The League of Struggle for Negro Rights campaigns to force the hiring of Black drivers by a Harlem bus company.

‘Jim Crow System of Co. Is Challenge to All Union Workers’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 11 No. 127. May 28, 1934.

Demand Negroes Be Hired on Bus Line–Jim Crow System of Co. Is Challenge to All Union Workers–Communists Must See to It That Unions Support Fight

THE continued discrimination against Negro workers by owners of the Fifth Ave. Coach Co. is a challenge to every worker In New York, every trade union member, and especially to every Communist.

This company which operates buses through Harlem, where 325,000 Negroes live, has categorically refused to hire Negro conductors or drivers. Among the 14.000 employees of the company there is not one Negro.

“It has been our policy not to hire Negroes and this policy will not be changed,” Frederick T. Wood, president of the company, snapped at a delegation of workers and intellectuals who went to the offices of the company to demand that Negroes be hired on the same basis as white workers.

The campaign to force the Fifth Ave. Coach authorities to hire Negroes was initiated and led by the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, 119 W. 135 Street. Harlem.

A picket line was set up in front of the company offices at 132 Street and Broadway. Members of the L.S. N.R., working in shifts, patrolled the office entrance of Coach Company.

The action aroused great sympathy among the Negro toilers of Harlem. Indeed, the picketing worried the company officials; for they quickly got in touch with the Police Department and secured a decision that no more than two pickets would be allowed to be on duty at the same time.

The L.S.N.R. decided to broaden and strengthen the fight. A mass demonstration of white and Negro workers was called in front of the 132 Street office. The trade unions were informed. All the working class organizations in the city were asked to support tills struggle against Jim crowism.

Here was a good fight. The unions of the Trade Union Unity Council agreed to support it. Then came the demonstration. Only a few hundred appeared on the scene of action. And out of these only a few were white workers.

Unions Not Mobilized

Not one of the New York Unions had mobilized their forces for this important struggle, notwithstanding the fact that it was a struggle for one of the basic demands of the Trade Union Unity League, “for the employment of Negro workers on the basis of equality with the white workers on all jobs and at equal wages.”

The unions agreed to support the fight, but did nothing about it. This bus company situation is certainly a serious matter. If the Communists in the unions were carrying out the decisions of the Eighth Convention of the Party, masses of workers in the unions would have been rallied to picket the bus terminals.

“The revolutionary unions must set the example before the whole of the Negro masses in the struggle for the economic interests of the Negro Workers,” says the resolution on trade union work adopted at the Eighth Convention of the Party.

But in the bus company fight the revolutionary unions surely set a bad example.

The situation must be remedied at once. If the unions back the L.S.N.R. in the fight or jobs far Negroes on the buses the demand can be won.

Unions Must Lead Fight

There must be an end to this underestimation of the Negro demands in the revolutionary unions.

Every Communist must see to it that the Fifth Avenue Coach Company fight is given the utmost support in his union. The Unions must lead the fight.

Picket every bus terminal in the city!

Demand:

1. NO DISCRIMINATION. HIRE NEGRO DRIVERS AND CONDUCTORS.

2. The right at workers to organize in any union of their choice.

3. The immediate reinstatement at the 28 workers fired for union activity.

4. No more speed up and terror.

5. No suspension without a fair hearing before a committee of workers.

6. Six-day week and six-hour day.

7. Increase in pay for all workers.

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.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n127-sect-two-trade-union-may-28-1934-DW-LOC.pdf