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TOM CRANN: It's All Things Considered from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Tom Crann. Nelson Peery has spent a life as an activist. He grew up in the only Black family in Wabasha, Minnesota during the Great Depression, and he went off to serve in the Second World War. His new book Black Radical begins with the story of his return from the war to Minneapolis. In it, Peery vividly depicts his odyssey as a worker, activist, and member of the Communist Party.

In addition to observations about the radical movement in Minnesota, the book chronicles his work as a bricklayer and party operative in Detroit, Cleveland, and New York. A film about Nelson Peery's life won an honorable mention at the Minnesota Historical Society's 2007 Moving Pictures Film competition last weekend. Nelson Peery joins me in the studio now. It's good to have you here. Thanks for coming in.

NELSON PEERY: Thank you very much.

TOM CRANN: In your first book, Black Fire, you focus on your childhood, your early years in Minnesota. And your family was the only African American family in Wabasha, Minnesota. Your father was a postal worker. You're one of seven boys, seven brothers.

NELSON PEERY: Yes.

TOM CRANN: When you look back, how do you characterize that experience, that childhood in Wabasha?

NELSON PEERY: Growing up in a situation like in Wabasha where, first of all, was populated by some pretty decent people. That's the first part. The second part of it is it's very difficult to segregate or isolate one family. So I never had the experience of being told at a theater-- there was only one theater in Wabasha, but they never told me I can't sell you a ticket because we don't allow colored in here, or I never went to a restaurant that told me we don't serve colored here, and so forth and so on.

And so when I moved to Minneapolis and have somebody actually tell me that they're not going to serve me a cup of coffee or an egg and a piece of toast because of my color, I mean, what the devil is going on? This is not the America that I was told about, and learned about, and experienced as a child.

So when I was there, I had to ask myself this question, well, what kind of people are these? Well, I thought about Bert Bastian who lived across the street from me that was my chum and best buddy and I thought about the other people in Wabasha. And I knew that there wasn't anything inherently wrong with white people, so therefore it had to be the system. And without even being conscious of it, I began to drift towards being a radical.

TOM CRANN: You go into the service, you're 18 when you went off to the Pacific in the Second World War. And then you come back to Minneapolis a young man, just out of the service. You were in the 93rd Division, a segregated division. And the book begins on your return. Tell us what that transition was like from the army and from the all-Black division you were in into segregated Minneapolis?

NELSON PEERY: When I went to war, I went to war in an Infantry Division, 18,000 men, all Black. I never talked to a white person for 3 and 1/2 years. And so we had this tremendous leap from being an isolated Black to a situation where I lost all contact with the whites in a physical sense. So when I came back, I was all Black.

And the thing, of course, when we got back there I mean putting this whole mix together, what it added up to when we got back to the United States, I along with practically all the rest of the Black Veterans, were determined we were not going to take this any longer. If we could fight for the freedom of the French, the freedom of the British, and so forth and so on, we could fight for our own freedom.

TOM CRANN: And was it that experience, those early moments back that pushed you, if you will, to join the Communist Party? You're talking now about that you be-dawned on you there's something wrong with the system. And was that the moment when you realized you had to do something about it?

NELSON PEERY: I was in the Communist Party about eight years from about 1946 up through 1953. But I think the thing that impelled me in that direction is the CP was the only integrated organization in this country. And so if you were going to fight on the question on the race question, you galvanized towards the CP, whether you like them or not. And there was many, many Blacks who were around the CP who did not agree with communism in any way, but there was nowhere else for them to go to fight.

TOM CRANN: You felt you could do more for the cause of racial equality there than in an organization, for example, like the NAACP?

NELSON PEERY: There was two aspects of the African American struggle. One was the struggle for equal rights, and one was the struggle for civil rights. And the NAACP concentrated on the civil rights, that is to say to win the court battles, to change the laws, and approach the struggle for liberation from a legal standpoint, whereas the Paul Robeson's approached the question from a social standpoint. That is to say that we have to win equality.

And so the fight for equal rights was much more compelling to me than the fight for civil rights. So therefore, I joined the Communist Party instead of the NAACP. And it was just about that simple. I think most people don't realize those two levels of struggle that was going on, and the animosity and hostility that it created between these groups because of that, each one of them being absolutely certain they were correct.

TOM CRANN: Well, here in Minnesota was a screening of a film that was part of films made about the greatest generation, and that label of people like yourself who fought the Second World War. How do you feel about that label of the greatest generation?

NELSON PEERY: Well, it was the greatest generation in the sense that we lived through the depression and we fought the greatest war in human history. But I have some questions about how great we really were because at the end of the war, we had the opportunity to build a different kind of world and we failed to do so. We didn't even try.

And so the goals that we fought for, the vision that Roosevelt gave us of freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, that was left in the dust. We no longer fought for it. So consequently, the forces that are at play today, they were able to begin consolidating and taking over the government, taking over the economy, taking over the country. And so yes, we won a battle, but we lost the war. And so the greatest generation I think has to be pretty humble in this respect.

TOM CRANN: Are you saying that there has been no major progress, for example, on racial equality in this country since that time and from that generation?

NELSON PEERY: There has and hasn't been. What we have seen is the Black elite becoming integrated into the white elite. But the Black poor today is perhaps worse off than ever, because at least in the 1930s, 1940s, we had a vision. We had something we were fighting for. You look at these youngsters today, especially in a city like Chicago, where I'm living now, and they don't even have any hope.

I mean, they're still poorly fed, poorly clad, poorly housed, poorly educated, sick. But at least we had vision, at least we had something we were fighting for. They don't have even vision today. So no, I don't think that the Black poor gained anything from the freedom movement.

TOM CRANN: Nelson Perry's new book is Black Radical-- The education of an American Revolutionary. Thank you for coming in today.

NELSON PEERY: Well, thank you so much.