[1] In particular Hammer and Hoe describes the way black workers brought existing traditions of resistance to racial oppression to their development of a unique version of Marxism.

Robin D. G. Kelley developed Hammer and Hoe during graduate school in the 1980s in a climate of activism, including the protests against police violence in Liberty City, Florida, Harold Washington’s election as Mayor of Chicago, and the growing presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson.

[4] Reviewing Hammer and Hoe for American Quarterly, historian David Roediger emphasized Kelley's methodological approach as descriptive rather than normative project: "Kelley asks not whether the Communist party was good (or correct or independent) but how the party came to attract a substantial number of African-American workers in Alabama and to energize their struggles [emphasis in the original].

He insists on measuring radicalism not by its ideological purity but by its ability to interact with a received culture to generate bold class organizations.

Throughout that time, the book has remained in print, winning awards and, more important to Kelley, a place in the hearts and strategic thinking of decades of young organizers struggling with the questions of race, gender, class, and solidarity.