Gregg Andrews - Thyra J. Edwards: Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle

Thyra J. Edwards

Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle

Gregg Andrews

University of Missouri Press
Columbia and London

Copyright 2011 by

The Curators of the University of Missouri

University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201

Printed and bound in the United States of America

All rights reserved

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Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8262-1912-1

ISBN 978-0-8262-7241-6 (electronic)

This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.

Design and composition: Jennifer Cropp

Printing and binding: Thomson-Shore, Inc.

Typefaces: Minion, Chesterfield Antique, and Adobe Garamond

Contents

Acknowledgments

My interest in Thyra J. Edwards as an important historical figure dates back to about ten years ago, when I set out to write a book on Texas labor in the Great Depression with the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. The more I studied Houstons black longshoremen, the more I kept running into Edwards. Over time, her fascinating life story diverted my attention from the Texas labor study, and I decided to undertake a biography of her instead. I would like to thank the NEH for that fellowship. I would also like to thank the Texas State Historical Association for twice awarding me the Mary M. Hughes Research Fellowship to help fund this study. At the annual meeting of the TSHA in 2008, I presented a paper, Black Labor Leaders and the Civil Rights Struggle in New Deal Texas, in which Edwards figured prominently and generated a lot of audience comments and discussion.

I have tried to write this book in a way that would appeal to a popular audience as well as to scholars. To the extent possible in any book, I have consciously sought not to impose my voice on the narrative too much, but rather to allow Edwardss popular but analytical style of writing to present her voice. On the one hand, she was critical of turgid academic studies that were deeply analytical but useful only to a handful of academics and condemned to gather dust on university library shelves. On the other, she bemoaned the lack of analysis and depth in the growing spate of popular writings on the history and culture of African Americans. In my opinion, her literary style, called fulsome by one of her sisters, offered readers an attractive alternative.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Vikki Bynummy wife, fellow scholar, former colleague, and now retirement companion in the land of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Edwards has been a constant topic of conversation between us for the last several years, and I have benefited a great deal from Vikkis insights, criticisms, and suggestions. Vikki not only read the manuscript and provided ongoing support, but also tore up the dance floor whenever my band and IDoctor G and the Mudcatsrocked the Cheatham Street Warehouse with our swampy blues music in San Marcos, Texas. I would like to thank the MudcatsSterling Finlay, Big John Mills, Grant Mazak, and Kyle Schneiderfor helping me to keep an edge on the beat in more ways than one. I owe a special thanks to my good friend and fellow songwriter, Kent Finlay, owner of the Cheatham Street Warehouse, for encouraging me to put on my other hat as a singer/songwriter.

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure to meet and host a dazzling performance by Gina Loring, accompanied by beat boxer Joshua Silverstein, on the campus of Texas State UniversitySan Marcos. Loring, a slam poet, hip-hop artist, actor, and political activist, is a great-niece of Thyra Edwardss. Loring provided me with a copy of a brief family history written in 1963 by her grandmother, Thelma Marshall, who was Edwardss sister. She also put me in contact with one of Edwardss cousins, Vee Edwards, of Pasadena, California, who allowed me access to the Edwards familys website, replete with photos and snapshots of the family. I would like to thank Vee and her sister, Ann Edwards, for facilitating the reproduction of several family photos.

I appreciate the research support provided by Frank de la Teja, Chair of the Department of History at Texas State UniversitySan Marcos. Several of my former colleagues discussed my research with me or read portions of it. I would like to give a special thanks to Dwight Watson, Ken Margerison, Rebecca Montgomery, Mary Brennan, Deirdre Lannon, and Tom Alter, my final MA thesis student, who is now in the doctoral program in History at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

A number of scholars have provided leads and references and shared their take on the political activism of Thyra J. Edwards. I would like to thank Gerald Horne, Eric Arnesen, Mike Honey, Beth Bates, Greg Boozell, Tom Dublin, Steve Rosswurm, and Joyce Moore Turner for their collegiality.

Without the help of several outstanding archivists and assistants who facilitated access to manuscript and archival collections, this book would have taken much longer than it did. I wish especially to thank Sam Sims and others at the Chicago History Museum, the repository of the Thyra J. Edwards Papers. Gail Malmgren, Peter Filardo, Erika Gottfried, and Ava Hassinger at the Tamiment Library at New York University provided important help, and so did Virginia Lewick (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library), Accacia Flanagan (Schlesinger Library, Harvard University), Lia Apodaca (Library of Congress), Nicolette A. Dobrowolski (Syracuse University Library), Margaret Jessup (Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College), Harry Miller (Wisconsin Historical Society), Kathy Shoemaker (Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University), Graham Sherriff (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University), and Nancy Shawcross (Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania). I also thank Andrea Cecilia Meyer, a graduate student and researcher who on my behalf searched the Bernard Ades Papers at the Tamiment Library. Alison Orton, a history graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, searched photos for me in the Thyra J. Edwards Papers.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, I obtained the Federal Bureau of Investigation file on Thyra J. Edwards. Unfortunately, the Central Intelligence Agency refused to release materials on her. I challenged their refusal, taking my request to an appeal review board, but to no avail.

I want to thank Editor-in-Chief Clair Willcox, Sara Davis, Gloria Thomas, and other members of the University of Missouri Press staff for their role in preparing my manuscript for publication. The criticisms and suggestions of two anonymous readers for the press also helped to strengthen the manuscript.

Thyra J. Edwards

Introduction

The Spirit of Aframerican Womanhood

I assure you that Thyra Edwards is one of the most brilliant young women of the Negro or any other race, in public life today. She has not only a keen analytical mind, but a fine poise, modest charm and a fluency of presentation that will capture the admiration of the most critical.

A. Philip Randolph, quoted in The National Religion and Labor Foundation Sponsors Thyra J. Edwards, ca. 1934

Thyra J. Edwards, the granddaughter of runaway slaves, was an important labor, civil-rights, and peace activist and an internationalist, Pan-Africanist, and advocate of womens rights in the first half of the twentieth century. A Texan who in her early twenties joined the Great Migration to the North, she was among a number of radical black women at that time who put their faith in organized labor and the Communist Party as instruments of civil rights and social justice. She brought not only a southernness but also an international dimension to her political activism because of her extensive travels, studies, and associations overseas. For Edwards, the battle for civil rights in the United States was part of the larger struggle against fascism, colonialism, and imperialism in the 1930s, 1940s, and early 1950s.