Nell Painter
The Life of a Southern Negro Communist: Hosea Hudson (1898–1988)
Hosea Hudson, a comrade of Paul Robeson’s from Birmingham, Alabama, did not move in Robeson’s lofty circles, but admired him from afar. The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South (1979), my second book, recounts Hudson’s experiences as a local activist, building Birmingham’s labor movement, and creating the city’s first voting rights organization. Just as Paul Robeson embodied the glamorous, international dimension of the twentieth-century American Left, Hudson personified the importance of its rank and file in the crucial territory of the segregated American South.
Nell Painter is Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton University, and formerly director of Princeton’s Program in African-American Studies. She has published acclaimed works on 19th and 20th Century history of the Southern United States (Standing at Armageddon, 1989; The History of White People, 2011), and has been awarded the American Historical Association’s Award for Scholarly Distinction. Professor Painter currently holds a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin. In addition to her writing, she creates art revolving around the discrimination against African Americans, both displaying this artwork and incorporating it into her written work, as in her most recent volume of essays, I Just Keep Talking (2024).