The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-01-23
BY Amy schechter.


TN the preceding article it was shown
i that the advanced element in the
post-ciVil war labor movement be-
lieved the future of the emancipated
Negro workers of the south to be
indissolubly bound up with the Amer
Jean labor movement as whole. This
view was, unfortunately, not shared
by the great majority of the organ
lied (white) workers. Governed by
the deep-seated prejudices which arise
wherever slave labor exists side by
size with wage labor, and where the
slave is identified in the popular mind
with the system of which he is the
victim, many trade unions discrimi-
mated against the Negro worker,
rendering him antagonistic to the
labor movement, and fiinging him into
the arms of the bourgeois politicians
of both races.
William Syivis and the other for
ward-looking leaders of the National
Labor Union. who, after emancipation,
had taken the initiative in declaring
for the solidarity Of white labor with
Negro labor, were powerless to en-
force the lifting of the ban against
Negro membership in the unions. The
National Labor Union, as has been
said, was a loose federation of nation
al unions and central labor bodies;
and its committee had no control over
the affiliated trade unions, acting rath-
or in an advisory and organizational
capacity.
At the Chicago congress of the Ma
tional Labor Union delegate stated
that although there were number
of colored mechanics in New Haven,
we have so far been unable to induce
the trade unions to admit them"
Some delegates inclined to the view
that the question was similar to that
Of the foreign-born workers, the Ger
mans, for instance, who voluntarily
organized in national unions Of their
own. But William Sylvis, the leading
figure in the labor movement of the
time, and a keen analyst of contem-
porary conditions, held that the mat
ter was extremely urgent, and said,
"This question had already been in
troduced in the south, the whites
striking against the blacks, and Great
ing an antagonism which will kill on
the trade unions unless the two be
consolidated"
Trevellick, Sylvis' most active aid
in the organizing work of the National
Labor Union, declared, in the course
of the discussion, that, 1.-THE Negro. =.
has already stood his ground uobly
when a member of trade union. "
A case which attracted general at
tention and took on the character of
a test case was that of the Negro
printer, Douglass, who was refused
admission to a local Washington un-
ion in 1869. The constitution of the
National Typographical Union in
which this local was affiliated con-
tanned no clause regarding racial dis
elimination in reference to member
ship and Douglass appealed to the
national convention, but his appeal
was turned down. The case aroused
a good deal OF bitterness, and was
brought up as typical of union dis
elimination at the Negro Labor Con-
gress held at the close Of that year.
This discrimination on the part OF
its affiliated unions naturally initiated
against the possibility of drawing the
Negro workers into the National La.
Dor Union as an integral part Of the
organization. Another factor of equal
Importance was the fact that very
real Emergencies existed between the
immediate needs of Negro labor and
white labor at this period.
In the first place the sense of a
allegiance quite inevitable at that
time) of the Negro toiler to the re
publican party as the party of Lin
coin and emancipation, brought him
into opposition to the policy of indie
pendent working class political action
which was the foundation upon which