A generation before the Civil Rights Movement, a campaign by the Young Workers League and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights to break Jim Crow laws by their mass violation was begun. Here, hundreds of Black and white young Communists go for a swim at Denver’s segregated Washington Park beach. 36 are arrested.

‘Denver Police Attack Anti-Jim Crow Fight’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 4 No. 198. August 19, 1932.

Beat Young Workers; Arrest 36; Big Protest Tonight

DENVER, Colo. Aug. 18. Thirty-six white and Negro workers, mostly youth, were arrested here yesterday after a terrific struggle initiated by the Young Communist League against jim-crow practices in Denver’s bathing parks.

As part of the special fight for Negro rights, three hundred workers under the leadership of the Young Communist League marched in a body to Washington Park to demand the right of Negro workers to battle in any part of the park without molestation.

Negro and White Defy Cop Edict

Fifty police, under the personal command of the Commissioner of Safety, Milliken and Chief of Police Clark, refused to allow the Negro workers to bathe. The Negro and white workers defied the police edict. The struggle commenced only after all the workers had brushed past the police and had bathed and were on the point of leaving the park. The police then attacked the leaders of the demonstration in an attempt to incite the large crowd of petty bourgeois shop-keepers and undeveloped workers present. Throughout the demonstration this crowd remained passive with some among them showing sympathy in spite of the police attempts to create provocations.

Young Communist Beaten

Jay Anton, district organizer of the League, was brutally beaten up by a score of police who jumped him all at once.

The arrested workers include Pat Toohey, district organizer of the Communist Party, Nell Anyon, district organizer of the Pioneers; Frank Smith, secretary of the Unemployed Council; Carr, district secretary of the International Labor Defense.

Two-thirds of the arrested workers are Negroes, against whom the police as usual especially directed their attacks. Most of the white workers arrested were seized in the act of defending their Negro comrades.

Mayor in Demagogic Statement

In an attempt to hide the fact that the city administration and its police in their onslaught on the workers were openly defending Jim Crowism and other forms of national oppression of the Negro masses, the mayor of Denver has issued a demagogic statement attacking the demonstration “as Communist inspired.” Similar statements have been issued by Commissioner Milliken and Chief of Police Clark. In his statement Milliken asserts he will give no quarters to Communists.

The Negro district is heavily patrolled by police today in fear of angry retaliation by the workers to police brutality.

The local bourgeois papers have given the demonstration wide publicity, attempting to characterize it as a “race riot” in order to hide its working class character as a united fighting front of the Negro and white workers against their common enemy.

Demonstrate Friday

A huge protest demonstration against the police attack and against the jim-crowing of Negro workers in the bathing parks is being organized for this Friday evening. The Communist Party and the Young Communist League have issued a joint statement denouncing the mayor, the commissioner and chief of police for their attack on the anti-Jim Crowism demonstration and placing full responsibility for the police riot on the police officials who provoked and attacked the demonstrators.

The 36 arrested workers are to come up for trial tomorrow before the notorious anti-working class judge, Pickens. The workers of Denver are planning to pack the court in a militant demonstration for the unconditional release of their comrades.

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/1932/v09-n198-NY-aug-19-1932-DW-LOC.pdf