1932 Campaign Poster With Map For The Communist Party USA

The poster above titled: EQUAL RIGHTS FOR NEGROES !EVERYWHERE!, SELF DETERMINATION for the BLACK BELT, VOTE COMMUNIST was for the 1932 US election.

Ford who was running as Vice President, was the first African American in history to be included on a presidential ticket.

More about the election:

This is a 1932 U.S. Communist Party campaign poster. It promotes William Z. Foster for president and James W. Ford for vice president. The big theme splashed across it is:

Equal rights for Black Americans
Self-determination for the “Black Belt”

At the time, the “Black Belt” was a term Communists and others used to refer to heavily African-American counties in the Deep South, where they argued Black people constituted an “oppressed nation.”

They advocated the right to self-government there, a pretty radical stance compared to mainstream U.S. politics in the 1930s.

William Z. Foster (Presidential nominee)

Foster was a major labour organizer and a long-time leader in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

Some quick highlights:

Known for organizing major strikes in the 1910s–20s.
Ran for president three times (1924, 1928, 1932).
In 1932 he actually suffered a heart attack mid-campaign, so Ford ended up doing most of the active campaigning.

He wasn’t a mainstream figure, but he was extremely important inside the CPUSA.

James W. Ford (Vice-presidential nominee)

Ford is super notable:

He was an African-American Communist leader, union organizer, and anti-racism activist.
In 1932, he became the first Black candidate for vice president on any national ticket.
He was central in pushing the CPUSA to make racial justice a core priority.

The poster includes his portrait prominently , and that wasn’t an accident. The Party was trying to position itself as the political home for Black voters at a time when both major parties maintained segregationist compromises.

What’s with the “Black Belt self-determination” map?

The map outlines counties across the Deep South where Black populations were concentrated (Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, etc.).

The Communist Party thought racism in the U.S. wasn’t just discrimination, they framed it as national oppression, similar (in their view) to colonial rule.

So they argued:

Black Americans in the Black Belt should have the right to form their own autonomous government if they chose to.

That was never a mainstream idea, but it made the CPUSA stand out sharply from Democrats (who were tied to the segregated South) and Republicans (who had largely abandoned civil rights after Reconstruction).

The 1932 Election

The 1932 election was dominated by:

Great Depression misery
Widespread unemployment
Collapse of trust in President Herbert Hoover

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal message steamrolled everyone else.

Final results:

FDR: 57.4% of the popular vote (22,821,277 votes)
Hoover: 39.6% (15,761,254 votes)
Socialists: 2.23% (884,885 votes )
Communist Party: 0.23% (103,307 votes)

So the Communists didn’t make electoral waves, but they did punch above their weight culturally in certain areas, especially among labour organizers, unemployed workers’ groups, and some Black communities in the South and North.

What the Communist campaign emphasized in 1932

They ran on stuff that was way outside the political mainstream at the time but feels surprisingly modern in some ways:

Federal unemployment insurance
Racial equality and anti-lynching laws
Desegregation
Tenant farmer rights
Protection for labor organizing
Ending Jim Crow
Self-determination for the Black Belt

Mainstream parties were not touching any of this.

Why this poster is historically interesting

It’s one of the earliest national campaign posters in U.S. history that foregrounds Black civil rights.
It features James W. Ford, the first Black VP candidate.
The “Black Belt” self-determination idea represents a unique moment in left-wing racial politics.
It’s an example of how the CPUSA tried to appeal directly to Southern Black voters during Jim Crow, something the major parties were absolutely not doing.

Map of the Black-Belt today: