“certify the existence”: Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, vol. 1, 1902–1941: I, Too, Sing America (1986; New York: Oxford, 2002), 105.
“mystery woman”: Mary Helen Washington, “Nella Larsen: Mystery Woman of the Harlem Renaissance,” Ms., December 1980, 44–50.
“all tired and worn”: Hurston to Lawrence Jordan, May 31, 1930, in Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, ed. Carla Kaplan (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), 190.
1929–1934: The Great Depression
“The Fascist racketeers”: Angelo Herndon, Let Me Live (1937; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 166.
anticipated fascism: Cedric Robinson, “Fascism and the Intersections of Capitalism, Racialism, and Historical Consciousness,” Humanities in Society 3, no. 1 (1983): 325.
“a symbol of the clash”: Herndon, Let Me Live, 317. Other scholars have elaborated on the links between Herndon’s case, the Communist Party’s antilynching and racial justice campaigns, and Black antifascism, most notably Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), chap. 4; Mark Solomon, Their Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998); and Clayton Vaughn-Roberson, “Fascism with a Jim Crow Face: The National Negro Congress and the Global Popular Front” (PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2019).
mainly in Alabama: Herndon’s memoir tells a different story, but I am relying on the census data, which not only registers Alabama as the birthplace of all of Harriet’s children but situates her in Union Church by 1920 with her seven children. Angelo is listed as five, which would push his birth year up to 1914, which is very likely since the 1930 Census lists him (as Eugene Braxton) as age fifteen. U.S. Census 1900, Population Schedule: Union Church, E.D. no. 40; U.S. Census 1920, Population Schedule: Union Church, E.D. nos. 43 and 44.
Sallie Herndon: Sallie married Harriet’s brother Alex (or Aleck) and lived in Union Church with their six children for several years. She moved to Birmingham in the mid- to late 1920s. Alex is not listed as a member of the household, although she is listed as “married.” See U.S. Census 1910, Population Schedule: Union Church, E.D. no 44; U.S. Census 1930, Population Schedule: Birmingham, E.D. no. 37-2.
“some kind of a secret”: Herndon, Let Me Live, 72.
Impressed with the Communists: See Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 38.
Atlanta Six: The best account of the Atlanta Six case is Maryan Soliman, “Inciting Free Speech and Racial Equality: The Communist Party and Georgia’s Insurrection Statute in the 1930s” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2014).
“back to the cotton fields”: Ibid., 135.
denying Black Shirts: Ibid., 132–37; see also Charles Martin, “White Supremacy and Black Workers: Georgia’s ‘Black Shirts’ Combat the Great Depression,” Labor History 18 (1977): 366–81.
The ILD retained: On Angelo Herndon’s case and the campaign surrounding it, see Charles H. Martin, Angelo Herndon and Southern Justice (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976); Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Gilmore, Defying Dixie, chap. 4; Rebecca Hill, Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); James J. Lorence, A Hard Journey: The Life of Don West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); and Dennis Childs, “ ‘An Insinuating Voice’: Angelo Herndon and the Invisible Genesis of the Radical Prison Slave’s Neo-Slave Narrative,” Callaloo 40, no. 4 (2017): 30–56.
“lynching is insurrection”: See Gilmore, Defying Dixie; Benjamin Davis, Jr., Communist Councilman from Harlem: Autobiographical Notes Written in a Federal Penitentiary (New York: International Publishers, 1969), 54–60.
“Today, when the world”: Herndon, Let Me Live, 406.
“Yesterday, Ethiopia”: Langston Hughes, “Milt Herndon Died Trying to Rescue Wounded Pal,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 1, 1938; quoted in Vaughn-Roberson, “Fascism with a Jim Crow Face,” 90.
1934–1939: Zora Neale Hurston
“Jonah’s Gourd Vine can be called”: Margaret Wallace, “Real Negro People,” New York Times, May 6, 1934.
“had been dammed up”: Zora Heale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road (1942; New York: HarperPerennial, 1996), 175.
“Her dialogue manages”: Richard Wright, “Between Laughter and Tears,” New Masses, October 5, 1937.
“It is a pity”: Reece Stuart, Jr., “Author Calls Voodoo Harmless in a Study of Haiti and Jamaica,” Des Moines Register, November 13, 1938.
“Hurston’s poorest book”: Robert E. Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 248.
“so grim that”: Zora Neale Hurston, “Stories of Conflict,” Saturday Review of Literature, April 2, 1938.
1939–1944: The Black Soldier
Isaac Woodard wanted: Richard Gergel, Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
Black World War I veterans: On the experience of Black soldiers in World War I, see Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
victory against racism: Kimberley L. Phillips, War! What Is It Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
clashed with local whites: Gail L. Buckley, American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm (New York: Random House, 2001); and Bernard C. Nalty, Strength for the Fight: A History of Blacks in the Military (New York: Free Press, 1986).
court-martialed fifty men: Robert L. Allen, The Port Chicago Mutiny (New York: Warner Books, 1989).
on the European front: On the presence of Black servicemen in D-Day, see Linda Hervieux, Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War (New York: Harper, 2015).
New Guinea campaign: Robert F. Jefferson, Fighting for Hope: African American Troops of the 93rd Infantry Division in World War II and Postwar America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).