Communist International hosts W.E.B. Du Bois’ close co-worker and N.A.A.C.P. founder William Pickens, who places the struggle for Black liberation in the U.S. in the context of a larger anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle.

‘The Negro Problem’ by William Pickens from The Communist. Vol. 4 No. 2. February 15, 1927.

WILLIAM PICKENS, the author of this article, is not a Communist. He is one of the few Negroes who have succeeded in ascending the social ladder in capitalist America. He is a professor, a bourgeois radical journalist, and one of the leaders of the Negro liberation movement. Mr. Pickens is the author of a number of books imbued with passionate hatred for race oppression. (“The Heir of Slaves”; a collection of speeches and studies entitled “The New Negro”; a volume of short stories, “The Vengeance of the Gods,” and others.) He is also a member of the “Civic Club” of New York, and of the American Negro Academy. At the present time he is organiser for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured Peoples, of which he has been a member since the inception of this organisation. The author is not a Communist, but the Editorial Board takes all the more pleasure m publishing this article, which discloses the hypocrisy of democracy and shows that even bourgeois-radical leaders of the national liberation movements are beginning to understand that only in alliance with the victorious proletarian revolution is veal emancipation of the oppressed peoples possible.—Ed.

I. INDEPENDENCE OF THE OPPRESSED

AS communication and transportation between different parts of the world become more frequent and more rapid, the political and social problems of the world tend to become more interdependent. When it took six months for a shipment of goods from New Orleans to reach Berlin and twelve months for Berlin to send an order to New Orleans and get a response, then sweating black labour of Louisiana had less in common with sweating white labour in Germany. But when electric communication and steam transportation reduced the communication time to a few minutes and the transportation time to a few days, then a great common interest sprang up between the black labourer in the southern United States and the white labourer in the heart of Germany, whether they have vet conceived a sense of that common interest or not.

Inasmuch as the products of American black labour can reach the European markets only a day or so later than the products of European white labour, the effect is the same as if the New World blacks had been brought across the Atlantic and put to work side by side with Old World whites. The conditions of these two groups of labourers must henceforth have a determining influence on each other. The workers of the world are now competing with each other, which they must change into co-operation in order to survive. The belated and antiquated statesmanship of the world has thought only to erect the pitiful defences of immigration acts, passports and tariff walls. It has not occurred to some that the only finally effective remedy must be a coordinating of the conditions of the labourers of the world.

Evidently our social advancement lags far behind our industrial and commercial technology. Otherwise the labouring masses of England and Germany would be more interested in the conditions of labour in Mississippi and Minnesota. Negro cottonfield peons in America are helping to create the status of millhands in Germany. Hindu women working for three shillings a week in the mines of a British nobleman in India are helping to determine the wages of vainly-fighting mine labourers in England Wales.

Such world social relations make it logical for the oppressed and dominated peoples of the world, colonial and national, to confer and compare notes. In Brussels. Belgium, on February 5, 1927, will assemble the preliminary commissions of the first world conference of such peoples and classes: the negro of the Americas and of Africa; the Hindu of Africa and Asia; the struggling Chinese nationalist; the Egyptian patriot; and hundreds of others. For in the light of the new relationships brought about by the scientific advance of the human race, “domestic problems” and “domestic affairs” are phrases which must have a wider, perhaps a worldwide significance. The last war showed clearly enough that no two nations can start even a strictly “private” fight which will be without interest and consequences to other nations.

In the United States there are between twelve and fifteen million people with negro blood—many of them having less negro blood than have some of those who are in the white group and do not know or do not acknowledge their negro blood. These negroes have been in the country for more than three hundred years, practically the same length of time as the white inhabitants—for as soon as the whites came, they welcomed somebody to do the work. For the first two hundred and fifty years these blacks were slaves, in name and in fact—and for the last sixty years they have been freemen in name.

Their constitutional emancipation was brought about by the fundamental economic conflict which arose between their slave labour in the south and the labour of free white men in the north—which conflict was further stimulated by those who opposed slavery on moral and religious grounds. The development of technique made this conflict more and more unbearable. And the emancipation of the negro people from oppression can be brought about only through the elimination of antagonisms which exist between oppressed and underpaid labour in any part of the world, and labour struggling to be free and fairly paid in any other part of the world.

Those who suffer economic or political oppression in other parts of the world must oppose their influence to the segregation, lynching and disfranchisement of negroes in America, and also to the effort to create a politically emasculated and permanently inferior black caste in South Africa.

Equal opportunities for all races of men should be the first principle of the working class, and the weight of its influence should be opposed not only to oppression in the colonies, but to violent and discriminatory barriers erected against racial minorities or dominated races everywhere in the world.

II. LYNCHING IN THE AMERICAN STATES

During the year 1926 nearly forty human beings were “lynched” in the United States of America, several of them being burned alive and others tortured and killed in the most horrible fashion. These victims were nearly all negroes, although two or three defenceless poor whites were also lynched during the year. Some of the victims were women. Some of them had already established their innocence of any crime whatsoever, ana others would have been proven innocent of crime if they had been tried in courts of law.

A negro may be killed by a mob for any offence or any virtue in the southern part of the United States. A few years ago one old man was lynched in Georgia because he tried to prevent white men from raping two young girls. The old man had not hurt the men, but simply threatened them with his old hunting gun to scare them off the attack on the girls—and the other whites of the community later turned out and helped these two rapists to lynch the old black man.

In the last forty years nearly four thousand (4,000) persons have been lynched in the United States, according to the record, and many others have been lynched where no record has been made.

These 4,000 victims do not include the uncounted hundreds who have been killed by mobs in street riots, nor the uncounted thousands who have been murdered by dominant whites who have gone unpunished for the murders. It is the common practice to free white men who murder negroes in the southern part of the United States.

Only six states of the total 48 have remained free from lynching during the last 4o years, although the great bulk of the lynching has been done in the southern states.

The only organised and uncompromising effort to fight lynching during all this time has been the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, which has been in existence for 18 years. This Association has fought the lynching evil by publicity, by seeking to convict lynchers in the courts. It has passed laws in the State legislatures and in the national congress to punish lynchers as other murderers should be punished. Some states have passed such laws and enforce them. Some southern states have passed antilynching laws, but seem to attempt to enforce them only when the victim of the lynching is white.

The national Congress at Washington has so far refused or failed to pass a national anti-lynching law, which could be better enforced than local state laws against lynching. Local prejudice generally controls local courts, and when a negro is lynched it is next to impossible to find twelve white men to make up a jury that will agree upon the conviction of any of the lynchers. Usually the white men on the jury have relatives or friends who were members of the mobs. And in southern states, by tricky administration, all the jurors are white, even when a negro is one party to the suit or even when negroes are both parties to the suit. A national court could take a man out of his immediate home town and try him, where he could not get his friends and relatives on the jury. But in spite of the awful record, the Congress of the nation has so far refused to act, largely because of the votes of southern white men in the Congress, who form an active and powerful minority whenever the rights of the negro are up for consideration in that body.

And this inactivity of Congress is due to another cause : that there are no negroes in the Congress, because they are cheated out of their right to vote or bullied away from the polls, especially in the south. One-tenth of the population of the United States is of negro blood, so that if the negroes had their fair share of representation in the national Congress, there would be about 60 negro congressmen in the House and in the Senate. In a number of the southern states half the law makers, or nearly half, would be coloured people, if they were not deprived unlawfully or by tricky discrimination of their votes. This political emasculation of the coloured population makes its much harder for them to fight lynching.

By scientific attack on the evil, and by careful and courageous investigation, the officers of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People have succeeded in making lynching a disgrace among the nations. The horrible facts about lynchings have been published all over the nation and all over the world, and the campaign still goes on. In one year over 200 people were lynched, and in one year after the world war I4 men and women were burned by mobs, 11 of them being burned alive.

The Economics of Lynch Law

Practically all lynchings can be explained by some form of economic trouble; perhaps the negro was demanding more wages, or pay for past work, or better treatment as a labourer, or a greater share of the crop which he helped to produce; or perhaps he has built too fine a house or bought too good a farm and has thereby aroused the jealousy of his white neighbours; or perhaps he has defended his own goods or the women of his house against attack by white men. A few months ago two boys and a young coloured woman were horribly lynched at Aiken, South Carolina, because they defended their home and their persons against an unprovoked attack of white men, whom they did not even know to be officers of the law. The attack was perhaps inspired by the desire of certain whites to embarrass the farming success of the white man for whom these negroes and their family worked. Thus an economic war even between two powerful whites may bring the lynching terror upon the negroes, who happen to be economic slaves of one of the opposing whites. It is to be noted that the greatest number of lynchings and the most horrible forms of torture take place in those sections where there is the most exploitation of negro labour. It is doubtful whether an economically exploited class can ever have equal protection of the laws, in spite of the written letter.

The publicity against lynching in the last five or six years has shown some tendency to reduce the number, but it is hardly to be hoped that the evil practice can be entirely eradicated without national legislation and such social reforms as will better protect the negro in his economic rights.

The ECCI published the magazine ‘Communist International’ edited by Zinoviev and Karl Radek from 1919 until 1926 irregularly in German, French, Russian, and English. Restarting in 1927 until 1934. Unlike, Inprecorr, CI contained long-form articles by the leading figures of the International as well as proceedings, statements, and notices of the Comintern. No complete run of Communist International is available in English. Both were largely published outside of Soviet territory, with Communist International printed in London, to facilitate distribution and both were major contributors to the Communist press in the U.S. Communist International and Inprecorr are an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/ci/vol-4/v04-n02-feb-15-1927-CI-riaz-orig.pdf