‘Detroit District League of Struggle for Negro Rights Starts Mass Work’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 8 No. 286. November 28, 1931.

From the Detroit district of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, R.G. sends an activity report and plan of work for the Liberator drive, worthy of printing word for word. She writes:

“Functioning L.S.N.R. branches are now established with the following membership: three in Detroit, with 30, 25 and 20 members; two in Hamtramck with 30 and 25 members, Pontiac, 34; Highland, 13; Ecorse, 75.” Although two were organized within the last month, a new branch in Flint and a fourth in Detroit are expected to be formed within the next week. Liberator sales, low at present, are picking up as the drive progresses. “Several newsstands are now selling the Liberator…Red Builders are being approached to sell the paper, and three young boys are establishing house-to-house routes.”. An excellent start which, if followed, will create a permanent basis for mass circulation in Detroit.

But money is needed to establish a headquarters for the L.S.N.R., and to carry on the work of the district. Detroit gets busy. “Each group is to be taxed $2 monthly, is to hold home affairs to raise money (a wise step, involving a minimum expense), collection lists are going to be printed, money collected, organizations approached for donations.”

Activity Starts in Groups.

Although, according to R.G., the groups have not yet been involved in activity to any great extent, the report indicates the beginnings of mass work in the Detroit district. “A Nat Turner mass meeting was held at the Greek Workers Club,” she writes. “A demonstration will be held before a White Tower restaurant in Hamtramck, which refuses to serve Negro workers. Liberator mass meetings will be held by each group within the next three weeks. In January an L.S.N.R. conference will be arranged to affiliate and activize many fraternal organizations.” (Rather late date, but numerous other conferees in the district prevent an earlier meeting.)

The district L.S.N.R. is alive to the necessity of TRAINING its Negro and white workers, the better to fight in the struggles against lynching, starvation, segregation, and for Negro rights.

“Classes for functionaries, (executives) and chosen rank and file members of the L.S.N.R. groups will be held for the next six weeks. Thus far, about 20 members are expected to attend. Weekly forums will be held in our headquarters…a library established, and many activities carried on here.”

Mass Organizations Involved in Drive.

The Communist Party, too, is involved in the drive; putting the Liberator on the newsstands, securing worker correspondents, subscriptions, organizing Liberator Red Sundays on Nov. 29 and Dec. 6, drawing in sympathetic workers to sell, get subs, build carrier routes during these days of concentration. Mass organizations, unemployed councils, block committees (where Liberator agents will see to it that the Liberator is well circulated among the workers and on the newsstands) will support the campaign. Unemployed workers, organized into Liberator Builders Clubs for systematic house-to-house deliveries, street and factory gate sales, and at workers’ meetings, will “compete with one another for the number of subs secured, the numbers of regular receivers of the paper, etc.” From these clubs, affiliated to the L.S.N.R. will develop a steady flow of worker correspondence.

The immediate step of the Liberator drive will be discussed at a general membership meeting of the L.S.N.R. Quotas by groups have been worked out, prizes to be awarded to the one reaching or exceeding its quota first. The drive will end with a Liberator Ball some time in January.

Detroit is to be congratulated for one of the most thorough, most concrete program for building the L.S.N.R. to carry on the struggles of the Negro workers and of all workers, and for a mass circulation for its organ, the Liberator. The fruits of these plans may not be realized the first week, perhaps, but Detroit has shown the way HOW to carry on work effectively and systematically. We look to that district not only to exceed its quota of 1,000, but to surpass it…Where are reports from other districts? Send them in!

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.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n286-NY-nov-28-1931-DW-LOC.pdf