Print
Email
Cite
Ford, James W.
1893–1957
American Communist Party official, first African American to run on a presidential ticket.James W. Ford was born in Pratt City, Alabama, on December 22, 1893. In 1913 he entered Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduated in 1920 after serving in the army during World War I (1914–1918). Ford then moved to Chicago, where he became a postal worker and joined the Chicago Postal Workers Union and the American Negro Labor Congress, both affiliates of the Communist Party USA.Ford joined the Communist Party in 1926 and rose rapidly through its ranks. In 1928 he was a delegate to the party's executive committee meeting in Moscow. In 1931 he became vice president of the party's League of Struggle for Negro Rights. He was the first African American on a presidential ticket, running for vice president with William Z. Foster in 1932. They received 102,991 votes.In 1933 Ford was selected to head the party's section in Harlem, New York. It was decentralized, and many of its members diverged from the party's platform by endorsing Black Nationalism, which the party believed would alienate white workers. Ford efficiently returned the organization to Communist orthodoxy, and under his leadership the Harlem section membership increased from 560 to 1,000.In 1936 Ford was again selected as the Communist Party's vice presidential candidate, but he and running mate Earl Browder received fewer than 50,000 votes. During World War II (1939–1945), Ford's power in the national party diminished, though he remained head of the Harlem section. In the 1950s, he was the executive director of the National Committee to Defend Negro Leadership, a group founded to aid African American party members who were convicted under federal antisubversion laws that arose because of Cold War antipathy toward the Communist Party.See also Black Nationalism in the United States; Labor Leaders; Socialism; World War I and African Americans.Sign up to recieve email alerts from African American Studies Center
