Day five of the A.N.L.C. meeting in Chicago sees a speech from Richard B. Moore, and discussions and resolutions on Black youth and on the struggle against imperialism.

‘Day Five of the American Negro Labor Congress’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 2 No. 249. October 31, 1925.

‘Call for Working Class Unity’ by Richard B. Moore.

The following Is a stenographic report of the speech made by Richard B. Moore, delegate to the American Negro Labor Congress, from the Ethiopian Students League of New York City at the opening session, Sunday evening, Oct. 25, in the Metropolitan Community Center, 3118 Giles Ave.

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BROTHER Chairman and Fellow Workers:

I deem it a high honor to be present on this occasion. We are witnessing the emergence of a class that is destined to play a significant role in the further emancipation of Negro people and also the down trodden white workers of America.

The Slave System.

You remember half a century ago when a great system of oppression ruled in America, when men were bought and sold, there appeared upon the scene that great advocate of the race, Frederick Douglass. In him the slave became vocal. When he was aroused, and when he bestirred himself, the institution was weakened, and overthrown. Tonight we are witnessing again the emergence of this race. There are many of the hirelings of the press present. They called the abolitionists all the foul names they could think of in their day. They called John Brown, Frederick Douglass and even Abraham Lincoln, although he was not a thoro going abolitionist, they called them everything they could think of to brand them and discourage them; and now they are calling us names, and by that talk, we know that the cause we are promoting is a fair one. Well may the hirelings of the capitalist press with their innuendoes say that this is to arouse the Negro workers of the country to the true conditions that surround them; it is to arouse the white workers to the true conditions surrounding them also.

White Slaves.

May I tell you that there are white slaves in America likewise? It is true enough that white workers do not always recognize their true interests, but they will be driven to realize it.

Let me tell you now, and let me tell you reporters who are here to spread the tidings of this congress to the world, that the condition of the workers is fast becoming a condition of chattel slavery like that of sixty years ago.

Must Unite.

You will only be able to free yourselves from that condition by lining up solidly as one man with the Negro workers of America. And let me tell you that the Negro group is despised, burned, discriminated against, treated as dogs, yet, when the North and the South were locked in a death struggle, it was the Negro worker who decided that struggle, who brought victory to the Union Army. And I tell you that there is a great crisis coming, for as Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” When Lincoln said that he was uttering a truth. Chattel slavery was destroyed. The house Is again divided, and I say that the house can not stand.

The Class Struggle.

You can not build up wealth on one hand and poverty and suffering on the other and expect the house to last; there must be conflict there must be a struggle between these two extremes; between capital on the one hand and the oppressed workers on the other, determining who shall rule, and when that time comes, you white workers are not going to be able to win unless you begin now to unite with the Negro workers.

Raps Pan Handlers.

I want to say to the Negro pan handlers who are here, it is you who are willing to sell the Negro people for a mess of pottage. I want to be able to say that the Negro race can only achieve another step in the march toward emancipation by uniting with the enlightened white workers in the struggle.

You paid Negro agents who have been posing before the Negro masses as leaders, who have been selling out to politicians have caused the condition of the Negro masses to grow worse each year.

Movement from Below.

The convening of the Negro Labor Congress means that there will be a movement from below; a movement rises up out of the hearts of its people. You represent the voice of the group today. It may but a small voice. The Abolitionists were small voices when they began, but a mighty movement grew out of it.

I challenge you, whether black or white if you realize the significance of this movement—I call upon you now to give your challenge to those forces that would kill and destroy this Union, but rallying to the cause I am going to set the example myself. I am a poor young man. I am only making twenty-five dollars a week as an elevator operator in New York.

I am an intelligent young man, you can see by my talk that I have intelligence; but because I refuse to sell out my interest to my superiors, I prefer to struggle with them, if necessary to die with them, rather than to aid by one little word or deed of mine the infernal program of lynching and terrorism.

Going To Fight.

I am going to fight; Out of my slender means—and I have quite some demands upon them, I am going to give five dollars to the American Negro Labor Congress. I am going to challenge every single one of you to match it. Stand up and talk turkey. I want every man and every woman in this movement who values freedom and true liberty to have a place to work in harmony.

Stand up where you are—the ushers will take your collections. The forces against us are mighty and they are not going to leave a stone unturned to crush us. You remember during the war when you gave until it hurt—liberty bonds. I am challenging you now to give until it hurts.

I wonder if the press which undertook to brand this cause as Bolshevik, will go to the trouble to publish the truth about this cause, those whom they brand as Red and Communists.

During the war it was pro-German, well, this much I know that the Bolsheviks of Russia stopped lynching and other crimes of the sort in Russia and I challenge them to do the same in America. And as Patrick Henry said, “if this be treason, make the most of it.”

We Want Equality.

All we want is a future; all we want is equality in every respect.

Once and for all the American Negro Labor Congress repudiates what has been said by Booker Washington in a speech he made in the South.

He said “In all things purely material we are united, but in all things social we are going to be separate.”

Demand Right To Live.

That is simply an eruption of the slave ulcer. We are now demanding the rights of living, nothing more, nothing less.

Let me close with this remark, countrymen, we sue for simple justice at your hands. Naught else will have, nor less will take, and we know that the only way that those rights can be assured is in that union of white and black workers, which eventually will rule not only America, (this Is the last country in which it will be seen), but the whole world.

I am going to quote those wonderful words of the man who was a Jew, who driven by the oppression which his race suffered investigated the causes of that oppression—analyzed the structure of the social system and discovered its driving forces and the solution for its evil—there, it is written on that sign on the wall, the challenging utterance of that greatest thinker of the 19th century—Karl Marx—“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, but you have a whole world to gain.”

A.N.LC. TAKES STAND AGAINST COLONIAL RULE

Calls for International Race Congress

In a resolution that was adopted by the American Negro Labor Congress at one of its sessions meeting at the Metropolitan Community Center, 3118 Giles Ave., the attempts of the imperialists to enslave the workers of colonial countries was denounced and exposed. It hailed Soviet Russia as the first power to establish race equality, socially, politically and economically. The congress also goes on record for the convening of an international race congress to discuss methods of combatting imperialism.

The following excerpts are taken from the resolution:

“Imperialism is the enslavement of the entire world by capitalist nations, bringing under their oppressive rule the 1,100,000,000 darker colored peoples in Asia, Africa, the Philippines, Mexico, Haiti, Porto Rico, San Domingo, Central and North America.

“From the colonies and semi-colonial regions the imperialist nations secure immense supplies of raw materials produced at a lower labor cost by reason of the inferior social, economic and political status forced upon the darker-skinned peoples.

“Here also they conscript recruits for the armies with which the imperialist nations wage war on one another, on Soviet Russia, on the colonial peoples themselves and on the working class.

“We hail the workers’ and farmers’ government of Soviet Russia as the first to bring into being the full social, political and economic equality for all peoples, white and dark-skinned.

“As a first step in connecting the struggles of our race in America with its world-wide struggle against imperialism, this congress of Negro workers and farmers instructs the National Executive Committee to convene a world congress of our race.

“It further instructs the American Negro delegates to this world congress to lay the foundations for a world organization of the workers and farmers of our race and to make this organization a leader and fighter in the liberation movements of all darker-skinned peoples in the colonies of imperialism everywhere.”

Corrine Robinson, delegate from the Young Workers’ League, presented a resolution on the role of the Negro youth in America out of which the following excerpts are taken:

“When thousands, of young Negroes entered the industries of the north during the migration, the bosses did their best to stir up racial prejudices between the young Negro and the young white workers. They did this because they wanted to keep the young Negroes Working for even lower wages than the young white workers. These young Negroes who are discriminated against in this way are forced to work for the lowest imaginable wages and in certain shops and industries young Negroes are employed almost entirely in an effort to keep the wages down and increase the profits.

“These young Negro workers get as low as 10 to 13 a week, the young Negro girls and women getting nearer the lower scale. On this they are expected to live. These young Negroes who are being forced to work in greater and greater numbers on account of the low wages their parents receive are an important source of cheap labor for the bosses and are used by them in cutting down the wages of the other workers.”

Negro Children and Child Labor.

“Most of the Negro child laborers are found in the south, where records show that almost 1,000,000 Negro children of school age were not enrolled in the public schools.

“Not only is segregation the common practice in the public schools of both the south and the north, but especially in the south, the states discriminate against the Negro school children thru unequal expenditures for education, etc.

“For example, in South Carolina, there is only $5 Invested in school property for Negroes while there is (60 invested for the whites. Similarly there is only 18 Invested in school property for Negroes to $74 for white in Louisiana, and much the same in the other states thruout the south.

The school term is shortened so that the Negro children can be sent to work) In the cotton fields as early as possible in the north, the most marked discrimination consists in segregation, housing of Negro children in the oldest, most unsafe and unsanitary school buildings and inferior educational arrangements of all kinds.

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/1925/1925-nat/v02b-n249-oct-31-Chi-1925-DW-mfilm.pdf