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Dissertation Information for Jennifer Ruthanne Uhlmann

NAME:
- Jennifer Ruthanne Uhlmann

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (2006)

ADVISORS:
- Ellen Carol DuBois

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Jessica Wang
- Ruth Milkman

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: The communist civil rights movement: Legal activism in the United States, 1919--1946

Abstract: This research underscores the unique aspects of the Communist Civil Rights Movement in the 1930s and insists that the movement should be historiographically analyzed in its own right rather than reduced to a seedtime for the mid-century Civil Rights Movement.

The dissertation focuses on the legal activism that was led by the Communist Party, USA, from the party's inception until 1946, and on the public campaigns that accompanied it. It describes the state sedition laws raised against Communists and discusses cases that arose from the prosecution of Communists under them. While in the early years the party's legal efforts were forced and reactive--battles for survival against the barrage of lawsuits brought against them--by the late 1920s Communists came to actively use the judicial system as a means to furthering their own political and economic aims. The International Labor Defense--a semi-autonomous Communist-controlled group that operated from 1925 until 1946--carried out the party's activist agenda and forms the main focus of the dissertation. Through its celebrated campaigns for Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro youths, Angelo Herndon, Tom Mooney and many others, the ILD grew to become the preeminent radical legal activist organization in the inter-war years, heavily influencing others in the field. The ILD left an indelible mark on Constitutional law, in particular by successfully arguing for the incorporation of civil freedoms through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The dissertation highlights the ambiguous relationship that Communists themselves had to the principle of free speech, and the ironies of this revolutionary party contributing to the reformation of Constitutional law.

In the course of these campaigns the ILD and its activists developed an impressive arsenal of legal and public means to resist government clampdowns and support grassroots political activism. The ILD's adoption of African-American causes, its blending of civil rights, civil liberties and labor rights into one agenda, its mobilization of spirited protest through "mass defense," and its pivotal role in opening a field of judicial action for popular causes all contributed to the impressive versatility, breadth and uniqueness of the Communist Civil Rights Movement.

MPACT Scores for Jennifer Ruthanne Uhlmann

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calculated 2008-08-09 08:56:21

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Students under Jennifer Ruthanne Uhlmann

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None