The daily worker., 1927-05-11
Naggin' de Niggah
By WILLIAM MELVILLE SUTTON.
ARTICLE III


sport well the favorite locution of the south
This means that he is taught that he is child ant
that because he is child all the privatons, all tn
torture all the denias all the oppression and suppress
sion to which he is subjected is for his Gown good
He must not dare yearn for the education that is pro
vided for the white He must not yearn for the job
that white men hold. He must remember that he j
serf, not even exalted as vassal And he mus
remain embalmed in ignorance and fear that whel
northerners come down he may be pointed out
Child"
A Law Place.
Above all, he must remember that the white man il
his peer his overload Though he has been bengnantly
of late granted the right to walk the side o.
the street his MASTER he must always be the cring
ing servitor, the obsequious sdestepper He must no
'block" the path of the white.
jim Crow Hearses.
And when he dares to ask the assistance of an in
terne from a white mans hospital white mans
undertaken funeral ambulance drver-always the
scene of accident the lookout for customers
though he may be dying, the Negro aspires to such
dazzling heights that the white is stung to hom
cdal wrath Thus in the face of the fact that Tom
Lee, Negro though he be, rsked his life for nearly
of worthless politicians and hangers
the fatal day the steamer Norman went down ir
the Mississippi near Memphis more than year ago
two of his lay dying back in August 1926 while
white ambulance drivers forgetful of the fact that
man may be black and still be human, stood by, re-
fused him succor, ignored his plight and all but
laughed.
The newspapers of Memphs-it was in this eminent
Mississippi port that the outrageous drama was
enactedgave vent to righteous indignation after the
first act. The undertakers and ambulance drivers
promised to be good Eight days after, Act Two was
time dead Negro could not be transported his own
funeral parlors. The excuse? The typical southern
excuse. white southerner's corpse could rest
in peace if when he still living, he had been brought
to the hospital in ambulance contaminated by a
Negro, if his brought to the cemetery
in a chariot that had carried a Negro.
Two more incidents must record from this southern
land of the Free where human beings because they
not white, household slaves at two to five dollars
week. much the property of their white employers
las their ancestors, who got lodgings and clothes and
food for their servces-two incidents which handled
for the Memphis sheet which working, the
sympathetic, deprecatng stories Of which were re-
ceived with sneers by the newspapermen of that emf
nent city.
Tubercular Prisoner.
Hattie Johnson tubercular, povertystricken Stunned
by blacks and whites alike accused of shoplifting
Perhaps the charge true perhaps it was not. II
it was, the real criminals the white overlords
Convicted count of petit larceny, she was SEN
fenced to Jail for sixty days and fined $780, At the
end of her te if she could not pay the fine she was
to spend five months longer in JAIL at the current penal
rates OF forty cents day. in order to work out" the
fine.
In Jail her cell was sick-room But no one came
to plead her cause cared whether she lived
died When her sixty-day sentence was nearing its
end, a knd-hearted lawyer-an anamoly to be sure
sought to have her freedom restored to her. so that
she might regain health outside prison walls His argu-
ments were based not on the law-for he could plead
law since she had not money wherewith to pay the
fine-but on humanity. For freedom she must have
bondsmen. The good and noble county commissioners
refused to accept the two persons whites, who would
help her. Heaven and earth could not move them So
back to prison went Hattie She may be dead now
for cell would be fatal to a frail body wracked by
disease l don't know. But remember her face as
she sat in the courtroom and wondered am sure what
Lincoln would say and where earth is all this JUS
tice one hears much about.
Corn Stealing
The other incident was made for the telling by good
and kind probate judge of Shelby County, Tennessee
Polk, fourteen years old, and family of poor white
trash-not much white trash because they had sunk
to such levels to live door to a niggah family
but because of their behavior in the case of Davy
which condemned them in the eyes of the other
whites in the county Two young sons of the family
OF trash and several other youngsters into Davys
patch Of and very generously helped themselves
to ear after with which to replenish nexpensvey
the family arders. Davy caught Willie his neighbors
next day. the result of the Vaccinations of family
of whites in lower standing than family of blacks
In the south, Davy his way to an industrial
school, where he to spend those years of his life
between fourteen and twenty-one. I can still see the
headline written my "story," out of which had
been whipped all humane sentiments and such depre-
cations that are anathemas to the southern ear and
eye:
"Chastser is Chastised"
keep my clipping telling about Davy for both the
story and the smart-aecy SNUG head it eptomize
waged in America.