Louise Patterson on her radicalization and introduction to Marxism

Louise Thompson Patterson was a key figure in the U.S. communist movement and the Harlem Renaissance. In this video, she speaks about her introduction to Marxism and her radicalization. This interview was conducted over three decades ago and the audio files have been digitized as part of NYU Tamiment Library’s invaluable Oral History of the American Left project. Liberation School has been transcribing and publishing interviews from this collection not as an endorsement of all the statements expressed in them, but to help a new generation of organizers and revolutionaries gain access to the experiences, lessons and perspectives of prior generations of U.S. communists. While much has been written in academic circles about the role of communists in the Black freedom struggle, this history is systematically omitted in history textbooks and rarer still do we get to hear from the Black radicals themselves. Read the full transcription: https://liberationschool.org/louise-patterson-on-her-introduction-to-marxism-and-radicalization/