The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 20, 1933, Page 5

DALLY WORKER, NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1930 Page 5 F WHITE TOILERS TO MARCH AT THE HEAD OF STRUGGLE FOR NEGRO RIGHTS” ~By Back Knight, Ala. Prosecutor, “IT IS THE DUTY O “SHAKE, BROTHERS!” On the Anniversary of ~ slave leader. Tou Toussaint L’Ouverture, Haitian Revolutionist inspiring Symbol of Haitian Masses in Their Struggle Against A Toussaint L’Ouverture anniver- sary meeting—in support of the Haitian masses against U. S. im- periatism—will be held tomorrow, Sunday, at 3 o'clock in the after- noon at*P. 8. 139, at 149 W. 140th Street;in Harlem. Speakers will in- siddg Viliam L. Patterson, national secretary of the I, L. D.; Harold Williams, of the Harlem ‘Liberator’; Joshua Kunitz, of the National Committce for the Defense of Poli- ticaly Priseners; J. Zamore, and e, of the Dumas Lit- The meeting js ar- the Nat Turner Literary y HAROLD WILLIAMS » NE of the most brilliant pages in therhistory of the struggles of the Negro péople for national liberation is the “Haltian Revolution. Slavery was completely destroyed by the force- ful ofgamized might of the Negro slaves under the able leadership of ‘Toussiant L’Ouverture at the end of the 18th century, The sharp turn of events f"France with the overthrow of ths“fetidal lords re-echoed in the colonie#ahe idea of fraternity, equa The mullatoes who . atus of the middle ‘were demanding equal rights. the opportunity of send- ing twd™df their representatives to » France,“®ge and Chavanne. On their returit.etbe, colon: demanded that they be,pyt to death. T. G. Stewart, the Haitign Revolutionist, gives the following “account: “After two months ‘of horr oceedings, which cannot be calléd ‘@ trial, it was finally de- creed that anne gpgujd be. broken alive on the wheel and be left ‘with their faces turned, toyards heaven as long as it should“piéase God to continue their i off and that of Oge placed on a fi@le in the road leading to his native town, Dondo.’ With whai hypocrisy and vicious- ness theJandlords attgmpted to peu- petrat®%the system*®of oppression! Although Oge and Chavanne were not representatives afethe slaves but of. thewmiddle classtmullatoes de- mandipgseéaual rightst ‘the slave mas- ters nig! thcir demasis with fright- ful terror: But thisrterror is of n« avail tofmaintain shrery. The r ~ volutiengxyrising of tat Negro slaves, August; 28 1791, comptetely shattered the pow slavery--myasters. The revolutionary ant L’Ouverture, skillfubysattilized «tween France and Spain and suc- ceededisirevanquishing the armies of Francegs@pain. and>‘England. was indgest a great victory for the slaves a@d:.a crushing defeat for the lave powers. The black thout previous military or experience, conquered the best-armies of Europe, with arms wrested from them. The. Sttuggle in Haiti Haiti was the richest colonial pos- session of France and one of the greatest military outposts. The suc- cessful, revolution was a stag- gering*defeat to the colonial slave system founded upon white supreme- acy. the revolution. He organized an ex- pedition-cf thirty thousand of crack battalion, with his brother-in- Jaw, General Le Clere as its head, to reinstate chattel slavery on the Island 6?*Aaiti. To aceomplish this militar¥#*smanouever, France nego- tiated \wtita:other European powers, . for moral..su. ort as well as the se- curing, diers. Generale Clere attempted to de- ceive e Haitian people with the ‘words ys he came to “co-operate” with the Haitian people in restoring order. cae Haitian masses did not Permit * lves to be fooled, but _Yose in'“Afins again. The milftary tactics employed by the Haitian slaves was in many res- pects erior to those of the soldiers “of Napélébn. After years of battle, *"Poussiati? L'Ouverture was treacher- “ously tricked and taken to France as » ® prisoner; yet the struggle for lib- pen DESSALINES succeeded Tous- isanp WOuverture and wa sable to ‘the .blagkasin. the struggle for libera- tion. galines was able to mobilize over men and hurl them . against thearmy of France. General RochamWeau, commander-in-chief of the -army, declared that when Dessalings,..would be captured, he ‘would not be treated as a prisoner of war but, be beaten and whipped to deat! ut the heroic struggle of the Hi masses forced Rocham- heau findfly to beg for mercy at their hands. beau with the pitiful After death their heads were |) and system of the chattel! e antagonism be-| This} Napoleon determined to crush} -aships to transport the sol- | solidifysthe. mullato middle class with | U. S. Imperialism he revolutionary spirit of the Haitian masses cannot be crushed. Inspired by the tradition of the revolution of 1791, workers and peasants militantly carried forward the struggle for lib- j eration despite the terror of United | States occupation and the betrayal of | the reformist nationalist traitors such | as Borno, etc. of struggle in support of the Haitian | masses, for the withdrawal of U. S. marines and the restoration of the independency of the Negro republic. j ss a |BirminghamRed Cross |\Seeks to Trap Negroes r Miss. Slave Farms BIRMINGHAM, Ala., | How the Red Cross in thi ‘fo the misery of the starving unem- ployed to recruit peon labor for vhite planters was revealed when a | jobless Negro worker turned in des- |peration to the Unemployed Counce: Within the past week, six families |in one neighborhood have been cut off the Red Cross relief | |they refused to go to M | plantations to become virtual s for white planters there. The Red 'Gross officials painted the pr in glowing colors, telling one lw | be able to clear $500 by Chris they would pack up and go to M i. Anyone who knows the j conditions of the Negro croppers jand farm laborers in the South to- jday knows that this can be only a |downright lie. What this family i ii to clear, if it goes to the | Mississippi plantation, is $500 worth ‘of debts, which will effectively chain lit to the land for years to come. When the six families, scenting the lie, refused to leave the city, |the Red Cross officials stopped paint- ing pretty word-pictures of ideal conditions on the plantation, and | told these workers bluntly that they would receive no more relief. 400 at Providence Scottsboro Meet By a Negro Worker Correspondent PROVIDENCE, R.I—On May 11th, | Providence saw one of the largest in- | door mass meetings ever held in the state of Rhode Island. This meeting | was in defense of the nine Scottsboro | boys. ‘The hall was packed and many out- | side heard that there was standing |room only and went away. But this | did not keep many from coming in, and they lined up around the wall. | _ Mrs. Patterson, mother of tie con- | demned boy who received tremendous | applause, made a moving speech. | Rev. Williams made a fine speech |on the jim crow in the South where | he has travelled and lived in the hell- hole called Alabama. M Raymond Harris told how he was Jim Crowed in Baltimore and how the only friends of the Negro, the ILD, | fought for Negro rights. He told how | Roosevelt refused to see the delegates elected by the marchers because he | was too busy seeing foreign diplomats | to see the “forgotten man.” | At the close of the meeting, slips were passed out and more than 75 people signed their name to help in | the fight. A collection of $27.08 was taken and given to Mrs. Patterson for the defense work. Over 200 small pamphlets were sold and -nany stamps. —A. B. IRMINGHAM, Ala.—‘I am a na- On the anniversary of Toussiant | | L’Ouverture, let us raise the banner To Bar P Bosses of State Figh | (This article is taken from the | first issue of the new Southern | Worker published May 12.) r JAMES MALLORY ‘ound useful man of Alabama is Attor- s EF. Knight. to the od Reason—One Million Dollars. hy the state of Ala- hard for it work convict labor can b* ¢ words—one million dol @ amount of th t ate of Al 1g sO was one of th be founded on T. C. I. got the con’ bama after les to wine. Lees whe demas 8 Mose Sanne boy ms Working for No lion dollars f cotton ¢ > : on BIRMINGHAM, Ala., May 19.—The| | vicious prison conditions and pro- {vocative tactics of jail officials in | Birmingham County Jail, which re- sulted in friction between the Scotts- | boro boys confined there, driven to hysteria by the mistreatment ac- corded them were revealed here when Attorney Benjamin J.. Davis, | Jr., Negro attorney of Atlanta and | one of the International Labor De- fense counsel in the Herndon case, visited the boys there. The story of the “fight” between | | Haywood Patterson and Roy Wright, greatly exaggerated in reports sent out by the warden last week, was told to Attorney Davis by the boys them- | selves. “Our tempers got the best of us) for just a minute,” the boys told | Davis. “We Get Awful Nervous” “We were talking and , kidding about girls we used to know before we were arrested,” Patterson said. “We haven't got anything. to read and not much to talk about, cooped | up like this for more than two years. Before either of us knew what it was | all about, Roy hit me with the knife. | It didn’t amount to nothing. It was | an accident.” The knife was slipped into the jail | cell where the boys are confined by | | guards, with the hope that, with the nervousness induced by loneliness and confinement, it might help to} frame the boys, Davis said he was | convinced. None of the boys could | tell exactly where it came from. | “Things like that might happen | any time, between no matter how) good friends, when they are held in jail so long on frame-up charges,” both Patterson and Roy Wright told Davis. “We get awful nervous and) irritable in here sometimes.” | “The terrific strain of the frame- up ordeal has had that effect upon the boys,” Davis said, “but in spite of that they are in excellent spirits in regard to their case. » “I studied their faces carefully. Their chins are up, their eyes bright with confidence, defiance, vigor. | Without doubt this has been instilled | into them by the world of sympathy with their cause aroused by the ILD. They are militant and un- afraid. Montgomery Going Blind | “Olen Montgomery is fast losing - Scottsboro Bo ys Tell Lawyer for I.L.D. Facts of “Fight” in Cell of Birmingham Jail The rest goes to nke use of The actory equip- fh buys the cloth from Alabama I he convi are es’ newspapers care- stem in his own hand. When he was first arrested, his glasses were broken by the thugs, and he has had none since. It is impossible for him to read. Protests should be sent at once to the warden of Jefferson County Question in the U- | Jail, Birmingham, Ala., denouncing | bama prison fare. the blinding of the boy by refusal of + “BOURGEOIS LIE 10 SAY THAT YOKE OF NEGRO SLAVERY LIPTED INU 8.” —From Resolu‘ion of the Communist International on the Negro States, Oct. 1930. aunist Position on the Nesro Question, (25c), Workers’ Library Publishers, P. O. Box 148, Station D, New York City. IT is only a Yankee bourgeois lie to say that the y has been lifted in the United States. but in practice the great majority of the Negro masses in the South are living in slavery in the literal sense of the word. “free” as “tenant farmers” or “contract laborers” on the big plantations of the white landowners, but actually they are completely in the power ful to keep the name of this firm prison authorities to pay any atten-, bas been to some tion to this, which is a definite |far as it was ¢ secret. And wha oppo! tor medical need. | both by this com they ne “The boys are, in my opinion, | world-y no wai to their workers. greatly suffering from the food, | placed n The state feeds, clothes and shelters which 1s pretty bad. Regular Ala-| slipping a knife into the cel after a fashion—the workers who \the boys would some 1 duce and cloth, and “But th aistreatment of the boys | tempér he company need pay only a sum to —— mili- | the state officials as their “share” “Haywood Pattérson is very tant, and understands 1 the mili- tant policy of the I.L.D. Considering the isolation in which the boys have been kept, their general understand- ing of militant policy is really ex- ceptional. They are very brave and aggressive, | “Sympathizers should immediately | be mobilized to’ send the boys litera- | ture. They will all read and study | together. Other things they should the booty. That’s doing even better Reprinted from “The By NAT ROSS be sent are shoes, shirts, overalls, q ‘ tooth paste, cigarettes, and other such THE great effect upon large sections | necessities.” of the white toiling masses of the | Appeal by the L. L. D. South resulting from recent develop- ke of Negro slavery campaign of defense of the Scotts- boro boys, and for providing the the white masses of the South against Scottsboro boys with the things of their exploiters; they are not permitted, or else it is made impossible for them to leave their exploiters; if they do leave the plantations, they are brought back and in many cases whipped; many of them are simply taken prisoner under various pretexts and, bound together with long chains, they have to do compulsory labor on the roads. All through the South, the Negroes are not only deprived of all rights, and subjected to the arbitrary will of the white exploiters, but they are also socially ostra- cized, that is, they are treated in general not as human beings, but as cattle. But this ostracism regarding Negroes is not limited to the South. Not only in the South but throughout the United States, the lynching of Negroes is permitted to go unpunished. Everywhere the American bour- | geoisie surrounds the Negroes with an atmosphere of social ostracism . . . | . | necessary to make their prison life bearable. Funds should be sent to the International Labor Defense, | Room 430, 80 East Ith St, New IN the struggle for equal rights for the Negroes, however, it is the duty of the white workers to march at the head of this struggle. They must everywhere make & breach in the walls of segregation and “Jim-Crowism” which have been set up by bourgeois slave-market morality. They must most ruthlessly unmask and condemn the hypocritical reformists and bourgeois “friends, of Negroes” who, in reality, aré only interested in strengthening the power of the enemies of the Negroes. They, the white workers, must boldly jump at the throat of the 100 per cent bandits who strike a Negro in the face. This struggle will be the test of real inter- national solidarity of the American white workers. It is the special duty of the revolutionary Negro workers to carry on tireless activity among the Negro working masses to free them of their distrust of the white proletariat and draw them into the common front of the revolutionary class struggle against the bourgeoisie. They must emphasize witli all force that the first rule of proletarian morality is that no worker who wants to be . equal member of his class must ever serve ENOMENT. his e¥e sight. He cannot see a match SOUTHERN WHITE GIRL TELLS HOW NEGROES DEFENDE Jane Speed Describes Slugging by Birmingham Police and Abuse in Jail Following Attempt to Smash May 1 Meet “The United Front May Day Com- as a strike breaker or a supporter of bourgeois politics, i] DEMAND NEGRO RIGHTS! the Negro people and created a jim- crow system on the basis of it. As a result of the Scottsboro fight a dim light is beginning to shine thru the darkness of prejudice, among the white work THE DECATUR | TRIAL The white workers could see plainly in the Decatur trial that Negroes were kept off the jury not because they lacked intelligence or ability, but be- cause they were Negroes. They saw that the exclusion of Negroes was | based fundamentally on the same which excluded the “poor white population of the South) from jury service also. The white workers saw that the Scottsboro boys could |not get a fair trial under such cir- | cumstances. They were dazed by | the testimony of Ruby Bates. Some of them still said the boys should | burn just as a lesson to Negroes any. y. Others hesitated, and said tha |both girls were liars and no good of them girl who to it required plenty of hone E | courage to tell the truth in the face ‘of the white lynchers in Decatur. at 1 o'clock. | “Immediately thé cops began beat-| me in the most abusive, vile and ob- HER FROM COP: “The next morning they took mé (the majority of the tolling| Picked to Defeat Law rison Labor t for the “Right” to Continue Exploitation of Prisoners the reg bosses, who, . still have to y dollars a ig Workers out of Jobs ‘Tr and farmers suffer enforced competi- he th prison, 1 Last year, 's cotton mills at Kilby and ons, spun 16,736,046 and the prison duced 3,500 shirts cotton for all this work prison farm. pretend to wegp he lot of the pris- it in enforced y, year after suffered the hell jails, knows that this is. Only a den Sims of the Jail excused the by saying: “Anyone x nough to get caught lice deserves to catch dis- his is no damn reformatory. en’t time to fool around with The jail is run for state, and those who the law are worked as rd as possible.” So odile tears of the the pd Hearted Measure ooper act is itself a ed and shamefaced meas- provisions of the bill show at it is brought forward not lf of prison labor, or the id mers outside, but on f certain employers who fear ntractbrs’ competition. Th not forbid sweated pri. ith le goods, or to require be labeled or branded That is, wherever th manufacturers feel ts of prison competition in y may get their the products of legislatur prison labor. But even this small threat to it prison-made profits has thrown fear into the Alabama officials and the prison-contractors—and the is in the North, South, East ho buy at a cheap price th de goods. To fight agai at, the Alabama rulers have the joo, Attorney-General would-be, murderer of the out Kni Scottsboro boys An altogether useful man, Thomas Knight! on Ez White Toilers of the South The “rape bogey’ of the Souther [exploiters had received a smashing | blow in the nose and the white mass- les saw it, . j ‘The International Labor Defense | ments in the Scottsboro case is of |"PHE Southern white toilers were Formally it has been abolished, | 5.5 calted on all workers and sym- | fu ata >. For de-|4 greatly impressed by the wonder- ; pathizers to send funds both for ; ; ‘ling class has| ful fight of the International Labor Formally, they are | carrying on the legal and mass |°*0°® the Southern ruling class ha5| Deronse, ‘They were hearing about | successfully poisoned the minds of|the mass actions of all peoples the | world over. And right in their own | community they saw growing unity. |In Birmingham, Scottsboro meetings were held where Negro and white | sat together and where white work- ers and intellectuals called for the | freedom of the Scottsboro boys. They | saw on May 1 in Birmingham, Ala. | how Negroes don’t rape white women | but defend them from police thugs who try to arrest them, even to the point of beating the cops. The white workers saw how Tom | Mooney, whom many of them idolize almost unnerved Tom Knight when |the latter received Mooney’s wire in the Decatur courtroom demanding the freedom of the Scottsboro boys. The white workers are being roused the growing struggles of the Negro sses in the South. That is why you will find many white workers | sympathetic to the ILD. on the Scottsboro issue. That is why for the fi since Reconstruction you | will find a deep-going interest, dis- end ion e mas: curiosity among the on the Negro question. PREJUDICE STILL DEEP or ‘ong not je course, would be just as tion the still exist- prejudice of the maj- hite toiling masses. It is a fact that winning the white masses for the fight for Negro lib- eration is one of the most important }and at the same time one of the stormiest tasks of the Revolutionary inovement in the South. The Scotts- boro case, among others, has helped to throw new light on the struggle. More and more sections of the white toilers see in the fight for Negrc rights and freedom their own salva: tion from the hunger, terror and re- actionary schemes of the jim-crow and lynch rulers of the South. That i y the united front of all toflers scene language. They continued to/ back to the police station and began attempt though uns! successful, was the prelude to the victorious Rus- Reyp eau pee) wort , Haiti once +more wed. The inde- ce. of the Negro republic of iti .was- crushed out by United | with the inter- ,United States marines in 17 at behest of the Wall Street i it Roosevelt, who demogically proclaims his “new for the forgotten man,” played 4 ame] ‘in the rape of Haiti of the constitution es- “The Haitian people, But tive Alabamian. I was reared in Montgomery where my brother and grandmother were born — and my father is a Kentuckian. So I bélieve I have the right to call myself a truly Southern girl. I am eligible for membership in the U.D.C. and the DAR. “The treatmént I received May 1, when I tried to exircise my right of free speech in Birmingham showed me Clearly for the first time that the constitutional rights guaranteéd us are a mere fiction,” v ‘This was the statement made by Jane Speed, white southern girl, who was arrested on May 1, along with two Negro workérs who tried to de- mittee asked thé City Commissioner for permission to hold a meeting at Ingram Park,” she said, explaining the circumstances of the arrest. “He refuséd, saying ‘we are sitting on a barrel of dynamite, and this is no time to have the whites and the Negroes mixing and mingling to- gether, and listening to inflamatory speeches.’ He gavé this refusal in a whisper, his fips and hands trembling} noticibly. “However, we went ahead with the preparations for a mass meeting just the same and I was sélected as the first speaker. In spite of the fact that a forged leaflet, saying that the mect- ing was called off, was distributed fend her from the brutality of the batten | Ee polica, when, she ad- a a May Day meeting. Sunday night and Monday morning, probably by the K.K.K., séveral thou- sand were around the Park Monday “But, the whole hotice force, espe- cially the motorcyclé cops, were keep- ing everybody on the move and pre- venting a group from forming any- where, Finally a group of about 50 were mobilized on a corner, so I got on the running board of an auto- mobile and began to speak. I got no furthér than ‘Fellow workers, we are here today because we refuse to starve quietly in our homes, We are meeting to organize a struggle for better conditions—when the cops began coming from every direction and soon outnumbered the workers. One grabbed my arm and pulled me off thé car. The workers rushed for- ward to defend my right to speak and to protect me, shouting, ‘Let her suas ah has the right to speak,’ e ing the workers, for a minute I stop- ped, the thud of the blows and the sight of the blood made my head) reel. But I began speaking again. de- | manding that we be allowed to have | our meeting and shouting to thé other workers to come closer. Thén the cop who was holding me began to twist my arm, saying, ‘Will you get out of here quietly or will we have to arrest you?’ I answered that it was my constitutional right to speak and that I intended to continue speaking. Then another cop grabbed me by the arm and togéther they dragged me| toward the police car. They muzzled | my mouth with their hands. All the | time they were nearly twisting my arm out, “When they got me into the car théy began threatening and cursing squeeze and twist my arms. “At the jail I saw that two Negro workérs had been arrested with me. They had tried to defend me from | the cops—blood was running from their faces, “I tried to give them a look of en- couragement but thé cop caught my glance and gave me a shove that nearly knocked me down, throwing me against a table—and began again reviling and cursing me—and calling mé a ‘dirty nigger lover.’ Insulted by Police “That night in jail I couldn't sleep, wondering if the Negro workers who hhad defended mé were being beaten and tortured. The beds were foul of course, and I supposed it was every other way typical of a Southern jail. | to question me. I refused to give them more than my name and age. When they triéd to fingerprint me, I re- | sisted, but they fingerprinted me janyway. They photographed and | weighed me in the same plainclothésmen: and cops. All the time this was going on they were reviling and taunting me with the | same insulting remarks, | “Here in this so-called “chivalrous” South—where the white men aré sup- posed to “protect” the Southern white womanhood—the cops instead of protecting me—were malireating and cursing mé in the vilest possible } language. And here too it was the Negro workers who heroically de- fended me from the brutal attacks manner, | |Then I was exhibited to about 75| in the South for their common inter- s becomes the all-burning issue’ of | the day. i |Demand Pardon for MeDuffey ‘ ST, PAUL, Minn., May 19.--A dele- | gation of 30 representatives of Negre | and white workers’ organizations, le¢ by the International Labor Defense appeared before the State Pardor Board to demand a pardon for Er- |nest McDuffey, Negro frame-up vie- tim who is serving a 7-year term ir | the St, Cloud Reformatory. Gov- jemor Olson and another Farmer- \Laborite are members of the Board. X t ey