed and the Depression and the imperialist war. You had all that he was talking about that night. In the biggest part, I didn’t know what he was saying. All I know is about the Scottsboro case. He was explaining about how the Scottsboro case is a part of the whole frame-up of the Negro people in the South—jim crow, frame-up, lynching, all that was part of the system. So I could understand that all right, and how speed-up, the unemployment, and how the unemployed people wouldn’t be able to buy back what they make, that they was consumers and that it would put more people in the street … He took the conveyer, up there where we mold, took that and made a pattern, said, “How many men been kicked out in the street after they put that conveyer machine in there?” I could see that.<sup>34</sup>\n\n142","previous_page":141,"next_page":143}