Herbert
Aptheker was born in Brooklyn, New York City,
on 31st July, 1915. When he was 16 he went with his father to Alabama.
He was shocked by the operation of the Jim
Crow Laws and
on his return he wrote an article for his school newspaper about racial
segregation in the south.
After
obtaining a degree from Columbia University he worked as an educational
worker for the Food and Tobacco Workers Union. He also served as secretary
of the Abolish Peonage Committee.
In
1939 Aptheker joined the American Communist
Party. During the Second World War he served
in the United
States Army and
took part in Operation
Overlord and
by 1945 had reached the rank of major.
Aptheker
suffered from the effects of McCarthyism
and was unable to obtain a full-time appointment as a university lecturer
in the 1950s. On one occasion he was denied the right to speak at
the Ohio State University and so while he sat in silence on the stage,
students read from some of his writings.
Aptheker
was editor of Masses and the Mainstream
(1948-53) and Political Affairs
(1953-1963) and served as executive director of the American Institute
for Marxist Studies.
In
1948 Aptheker published Negro People in America.
Three years later he published A Documentary
History of the Negro People in
the United States. Over the next forty years he published
several volumes in this series. This included Colonial
Times to 1910, Reconstruction
Years to the Founding of the NAACP, Beginning
of the New Deal to the End of the Second World War and
Alabama Protests to the Death of Martin Luther
King Jr.
After
the listing of the blacklist Aptheker held posts at Bryn Mawr College,
the University of California, City University of New York and the
University of Santa Clara. During this period he was one of the main
leaders of the opposition to the Vietnam War.
Aptheker also edited the correspondence of William
DuBois.
Other
books by Aptheker included The Truth About
Hungary (1957), American Negro
Slave Revolts (1966), Nature of
Democracy, Freedom and Revolution (1968),World
of C. Wright Mills (1976), Unfolding
Drama (1979), Afro-American History:
the Modern Era (1986), American
Revolution,1763-1783: A History of the American People
(1987), Abolitionism: a Revolutionary Movement
(1989), The Literary Legacy of W.E.B. DuBois
(1989), Early Years of the Republic 1783-1793
(1989) and Anti-Racism in US History
(1992).
Herbert
Aptheker died 17th
March, 2003.
Available
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