The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 24, 1926, Page 12

at EI TOM oD cone RY Dainty Lynchings for Southern Lady EDITOR'S NOTE: In the January issue of a paper of Ber- lin, Germany, the “Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung”, theré was pub- lished an article, profusely illustrated, on the situation of the Negro in the United States of America. It drew a “correction” from a Southern woman visiting Heidelberg, to which the writer of the original article replies. We publish the two letters below. The Southern Lady's Letter TO THE EDITORS OF THE “NEUER DEUTSCHER VERLAG”: HAVE just received the “Illus- trierte Arbeiter Zeitung” of Jan. 10, 1926. It contains a grave error. On the first page I found a picture of a Negro being punished by whipping— in Delaware, America—with the _ re- mark of the editor that in America this punishment was generally ap plied. On the contrary, since the lib- eration of the Negroes it has been abolished generally, and is severely punished itself. In Delaware, however, an old law is still in force, which applies to whites and blacks, especially in the case of domestic tyrants who beat their wives ——in which cases the use of the whip is justified. Foreigners seem to have great diffi- eulty in understanding the situation of the Negro in America, and this is particularly true of the propaganda for the new economies. With regard to this latter among the American Ne- groes it would be extremely necessary to have a thorough understanding of the Negro as well as of American con- ditions. America harbors, from one hundred and ten million to one hundred and twenty million whites, about ten or twelve million blacks. It is just as if ‘in Germany there were ten per cent Negroes, hence about six or seven millions, Quite regardless of this, one must consider that the Negro has never had either a cultural nor national back- ground, and that he possesses little understanding for thoughts of this kind. He is extremely restricted in big questions and very easily misun- derstands them. An example of this is the Negro republic of Haiti. Not- withstanding all prejudices, it is a fact that it devolved upon an Amer- ican expedition, and with partial suc- cess, to bring about some sort of order in Haiti. The Negro is also pecu- liarly apt to retrograde into deeply primitive conditions. unless he is watched. These are ine problems in ‘America with regard to the American Negro. ‘ From a scientific standpoint it may be stated it has taken Nature prob- ably half a million years to push the star of the white race forward and up- ward. The average among Negroes can naturally not be equal to that among whites. The American refuses community with~the Negro. instinct- _.dyely, and not because he hates them. It is a terrible blunder, which can very easily bring about the greatest of ntisfortunes, if the American Negro were to be incited against the Amer- ican world. The new economics can only be harmed by propaganda among the Negroes. The new movement will be pushed back for decades in Amer- ica. Personal and chiefly racial feel- ing will destroy all other thoughts. Should the Negroes be incited to vio- lence by doctrines hardly half under- stood by them, then they are doomed to be wiped out. It is a crime against these people to lead them to their cer- tain destruction. Surely there is enough work to do in other parts of the world in which the new economy is more urgently applicable. There also success rests considerably upon a real understanding of the masses, ‘but nowhere would the result be so destructive and futile as in America through a movement of incited Ne- groes. Josephine W. Elston, Heidelberg, Europiischer Hof. The Answer TO THE EDITORS OF THE “ARBEITER ILLUSTRIERTE”: O a gentle southern lady remon- strates against the article on the Negro question published in January? She writes: “Foreigners seem to have great difficulty in understanding the situation of the Negro in America’— so they have, for it is rarely that the master-class viewpoint is expressed so naively as in this letter from Florida, via Heidetberg. Pa The article in question stated basic- ally that since the present economic position of the Negro (as a result of the war, the stoppage of immigration, | the advancing industrialization of the South itself) no longer in any way corresponds to his miserable social, political and juridical feudal status (in which since his introduction into the country he was held by terrorism and violence), therefore the Negro be- comes today thore and more a poten- tial revolutionary factor. This was evidenced by figures on the mass mi- grations to the North, on the declining percentage engaged in agriculture and the mounting number entering indus- try and by citing the Negro protest movements. The seriousness of the situation was attested by the laws passed to punish severely anyone who encouraged the Negroes to leave the South and by the extensive propa- ganda which aimed to convince the Negroes that it was better to be robbed by a Southern landlord than by a Northern capitalist. But more than klan and newspapers were need- ed to stem that exodus—so to some slight extent wages were raised, “black and white” committees for so- cial work were formed as a sop to the growing consciousness of the Negro intelligentsia, and in two states re- cently soldiers were called out to make sure that the lynching of ac- cused Negroes was done according to the lawbooks after 16-minute trials, instead of in the extra-legal savagery that usually prevails. A Southern governor lays bare the gravity: qf the situation when he writes:- In some counties’ "(of “Géergia)! the> Negros is! being driven out as though he were a wild beast, in others he is held as a slave. It should be noted that our gentle critic makes not a single reply to either thé arguments in the article nor the facts that support them. She limits herself to the alleged inaccu- racy of a title beneath one of the pictures. She admits that the whip- ping post is legal “punishment” in Delaware and that Negroes are beaten there—but her defense is that white wife-beaters also are thus punished.. I have not at hand statistics showing the exact preponderance of the num- ber of Negroes tied to this infamous post, but everyone knows that the purpose of this form of punishment is as much degradation as physical torture, and a ruling class always sees to it that degradation is applied most liberally to its subjects. It is no answer to say that white wife-beaters, for whose blood the Southern Jady also gently thirsts in ‘her justification of the whipping-post, are tortured in the same way. In lynching also there is no hard and fast color line, of the 3,337 lynchings between 1882 and 1903 it is reported that 1,192 were of whites, yet no one denies that the purpose of lynching is and remains not that of punishing wrong-doers but of intimidating the more independent and courageous-Negroes. And in Gov- erenor Dorsey's arraignment, in prac- tically every one of the many authen- ticated cases of peonage and brutality cited, the Negro peons were whipped, while one master, charged with mur- dering too large a number of his black workers, defended himself with the claim that he had not beaten them any longer or oftener than the law pro- vided! The lady’s protests are typical of Southern “reasoning” in that they con- tain not a single fact, not a shred of evidence to support the monstrous assumptions piled one on top of the other. “One must consider that the Negro never had a cultural back- ground”—yet the cotton-pickers’ an- cestors were forging iron when the land owners’ ancestors were still cracking mussels with unchipped stones. “It devolved upon an Ameri- can expedition, and with partial suc- cess, to bring about some sort of order in Haiti,” she says. But what sort of order? And whose? The facts are that U. S. warships sailed into the harbor and marines occupied the city, to force:upon the Haitian government an unwanted “loan” of $14,000,000 from the National City Bank—and on such terms that the Haitians would actually get one one and a half mil- lions, the rest being eaten up in bank- ers’ commissions or applied to old claims. The Negro republic of Haiti is an epic of credit to the black race and of shame to the white, Here is at least one slave class that struck blow after blow for freedom, and the great black rebel, Toussaint l’Overture, gave his people the right idea when he told them:. “Your muskets are your lib- erty.” Unfortunately, his estimate of the white masters’ “honor” was not quite low enough, and he permitted himself to be trapped under a flag of truce, The prattle sbout the “half million years spent by Nature to push the star of the white race forward and up ward” is rather more poetic ‘than “scientifically” accurate. It is true that the European whites have devel- oped, during a certain period, greater economic and military power than have the African blacks. But the very process of development that brought about their dominance now goes on to destroy it, European industry de- pends for its very life-breath upon the raw materials and markets of the colonial lands, and this process, this desperate race for markets and raw materials in turn developes new indus- trial competitors in the erstwhile market countries, a new self-conscious native bourgeoisie and a new revolu- tionary colonial proletariat. The Florida lady does not know her own problem. It is not as though ten per cent of the Germans had black skins; no, the Negro population is so concentrated that in two states they constitute more than a majority of the population, and in seven more only a slightly smaller proportion. In this “solid South” ttfeNegroes have for three centuries done practically aM the useful work, relegating the “masters” more and more into the role of para- sites. When she speaks of “inciting the Negroes against the American world” she, of course, refers to her white parasitic world. She tries to tell'tis ‘that “The Amen. ican refused community: with: the. Ne- gro instinctively, not because he hates him.” The white master in the South HATES the Negro because he FEARS him, fears his numbers and his grow- ing economic importance. “Instinct- ively!” As far back as 1661 they passed laws in the South to flog white men and enslave white women who mated with Negroes. These remedies were rather obviously inadequate. We find cases recorded in which clergy- men were fined for performing mixed marriage ceremonies. Far from in- stinctive aversion menacing the South- ern masters’ position, it was from the opposite quarter that they feared the wind. In conclusion, it should be noted with interest that the Southern lady is apprehensive lest the “new econ- omy” waste its time with-propaganda that in her judgment would harm the Negroes. When the South took up arms to smash the United States rather than give up unlimited power over their slaves, of course they did it for the good of the blacks. But it was not the Communists who lured the black workers away from the star- -vation of the cotton fields and into the industrial cities of the North—and of the new South. This was done by capitalist enterprises. Again capital- ism shows how it digs its own grave. These Negro proletarians in the man- ufacturing cities are a potential revo- lutionary factor that will have to be reckoned with. And the millions of Negro peasants are also restive. The gentle Southern lady probably likes capital all right, since it brings Het delberg to those on top, but she can’t have her capitalism without its inevi- table consequences—in this case an awakening Negro working class grop- ing its way toward the proletarian revolution. William F. Kruse. Glorious “Hay Bales,” Daily Worker cartoonist, drew this picture of himself play- Garbage ing the part of Hamlet. He finds the dead bones of the league of nations in the garbage pail of Geneva. But a “league of nations” has never really existed, The “league of imperialists to strangle the nations” it is not dead, but very much alive, very dangerous, and will continue to be so until thd working class, the farmers and the colonial peoples destroy it, ‘ n=