Negro Liberation

New York: Intenational Publishers, 1948. First Edition. Octavo. 21.5cm. Publisher's royal blue cloth titled in red to spine. 245pp. Slightly shaken in its binding, bumped and scufed to spine ends and corners, with some light surface wear and soiling to the boards, the most notable defect is a small, shallow scrap to the fore-edge of the front board, exposing the board beneath the cloth; internally clean and fresh, signed to the front free endpaper by both Haywood, and Jack Stachel. A good copy of a significant work, cosmetically a trifle unappealing, but structurally solid.

A child of enslaved peoples, Haywood joined the American Communist Party and became a notable writer and speaker on the theory of the African American struggle. He wrote detailed first hand accounts of the Scottsboro trials, the 1919 Chicago riots, and on a number of other subjects related to the experiences of people of color. This text is possibly the first truly comprehensive piece of writing on the "Negro Question" by an African American reformer and Marxist. Haywood was a committed believer in the movement calling for an autonomous African American nation. He was expelled from the CPUSA in 1958 for his refusal to abandon his staunchly Stalinist ideology; following his expulsion, Haywood adopted an increasingly Maoist line, eventually helping to found the Maoist New Communist Movement in the mid-1960s. As well as being signed by Haywood, this copy is additionally signed by Jack Stachel, a prominent labor activist, key member of the CPUSA, and a frequent colleague and collaborator with Earl Browder, the CPUSA's General Secretary who, among many other things, was an agent and recruiter for the Soviet Union's espionage efforts. Copies of this important work signed by Haywood are scarce, and the additional signature of Stachel is an interesting association.