The John Reed Clubs

Named after muckraking journalist and radical John Reed, these short-lived clubs were aligned with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and intended primarily to foster young leftist talent. When Wright joined the Chicago chapter in 1933 (the chapter had been formed in 1932), there were about thirty clubs nationwide. Like many other local chapters, the Chicago John Reed Club published its own magazine, Left Front. Another club, the New York chapter, established a journal that survived the demise of the John Reed clubs, the Partisan Review.

The image below and left is from the Milwaukee club's inaugural issue (from the collection of Cary Nelson).

Wright, having joined the club only a few months earlier, was elected secretary of the group in September 1933, at least in part because the writers were upset at their current leader and felt that the club members would be afraid to vote against Wright because of his race (no radical wanted to be called racist).

Wright became a member of Left Front's editorial board in January 1934. The club was being torn by competing demands for its resources from both its members and the Communist Party, which put its journal, and Wright's most accessible outlet, in continuous jeopardy. Left Front managed to appear for nearly a year before financial problems sank it following the May 1934 issue.

One of Wright's biggest complaints (and one shared by other writers in the club) was the Communist Party's unceasing demands on their time for activities that seemed irrelevant to an artistic club. As Wright characterizes it in Black Boy (American Hunger), he couldnt be a writer if he was constantly preparing reports on the price of pork chops.

Wright fought hard for the group's existence, but in the end it was futile. In September 1934, at the John Reed Clubs' second national congress, the Communist Party handed down the decision that the clubs were to be disbanded. Because his association gave him access to literary outlets, Wright continued in the Communist Party despite the clubs' disappearance. Problems between artistic freedom and Party directives continued for Wright, and he angrily denounced the Party in August 1944 with a piece entitled "I Tried to Be a Communist," which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly.

to the chronology of Wright's life.

to the bibliography of Wright criticism.

to the bibliography of Wright's work.

to the Richard Wright Homepage.