Communists in Closets

<p><em>Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s–1990s</em> explores the history of gay lesbian and non-heterosexual people in the Communist Party in the United States.</p><p>The Communist Party banned lesbian gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people from membership beginning in 1938 when it cast them off as degenerates. It persisted in this policy until 1991. During this 60-year ban gays and lesbians who did join the Communist Party were deeply closeted within it as well as in their public lives as both queer and Communist. By the late 1930s the Communist Party had a membership approaching 100000 and tens of thousands more people moved in its orbit through the Popular Front against fascism anti-racist organizing especially in the south and its widely read cultural magazine <i>The New Masses. </i>Based on a decade of archival research correspondence and interviews Bettina Aptheker explores this history also pulling from her own experience as a closeted lesbian in the Communist Party in the 1960s and ‘70s. Ironically and in spite of this homophobia individual Communists laid some of the political and theoretical foundations for lesbian and gay liberation and women’s liberation and contributed significantly to peace social justice civil rights and Black and Latinx liberation movements.</p><p>This book will be of interest to students scholars and general readers in political history gender studies and the history of sexuality.</p>