The cover art for the album "Power to the Working Class: Revolutionary songs written & sung by workers & students in struggle." Source: Library of Congress

Red in the Stars and Stripes?

A History of Socialism in America

05.08.20

With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and record levels of unemployment, the conversation around socialism in the U.S. has resurfaced in surprising ways. So we thought we’d revisit this episode from 2019.

Image: The cover art for the album “Power to the Working Class: Revolutionary songs written & sung by workers & students in struggle.” Source: Library of Congress

This episode and related resources are funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this show, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Red in the Stars and Stripes? Lesson Set

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At many times throughout American history, there have been organized movements in favor of socialism. This debate continues in today’s politics, as several candidates in the Democratic Party have advocated for a more socialist approach to the United States economy. For some Americans, socialism represents a more equitable distribution of power and wealth. For others, its values are completely antithetical to the “American Dream” and free enterprise.

This lesson, and the corresponding BackStory episode, focus on how the United States has grappled with socialism throughout its history. It covers the rise of labor movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the Pullman Strike and the contributions of Eugene V. Debs. It outlines the unique politics of Milwaukee, Wisconsin which elected three socialist mayors between 1910 and 1960. It discusses conservative critiques of socialism put forward by media figures such as Clarence Manion that still resonate in political discourse today. Finally, it examines the perspective of the current mayor of Jackson, Mississippi who is a self-identified socialist.

For many people, there is a negative connotation to the term “socialism.” This lesson explores some of the reasons behind this stigma. The goal is to get students to use a critical lens when examining the ongoing confrontation between socialism and capitalism throughout American history.

Segments

I Am For Socialism Because I Am For Humanity

In the beginning of the 20th century, Eugene Debs was the voice of the American socialist movement and national symbol of workers’ rights. But he wasn’t always a radical. Historian Nicholas Salvatore charts Debs’ path to becoming a socialist and explains the unique brand of American socialism he espoused throughout his political career thereafter.

Music:
Etched Memory by Podington Bear

Eugene Debs; radicalism; socialism

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

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Speaker 1: Major funds for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Brian Balogh: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory.
Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Brian Balogh.

Nathan Connolly: And, I’m Nathan Connolly. If you’re new to the podcast, we’re all historians, and each week, along with our colleagues, Joanne Freeman and Ed Ayers, we explore the history of one topic that’s been in the news.

Brian Balogh: We’re going to start today’s show just outside of Chicago in the town of Pullman. Founded in 1880 by George Pullman, owner of the Pullman Car Company, the town was developed exclusively for laborers. It was an experiment in social reform providing workers a community free from poverty and crime. But, according to historian Nicholas Salvatore, Pullman’s motivations were, in reality, much less altruistic.

Nicholas S.: That model town was actually a way of controlling the workforce, because if the worker … Let’s say a family is there with a husband, wife, and two kids, and if the husband was the one who was working on the line, if he raised any issues about conditions, wages, dissent concerning the way the company was run, et cetera, et cetera, they get thrown out. And, it happened all the time.

Brian Balogh: In 1893, the railroad industry was hit hard by a financial panic. In response, Pullman fired workers and cut wages, but refused to lower rent. As conditions in town rapidly deteriorated, laborers organized a strike led by rising politician and labor activist, Eugene Debs.

Nicholas S.: Debs was the titular leader of the strike. He was rooted in Chicago. He was the symbol of the strike on a national level. He traveled to other strike sites to give rallies, give speeches, et cetera, et cetera. So, he became this singular figure, and his speeches were really dynamic and hard biting. He was laying out as clearly as he possibly could what actually was happening in this Pullman strike and what the stakes in the strike were for working people who simply had absolutely no control at that point of their workplace situations.

Brian Balogh: If it is a fact that after working for George Pullman for many years, you appear two weeks after your work stops, ragged and hungry, it only emphasizes the charge I made before this community. I do not believe in violent methods, but I do believe in telling the truth. The paternalism of Pullman is the same as the self-interest of a slaveholder in his human chattels. You are striking to avert slavery and degradation.

Nicholas S.: In the Pullman corporation’s response to the strike, he saw the power and unyielding commitment of capital to do as it wants to do and to ignore whatever the issues or grievances or concerns that their workforce had about wages, conditions or whatever it may be. And, he saw that that was not going to change voluntarily.

Brian Balogh: As the strike escalated, Pullman and his allies appealed to the government for help. Fearing a national crisis, President Cleveland dispatched federal troops and brutally defeated the strike. Debs was arrested soon thereafter, and sentenced to six months in prison.

Nicholas S.: The head of the prison at Woodstock allowed him to have untold numbers of visitors, so British socialists showed up, American socialists came, working people came, leaders of unions came. They would bring him a book or they would leave a pamphlet or they would talk for an hour or two or three about conditions in America or whatever the … We don’t have all the details about what they talked about, but the point was is that his vision broadened in that framework.
He essentially went to graduate school in Woodstock Jail, and he really had a lot to think about. I don’t know what happened in jail because we don’t have the record of that from him, but in reading his speeches, et cetera, after Woodstock, it’s in that process that he begins to see that you can both be a socialist and a fiercely committed American, small d democrat who believed in the vote and believed in democratic processes.

Brian Balogh: Debs’ release from prison marked his arrival on the national scene. Although he wasn’t yet a Socialist, by 1895 he had undoubtedly become one of the most prominent labor activists in America.

Nicholas S.: When he came out of jail and came on the train from Woodstock to the depot in Chicago, according to the contemporary newspapers, some hundred thousand people jammed the depot to welcome him back. That’s where Debs really became almost … I hate to use this word but almost canonized as a national leader of dissent and of working people, as a fighter for working people’s rights. Then it’s a little bit later in ’96 that he declares as a Socialist.

Brian Balogh: Debs spent much of his career traveling the country, spreading the word about the ills of industrial capitalism. Tall and lanky in appearance, Debs was a force of nature on stage drawing huge crowds from all political stripes just to see him speak.
There are two social and economic systems which have been conflicting since the morning stars sang together and the Son of God shouted forth their joy. Under one system, the few have enjoyed the fruits of the Earth and the masses have been doomed to serve as beasts of burden. The beneficiaries of this system believe that a system under which the few rule and the masses toil and submit to their masters in silence, is, on the whole, a good system. It is a system, however, which has filled the world with unspeakable woe, and it is needless to say that it is under this system we now live.
There is another system under which there is no favored class, no special privileges where the Earth and the fullness thereof becomes the heritage of the common people.

Nicholas S.: It’s, I think, important to remember with Debs that his socialism is a socialism that is not calling for revolution as might be understood in a more orthodox, Marxist framework from a European background. He’s saying, “We can use the mechanisms of our democratic process, which have been brutalized by corporate interests and actions, and we can, in fact, turn this around.” He never rejected the concept of American democracy. He criticized it fiercely for its lapses. It’s the absence of fulfillment, et cetera, et cetera, but he never, to my knowledge, he never sought to replace it.

Brian Balogh: Debs’ unique brand of American socialism had broad appeal. As a Socialist Party candidate, he ran for president five times, at one point, garnering 12% of the popular vote. While many Americans had mixed feelings about Debs, he was almost universally beloved by the working class.
In 1918, Debs was arrested again. This time for speaking out against America’s involvement in World War I. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and even behind bars, Salvatore says Debs found a way to deeply affect those around him.

Nicholas S.: Here was this guy who was accused of being disloyal to the United States in prison with people charged and convicted of doing all sorts of different things from murder and what have you to robberies, to this, to that, the other thing. Debs starts talking to them, and he’s not bashful about who he is and what he’s done and et cetera, et cetera. By the time he left prison … I don’t know that this has ever happened before or since. By the time he left prison, the warden opened the jail cells and let all of the prisoners who wanted to come to the side of the prison where he would be walking out of down to meet the car where he was getting picked up.
They were applauding him. There was something he did in that prison in terms of trying to return to these men some sense of their dignity and their humanity by recognizing them. That was stunning, absolutely stunning. It had little to do with socialism in the sense of ideological, but it was Debs the man and the quality of his personality and his concern for other people that led the warden, of all people, to do that.

Brian Balogh: Nicholas Salvatore is Professor Emeritus at Cornell University and the author of Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist.

Sewer Socialism

Recently, it was announced that the 2020 Democratic National Convention will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Nathan talks with historian Aims Mcguinness to learn about the city’s largely forgotten socialist past.

Music:
Retake by Ketsa

Milwaukee; infrastructure; local government; sanitation; socialism

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

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Nathan Connolly: Talk of socialism seems to be roaring back in the media these days, from Democratic candidates who embrace it to Republicans who deride it. And, polls show its popularity is growing, particularly among Millennials. So, today on the show, the history of socialism in America.

Brian Balogh: We’ll talk about the way a conservative pundit used radio to push back against socialism during the Cold War.

Nathan Connolly: And, I’ll be talking to an elected Socialist mayor in the heart of Mississippi.
Most know Milwaukee, Wisconsin for its baseball and breweries, but recently, people are rediscovering a whole different side of the city. In March, it was announced that the 2020 Democratic National Convention will be held in Milwaukee. That announcement has generated renewed interest in the city and its largely forgotten socialist past. From 1910 to 1960, Milwaukee elected three Socialist mayors, more than any other major American city. Their policies were centered on sanitation, parks, and education, became known as Sewer Socialism. But, why, of all places, did socialism take root in Milwaukee?

Aims McGuinness: Some of the answers that historians have given have focused on the large population of immigrants, especially from German-speaking parts of Europe, and the presence of a large, working-class and a booming industrial economy in Milwaukee in the early 20th century.

Nathan Connolly: That’s historian Aims McGuinness. He says those answers, while true, only tell half the story. What really sets Milwaukee apart from other industrial cities revolved around something called the Milwaukee Idea.

Aims McGuinness: Victor Berger, who is the first Socialist elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1910, and he and his allies look particularly to the Social Democratic Party and a history of social democracy in Germany. They adapt those ideas to the context of the United States, and they come up with what, at least for a time, is a very successful political strategy that Victor Berger dubs the Milwaukee Idea.
The Milwaukee Idea he envisions as an alliance between labor unions and a specifically Socialist, working-class, political party. There are other competing ideas of how to make a socialist revolution happen. This is Victor Berger’s particular spin. This proves for a time to be extraordinarily successful in Milwaukee and makes Milwaukee, at least for a time, a model for Socialists elsewhere in the United States.

Nathan Connolly: Well, this is one of the things that I’ve always found so incredible is that you have these moments of backlash against the socialist movement, after World War I, again during McCarthyism in the 1950s. You have, in some ways, this durability of socialism in Milwaukee, and I’m curious, is this attributed to the Milwaukee plan that Berger initially conceives of, or are there other elements that allow Milwaukee socialist element to be so durable across these years?

Aims McGuinness: The repression of the Wilson administration against Socialists and other critics of U.S. entering into World War I, it hits Socialists hard across the board in the United States. Because Milwaukee had a relatively large German-American population, many of whom were critical or, at least, unsympathetic to U.S. entering into World War I, this, in the short term, actually increases German-American support for the Socialists in 1917, 18, 19 and partly as a reaction. In other words, you have German-Americans who didn’t necessarily regard themselves as Socialists but are drawn to the party precisely because of its position on the war. So, I think that’s one reason.
I think another factor to consider really important is Socialist discomfort with and then opposition to the Bolshevik Revolution. The Socialist Party and the Communist Party are in conflict, in competition with one another in the United States after 1917. Although, both Socialists and Communists are red-baited, the fact that most Socialists, and certainly Socialist leaders in Milwaukee, are highly critical of a Soviet Union and then anti-Stalinists, that, to a certain extent, shields them from the full wrath of Joseph McCarthy.

Nathan Connolly: These are shades of gray that are obviously very foreign to people thinking only from the early 21st century where we tend to paint communism and socialism with the same broad brush. Most people, even before the 1950s, have a hard time getting their mind around these different gradations on the left. But, there’s even finer points. There’s something in Milwaukee, as I understand it, called Sewer Socialism. Now, what is that exactly and where did that term come from?

Aims McGuinness: The term Sewer Socialism began as an insult or a condescending remark by another famous Socialist from the early 20th century, Morris Hillquit, who derided Daniel Hoan, who was Milwaukee’s second Socialist mayor, essentially being overly practical, not sufficiently concerned with a larger project of revolution. He has a famous quotation, Hillquit does, where he says, “I do not belong to the Daniel Hoan group to whom socialism consists of merely providing clean sewers of Milwaukee.”
So, that started out as an insult, but then some Socialists in Milwaukee really embraced this term and they say, “That’s right. That’s who we are. We care about improving the lives of working-class people, and that means, among other things, giving them clean water, parks, higher wages, et cetera.”

Nathan Connolly: Give me a sense of some of those improvements because just knowing how local politics work, you don’t get to be mayor, and certainly not stay mayor, unless you can deliver goods and services to your constituency. Local politics are very unforgiving where that’s concerned. So, I have to imagine that there are a number of really concrete accomplishments that Milwaukee Socialist mayors could point to. What might those be?

Aims McGuinness: Milwaukee Socialists initially came in as clean government activists. They didn’t just promise to clean up government, but they instituted policies that actually ensured that government would be cleaner in the future, things that in retrospect might seem simple, but, at the time, were revolutionary, like creating an inventory of city property, going to the University of Wisconsin and getting the advice of economists there like John Commons. How do we introduce modern accounting into municipal governments? How do we, in a sense, open the books to the people?

Nathan Connolly: I just want to be sure I understand. You have the Socialists befriending the economists as part of their governing strategy.

Aims McGuinness: Oh, absolutely. The Socialists really rely on the University of Wisconsin, including experts who are not Socialists. But, they reach out beyond the Party for expertise, again, to make corruption less possible. One of the things that Socialists wanted to do was to build infrastructure and that means public investment, and that means people’s tax dollars. People aren’t going to be willing to make that investment if they can’t be sure that that money isn’t going to what it’s supposed to be going.
So, accounting is revolutionary from the Socialists’ perspective and that’s one of the reasons why they’re able to build this broader electoral support. That same is true with debt. This often surprises people in the present to hear that Socialists also promised and succeeded in minimizing municipal debt and also even in lowering taxes. Well, how did they do this? In part, it was through reducing corruption, making sure that the money went where it was supposed to go rather than people’s pockets.
But, their interest in minimizing municipal debt actually also comes from a socialist critique. They’re very concerned about the influence of what we would now call the financial industry on municipal politics. They see that one of the ways in which banks wield influence over public policy is through financing public works through debt, high-interest debt, to the private sector. What Socialists in Milwaukee say is, “No, actually the way to free ourselves from banks is through, what they call, pay as you go government. We’re not going to spend any more on public works than we get in revenue.”
They were remarkably successful at this. Milwaukee city government remains solvent, doesn’t go into bankruptcy even in the darkest moments of the Great Depression.

Nathan Connolly: Aims, how would you account for the fact that Milwaukee’s socialist history, as rich as it’s been, has been largely forgotten to folks living outside of that city?

Aims McGuinness: One reason is because of red-baiting and red scare. Too often, self-described liberals in the United States have been in denial about the socialist roots of some of their most important and courageous and valuable ideas. And, they haven’t wanted to acknowledge that history for fear of being branded Reds themselves. Sadly, by running away from that history, they have, in a sense, cut themselves off and cut our country off from this larger, global history and conversation about the roots of inequality in our world.
You know what? It hasn’t gotten them very much because any Socialist who thought that they could shield themselves by red-baiting, by calling themselves liberals, was soon to be disappointed to find out that the term liberal could be just as viscously stigmatized as the term-

Nathan Connolly: Socialist.

Aims McGuinness: Yeah. So, at a certain point, people on the left, no matter how they think of themselves, have to step back and think, “What do we do with our keywords? Do we keep on running away from them and letting our opponents paint us into corner after corner, or do we sit back and say, ‘You know what? Actually, own it. I may not be a Socialist, but I owe a debt to this history.'” If more liberals and more people on the left would be willing, even if they’re not Socialists, to stick up for the richness of our political vocabulary, there might be, at the very least, more competition. We’d have a richer political debate in this country then we have right now.

Nathan Connolly: Aims McGuinness is a History Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Clarence Manion Vs The Socialist World Order

During the Cold War, resistance to what some perceived to be socialist policies and government overreach permeated into the airwaves of conservative radio. At the center of this pushback was a man named Clarence Manion, who hosted a program called “The Manion Forum of Opinion” for 25 years. Scholar Nicole Hemmer says in many ways Manion is the “godfather of modern conservative radio,” and that his attempt to stoke a fear of socialism in the United States can still be heard in conservative media today.

Music:
Driftwood by Podington Bear

conservative media; radio; socialism

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

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Despite Milwaukee’s string of Socialist mayors, socialism hasn’t been widely accepted as an ideology that belongs in American politics. During the Cold War, resistance to what some perceived to be socialist policies and government overreach cascaded into the airwaves of conservative radio. Some conservative commentators believed socialism was lurking on the horizon in the 1950s thanks to New Deal policies like social security, which they thought enforced an unfair dependence on the government.
Scholar Nicole Hemmer is an expert on the history of conservative media. She says back in the 50s, as American fears of socialism and communism stoked the fires of the Cold War, the right-leaning radio world looked a lot different than it does today.

Nicole Hemmer: It was a tiny, tiny universe. Most of the people who got involved in conservative media in the 1950s and 1960s were die-hard conservatives looking for a way to get their message out. So, they weren’t people who were rooted in the media. They weren’t radio shock jocks the way that Glenn Beck was or Rush Limbaugh was. They were people who had these really strong political beliefs that they wanted to find a way to get out to the American people.

Brian Balogh: And, at the center of this was a man Nicole says in many ways is the godfather of modern, conservative radio, a guy name Clarence Manion.

Clarence Manion: On this program last Sunday, I talked very frankly about the prospects for violent, bloody revolution here and in Russia. This is a subject which must be reviewed soon and often because one or the other of these revolutions is high on the agenda of probabilities.

Nicole Hemmer: Clarence Manion’s was one of the first radio programs from a conservative bent. He would join a handful of other, mostly men, who would host these weekly, 15-minute radio shows that really ran all across the country. He had been the Dean of Notre Dame Law School, so he is very well-credentialed. He was very much rooted in higher education and the law, so somebody like Clarence Manion, who does not have your normal radio host profile, was sort of forced, in a way, to take to the airwaves because he really wanted to get his message out and be believed that’s the best way to do it.

Brian Balogh: In 1954, Manion started his weekly radio show called the Manion Forum of Opinion. The program ultimately ran for 25 years and throughout all that time, Manion’s message stayed pretty consistent.

Clarence Manion: This we do know beyond doubt. The sure way to defeat communism is to preserve American liberty. To preserve American liberty we must drain off this deep pool of federal power now. This is the truth. Let us face it.

Nicole Hemmer: Socialism took up a very important place in arguments against communism for conservatives because conservatives painted the road to communism as one that passed through socialism. So, a society would first embrace liberalism, something like what the Democrats were doing back in the 1930s and 1940s.

Clarence Manion: Tonight, I wish to discuss a revolution that has already taken place. The one that happened in the United States in 1933. The revolution that has proceeded from then until now without interruption. The 1933 revolution has produced an entirely new set of American governmental principles. Basic presuppositions that were universally accepted in 1930 have since been thrown into the political ashcan. Ideas that were then politically abhorrent have now been embraced by both major political parties.
There is a long list of such items. Here are just a few of them. Compulsory federal old age insurance, foreign giveaway programs, federal regulation of labor …

Nicole Hemmer: So, they would embrace something like New Deal liberalism and inevitably after that as the people got softer and got more used to getting things from the government, then a society would pass into socialism and from there, it inevitably slid into communism. Communism was the overall control of everyone’s lives and that, for conservatives, was the inevitable end result of the embrace of liberalism.

Brian Balogh: From the documents I’ve read in the middle of the 50s, wasn’t there a kind of you’re with us or against us attitude? How does that square with this pathway and continuum notion?

Nicole Hemmer: Well, the idea that there was a slippery slope from liberalism to communism meant that you had to draw a firm line right from the start, that you had to be with conservatives or you were setting the nation on the path toward communism. So, it seems strange. If politics is a spectrum, then it doesn’t really support a black and white world view. But, in fact, what they’re arguing is that it is a black and white world where you’re either communist or anti-communist, but they just draw the line in a very different spot. If you’re conservative, you’re anti-communist. If you’re anything else, you’re committing the nation to communism.

Brian Balogh: So that liberalism was the gateway drug straight to communism.

Nicole Hemmer: Absolutely. That there was no turning back once you started injecting liberalism into a society.

Brian Balogh: What was unAmerican about liberalism as Manion saw it?

Nicole Hemmer: So, Manion saw liberalism as a ceding of individual freedom, which is to say liberalism forced you to give up freedoms in order to get things from the government. If the government was going to give you medical care, they were taking away your freedoms to choose. Manion believed that in taking care of people in their old age, there’s something like social security, people were becoming dependent on the government. And, if you became dependent on the government, then the government could take more and more control over your lives.
It was really for him a choice between dependence or independence and any sort of government program encouraged dependence.

Clarence Manion: What is the great potential menace to human liberty? It is the giant corporation, the big labor union, Wall Street, or syndicated crime? No. The great potential enemy of human liberty is the menacing power of government. In its proper place, at the service of man’s liberty, government, through its courts, legislators, and executive agents, can protect the rights of man against every conceivable combination of private power that may assail man’s rights. It is only against the power of government itself that liberty is helpless.

Brian Balogh: To what extent did Manion’s concern about the path to socialism begin to define what was American in the first place?

Nicole Hemmer: Oh, it very much did. Manion’s concerns over socialism, which really blossomed in the early 1950s as the Cold War’s really beginning to heat up. He defined Americanism, which was the word that he used before he started using the word conservatism, Americanism was defined in opposition to socialism. So, in many ways, as Manion focused more and more on these fears of government entrenchment in people’s lives, his conservatism took on more and more of a kind of libertarian tone, this idea that government couldn’t have any role in anyone’s lives.
Which I have to say, was actually a real reversal for Manion, who in the 1930s, was a New Deal liberal. But, his turn towards conservatism and his fears, in many ways, of communism during the Cold War really did change his politics and change the way that he defined his own sense of what conservatism was and what Americanism was.

Brian Balogh: Well, let’s talk a little bit about the radio side of all of this. Some of Manion’s views, I’m assuming, were reflected in the main conservative print outlet, the National Review. How did Manion’s style on radio and how did reaching people on radio, how was that different than reaching people through a really pretty intellectual journal like the National Review?

Nicole Hemmer: Radio, as your listeners can probably tell since they’re listening to our voices, is a very intimate medium, right? Somebody’s voice nestling right there in your ear does create a kind of intimacy.

Brian Balogh: Look no farther than our president, FDR, right?

Nicole Hemmer: Absolutely. FDR is reaching out to Americans and trying to forge relationships with them over radio and it does create a real affection for FDR. In Manion’s case, he’s relying on the trust that that intimacy builds, but he’s not trying to calm people in the way that Franklin Roosevelt was. He’s trying to stir them up. He’s using radio and the urgency of the medium to create this kind of necessity for action. He’s trying to rile them up. He’s trying to convince them that they have to act now.
Radio is a much better medium for that for two reasons. One, the intimacy and the urgency I’m talking about, but two, it doesn’t cost you anything. It costs you something to go out and find an issue of National Review, to subscribe or buy it on the newsstand. But, with radio, all you have to do is turn a dial. The buy-in is so low that he’s able to reach a lot more people.

Brian Balogh: Can you give us some examples of how he was able to stir up fear, his use of tactics on radio?

Nicole Hemmer: One of his main tactics was a kind of an apocalyptic warning that he used frequently, especially in the early years of his program. That the hour is now. You must act. We’re in our closing days to turn this country around and save America from communism. There was this real sense that it was all about to end.

Clarence Manion: After 20 delirious years of communist injected anesthetic, when will the American people wake up? Will the awakening come before or after it is too late? That is the life or death question. Let us face it.

Brian Balogh: I know this is a difficult question, Nicki, but what would you attribute to Manion and his radio show that added to American fears of socialism? What is Manion responsible for if you can separate out his contribution from everything else?

Nicole Hemmer: Well, I think you can’t separate out his contribution, and I think that’s actually important because all of these voices warning about impending socialism and communism coming from the Senate and Joe McCarthy, coming from all of these different parts of American culture and politics, are all reinforcing one another. Manion has a role in helping put that fear of communism at the heart of the conservative movement as it’s developing in the early 1950s, and I do think that that core fear, the fear of the other, the fear of a country in danger, the fear of America moving in the wrong direction, that is still very much there.
That idea that you can’t trust the media. We’re the only ones that are going to be able to tell you the truth. That’s still there as well. Actually, if you turn on conservative talk radio or Fox News today, those same kind of cries about socialism have, in many ways, returned to the center of the conversation. In that way, when you hear on Fox News discussions of creeping socialism, there is a way in which they are, without really knowing it, looking back to Manion and repeating the very things that got him into radio in the first place.

Clarence Manion: The Communists are really the sharp troops for the Socialists. The Communists, like the Socialists, are seeking to establish a socialist world order.

Rush Limbaugh: It never can work because socialism is in direct violation of human nature. Capitalism is not. Capitalism embodies human nature from freedom to ambition on down the line.

Sean Hannity: Ice is melting in Antarctica. It’s a crisis they say and the only solution is full-on American socialism, government control of every aspect of your life, the antithesis of freedom and liberty and our constitutional republic.

Speaker 10: If Democrats want to bring socialism to America, it makes me wonder did they want to destroy America?

Brian Balogh: Nicole Hemmer is an Assistant Professor in Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. She’s also author of the book, Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.

Not Your Typical Mississippi Mayor?

If you were looking for one of America’s most prominent elected socialists, you maybe wouldn’t start in Mississippi, but Chockwe Antar Lumumba has been the socialist mayor of Jackson Mississippi since 2017, and his father Chockwe Lumuba held the post until 2014. Nathan speaks to the man who has the ambition to turn Jackson into the “most radical city in America.”

Mississippi; local government; mayors; radicalism; socialism

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

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Nathan Connolly: If you were looking for an elected Socialist mayor today, you probably wouldn’t start with the state of Mississippi, but Jackson, Mississippi is where the Lumumba family has worked to establish a radical vision of an American socialist future. I recently spoke to Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a self-described radical Socialist who’s been Jackson’s mayor since 2017. He’s followed in his father’s footsteps. From 2013 until he died in office, his father Chokwe Lumumba was Jackson’s mayor and worked to bring socialist policies to the heart of the deep South.

Chokwe L.: Well, first and foremost, I’m happy to join you in this conversation and this is a discussion which is near and dear to me. In order to give a proper framework of that history, it stretches further back than even my father’s election to the office of mayor in 2013. I come from a rich tradition and legacy of two parents that were activists and moved us to Mississippi for the purpose of community building and work.
My father was in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 70s doing work to help sustain and create self-determined communities. Out of that, he was at a crossroads, or a point in his life, where he was trying to determine whether he could pursue a legal career and still maintain that vision and that goal and he found his way to that. Later, gained a family after moving back to Detroit. Then, had a case that lasted for two years in New York and decided that they wanted to move to the South. It was my father who shared that we still had unfinished business in Mississippi and that’s why we moved here. Not because we have family members in Mississippi but because we wanted to be a part of some work that we felt was important.
My parents felt that giving their children a sense of community was as an important part of nurturing us as giving us food, water, and shelter. Whether the work we’ve been blessed to be a part of is categorized as socialist work, revolutionary work, it’s work that recognizes that conditions, as they exist, are not sufficient for our people and we have to dare to do something different.

Nathan Connolly: Now, Jackson in American history is a place that obviously has a number of different flashpoints. Perhaps none more prominent and poignant than the assassination of Medgar Evers there in 1963. So, I’m curious if your father’s sense of unfinished work is continuing a kind of militancy and anti-racism and economic justice of the kind that Medgar Evers helped to initiate or if you’re thinking more broadly about the black, radical South and building Jackson as a kind of launchpad for a broad, regional realignment around politics of self-determination.

Chokwe L.: We’re a part of a continuum of struggle that has had different iterations over time. Earlier on, my father and many of his comrades were somewhat antagonistic towards the idea of electoral politics as many people still find themselves today. You find people who are disheartened. There’s apathy. You find people who have just lost total faith in the electoral structure.
We pursued a number of community efforts and grassroots efforts that had sustained, while limited success in what it was accomplishing at that moment. I think that where my father and many of his comrades graduated to in their thinking was the idea of how we can pursue other means of meeting people where they are and even recognizing the limitations in electoral politics, that it is a mere means to an end and not the end itself.
So, people have to be organized on multiple fronts in order to create a better condition. When we see a society where there’s a growing inequity, there are many contributions to that discussion of how we’ve come to this point. I was a part of a conversation with a number of mayors sometime ago about this and so there were meaningful contributions of innovation versus workforce, minimum wage, and education, and all these things were important, but I had a problem with the premise of the discussion in seeing that we have gone wrong. I think that the system is operating in the way that it was always intended to, and, if anything, it’s probably over performing. We’re merely finding out that the system as designed, doesn’t work for us.

Nathan Connolly: Right. You’ve been on record as saying that you’d like to see Jackson become, “the most radical city on the planet.” I’m curious as to what you imagine that might look like in say five years or 15 years, if this vision moves as you describe from the ground up and from pothole to pothole to community to community.

Chokwe L.: Well, I think it’s a city that makes a drastic shift from what is traditionally taking place, waiting on someone to act on our behalf, being at the bottom of receiving so many resources, to a city that demands control of their governance, demands control of how we develop, and understanding that the future isn’t coming, the future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed. And, demanding that they get their fair share and that we look at unity and equity in the process of what we build, understanding that development is more than just great edifices and structures that we build, but being intentional about the souls that reside in a space and how we take care of them.
That idea of being the most radical city on the planet surfaced out of what was initially a critique. It was a critique of myself, and prior to taking office, it was a critique of my father, suggesting that possibly we were too radical to bring people together. I tell people I looked up the word radical and I find that a radical is a person who seeks change. If we look into communities who are in need of change, then the reality is that we should be as radical as the circumstances dictate we should be. When we look across history at the people that we revere most, you mentioned Medgar Evers, he was a radical.
Fannie Lou Hamer, who organized poor farmers in the Mississippi Delta, was a radical. Ida B. Wells, who dares to disseminate a message that was dangerous but necessary, was a radical. Jesus Christ was a radical. So, I see it as a badge of honor. I don’t even know if I’m deserving of it, right? But, we should see it as an opportunity to be a model, more than just accomplish our ends and correct our problems as a city, but take a space that has been known for so much negativity historically, and turn it into a space that serves as a model for the rest of the world to build off.

Nathan Connolly: Now, you’ve just outlined a pretty compelling genealogy of folks from Jesus Christ through Ida B. Wells to Fannie Lou Hamer and up, who have been espousing, through one form or another, a kind of radical vision. So, I’m curious, in terms of the bigger picture, what you make of current moment, specifically, this tension that seems to be animating national debates now around socialism, be it the Green New Deal, be it around prison abolition, ending surplus populations and the like of workers. What is it that you imagine to be the role of your administration and your city in shaping and bumping up against this national conversation, and do you pay any credence at all to the notion that somehow it’s possible to advance as a political and rhetorical strategy the notion that, say, socialism is actually quite American?

Chokwe L.: Well, and that comes up a lot when I talk about cooperative enterprise. In the context of that specifically, I would say that this isn’t something that’s coming, it’s something that’s here. If people in our nation knew how many businesses were ultimately cooperatives, then they would understand that it’s a necessary addition to how this economy develops. Land O’Lakes butter is a cooperative. Florida Orange Growers is a Cooperative. You’re a part of a credit union, you’re a part of nothing more than a cooperative.
Even though I’m originally from Detroit and it pains me to say this, one of the largest cooperatives we know today is the Green Bay Packers, right? That is owned by a community-

Nathan Connolly: You’re a Lions fan I take it.

Chokwe L.: Yeah, yeah, I am. I am. Let’s you know I can endure struggle, okay? Those are ideas of how communities see something that they find value in it and support it, and it works for the benefit of those communities. So, we can broaden that.
Now, in terms of this notion of this scary word, socialism, what I would say is that we have to find an opportunity to exploit operational unity because people have been conditioned or told to fear myself and other people who are speaking this way. I find here in Jackson that there are people that I now engage in conversations that they learn that I’m not such a scary guy. I’m actually pretty nice, right? I’m passionate and I’m concerned about people, and I’m not trying to work towards the detriment of anyone.
So, this notion or this discussion that tries to pushback that it’s trying to take away value or take away something from someone else, is something that we have to shift that dynamic and exploit operational unity which focuses more on our common ends and objectives than our differences. In doing so, you find a space or an opportunity to have a conversation that may not have previously been envisioned. When we shift the narrative and really explain to people how they have not been benefited from the system as it exists, then you find that a-ha moment where people see that this is really true.
If we go back to the roots slavery in Mississippi, we know who the obvious victims of slavery are, but we very rarely have a conversation in Mississippi about poor white families and the majority of families who did not own slaves and how they were exploited. It was a labor system that provided no opportunity for you.

Nathan Connolly: So, Mayor Lumumba, given your father’s electoral success and now your own, does it tell us anything about the viability of socialism in electoral politics specifically?

Chokwe L.: Yeah, well, I would share with you the very thing that my father stated after his election, is that the election, or his election, or the election of a progressive ideal says honestly less about the candidate, less about us, and more about the people. The selection of our leadership demonstrates the readiness of the people, and I think if we can find people ready for change in Mississippi, people who have been oppressed in so many ways … Honestly, oppression has the potential to be the greatest organizer of all time … then it suggests where we can build to in conversations that we are prepared to take on now throughout the nation and throughout the world.

Nathan Connolly: Just based on where you sit from your vantage point, are the conditions across the country such that could reflect the possibility of them pulling the lever in the Socialist direction?

Chokwe L.: I believe so. I think that the people are looking for big vision. People are looking for something different and that’s why you see so many new ideas being thrown out. We state that we have a booming economy. The reality is that, yeah, even if the pie is bigger, your slice in it hasn’t changed, right? Your slice of that pie has got no bigger and you’re still living in the same conditions you were before they told you that the economy was better.
So, we want people to start asking questions. How does that translate into my life? How do I see greater opportunities for my children? How do I secure safe and clean water? How do I ensure that the infrastructure around my community is built and supportive? If you don’t see those changes, then just looking at GDP as a measure of success, is insufficient. So, how do we look at socially sustainable goals as a new index for success in communities and whether we are thriving or failing to make the mark?

Brian Balogh: Nathan, our topic today is the history of socialism and I know that we focus on U.S. history, but I think on this topic, it’s almost impossible to talk about American socialism without looking over at the great socialist, indeed communist example, the Soviet Union. From the end of World War I up until arguably the 80s or the 90s, not clear when it ends, we have a nation that’s often defined as a mortal enemy that is seen as a minimum socialist and calls itself communist. So, my question for you is how does American socialism differ from that Soviet model, which is sitting over there and kind of a beacon to the world as to what communism is?

Nathan Connolly: It’s absolutely true that the specter of communism with state power behind it, with the Soviet Union, raised deep concerns for those who are thinking about American national security or foreign relations, diplomatic circles. The ideology of the 20th century has, in some ways, become so tilted by the Cold War frame that we have a very hard time now even appreciating or parsing the differences between, say, socialism or communism in the abstract or even as they are applied in American society.
It may surprise some listeners to know that different socialist practices including forming mutual aid societies or creating cooperatives, publicly owned lands, these kinds of things that are not driven by profit motive … which is basically what separates socialism from capitalism, that you take out the profit motive … those kinds of things are really predating the country itself. You can go back to Charleston, South Carolina in the 1730s and find mutual aid organizations, for example, that are basically keeping those colonies humming.
What we understand communism to be, which is workers owning the means of production, that doesn’t really have anything beyond a few small outfits or adherents who are trying to radicalize workers, but it never reaches the same kind of momentum as general practices of cooperative economics and such are existing in the United States.

Brian Balogh: Yeah, that’s a great point.

Nathan Connolly: So, Brian, just thinking about this in the present day and, say, Millennials who are really, in some cases, having no recollection of the Berlin Wall even coming down and certainly not invested at all in mid-20th century squabbles over socialism but they’re still, in many cases, feeling drawn to politicians who are advocating for different forms of socialist programming whether it’s different kinds of employment of healthcare or their concerns about ever owning a home. Is there any way to account for the arrival or the popularity or the cresting support for socialistic ideas that are rooted in contemporary concerns?

Brian Balogh: I think you just named all of them, Nathan. The fact that there is no external, literal, national security threat from nations that embrace communism is a huge factor. As you said, they don’t remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and they certainly don’t remember the high point of the Cold War. And, domestically, the fact that the social security system is skewed against them because of their age.

Nathan Connolly: That’s right.

Brian Balogh: I mean, let’s face it. One of the biggest redistributions of income in the 20th century was between young people and old people. I’m one of those old people. You’re one of those young people and you’re stuck with the bill, right?

Nathan Connolly: That’s right. We can settle up after the show, though, Brian. I’ll take a check.

Brian Balogh: So, these people are thinking about the kinds of mechanisms that are simply assumed in many of the societies that they look to. Universal healthcare, some kind of social provision that is equitable, not just for older people, but for younger people as well, and they’re looking towards that without the ultimate veto power of, “Oh, no. That’s like the Soviet Union. That’s like the People’s Republic of China.” There’s nothing to stop them logically from saying, “Hey, why not?”

Nathan Connolly: Right. Right. I got to tell you, Brian. One of the things that I think is very clear in just how politicized the terms are … Really, to my mind, just how empty these terms like socialism and capitalism are as vessels, right? They’re empty vessels into which people pour their political and economic interests … is the fact that for many African Americans, through the high point of prosperity in the 20th century and the booming consumer economy, they lived in what was, in effect, a socialist economy. Now, bear with me on this.
If you think about Jim Crow segregation as a regulation on the free market, and you look at what socialism’s textbook definition is, which is from each according to their skill, to each according to their need, many people who are in political power said, “Well, we don’t think that African Americans are very smart. We don’t think that they’re very industrious. We don’t think that they need, for example, nine months of school. We don’t think that they need the ability to organize in labor unions.” The exceptions that are written into the Wagner Act, the segregation under the Housing Act, the disparate school year funding that African Americans are experiencing, all of this is about an economy that is overtly regulated to their detriment.
Frankly, if you look at what the arguments were through the 20th century, there were, in many cases, what we could call a deregulatory argument. Saying, “Look, we just want the ability to participate in capitalism like everybody else.” You got Southern senators with all their Americanism and their red-blooded patriotism saying, “No, we’re going to regulate this economy in such a way where you won’t be able to participate in a free market system.”
It’s wonderful to point out the irony of the fact that, in many instances, the very people who are really railing against the government because its engaging in creeping socialism in the arenas of housing, education, employment and so forth, are also highly regulating it, again, frankly, overregulating African Americans in the spirit of racial segregation.

Brian Balogh: Well, Nathan, I didn’t think it was possible, but you now have convinced me why we should look for a Socialist mayor in Mississippi.

Nathan Connolly: Yeah, because, again, it’s not socialism in the abstract, but it’s the kind, right? If you have a kind of socialism in Jackson like Mayor Lumumba’s advocating for, it has baked into it at least, an anti-racist commitment. I think that has to be at least part of what any economic system, in this country anyway.

Brian Balogh: That’s going to do it for us today, but you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode or ask us your questions about history. You’ll find us at backstoryradio.org or send an email to backstory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter at backstoryradio. Whatever you do, don’t be a stranger.
Special thanks this week to the Johns Hopkins Studios in Baltimore.

Nathan Connolly: BackStory’s produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusion, or recommendations expressed in this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities, and the environment.

Speaker 12: Brian Balogh is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is a Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University. BackStory was created by Andrew Windham from Virginia Humanities.