> how important the activities of CP members,s ex-members, and 'fellow
> travellers" were Carrol
That's a point of considerable interest. How many of the better things in modern U.S. history would not have happened without the CP? Civil rights, tenants rights, union organizing - they were crucial to all of it, no? Doug
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They were certainly important for me. I was good friends in high school with a buddy, whose parents were CPers. Their other son went to UCB and was active in all the early demos, from SF HUAC up through FSM. He was close friends with Mike Tigar at the time. They dropped out of action after FSM to get through Boalt law school.
Meanwhile, their mother added a great deal to my understanding of current events from about 16 through 22. She ran a day camp where I had my first job at fifteen and started learning to teach kids, then later at 20 a summer job as a teacher's assistant at a school for `emotionally' disturbed children run by Sonia Braverman and others. This was a whole commie nest.
So you can add education and psychology to the list. These women were working in a combination of clinical social sciences and marxism all baring on education and raising children. This was something like learning how to enact collective ideals in life with real people. A lot of it was translated into various models for that period's idea of `progressive' education, and progressive parenthood. My friend's mother later worked in the Head Start project in Pacoima. A few years later she become the director, were she remained until she retired. I lost contact with the family in the 80s over personal matters. I never got to thank them.
These experiences were very important to me later when I started working in the disability movements. But none of the leadership had any of those early experiences and turned out to be far less radical than they should have been. There were a few people who were Marxists, but of the studying kind. They'd never seem much of it in practice. Anyway, two of these organizations used to meet with the Oakland Panther's projects to coordinate access, services, referrals, and so forth.
I later got to know Bobby Seal's daughter who was a couple of years younger than my son. We used to talk about the various famous members along with Angela Davis, etc. At one point, D started talking about the media image that Joanna mentioned, as a radical separatist movement that hated white people. She started explaining and I started to laugh a little. Don't explain. It isn't necessary. This led to a discussion (lecture by Dad) of the difference between solidarity and separatism. It was a mixed bag, and very much on D's mind. She had a white computer nerd boyfriend she was afraid to introduce to her mother. I couldn't quite figure out which worried her most, her parent's reaction, or scaring her boyfriend. Her parents are big people and carry a real presence around. Her boyfriend was a shorty. Meanwhile, her mother was working on writing a personal history of the local movement. I hope she finishes it.
CG