[3] The trip proved shocking and life-altering for Aptheker, who upon his return to Brooklyn began writing a column called "The Dark Side of The South" for his Erasmus Hall High School newspaper.

[4] At Columbia, Aptheker continued to engage in the anti-war movement, both through the NSL and the American League Against War and Fascism, a broader mass organization of the Communist Party during its Popular Front period.

[1] Their daughter, Bettina, was born in 1944 at the U.S. Army Hospital in Fort Bragg, North Carolina during Aptheker's service in World War II.

[9] In December 1950, after failing to respond to the U.S. Army's letter of inquiry about his Communist political activity, he lost his commission after an honorable discharge.

Shortly afterward, he served as secretary of the "Abolish Peonage Committee," which had been established in 1940 by activists in New York and Chicago, with the support of the International Labor Defense (IDL), an arm of the Communist Party.

Several southern states had banned convict leasing to industries in the early 20th century: Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas and Florida by 1923.

[11][10] Aptheker's master's thesis, a study of Nat Turner's Rebellion in Virginia in 1831, laid the groundwork for his future work on the history of American slave revolts.

Aptheker asserted Turner's heroism, demonstrating how his rebellion was rooted in resistance to the exploitative conditions of the Southern slave system.

Aptheker set forth historiographical arguments, challenging some conservative histories, most notably the perspective in the writings of Georgia-born historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, who was considered part of the Dunning School at Columbia University.

Phillips had characterized enslaved African Americans as childlike, inferior, and uncivilized; he argued that slavery was a benign institution; and defended the preservation of the Southern plantation system.

In his work as a historian, he compiled a documentary history of African Americans in the United States, a monumental collection which he started publishing in 1951.

In 1966, he ran in the U.S. House of Representatives election in New York's 12th Congressional District for the Peace and Freedom Party; he received 3,562 votes.

She thought that he celebrated black resistance in part "to compensate for his deep shame about the way, he believed, the Jews had acted during the Holocaust.

"[13] The controversy about her claims about her father continued for months, with many essays and letters published on the History News Network hosted by George Mason University.

He also wrote that he had interviewed Kate Miller, who had been present during Bettina Aptheker's 1999 conversation with her father about the abuse, and confirmed her account.