The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-05-08

By EDITH BLACK

Lne mouse Oh representatives over
the proposal to erect a monument in
France to Negro regiments which
fought in the last war.
Southern congressman opposed the
measure and used all possible tactics
to prevent its passage. But every
Negro who understands the interests
of his people will see that these south
ern feudalists are too dull to see
that the erection of this monument is
nothing at all for the good of the
Negro. 1t is merely an attempt Of the
shrewder exploiters to blind the eyes
of the Negro to the treachery of the
ruling class toward these same
Negroes. The glittering monument is
for the purpose of making the Negro
forget wrongs and broken promises.
It is intended to make the Negro
patriotic" toward his masters-to be
willing to go out again and die for
the democracy of southern landlords.
Every Negro who has both intel
ligence and manhood ought to spurn
with contempt the suggestion of such
a monument.
If the white workers who were
deceived into fighting the war for
democracy" had their eyes opened as
to the real nature of capitalist war
and the real object of capitalist vic
tory, the Negro workers who fought
in this same fight learned what was
probably the most important lesson
that the colored people in America
has yet been taught
The white workers could be fooled
into risking their lives to make Nor
gan's loans secure, by the Illusion that
they were fighting to make the world
safe for democracy" But the Negro
worker and the Negro peasant had
never tasted this democracy" even
that mockery of it which the white
worker has as his portion. ELECTION
by the people?" But the majority Of
the Negroes were denied the vote
Freedom of speech? A Negro in the
South who speaks his mind about his
conditions Is lynched. Equality
brotherhood2e Even in the ranks of
the working class the Negro is not an
equal. Negroes take the worst jobs
at the lowest pay, are charged the
highest rents, get the least schooling.
DURING the war Negro leaders
~ both the pitifully weak sincere"
ones and those who were not sincere
got busy to show the Negro, who had
never enjoyed democracy" at home,
why he should lay down his life to
bring it to peoples abroad. This war,
they said, would be the acid test of
the Negroes loyalty. This war was the
touchstone which would show If the
Negroes were deserving. They had
been segregated, they had been lynch
ed-true-but If they showed them
selves loyal in this hour of crisis-so
said the fnisleaders of the Racial
these wrongs would be righted. A
grateful nation would raise them up to
the position they deserved. This would
be the turning point.
GO into the seething hell Of modern
~ war went the youth Of the Negro
race. Negroes who had escaped the
lyncher's moose, Negroes who had
escaped starvation from pitiful wages,
Negroes who had suffered fmprison-
ment for debt" on southern farms,
entered the hell of guns and gas. Into
this hell went Negroes who had been
mobbed for any and for no reason,
and young Negro intellectuals who
had fought bitterly for the education
denied their race.
All of the workers who saw active
service learned the nature of capitalist
warfare. They found that it meant
mud and filth, sleeplessness, vermin,
wounds. Those who lived, learned
still more by the treaties of peace"
which revealed the true aims of the
war. The Negro workers found out
all this, and more. They found that
even when they offered to lay down
their lives for their" country, the
country insisted that they be Jim
crowed in the sacrifice, All Negro