The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-11-29
BY CYRIL BRIGGS


file delegates from the South and
from other parts of the country can
doubt the determination Of the Negro
masses for struggle or mistake the
impatience and disgust with which
they view the betrayals Of their strug-
giles by such treacherous organiza-
tons as the N. A. A. c. P. and Urban
League.
Such is the present spirit of the
Negro masses that several Of the del
egates at the st. Louis convention
rode the rod" to get to it. Eighteen
year old Joseph Burton rode freight
all the way from Birmingham to
Chattanooga because he wanted to
attend the Southern Anti-Lynching
Conference and "join up in real
fight against lynching"
Burton had learned Of the League
of Struggle for Negro Rights Cat that
time the American Negro Labor
Congress- through a contact in the
Birmingham Laundry in Birming-
ham, where with a number of other
workers he shaved six days week,
IL hours a day. AS wringer Burton
got S2.25 a day-Sl3.50 week. A
pitiful wage for a worker whose pa
rents had II children and himself the
main support for the others are now
unemployed. He told the convention
how Negro women and girls were
driven IL hours day for rs cents
in the same plant, and how the work.
ers were often robbed of a days
wages through the bosses switching
finished work to somebody else,
claiming it had not been finished.
Burton's family of 10 lived in 3
room shack, no gas, no electricity, no
sanitary arrangements, clubhouse In
the yard. For this they paid S18
month. Burton never attended
school, He had to go to work at the
age of ten. His father told him not
to return home If he mixed with "the
radicals who are fighting lynching."
At Chattanooga he made the most
militant speech of the southern con-
ference and was elected a delegate
to the st. Louis convention. He came
to st. Louis with Mary Dalton and
other white and Negro delegates from
the south. Two days, two nights on
the road in a car that insisted on
breaking down; held up by police,
threatened with Jail on vagrancy
charges, refused service in white res
taurants, not always able to get to |
the Negro sections, starving, cold, |
uncomfortable, but never whimper-
ing, the southern delegates forced |
their way to the convention, Negro
and white suffering alike when the |
iim-crow restaurants refused service
to the Negro comrades, refusing them
even the use Of the comfort stations!
MARY Dalton told the convention OF
Ni the enthusiasm Of the southern
workers, white and colored, for the
movement. How every delegate at
the Chattanooga conference wanted
to come to st. Louis to help carry
on the fight; how the workers sup
ported Bell, a Negro worker nom
mated on the Communist ticket for
U. S. Senator, how in six Tennessee
counties they gave Bell $40 votes, in
spite Of the wide spread stealing OF
the boss parties, how the boss press
raved when Bell was nominated, and
how the Communist Party is steadily
breaking down the barriers of race
prejudice and hatred built up by the
imperialists to split the working
class and weaken it's struggles.
Ben Careathers of Pittsburgh spoke
of unemployment in that city, of the
misery and starvation of both Negro
and white workers, told of the coal
and iron police breaking up meetings
of the League of Struggle for Negro
Rights. He told of the fighting
spirit OF the Negro miners and steel
workers, of their determination to
carry on against boss oppression.
Kingston of Philadelphia gave
detailed report of the experience OF
the League in that city, its efforts to
work within the Carney organization,
It's success in creating five function
ing locals and a City Committee, its
leadership Of the everyday struggles
of the Negro masses.
Not all Of the delegates were as
clear upon the class nature Of Negro
oppression as were Kingston, Mary
Pevey, Careathers, Mary Dalton and
others. But one and all were aware
of the need for organized struggle, OF
the need for unity between the black
and white workers. Most Of them
realized the fundamental difference
between the depressing imperialist
governments and the first workers
republic, the Soviet Union. All Justify
cheered as William Brown, a Negro
steel worker of Detroit and returned
delegate from the Fifth Congress Of
the Red International Of Labor
Unions, took the floor with the open
ing remark:
UnionsS
..'T am just returned from a coun-
try where all men are equal regard
less of color, creed or nationality.
bring to you the greetings from the
workers of the Soviet Union"