The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 31, 1925, Page 8

The following is a stenographic re- port of the speech: made by: Richard B. Moore, delegate’ to the American Negro Labor Congress, from the ‘Bthi- opian Students League of New York City at the opening session, Sunday evening, Oct. 25, im the Metropolitan Community Center, 3118 Giles: Ave. * * * ROTHER Chairman and Fellow Workers: I deem it a high honor to be pres- ent on this occasion. We are witness- ing the emergence of a class that is destined to play ‘a sighificant role in the further people and also the down trodden white workers of America, The Slave System. You remember half a century ago when a great system of oppression ruled in America, when men were bought and sold, there appeared upon the scene that great advocate of thé race, Frederick Douglass. In him the Slave became’ voeal. When he was @rowsed, and when he bestirred him- Sélf, the institution was weakened, and overthrown.’ Tonight we are wit- nessing again the emergence of this race. There are many of the hire- lings of the press present. They call- ed the abolitionists all the foul names they could think of in their day. They called John Brown, Frederick Dou- glass and eyen Abraham Lincoln, al- tho he was not a thoro going aboli- tionist, they called them everything they could think of to brand them and discourage them; and now they are calling us names, and by that talk, we know that the cause we are pro- moting is a fair one. Well may the hirelings of the capitalist press with their inunendoes say that this is to arouse the Negro workers of the country to the true conditions that surround them; it is to arouse the white workers to the true conditions surrounding them also. White Slaves. May I tell you that there are white slaves in America likewise? It is true epough that)white,workers,.do not al- Ways, recognize. their true. interests, but they will be driven to realize it. Let me tell you now, and let me tell you reporters who are here to spread the tidings of this congress to the world, that the condition of the work- ers is fast becoming a condition of chattel slavery like that of sixty years ago. Must Unite. You will only be able to free your- selves from that condition by lining up solidly as one man with the Negro workers of America. And let me teli you that the Negro group is despised, burned, discriminated against, treated as dogs, yet, when the North and the South were locked in a death strug- gle, it was the Negro worker who de- cided that struggle, who brot victory “tg the Union Army. And I tell you that-there is a great crisis coming, for as Limcoln said, “A house divided AN ORGANIZER OF THE NEGRO LABOR CONGRESS _H. V, PHILLIPS National Secretary of the American Negro Labor Congress. emancipation of Negro | against itself cannot stand.” When Lincoln said that he was uttering a truth. Chattel slavery was destroyed. The house is again divided, and I say that the house can not stand. The Class Struggle. You can not build up wealth on one hand and poverty and suffering on the other and expect the house to last; there must be. conflict there must be a struggle between these two extremes; between capital on the‘one hand and the oppressed workers on the other, determining who shall rule, and when that time comes, you white workers are not going to be ‘able to win unless you begin now ‘to unite with the Negro workers. . Raps Pan Handlers. I want to say to the Negro pan handlers who are here, it is you who are willing to sell the Negro people for a mess of pottage. I want to be able to say that the Negro race can only achieve another step in~ the march toward emancipation’ by unit- ing with the enlightened white work- ers in the struggle. You paid Negro agents who have been posing before the Negro masses as leaders, who have been selling out to politicians have caused the condi- tion of the Negro masses to grow worse each year. Movement from Below. The convening of the Negro Labor Congress means that there will be a novement from below; a movement ‘ises up out of the hearts of its peo- le. “ You represent the voice of the group today. It may bea small voice. The Abolitionists were small voices when they began, but a mighty move- ment grew out of it. I challenge you, whether black or Negroes A By WALT CARMON The popular songs to the contrary, hundreds of thousands of Ney ork: | ers do NOT “want to he F sane where sin¥é6¥y Sin @xaats.2°) Soe ts Today in the Southern States, where four-fifths of the twelve million Ne- groes in this country live, constitu- tional amendments restrict their right to the ballot. Tax tests, property tests, educational tests, understand- ing and character clauses and the famous grandfather clause, all keep the Negro working man and woman Call for Working Class Unity white if you realize the significance of this movement—I call upon *you now to give your challenge to those forces that would kill and “destroy this Union, bu rallying to the cause Tam going to set the example myself. I am a poor young man. I am only making twenty-five dollars a week as an elevator operator in New York. I am an intelligent young man, you can see by my talk that I have intel- ligence; but because I refuse to sell out my. interest to my superiors, I prefer to struggle with them, if neces- sary to die with them, rather than to aid by one little word or deed of mine the.infernal program of lynching and terrorism, Going To -Fight. I am going to fight; Out of my slender means—dnd I have quite some demands upon them, I am go- ing to give five dollars to the Amer- ican Negro Labor Congress. I am going to challenge every single one of you to match it. Stand up and talk turkey. I want every man and every woman in this movement who values freedom and true liberty to have a place to work in harmony. Stand up where you are—the ushers will take your collections. The forces against us are mighty and they are not going to leave a stone unturned to crush us. You remember during the war when you gave until it hurt —liberty bonds. I am challenging you now to give until it hurts. I wonder if the press which under- took to brand this cause as Bolshévik, will go to the trouble to publish the truth about this cause, those whom they brand as Red and Communists. During the war it was pro-German, well, this much. I know that the Bol- sheviks of Russia stopped lynching and on the farm at an early age, are added the lack of schools thruout the South. The percentage of dollars spent yearly for education on a white Negro ‘child Vary*to as high as %4-to,'8 -dollars'in--Lousiana where Negro illiteracy runs to 38.5 per cent, To these barbarities practiced on the Negro must be added 208 lyn- chings in the last five years. Whether these numbers rise or fall, economic conditions take a steady toll of lives of Negro workers. Where in 1922 for whites the death rate per 1,000 was 12.1 per cent, for Negroes from the polls. In hundreds of cities|it was 20.5. Capitalism steps harder where legal requirements are fullfil-|°2 the Negroe worker. § led, it would be risking his life for a Negro to approach the polls. In other Disease Outcome of Persecutions Disease ravages the race. Death from cities insults and inconvenience are| tuberculosis and syphilis, according placed -in the Negro worker’s way|to the Metropolitan Life Insurance prevent him from exercising rights company, (figures for whole country) of citizenship. reach startling figures. The numbers Jim Crowism Even in Schools for the last disease show a mortality Race segregation, prevelent to a de- of 38.7 per hundred thousand, in com- gree thruout the country, in the South-| P@tison with only 10.5 for. whites. ern States reaches unthinkable forms, | Other diseases take heavier toll In the trains, laws require seats,|#™08& Negro workers than among compartments and coaches for whites| ‘Be White. White persons live nearly and Negroes. With the exception of |8°¥°2 Years longer according to Missouri,.all the Southern States have| “res of the same concern which laws separating the races in street include all classes, cars. This separation extends to re-| The bureau of census for one sec- sidential districts, parks, restaurants,| tion, notes that “In 28 or 33 per cent theaters, ete. of the 84 cities with the registration To such an extent do these Jim|y color the deaths outnumber the Crow laws operate that we have a} births among the colored people”. In case of three white passengers enter-| 40 article on “Negro Migration”, Chas. ing a car marked “for whites only”;S. Johnson says of the Negro death in Mississippi, finding two Negro pas-| Tate in the South: “The Negro death sengers in the car and suing the| Tate during the period of slavery was company for damages because the|#bout the same as that of the white. conductor would not “remove” the| Beginning with their imdependence Negroes-and being awarded $400 each| (?), this death rate increased steadi- in compensation for the “injury” by|!y UPD to about ten years ago in spite the Mississippi courts! of the increase in education and some Twenty-two states requires separa-|™easure of health training. The Ne- tion of races in the public schools. | TO population has increased at a rate According to the Census Reports| early normal, During the last decade of 1920 (for the whole country), only| W¢ Were. surprised and shocked to 53.5 per cent of Negro children bet-|learn that the rate of the increase ween the ages of 5-20 inclusive, were| has fallen off gbout 50 per cent. enrolled in school, Making allowances for certain errors Though the Negro comprises one-|!2 enumeration, there ig still room tenth of the population of the country,|for some concern in these figures. reports for the same year show the| This does not mean that fewer child- Negroes as 87.8 per cent of the {I-/ Tem are being born in the congested literates, district of the These facts are not so surprising|!¥ more of them are dying, when to the economic causes that} “. Out drive Negro children into the factory Negro male By Richard B. Moore and other crimes of the sort in Russia and I challenge them to do the same in America. And as Patrick Henry said,“If this be treason, make the most of it.” We Want Equality. All we want is a future; all we want is equality in: every respect. Once and for all the American Ne- gro Labor Congress repudiates what has been said by Booker Washington in @ speech he made in the South. He said “In all things purely material we are united, but in all things social we are going to be separate.” Demand Right To Live. That is simply an erruption of slave ulcer, We are now demanding the rights of living, nothing more, nothing less. Let me close with this remark, countrymen, we sue for simple justice at your hands. Naught else wii. have, nor less will take, and we know that the only way that those rights can be assured ig in that union of white and black workers, which eventually will rule not’only America, (this is the last country in which it will be seen), but the whole world. I am going to quote those wonder- ful words of the man who was a Jew, who driven by the oppression which his race suffered investigated the causes of that oppression—analyzed the structure of the social system and discovered its driving forces and the solution for its evil—there, it is writ- ten on that sign on the wall, the challenging utterance of that greatest thinker of the 19th ‘century—Karl Marx—“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, but you have a whole world to gain.” the re Still Slaves more Negro boys die before they reach the age of one year than white boys, and 8,281 more girls,” Twenty-nine states in this. country makes intermarriage illegal, Peonage In the South Peonage still exists in the South. The plantation system” is not eradi- cated sixty-two years after release from chattel slave. In the South as a whole, three out of every four Negro farmers are te- nants and the number is increasing rapidly. Wages of farm workers range from $1 to $3 per day and more and more the Negro worker, predominant- ly agricultural, is being driven into the cities—and into the North, where le is ever becoming a more important factor, The South is still the home of the most opressed worker in America — the home of slavery. Wm. F. Dunne in his article “Negroes In American Industry” in March issue of the Work- ers Monthly, painted this bitterly true picture: “The slave south is not dead and slavery has not been abolished. It lives in song and story, it lives in every community where there are black and white human beings, it lives in the agricultural region of the south, it exists in the industrial feudalism of the lumber and turpentine camps of the south, it lives in the southern non- union coal fields, it lives in the co- lumns of the capitalist press of both north and south and the prejudice and strife among the workers is fed and inflamed like a gangrenous wound this filth that it exudes.” x Send for a catalogue of all Com- munist literature. chelp! To Save THE DAILY WORKER rt &