While the early 1930s Communist position on Black liberation is closely associated with ‘Self-Determination for the Black-Belt’, the struggle for civil rights was also central. Developed around the Scottsboro case, the L.S.N.R. platform on legal rights. The successor to the American Negro Labor Congress, The League of Struggle for Negro Rights was organized by the Communist Party in 1930. Langston Hughes became its President in 1934 with Harry Haywood as General Secretary. With the end of the Third Period and the beginning of the Popular Front, the League was closed and the C.P. focused on the National Negro Congress by 1935.

‘Bill of Civil Rights for the Negro People’ from Equality, Land and Freedom: A Program for Negro Liberation. League of Struggle for Negro Rights, New York City. 1933.

AGAINST DISCRIMINATION BY REASON OF NATIONALITY OR COLOR, OR OF SO-CALLED “RACE”

Presented by the “Free the Scottsboro Boys” Marchers to the President and Congress of the United States

Proposed by the League of Struggle for Negro Rights; Endorsed by the National Scottsboro Action Committee

WHEREAS, the thirteen million Negro people of the United States, and especially those who reside in the Black Belt of the South where they constitute a majority of the population, are denied the rights of citizenship and equality, and are deprived of their right to vote, to serve on all juries and to enjoy equal rights in courts of law, and are held on the land in peonage and debt slavery, and because of their lack of political rights are habitually framed-up, and are enslaved in penal servitude for trivial offenses or no offense at all in the chain gang system, and are otherwise subjected to intolerable discrimination and oppression; Therefore, the following law is proposed:

1. In all states, territories or possessions of the United States and the District of Columbia, no person shall be deprived of the right to vote or intimidated in an election or primary election or referendum by reason of color, nationality, race or ancestry; nor for non-payment of any tax, nor on grounds of educational or property disqualification.

2. No person shall be deprived of the right to serve on grand juries or petit juries or excluded from jury lists or panels for any of the above reasons nor by any device directly or indirectly to accomplish the same purpose.

3. No persons shall be excluded from any school or class, maintained either by public or private funds because of color, race, or nationality, nor by any device to accomplish the same, purpose; nor shall there be any segregation or distinction made among students or among teachers of different color, race or nationality, nor any difference or segregation in accommodations.

4. No teacher shall be excluded from a position as teacher in any school, public or private, by reason of color, nationality or race, or for any reason devised to prevent the holding of teaching positions by teachers of one color, race or nationality in teaching pupils of another color, race or nationality.

5. No person shall be denied accommodation or be separated or segregated in any train, ship, motor vehicle, airship, trolley car or other public conveyance because of color, race or nationality; and no person shall be denied admission or equal service nor shall anyone be segregated in any inn, hotel, restaurant, cafe, theatre, music hall or other place of public resort because of color, race or nationality, whether the accommodations be equal or not.

6. No person shall be denied the right to own, possess, rent, occupy or otherwise enjoy any apartment, home, room or other living or business quarters because of color, race or nationality; and any apartment or rooming house proprietor or manager in any community in which residents or travellers of various colors, races or nationalities are to be found, shall be judged prima facie to be violating this law if it appears that persons of any given color, race or nationality are not regularly served on an equal basis in any such institution maintained by him; and it shall be unlawful to create or maintain any restrictions of neighborhoods or houses for purposes of distinction between colors, races or nationalities; and it shall be unlawful to require any person to pay a larger price or rental than is paid by persons of any other color, race or nationality.

7. No person shall be denied employment because of color, race or nationality; and it shall be a prima facie violation if any employer of 20 or more persons shall deny employment to persons of a given color, race or nationality, or shall segregate such persons or give them inferior kinds of employment; and it shall be unlawful to make any distinction in working conditions or character of employment in the amount of wages or salaries paid, on the basis of color, race or nationality.

8. No person shall be discriminated against in unemployment relief or social insurance or assistance due to any emergency or calamity of nature, flood, hurricanes, economic crisis or unemployment; nor shall there be any requirement of forced labor by reason or on account of color, race or nationality.

9. No person shall be charged higher or additional fees, prices or rates for any kind of insurance on account of nationality, race or color.

10. No person shall be denied the right to receive instruction for, enter into or pursue any profession, service, trade or occupation; nor be discriminated against in the pursuit or practice of such activity, because of color, race or nationality.

11. No person shall be denied membership in any organization, whether social, political, economic, fraternal, insurance, religious, or cultural, or any trade union or any benefit association or other organization or any local, branch or any sub-division thereof because of color, race or nationality.

12. No person shall be deprived of the right of appointment to any office or position or the right to take any examination for any such office, or position or denied permanent appointment because of color, race or nationality.

13. No persons shall be excluded from or discriminated against or segregated in the armed forces of the United States, on land, at sea or in the air, or in any military schools maintained for the training of officers or enlisted men for the several branches of service, nor shall any person be assigned to separate regiments, companies or squads, against his will, because of race, nationality and color.

14. No person shall be denied treatment and accommodations or segregated in any hospital, clinic or other institution for treatment of ailments by reason of color, race or nationality and it shall be unlawful to make any distinctions of nationality, race or color, in admitting any person whether equal accommodations be furnished or not. Nor shall any discrimination be made against the inclusion on the staff of any such and employment in any institution of any person because of nationality, race or color.

15. No person shall be forced to labor to pay a debt or obligation, or to remain on any job because of contract or agreement. It shall be unlawful for any private persons to employ convict labor or to have any control over convicts.

16. No person shall be deprived of the right to bear arms in self-defense or to keep such arms in his home or to use such arms by himself or in conjunction with others in defense of life by reason of nationality, color or race.

17. Any person who aids or participates in a lynching or other act of violence directed against a person wholly or partly because of supposed “inferiority” of race, color or nationality, or directed against a person because of alleged or suspected crimes associated in public tradition with supposed “inferiority” of race, nationality or color, shall be considered and adjudged guilty of a crime punishable by death.

18. Any person who shall violate any of the provisions of any of the sections of this title shall be guilty of a felony.

19. No state shall pass any law prohibiting any marriage because the parties thereto are of different races, and all laws making such marriages criminal or illegal are hereby declared null, void, and of no effect. All couples living together in relations of man and wife, but whose relations are considered illegal because of difference of color, race or nationality, shall be deemed hereafter to be lawfully man and wife, and their children are legitimatized and entitled to inherit their property heretofore acquired.

PDF of full pamphlet: https://archive.org/download/EqualityLandAndFreedomAProgramForNegroLiberation/LSNR.pdf