Socialist Newspapers & the Circulation of Spivak's Novel
Spivak's communist roots were a large reason he went to Georgia to investigate the prison system. Many journalists in the Progressive Era were motivated by their socialist political ties to uncover human rights injustice caused by the American government. Once his novel was published, it became serialized by many socialist newspapers and spread to a wide, left-leaning audience.
By looking at the original prints of Spivak's photographs, we can see the process one particular socialist publication, the Daily Worker, followed in turning Spivak's work into a socialist serial. These particular photographs have been edited with a white pen, erasing the background and highlighting the foreground so the photo would show up in newspaper print. The annotations on the back of the photos were made by a printer. This is a remarkable look into the printing process in the early 1930s and the way photos were prepared and handled.
But these photographs are also revealing in another way. By analyzing the subject and content of each photograph selected to be included in the Daily Worker's serial of Spivak's novel, we can see that the Daily Worker chose photos that center around labor, instead of photos that depict explicit torture or cruelty. This might be the case as to not offend the senses of their northern, predominantly-white audience. While that is probably one explanation (seeing as the Daily Worker reprimanded Spivak for his explicit language, also offensive in the Progressive Era), we believe there is another, more important, explanation. The Daily Worker and other socialist publications chose photographs that highlighted labor injustice over racial injustice. This way, the injustice found in the Georgia prison system was a vehicle to display the labor inequality found in the South. These photographs tell the all-too familiar story of Progressive Era muckrakers and the use of social injustice to further the communist political agenda.