The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-04-16
BY TOM JOHNSON.

by IOM JOHNSON.
I EGAL lynching on mass scale in Alabama
IL is to reach new heights if the plans of the
State to burn eight young Negro workers in the
electric chair July 10 go through. In addition
the State will try to send ninth Negro youth,
Roy Wright, IA, to his death with them.
These nine Negro boys, only one older than
20 years, have been convicted in the Scottsboro
circuit court of "forcefully ravaging and debas-
ing" two white girls who were their fellow pas
sengers on freight train in Northern Alabama.
The verdict of the all-whte jury of local business
men and farmers was returned in a tense at
mosphere of lynch law and violence with men
acing crowd of 10000 white mountaineers Dilling
through the strets of the little village of Scots
bore.
This determination of the white ruling class
of Alabama to burn these nine Negro boys in
the electric chair is not motivated by any desire
to protect the virtue Of white womanhood' In
a period of Sharpest crisis, with armed warfare
between the oppressed troopers and the despotic
white landlords smodering on the countryside
with hundreds of thousands of half-Starved Ne
gro workers tramping the streets of the towns
and daily growing more desperate and with
revolutionary force new to the South, the Com
munist Party at work crystallizing and organizing
for action this revolutionary ferment, the white
of the oppressed Negro people the charred bodies
of nine young workers as warning that the
lynch law of the white bourgeoise still reigns
supreme. 1t is grim reminder that the ruling
class will sink to any depths of brutality and
bloody repression to maintain its oppressive rule
and to smash any revolt against this rule. BY
this act the white bourgeoisie serves notice to
the masses of Negro toilers now stirring rest
lessly and cropping as yet bindly for way out
from their poverty and super exploitation: "Take
warning! Accept starvation and semi-slavery
your inevitable lot for the first signs of revolt
against our rule will be met with the bloody
fist of ruling class violence"
The attempt of the white bourgeosie by means
Of mass murder, to stem the advance of Negro
toilers, with the Negro proletariat marching at
the head, must and will fall to the ground This
attempt at legal lynchng will react as the great
est impetus to the development of a powerful
revolutionary national movement of the Negro
masses in the South. On the bloody stage at
Scottsboro the white bourgeoisie has unwittingly
dramatized in the Sharpest and most vivid colors
the whole system Of national oppression which
has as its aim the subsection of whole nation,
millions strong, to the unbridled exploitation of
the white rulers.
To the most backward Negro toiler it is clear
that no "justice'-even of the doubtful variety
"enjoyed" by the white workers under the rule
of capitalism, could be expected by those nine
Negro boys in the Jim Grow capitalist court Of
Scottsboro 1t is clear to all that as long as
the Negro is denied every political right, as long
as whole nation is denied the most elementary
democratic rights" "Scottsboro JUSTICE" that is
lynch-law justice with the full support and active
cooperation of all courts and state organs of the
white bourgeosie will be the order of the day.
Further this trial reveals to all who care to
see that lynch law is not the product of "irre-
sponsible actions by uneducated and degenerated
whites" which can be removed by educational
methods, as is consistently maintained by the
white liberals of the South and their friends
the Negro reformists, but that it is an essential
part of this whole system Of national oppression
on which are based the super-profits of the
Southern industrialists and landlords.
From these plain facts the Negro toilers will
draw the proper conclusions They will realize
that it is impossible to fight lynch law, whether
it be of the legal extra legal variety, by itself.
They will learn that to destroy this infamous
institution of the white boTgeoisie, the whole
system of national oppression must be destroyed
and the Negro masses must win the uncondi-
tional right to govern themselves as they see fit