TY - CHAP AB - Purpose This chapter focuses on how the repression of political ideologies can silence feminist voices. It examines how writings by women working with the U.S. Communist Party in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s have been overlooked even though they presaged important linchpins of U.S. second-wave feminist thought.Methodology/approach This study is based on historical and archival research.Findings Decades before the rise of second-wave feminism, women in the CPUSA had: (1) produced a political economy of domestic labor; (2) employed an intersectional analysis of the interlocking oppressions of race, gender, class, and nation; and (3) called for a global feminist analysis that linked these multiple oppressions to colonialism and imperialism.Social implications This study illustrates the costs of political repression and how the canon of feminist thought can be enhanced by resuscitating subjugated knowledges.Originality/value Too little attention has focused on the silencing of women because of their political ideologies. This chapter addresses this lacuna in feminist studies and calls into question the oft-repeated notion that the periods between the waves of U.S. feminism were times of movement stagnation. It shows how theory construction can flourish even when feminist activism wanes. VL - 20 SN - 978-1-78560-078-4, 978-1-78560-079-1/1529-2126 DO - 10.1108/S1529-212620150000020024 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-212620150000020024 AU - Mann Susan Archer PY - 2015 Y1 - 2015/01/01 TI - The Unread Red Feminists: Silenced Precursors of the U.S. Second Wave T2 - At the Center: Feminism, Social Science and Knowledge T3 - Advances in Gender Research PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 291 EP - 310 Y2 - 2024/04/26 ER -