‘U.S. Communist Party Denounces Lynchings’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 5 No. 171. July 20, 1928.

The Workers (Communist) Party yesterday issued from its national headquarters in New York vigorous denunciation of lynching, calling attention to several recent cases of terrorist crimes against Negroes, encouraged and left unpunished by the ruling class and authorities, as well as the attitude of the capitalist political parties giving tacit approval of lynching.

The Communist statement, which sets forth the measures which it declares the workers must fight for in the struggle against lynching, is as follows:

Horrible Crime.

Three Negroes have recently been lynched in the most horrible and brutal manner in the state of Mississippi. A mob of over 5,000 battered down the jail at Brookhaven and dragged out two Negroes who had been arrested because they had resisted two white men who had attacked them with a gun following a dispute. The mob tied these men to automobile trucks, dragged them around the town, and strung them up to an electric light pole within 50 feet of the City Hall. While they were yet conscious, these ill-fated blacks were lowered to the ground mutilated, and their remains again strung up. Among the mob were business men, prominent city officials, physicians, lawyers, school heads, and church leaders. At Summit, another Negro was given over by officers to a lynching mob which chained its victim to a tree along the road.

Only a few days before, at Houston, Texas, a young Negro was lynched as the democrats assembled for their national convention. H had exchanged shots with a detective who had been hounding him. He was taken from the hospital, where he lay wounded, by five men, one a policeman in uniform, and hanged from a bridge. While the body of this young Negro swung limp and lifeless, the democrats, assembled at Sam Houston Hall eight miles away showed their complete accord with the system of lynching and exploitation by their failure to write any plank in their platform or even to utter a single word against this horrible practice of lynching.

Lynching, a Part of Capitalist Class Oppression.

These lynchings expose once the system of savage repression and brutal terrorism by which the Negro masses of America are ground under the iron heel of their ruthless exploiters. These lynchings reveal the true nature of the “democracy,” “justice,” “law and order,” which the imperialist masters of America impose upon their slaves, the millions of black and white workers who have no right that their capitalist exploiters are bound to respect. Lynching, mob violence, burning at the stake, are common and established practices of American capitalist democracy. Thousands of Negroes, and thousands of white workers, also, have been put to death by this savage terror.

Lynching is openly defended in congress, it is condoned in the courts, it is preached from the pulpits. It is purposely maintained by the wealthy rulers of America as a necessary part of the vicious system of oppression and exploitation which keeps the Negro masses as a slave class at the bottom of capitalist society, degraded and driven in the most merciless fashion, to produce, wealth for their inhuman exploiters. It is the naked engine of terror which upholds the whole vile system of racial segregation and oppression, of Jim-Crowism, disfranchisement, peonage and slavery—the system which not only crushes the Negro masses but divides them also from the white workers and secures the degradation and exploitation of all the workers of America.

Lynching is a special part of the “law and order” of capitalist society. It is the extra-legal counterpart of the legal machinery and state power by which the workers, black and white, are enslaved, repressed and exploited by the financial masters of America. It is part of the whole capitalist system of exploitation, which utilizes the divisions between black and white workers, to pay the Negro workers the most miserable starvation wages and to force him to work under the most degrading conditions at the most arduous and disagreeable tasks.

Capitalist Politicians Will Never Stop Lynching.

The political servants of the imperialist oppressors will never abolish lynching. The Cole Bleases and the Heflins, the Glasses and the Tillmans, openly support lynching. The Coolidges and the Hoovers and the Smiths either silently support lynching or speak hypocritical words, but never take action against the lynchers. The parties of big and small business, the parties which represent the interests which fatten upon the system of violent enslavement and repression of the Negro and white workers, will never abolish lynching.

The republican and democratic parties have held the power of government between them. During all this time nothing has ever been done to punish lynchers, while thousands of black and white workers have been done to death. Both republicans and democrats united to defeat the Dyer anti-lynching bill, which in spite of its many defects would have provided some legal basis for proceeding against the lynchers.

The Democratic Party of Lynching

The democratic party is the party of the solid South, the party of the business men and the plantation owners who live upon the labor and subjection of the black and white workers. Not a single Negro delegate was seated in the democratic convention, and a Jim-Crow cage was provided for Negro visitors. Al Smith and Jimmy Walker by many acts have openly shown their complete acceptance of the whole nefarious system of race oppression and class exploitation and have proved their thorough subservience to big business. They have received the seal of approval of the Bleases as well as of the Raskovs, of the Southern lynchocrats as well as of the Northern financiers. Tammany Hall stands solidly with the Southern democrats for disfranchisement, segregation, peonage and lynching, for the enslavement and exploitation of the black and white masses of America.

The Republican Party’s Betrayal and Lynching.

The republican party is the party of big business, of the bankers and financial magnates who have only one use for the Negroes–to keep them in violent subjection, in order to wring wealth out of their toil.

The republican party used the Negroes to win control of the government for the capitalists, from the chattel slave holders. But as soon as the capitalists succeeded in establishing their system of wage slavery and exploitation, the Republican party betrayed the Negroes and delivered them up to the slave drivers and lynchers. Hoover, the republican candidate for president. is the faithful servant of the imperialist oppressors. He has maintained segregation in his department, and condoned the peonage and abuse of thousands of Negroes during the Mississippi flood disaster. The republican party openly rebuffs the Negro by segregating their delegates at its national convention in Kansas. The few empty and hollow words which the republicans give to the Negroes in their platform should deceive no one. Its record of betrayal and repression proves it also to be the party of Jim-Crowism and disfranchisement, peonage and lynching, the party of the wealthy tyrants who grind huge profits out of the black and white workers and farmers of this country.

Socialist Party Now Openly Treacherous.

The socialist party is treacherous. It openly declared upon taking office in Reading, Pennsylvania, that it would maintain capitalist law and order. Its empty gesture of the Berger anti-lynching bill means nothing. Besides this bill fails in the most important essential, the right of self-defense for the Negro masses.

The socialist leaders of the Pullman Porters have lined up with William Green, President of the A.F of L. They have betrayed the interests of the Pullman Porters. They have accepted the policy of segregation and non-organization of black workers advocated by Green, and the reactionary officialdom of the trade unions. Randolph has openly declared for Smith, the candidate of the democrats, the party of the southern lynchers. He has not even been rebuked or censured by the socialist party. The socialist party continues to support him in his betrayal of the interests of the Negro workers to the capitalists and lynchers.

In the South, the socialist party refuses to admit Negroes into its ranks and holds meetings at which the practices of Negro segregation are strictly enforced.

Only the Working Class Can Abolish Lynching.

The brutal and atrocious treatment of the Negro masses, of which lynching, cold-blooded and horrible, is an expression, is a characteristic of United States imperialism which suppresses with bayonet and gun the peoples of Haiti, Latin America. and the Philippines and crushes with murderous cruelty every attempt of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples, to free themselves from the oppression and exploitation of their imperialist masters.

Only the victorious party of the workers can abolish lynching. Only a workers’ and farmers’ government can overthrow the whole vile system of lynching and exploitation. It was the revolutionary Communist Party which abolished lynching and pogroms in Russia. It will be the revolutionary Workers (Communist) Party of America that will abolish lynching in America in the same way. The Workers (Communist) Party stands forth as the champion of the oppressed Negro masses Twenty-four Negro delegates sat in the National Nominating Convention of the Workers Party, participated on all important committees and helped to draft a program of action for the oppressed masses of America, black and white. Only the Workers Party supports the Negro masses in their struggle against the system of lynching and race oppression. Only this party unites black and white workers in militant struggle against the system of imperialist oppression, of which lynching is an outgrowth. Only this party champions the Negro masses in their right of self-defense and only this party fights with them against mob violence and terrorism.

The Workers Party Fights the Lynching System.

The Communist Party considers it as its historic duty to unite all workers regardless of their color. against the common enemy, against the master class. The Negro race must understand that capitalism means racial oppression, and communism means social equality.

The following are the demands of the Workers (Communist) Party for which it will fight with all its vigor and determination. It calls upon the workers and poor farmers, black and white, to organize their might to put these demands into effect.

1. A Federal law against lynching, and the protection of the Negro masses in their right of self-defense.

2. Abolition of the whole system of race discrimination. Full racial political and social equality for the Negro race.

3. Abolition of all laws which result in segregation of Negroes. Abolition of all Jim-Crow laws. The law shall forbid all discrimination against Negroes in selling or renting houses.

4. Abolition of all laws which disfranchise the Negroes.

5. Abolition of laws forbidding intermarriage of persons of different races.

6. Abolition of all laws and public administration measures which prohibit, or in practice prevent, Negro children or youth from attending general public schools or universities.

7. Full and equal admittance of Negroes to all railway station waiting rooms, trains, restaurants, hotels and theatres.

8. Abolition of discriminatory practices in courts against Negroes. No discrimination in jury service.

9. Abolition of the convict lease system and of the chain gang.

10. Abolition of all Jim-Grow distinctions in the army, navy and civil service.

11. Immediate removal of all restrictions in all trade unions against the membership of Negro workers.

12. Equal opportunities for employment, wages, hours and working conditions for Negro workers and white workers. Equal pay for equal work for black and white workers.

The Workers (Communist) Party calls upon the Negro and white workers to fight against the lynching system, to vote against the lynching system by voting against the parties which uphold that system, by supporting the only party which can and does fight against the system of lynching and oppression.

Unite against the lynchers and exploiters!

Organize for the abolition of the system of lynching and exploitation! Vote Communist!

Join the Workers (Communist) Party of America!

-Central Executive Committee, Workers (Communist) Party of America.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist

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