Claude Lightfoot

Claude M. Lightfoot (1910–1991) was an African-American activist, politician, and author.

Claude M. Lightfoot was born on January 19, 1910, in Lake Village, Arkansas.

Soon after his birth his parents left him to be cared for by his grandmother, Frances Henderson Lightfoot, A former slave who managed to acquire a large cotton farm in Lake Village.

Claude lived with his grandmother for the first six years of his life before moving to Little Rock, AR to be with his parents.

In Little Rock, the living conditions were much worse than they had been on his grandmother's farm in Lake Village.

His parents struggled to put food on the table and this was a major factor contributing to his family deciding to move north.

A few of the things that Drew Lightfoot to Garvey were the poor treatment of African American veterans coming back from World War One, The race riots occurring in the late 1910s and early 1920s, As well as other members of his family who were also attracted to Garvey's ideas.

Lightfoot's formal education came to an end when he was forced to drop out of high school in order to help make money for his family.

With the exception of spending one year at Virginia Union University in Richmond the rest of his education would be self taught.

Lightfoot continued to believe in Marcus Garvey's black nationalist vision into his twenties.

While in his twenties he joined the Democratic party breaking from his previous alliance with the Republican party which he had previously identified with due to its reputation as the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Having moved from his birthplace in Arkansas to Chicago's South Side in 1917, Lightfoot experienced the Chicago Race Riots of 1919, prompting him to join the struggles of Black workers in the 1920s.

After participating briefly in Marcus Garvey's movement, which he decided was unworkable, Lightfoot became a member of the Democratic Party.

Different members of his family began to migrate north and by 1918 his entire nuclear family had settled in Chicago.

In Chicago, Lightfoot began to develop his interest in politics.

This is also the period where he began to realize more fully the disadvantaged position that African Americans occupy in our society.

He noted that despite the popular notion that racism in the North did not compare with racism in the south, Lightfoot noticed that as an African-American, Jim Crow would follow him wherever he went.

During this time in his life, Lightfoot became drawn to Marcus Garvey and black nationalism.

At this time he believed in black capitalism, and the idea that African Americans should form their own economy separate from the economy run by the whites and exploiting blacks.

In 1930 he helped to form the Young Men's Black Democratic Club.

Disillusionment during the Great Depression led him to join the Communist Party in 1931.

In 1932 Lightfoot ran for the Illinois State Legislature on the Communist ticket, receiving 33,000 votes.

In 1935 Lightfoot was a delegate to the Seventh (and last) World Congress of the Communist International in the Soviet Union.

Lightfoot was the nominee of the Communist Party for Illinois Attorney General in November 1936.

Lightfoot married Geraldyne Gray in 1938.

After enlisting in 1941 and serving three and a half years in World War II, he rose to the top leadership of the Illinois Communist Party, succeeding Gilbert Green as chairman in 1957 when the latter was arrested.

On June 26, 1954, during the McCarthy era, Lightfoot was arrested based on the Smith Act of 1940 and put on trial.

While previous Smith Act indictments had been of individuals accused directly of attempting to overthrow the US government by force or violence, Lightfoot was indicted merely for being a member of the Communist Party, which, in turn, was alleged to be attempting to overthrow the government.

His conviction in January 1955 was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the conviction, resulting in Lightfoot's acquittal in 1961.

Lightfoot's autobiography, which was also his doctoral thesis at the University of Illinois, is: From Chicago's Ghetto to World Politics: The Life and Struggles of Claude M. Lightfoot.

From 1957 until his death in 1991 Lightfoot was an officer of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) and was several times the nominee of that party for elected political office.

The author of many books and articles about racism and communism, Lightfoot also traveled and lectured throughout the world.

She was a CPUSA organizer who died of cancer in 1962; they adopted a disabled son, Earl, around 1955.

Lightfoot married a woman named Joyce in 1965 and adopted a daughter named Tanya.

It was first published as Black America and the World Revolution (New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1970).

In the 1970s Lightfoot wrote newspaper columns for the Chicago Courier.

In 1973 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Rostock in East Germany for his book Racism and Human Survival: Lessons of Nazi Germany for Today's World.

He was also honored by the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America and the Bulgarian and Soviet Communist parties.

A 1980 augmented edition was titled Chicago Slums to World Politics.

He donated his papers to the Chicago Historical Museum in 1986.