The Omaha guide., 1946-03-30
er, not an Italian worker, not a Jewish, q Caihoi.c, a P-o.-
estant workers, but just an American.
Released by Calvin's News Service

neeaScS y lawns News Service
About the same time that the uniformed and un-uniform-
ed hoOdlums of Columbia, Tennessee, celebrated the end Of
brotherhood Week" by terrorizing the towns Negro in-
habitants, mounted policemen rode down and dubbed
piekets at the General Electric plant in Philadelphia.
The two events are not unrelated. Philadelphia police
were enforcing an order banning effective pickeiing. The
order was issued by a capitalist court in the interest of a
powerful capitalist corporation. The police enforced IL
via the familiar method Of .erroristic violence which il cal
culated to COW the workers.
True, there was no strike at Columbia. But Colun.bia's
5000 Negro citizens constitute the towns reservoir Of
cheap labor. And the fear exists in Columbia, as il does
throughout the South, that the Negroes wartime expcr-
fence in war plants, shipyards and the armed services, has
made them "uppity"-that is, less docile.
1t is a fact, amply attested to by history, that ruling class
es have but one method of dealing with workers who slough
off dOciity-terrorism. 1t is the method of Imperialism
in dealing with colonial slaves. Ii is the capitalists uIti-
mate method of breaking strikes. From the so-called Re-
construction Era to the present il has been the method of
the Southern plunderbund, when all others seemed to fail,
of keeping the Negro in a submissive pattern of behavior.
Terrorism-the policy of overwhelming subjugated peo.
pie with violence, is a calculated policy. Inspired by fear
that resides in the back Of the minds Of oppressors even i'm
the most peaceful of times, its purpose is to crush the
rebelliOus spirit by demonstrating the sfutility' of claI-
longing the Oppressor's power. Ny
have said that the events at PHILADELPHIA and Columbia
are related. They are. But it is easy to draw many dis
tinctiOns between them. The Philadelphia police acted m-
der the lava fact Of dubious solace to The workers who
had their heads cracked, but a fact nevertheless. The po-
lice, highway patrOlmen, miitiamen and plain hoodlums
who unleashed terror on C~oumbia's Negro community
scOrned legal sanction. Indoctrinated by a 'white suprem
acy" culture which implicitly denies the Negro equality
under the law, they forced their way violently into DWELL
ings and searched them without warrants, dubbed and ar
rested the occupants who attempted to assert their lawful
rights, and otherwise depOrted themselves in the lynch
spirit which has always been the ultimate expression of
their "cluture."
Obviously, the whole pattern Of racist thought in the
South is caluculated to encourage violent and overt acts B.
gainst the Negro, to deny him his elementary and constitu-
tional rights, and to keep him in his place. But what ID
This place?' The a~poogist for ''white supremacy says
the phrase has a social application only. But the facts of
the economy in the South give him the lie. The facts show
that the Negroes 'place' is almost any job that is mental,
dirty, repulsive or back-breaking, and for which the wages
are SO low that it is often more economical for the exploit
ers to hire a hundred Negroes than buy one machine.
The brutal assault on Columbia's Negro inhabitants was
an &C tot racial terrorism. But lurking behind the vicious
racist spirit, and secreting it as a rattlesnake secretes ven-
ON, is the same hatred that erupted in the savage attack on
pickets in Philadelphia-hatred of labor!