The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-11-09

OFSI Glle WIlOle Country, tIldI UIl6
Black Belt with its serious threat
at capitalism because of the Spe-
cially oppressed condition of its
concentrated Negro majority would
dissolve of itself. This argument,
together with the contention that
industrialization in the Black Belt
itself would turn the Negro peas
antry into a working class and
thus remove the objective condition
for national revolutionary strug-
gle in the Black Belt is also used
by the Lovestonites, renegades from
Communism, to deny the demand
for the right of determination
VIBRATIONS STRENGTHEN
LIBERATION STRUGGLE
But the mass migrations to the
North did not cut very deeply into
the Negro majority in the Black
Belt. While the Negroes were es-
Gaping in such large numbers from
peonage and unbearable conditions
on the cotton plantations, large
numbers of poor whites" were also
migrating into industry both in the
North and South. Moreover, the
number of Negroes going North was
almost equalled by the Negroes
leaving the plantations for indus
try on the border of the Black
Belt, the latter phase of the migra-
ton being a much older movement.
In accordance with their policy of
forcibly retarding the economic
growth of a subject people, the
Yankee imperialists had constructed
their main heavy industrial sec
tons with the exception of the
textile industry, from which Ne
groes are almost entirely excluded
not in the Black Belt proper, which
was forced to continue to serve it's
main function of supplying cheap
cotton, but outside of the Black
Belt.
8 This inner-southern migration
of the Negroes, far from removing
the conditions and necessity for a
revolutionary emancipation strug-
gle, strengthened that struggle and
its potential leaders. For these
Negro workers, with one foot still
in the soil, were increasing the
Negro working class in the South
and coming face to face with the
Southern white workers in indus
try, who, no matter how much i'm
bued with white chauYinism, are
bound to forge and are forging
bonds of solidarity with the Negroes
in the struggle against capitalism.
The struggle for liberation thus
entered with greater force into
southern industry, broadening the
field of that struggle and merging
with the whole struggle against
capitalism.
AS result of these developments
the population figures have changed
very little in the Black Belt since
1910. Over a period of 20 years
the total population in the Black
Belt proper increased by only
100000, while the Negro popula-
ton remained at the same figure.
THE SCHOLAR"
MAKES A DISCOVERY
Z From 1922 on. Negro migration
to the North diminished. Today
there is reverse movement among
the Negroes, part of the general
and yet incipient trend back to
farms, under the influence of the
deep crisis and widespread unem-
ployment. Government statistics
for 1890 and 1881 show that there
is more migration from the cities
to the farms than from the farms
to the cities.
To return to our New Leader"
scholar" may we not wonder by
what inhuman efforts of scholar
ship he has been able to discover
"gTeat Negro migration Ito the
north--J. Al going on the present
time?
THE Socialists" Of course, are
l but too glad to grasp at the
picture of dissolving Black Belt.
1t is a part Of their general con-
cept-or wish--that all the difficult
ties Of capitalism, all its contradic-
tons, will be removed in a peace
full, harmless and painless manner.
But the Black Belt remains, in
spite of migrations beginning even
in 1876, as a thorny problem in the
heart of capitalism and as an arena
on which revolutionary struggle
of inestimable aid and value to the
whole struggle OF the proletartat. is
maturing.