Timeline part 5 (1952-1956)
Imprisoned in Ellis Island for 4 months by US Immigration Officials (part of the heightened political repression against communists). Writes Mariners, Renegades and Castaways while incarcerated there.
(below) Ellis Island’s Immigrant Landing Station. Image public domain.
While C.L.R. was still on Ellis Island, he spearheaded the creation of the “Third Layer School,” where rank-and-file workers, women, and youth did the talking and intellectuals did the listening.
5 March: Stalin dies. Malenkov becomes Soviet premier; Beria, minister of interior; Molotov, foreign minister.
Mariners, Renegades and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In. New York; privately printed (1953). Reprinted, London: Allison & Busby (1984).
Gives public lectures on American and European literature as part of case to remain in the USA.
Appeal for U.S. citizenship turned down and forced to leave U.S. James was deported to the U.K. on grounds of being a Communist alien agitator under the new McCarren Act.
James ends marriage with Constance Web.
Notes on Hamlet, lecture given by James at the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Columbia Unniversity, New York. Later published in the CLR James Reader
Editor of journal: International African Opinion (published ’53-’57)
17 May: U.S. Supreme Court (in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka) unanimously bans racial segregation in public schools.
Colour Bar (written with Learie Constantine).
Filomena Daddario and Grace Lee Boggs spent the Spring of 1954 in London working with James.
Popular Art and the Cultural Tradition. (Lecture given in Paris at a conference on Mass Culture). Published in the CLR James Reader.
November: Algerian War of Independence against France begins; France struggles to maintain colonial rule until 1962 when it agrees to Algeria’s independence.
Preface to Criticism. (extract from unpublished documents on literary criticism) Published in C.L.R. James Reader.
Raya Dunayevskaya splits from Correspondence group.
1 December: Rosa Parks refuses to sit at the back of the bus. Martin Luther King, Jr., leads black boycott of Montgomery, Ala., bus system; desegregated service begins on 21 December 1956.
(left) Black Residents Walking, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955. Image public domain
April: Morocco gains independence.
Every Cook Can Govern. Essay printed in Correspondence.
Marries Selma Weinstein who has come to the UK from the US with 6 year old son.
Fellow Correspondence member and long time American sponsor of James, Lyman Paine spends ‘several months’ in London with James.
Workers’ uprising against Communist rule in Poznan, Poland, is crushed (June 28–30); rebellion inspires Hungarian students to stage a protest against Communism in Budapest (Oct. 23); Hungarian rebellion forces Soviet troops to withdraw from Budapest.
(left) A Soviet tank attempts to clear a road barricade in Budapest, October 1956. Image public domain.
Letters on Politics (letters sent to Correspondence members 1956-1960). Published in CLR James Reader.