The Michigan chronicle. [volume] (Detroit, Mich.) 1936-current, 1942-05-16
OUR MANPOWER

being made ready for the production of war goods
in order that Hitler and his satellites may be de-
stroyed as soon as humanity possible. Men and wom-
en- are being employed hourly in this desperate and
determined struggle to rid the world Of the Nazi
menace But, alas, these jobs still have sign on
them, "For white only" and these men and women
who are being employed hourly are still chosen on
the basis of color of their skin. The employers here
are still trying to make this white mans war.
Though ANXIOUS to work to defeat the enemy,
black men and women roam the Streets idle Despite
all of the announcements from government and
industry, our nanpower wastes While the Japanese
advance. Green white workers from the hills OF
Kentucky and from Tobacco Road can get jobs
denied to Negroes who have factory experience and
these white workers are being imported to Detroit
while we stand idle As long Hitler has an office
in the Fisher building, and shapes the employment
policy of General Motors we have to feel that
this is white mans war As long as Negotiating
fascsts in Congress and the government condone
and support this discrimination and Jim Crowlsm,
we intend to fight them for all we worth, for
they are the enemy.
Are we arguing and protesting for our selfish
interests only? No! In denouncing these traitors
and hate-mongers within our gates, are seeking
to save democracy here These sinking little Hitlers
who-deny us jobs are giving comfort to the enemy,
they are sabotaging democracy at its fountan-head
The brilliant editor of the New York daily news
paper, M, Ralph Ingersol, painted the frightful
picture of this American scene last Saturday in an
editorial which we believe should be carved in granite
on the courthouse square of every county in the
nation. We reprint Ingersos editorial in full.
a would like to put the question of discrimina-
ton against Negroes in America in its simplest
terms:
Look into your hearts, you people who will not
give fellow American job because his skin is
darker than yours, you people who will not sit down
to eat with him. you who refuse to ride by his side
in a train: Do you hate an American Negro more
than you hate Hitler and everything he stands for?
"You are afraid perhaps that if the Negro has
proper schooling, is well trained, he will get your
job? If So you are very foolish white man, for in
many sections of the U.S.A. the reason your wages
are higher is that the Negro has been intimdated
into taking less But even you really think this isn't
so, ask yourself: are you more afraid of the Negro
than you are of the Reichswehr?
Because that, Mr.. and Mrs. White American,
is what it is all going to boil down to before this
is over. If enough of you hate and fear the good
American Negro more than you hate and fear Adolf
Hitler your children going to grow up under
gauleers. For if it were left to you you would lose
and fight with the Negro whose good right arm
whose quick willingness to learn, whose eagerness
to serve his country you need now.
81 would even put it this way: you need the
Negro more than he needs you - for you have more
freedom than he to lose.
"Ask anyone who has been to Europe during
this war if he thinks any nation stand up against
Hitler with 10 per cent of its manpower unused.
81 am not, obviously, writing this editorial to
people who agree with me. l am writing to people
who are not moved by the monstrous immortality of
being compacent at home about the very practices
we fight to destroy abroad, to the ones who have
learned nothing from the last 10 years in Europe
Hitler has demonstrated what kind of country
racial theorism eventually produces - country of
concentration camps and forced labor country with
out decency self-respect, without Kindness with
out religion grace. And am writing to the simply
insensitive ones who are of good heart, but never
have thought Of these things.
"And what am saying, to repeat, is very simple:
this country is not strong enough to go on perse-
cuting-discrintnatmg against-1O per cent of its
population and win the war, too We will either live
by our democratic prncples-all men are created
5rao and ,-o riI1 die ma po+;on ,fto,.