W.E.B. Du Bois explains why Black workers were not flocking to the Socialist Party, speaking to the Socialist Party leadership’s racist support for ‘Asian exclusion’ in immigration, and failure to attack the anti-Black policies of most trade unions, among other issues.

‘Socialism Too Narrow for Negroes, Says Du Bois’ from the New York Call. Vol. 4 No. 21. January 21, 1911.

Professor Du Bois Scores Indorsement of Exclusion Laws.

“The negro race will not take kindly to Socialism so long as the international Socialist movement puts up the bars against any race whether it be yellow or black.

“If Socialism is to gain the confidence of the negro and get him to Join the Socialist party it will have to begin by changing its attitude toward the yellow races.

“The ban upon Asiatic labor sanctioned by the international Socialist Congress will have to be repealed.”

This, in substance. was the message to Socialists which Professor W. E.B. Du Bois, the noted negro scholar, delivered last night to a cosmopolitan audience of 1,000 people at, Lenox Casino, 116th street and Lenox avenue. The subject of his address was “The Race Problem.”

Professor Du Bois began his lecture by saying that he would vary slightly from the subject which he had had in mind when he planned his lecture, because he had been reading The Call lately and he found that there were certain points about the race problem on which even the Socialists, who are presumably more informed, need enlightenment.

No Bans Tolerated.

“You come to us,” he said, “and with all the faith that your idea, the idea of Socialism inspires you, and you tell the negro race to join the Socialist movement. which aims at the abolition of all ills and inequalities. You will find, however, that the negro race will look upon you, upon the Socialists, with the same suspicion that it looks upon all white men. It will regard you as enemies just as it has been taught to regard all white men.

“Beside the Socialist movement really does not offer such a remedy for the race problem as Socialists generally think. The Socialist movement, like a great many reform movements in religion, in humanitarian and social relations of men, in the labor movement have been movements which have concerned themselves with the European civilization, with the white races. So long as the Socialist movement can put a ban upon any race because of its color, whether that color be yellow or black, the negro will not feel at home in it.”

Negro Always Exploited.

This, the climax of Professor Du Bois, address, came after a brilliant review of the history of the black race, the humilities and degradations to which the white races have subjected the negro in the times when slavery was flourishing, and the humility to which the negro is subjected by the white man today.

“In the South.” the speaker said, “the negro, when traveling, is subjected to the greatest indignities. The negro schools there are worse today than they were ten years ago. The church, Christianity, which teaches the doctrine of love and humility, does not extend as far as the relations of the whites and the negroes. In industry the negro is being taken advantage of. Negroes in the South are working for 30 cents a day in a great many instances.

“We frequently hear the cry that the negro crowds in the cities. Well, the cities are the only places where the negro family is given any sort of consideration.

“To call the negro free in the United States is to use the word ‘free’ with extreme latitude.”

Speaking about the economic status of the negro race, Dr. Du Bois said that the negro is constantly being deprived of his opportunities on the industrial field through the prejudice of his white fellow workers. Just as when the Declaration of Independence was written and the clause that all men were born free and equal was put in it. It somehow did not include the negro among the “all men.” who were born free and equal, so today the negro is somehow excluded from most industrial opportunities.

Reforms Exclude Negroes.

“There have been great movements for the betterment of humanity in the history of the world in the last five or six centuries, Catholicism and the reformism of Luther each. in their way, brought christianity to the heathen. None of these religious movements, however, thought of setting the negro free. Then came the French revolution. Americans were inspired by it. Indeed, there was a feeling at that time that slavery would disappear in the United States in ten, or at most twenty years, from purely humanitarian motives.

“But just at this time cotton cloth was discovered. Men liked the idea of wearing cotton clothes. The negro was the best asset in the cotton industry and private gain got the upper hand. The negro remained enslaved. When the negro was finally set free he was turned out poor and naked without clothes to his back, without tools to work, and with a definite hatred for work because he had come to associate work with slavery. He was then told to shift for himself and not to complain. Above all not to complain. Of course it did not take long and the negro was again reduced to slavery.

Scores the A. F. of L

“Then came the labor movement. At first the Knights of Labor were really friendly to the negro. Then the American spirit became dominate in the Knights of Labor ranks, and this meant more or less hatred of the negro.

“The American Federation of Labor likewise was enthusiastic for the negro at first. It even had a clause in its constitution specifying that any labor, body which refused to admit negroes to membership should in turn be refused affiliation with the American Federation of Labor. Now we have before us a spectacle of the American Federation of Labor eating its own words and good resolutions when it has among the unions affiliated with It a railroad men’s organization which has in its constitution a clause barring negroes from membership.”

The chairman of the evening was Joshua Wanhope. Mrs. J.W. Gates gave an excellent vocal solo.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1911/110121-newyorkcall-v04n21.pdf