The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1935-01-14
Gains Are Won
In the Arena
OF Class Fight
TwO.Fisted Policy of
Mass Defense Proved
to Be Correct
By ANNA DAMON

cases of Haywood Patterson ana
Clarence Norris, Scottsboro boys,
the International Labor Defense,
the whole working class and Negro
liberation movement can record a
very important partial victory,
This latest success, announced
Jan. 7, 1885, is one of a series Of
four gains of recent months on the
defense front under the leadership
q Of the LID, which have brought
= before the U. S. Supreme Court
Z two major defense cases of broadest
implications. These are the Scots
O. boro and Herndon cases.
h The first of these successes was
the freeing, on August 4, 1884, Of
Angelo Herndon, heroic young Ne
gro leader of black and white I'M
employed on SIS 900 cash bail raised
by mass subscription. Next came
the stay of execution for Haywood
~ Patterson and Clarence Norris from
Dec. 7 to Feb. 8, wrung from the
State Supreme Court Of Alabama.
This was followed by the acceptance
of the U. S. Supreme Court of the
appeal in the Herndon case, date
for the hearing of which has not
vet been set. With the Jan. 7
decision, the ground was cleared Of
the legal barriers with which the
court of last illusions" surrounds
itself, and the struggle has now be-
gun to force that court to reverse
the lynch decisions against Hern-
don, Patterson and Norris.
Won by Glass Struggle
These successes have been won
on a class battlefront that ex-
tended from corner to corner Of
the United States. The struggle
: around the Scottsboro case in the
United States was carried on in the
fight for the freedom Of literally
. thousands of strikers, unemployed,
poor farmers, and anti-fascists ar
rested throughout the country, in
the fight against lynching, and for
national liberation Of the Negro
people-a battle which has itself re-
ceived tremendous impetus from
the Scottsboro and Herndon cam
paigns.
The fight for Scottsboro and
Herndon cannot be divorced from
the fight for the freedom Of Tom
Z Mooney, a struggle into which mil
lions Of trade unionists and others
have been drawn, into which,
Z through its link with Scottsboro
thousands Of Negro people have
: been brought through an under
3 standing of the fundamental issues
involved in both cases.
The struggle cannot be separated
from the fight against criminal syn
dicalism charges and laws, now
raging countrywide, in which on
the same Jan. 7 which brought the
Supreme Court decision on the writ
of certiorari in the Scottsboro case,
s was recorded the victory Of the
freeing Of Is unemployed leaders
facing 1fe-terns in Jail on criminal
syndicalism and treason" charges
in TIillsboro, Illinois. These strug-
r giles have been definitely linked
: through the international Labor
Defense, which has bound the
thousands of defense cases through
out the country into broad COM
mon front of struggle, each case
strengthening every other.
Policies Proved Correct
The series OF partial victories in
the Scottsboro and Herndon cases,
and especially this latest achieve
ment Of workers defense, prove
once again the correctness of the
policies followed by the Interna-
tional Labor Defense = the two
listed policy of mass defense plus
the best available legal defense. It
Is the best answer that can be
given to the enemies Of the Scots
boro boys, Leibowitz, his cohorts
among the Negro reformists, led by
DR.. George E. Haynes and William
H. kid Davis of the Amsterdam
News" the editors of the Nation, .
and the leadership Of the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People.
Role Of Workers Press
Only the working class and revo-
lutionary press, together with some
portion of the Negro press, stood
by the Scottsboro boys and their
defenders without wavering. The
Daily Worker" organ of the Com
munist Party, the Negro LIBERIA
tor" organ of the League of Strug-
gle for Negro Rights, and the la
Dor Defender" official organ of the
LID. together with the revolution
airy press, became the only medium
through which the ScottSboro boys
defense could find expression.
These alignments of the agita-
tional forces were not only the sur
face indications of the political
alignments which underlay them,
of the coordinated reactionary front
of the New Deal of lynching, mis-
cry, and terror which stood opposed
to the united front of working class
and Negro liberation forces for the
lives and freedom of the Scottsboro
boys They formed a powerful Of
fensive weapon on the strength of
which the lynchers throughout the
South, thinking they saw weak
ening Of the Scottsboro defense
forces, launched new and fiercer
wave of terror against white and
Negro workers.
The LID. met these attacks
boldly, and marching forward
steadily with its legal steps in
which Osmond K. Fraenkel and
Walter H. Pollak, constitutional
authorities, the latter the same
lawyer who prepared the legal pap
ers and conducted the argument in
the first successful U. S. Supreme
Court appeal in the case in 1884,
were retained, proceeded along the
road that history had set for IL. Of