Bearing the seeds of struggle: Freedomways Magazine, Black Leftists, and continuities in the freedom movement

A number of black leftists survived the most repressive years of the early Cold War to participate in the post-war African American civil rights movement. Among them were the editors of Freedomways magazine, who brought their activist and organizing experiences in Popular Front coalitions in the 1930s and 1940s to bear on the civil rights upsurge of the l95Os-l97Os. As the African American freedom struggle expanded its support of civil rights to encompass anti-Vietnam War, anti-colonial, and anti-poverty initiatives by the mid-1 960s, Freedomways became an important publication linking several generations of black radicals. In particular, it propagated an influential form of radical integrationism -- deeply-influenced by Popular Front ideology and strategy -- that largely succeeded in transcending the factionalism of the black movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Overall, Freedomways' radicalism helps to show important continuities over time in the black freedom struggle.