Day two of the A.N.L.C.’s founding conference focuses on Jim Crow in the labor movement and the organizing of Black workers.

‘Day Two of the American Negro Labor Congress’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 2 No. 246. October 28, 1925.

Struggle for Advancement of Negro Labor Is Part of the Struggle for the Militant Labor Movement.

Greetings to Negro Labor Congress

By the Trade Union Educational League.

EFFORTS to organize the Negro working masses for struggle against oppression, social and economic, are a vital and integral part of the whole movement of labor and the toiling masses of the world towards emancipation from the slavery of capitalist imperialism.

The American Negro Labor Congress now in session In Chicago represents the most promising, militant, and energetic effort to link up this neglected and important field of struggle with the world-wide battle front of labor.

Representing the progressive and revolutionary left-wing of the American trade unions, the Trade Union Educational League welcomes the American Negro Labor Congress, and pledges its support in the achievement of our common aims.

The Negroes have a vital part to play in the remolding of our labor movement into a fighting instrument for the emancipation of all labor.

And the trade union left-wing has its necessary work to do in raising the status of the Negro masses to a complete equality, social and economic, to a full brotherhood of all labor, as the necessary precondition to emancipation.

Our slogan for “Amalgamation of the craft unions into industrial unions,” is of vital importance to the Negro workers, pointing out the only form of unionism which can gather in all workers, white, yellow and black,–into a powerful labor movement.

Our slogan of “Organize the Unorganized,” applies especially to the neglected Negro masses, who must be brought into the labor unions.

Our demand for a Labor Party points to the absolutely essential extension of the struggle to the political field, to the complete conquest of social, economic, and governmental power by the forces of labor, white and black, to achieve our common emancipation.

In fraternal solidarity, united by our common needs and our common understanding, our movement will become invincible.

The barriers against the entrance of the Negro workers into the unions must be broken down. Our common efforts can achieve this.

The Trade Union Educational League, in greeting the American Negro Labor Congress, calls for a united front of all workers for:

Complete equality, fraternity, and solidarity of white and black workers, for removing all racial discriminations and for their common emancipation!

Amalgamation of the small divided craft unions into powerful industrial unions!

Organization of the unorganized, especially of the Negro workers!

For a Labor Party!

Abolition of all barriers against Negroes in the labor unions!

United struggle against our common oppressor, capitalist imperialism!

National Committee, Trade Union Educational League, J.W. Johnstone, Acting Secretary.

A.N.L.C. HITS AT JIM CROWISM IN TRADE UNIONS.

Demands Immediate End of Restrictions

The first American Negro Labor Congress, at its opening business session yesterday, voted unanimously to endorse a resolution condemning the officialdom of the American Federation of Labor for refusing to organize the Negro workers into the existing unions, condemning the traitors to the Negro race who profit by attempting to recruit scabs from among the ranks of the colored workers, and demanding the immediate removal of all restrictions in all unions upon the membership of Negroes.

Race Hatred Must Be Abolished

The resolution was adopted after a discussion by the delegates, most of whom represent labor organizations, of the restrictions placed upon colored workers by the bureaucrats of the American Federation of Labor. The resolution reads in part:

“Trade unions are the organs devised by the working class as a result of its struggle with the capitalists Trade unions which fail to unite all workers regardless of nationality, color or religion on the basis of the common necessity for resistance to the tyrannies of the bosses likewise fail in their duty to the working class.

“The failure of the American Federation of Labor officialdom under pressure of race prejudice benefiting only the capitalists of the north and the south, to stamp out race hatred in the unions, to organize the Negro workers and to build a solid front of the workers of both races against American capitalism, is a crime against the whole working class.

“We condemn those who would fasten the stigma of ‘strikebreaker’ upon our race, and we likewise condemn those unscrupulous members of our race who, acting in behalf of capitalist agencies, attempt to recruit scabs, create suspicion and division in the ranks of the working class and bring discredit upon our race.

Prejudice Must Go.

“We demand the immediate removal of all restriction in all unions upon the membership of workers of our race in them, whether openly stated as in the constitution of the International Association of Machinists, or enforced by the so-called ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ as in other unions.

“We instruct our members in all unions to wage an uncompromising fight for the removal of all such bars to Negro membership. We declare our readiness to engage in all struggles of the working class.”

The resolution states further that should the A. F. of L. unions persist in their policy of discrimination, the Negro workers will organize themselves, and use their own unions as weapons in the fight to enter the general movement of the workers.

Opening Session a Success.

The opening mass meeting of the American Negro Labor Congress on Sunday night received with boundless enthusiasm the reports of Lovett Fort-Whiteman, national organizer of the congress, and H.V. Phillips, its national secretary. The keynote of the congress was struck by Whiteman when he said that “The aim of the American Negro Labor Congress is to gather, to mobilize, and to coordinate into a fighting machine the most enlightened and militant and class conscious workers of the race in the struggle for the abolition of lynching, jim-crowism, industrial discrimination, political disfranchisement, segregation, etc., of the race.

“The American Negro Labor Congress indeed marks the beginning of a new era in the history of American labor. A new day is dawning for the oppressed. Indeed the spirit is adrift that those who create the wealth of the earth should be permitted to enjoy it. The man who builds the palaces should live in them.”

No Color Line There.

Over forty delegates participated in the opening sessions of the congress, together with an audience of colored and white workers who crowded the hall to its doors. The crowd met with applause and cheers the statement of Richard Moore, delegate from New York City, that “the American Negro Labor Congress repudiates forever the policy of slavish submission preached by such so-called leaders of the race as Booker T. Washington, who was perfectly willing to repudiate the demand of the race for social equality.” Neither the scurrilous attacks of William Green, who “warned” the colored workers to stay away from the congress, nor the vile and slanderous attacks of the capitalist press, seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of the colored workers for the congress. Indeed, these attacks have, if thing, made the Negro workers realize more strongly than ever the necessity of going ahead with their plans for organization. They have had too much experience with the activities of Green and his kind to expect any sincere utterance from that direction. And they have received too many slaps in the face from the capitalist press to imagine that this press could have their interests at heart. And concerning the lying promises of the A.F. of L. officialdom to organize Negro workers–a bribe to keep them away from this congress–the American Negro Labor Congress not only proposes to go ahead with its work, but to force the A.F. of L. officials to come thru with those promises and actually to organize the colored workers into their unions.

Telegrams of Greetings Read.

Telegrams of greeting have been received from labor organizations all over the world. Among others, the South African Industrial and Commercial Union of Negro Miners, the Peasants’ International, and the Defense League of Italian Peasants have sent messages hailing the congress as a great step forward in the emancipation of the oppressed people.

The congress voted to send a telegram of sympathy and a pledge of co-operation to Dr. Ossian Sweet, a colored physician now in the county jail in Detroit, Michigan, for the crime of defending himself when his house was attacked a few weeks ago by a mob.

Mass Meetings Every Night.

The congress will continue its session all this week at its hall at the Metropolitan Community Center, 3118 Giles Avenue. The mornings and afternoons will be occupied with business sessions, at which plans for work will be laid out and committees selected. The evening sessions will be taken up with mass meetings, which will discuss the questions taken up by the delegates during the day.

All sessions, both business and night sessions, are open to the public.

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.

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