Activities and affiliations

Political and party leadership Communist Party USA (CPUSA) 1881–1961 ○ Natural causes

From leading the Great Steel Strike of 1919 to longest-serving leader of American communism

“The only party that genuinely represents the interests of the workers is the revolutionary party.” — Pages from a Worker's Life, 1939

From leading the Great Steel Strike of 1919 to becoming the CPUSA's longest-serving leader. He rebuilt the party after Browder dissolved it in 1944 and authored major Marxist histories including History of the Communist Party of the United States.

Political and party leadership Communist Party USA (CPUSA) 1891–1973 ○ Natural causes

The CPUSA leader who declared Communism was 20th-century Americanism, and then dissolved his own party

“Communism is twentieth-century Americanism.” — July 4, 1938, beneath the Star-Spangled Banner and the red flag together

A Kansas-born CPUSA leader for 15 years from 1930, Earl Browder proclaimed 'Communism is 20th-century Americanism' and in 1944 dissolved the party into a 'Communist Political Association', a strategy known as 'Browderism.' Expelled in 1946, he broke definitively with the party.

Political and party leadership Communist Party USA (CPUSA) 1898–1985 ○ Natural causes

Architect of the Comintern Black Belt thesis: Southern Blacks are an oppressed nation with the right to self-determination

“The problem is fundamentally a question of an oppressed nation with full rights of self-determination.” — Negro Liberation, 1948

American communist, radicalized from the son of former slaves. He helped establish the Comintern thesis of Black self-determination in the Southern Black Belt, served on the CPUSA Politburo, and fought as a political commissar in the Spanish Civil War. Expelled in 1959 for opposing de-Stalinization, he became a leading figure in the Maoist New Communist Movement.

Political and party leadership Communist Party USA (CPUSA) 1910–2000 ○ Diabetes complications

Finnish-American labor militant and CPUSA General Secretary for 41 years, Moscow loyalist, four-time presidential candidate

'Socialism in America will come through the ballot box' — Hall to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1996.

A Finnish immigrant's son forged in the steel strikes, Hall led the CPUSA for 41 years as an orthodox Marxist-Leninist. Trained at Moscow's International Lenin School and imprisoned under the Smith Act, he seized party leadership in 1959, hewed unflinchingly to the Soviet line through every crisis, and ran for president four times, becoming the face of American communism during the Cold War.

Social movements and organizing Communist Party USA (CPUSA) 1915–1964 ○ Heart attack

The Black feminist Marxist who pioneered intersectional analysis, and created the Notting Hill Carnival

"A people's art is the genesis of their freedom" — slogan of the first Caribbean carnival, 1959

Trinidad-born Marxist-feminist theorist. Her 1949 analysis of the triple oppression of race, class and gender is recognised as a forerunner of intersectionality. Deported to Britain, she founded a major Black newspaper and organised the Caribbean carnival that gave rise to Notting Hill Carnival.