The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-07-11

The Supreme Courts of the States OF
Alabama and Georgia have brushed aside
the overwhelming evidence of the inno-
cence of the Scottsboro boys and Angelo
Herndon and have refused to reverse the
vicious verdict against these victims of class and
national oppression
The fact that the trials Of Herndon and the
scosboro boys reeked with prejudice, the fact that
the most elementary rights of the working class
and the Negro people were trampled underfoot-
all this means nothing to the highest legal tribunals
of these two Southern States.
The international Labor Defense presented evil
dence for the Scottsboro boys. One-tenth of this
evidence would have been sufficient in the ordinary
course of legal case, to warrant the freeing OF
the prisoners Yet in the face of all this, the
Alabama Supreme Court cynicaly states: we md
no error to reverse"
Sentence of death has again been passed
against two of the scottsborO boys. Angelo Hern-
dom heroic young leader of the white and Negro
workers Of Atlanta, after two years of torture in
JAIL is on his way to the chain-gang.
THE plan to murder the Scottsboro boys and
Angelo Herndon is the answer of the rulers and
the If courts to the rising rebellion of the white
workers and the Negro people. Against the misery
Of this rotten capitalist system a wave Of strikes
East and West workers of all races and nationai-
ties have struck against the denial Of their rights
against the slavery imposed on them by the New
Deal" and the MIRA. Bullets, tear-gas, and ma
chine-guns all the forces Of the government and
the employers have not been able to stop the
workers and the Negro people The Southern
workers especially, have struck against the vicious
wage dferentials.
In answer to these mass struggles, the govern
oaA1N aN,I han
ers, plan to throw into faces the charred
bodies of the nine Scottsboro boys, and the broken
body Of Angelo Herndon, done to death on the
rnurderous Georgia chain-gang.
The new DEGREES against the ScottSboro boys
and Herndon say plainly to the Negro masses:
You have no rights You servants and under
lings. You must stay in the place assigned you.
If you protest you will face the chain-gangS the
prisons, and the electric chair.
The decisions against Angelo Herndon and the
scottsboro boys are danger signal for every
worker every toiling farmer, every honest intel
lectual in the United States. These decisions in
volve far more than ten people. Fascist organi
cations of the kind that are numbering class
brothers in Germany are springing up all over the
country. The menace of fascism in America in
creases day by day. Such cases as these of Scots
boro and Herndon are the testing ground for fas-
cisn in the United State=the first feeers put out
by the Brown Beast
Just as Hitler to suppress the German masses,
tncites murder against the Jews, so the American
rulers to keep the workers divided to divert them
from the thought of their starvation and suffering,
to confuse them and keep them from joining in
solidarity against their common foe, lynches and
burns in the electric chair the Negro workers
The United States today is in upheaval. The
class lines tauter, the issues more sharply
drawn. The measures Of oppression
vicious.
TO MEET this situation, we must have a mightier
mass movement than ever before
Those who would betray the working class and
the Negro people-the misleaders of the N.A.A.CP,
of the Socialist Party, of the A. F. of L., and of
other organizations of this type-wiI tell us: The
Supreme Court will save the Scottsboro boys and
Angelo Herndon. Yes we will take these cases
before the Supreme Court. But this counsel to
put reliance in the ruling class courts is given to
weaken the organized campaign of the white and
Negro toers to force the freedom of these victims
There must be illusions about the Supreme
Court. The last Scottsboro decision by this highest
court refused to consider single one of the burn
ing issues involved in the case-the issues of prin-
ciple. 1t refused to pass on the question of the
right of Negroes to serve on juries. Since that
time, it has refused to consider the same question
as raised in the case of George Crawford another
Negro framed in the State of Virginia. Only the
mightieSt mass movement the most determined
action by white and Negro toilers can force the
Supreme Court, which is the supreme legal agent
of the white rulers, to hand down decision favor
ing the Scottsboro boys and Angelo Herndon.
The Supreme Courts Of Georgia and Alabama,
with the full support of the national government
of Roosevelt of the New Deal regime, has by
these decisions spat in the face of the Negro people
and the white working class. 1t has trampled
underfoot all our rights and refused as much as to
listen to our demands
What must be answer? The Communist
Party calls upon all organizations of workers and
of the Negro people, on all honest sincere intel
lectuals on all those willing to fight against op-
preston; to give unconditional support to the
League Of Struggle for Negro Rights and the Inter-
national Labor Defense in the fight to free the
Scottsboro boys and Angelo Herndon. In every
city broad united fronts should be organized con-
ferences should be called to plan the fight for the
freedom Of the Scottsboro boys and Herndon and
for Negro rights in a campaign that shall draw in
thousands Of workers never reached before United
front committees must lead this struggle-workers
farmers and inellectuals of every nationality, creed