A fascinating look at the Communist Party struggle against racism in Washington D.C. during the early 1930s by its city organizer. In two parts; the first detailing the fight to break de facto jim-crow policies through mass actions, the second concerning the problem of white chauvinism within the Party.

‘Breaking Down Race Hatred In Capital of the United States’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 11 Nos. 13 & 14. January 15 & 16, 1934.

In this column, today and tomorrow, we are dealing with a very important question, i.e., the fight to break down race prejudice, instilled by the capitalist class, in the minds of the workers, and the struggle against white chauvinism in the Party. Today’s article deals with the situation in Washington, D.C., and the progress that the Party has made there in breaking the jim-crow laws and practices. Tomorrow’s section presents the struggle against white chauvinism within the Party. The article is written by the Party Organizer in Washington.

The Fight Against Race Prejudice and Struggle Against White Chauvinism in the Party

Washington, D.C., is the Capital of the United States. One-third of the population is Negro. Washington has no Jim-Crow laws. But Washington has Jim-Crow practices. That is, a Negro is not prevented by law from going to a “white” theatre, hotel, restaurant, or otherwise exercising his rights as an American citizen. But if he actually tries to exercise these rights it is an entirely different matter. Then we see that there is no difference between Jim- Crow laws and Jim-Crow practices.

Since Washington is the home of the President, the defender of the Constitution of the United States (including the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments!) it would not be good politics as far as the 12,000,000 Negroes are concerned, to make Jim-Crow laws. But it is easy for the government to close its eyes to Jim-Crow practices.

Struggle Against Jim-Crowism

However, the revolutionary movement, under the leadership of the Communist Party, is exposing these practices, and is breaking them down through struggles of Negro and white workers. Especially during the past few years, during the deepening of the crisis in Washington, have we been able to do this.

The Communist Party of Washington, which has only in the past few years come forward as a party of struggle, as the leader of the fight against unemployment, wage-cuts, oppression of the Negro people, etc., has not been able to shape a clear program on the liberation movement. The comrades, many of whom have been in the Party for years during its period of sectarianism and isolation, are now unable, and in some cases unwilling, to understand the role of the Party on the Negro question in Washington. It is only now that a clear Bolshevik line is being hammered out. It is only now, when the Party is actually leading the struggles of the Negro masses of Washington, that our comrades who are still inclined to remain in their sectarian shell of the language mass organizations are facing the question of the liberation movement of the Negroes.

Must Expose National Government

Washington, being the Capital, where Jim-Crow laws remain unwritten, but are enforced by the President and the Congress, has a most important role to play in the liberation movement.

The Party in Washington has the task of exposing the National Government as a government that sanctions the oppression of 12,000,000 Negro people. The excuse that the states are violating the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments in opposition to the wishes of the Federal Government crumbles beneath the Jim- Crow practices allowed in the Capital.

Second, the Party has the opportunity, and duty, to actually break down discrimination against the Negro in Washington, and thus stimulate similar struggles in the South. We say South deliberately, in order to establish, once and for all, the fact that Washington is not a Southern city, but a Northern city.

Party’s Struggles Against Jim-Crowism

The Communist Party, nationally and locally, has made noteworthy forward strides in breaking down Jim-Crowism in Washington.

The two National Hunger Marches which threw overboard all the Jim-Crow practices of the Capital City, set many Negro and white workers thinking.

The Veterans’ March and Convention likewise violently shook the Jim Crow practices of D.C. by the roots. Even the reformist “Crisis” carried an article on this virtual resolution in Washington conventions.

The recent delegation of textile strikers from Paterson, N.J., under the leadership of the revolutionary National Textile Workers’ Union, crashed through the Jim-Crow practices of the Tourist Camp, the semi- official lodging place for large visitors’ delegations, and forced the Camp to lodge the Negroes on the Delegation.

The local Party has carried the fight further, and with more consistency. A fight to force the People’s Drug Stores to serve Negroes at their lunch counter took the form of a series of open demonstrations, under the leadership of the Young Communist League.

Demonstrations

The Unemployed Council, under open Communist leadership, has forced the Relief Station to grant equal relief to Negroes, and has further forced the relief station to stop asking applicants for relief to fill out their questionnaire answering whether the applicant is Negro or white.

Interracial dancing is a regular practice in affairs under Communist leadership. Joint demonstrations of Negro and white workers for release of the Logan Circle Boys and the Scottsboro Boys have been frequent. Washington workers, Negro and white, staged its first May Day demonstration in 30 years last May. The photographers of the capitalist press caught a striking scene. It was a picture of a Negro and a white worker holding aloft a banner against the background of the U. S. Capitol, reading: Down With Jim-Crowism! Such activities have won for the Communist Party the respect and confidence of the Negro masses, and large numbers of white workers. Even the government employees, which have made a practice of Jim-Crow unions, have recently, in one department, formed a union of both Negro and white workers.

Race discrimination is being to a great degree broken down, and this is due to the leadership and influence of the Communist Party, which is the only force which is carrying on a real fight for full social, economic and political rights for the Negro. And, of course, the ground is being prepared by the deepening of the economic crisis in Washington, with its wage cuts, unemployment, etc.

The white workers, suffering under the severe blows of the crisis, are gradually losing their ideas of white superiority. Even the arch-conservative National Student Federation, which held its convention a few weeks ago in the aristocratic Mayflower Hotel, met the issue of discrimination, and the militants present won over the conference to the position of “No Discrimination.”

Continuing the question discussed yesterday–the breaking down of race hatred in Washington, D.C., the Capitol of the nation, Where the Federal Constitution prohibits Jim-Crow laws, but where Jim-Crow law practices have been wide- spread and accepted-the following article, by the Party Organizer in Washington, deals with the question of white chauvinism within the Party, and the struggle against it. Important lessons for our whole Party are to be found in the Washington experiences.

The struggle against race prejudice and against the Jim-Crow practices in Washington is comparatively a recent one. Consequently our own Party members and sympathetic mass organizations are not yet clear or convinced of the necessity of carrying on a daily struggle for equal rights for Negroes in Washington. The ugly head of White Chauvinism bobs up in our Party, especially among those elements who are least active in the Party campaigns, especially among those elements who still cling to the Socialist ideology which they had for so long a time accepted.

The Party in Washington, which has only in the past year or so recruited into its ranks many native white workers, and Negro workers, has as its fundamental task the wiping out of white chauvinism in the Party.

Because our Party has won for itself the confidence of the Negro masses, the struggle against white chauvinism becomes a life and death struggle.

A recent incident of open white chauvinism was handled in the following manner:

Word came to the Party that four Negro comrades and other Negro workers with them, were denied admission to a Peasants’ Ball, which was held in the Pythian Temple on Christmas night under the auspices of the Women’s League. A meeting was immediately called with all the workers involved and the Secretariat of the Party, where the facts were threshed out.

The investigation disclosed the following:

(1) The Negroes were not permitted to enter the hall. (2) The ticket collector at the door was a Party member. (3) A Party member “diplomatically” advised the Negroes that this affair was of interest only to Jews. (4) A Jim-Crow hall was rented for the affair. (5) The affair was planned at a meeting of the F.S.U., where Negroes were present.

The white comrades and close sympathizers involved claimed:

(1) The Negroes were drunk. (2) They had no tickets. (3) The manager of the hall would not permit Negroes. (4) Some comrades admitted they had made a serious mistake.

The Negro workers refuted this by showing:

(1) They were not drunk. (2) They were willing to buy tickets.

The Party Secretariat pointed out:

(1) The cry DRUNK is a substitution for the cry RAPE which the bosses use (2) The issue of tickets is an excuse which cannot hide discrimination. Our comrades cannot look at this question from the standpoint of a petty shopkeeper. (3) The fight for Negro Rights does not stop with the rules of a Negro-hating landlord, but continues on to struggle with the government and the police. (4) The Communists in the Women’s League and other mass organizations which participated in this ball should have put up a stiff battle against the management and have rushed to the defense of the Negroes. (5) The Party members in these organizations should not have permitted a Jim-Crow hall to be rented unless they were prepared to protect and defend the Negroes who wanted to attend.

A series of discussions were held with the Jewish fraction and with the Negro comrades. These discussions showed that the Jewish comrades who committed this act of white chauvinism were those comrades who were still poisoned with the ideology of the bourgeoisie and the Socialist Party. They do not have the least understanding of the national movement of the Negroes, and its relation to the revolutionary movement. They speak such strange words as: “There must be something wrong with the position of a relentless fight against Negro discrimination, since to carry on such a fight is not PRACTICAL.” In no case do these comrades admit chauvinism (except in the case of one), but they defend their policy on the grounds that the mass organizations like the I.W.O., Women’s League, Icor, etc., would split up on this question, and that it would be impossible to run a “successful” affair that white people would not come; etc., etc.

These ideas were completely broken down, by exposing these ideas as typical Socialist ideas, as ideas of the crassest bourgeois degeneration. When these comrades were told how the Negro comrades were alarmed over this incident, how outside Negro workers were holding meetings among themselves on this question, how the danger of actually losing the prestige among the Negro masses of Washington, and over the entire country, may result from such uncommunist action, the comrades all admitted their errors, and the following action was agreed to:

(1) A statement to be written by the Jewish comrades involved and to be discussed in the mass organizations on the mistake of excluding the Negroes from the Peasant’s Ball. (2) Our comrades not to permit the renting of the Jim-Crow hall again unless they are prepared to defend the Negroes. (3) These white comrades to organize themselves into defense groups at the next affair which is being run by the ICOR at a Jim-Crow hall. (4) A membership meeting of all Party, Y.C.L. and sympathizers where a thorough and frank discussion shall be carried through. (5) A statement to be sent to the Party press.

While we do not by any means believe this discussion will break down white chauvinism in our Party, we do believe that these comrades involved are not incurable chauvinists. We believe that in the process of involving these comrades in the mass campaigns of the Party, especially in the struggles for Negro rights, will these comrades be able to understand the correct Communist position on the Negro question, and be able to bring this position into the mass organizations.

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/1934/v11-n013-jan-15-1934-DW-LOC.pdf

PDF of issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n014-jan-16-1934-DW-LOC.pdf