John Reed Clubs

1929 In October 1929, the John Reed Club was founded by eight staff members of the New Masses magazine to support leftist and Marxist artists and writers. They included: Mike Gold, Walt Carmon, William Gropper, Keene Wallis, Hugo Gellert, Morris Pass, and Joseph Pass. He told them to "go out and form a club" and "call it the John Reed Club." ==Organization==

The John Reed Club's slogan was "Art is a weapon in the class struggle." John Reed Club School of Art During the 1932 national convention, the JRCs announced the opening of a "John Reed Club School of Art" in New York City at 450 Sixth Avenue. Classes were to start on November 14, 1932, for Monday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Instruction was open beyond JRC members. Instructors included Hugo Gellert, William Gropper, Louis Lozowick, and William Siegel. ==People==

By 1933, the New York chapter had 380 members, of whom some 200 were artists and the rest writers. The only paid job was secretary-treasurer at $15 per week. Granville Hicks • Chicago: Richard Wright and the artist Morris Topchevsky were members in Chicago. (In 1944, Wright distilled his uncomfortable experience in an Atlantic Monthly article, "I Tried to be a Communist".) Prominent women writers who were JRC members include: Jan Wittenber, Grace Lumpkin, Tillie Lerner, Meridel Le Sueur, Josephine Herbst, and Clara Weatherwax. Prominent African-American writers who were JRC members include: Eugene Gordon, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Joe Jones. ==Assessment==

In her 1977 work The John Reed Clubs, Laurie Ann Alexandre stated: It would be inaccurate to call the John Reed Club a Marxist organization. Its charter simply stated that any member who recognized class struggle and wished to give it support would be welcomed. It cannot be said that the JRC was committed beyond that general point. Many of its members were not Marxists, and the Clubs spent little time educating its members in the theoretical underpinnings of Engels, Marx, or Lenin. ==Works==

Books by the JRCs • Harlan Miners Speak: Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields (1932) • Red Pen (later Left Review) from Philadelphia Gan Kolski, Louis Lozowick, Jan Matulka, Morris Pass, Anton Refregier, Louis Leon Ribak, Esther Shemitz, Otto Soglow, and Art Young. • 1930: The second exhibition occurred in January 1930: 42 drawings, paintings, and lithographs that traveled from the Borough Park Workers' Club (43rd Street, Brooklyn) to other clubs in Brownsville, Williamsburg, the Bronx, and Manhattan. in 1935: its theme was the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and included "Roustabouts" by Joe Jones. The last known exhibition occurred at the ACA Gallery: its theme was "The Capitalist Crisis" and gained little notice outside of Communist press organs. The site of the John Reed Club in New York held exhibitions of member work from the summer of 1930; it established a gallery there in 1932. Records are scarce for 1932–1935. == See also==

• James Gilbert, "Literature and Revolution in the United States: The Partisan Review," Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 2, no. 2 (April 1967), pp. 161-176. In JSTOR. • Eric Homberger, "Proletarian Literature and the John Reed Clubs 1929-1935," Journal of American Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (Aug. 1979), pp. 221-244. In JSTOR. • Walter B. Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States: 1900-1954: Some interrelations of Literature and Society (New York: Hill and Wang, 1966). • Henry Hart, ed., ''The American Writers' Congress'' (New York: International Publishers, 1935). • partial text of "I Tried to be a Communist", by Richard Wright • Yale University Press: Artists on the Left by Andrew Hemingway • NYU Grey Art Gallery: The Left Front: Radical Art in the "Red Decade," 1929–1940 • Northwestern University: The Left Front: Radical Art in the "Red Decade," 1929–1940 • Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Photo - Protest held by the John Reed Club and Artists' Union, 1934