Herbert Aptheker facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Herbert Aptheker
|
|
|---|---|
Aptheker transferring W. E. B. Du Bois papers to University of Massachusetts, 1973
|
|
| Born | July 31, 1915 |
| Died | March 17, 2003 (aged 87) |
| Alma mater | Columbia University |
| Occupation | Marxist historian, editor, activist |
|
Notable work
|
American Negro Slave Revolts, Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, History of the American People, The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, Anti-Racism in U.S. History |
| Political party | Communist Party USA, Peace and Freedom Party |
| Spouse(s) | Fay Aptheker (1942–1999) |
| Children | Bettina Aptheker |
Herbert Aptheker (born July 31, 1915 – died March 17, 2003) was an American historian and activist. A historian studies and writes about the past. An activist works to bring about social or political change.
Aptheker wrote over 50 books. Most of his books were about African-American history and the general history of the U.S.. One of his most famous books was American Negro Slave Revolts (1943). This book is considered a very important work in its field.
He also put together a 7-volume collection called Documentary History of the Negro People (1951–1994). This collection gathered many original documents that help people study African-American history. He was also chosen to manage the writings of the famous scholar W. E. B. Du Bois.
In the 1940s, Aptheker was a well-known person in academic discussions in the U.S. However, in the 1950s, he was put on a blacklist by universities. This meant he could not get teaching jobs because he was a member of the Communist Party USA. In 1955, he became the editor of Political Affairs, a magazine about communist ideas.
Contents
Biography
Early life and education
Herbert Aptheker was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was the youngest child in a wealthy Jewish family.
In 1931, when he was 16, he went with his father on a business trip to Alabama. There, he saw firsthand how African Americans were treated unfairly under Jim Crow Laws in the South. This trip was a big shock for Aptheker. It changed his life. When he returned to Brooklyn, he started writing a column for his Erasmus Hall High School newspaper called "The Dark Side of The South."
Aptheker finished high school in 1933, during the Great Depression. He was accepted into Columbia University. However, he could not get into the main part of the university, Columbia College. This was because the college president, Nicholas Murray Butler, had set a limit on how many Jewish students could join.
Instead, Aptheker had to enroll at Seth Low Junior College in Brooklyn Heights. This was a smaller school set up by Butler for Jewish and Italian students who were admitted beyond his limits.
While at Seth Low, Aptheker became involved in politics. He helped organize events against war. He also spoke for student groups like the National Student League (NSL), which was supported by communists, and the Student League for Industrial Democracy, which was supported by socialists. During this time, he started reading The Daily Worker, a Communist Party newspaper. He also read The New Masses, a party magazine about art and literature. He did not join the party yet.
After two years at Seth Low, Aptheker was allowed to go to Columbia's main campus in Manhattan. But he was not a full member of Columbia College. He was called a "university undergraduate." This meant he would get a Bachelor of Science degree, which was seen as less important than a Bachelor of Arts. He received his degree in 1936. At Columbia, Aptheker continued to work against war. He did this through the NSL and the American League Against War and Fascism. This was a larger group connected to the Communist Party.
Aptheker earned his Master's degree from Columbia in 1937. He then got his Ph.D. in 1943 from the same university. In September 1939, he joined the Communist Party USA. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in sociology in 1945.
Marriage and World War II service
In 1942, Aptheker married Fay Philippa Aptheker (1905–1999). She was his first cousin and also from Brooklyn. Fay was a union organizer and political activist. They were married for 62 years until she passed away. Their daughter, Bettina, was born in 1944. This was at the U.S. Army Hospital in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Aptheker was serving in World War II at the time.
Aptheker took part in Operation Overlord, which was the invasion of northern France. By 1945, he had become a Major in the artillery. He was in charge of the all-black 350th artillery unit. In December 1950, he lost his military rank. This happened after he did not reply to the U.S. Army's questions about his Communist political activities. He had received an honorable discharge before this.
Work in the South and research
After the war, Aptheker and his family returned to the South. He worked as an educator for the Food and Tobacco Workers Union. Soon after, he became the secretary of the "Abolish Peonage Committee." This committee was started in 1940 by activists in New York and Chicago. It had the support of the International Labor Defense (IDL), a group connected to the Communist Party.
"Peons" in the South were mostly African Americans. They were usually sharecroppers who were tied to plantations. This was because of debts they owed to plantation owners or local shopkeepers. This practice kept African Americans in a form of slavery even after the Civil War.
The government started to pay more attention to these problems. In 1941, Attorney General Francis Biddle told federal lawyers to "actively investigate and try more peonage cases." The U.S. wanted to reduce rural peonage as it was about to enter World War II.
Southern states also had programs called convict leasing. They would rent out convicts to businesses and keep the money. Several southern states had stopped this practice by 1923. These included Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas, and Florida.
Research in African-American history
Aptheker's master's thesis was a study of Nat Turner's slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831. This work helped him with his future studies on American slave revolts. Aptheker showed that Turner was a hero. He explained how the rebellion was a response to the harsh conditions of slavery in the South.
His book Negro Slave Revolts in the United States 1526–1860 (1939) lists many documented slave revolts. His Ph.D. paper, American Negro Slave Revolts, was published in 1943. While doing research in Southern libraries, he found 250 similar events.
Aptheker challenged some older ways of writing history. He disagreed with historians like Ulrich Bonnell Phillips from Georgia. Phillips was part of the Dunning School at Columbia University. These historians were critical of Reconstruction after the Civil War. They argued that slavery was not worse than working conditions in cities. Phillips described enslaved African Americans as childlike and less intelligent. He said slavery was a kind institution and supported the Southern plantation system. Such ideas were common before Aptheker's work.
Aptheker always highlighted W. E. B. Du Bois's important studies and his lifelong fight for African Americans to be equal. As a historian, Aptheker put together a collection of documents about African Americans in the United States. This huge collection began in 1951. It grew to seven volumes of original documents. It became a very important resource for studying African-American history.
Post-war activism
During the 1950s, a time known as McCarthyism, Aptheker was blacklisted in universities. This was because he was a member of the Communist Party. He could not get a job as a university teacher for ten years. Aptheker was part of the National Committee of the CPUSA from 1957 to 1991. For several years in the 1960s and 1970s, he was the main leader of the American Institute For Marxist Studies.
In 1966, he ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in New York. He ran for the Peace and Freedom Party and received 3,562 votes. Because of his work on African-American documents and history, W. E. B. Du Bois chose Aptheker to manage his writings after his death.
Aptheker was strongly against the Vietnam War. He gave talks about the war at colleges across the country. From 1969 to 1973, Aptheker taught a full-year course each year on Afro-American History at Bryn Mawr College. Herbert Aptheker passed away at age 87 on March 17, 2003, in Mountain View, California. His wife had died in 1999.
Works
Herbert Aptheker wrote many important books and articles. Here are some of his notable works:
- American Negro Slave Revolts (1943)
- Documentary History of the Negro People, 7-volumes (1951–1994)
- The American Revolution 1763–1783 (1960)
- The American Civil War (1961)
- Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion: Including the 1831 "Confessions" (1966)
- Anti-Racism in U.S. History: The First Two Hundred Years (1992)
He also wrote introductions or forewords for books by other authors, including The Negro in the South by Booker T. Washington and The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W. E. B. Du Bois.
Aptheker also edited many works by W. E. B. Du Bois, helping to share Du Bois's important writings with more people. Some of these include:
- The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois (1968)
- The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906–1960 (1973)
- The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois (1997)
Images for kids
-
Aptheker transferring W. E. B. Du Bois papers to University of Massachusetts, 1973
See also
In Spanish: Herbert Aptheker para niños
