Nothing counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure,
and still more pressure through broad,
organized, aggressive mass action.
-A. Philip Randolph
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday August 28, 1918
New York City – Socialist Locals Organized Across Race Divide
From The Ohio Socialist of August 21, 1918:
-The following article is reprinted from The Messenger:
Negroes Organizing in
Socialist Party
Editors of The Messenger
The new negro is awakening. After having been the political Rip Van Winkle of America for fifty years, sleeping in the cesspools of Republican reaction, he has at last opened his eyes. In New York city, in the very heart of the negro settlement, there has been organized the Twenty-first Assembly District Socialist Branch, which includes all white and colored Socialists in the district. The branch has grown to about one hundred members in two weeks, all of whom are dues paying and in good standing.
The new negro leaders are pointing out the Republican party as the worst fraud under which negroes have been laboring.The Democratic party is openly against the negro. The Republican party is ever striking him a blow in the back. Either one or the other of those parties has been in power for the last fifty years, the Republicans the greater part of the time. The Jim Crowism, segregation, lynching, defranchisement and discrimination are as much the work of the Republican as the Democratic party. Jim Crowism railroads was upheld in a decision by Charles E. Hughes. Lynch laws thrived under McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft. The Grandfather disfranchisement laws were passed under the guardianship of the Republican party. The Summer Civil Rights bill was declared unconstitutional by the Republican Supreme Court.
Lastly the Republican party is the party of plutocracy, of wealth, of monopoly, of trusts, of big business. But the negroes-99 per cent. of them-are working people. They have nothing in common with big business and their employers. They ought to belong to the workers’ party. And that is the Socialist party. The object of the employer is to get the greatest amount of work from the laborer and to give the least amount of pay. The object of the laborer is to get the greatest amount of pay for the least amount of work. In a word, the interests of the employer and the employe are opposed.
What negro workers need is more wages for their work, shorter hours for leisure, recreation and education, and better conditions under which to work. The party which stands for these things is the Socialist party. It is also the party which stands at all times and in all countries against race prejudice. In fact many of the finest workers in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are Socialists. Instance Miss Mary White Ovington, its vice president. Let the colored people throughout the country get into the Socialist party. Organize in the branches. No prejudice will be found anywhere and you will become a power to be feared and respected throughout this nation.-The Messenger.
