The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-11-19
TheNAACPDefends
Lynching
BY LYMAN BARUFKIN.

THE most ardent, 100 per cent southern slave
owner could do no better than the leaders
of the National Association for the Advancement
Of Colored People N.AACP0 have been doing
within the past few months to uphold the
CHASTITY institution of lynching
In defending the lynchers of Camp Hill and
Birmingham; Alabama, by blaming their recent
murders OF Negro tenant-farmers and workers
on the activities OF Communists the N A. A. c.
P. leaders have been justifying those atrocities
and at the same time they belied what they
have repeatedly admitted-that lynchings are
due primarily to economic causes and will cease
only when the capitalist system will be abolished
They have said this in articles in their official
organ, the Crisis in pamphlets and books which
have gotten official recognition by the Associa-
ton in brief they submitted to the Wickersham
Commission.
In speech printed in the Crisis of Feb, 1920,
in which w. E. B. Dubois, one of the leaders of
the N. A. A, c. p, was dealing with the mas
sacre of over two hundred Negroes in Elaine,
Ark, he admitted that Negroes were held in
peonage (semi-slayery) by "a contract which
binds the laborer, his wife and his children,
hand and foot; which renders the landlord
judge, sheriff, and executioner."
And the Associations Publicity Director, Her
bert j. seligman, in his book, 1.-The Negro Faces
America" describes the economic reasons for
that massacre, and incidentally points out that
no matter who would come to the aid of the ex-
plotted Negroes the land owners will not hest
tate to murder him. Seligman quotes u. S. Brat
ton the lawyer who had been retained by the
share choppers union to handle their cases
against the robber landlords in court.
Grafton says that not only is he Southerner
but that his parents and grandparents we're
Southerners. He was also ex-Assistant
United States Attorney. Yet says Bratton, ut
was publicly asserted that If I dared TO enter
the County OF Philips (where the lynching was
commtted) I would be shot down"
The most significant part of Bratton's state
ment Is where he says:
"As to the limits TO which plantation managers
will go before they will allow themselves to be
intcrfered with in carrying out their practices,
I would state that Sheriff Kitchens told my
wife and the wife of my that even If he tthe
Sheriff should go down onto those plantations
and interfere with their laborers that he would
be shot down." (My emphasize b.
And the Field Secretary of the N.A.ACP.,
William Pickens, said:
The race problem In the United states Is
only an intensiiication Of the wrongs Of our
economic system. .. The evil Of this system
h responsible for all the nassacres Of colored
people and for nearly all the horrible lynch
ings and burnings Of individual Negroes. :"
Very much along that line wrote also Walter
White, the chief spokesman for the N.A.ACP,
in his book, Rope and Faggot," which was pub
lshed in 1929 And in December, 1880, he said
that he believed 1T would be better if more
Negroes we're won to membership in the Com
munist Party"
But since the Scottsboro case they have be-
trayed all the above-and the Negroes whom
they pretend to lead-and by blaming the muir
ders on the Communists the N.A.ACP. leaders
actually defend the Alabama lynchers and JUS
tify their mt1rderous deeds.