As an example of continuing white chauvinism in its ranks, Leon Platt points to the situation of Philadelphia’s Communist Party local where some white comrades active in the Scottsboro defense balked at defending a local Black child 16-year-old Willie Brown, sentenced to die for killing a 7-year-old white girl.

‘Smash the Ugly Head of White Chauvinism’ by Leon Platt from The Daily Worker. Vol. 9 No. 118. May 18, 1932.

FOR the last year, the Communist Party in the city of Philadelphia has made considerable progress in its work among the Negro masses. This progress was due to the fact that the Party was fighting for Negro rights as it especially expressed itself in the struggle for unemployment relief and thus proved to the Negro masses our sincerity and willingness to fight together with them against race oppression. While through our struggle for Negro rights many Negro workers joined the Party, at the same time, the existence of white chauvinism and the failure of the Party to fight energetically against it. is driving these Negro workers out of the revolutionary movement. In fact, we were led to believe that because Negroes join the Party, it proves that there is no white chauvinism in the Party. However, today we find the number of Negro workers joining the Party is declining, and together with it, there is a decline in the activity of our Negro Party members. This is mainly due to the existence of white chauvinism.

The details in the case of Willie Brown are already familiar to the readers of our Party press. Willie Brown was framed-up on a charge of killing and attacking a white child, Dorothy Lutz. The frame-up is evident, if we only examine the mere proceedings of the trial. He was found “guilty” on the basis of a forced “confession” after undergoing a third degree, by a lily-white hand-picked jiffy, under conditions of mob hysteria, incited by the police department, the state’s attorney, under the general direction of the well-known strike-breaker. Judge McDevitt. The State did not even possess the so-called circumstantial evidence that Is usually introduced in frame-up cases, especially where Negroes are involved. As a matter of fact, in the hands of the murdered child, was found the hair of a white man, and the ring which was found near the child’s body, doesn’t even fit Willie Brown.

The question for us now to ask is how is it possible, in the face of such evident frame-up, to hear opinions expressed in the Party and ranks of militant working class organizations, that the Party must not arouse the masses to fight for the release of Willie Brown and should not even concern itself with the case? Why do some who consider themselves revolutionary workers say, “We should fight for Negro rights, for the freedom of the Scottsboro boys, but not for the freedom of Willie Brown”? It is because to fight for Willie Brown means to come into collision with the entire Philadelphia city administration—the courts, the ward politicians and the Philadelphia police department. It would threaten the influence of the Republican-Vare machine among the Negro masses. This also explains why the police permitted Scottsboro meetings, but attacked Willie Brown meetings, why the police permitted the display of signs calling for the freedom of the Scottsboro boys, but prohibited all signs calling for the release of Willie Brown.

A more energetic fight for the freedom of Willie Brown would sharpen the class struggle in Philadelphia, and those who refuse to carry on this fight are not only helping the police to send Brown to the electric chair, but are generally deserting the struggle of the working people against frame-ups and race oppression. When such comrades were criticized in this light, they strongly resented it and pointed to their activities for Negro rights In connection with Scottsboro, Orphan Jones, etc. However, these comrades forget the fact that the struggle for the freedom for Willie Brown is undermining and conflicting with the very foundation of the capitalist class rule here in this city.

The fight for the freedom of Willie Brown Is the real test for one to show his revolutionary courage in face of all these difficulties and to expose this frame-up and convince these white workers, still Influenced by capitalist ideology, of this. Therefore, when in some of the Jewish workers organizations in Philadelphia there are opinions that Willie Brown is a murderer and we should not fight for his release; when in the Italian branch of the I.L.D., the Party fraction fights against the Party policy of defending Willie Brown, this shows not only a betrayal of the class struggle by people who call themselves revolutionaries and Communists, but it also shows the existence of white chauvinism in our ranks and how successful the capitalist class is in corrupting the labor movement with its capitalist ideology.

White Chauvinism Is Deep-Rooted

The case of While Brown brought out the white chauvinism existing in our movement in its ugliest form. But it is not only limited to this case. It exists in all spheres of Party life.

For example: The Children’s Schools of the International Workers Order. These schools aim to give Jewish workers children a working class ideology. This is done on the basis of acquainting these workers’ children with all the struggles of the workers. After a period of five years existence of these schools, after all the struggles we have gone through the last few years, after the Scottsboro case, the Orphan Jones case, and the Willie Brown case, in the yearly magazine of these schools which evaluates the work of these schools as well as the problems of the workers and their children, there is not a word said about race oppression and the word NEGRO is not even mentioned. WHY? Some try to explain this away as a mere technical oversight—a printer’s mistake. Others want to place the blame upon Individuals. But NO! It arises from the capitalist ideology with which the ruling class wants to corrupt the workers’ movement. When white chauvinism is thoroughly exposed, it will expose with it. a whole chain of corrupt bourgeois practices that exists In our ranks.

Other Concrete Case

Here is another case: Section 13 of the Communist Party in Philadelphia called a Willie Brown defense meeting In the headquarters of the Russian Workers Club. As the crowd began to gather, two Negro workers came in. When the police asked one of the house committee of the Russian Club If they want the Negroes present, he said, “No” and the Negroes were ejected without the Party member who was present, and the other workers who sympathize with the Party, even coming to the defense of these Negro workers.

A third case: In one Party unit In Philadelphia, with a number of Negro workers in it, the attendance of the Negro comrades began to decline. Some white comrades immediately developed the idea that Negro workers are not sincere as Communists, that they are lazy and “will not come to meetings in rainy weather.” This is a grave insult to our Party in which we have excellent and most courageous Negro comrades fighting for the Party and its program day in and day out. This In itself is the most brazen act of white chauvinism, because after some investigation It was found that the reason why some of the Negro comrades do not attend unit meetings is because the landlord of the Party headquarters insulted them and they did not feel like coming. The white comrades, failing to see that and fight against it, actually protected the white chauvinist landlord. And the Negro comrades not seeing the white comrades to be much concerned with this, and to protest this race discrimination, began to lose interest in the Party.

Many more examples can be brought to illustrate the existence of white chauvinism. But what are we going to do about it? So far we really did not fight white chauvinism. It is our duty to begin to fight it now. HOW? Not through a mere admission of sins and by Up service, but through struggle for Negro rights, NOT ONLY IN SCOTTSBORO, BUT ALSO IN PHILADELPHIA. This struggle for Negro rights to Philadelphia, is mainly the fight FOR THE FREEDOM OF WILLIE BROWN.

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/1932/v09-n118-NY-may-18-1932-DW-LOC.pdf