A “Renewed Emphasis on Youth”: The CPUSA and the Youth and Student Movement, 1958-1967

Most histories of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) end in 1956. The CPUSA was a “shattered organization” “afflicted with a mortal illness” and played a marginal role after 1956 as its “membership plummeted,” so the dominant, traditional narrative suggests. Just a little context. The Khrushchev revelations and the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution, as well as nearly a decade of domestic Red Scare repression through the Smith and McCarran Acts, weakened the Party. But it was not destroyed. Of course, there are a few excellent examples that challenge this traditional narrative. Gerald Horne’s biography of William L Patterson, Sara Rzeszutek’s biography of James and Esther Cooper Jackson, and Gary Murrell’s biography of Herbert Aptheker. But, much more needs to be done. That these challenges take the shape of biographies – and not general histories – is also worth noting. My research is largely focused on the post-1956 period, and as such I hope to help uncover some of the hidden contributions’ communists made during the 2nd half of the 20th Century. In my collection of short biographies to be published this summer, I enlarge the historical lens to focus on communist defense of the Bill of Rights, the youth and student upsurge of the 1960s, the anti-Vietnam war peace offensive, Charlene Mitchell’s campaign for president of the United States, and the birth of the Party-led National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR), among other topics.