St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1944-03-31


tradition of equality, and on our
Good Neighbor Policy towards the
21 Latin-American republics.
Last week 1 pointed out how the
new Good Neighbor policy of Presi-
dent Franklin D. Roosevelt was
bringing the colored Negro-Indian
majority of Latin America jobs,
hospitals, schools, and luxuries like
sewing machines that they had
never had during that long night
mare of 'big-stick" imperialism. I
pointed out that these new, good
things for our colored brothers of
Latin-America would help US ham,
mer out a good neighbor policy for
Mississippi and Georgia as well as
Mexico and Guatemala.
That's the way most Americans
feel about it since most Americans
are neither lynchers nor landlords.
That's not the way Jim Crow feels
about it and the old scoundrel has a
lot of his friends scattered through
Congress and our State Depart
ment.
Recently, a leading Negro news
paper revealed in blistering ex-
pose that Confederates in the State
Department had forced Negro Haiti
to shame herself before all democ-
racies by drawing color distinctions
between light-skinned and dark
skinned Haitians.
Haiti, it was said, was bringing
all of her dark-skinned diplomats
home from the United States and
seeing to it that almost white people
were her sole representatives in this
country which fought a bloody Civil
War for the freedom of all colored
peoples-whether they were pure
black, mulatto, or light octoroon.
Pm not excusing President Ellie
Lescot and the rest of Haiti's Of
ficial family for appeasing Dixie
when point out that more than
$1O,000,000 of American sugar trust
cash is invested in Haiti. The
American dollars that control the
country are, in turn, controlled by
sugar trust outfits like the Haitian
Agricultural Corporation and the
Haitian American Development
Company.
Both of these corporations are
among the old Big Stick imperialist
outfits that gained a foothold in
Latin America, with the assistance
of United States marines who shot
and murdered rebellious colored
peoples under the gentle guidance
of that old frebag, President Theo-
dore Roosevelt.
Both of them, along with United
Fruit, Standard Oil, and other giant
American trusts, hate the Good
Neighbor policy because it means
paying wages of more than a quar-
ter a day to colored workers. It
means that they'll have to stop their
policy of giving some cream to ma
tive aristocrats-like many of the
Haitian mulattoes who acted as
their straw bosses over the rest of
the people.
But the peoples of Latin America
will maintain their tradition of
equality and fraternity whatever
the funny business that may be
pulled by corporations and govern
ments.
Equality comes easy to them; was
it not the Negroes and Indians who,
time after time, forced the wishy-
washy white aristocracy to keep on
fighting for independence against
imperial Spain when the aristocrats
sought compromises that would
have benefited them but would
have harmed the colored peoples.
The spirit of equality and fra
ternity has already beaten Old Man
Jim Crow across boundary lines and
into countries where coIored people
form very small percentages of the
populations. Costa Rica, where the
population is overwhelmingly white,
recently repealed her Chinese Ex-
clusion Law, following the lead of
Cuba, whose people, by a generous
estimate, are no more than fifty per
| rent white