This is part one of a two-part article on the Communist Party USA in the 1930s. Many of the struggles in which Communists had played a leading role in the 1920s had ended in defeat. The 1926 Patterson, New Jersey, silk strike and the Gastonia, North Carolina, mill strike had been crushed. Sacco and Vanzetti … Continue reading The Communist Party in the ’30s: The Depression and the great upsurge