African American Political History Robert Minor on Benjamin J. Davis’s Election to the New York City Council 1946

Robert Minor Promoting Racial Equality Black Radicalism

Pamphlets

Minor, Robert. Tell the People How Ben Davis Was Elected, 1946, presents Communist Party leader Benjamin J. Davis’s election to the New York City Council as a model for Black political representation and Communist electoral organizing in Harlem. Davis, a Black attorney and Communist Party leader, was elected to the Council in 1943 and reelected in 1945; during his tenure he organized campaigns against police brutality and segregation in housing, education, and sports. The New York Public Library’s Benjamin J. Davis papers identify him as one of only two Communist Party candidates elected to public office in the United States. Minor’s pamphlet appeared after Davis’s reelection and used his campaign to explain how Communist organizers sought electoral support among Black and working-class New Yorkers.

Minor, Robert. Tell the People How Ben Davis Was Elected. New York: New Century Publishers, 1946. 24 pages. Photo-illustrated wrappers. Slim 8vo. The pamphlet describes the political organizing behind Davis’s City Council election and promotes his success as evidence for the Communist Party’s approach to Black political participation and electoral work. Contemporary Communist commentary described Davis’s 1943 election as dependent upon Black political mobilization in Harlem as well as support from white progressive voters, while bibliographic records identify Minor’s publication as a Communist Party recruitment pamphlet describing Davis’s City Council campaign. The Library of Congress records a 24-page second printing issued in April 1946, establishing that the pamphlet circulated in at least two printings during that year.

Published immediately after World War II and before Cold War anti communism transformed Davis’s political circumstances, the pamphlet documents a period when Communist Party electoral organizing, Black representation in municipal government, labor politics, and campaigns against racial discrimination converged in New York City. Davis’s subsequent prosecution under the Smith Act and removal from the Council in 1949 place the pamphlet before the federal campaign against Communist Party leadership that would define his later public career. Wrappers separated from the text block, with a small triangular tear to the rear wrapper; otherwise very good condition. The pamphlet records how the Communist Party presented the electoral career of a Black Harlem councilman as a practical example of its political organizing in the immediate postwar period.

Item #16252

Price: $220.00