The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-11-26
BY CYRUS BRIGGS.
Article No. 4.


THE ST. Louis convention of the League of
Struggle for Negro Rights represented the
highest point reached so far in the struggle of
the Negro proletariat, in firm alliance with the
most advanced elements of the white workers
to wrest leadership of the Negro masses from
the hands of the treacherous Negro petty -bour-
geo1sie-rent-gougin landlords, parasitic preach
ers (many of them in the role of landlords,
petty business men> etc
These betrayers of the struggles of the Negro
masses were conspicuous by their absence
Among the delegates to the convention we're none
of the group of reformists and petitionists whom
the bosses name and recognize as leaders" of
the Negro masses.
Reformists Conscicuous by Absence.
These traitors tabooed the convention and
were tabooed by it. Living far apart from the
lives Of the oppressed Negro masses immune to
their sufferings, feeling only remotely the Bit
terness OF oppression and that only because they
the socially elect of the Negro race are refused
different status in capitalist society from the
Negro workers, protected by their money and
connection from most of the Jim-Crow exper-
fences of the masses, these gentlemen could not
have understood much less shared in, the burn
ing indignation, the grim will to struggle which
gle for Negro Rights and marked it as some
thing definitely and widely apart from the usual
talk festivals and belly crawling conventions and
conferences OF the Negro petty bourgeoisie.
Would Have Shocked Fashion-Plate Dubois
The fashionaby dressed and urbane Dr. Du
Bots of the National Association for the "Ad-
vancement" of Colored People would hardly have
understood the frank proletarian denunciations
of lynching, jirrl-crowism and other conditions
facing the Negro masses which were given u.s.
terance not only by the leaders in the conven-
ton but by the rank and file delegates during
the discussions. The language of workers who
had hitch linked and rode the rods almost penn-
less and without baggage" Gas one Negro bour-
geos paper carefully pointed outD to voice their
protests against the wrongs inflicted upon them
by the white ruling class was hardly the language
to which the cultured ears of the snobbish DR..
Du Bots are accustomed. And that hoary pros
titute intellectual and perennial procurer for the
republican party, Kelly Miller, would certainly
have been shocked out of his senile senses by
the militant spirit evident on every hand.
Misleader Miller would have found the spirit
of the convention too impatient of oppression
But the worker delegates would have retorted
that it is all very we'll for these gentlemen to
pirate of patience since their contact with Jim
crowism and other forms of Negro oppression
is very slight.
1t was DR.. Du Bots who boosted in the Crisis"
few years ago Of the facility with which auto
mobile ownership enables the Negro petty bourg-
eosie to escape most of the unpleasantness Of
the bosses jim-crowism laws But not many
Negro workers own cars and even when they do
they are liable to be molested on various charges
vagrancy, etc.
Convention Points Out Conflicting Interests.
The convention carefully pointed out in its
manifesto to the white and Negro masses the