{"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":144,"pdf_page":143,"physical_index":143,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"b4d94a770ab5fd96805b2272144b6d316b7a427a61f3d946066ca0472e8ff8ec"},"chapter":"CROWDS AND PARTY","content":"In Depression-era Alabama, the space of the Party enabled Hudson and his comrades to see themselves as possessing constituent power, to imagine themselves as establishing a government, setting out the principles and processes for a new, liberated, majority-black society. Hudson couldn’t read, but he had a practical optimism sufficient for imagining himself making a new world as he engaged in the struggles of the day—“the right to vote, against lynching, police brutality, the right for poor rural Negroes to sell they products, that was immediate.”<sup>37</sup> Hudson had this practical optimism because of his work in the party.\n\nIn one of these meetings on a hot July night Hudson first learned about democratic rights. Someone asked a white comrade from New York whether Negroes would ever enjoy democratic rights under the current system. Hudson stops him, saying “I don’t know what you mean by ‘democratic rights.’ I hear you all talking about ‘democratic,’ what is ‘democratic rights’?” The white comrade, Hudson says, “Didn’t get mad, say ‘You ought to know,’ or stuff like that. He stopped and explained it in detail.”\n\nIn the Party, Hudson learned to read and write well enough to publish a book. He attended the Party’s National Training School. The Party reinforced his confidence, strengthening his courage:\n\nWhat the Party was doing was taking this lower class like myself and making people out of them, took the time and they didn’t laugh at you if you made a mistake. In other words, it made this lower class feel at home when they sit down in a meeting. If he got up and tried to talk and he couldn’t express hisself, nobody liable to laugh at him. They tried to help him and tell them, “you’ll learn.” There was always something to bring you forward, to give you courage … The Party made me know that I was somebody.<sup>38</sup>\n\nBefore he joined the Party, Hudson sang with a quartet and attended church. So he had already a kind of confidence, but not the kind that would let him speak easily with the “better class” blacks or with whites.\n\nIn part Hudson’s insecurity was a matter of his illiteracy. The little primary education he had as a child was traumatizing. To get to school, he had to walk several miles alone through woods and pastures and he was afraid of encountering a snake or mad dog. Once he got to school he chewed his sleeves with nervousness. His grandmother instructed the teacher to whip him till he stopped. As soon as he was big enough, he was pulled from school for spring plowing even as his younger brother was allowed to continue to study. The favored younger brother became a preacher. Until he joined the Party, Hudson was held down in inferiorities that tied him to a world of poverty and violence. The Party brought him up out of it, not just by helping him acquire skills but by imbuing him with collective strength. He came to know he was somebody by experiencing the way the Party made people out of the lower class. Even meetings, perhaps especially meetings, helped instill this sensibility as they made them feel at home. As comrades in the Communist Party, they could see and feel the power their collectivity gave them, the strength that comes from solidarity. Comrades wouldn’t laugh at someone having trouble expressing himself. They would support him as one of their own and in that support give him the sense of a world where equality was possible, even when it wasn’t easy.<sup>39</sup>\n\n144","previous_page":143,"next_page":145}