James S. "Jim" Allen, born Sol Auerbach (1906–1986), was an American Marxist historian, journalist, editor, activist, and functionary of the Communist Party USA.

[3] During his formative years in Philadelphia, Auerbach had developed a strong interest in African American life, which led to his appointment in 1930 as editor of the Communist Party's first newspaper produced south of the Mason-Dixon line, The Southern Worker.

[3] According to the testimony of Isabelle Allen, authorities never were able to identify the shop that produced the paper, partly because to the struggling printer's simultaneous production of a newspaper for the Ku Klux Klan, an ideal cover for a secret side job.

[4] Despite breathless speculation then and later that the communist mobilizing slogan "Self-Determination for the Black Belt" was a call for national secession, Allen later claimed that "we weren't stupid".

[8]Allen's actual time spent in the South was limited, as he was forced to return to New York in 1931 by the pressure of life in hiding[9] and the "monotonous" and "depressing" job of editing an underground newspaper to which Southerners were too frightened to subscribe.

"[11] Allen was listening to the radio in his Chattanooga apartment in March 1931 when he heard that police in Paint Rock, Alabama, had removed nine young black men from a freight train and charged them with rape.

[12] They were not traveling as a group and some did not know the others until they met in jail, pulled from the train by a mob of 200 whites following false accusations of rape by two women seeking to avoid prostitution charges.

Gilmore wrote, "Without the spotlight that Jim Allen quickly focused on the trials it is most likely that the 'Boys' would have been dead by fall, lost among the thousands of unknown Southern black men executed legally and illegally.

[13] In accord with the strategy of the popular front, the Comintern then sought to build broad alliances against the rising tide of fascism and was therefore interested in minimizing conflict between communists and socialists.

Allen's mission was that of convincing Crisanto Evangelista, the General Secretary of the CPP, and his jailed comrades to accept a conditional pardon from Philippine President Manuel Quezon and to gain their freedom so they could lead the fight against Japanese militarism.

His new mission was to expand the conditional pardons that had been granted to Evangelista and his associates to the full restoration of civil rights so that they could mobilize radical Philippine workers against fascism by public meetings and mass demonstrations.

[14] Next, Allen sought to broker actual unity between the two parties, conferring both with the CPP leadership and with Pedro Abad Santos, the president of the SPP, on the matter.

[14] Allen used the utmost diplomacy in making his case to Abad Santos to bury tactical differences with the communists and to accept a merger, in the interest of constructing a stronger organization in opposition to fascism.

Since he did not express his opposition publicly, Allen was not expelled, but at the next National Convention, in 1972, he was quietly removed from the Central Committee, effectively cashiering him from the ranks of top party leadership.

[22] At IP, Allen was responsible for introducing the production of a series of inexpensive "New World Paperbacks" and made reissues of classic Marxist canon more readily available to a new generation of political activists and college students.

[23] During a cross-country sales trip, Allen had been convinced that the book trade was going to be dominated by the paperback format and that if IP were to survive in the new environment, it would need to retool its offerings.

Du Bois, personally editing the autobiography of communist New York City Council member Benjamin J. Davis Jr., and adding works by Henry Winston, Claude Lightfoot, and others.