A 1932 presidential election campaign poster by the U.S. Communist Party. [640×888]

James W. Ford, featured prominently on the poster, was the first African American ever placed on a national presidential ticket. A union organizer and anti-racism activist, Ford pushed the Party to make Black liberation central to its politics. When Foster suffered a heart attack mid-campaign, Ford ended up doing most of the actual campaigning.

The poster also includes a striking map of the “Black Belt” — the Deep South counties with majority-Black populations. In the early 1930s, the CPUSA argued that African Americans in this region formed an “oppressed nation” and should have the right to self-government if they chose. It was a radical position, completely outside the programs of both Democrats and Republicans, who were still bound by segregationist compromises.

Foster, a longtime labor leader known for organizing major strikes in the 1910s and ’20s, had already run twice before. But the 1932 campaign stood out because of its unusually sharp focus on racial justice. The Party’s platform called for:

• Equal rights and the end of Jim Crow
• Federal unemployment insurance
• Anti-lynching laws
• Desegregation
• Tenant farmer protections
• Labor organizing rights
• Self-determination for the Black Belt

For its time, it was light-years away from the mainstream.

This poster is fascinating not just as political ephemera, but as one of the earliest nationwide campaign materials in U.S. history to foreground Black civil rights, featuring the first Black vice-presidential candidate and a vision of racial justice far ahead of its era.