Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 3, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Ben Fletcher Imprisoned for Principle
From The Messenger of August 1919:
Ben Fletcher
Fellow Worker Ben Fletcher
Negro newspapers seldom publish anything about men who are useful to the race. Some parasite, ecclesiastical poltroon, sacerdotal tax gatherer, political faker or business exploiter will have his name in the papers, weekly or daily. But when it comes to one of those who fights for the great masses to lessen their hours of work, to increase their wages, to decrease their high cost of living, to make life more livable for the toiling black workers-that man is not respectable for the average Negro sheet.
Such a man is Ben Fletcher. He is one of the leading organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World, commonly known as I. W. W. He is in the Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas, where he was sent for trying to secure better working conditions of colored men and women in the United States. He has a vision far beyond that of almost any Negro leader whom we know. He threw in his lot with his fellow white workers, who work side by side with black men and black women to raise their standard of living. It is not uncommon to see Negro papers have headlines concerning a Negro who had committed murder, cut some woman’s throat, stolen a chicken or a loaf of bread, but those same papers never record happenings concerning the few Negro manly men who go to prison for principle. Ben Fletcher is in Leavenworth for a principle-a principle which when adopted, will put all the Negro leaders out of their parasitical jobs that principle is that to the workers belongs the world, but useful work is not done by negro leaders.
We want to advocate and urge that Negro societies, lodges, churches, N. A. A. C. P. branches and, of course, their labor organizations begin to protest against the imprisonment of Ben Fletcher and to demand his release. He has been of more service to the masses of the plain Negro people than all the wind jamming Negro leaders in the United States.
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