Anticommunist hysteria is not a time limited aberration in the American body politic. It emerged after the Civil War as a policing mechanism against freed Black Americans and thus is an important legacy of “Slavery and its Afterlives.” It depicts efforts toward justice and emancipation as anti-American conspiracies and Black Radicals as subversive agents. This panel will explore how racial capitalism has moved Black Americans into the political left while anticommunism operates as a tool that circumscribes their emancipatory efforts and depicts liberation movements as subversive threats. As Edward Carson shows, W.E.B. Du Bois’ radicalism was ignited in the aftermath of Reconstruction as he explored the capitalist exploitation of Black agricultural workers who were continually disenfranchised in a “second slavery” that persisted throughout the twentieth century. Meanwhile, the punitive state upheld racial capitalism through “lynch law” which meted out deadly punishment under the guise of the legal system to maintain white supremacy. As Tony Pecinovsky shows, radical activists challenged the violent white supremacist state and faced legal harassment, imprisonment, and ostracization for their efforts. Law enforcement operated alongside citizen organizations to sustain the white supremacist state. As Denise Lynn argues, veteran’s organizations were key in anticommunist purges which specifically targeted Black radicals, especially Paul Robeson. Black radicals theorized that anticommunism, legal lynching, and white supremacy were a foundational part of US fascism. But even as they faced violent suppression in the afterlives of slavery, Black radicals persisted in theorizing an emancipatory vision and continued to resist. As Zifeng Liu shows, Black radical women resisted the co-optation of their reproductive labors to the white supremacist war state and sought a peace grounded in anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism. Together these papers show that anticommunism has served as a key effort to police and restrain Black liberation in the generations after emancipation.