2-27-07, 8:16 am

Hes the Lily of the Valley, the Bright n Mawnin Star Hes the Fairest of Ten Thousan t mah soul... --From A Bright and Morning Star

One of the most interesting areas of cultural study is the impact of membership in the Communist Party USA on artists and writers. In some cases, such as Richard Wright, one of many, some of the most important and socially critical work was done while engaged with the Party itself or with forces close to the Party.

A short novella that deserves the attention of everyone is 'A Bright and Morning Star' by Richard Wright. Published in 1938, the story graphically chronicles violent repression against the communist organizers central to the story, living in the South, and the impact this has on the family and community around those activists. Wright highlights the importance socially and the personal nature of Black/white unity expressed through the love and political comradeship shared by a Black man and a white woman. As the child of a similar Black/white couple and knowing first hand what this meant in New York in the mid-1950's, two decades after the story, to read the impact of racism on Richard Wright's strong couple in this story touched a very personal chord in my heart. Wright makes the links between personal and social struggles very clear in a touching and warmway. The warmth of the story was among its most surprising attributes for me because I had experienced some of Wright's other writing as interesting and moving but cold and mechanical in its unfolding of character. 'A Bright and Shining Star' is warm with the affection of family and comradeship and the sacrifices that those relationships sometimes require.

At the time this story was written, Wright had been struggling to survive in the brutally racist society of depression Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. Wright was born on September 4th, 1908 in Roxie, Mississippi, just five year's after W.E.B. Du Bois's seminal work 'Souls of Black Folk' was published. Wright's sojourn in the South overlapped as well with Hosea Hudson's inspiring organizing work in Alabama. The reader is recommended to 'Black Worker in the Deep South' by Hosea Hudson and 'The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South' by Nell Irvin Painter if unfamiliar with this great leader. Louis and Dorothy Burnham, Esther and James Jackson, and other Black activists and communists were active in the South in the period leading up to or simultaneous with Wright's period of development and Party activism, and the period when the story was written. Finally, just six years prior to the story's publication Angelo Herndon, 'a young Black Communist worker and organizer, was arrested in 1932 on a charge of 'insurrection' since he had led in organizing Black and white unemployed people in Atlanta.' The Scottsboro trial was taking place, and Henry Winston was active, later to become the inspiring National Chairman of our Party. All this to indicate that Wright was writing during a period of intense struggle around the issues he addressed in the story, and that the people with whom he was politically interacting were among the best the times had brought forth. I am sure I have just hinted at the number of Black communists engaged in the struggle for fundamental revolutionary social change at the time. 'Hammer and Hoe: Communism and Black Resistance in the 1930's ' by Robin Kelley provides a moving account of the communist organizing and the struggles in the South of the time.

In 1938 Wright was a member of the Communist Party, working in New York City as the Harlem editor for the Daily Worker newspaper, precursor to today's People's Weekly World. He left the Party later, and eventually left the country. However, that does not diminish the strength of this story, nor the way it illuminates the struggle of Communists, Black and white, side by side in the South in the 1930's.

Wright dedicated the royalties from this story to the defense fund for Earl Browder, then general secretary of the CPUSA. Wright wrote of the story: 'Frankly, it is not my story; it belongs to the workers. I would never have written it unless I had felt that I had a workers' audience to read it. Ever since it was first published in the New Masses some two years ago, I've wanted to see it published alone and cheaply enough for workers to buy and read.'

'A Bright and Morning Star' revolves around a Black mother, her concern for her Communist organizer son's welfare when he doesn't return home as expected, his white comrade and lover's efforts to find and help him, and finally the mother's sacrifice to save her child from lynching. The story starts out from the mother's perspective:

'She stood with her Black face some six inches from the moist windowpane and wondered when on earth would it ever stop raining. It might keep up like this all week, she thought. She heard rain droning upon the roof and high up in the wet sky her eyes followed the silent rush of a bright shaft of yellow that swung from the airplane beacon in far off Memphis. Momently she could see it cutting through the rainy dark; it would hover a second like a gleaming sword above her her head, then vanish. She sighed, troubling, Johnny-Boys been trampin in this slop all day wid no decent shoes on his feet.. . . Through the window she could see the rich black earth sprawling outside in the night. There was more rain than the clay could soak up; pools stood everywhere.She yawned and mumbled: 'Rains good n bad. It kin make seeds bus up thu the groun, erit kin bog things down like watah-soaked coffin.''

Later, while waiting, the plot is setup as: 'She ironed again, faster now, as if she felt the more she engaged her body in work the less she would think. But how could she forget Johnny-Boy out there on those wet fields rounding up white and black Communists for a meeting tomorrow? And that was just what Sug had been doing when the sheriff had caught him, beat him, and tried to make him tell who and where his comrades were. Po Sug. They sho musta beat the boy somthin awful! But, thank Gawd, he didn't talk. He ain no weaklin, Sug ain! Hes been lion-hearted all his life long.'

I won't go further in detailing the contents of the story. It is a bone chilling and thrilling race to save a life. It is a moving and touching story. It is multi-layered and beautifully written. It stands among the masterpieces of Black literature of the 20th century.

The history of our communists, and in particular our Black communists, organizing in this country is a proud one of standing up to oppression, but itis also a history of the impact that oppression has on our comrades, our families, and our loved ones. For those who endured the gauntlet of police permitted hooligans attacking cars filled with children, women, and men in Peekskill, New York after a Paul Robeson concert,this story will not be foreign. For those of us who remember the imprisonment of Gus Hall, Henry Winston, and other dear comrades this story will not be foreign. For those of us who remember the struggle to free Angela Davis, this story will not be foreign. For those who remember the loss of Rudy Lozano,who see the gathering storm of US intervention in Cuba as Fidel's life enters its final decades, or who remember the Cuban 5 unjustly languishing in prison today (Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez, Rene Gonzalez), this story is a call to action.

For all of us who face the multiple oppressions of race and gender, and the economic exploitation of class, this story is a inspiring call to remember our proud roots in struggle, to stay strong, and to continue the fight for socialism today!