Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 26, 1921 Mary White Ovington Reviews “The Voice of the Negro” by Robert T. Kerlin
From the Chicago Broad Ax of November 19, 1921:
BOOK CHAT-BY MARY WHITE OVINGTON -CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE….. —————
“THEVOICE OF THE NEGRO” By Robert T. Kerlin ——-
(Published by E. P.Dutton & Co., 681 Fifth Ave., New York City, Price $2.50, postage 12 cents.)
Mr. Robert T. Kerlin, professor at Virginia Military Institute, last June wrote a letter to the Governor of Arkansas, in which he declared it would be a crime against the Creator, if the six colored men [The Moore Defendants-six of the Elaine 12] condemned to death, were executed. “Were they to suffer death,” he said, “they would be crucified.” Shortly after this statement, he was asked to resign by the Board of Virginia Military Institute. Refusing to do this, he was dismissed. This courageous letter to the Governor of Arkansas was the culmination of a number of acts sympathetic to the Negro, that had evidently grated against the sensibilities of the Board of Virginia Military Institute.
Probably “The Voice of the Negro,” the book which Mr. Kerlin’s publishers put out in 1920, was one of his heinous offenses. This book presents to the reader a careful synopsis of Negro opinion, as voiced through its press for four months succeeding the Washington riot. To quote from the preface, “virtually the entire Afro-American press consisting of two dailies, a dozen magazines, and nearly three hundred weeklies, has been drawn upon.” “When I told the publisher,” Mr. Kerlin goes on to say “that I was making this compilation, he remarked that my book would make disagreeable reading. There are worse things than disagreeable reading.”…..
———————-
[Photograph added.]
Note: By last June, when Kerlin wrote to the Arkansas Governor, the Elaine 12 had become the Ware Defendants and the Moore Defendants (6 in each group). The Ware Defendants had won another retrial, scheduled for June 1921, but since postponed. The Moore Defendants were scheduled for execution on June 10th, which execution was delayed by one brave judge. As of this date, the Ware defendants are yet awaiting their 3rd trial. The Moore Defendants have won a hearing before the U. S. Supreme Court.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 20, 1920
Bogalusa, Louisiana – Union Men Massacred by Loyalty Leaguers
From The Liberator of January 1920:
Bogalusa
By Mary White Ovington
The New York Times November 23, 1919
ON Saturday morning, November 22, in the town of Bogalusa, in the state of Louisiana, three men marched down the street. One was black; the other two, armed, walking on either side, were white. A negro criminal, one says at once, guarded by two officers of the law. No, there was no look of criminal or of policeman on anyone of the three faces. Those men, marching abreast, one black, the others white, were brothers, comrades-in-arms in the interminable battle of the worker for the product of his toil. The black man had dared to organize in a district where organization meant at the least exile, at the most, a death by lynching. On either side of him two white union men, carpenters by trade, risked by their espousal of the black man’s cause, not only their lives, but, if they were permitted to live, their reputations. They knew every vile taunt the cheap type of southerner, whom Dixie has made familiar to the world, would cast upon them. Yet together the three men marched down the broad highway of the Southern lumber town.
Unionism is far from popular in Bogalusa. The town is controlled by the Great Southern Lumber Company which this autumn ordered 2500 union men to destroy their union cards. Those refusing were thrown out of work. The Lumber Company has at its command the Loyalty League, a state organization formed during the war, not of soldiers but of men at home, part of whose business it was to see that every able-bodied man (Negro understood) should work at any task, at any wage, and for any hours that the employer might desire. They had back of them the State “work or fight law,” and might put to work men temporarily unemployed, save that the provision of the act did not apply to “persons temporarily unemployed by reasons of differences with their employers such as strikes or lockouts.”
Under this legislation it was small wonder that unionism was forbidden by the Lumber Company; or that, though the war was ended, the Loyalty League continued its work. Returning soldiers joined it, and the night before the three men marched down the city street five hundred armed Leaguers held up a train half-a-mile from the railroad station and searched it for undesirables. Failing to get anyone on the train, they turned back into town and proceeded to chase undesirables there. A number of union negroes were beaten up, but their chief quarry, Saul Dechus [Dacus], president of the local timberman’s union, they could not find. They wanted the “nigger” to be handed to them to be lynched, and failing to get him, they went discontented to their homes.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 23, 1919
State of Arkansas Sanctions Legalized Lynching of Twelve Union Men
From The New Solidarity of December 20, 1919:
TWELVE UNION NEGROES SENTENCED TO GALLOWS
A wholesale judicial lynching threatens to be the outcome of the recent situation in Arkansas, where a protest on the part of a group of Negroes known as the Farmers Protective Union [Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America] has resulted in a general charge of conspiracy against all the Negroes of the community. One hundred and twenty-two have been brought to trial. On the flimsiest evidence, sixty have been sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to twenty-one years. After a trial lasting exactly seven minutes, twelve have been condemned to die. This hideous travesty upon justice has been well called “legalized lynching”
———-
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From The New York Age of December 20, 1919:
NEW BRUNSWICK FOLK GIVE TO DEFENCE FUND
NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J.-Acting on the suggestion of THE AGE that a fund ought to be raised for the defense of the colored men convicted and sentenced to be executed in Elaine (Arkansas) riots, the citizens of this, town, through M. J. Preston, have raised and forwarded $68.25 to Miss Mary White Ovington, chairman of the executive committee. N. A. A. C. P.
[There follows a list of person who made donations (from $.25 to $5.00) to the Defence Fund.]
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.
Nothing counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure through broad, organized, aggressive mass action. -A. Philip Randolph ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday July 9, 1918
New York, New York – Randolph and Owen Recommend Socialist Party
From The Messenger of July 1918:
The editors of The Messenger decry the Republican and Democratic Parties as they give enthusiastic support to the Socialist Party of America.
—–
NEGROES ORGANIZING IN SOCIALIST PARTY
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 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, disfranchisement and discrimination are as much the work of the Republican as the Democratic party. Jim Crowism railroads was upheld in a decision by Chas. E. Hughes. Lynch laws thrived under McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft. The Grandfather disfranchisement laws were passed under the guardianship of the Republican party. The Sumner 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 employee are opposed.
———————-
———-
———-