The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-01-15
COMMUNISM ONLY
HOPE OF NEGRO,
SAYS bob MINI OR
Tells Open Forum of
Stagnant South

Soviet republic of America, Comrade
Robert Minor, writer and cartoonist
for the DAILY WORKER, told the
audience at the Workers Party open
forum, in the lodge room of the Ash
land Auditorium, Sunday night.
Comrade Minor, speaking on the
subject of "The Stagnant South and
the Revolution" told how the north
ern capitalists, in penetrating the
solid south, had made a compromise
with the semi-feudalistic form of So
city which hung over from slavery
days, and which denies the Negroes
even the farcical rights" of equal
franchise.
Minor declared that in the south
the problem of the class struggle has
been made the race problem by the
capitalists and that the only party
which boldly announces it's attitude
on the race problem and mobilizes the
Negroes as workers fighting for their
rights beside the white workers is the
Workers (Communist) Party.
with conditions as they are in the
south today, the capitalist class is
not likely to grant the so-called demo-
cratic-political rights to the Negroes
the south's exploited Masses" Com.
rade Minor said. "In the south there
ISIS not the modern capitalist form OF
government, nor is there the modern
capitalist political system. For ex-
ample, in Mississippi only one person
in every twenty-five casts his ballot.
Only the wealthy classes are allowed
to vote.
"The key to the stagnant south as
problem Of the proletarian revolu.
ton is the Negro question. Every
where in the south any question of
organizing the working class or the
exploited farming class, runs afoul of
the race question. In the labor unions
OF the south the Negro is either en-.
tirely barred, or in cases where the
Negroes must be taken into the union.
they are separated from the white
workers in the union meeting halls,
and are forced to conduct separate
meetings, with separate chairmen and
separate voting.
"The southern ruling class has in
herited the tradition of slave labor,
and has kept that tradition alive as a
guiding spirit" Comrade Minor de-
clared. Race hatred is played upon
as the standard means Of preventing
the Development of the organization
OF the workers. The Negro workers
have been used to break strikes of
white workers, and the white work
ers have been used to break strikes
of the Negro workers."
Minor told how in many southern
states the petty officers of the law
arrest unemployed workers and sell
them to employers for so much a head
often selling these workers into slav.
cry for as long as year. These
Migrants" are sentenced to terms at
hard labor" They are then placed
under whipping bosses. Wherever this
crude system lis not in effect, other
petty depredations, are made in the
so-called free wage laborers. Comrade
Minor told how he had seen raids or
railroad construction camps where
petty officers of the law, working in
conjunction with the employers, ar.
rested half a hundred workers on a
fictitious charge of playing cards on
Sunday and fined them a total Of all
the wages due them.
Some parts of the South where mod
ern capital has penetrated and opened
up modern form of production, such
as in West Virginia, Tennessee and
Georgia, we find the beginnings of a
primitive militancy Of the working
class" said Comrade Minor. "In the
unprecedented portions the class con-
fiict comes oftenest in the guise of
race conflicts. The most exploited
strata Of labor and 'peasantry' is in
these portions composed of Negroes.
They, especially since the world war,
have gone thru disillusionment, and
pacifist theories have no very strong
hold on them. The average Negro of
the south already has a faint glim-
mering of his proletarian standing.
Hardly day passes that his mind is
not Dwelling on the fact that h, car
rely on nothing but his own direct
acts for his self-defense."
Comrade Minor told Of the mas
sacres and lynchings which are the
punishment melted out by the bour-
geoisie for the attempts OF the
Negroes to organize and to fight for
their rights.
The key to the solution Of the prob
lem of the stagnant south is the direct
tackling Of the race problem by the
only element that can finally solve
the problem--the revolutionary Com
munist Party. The Workers Party
has offered the solution to the race
problem. Comrade Minor concluded.
He presented the program of the
Workers Community Party on the