Bring American Communists Out of the Shadows — and Closets
In the 20th century, American Communist Party members were portrayed as the Red Menace, an enemy within. In reality, they were ordinary people with extraordinarily complex intellectual, political, social, and romantic lives that deserve to be chronicled.
Communist Party USA members participate in a demonstration for unemployed relief during the Great Depression in San Francisco, California. (Bettmann / Getty Images)
When I was eight, two men in dark suits and fedoras stopped me on my way home from Peralta Elementary School in Oakland, California. “We want to talk to you about your parents,” they said. My mom and dad had warned me this might happen and told me how to respond. “You have to talk with them,” I said.
I don’t know if the FBI agents ever actually went to our house. I doubt it. My parents had been visited before, and they told the agents they had nothing to say. Talking wasn’t the point of stopping me anyway. It was to send a message: You’re vulnerable. We can hurt you. Be afraid.
Fear was something I grew up with. It’s why I’m an Oakland boy, not a Brooklyn boy. Our family left New York City the year the Rosenbergs were tried. My dad, head of his printing and publishing union, was blacklisted. We got in the car and drove across the country to the Bay Area, where he’d found a job in the printing plant of the University of California. I was five. Two years later, the Rosenbergs were executed.
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