Pettis Perry
{{Short description|American Communist Party leader}}
Pettis Perry (January 4, 1897 - July 24, 1965) was an American Communist Party official.
Biography
Perry was born on a tenant farm near Marion, Alabama.{{Cite journal |last=Boyer |first=Richard O. |date=December 1951 |title=Pettis Perry: The Story of a Working-class Leader |url=https://archive.org/details/mainstream-1947_1951-12_4_12/page/16/ |journal=Masses & Mainstream |volume=4 |issue=12 |pages=17}} He moved to Los Angeles in the 1920s, where he worked as a farm laborer in the Imperial Valley.{{Cite book |last=Sides |first=Josh |title=L.A. city limits : African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the present |date=2003 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=9780520248304 |pages=32}} Perry was inspired to join the Communist Party because of its work on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys.{{Cite book |last=Horne |first=Gerald |title=Fire this time : The Watts uprising and the 1960s |date=1997 |publisher=Da Capo Press |isbn=0306807920 |pages=5}} In 1933, Perry became the first African-American candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California, running on the Communist Party ticket.{{Cite journal |last=Jurich |first=Joscelyn |date=October 2017 |title=Pettis Perry and the “Negro Question” |journal=American Communist History |volume=16 |issue=3-4 |pages=8}}
Perry moved from California to New York City in 1948.{{Cite book |last=Shannon |first=David A. |title=The decline of American Communism: A history of the Communist Party of the United States since 1945. |date=1959 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace and Company |location=New York |pages=245}} In New York, Perry directed the Party's National Negro Commission until 1954.{{Cite book |last=Duberman |first=Martin B. |title=Paul Robeson |date=1996 |publisher=The New Press |isbn=156584288X |location=New York |pages=420}} In 1949, Perry began a campaign to eliminate white chauvinism and racism in the Party, traveling to Party branches around the country to discuss the issue.{{Cite book |last=Barrett |first=James R. |title=William Z. Foster and the tragedy of American radicalism |date=1999 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=0252020464 |location=Urbana |pages=243}} While acknowledging the validity of Perry's concerns, Steve Nelson and Joseph Starobin argued that the campaign had been divisive and harmful to the Party.{{Cite book |title=Tish Sommers, activist, and the founding of the Older Women's League |date=1991 |publisher=The University of Tennessee Press |isbn=0870496913 |location=Knoxville |pages=125}}
Perry was arrested on June 20, 1951, with twenty other Communist Party leaders, under the Smith Act.{{Cite book |last=Lannon |first=Albert Vetere |title=Second String Red: The Life of Al Lannon, American Communist |date=1999 |publisher=Lexington Books |pages=125}} During the trial, Perry argued that the proceedings were unfair, describing them as "a frameup so enormous as to resemble the Reichstag Fire trial".{{Cite book |last=Marable |first=Manning |title=Race, reform, and rebellion : The second Reconstruction in black America, 1945-1990 |date=1991 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |isbn=0333564332 |pages=31}} He and seven of the other defendants were sentenced to three years in jail and fined $5000.{{Cite book |last=Caute |first=David |title=The great fear : The anti-Communist purge under Truman and Eisenhower |date=1979 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=0671248480 |location=New York |pages=199}} After his release from prison in 1957, Perry continued working in the Party and died in Moscow in 1965.{{Cite book |title=Biographical Dictionary of the American Left |date=1986 |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=0313242003 |editor-last=Johnpoll |editor-first=Bernard K. |pages=313 |editor-last2=Klehr |editor-first2=Harvey}}
Perry was the inspiration for the character of Bart, a Black Communist leader, in Chester Himes' novel Lonely Crusade.{{Cite book |last=Wald |first=Alan M. |title=Trinity of passion : The literary left and the antifascist crusade |date=2007 |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |isbn=9780807830758 |location=Chapel Hill |pages=249}}