Hosea Hudson

Hosea Hudson

Hosea Hudson (April 12, 1898-1988) was an African American labor leader and Communist, crediting the Communist Party, USA for teaching him how to read. He joined the CPUSA in the 1930s and immediately became active in the campaign to save the Scottsboro Nine. He was a sharecropper, steelworker, and union officer. In the late 1930s, he founded the Right to Vote Club, which registered African Americans to vote in defiance of Jim Crow laws.

During the early-Red Scare, Hudson was expelled from the Birmingham Industrial Union Council. In 1947, he was fired from his job, and removed from his union position, and blacklisted. In his moving autobiography Black Worker in the Deep South, Hudson tells his story, as well as the larger story of the long fight against Jim Crow, systemic racism, and racial capitalism. In 1987, the historian Nell Irvin Painter co-authored a book about Hudson, who is also featured in numerous collections on the Civil Rights Movement and Communists.