The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-04-24

situation of the Negro in America
so they have, for it is rarely that the
master-class viewpoint is expressed so
naively as in this letter from Florida,
via Heidelberg.
The article in question stated basic
ally that since the present economic
position of the Negro (as a result of
the war, the stoppage of immigration,
the advancing industrialization of the
South ITSELF no longer in any way
corresponds to his miserable social,
political and juridical feudal status
Tin which since his introduction into
the country he was held by terrorism
and violence), therefore the Negro be-
comes today more and more a poten-
tial revolutionary factor. This was
evidenced by figures on the mass mi
grations to the North, on the declining
percentage engaged in agriculture and
the mounting number entering indus
try and by citing the Negro protest
movements. The seriousness of the
situation was attested by the laws
passed to punish severely anyone who
encouraged the Negroes to leave the
South and by the extensive propa-
ganda which aimed to convince the
Negroes that it was better to be
robbed by a Southern landlord than
by Northern capitalist. But more
than khan and newspapers were need
ed to stem that exodus-so to some
slight extent wages were raised,
BLACK and white" committees for So
cial work were formed as sop to the
growing consciousness of the Negro
intelligentsia, and in two states re-
Gently soldiers were called out to
make sure that the lynching of ac-
cused Negroes was done according
to the lawbooks after 16-minute trials,
instead Of in the extra-legal savagery
that usually prevails. A Southern
governor lays bare the gravity of the
situation when he writes: In some
counties (oE GeoTgia) 0the5 Negro is
being driven out as though he were
a wild beast, in others he is held as a
slave.
1t should be noted that our gentle
critic makes not a single reply to
either the arguments in the article
nor the facts that support them. She
limits herself to the alleged inaccu-
racy of title beneath one of the
pictures. She admits that the whip
ping post is legal punishment" in
Delaware and that Negroes are beaten
there-but her defense is that white
wife-beaters also are thus punished.
have not at hand statistics showing
the exact preponderance of the num-
Der of Negroes tied to this infamous
post, but everyone knows that the
purpose of this form of punishment
is as much degradation as physical
torture, and a ruling class always sees
to it that degradation is applied most
literally to its subjects. 1t is no
answer to say that white wife-beaters.
for whose blood the Southern lady
also gently thirsts in her justification
Of the whipping-post, are tortured in
the same way. In lynching also there
is no hard and fast color line, of the
3,3S1 lynch1ngs between 1882 and
1903 it is reported that 1,192 were of
whites, yet no one denies that the
purpose of lynching is and remains
not that Of Furnishing wrong-doers but
of intimidating the more independent
and courageous Negroes. And in Gov
erenor Dorsey's arraignment, in prac-
tically every one of the many anthem
ticated cases of peonage and brutality
cited, the Negro poems were whipped,
while one master, charged with muir
dering too large number of his black
workers, defended himself with the
claim that he had not beaten them any
longer or oftener than the law pro-
vided!
The lady's protests are typical of
Southern reasoning" in that they con-
tain not single fact, not a shred of
evidence to support the monstrous
assumptions piled one ON top OF the
other "Ona must consider that tho