James W. Ford Papers and Photographs

Abstract

James W. Ford (1893-1957) was a prominent African American Communist of Jamaican origin and the vice-presidential candidate of the Communist Party in 1932, 1936, and 1940. He was a delegate to the Profintern Congress in Moscow in 1928, organized the first International Conference of Negro Workers in Hamburg, Germany in 1930, and became the editor of the Negro Worker, published by the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, established at the Conference. After World War II his role in the Party diminished, however, he chaired the Bedford-Stuyvesant Party organization, and was executive director of the National Committee to Defend Negro Leadership, a Party group set up to support Smith Act defendants. The papers include correspondence, inclcuding items from Ralph Bunche, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson, memorabilia, including registration cards for international Communist conferences, obituaries and condolence cards sent to his widow Reba, and a specially bound personal copy of his book The Negro and the Democratic Front (1938). The photographs include a group shot of notable Communists taken in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, Angelo Herndon being carried on the shoulders of Ford and others, images of Communist conferences, of Ford in Mexico, campaigning in 1936, head shots and family portraits.