The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 28, 1925, Page 8

HAT labor has failed to do, the Negro church has done: It or- ganized the Negro. How strongly it binds him can be seen in thé fact that there is a church to every 256 Ne- groes in the country. The church gives him his ideas, gets his energy and takes his slaved for earnings— for capital. Belong to More Than One Church. There are today in the United States, with a total of twelve millio1 Negroes, = approximately 47,000 churches with a membership of 5,000,- 000. The number of churches com- pared to their membership and the total population, point to a strong penchant for the prviilege to belong to even more than one church—a religious dual unionism, one could call it! Add to the number of churches the 46,000 Sunday schools with some 3,- 000,000 pupils, and one begins to realize the enormity of the influence of the Negro church. Here is a giant obstacle to progress, with property estimated at nearly a hundred million dollars taken from the pockets of the deluded, trusting Negro worker, who even today in the south, where four- fifths of the Negroes live, is paid the beggarly wage of one to three dollars a day. In Chicago alone, a city with the fourth largest Negro populatior in the world, a survey taken in 1920 showed 15 churches in an area populated by 92,000 Negroes—a church to every 614 Negroes! This all pervading influence of the church among Negro workers is in- deed surprising. For after all, the heaven that the Negro church prom- ises is a white one! A Jim Crow heaven, where the Negro will “keep his place” as in a Louisiana village. Explanations to this puzzling problem are being asked often these days by Negro workers as attested by the let- ters carried only the other day by a leading Negro journal, 57 Varieties. Despite competing units, the Negro church has its highly developed and centralized body. Of the remarkably high percentage of churches to the population, about 25,000 churches, or well over half of the total number are of the baptist church (“national con- vention,” “free will” and “primitive” baptists) with a membership of about 3,250,000, which would inelude more than one out of every four Negroes in the country. The methodist church with its 57— more or less—varieties is next in size. Some 14,000 churches belong to this domination with a membership of ap- proximately a million and a-half, These are the most influential bodies, binding the Negro to his class interests. But in addition to these there are many others, among them: the churches of “living god,” “evangel- ical,” “Zionist” and—the catholic church. Even among Negroes the catholic church. has laid claim to a member- ship of some 250,000 with a parochial school attendance of 22,000 Negro children, and a good many more at its 134 lower and 15 Negro industrial and high schools. Strange as it may seem up to the present time, the salvation army has made but little progress among Ne- groes despite many efforts to reach them. In addition to the Negro churches, there are also 639,326 Nogro mem- bers of white churches—an interest- sccheiincaabesieguiaigrieiccinipeiacilaa-cntinns ithe eipeiitiie Malmnemeacigpameaanninliiiaincaetiimetingsdecanasraicnysas mining iaiinatiaiinnesaeattaliandimatsitiatiidinglaihcene thei feeeaatagentiaishttiiiiniameenndeniatecoeiepiin-dpoinimiannncinanigmateparaasiatinls The Negro and the Church ing figure to be sure, when compared with Negro membership in the mixed trade unions! r Tentacles of the Body. : That is the sum total of the various church bodies and its membership. But to build such in institution, it must also build its supporting units— its tentacles to absorb the energy and the meager finances of its sorely ex- ploited membership, For this the Negro church has built its propaganda bureau—its “mis- sion work.” For “home mission work” alone, $350,000 is spent yearly. The catholic church, a comparatively in- significant unit of the Negro church, has stafted sixty-nine new centers in the south with a hundred and seventy- two teachers engaged exclusively in colored missionary work. The missionary is the propaganda mainstay of the church. Word of mouth must necessarily be the chief means of “opium" purveyanceto Ne- gro masses when among thenm»/are | 1,842,161, ten years of over, who have been deliberately swindled of the right to public school education and who, therefore, form 37.3 per cent of all the illiterates in the country. But this is only one arm of its extensive propaganda. Five denomina- tional publishing houses are another, reaching the Negro with “inspired literature,” injecting into the Negro worker the dream of another world and shutting out from his understand- ing and his vision the drab, unlovely picture of the one he lives on. One of its distribution units is the American Bible Society among Ne- groes, established in 1901. It now an- nually places over 30,000 copies of the “good book” in the hands of Ne- groes and in 1923 bettered this aver- age by over a thousand copies in its “most successful year,” with illiteracy gradually on the down-grade. Varied Activities. The extent of the church activities bespeak the tremendous hold the chureh has upon the Negro. Not only does the church reach him thru the schools from childhood, but also in later life. thru the religious clubs, so- cieties, fraternal orders and other or- ganizations. The Y. M. C, A., befuddling the minds of all American youth, is most active also among Negroes. Founded first among them in 1853, there are today associations in 110 Negro edu- cational institutions and sixty-two Ne- gro city associations scattered thru twenty-six states, This tentacle of the church is be- coming ever more successful in paral- izing the mind in draining the meager earnings of the Negro worker., Negro Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. buildings exist in fourteen cities, having a-total Negro population® of 43,312, where the Y, M. C, A. has a paid member- ship of approximately. 16,000 among both sexes. The employer, ever-ready to assist Negro church activities, gives the activities of the Y. M. C. A. among Negroes an equally warm welcome. In a large number of industries where Negroes are employed, the company puts up the building at its own ex- pense, and pays the secretary. An- nual and ‘monthly dues are used to pay running expenses. Such work (reports the Negro Year Book) has been started among the Negro miners at Buxton, Ia, Benham, Ky., and Birmingham, Ala., and among the 5,000 Negroe employes of the Newport News (Va.) Shipbuilding company. This “philanthropy” is, of course, a trap for the Negro laborer to keep him from taking such steps as would real- ly bring him some advantage thru self-organization. Church Aids Imperialism. Hand in hand with imperialism, the Negro church marches to all corners of the globe, together with the in voting for recognition. the Soviets. churches of the whites for the en- slavement and suppression of its own peoples. Oppressed and exploited in Africa, ASia, the West. Indies and other parts of the world by capitalism (preceded often and aided by the church always), the Negro in America contributes thru the chruch $200,000 annually to enable capitalism to bet- ter continue the process. The Negro baptist church has con- ducted its foreign mission work since 1880 and is now the humble servant | decorations. of capitalism in Central, South and est Africa. ; The African methodist episcopal CZECHO-SLOVAK COMMUNISTS TO FORCE SOVIET RECOGNITION PRAGUE, Czecho-Slovakia, Nov. 27.—Following the victory in the recent Czecho-Slovakian elections to the national assembly, the Communist Party has launched a drive to force the recognition of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. The national democratic party which has opposed the recognition of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, lost very heavily’ dA! 'the'© elections and the anti-Soviet bloc has been badly beaten. c The social-democratic party’s executive committee has approved de jure recognition of the Soviets and will align with the Communists Czecho-Slovakia will be the fifteenth country to recognize the Soviet Union. if the drive that is now being launched by the Com- munists is successful, and the first of the petit entente to recognize Czecho-Slovak industrialists are eager for Russian trade and are bending every energy towards the early recognition of the Soviet Republic. Recognition of the Soviet Union will be one of the first things to be discussed by the incoming national assembly and un- doubtedly Russia will be recognized. - By Walt Carmon times of peace and gives aid in time of class war. Today it plays the role of a willing tool of capitalism, as the church has always played the servile role to every governing class in his- tory. To the Negro workers perhaps noth- ing could prove this more convincing- ly than a slight reading of the history of the abolition movement and the vile part the church has played ‘in fighting ‘this movement. But the church that only yesterday approved chattel slavery, today also approves wage slavery. The fact’ that on the opening day of the recent American Negro Labor Congress at Chicago, the capitalist press carried the warning of a Negro minister against it, with a pledge of the church “to capital, as a means of progress for the race,” only attests to the fine sensitiveness of the church to its dangers. Today increasing numbers of Negro workers, particularly in industry, are learning what their white brothers, thru bitter experience, have learned also—that the church is the hand- maiden of capital. The Negro, per- meated with religion even more than the white worker, because the Negro masses have been more extensively held in backward agricultural life in the south, will also learn—and quickly —that religion is only what Karl Marx called it, “opium of the people.” Says 2,300 Americans are Bribed by Foreign Nations’ Decorations WASHINGTON, Nov. 27.—(FP)— Sen. Norris has asked Secretary of State Kellogg fo send him a list of American officials to whom France, Italy, Belgium, Poland and other coun- tries—owing war debts—have given He has learned . that some 2,300 Americans have been given the legion of ‘honor: ribbon -by..the | French politicians in power. He: des- Zion church (what name could be|¢ribes this French and Italian policy, more imposing!) has in its foreign mission field some 52 stations and 52 churches with approximately 7,000 members. In this country the Negro church as- sists the employer in. keeping the Ne- gro worker contented at low wages in in an interview-with The Federated Press, as “morally, an attempted bri- bery.” “If I had a lawsuit to be tried be- fore a jury,” he commented, “and I sent baseball tickets to each of the jurors, even though I declared that I did not want t® influence their judge- ment I would be sent to jail for that act. “Here we find hundreds of newspa- per editors, press correspondents in Europe, university presidents, preach- ers, bankers, diplomats and politicians getting favors from the French gov- ernment, And presently, when French artillery bombards a Syrian city and hundreds of helpless women and chil- dren are killed, the gratitude of these public men to Paris is supposed to have no influence on their discussion of the affair!” Take this copy of the DAILY WORKER with you to the shop tomorrow. ( ee