The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-10-31
For President
Some Negro Leaders Surrender

American Negroes are reaping the result
of leadership by men whose station in life
makes them dependents of the white ruling
class.
This is strikingly exhibited in the public
appeal signed by long list of prominent
Negro leaders" in connection with the cleo
ton campaign This appeal purports to be
an appeal "for public Reputation of this
campaign of racial hatred" which, it is
pointed out both the democratic and repub-
lican parties are conducting in connection
with the presidential election.
But this is not the essential character of
the appeal" The language of the document
contains such shameful, humiliating surren-
der of the Negroes rights of manhood and
womanhood that this other quality, the
quality of surrender, overshadows any weak
little note of protest there is in it.
After condemning the action of the two
big capitalist parties in regard to the en-
phasis of racial contempt and hatred with
which condemnation, as far as it goes, we
heartily agree) the signers of the appeal
then get down on their knees to say:
"Do not misunderstood We not
asking equality where there is no equality.
We are not demanding even discussing pure
Nv
slightest desire for intermarriage between the
races We frankly recognize that the after
math of slavery must involve long years of
poverty, crime and contempt; for all that the
past has brought and the present gives we
have paid in good temper, quiet work and UNI
fatering faith
There are other passages not so bad, not
so abject; but the tone is one of submission
at the present time, with only whimper of
70 bo srra duaI die.
appearance of inequalities between racial
groups" Jour emphasis).
The tremendous question of social equal
ity-which is in reality a question of million
fold casses-is dismissed by these leaders"
as though the matter to them has become
nothing more than the wearing of dress
shirt by some colored intellectual at some
rich white parasites dinner party. The ques-
ton of the laws of some thirty-odd states
which put the Negro on the level of lower
animals by forbidding marriages of persons
of different race is tossed aside by these
leaders" with the shallow cynical, meaning
less words eve have not the slightest desire
for intermarriage between the races
What is the matter with these leaders of
an abused race of men and women engaged
in fighting against slavery?
We think what's the matter with them is
that they have lost their social vision; they
have become soft with living as ''intellec-
tuals' on the crumbs from the table of the
white bourgeoisie They have lost touch with
the million-fold masses of black men and
women who are sweating in slavery at the
hardest industrial labor and on southern
plantations. We say categorically that the
great masses of the Negro people-working
people-cannot and will not give up the
struggle for full emancipation here and nOw
These blind leaders" are still creeping on
their knees before the republican and demo-
cratic parties Tor the little socialist" party
of capitalism
Have these 'intellectuals" lost their his
torical sense? Are they, like Garvey,
descending to the level of those other Negro
Headers" who, in the decades before the
American Civil War, licked the boots of the
American Colonization Society, agreeing to
the deportation of the Negro to PARKWAY
Africa because they did not know and
could not understand that Impending
Crisis of social upheaval and class struggle
which was about to overthrow the then
existing order and abolish chattel slavery?
The trouble with these genteel men and
women "leaders'' is that they Relieve in the
present system of capitalist society which in
cludes the oppression of the Negro masses
as special and inferior labor caste for cheap
exploitation. They have lost their historical
sense.
But as these leaders retreat-and the more
thev retreat-the great masses of toiling
Negro people are gaining in understanding
~ historical events of the present. The Ne
ora masses are more and more coming to UNI
aersgrind that the impending fists Of So