Six month before its October, 1926 founding meeting, Chicago-based Black Young Communist H.V. Philips is tasked with organizing Black youth into the American Negro Labor Congress. Includes the Congress call.

‘H.V. Philips Will Organize Young Workers for the League’ from The Young Worker. Vol. 4 No. 11. April 11, 1925.

START ORGANIZING CONGRESS

A big Negro labor congress is to held in Chicago this summer, and the Young Workers League will take an active part in seeing that the young Negroes are well represented at this meeting. H.V Philips, an active young Negro comrade in the Chicago League and a member of the provisional committee of the Negro Labor Congress, will be busy organizing young Negroes for this important congress.

The position of the young Negro in American industry is at many times even worse than that of the adult Negro worker, and the young Negroes must play a leading role in the struggle against the slavery and discrimination under which they toil in America today.

The Young Workers League will give all possible aid to the work of organizing for a big Negro Labor Congress, which will be a congress of great significance, not only for the young Negro workers in America, but which will be of world-wide significance in the aid and leadership this congress will offer to the world-wide struggle of the darker races in the “colonies” against imperialism. The following call for the Negro Labor Congress has been issued:

The Call to Action.

Today, during the closing year of the first quarter of the twentieth century, we note with pride the world-wide stirring of the darker races against European imperialism. The Riff people of Morocco, in Northern Africa, have signally defeated the Spanish Army and driven the invaders from their soil. The natives of the Soudan are in armed revolt against England’s policy of hypocritically pretending to give Egypt her independence and at the same time retaining the richest part, the Soudan, as an organic part of the British empire. In South Africa, the Negro is daily asserting himself, and is throwing the full force of his organizational strength against the unjust measures for his oppression.

During recent years, France has endeavored to institute in her Congo possessions in Africa the barbarous “Red Rubber system” of King Leopold of Belgium, but each day increases the rising tide of revolt on the part of the native people. The present conflict in China arises from the organized opposition of the Chinese working class to the bold aggressions of the European imperialists. The workers and peasants of India are determined to drive every vestige of British authority from the soil of India.

We might go on giving example after example of the growing political self-consciousness of the darker races in other parts of the world and their pronounced determination to free themselves from the yoke of their oppressors.

12,000,000 Oppressed Negroes.

Yet if we stop to think, there is no racial group in the world more borne down by handicaps of social restraint than the twelve million Negroes of North America. And yet the American Negro is not helpless for today he holds a large place in the industrial life of the country and his chief weapon is his mass organizational strength. And by virtue of this, the Negro working class alone has the power with which to bring the new emancipation to the race in general More and more we are coming to recognize this fact. But it means that this particular social force latent in the life of the race must first be mobilized, coordinated and shaped into a great national medium expressing the social, political and cultural aspirations of the race.

The idea of the American Negro Labor Congress is to bring together the most potent elements of the Negro race for deliberation and action, upon those most irritating and oppressive social problems affecting the life of the race in general and the Negro working class in particular.

Slave Conditions Still Exist.

The Negro race of America was freed from the bonds of chattel slavery sixty-two years ago. Yet if we examine our present condition, we are obliged to recognize that much of the condition of chattel slavery still clings to us.

The American Negro Labor Congress will consider such problems as the payment of equal wages for equal work, regardless of race or sex. It is a common condition throughout America to find a white worker and a Negro worker employed side by side, and often the white workers receiving fifty per cent more than the Negro worker. It is the same in respect to women doing the same work as men, yet receiving much less pay.

The American Labor Congress will fight for the abolition of industrial discrimination in factories, mill mines, on the railroads and in all places where labor is employed. This is a condition that is responsible for there being so few avenues of occupation open to the Negro man and woman of America, resulting in a constant and extraordinary element of unemployment in the race.

This condition reflects itself in our moral life, giving rise to prostitution and too often to an imperfect home life among our people.

Will Organize for Action.

The American Negro Labor Congress proposes to stir the working masses to take some organized action against the unjust conditions of residential segregation imposed upon the Negro in our larger cities, which results in our being compelled to pay exorbitantly high rents. Today the matter of paying house rents has become a supreme factor in our daily life, and we note with chagrin an increasing parasitical class within our own race that grows fat on the transfer of apartment houses from whites to Negroes at increased rents.

The white and black workers must be made to see that they have a common cause in the proposal of the American Negro Labor Congress to make plans for the waging of war against the policy of the officialdom of the trade unions which bar Negroes from membership, our aim being to break down this racial discrimination.

To Co-Operate With All.

We shall assume an attitude of helpfulness towards the many groups in every part of the country which are at present agitating a nation-wide campaign for shorter hours of the working day for both men and women.

In view of the many futile appeals to our national congress to make lynching a federal crime, the American Negro Labor Congress shall propose that the seat of action be changed to the masses themselves, and shall endeavor to stimulate and promote the organization of inter-racial committees throughout the nation with the aim of bringing about a better feeling between white and black workers as a remedy against lynching and race riots. Racial antagonisms arise from class exploitation. Racial antagonism is not an inherent thing in the mental make-up of the individual. The child, it may be noted in the most remote sections of the Southern states, does not affect racial arrogance until brought in touch with public institutions–the school, the church, the press, etc.

Racial antagonism springs from the present order of society–a society in which less than ten per cent of the people own and control everything including the agencies of public opinion, and through these agencies of public opinion they carefully cultivate the spirit of hostility between the workers on the basis of racial and religious differences. By so doing, they make it easier for the rulers to exploit, rob and plunder white and black worker alike. Not only must the American Negro and white worker be made to see that they have a common aim, but they must learn that both have a common cause with the working class of the world.

The American Negro Labor Congress shall demand the abolition of Jim Crowism, not only in the Southern states, but throughout the nation.

Power Will Get Rights.

The American Negro Labor Congress shall bring to bear the full force of its organized strength against any measures on the part of any section of the nation to curtail the right of the ballot of any section of the working class.

We shall demand the right of Negro pupils to attend all schools anywhere within the nation and the right of Negro teachers to teach any school.

We shall endeavor to arouse the agricultural workers, tenant and share-farmers of the South to the necessity of organizing among themselves, supported by the industrial workers of the cities, for the purpose of uprooting the hated peonage system and landlordism practiced in the backward agricultural district of the South.

We shall demand the right of the Negro to equal accommodations with whites in all theatres, restaurants, hotels, etc., better working conditions for Negro men and women everywhere, and the full abolition of child labor. These, as well as many other social abuses weighing heavily upon the life of the Negro, shall be treated by the American Negro Labor Congress.

The American Negro Labor Congress will mark a new epoch in the life of the American Negro and set him upon a new road of thinking. Although this congress will treat primarily the problems attending the life of the American Negro, yet at the same time we as a race must take on something of an international viewpoint and come to see that the Negro question is a part of a great and important world question.

What Congress Is.

The congress shall be composed of delegates from the various independent Negro labor unions, from mixed unions (white and black), from unorganized factory groups of Negro workers, of representatives of Negro agricultural workers and of individual advocates, both Negro and white, who are well known for their championship of the cause of the Negro working class in particular.

It is planned that the Congress shall take place in Chicago some time during the summer, the exact date of its opening to be decided later. Every Negro working class organization, every Negro leader who is genuinely interested in the uplift of the Negro working class, is being asked to co-operate to make this congress not a mere passing affair in our daily life, but a great and historical event that hall ever remain influential and far-reaching in the national life of the American Negro.

The American Negro may well look with sympathy upon any plans to free Africa from the grip of French and British imperialism. But we cannot escape from the conditions here at home, and we must devote our best. Energies toward abolishing the social evils that daily affect the life of the Negro here.

The strength of the race rests in its working class, and it alone has the  power to lift the race out of the mire and break the shackles of the oppressor!

STAND BEHIND THE NEGRO WORKING CLASS!

RALLY TO THE AMERICAN NEGRO LABOR CONGRESS!

PROMOTE UNITY AND HARMONY BETWEEN THE WORKERS OF ALL RACES!

Signed:

William Bryant, Business Manager of Asphalt Workers’ Union, Milwaukee, Wis.
Edward L. Doty, Organizer of Negro Plumbers, Chicago.
H.V. Phillips, Organizer of Negro Working Class Youth, Chicago.
Elizabeth Griffin, President of Chicago Negro Women’s Household League.
Everett Green, Chicago Correspondent of “Afro-American,” Baltimore, Md.
William Scarville, of the Pittsburgh-American.
Charles Henry, Representative of Unorganized Negro Steel Workers, Chicago.

The Young Worker was produced by the Young Workers League of America beginning in 1922. The name of the Workers Party youth league followed the name of the adult party, changing to the Young Workers (Communist) League when the Workers Party became the Workers (Communist) Party in 1926. The journal was published monthly in Chicago and continued until 1927. Editors included Oliver Carlson, Martin Abern, Max Schachtman, Nat Kaplan, and Harry Gannes.

For PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/youngworker/v04n11-apr-11-1925-yw.pdf