page_title: Jessica Mitford
section_title: Books and music
hierarchical_section_title: Jessica Mitford / Career and politics / Books and music
caption_attribution_description: English: Jessica Mitford appearing on After Dark on 20 August 1988. Other guests included John Rentoul and Eva Figes.
context_page_description: Jessica Lucy 'Decca' Freeman-Mitford was an English author, one of the six aristocratic Mitford sisters noted for their sharply conflicting politics.
  Jessica married her second cousin Esmond Romilly, who was killed in World War II, and then American civil rights lawyer Robert Treuhaft, with whom she joined the American Communist Party and worked closely in the Civil Rights Congress. Both refused to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and later resigned from the party out of disillusion with Stalinism.
  Her memoirs Hons and Rebels, and a social commentary The American Way of Death, both became classics.
context_section_description: Mitford's second memoir, A Fine Old Conflict (1977), comically describes her experiences joining and eventually leaving the Communist Party USA. Mitford titled the book after what, in her youth, she thought were the lyrics to the Communist anthem, "The Internationale", which actually are "Tis the final conflict". Mitford recounts how she was invited to join the Communist Party by her co-worker Dobby, to whom she responded "We thought you'd never ask!"  She bristled against the conservative structure in the CP, at one point upsetting the women's caucus by printing a poster with "Girls! Girls! Girls!" to draw people to an event. She mercilessly teased an elder Communist about what she perceived as his paranoia when he wrote out the name of a town where she could get chickens donated from "loyal party members" for a fund raiser. When he wrote Petaluma on a scrap of paper to avoid being overheard by possible bugs, she asked in jest how the chickens should be prepared, and wrote, "Fried or broiled".
  In addition to writing and activism, Mitford tried her hand at music as singer for "Decca and the Dectones," a cowbell and kazoo orchestra. She performed at numerous benefits and opened for Cyndi Lauper on the roof of the Virgin Records store in San Francisco. She recorded two short albums: one contains her rendition of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Grace Darling", and the other, two duets with friend and poet Maya Angelou. Her last work was an update entitled The American Way of Death Revisited.
caption: Mitford appearing on British TV show After Dark in 1988
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