The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 6, 1933, Page 3

cee By SENDER GARLIN. FAKE electric chair, resembling in every respect the real one used for execution purposes in the Georgia State Prison, was utilized in the attempt to wrest a “confession” from Angelo Herndon, 19-year-old Negro boy sentenced to serve 18-20 years on the chain gang. This I learned from Herndon himself when I interviewed him last week in the Fulton Towers Prison in Atlanta, Ga., where he has been con- fined since last July. THE THIRD DEGREE The “electric-chair” was rigged up in-a@ small, darkened room on the lice station, Herndon told me. On the floor old skulls were strewn about—the police were speculating | on the mythical “superstitions” of Negroes in order to frighten him. Working on the favorite police theory. that the 19-year-old Negro organizer of the Atlanta Unem- ployed Council was a “pawn” in the hands of a “master mind,” and the , cops, convinced that the latter must be a white man, sought to force Herndon: to tell just who was “hir- ing him: to do all this.” Herndon’s explanation that the Unemployed Council was an organ- ization of Negro and white workers struggling for relief was unsatis- factory to the police: They warned him that “many niggers in this place never get back.” Seeing, how- ever, that they could not frighten Herndon even by shoving him onto the third-degree “electric chair,” the detectives yanked him back into his cell, A WORKER SINCE 13 Herndon, who has worked in the coal mines and steel mills since he was 13 years old, was arrested in Atlanta last July after he had taken a leading part in thé fight of the local Unemployed Council for relief for Negro and white jobless workers. His father, an Ohio coal miner. died when Herndon was still trusgle of the Unemployed 1 reached a high point when y government closed down lef stations which previously had giving a few crumbs to 20,000 ployed of the The un- st bad colle m of the sum d Herndon’s ar- jim indicted by the grand jury on a cherge of “ate piing to incite insurrection,” He ordered him to trial after defense had ed out a writ cf habeas corpus. LLOWING a dramatic three-day trial which began January 16, Herndon was convicted by an a white, Nand-picked jury and se: tenced to 18-20 years on the Geor- gia chain gang, on an old Civi slave code enacted in 1861. That Herndon’s crime consisted im organizing the hungry unem- ployed was admitted openly by the Atlanta press which, in shrieking streamer -- headlines announced: DEATH PENALTY ASKED FOR RED IN ATLANTA SEDITION TRIAL—MAN ACCUSED OF AGI- TATING JOBLESS. A similar admission was made by Assistant Prosecutor Walter Le Craw-who, incidentally, is a brother of the president of the Atlanta Chamber of Commeres. A FIGHTING DEFENSE Cutting out the paws fuLuwed in the defense fight for Haywood Pat- terson in Decatur, Ala., the two Ne- gro attorneys for the International Labor Defense—Joseph H. Geer and Benjamin Davis, Jr—boldly, and for the first time in the South, put forward the demands for Ne- groes on the jury, bringing to the fore at the same time, the whole question. of Negro oppression and | the violation of the guaranteed rights of the Negro masses. A di- rect result of this fight was seen shortly afterward when two Ne- groes were placed on an Atlanta tion. Facing a hostile judge and an all-white, handpicked jury Hern- don boldly spoke—knowing that his i fig ix , EF by i | 3 ti I i r i 3 & E 5 ete : et ii iy | i E E i EF Wy zs ? gs 5 uf third floor of the Atlanta po- | ~ ery and desolation on the one hand —and growing struggle on the other, He told of the thousands of unemployed on the streets, of aban- doned farms; of toilers on the land | unable to scratch a barest living from the soil and of their farms seized by the bankers and land- lords; of plantations in Georgia; of the overseers who stand over Ne- | gro croppers with guns, driving | them to work like convicts—and of | the workers on the murderous Geo- | orgia chain gang which he himself | was facing, unafraid, | ° | “[{VIDENCE” against Herndon at the trial consisted of literature seized without a search-warrent on his person and in his room which consisted of copies of the Daily Worker, The Communist, Party Or- ganizer, Liberator, organ of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and the pamphlet, “The ‘Communist Position on the Negro Question.” When Watson, Atlanta detective specializing in “Red” cases, and other prosecution witnesses at the { trial persisted in referring to Hern- | don and other Negroes as “niggers” | and “darkies,” the I.L.D. attorneys vigorously protested in open court, forcing the judge to rule against the further use of the obnoxious term. The defense at the same time protested the addressing of Negro witnesses by their first names in- stead of Mr. and Mrs, PROSHCUTION ADMITS REAL ISSUES | Admitting that the issue on trial) | e was the advocacy of unconditional rights for the oppressed Negro mas- ses and the demand for self-deter- mination where the Negroes consti-| tute the majority of the population, | Solicitor John Hudson, the state pro-| secutcr concluded his summation to | the jury with the fervent plea to} | “stamp this thing out now with a| conviction.” | ERNDON, a strapping, intelligent appearing young fellow, weighed | 185 pounds when he was arrested last) July. He weighs much less now, he| knows, ‘because the clothes I still | have sre much too big for me.” He wore light-grey striped trousers and} | a white shirt open at the throat. His | first request was for cigarettes and | | for the newspapers and magazines I| Photo Shows Fulton. Towers Prison in Atlan- ta, Ga, where Angelo Herndon is confined. It is ong of the oldest and worst prisons in the South, In inset is Angelo Hern- don. DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1933 USE FAKE ‘ELECTRIC CHAIR TO THIRD-DEGREE HERNDONS “Attempts to Crush Unity of Negro and White Will Fail,’ Says Young Negro Organizer, Facing 20 Years on Chain Gang, In Prison Interview ’ consisting of: BREAKFAST: gritz, fat back and “coffce which you can not drink”; LUNCH: corn meal bread, liver grind “which looks as if it was murdered,” crushed up white potatces with no seasoning. | NO SUPPER. ERNDON, who is awakened with the other prisoners at 7:30, 1s given no work to do, and unless he has reading matter must spend the day aimlessly in the cell. in his cell are put out at 9 o'clock. During the first months of his con- finement he was “mistreated in 101 ways,” but recently, because of the mass campaign around Herndon’s defense, the authorities are more cautious in their treatment of him, The only complaint he had was The lights | | Sag with me: | that he Was not getting sufficient) | Herndon’s cell is in reality a death yeading matter. He craves books— cell, for with him have been placed) basic economic and social studies and | four other Negro boys now facing! good contemporary fiction. Inter-| | electrocution folowing a Georgia con-/ esting enough today (May 7) is Hern-| | viction on a charge that they were | don’s twentieth birthday; and the | implicated In the killing of an Atlanta | writer suggests that workers every- | policeman. | where send him telegraphic greeting: | HIS LIFE IN PRISON and books to read. The books in or-j i .| der to be delivered must come dir-| ae aati tare peat ie ectly from a publisher. They should} feet by 8 There are no beds, only| be addressed to Angelo Herndon, Ful- | iron bunks attached to the sides of| tn Towers Prison, Atlanta, Georgia. | jets never washed.” A toilet Is gen-| 7 saw Herndon only a few days after | erously provided the State of} | the death verdict against ‘wood | | Georgia, but it seldom flushes, and) Patterson had been rendered, and his is always in need of repair, Herndon | eyes gleamed with pleasure as I told said. | of the marvelously confident spirit| | The young Negro is suffering from | displayed by the Scottsboro boys stomach trouble inevitable from the | when I visited them in their cell on Jack of exercise and a prison diet the eighth floor of the Jefferson! ; the cell, with “mattresses and blank- | ; County Prison in Birmingham, Ala. The verdict shocked him, he said, but, |-knowing the character of Southern} “justice,” it was not entirely unex-/ pected. “It shows that the Alabama rul- ers will stop at nothing, especially | | when it comes to upholding their | system of slavery.” Herndon asked eagerly about plans for the Scotts- | | boro March to Washington and | praised the International Labor De- | | fense, | [JERNDON'S first job at the age of 13 was in a coal mine in Lexington, | Ky. One year later he was working | for the Tennessee Coal and Iron | Company, and in 1930 when he first} | became active as a militant organ-| | izer he was an unemployed steel) | worker in Birmingham. “How did you first become in- terested in the movement?” I asked Herndon. He smiled. “I was hunting jobs around town in front of the em- ployment agencies. Of course, there were no jobs to be had, but I kept on looking. One day I saw some handbills stuck up in front of one of the agencies. It was a call to the unemployed to come to a meeting in the park, and was signed by the Unemployed Council off Birmingham, I thought Ud go over. I got in- terested in the fight, and only a few months later I was elected a delegate to the National Unem- ployed Council convention in Chicago, Later I was sent down to Atlanta. The rest I don’t have to tell you about.” “Mass Fight Is Way to Win,” ays Herndon By ANGELO HERNDON. HE present struggle for the rights of Negroes to serve on juries— part of the whole fight for Negro rights—is an historical one. We | must guard, however, against fall- ing into the trap of legalistic illu- sions. This particular question must carry with it the most simple and thorough explanation of its relation to the every-day struggles of the Negro and white workers. I can remember during my trial, that when the question of exclusion of Negroes from jury service was raised, many workers whom I had the chance to talk with seemed to be under the impression that this fight was one that should be con- ducted only through the courts, The main function of the courts is to protect, from every angle, the interests of the capitalists, even hough in doing so it may deprive a certain group of the so-called rights which are guaranteed in its own constitution. Especially will these rights be ignored when the class struggle has developed to the point where it is taken into the courts of the U. S. Government. The state and city governments are fully aware of the fact that Negroes are denied their elementary rights, lynched, persecuted and forced to live in actual slavery in the Black | Belt of the South. The Roosevelt Hunger Government will go to the same lengths as the Decatur and the Atlanta lynch courts did in denying that Negroes had been sys- tematically excluded from jury ser- vice for no other reason than that their skin was black, unless the broadest struggles are conducted to force them to yield to the demands of the workers. It is to the in- terest of U. S. imperialism, as well as to the southern slave-drivers, to keep the Negro people chained in slavery while they continue to carry on their program of national oppression and economic robbery against the Negro toilers. 'HE lynch verdict rendered in De- catur, reflecting the voice of the southern slave masters, should be a | most convincing example to the Ne- gro workers that the slave masters will not stop at anything to up- hold their system of lynchings, po- lice terror. And that the fight to obtain the elementary rights for the whole Negro people does not lie in the channels of capitalist courts alone but through mass struggle of | both white and Negro workers. Never before have such mountains of lies, built up by the slave drivers in the Scottsboro case, been blasted so completely yet in spite of the world of evidence proving the in- nocence of Patterson, and the oth- er boys, he has again been con- demned to die in the electric chair. It so happens that in capitalist courts such questions as those now connected with the Scottsboro case dig down into the very heart of the decaying system of the bosses. Thus they resort to the most brutal and savage methods in order to keep under their heels the whole Negro people. . 'HE Scottsboro march to Wash- ington for the release of the Scottsboro boys and for the immed- iate enforcement of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the con- stitution must be a rousing signal for greater mass struggle to the American workers, for a fight for the freedom of the Scottsboro boys and all victims of national oppres- sion, which will not end until rights for Negro toilers have been achieved. Carry on the fight till the Scottsboro boys and all victims of capitalist oppression are freed! Carry on the fight for political, economic and social rights for Ne- gro workers! Fight against the Roosevelt forced labor labor scheme! For Solid unity between white and Negro workers. | ostensibly THE Page Three Scottsboro Marchers To Fight For Civil Rights For Negroes R two years the Negro and white orking masses have been wag- a life and death struggle to e the nine innocent Negro boys framed at Scottsboro. Through the militant leadership of the Com- munist Party and the International Labor Defense, supported by the world-wide revolutionary movement, the issue in the struggle, during this period, has been raised beyond the question of saving the lives of nine framed-up defendants to the fundamental issue of defending the most elementary rights of the Negro people in the United States. The justice meted out by the Alabama courts has sharply reveal- ed to the whole world that behind the Scottsboro case rages an ele- mental war between the reaction- ary forces of the white ruling class and the awakening Negro people, in solidarity with the white work- ers, for their right to complete equality. It is this fundamental principle which is the moving force in the stubborn struggle of count- less black and white toilers in be- half of the Scottsboro boys. MILLIONS OPPRESSED Thirteen million Negroes, a tenth of the population of the United States, are living today under vari- ous kinds of disabilities, economic, political and social. In the Black Belt of the South, 8,000,000 Negroes, although consti- tuting a majority of the population, are reduced to the status of an op- pressed nation. The so-called “emancipation proclamation” of 1863 has in no way lifted the actual yoke of slavery from the Negro masses. This proclamation did not touch upon the fundamental ques- tion of land, and by depriving the Negroes of the land their slavery has, on the contrary, been perpetu- ated. The material conditions of Negroes under the present system. of share ipping, peonage, denial of the right to sell crops, planta- tion stores, usury, and convict labor, are in no way improved by their “legal” freedom. All the forces of in | government are enlisted to main- tain their slavery. BY law, and by practices uncheck- to economic super-ex- ploitation, to social indignities, and to political inequality bordering on shall abridge the privileges or im- | virtual outlawry. The Bill of Rights in the American Constitution is for | the Negro masses a mere fiction. The 13th, 14th and 15th. Amend- ments to the Constitution, adopted to admit the Negro People to political equality, have proved a hollow mockery. State upon State maintains legal restric- tions on the rights of the Negro people. Chain-gang slavery, peon- age, disfranchisement, segregation, inter-marriage bans, all or in’ part, are legalized in more than half the States in the Union, while “unwrit- ten laws” legalize such practices as the closing of many occupations, (particularly the skilled industries) and the professions to Negroes, the discrimination in the American Federation of Labor unions, the imposition of inferior working and living conditions upon Negroes, pre~ judicial treatment of Negroes in dwellings, in public places, in places of employment, in educational in~ stitutions, in law courts, on public carriers, etc ALABAMA LYNCH VERDICT The recent lynch verdict of the Decatur courts, in the case of Hay wood Patterson, first of the Scotts- boro boys to come up for a new trial, has most especially . brought to light the flagrant systematic ex- clusion of all Negroes from jury service: has evidenced the repeated and wilful attempts by the courts of Alabama. legally to murder nine ed by law, the Negro people of {| | the United States are everywhere | subjected innocent boys in the face of their proved innocence, in the the perjury of the principl witness of the ack jection of race prej torneys for the pro admitted tampering w So brazen has been th of the boss-controlled c Alabama in the Scottsboro which has become a test case for the continued tyranny over the Negro masses, that the momer come for the Negro people ani white working class, as well as all true friends of Negro liberation to hurl the challenge: Shall a nation of thirteen million people continue to remain oppressed economically, politically, and socially, or shall the entire American working class, white and black, join in unison to demand full and unqualified equal- ity for the Negro people! Finally, the refusal of Congress to avail itself of the enforcement | Congress | impeachment powers granted it by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the refusal of the President to exercise his ex- ecutive powers to check lynchings, | has given the stamp of approval, | the status of unwritten law, to the | murderous instigations of the white | master class of the South against | the Negro masses whom they seek | to keep in perpetual subjection | through the most fiendish terror. The railroading to long prison [| terms of Angelo Herndon and the | five Tallapoosa sharecroppers are examples of the whole system of white ruling class oppression, par- ticularly in the South. The Constitution of the United States includes three Amendments avowedly for the purpose of giving political equality to the Negroes. The following are quotations from the 13th, 14th and 15th Amend- ments: “Sec, 1. Neither slavery nor INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and sub- ject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the state wherein they reside. NO STATE SHALL MAKE OR ENFORCE ANY LAW which munities of a CITIZEN of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any |. person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, | | “The right of the citizens of | the ‘United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any state, on account of race, color, or pre- vious condition of servitude.” | Each of the foregoing Amend~ ments carries with it an enforce- ment clause reading: “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” ‘The responsibility for the inhu- man oppression of the Negro people rests directly upon the white ruling | class and its State and Federal | Governments. Numbers of states openly launch attacks upon the liv- | ing conditions, liberties and lives of the Negroes, while the refusal of | Congress and President to act or lift a voice,against these atrocities clearly demonstrates their pariner- ship in the onslaught upon the Ne-~ gro people. in two flagrant ex- amples out of many has jumped to the defense of the lynchers: in the case of George Crawford, where proceedings were | overwhelmingly voted against Judge Lowell because he refused the ex- The following is a literal des- eription of the life of turpentine workers and share-croppers in Southern Alabama as told ree- ently to a Daily Worker Corres- pondent—Editor’s Note). '¥Y father was a share cropper for W. H. Rhine, but the main owners are Everett and Boykin, My father raised a crop on this agreement: ‘They raised the crop on halves; the landlord furnished the supplies, my father and brothers were to do all the work raising the crop. There was a big family of us at the time and at the price he was selling his groceries for, it cost us about $15 a week at his store—where he charges on them. The children we and lay in| questions you as far back as she can time, They can’t| thin! SICKNESS, STARVATION, ROBBERY BY B | SOUTH, SON OF ALA. SHARECROPPER TELLS CORRESPONDENT { hardiy get any medicine or doctors. { You have to notify health officers and the commission is supposed to be looking out for people in that shape. ‘When women are down with children or they give birth to a child, they have to eat common food—salt meat and beans and corn bread. They have no milk. If you are sick you can’t get + @ doctor unless you have cattle or have somethin gthat you can mort-. gage or give him to stand good for the bill until you can pay it. * + IRPENTINE workers are raising cups at 10 cents a hundred in scattered timber and the best that has been known to be made yet by them turpentine men is 35 cents a day. At the end of the week when he goes in to draw his time the man will hand him a dollar or so and say that he will have to make out with that and take the rest out in trade in the store, Unless he trades with him during the summer time, when tur- Pentine work closes down, he won't allow him to trade with him in the winter. If he don’t trade the year round he can‘t get anything. The women, girls and all haven't , “A LADY WRITES YOU UP” And the government work supposed to be going on there—this road work, Unless you are in good standing with some of the men or have some pull ten of us in the family and after in two different counties on the road they did give four days work at a dollar a get @ job on the road you ‘go to a desk where a lady writes you up and cut you off. And you have to walk, | any where from eight to ten miles/ | to get to the work. | | . And the people inside of their | houses—the bedding is made out of | pine straw, hay and croaker sacks, My father in this crop! raised 742 bales of cotton which they | were getting around one hundred and some odd dollars for a bale at that time. He raised and whipped out | 800 pounds of crowder peas worth six and eight dollars a bushel at that time in the seed store. He raised 350 | bushels of sweet potatoes which they | were getting 50 cents a bushel, and | about 80 bushels of corn. Corn was selling at that time about 50 cents a bushel. Then cucumbers. He raised about three acres of cucumbers. I don’t, remember how much he was getting, but about 25 cents a hamper, I think. And he also raised cain enuf to get 190 gallons of cane syrup. He | was selling this cane syrup for 90 cents a gallon and then it went to $1.25. And this besides two gardens: he raised one for himself and one for the owner. At the end of the year when this crop was finished he went to the man for a settlement. Right at the present time he couldn't give him a settlement because he claimed the bookkeeper wasn’t in. When the bookkeeper did come and he caught them together he asked him again for a settlement. So they walked into the office and they figured up, the owner and the bookkeeper, and said my father was $1,800 in debt—taking his half of the crop and my father's half too. . * +e now. the wood choppers. These paper mills lets out these con- tracts to the men and allows them ik of. They try to get excuses to $1.60 a cord to have this paper wood cut and put on the tracks, They allow | Turpentine Worker in Southern Alabama & man 40 and 50 cents a cord to saw it, cord it and help load the trucks and they come in after it. And he allows the truck drivers 75 cents a cord to put in on the track, whether it’s five miles or seventy-five miles. There are very few'men that will come up to their agreement and go in on Saturday and pay what they owe. When five of us are working we earn on an average of $1.00 a day for all five and you could never get in a full week. Sometimes only two, three or five days a week. Now they have a little place there that ts called McIntosh on the Mobile| and Jackson Highway—all paper wood; that’s all in that country to do, The men work up until Friday evening, hundreds of them and they leave the first thing Saturday morn- ing and walk twelve miles to this store where they are supposed to pay off and stand around to wait tintil sometimes 9 o’cloc: Saturday night until they check them up and give them anything. Some of them will get a dollar or so, some of them may get two or three and they will say “you didn’t get in much wood this week’” or “it didn’t get on the track” and they won’t pay the full amount, OSS IS DAILY EXPERIENCE IN | ‘HE Hawaiian lynchers, lined up with Cl ntire toiling masses, is the e Negro and white toilers Not by way of hold- ing forth legalistic illusions, not in the spirit of the reformists, as in al presentation of anti- laws without the rousing of mass struggle and support for their en- forcement, but by way of bringing forward militantly the claim to equal rights for the Negro people | the League of Struggle for Negro Rights has brought forward the Bill of Civil Rights, which has been endorsed by the National Scotts- boro Action Committee. ONLY STRUGGLE IS EFFECTIVE Only by constant struggle, by a consistent fight on the part of mil- lions of toilers, black and white, by the combatting of every expression of Negrophobia, can enforcement of such a bill, effective legal protec- tion for Negroes in all fields, and actual enforcement of their equal- ity, be obtained. The community of interest be- tween the struggles of the Negro People against national oppression, and those of the white workers against their exploitation and degradation by the same ruling class forces, is clear. That the white workers increasingly recognize this common interest is shown by the fact that even in the South they are being drawn more and more into the struggle for Negro rights. It is in no way an accident that it is in the South, where the rul- ing class doctrine of white su- premacy reigns most openly, that the conditions of the white workers are the most degraded, their exploitation most extreme, The slave status of the Negro masses is used by the ruling class as a weapon to whip down the liy- ing standards of the whites. The laws of the Southern states which | disfranchise the Negroes operate also to the same effect against large masses of white toilers. Armed forces of “law and order” and the extra-legal forces, such as the Ku Klux Klan, which supple- ment them, though used primarily | to enforce slavery on the Negroes, are used also against the whites whenever they attempt to fight for better conditions. Mob violence, which the ruling class and its government authori- jes use as @ weapon against the Negro toilers, is instigated by the drawing in of white workers into its operations, for the purpose of diverting them from their commu- nity of interest with the Negro masses, OME of the basic democratic rights denied the Negro people almost completely include those of jury service, voting, educational facilities without discrimination, and the right to move from place to place freely without being shamefully herded into Jim Crow vehicles. These conditions are dealt with explicitly in sections of the Bill of Civil Rights designed to abolish them. Heavy penalties, as well as provision for civil damages, are provided for their violation. Lynchings and police murders, and murders of Negroes by individ- uals at the instigation of the white ruling class and its officers, are the most violent open expressions of the drive against the Negro masses. Five thousand Negroes have been lynched in the past fifty years. Last year, with suppression of all information regarding lynchings the order of the day for the work- ing class and its press, thirty-seven lynchings came to light. In the first two months of 1933, nine lynchings were recorded. Besides these, and besides the unrecorded lynchings, there have been a grow- ing number of police murders and | murders by individuals, of Negroes, just give a dollar or two and put them | off until next week and claim they will do better, and when next week comes its the same thing all over again. That's about all that I know out- side that two of those women in that settlement died on account of not having a doctor. One had a child and they couldn’t get a doctor, only unlicensed midwives, . JOW the schools Mm this part of the country. They only have one school about ten or twelve mile space any way you go, and this year they had a very short session of school| on account of teachers not getting the proper pay. It depends on the owner about children going to school. When he needs children to work on his place he won't’ let’ them go to} school. If children go to him and ask | for tablets and pencils he will pro- mise to put in an order but will say | “Son, you get a hoe and go up on| that hill and start chopping” and the| boy goes. ‘When people die their family goes to 2 saw mill and gets rough timber | and makes a box and puts them | in it and make their own graves. ‘You can trade your whole weeks wages in and only get enough sup- plies to last three days for a family, only food, no clothes. “R. F. C, RELIEF” Now the flour going over the coun- try from the government. My father ask for it and they wouldn't give it to him. We did get flour and were allowed a twenty-four pound sack every two weeks and the merchant: went together and wrote to Governor Miller to cut this flour out of this| section because the people were work- | ing for him and he fed them and ‘they didn’t need it so they cut it out of that country, x be mounting into hundreds per year as this form of terror has become more popular with the white rulers of South and North. Against ‘these, also, sections are provided in the Bill of Civil Rights, authorizing specifi¢ use of every agency at the command of the gov- ernment—not, as is now the prac- tice, to promote them, but to pree vent them. The conditions which require the inclusion of sections 3, 4 and 5— against disfranchisement, disquali+ fication for jury service, and school segregation and discrimination, are particularly concrete, as embodied in the laws of many states, and in the practice of all (AN the basis of the mass move- ment roused around the indigna- tion and protests of groe and white wo. infamous lynch-verdict of Decatur in the Scottsboro case, concessions can be won by a militant struggle, from the ruling class. Such concese sions, partial though they may be, are definite forward steps in the national struggle of the Negro peo- ple for the right to self-determina- tion. Only the winning of this | right, with the confiscation of the land now pe act ple. The League of Struggle for Negro Rights, an organization of Negro and white, wholeheartedly approves of the proposed program of action of the National Scottsboro Action Committee in presenting President Roosevelt and Congress on May 8 with a demand for the freedom of the Scottsboro boys and with the “Bill of Civil Rights” demanding the enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U. S. Constitution as an inseparable part. of the struggle for the freedom of the Scottshoro boys. held by force by the ite ruling class, can achieve the al liberation of the Negro peo-