As the transformative Summer of ’34 unfolds, Harry Haywood on the sees the centrality of Black workers in what would become the C.I.O. drive, particularly in steel.

‘Negro Will Play Great Role in Coming Struggle of American Labor’ by Harry Haywood from the Daily Worker. Vol. 11 No. 148. June 21, 1934.

LSNR Leader Recounts Struggles for Equal Rights in Country

“THE coming great steel strike—which has been merely postponed, not smashed—will find in its front ranks the Negro workers.

“So will every great struggle—provided only that the Communist Party, the revolutionary unions. the oppositions in the A. F. of L. know how to take up boldly the militant struggle for equality for Negroes. If we do not blur over these demands of the Negro workers, and if we bring the white workers forward to demand the rights of Negroes, the strength of the workers in the tremendous struggles to come will be increased manyfold.”

This was Harry Haywood speaking, with burning enthusiasm, of the part the Negro workers will play in the wave of strikes about to break over the country. Haywood, general secretary of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, has just returned from a tour in which he had the opportunity to talk with workers of many cities and many trades.

Terror in Ford’s Domain

“When I hit Detroit,” said Haywood, “I found a campaign of terror against the Negro masses. Newspaper were screaming about a ‘Negro rapist and slasher’ who was supposed to be cutting and attacking white women. The police were making continual round-ups of Negro workers. The superintendent of schools—paid $18,000 a year out of money collected from white and Negro tax-payers—made speeches attacking the Negro people. As a climax to the reign of terror, James Victory, a Negro world war veteran, was framed.

Ferment on Chicago South Side

“From Detroit, I went to Chicago. There is a tremendous ferment going on among the Negro masses on Chicago’s South Side. As was to be expected. I found the Negro reformists active. The Urban League is starting out with a program for organizing Negro workers into Jim- Crow unions. These misleaders attack the American Federation of Labor for its Jim-Crow policy. But how do they attack it? We know that the jim-crow policy of the A. F. of L. has its source in the top leaders of the A. F. of L.—the Greens, Wolls, Lewises. These men serve the ruling-class. The Negro misleaders treacherously represent the jim-crow policy of the A. F. of L. as stemming from the rank and file. By this means they try to keep the Negro workers from taking their places side by side with the white workers in the labor movement.

“Well, in Chicago the American Consolidated Trades Council, which is an organization of Negro plumbers, mechanics and building trades workers, started a fight for admission of Negro workers in these trades into the A. F. of L. The A. F. of L. officials gave them the run-around, so the Consolidated finally established itself as a bona fide union and got a charter from the state. They are now taking In white workers also. The Trades Council has been conducting a fight for the right of Negro workers to work on all jobs in these trades, particularly public works projects. When the Wendell Phillips High School was built in Chicago, right in the heart of the Negro neighborhood, no Negroes were taken on. The Council organized actions around this, with the support of the Trade Union Unity League and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. They threw a picket line around the school and had a demonstration. They demanded shorter hours for the white workers on the job, with no cut in pay, and the right of the Negroes to any job on the building. The city bosses mobilized hundreds of police—but as a result of the demonstration a number of Negroes got jobs on the High School.

L.S.N.R. Fights Chi Jim-Crow

“The League of Struggle for Negro Rights in Chicago has drawn up a city ordinance to enforce the right of Negroes to work on all jobs and against all forms of Jim-Crowism: on the beaches, in restaurants, hotels, theatres and so on. They are setting out on a campaign to get thousands of signatures of whites and Negroes for the bill, and it will be presented to the City Council on June 27.

“In Kansas City, Mo,, police smashed the headquarters of the Communist Party, arrested A.W. Berry, a Negro comrade who is section organizer, and tore up the leaflets advertising my meeting. The Relief Workers’ Protective Union had organized for the continuation of C.W.A. jobs, uniting whites and Negroes on this issue. The police and the city government raised the ‘red scare’ in order to conceal the issues of bread and butter.

“A conference I attended in St. Louis adopted a proclamation for the rights of the Negro people.

Bosses Used Negroes As Scabs

“I visited Gary, too, the scene of the great steel strike of 1919. In that strike, Negro workers were brought up from the South. The A. F. of L. misleadership refused to organize the Negroes, and the bosses were able to use them as strike-breakers. Immediately after the strike. Jim-Crowism was strengthened all down the. line—Jim-Crow schools came in. The Negroes were relegated to the lowest jobs in the plant. All this was a real lesson for the Negro people—and for the white workers.

“The response of the workers to the building of a mass L.S.N.R. is tremendous. Many new branches have already been set up. The workers are also enthusiastic about building the Negro Liberator. The banquet to be given Ben Davis, Jr., this Sunday night at Lido Ballroom, 146th St. and Seventh Ave., is talked of all over the country, not only in New York.

“We are going to see an increase in activity by the Negro reformists The Urban league, the N.A.A.C.P. misleaders. and others will work their heads off to keep them from joining with the white workers. Can the militant left-wing organizations win the Negro masses inspite of this? It is up to us. We’ve got to formulate clearly our demands for Negroes in every struggle. We must draw Negro workers on to the strike committees and into leading positions. At the same time the left-wing unions, all groups of militant workers, must show their faces in the fight for the rights of Negroes, for the freedom of the Scottsboro boys and Angelo Herndon.”

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. National and City (New York and environs) editions exist.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n148-jun-21-1934-DW-LOC.pdf