Southern Worker

The Southern Worker was a Communist Party newspaper published weekly in Birmingham from 1930 to 1937. James Allen, an editor for the Labor Defender was appointed to oversee publication with a budget of $200. The first issue was dated August 16, 1930.

During its run, the Southern Worker focused on tenant farming and sharecropping practices in the rural South as part of the Party's campaign to organize the "oppressed nation" of Southern blacks to overthrow their oppressors.

The newspaper never gained a large local readership, but was distributed widely across the United States, helping expose particularly cruel practices to outside observers. It folded in 1937 and was superceded by New South, which was published in Birmingham and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

References

• Medley, Jerry Morgan (February 21, 20080) "Alabama Voices: Newspaper had impact." Montgomery Advertiser
• Medley, Jerry Morgan (October 3, 2000) "Southern Worker: Alabama's Communist Newspaper." Paper presented to the American Journalism Historians Association, National Convention, San Diego, California