The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-04-14
The Struggle for Negro Rights

FafIy, winch mas come Sharply 10 the 'front.' OF
our practical work, is the liberation Of the
Negro people from the special oppression
under which they suffer. In organizing and
leading the struggle for Negro rights, the Com
munist Party is carrying out the slogan first
enunciated by Karl Marx when he was or
ganizing international support by the Euro
pean workers to the emancipation of the Negro
chattel slaves in America. Marx said: Labor
in a white skin cannot be free while labor in
black skin is branded" The cause Of the
emancipation Of the Negroes from their spe-
cial oppression is inextricably bound up with
the cause Of the emancipation of the working
class from the oppression Of capitalism. Be-
cause our Party, as whole, has not yet firmly
mastered the theoretical basis for our Negro
program, it is necessary again at this conven-
ton to continue to discuss it.
From its inception, the Communist Party of
ths United States placed the demands for Negro
rights in it's program. In the first period Of
our work, up to 1929, we cannot claim any inn
portant results. This was because the
Party, in spite of its correct general oriental
ton. did not have a clear Bolshevik under
standing OF the Negro question as the problem
OF liberation Of an oppressed nation. The Party
had not yet entirely emancipated itself from
the limitation of the bourgeos-liberal approach
to Negro rights. nor from the social-democratic
denial of the Negro question with its formula
ts1st the Negro can find their emancipation
only with the establishment of Socialism, and
as a part OF the working class. The Party
however, was continually struggling with this
question and constantly raising it again for
discussion, AS result of this, the problem
was brought to the consideration of our World
Party at the Sixth Congress of the Communist
International. The resolution there worked out
subsequently elaborated by a special resolution
in October, 1880, finally armed our Party poll
tically for a decisive step forward in rousng
and organizing the liberation movement Of the
Negroes, in uniting Negro and white workers in
firm and unbreakable solidarity.
The characteristics of the position of the
Negroes in America as an oppressed nation is
expressed in: ID the fact that the basic Negro
population, engaged in cultivating the land, is
Systematically excluded from independent pos
session of the land which it cutivates; p that
it is thereby reduced to position OF semi
serfdom in the form of specially exploited
tenants and sharecroppers; 81 that this special
exploitation is enforced by q system of legal
and illegal discrimination, segregation, denial of
political rights, personal subsection to indi-
vidual exploiters, and all forms of violent OPP
preston eliminating in the most brutal and
barbarous system Of murder, that it has become
notorious all over the world as lynch-lsw It
is difficult to find anywhere in the world such
examples of harbarous tortures as are used in
America to enforce the special oppression of
the Negro people.
The historical origin and development of the
Negro population of America as chattel slaves
imported from Africa, together with their ready
Identification due to their special racial char
acteristics, have facilitated the efforts of the
whit v1,1i,1 oIor -,
situations and customs of special national OPP
preston that were set up following the smash
ing OF the system of chattel slavery in the
Civil War These things give the Negro ques-
ton its character as that of an oppressed ma
ton. The Negroes have never yet been eman-
cipated. The form Of their oppression was
only changed from that of chattel slavery.
which constituted an obstacle to the further
development OF capitalism, to the more mod
ern' forms Of so-called free labor (Which means
that the employer is freed from all obligation
when he has paid the hourly or daily starvation
wage), and half-fuedal forms Of share-cropping
etc, whereby an imperialist nation Expresses
and exploits a weak nation. The position Of
the masses Of the Negroes, as farmers denied
the possession of the land, is the foundation
Tor the special oppression of the Negro people
as whole. All phases Of struggle for Negro
IlsntS HusJ TAKE as their foundation and
starting place, therefore. the struggle for pos
session of the. land by the landless Negro
farmers. This can only be achieved by breaking
through the rule of the white landlord ruling
class, the carrying through of the agrarian rev.
olutlon, such as was carried through in Eu-
rope in the first half of the nineteenth CEN
fury when the foundations were laid by modern
capitalism. The agrarian revolution, that is,
the distribution of land among those who work
the land, is historically part of the bourgeois
democratic revolution. But this revolution was
never carried through entirely in any country,
and hardly at all in the weak nations; the pre-
capitalist social and economic forms of oppres-
sion and exploitation of the weak nations has
been carried over to modern times and incor-
porated into the systems of finance capital and
modern Imperialism
The struggle for the completion of the bour-
geois-democratic revolution for the Negroes. as
for other oppressed nations thus becomes TO-DAY
Collectively revolutionary struggle to over
throw imperialism AS such it is an ally of the
revolutionary proletariat against the common
enemy-finance capital. Such agrarian rev.
olution can be realized only through winning
national self-deternination for the Negroes in
that territory in which they constitute the
majority of the population and the basic pro
ductive force upon the land, or as a by-uroduct
OF victorious proletaran revolution in the
country as a whole. The basic slogan of Negro
liberation is therefore the slogan of self
determination; the basic demand Of the Me-
groes is the demand for the land Through
out the United States the struggle for Negro
liberation is expressed in the struggle for COM
pleCe equality, for the abolition of all seprega
lion laws and practices (Jim- Crowism) the