The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-10-17
BY ESTHER CHEMNITZ

At the beginning of its campaign to invade
every state in the Union with its organizers,
the American Fascist Order of Black Shirts
found itself baked in its first efforts to CO.
cree the workers of Charlotte, North Carolina,
into joining their lynching, anti-working class
organizations.
Indignation waxed at its highest last night
among workers of the Louise Mill village in
Charlotte They had answered an unsigned
call to gather at the Junior Hall, Belmont Ave-,
in Charlotte at s o'clock. The call which was
clothed in secrecy and so catched as to pique
the curiosity of the villagers, invited grown
men only of Fl years and over to attend.
Women and children were specifically request
ed to stay away.
Thus enticed, some two hundred workers
found themselves together with superintend-
ents, foremen and neighborhood petty business
men at first class fascist meeting. This was
the beginning of membership drive to be
carried on in the separate mill villages of
Charlotte, North Carolina.
Accompanied by all the trick oratory of the
South, the appeal was made "to each red
blooded herman to protect noble womanhood
and the sacred home, and the supremacy of
the white race" Marvin Ritch, one-time Ku
Kluxer and former city attorney, made the
Introductory speech close friend and as
sociate of Ritch recalling his record in the
1919 strike when with John Dean of the United
Textile workers he took an active part in
betraying the workers of Charlotte, says he
believes Ritch wouldn't hesitate to sell to the
overseers what he claims to be his influence
with the workers"
The main speaker, an organizer from the
Atlanta headquarters of the Black Shirts, pro-
ceeded to picture "a wonderful glorious South
unmoested by the Reds who incite our good
Negroes and make, them disconnected with
that station in life in which it has pleased
god to call them. Think of working to-
gether with niggers shoulder to shoulder and
its these Communists who are raising havoc
in all our towns, who would have this come
about" The American fascist, the speaker
said, stands for jobs for the white man. Let
all the white men have jobs and then if there
are some jobs they don't want then, of course,
the Negro could have them. By such talk,
the fascist hope to be able to divide the white
and Negro workers, and so make it possible
for the employers to cut wages lengthen hours
and speed them up.
call for membership reiterating the great
significance of the organization as check
to Communism and the patriotism involved
was answered by the foremen, superintendent
and small business men in the audience but
not single worker responded. The newly
acquired members were then duly sworn in
by salute to the flag.
Thus ended the first of a concentrated effort
to organize in North Carolina a machinery for
railroading and lynching workers both Negro
and white.
H. M. Powers, one of the six defendants in
the famous instruction trial slated to come
up for hearing in Atlanta, Georgia, the end of
this month, and Southern Organizer of the
Communist Party, makes the following state
ment:
"The Communist Party will fight to the
fullest extent of its power the fascist Black
Hundreds effort to coerce the workers into
joining this terroristic organization aimed
against its own interests.
Significant is the fact that the formation
of the American Fascist and Black Shirt
Order in North Carolina followed the day after
Hoovers address here on Oct. 7th at Kings
Mountain, near the center of the struggles
of the textile workers of year ago. Hoover
openly called upon the Southern capitalist