12 12 The demise of Reconstruction and the consolidation of Jim Crow segregation did not destroy efforts to build coalitions between black and white working-class and poor people in the South. The rapid expansion of industries in southern states created the basis for the growth of biracial unions. The documents reprinted here illustrate that a significant number of African-American and white workers recognized their common class interests.
A NEGRO WOMAN SPEAKS
I am a colored woman, wife and mother. I have lived all my life in the South, and have often thought what a peculiar fact it is that the more ignorant the Southern whites are of us the more vehement they are in their denunciation of us. They boast that they have little intercourse with us, never see us in our homes, churches or places of amusement, but still they know us thoroughly.
They also admit that they know us in no capacity except as servants, yet they say that we are at our best in that single capacity. What philosophers they are! The Southerners saw we Negroes are a happy, laughing set of people, with no thought of tomorrow. How mistaken they are! The educated, thinking Negro is just the opposite. There is a feeling of unrest, insecurity, almost panic among the best class of Negroes in the South. In our homes, in our churches, wherever two or three are gathered together, there is a discussion of what is best to do. Must we remain in the South or go elsewhere? Where can we go to feel that security which other people feel? Is it best to go in great numbers or only in several families? These and many other things are discussed over and over.
People who have security in their homes, whose children can go on the street unmolested, whose wives and daughters are treated as women, cannot, perhaps, sympathize with the Southern Negro’s anxieties and complaints. I ask forbearance of such people….
I know of houses occupied by poor Negroes in which a respectable farmer would not keep his cattle. It is impossible for them to rent elsewhere. All Southern real estate agents have “white property” and “colored property.” In one of the largest Southern cities there is a colored minister, a graduate of Harvard, whose wife is an educated, Christian woman, who lived for weeks in a tumble-down rookery because he could neither rent nor buy in a respectable locality.
Many colored women who wash, iron, scrub, cook or sew all the week to help pay the rent for these miserable hovels and help fill the many small mouths, would deny themselves some of the necessaries of life if they could take their little children and teething babies on the cars to the parks of a Sunday afternoon and sit under the trees, enjoy the cool breezes and breathe God’s pure air for only two or three hours; but this is denied them. Some of the parks have signs, “No Negroes allowed on these grounds except as servants.” Pitiful, pitiful customs and laws that make war on women and babes! There is no wonder that we die; the wonder is that we persist in living.
Fourteen years ago I had just married. My husband had saved sufficient money to buy a small home. On account of our limited means we went to the suburbs, on unpaved streets, to look for a home, only asking for a high, healthy locality. Some real estate agents were “sorry, but had nothing to suit,” some had “just the thing,” but we discovered on investigation that they had “just the thing” for an unhealthy pigsty. Others had no “colored property.” One agent said that he had what we wanted, but we should have to go to see the lot after dark, or walk by and give the place a casual look; for, he said, “all the white people in the neighborhood would be down on me.” Finally we bought this lot. When the house was being built we went to see it. Consternation reigned. We had ruined this neighborhood of poor people; poor as we, poorer in manners at least. The people who lived next door received the sympathy of their friends. When we walked on the street (there were no sidewalks) we were embarrassed by the stare of many unfriendly eyes.
Two years passed before a single woman spoke to me, and only then because I helped one of them when a little sudden trouble came to her. Such was the reception, I a happy young woman, just married, received from people among whom I wanted to make a home. Fourteen years have now passed, four children have been born to us, and one has died in this same home, among these same neighbors. Although the neighbors speak to us, and occasionally one will send a child to borrow the morning’s paper or ask the loan of a pattern, not one woman has ever been inside of my house, not even at the times when a woman would doubly appreciate the slightest attention of a neighbor.
The Southerner boasts that he is our friend; he educates our children, he pays us for work and is most noble and generous to us. Did not the Negro by his labor for over three hundred years help to educate the white man’s children? Is thirty equal to three hundred? Does a white man deserve praise for paying a black man for his work?
The Southerner also claims that the Negro get justice. Not long ago a Negro man was cursed and struck in the face by an electric-car conductor. The Negro knocked the conductor down and although it was clearly proven in a court of “justice” that the conductor was in the wrong the Negro had to pay a fine of $10. The judge told him “I fine you that much to teach you that you must respect white folks.” The conductor was acquitted. “Most noble judge! A second Daniel!” This is the South’s idea of justice.
A noble man, who has established rescue homes for fallen women all over the country, visited a Southern city. The women of the city were invited to meet him in one of the churches. The fallen women were especially invited and both good and bad went. They sat wherever they could find a seat, so long as their faces were white; but I, a respectable married woman, was asked to sit apart. A colored woman, however respectable, is lower than the white prostitute. The Southern white woman will declare that no Negro women are virtuous, yet she places her innocent children in their care….
The Southerner says “the Negro must keep in his place.” That means the particular place the white man says is his…. A self-respecting colored man who does not cringe but walks erect, supports his family, educates his children, and by example and precept teaches them that God made all men equal, is called a “dangerous Negro”; “he is too smart”; “he wants to be white and act like white people.” Now we are told that the Negro has the worst traits of the whole human family and the Southern white man the best; but we must not profit by his example or we are regarded as “dangerous Negroes.”
White agents and other chance visitors who come into our homes ask questions that we must not dare ask their wives. They express surprise that our children have clean faces and that their hair is combed. You cannot insult a colored woman, you know….
There are aristocrats in crime, in poverty and in misfortune in the South. The white criminal cannot think of eating or sleeping in the same part of the penitentiary with the Negro criminal. The white pauper is just as exclusive; and although the blind cannot see color, nor the insane care about it, they must be kept separate, at great extra expense. Lastly, the dead white man’s bones must not be contaminated with the dead black man’s….
Whenever a crime is committed, in the South the policemen look for the Negro in the case. A white man with face and hands blackened can commit any crime in the calendar. The first friendly stream soon washes away his guilt and he is ready to join in the hunt to lynch the “big, black burly brute.” When a white man in the South does commit a crime, that is simply one white man gone wrong. If his crime is especially brutal he is a freak or temporarily insane. If one low, ignorant black wretch commits a crime, that is different. All of us must bear his guilt. A young white boy’s badness is simply the overflowing of young animal spirits; the black boy’s badness is badness, pure and simple….
When we were shouting for Dewey, Sampson, Schley and Hobson, and were on tiptoe to touch the hem of their garments, we were delighted to know that some of our Spanish-American heroes were coming where we could get a glimpse of them. Had not black men helped in a small way to give them their honors? In the cities of the South, where these heroes went, the white school children were assembled, flags were waved, flowers strewn, speeches made, and “My Country, ’tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty,” was sung. Our children who need to be taught so much, were not assembled, their hands waved no flags, they threw no flowers, heard no thrilling speech, sang no song of their country. And this is the South’s idea of justice. Is it surprising that feeling grows more bitter, when the white mother teaches her boy to hate my boy, not because he is mean, but because his skin is dark? I have seen very small white children hang their black dolls. It is not the child’s fault, he is simply an apt pupil.
Someone will at last arise who will champion our cause and compel the world to see that we deserve justice; as other heroes compelled it to see that we deserved freedom.
THE RACE QUESTION A CLASS QUESTION
“There is no clash between the white man of the South and the negro of MY CLASS!” said John Mitchell, Jr., President of the Mechanics’ Savings Bank of Richmond, Va., at the convention of the Bankers’ Association in New York City. Mr. Mitchell declared that no color line was drawn between the “better class” of whites and the “better class” of blacks, and that the negro was learning that as a business man the negro would be respected and not discriminated against. “He was received with enthusiasm and his brief remarks proved to be one of the memorable features of the convention. Among the Southern delegates a feeling of genuine satisfaction was expressed and they united in praising Mr. Mitchell’s speech,” says the New York Evening Post. And when the colored banker had finished and was being cheered and congratulated on all sides, the bankers were roused to new enthusiasm by a response from one of the South’s best-known financiers, Col. Robert J. Lowry of Atlanta, who said: “I am delighted to hear from my Southern brother. There is no fight, no hostility, between his class and my race in Georgia—or anywhere else. I am glad to hear this gentleman from Virginia. The gentleman is right in what he says.”
This touching scene in which the Southern white capitalist greeted the black capitalist as a gentleman and a brother in a striking proof of the fact that the race question is at bottom, like all other questions, a class question.
It is undoubtedly true that the negro has suffered much discrimination and outrage merely because of race feeling, and on the surface it may seem that the hatred of blacks is wholly caused, by repugnance to those of another race. But the real source of this race feeling is to be found in the fact that the negroes AS A RACE were once, as slaves, almost the sole working class in the North together with the fact that most of them are now working people—wage slaves instead of chattel slaves.
The nonproductive ruling class, whether it be a slave-holding class or capitalist class, always looks down upon and despises the other class which toils and sweats for it and feeds it and produces all the wealth upon which it lives in luxury. The capitalist’s contempt of the white workingman is restrained only by the consideration that it is necessary to get his vote, by the fact that it is necessary to maintain the illusion of social and political equality in order to keep the white workingman contented with his lot. The white workingman is used to believing himself “as good as any man” and it is therefore necessary for the capitalists to keep up this flattering illusion in order to persuade him to continue to submit to the present industrial system of legalized robbery. But because the negro working class is not long used to political freedom, and because the master class of the South once owned him bodily as a chattel slave, the contempt of the Southern ruling class for the negro workingman is entirely unrestrained, and the negro’s age-long habit of submission is taken advantage of to throw out his vote or disfranchise him.
That the Southerner’s contempt for the negro is not really based on any physical repugnance to him as a person is proven by the fact that the rich whites of the South think nothing of tolerating the presence of the black man as a personal servant waiting upon them, shaving them, attending them in baths and performing all sorts of services which bring the colored man into the closest personal contact with his master. And the thousands of mulattoes in the South are living proofs that many of the white men who express their horror at the thought of “social equality” freely enter into the most intimate of all personal relations with the women of the black race, as did many of the old slaveholders who considered their female slaves as sexual property as well as sources of material profit.
As a matter of fact there is no “social equality” between the workingmen and the rich men of any race. The white capitalist moves in the “cultured and respectable society” of his own class and would regard as preposterous and abhorrent the idea of receiving the “coarse and vulgar workingman” on a basis of equality; the workingman is admitted to his circles only in a despised menial capacity in some places special street cars for workingmen have been proposed (just as the South has its “Jim Crow” cars for negroes) in order that the fine ladies and gentlemen of the capitalist class may not have to soil themselves by riding in the same cars with “the dirty, ignorant workingmen.”
That the Southern capitalist has no more regard for the workingman of his own race than he has for the negro is shown by the fact that wherever white working-men go on strike, the capitalists never hesitate to replace them with negro scabs, and the black man who will do any equal amount of work for less wages can always get the job of the white. When a question of capitalist profit is involved race lines disappear and class division, regardless of race, stands out clearly for all to see. And that the negro is despised by the Southern upper class really for the reason that he is a workingman, and consequently poor, is proven by the fact that both the negroes and the prosperous whites consider the “poor white trash” of the South still lower than the black race itself.
The speech of the colored capitalist at the convention of the Bankers’ Association, and the way to which it was received by the Southern gentry present, prove that the Southern capitalist does not say: “All ‘coons’ look alike to me.” To the Southern capitalist the black banker is evidently a “gentleman” and a brother in the fraternity of capitalist parasites, but the black workingman is despised as a “loafer” and an inferior being, as is the white workingman. And the black banker has a delightfully simple solution of the race problem: Just let all negroes become bankers or business men and then they will be respected and race hatred will disappear. White workingmen are familiar with the same advice: Just let them save enough capital out of their wages, by the practise of industry, thrift, frugality and other capitalist virtues, to compete with multi-million-dollar trusts and then they will be eminently respectable citizens.
It is part of the instinctive policy of the capitalist class to perpetuate itself by creating and playing upon race hatred in order to keep workingmen of all races and nationalities from uniting to overthrow the infamous industrial system by which the capitalists profit. And it is also part of capitalist policy to use a weaker race to undermine the efforts of the more intelligent workingmen to better their conditions and emancipate their class. So it happens that Booker T. Washington and other prominent colored men are coddled by the ruling capitalist class and need to teach the colored men to be hardworking, submissive and contented under the tyranny of capitalism….
Booker T. Washington, the best type of the negro leader who is entirely satisfactory to the capitalist, has recently been put to a crucial test on the question of working class vs. capitalist class. During the recent great meat strike, in which so many of his race were used as strike breakers, he was asked by the union of the workers in the stockyards to address a meeting, which both union and non-union workingmen were invited to attend, on the question: “Should negroes act as strike breakers?” In this position, so awkward for a man who has dined with the capitalist President who stands for the “open shop,” Booker escaped by pleading the convenient excuse of “a previous engagement” which would prevent his being present.
Some negro papers openly advise the colored man to show his “faithfulness” and his industrial power by taking a job wherever he can get it, even if he is thus helping to break a strike, and promise that this will result in capitalist favor and respect; notwithstanding the fact that the strike breaker is always despised even by the capitalist himself and kicked out when he can no longer be used.
The Socialist movement, on the other hand, appeals to all workingmen, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude (but with very lively regard to present condition of servitude), to realize that their interests are in common and against the interests of all capitalists and to unite to overthrow capitalist rule.
Many of the Southern trade unions are realizing this, in some measure, by admitting the negroes to membership equally with the white, just as the bankers recognize their common class interest by welcoming the negro banker.
To the negro Socialism says: As a workingman you are oppressed by your capitalist boss as you were as a slave by your master, you are enslaved and robbed of the product of your labor under wage-slavery as you were under chattel slavery; you must unite with all other workingmen in the Socialist movement to free yourselves.
To the white workingman Socialism says: “If you do not realize your common interests with your black fellow-workman he will be used against you by the capitalist, who is the enemy of both of you. You must recognize that his interests as a workingman are the same as yours and must enroll him as a comrade in the fight against capitalism.
And to the white Southerner who fears the bugaboo of “social equality” with the negro, and objects to Socialism on that ground, it may be said. No one who objects to “social equality” with the negro, or with anyone else, can be forced to associate with those who are uncongenial to them under Socialism or under any other system. No one need invite to his home or seek the company of those who are displeasing to him. Socialism stands for political and economic equality, and in all public relations men of all races must have the same rights as human beings; but private association is a matter for each individual to decide for himself. And finally it should be remembered that as repugnance to the colored man has its chief source in his subservient position as a worker, together with all the lack of advantages which that position implies, therefore under Socialism, when opportunity for education and culture will be open to all, the negro and all others who are now crushed and degraded by capitalism will develop to a point where they will no longer be “inferior,” and consequently no longer repellent or uncongenial.
NEGRO WORKERS!
Don’t Allow Yourselves to be Divided from Your Fellow Workers by the Vicious Lumber Trust.
To all Negro Workers, and especially to the Negro Forest and Lumber Workers of the South, we send this message and appeal:
Fellow Worker:
When the forest slaves of Louisiana and Texas revolted against peonage and began, about two years ago, the organization of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, an industrial union taking in all the workers in the sawmills and camps, the lumber kings at once recognized the power inherent in such a movement and immediately began a campaign of lying and violence against the Union and all persons connected with it or suspected of sympathizing with us.
First among the cries they raised against us was, of course, the bunco cries of “white supremacy” and “social equality” coupled with that other cry: “They are organizing negroes against whites!” which the capitalists and landlords of the South and their political buzzard and social carrion crows always raise in order to justify the slugging and assassination of white and colored working men who seek to organize and better the condition of their class. From the day you, the negro workers were “freed,” down to the present hour these cries have been used to cloak the vilest crimes against workers, white and colored, and to hide the wholesale rape of the commonwealth of the South by as soulless and cold blooded a set of industrial scalawags and carpetbaggers as ever drew the breath of life.
For a generation, under the influence of these specious cries, they have kept us fighting each other—we to secure the “white supremacy” of a tramp and YOU the “social equality” of a vagrant. Our fathers “feel for it,” but we, their children, have come to the conclusion that porterhouse steaks and champagne will look as well on your tables as on those of the industrial scalawags and carpetbaggers; that the “white supremacy” that means starvation wages and child slavery for us and the “social equality” that means the same for you, though they may mean the “high life” and “Christian civilization” to the lumber kings and landlords, will have to go. As far as we, the workers of the South, are concerned, the only “supremacy” and “equality” they have ever granted us is the supremacy of misery and the equality of rags. This supremacy and this equality we, the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, mean to stand no longer than we have an organization big and strong enough to enforce our demands, chief among which is “A man’s life for all the workers in the mills and forests of the South.” Because the negro workers comprise one-half or more of the labor employed in the Southern lumber industry, this battle cry of ours, “A man’s life for all the workers,” has been considered a menace and therefore a crime in the eyes of the Southern oligarchy, for they, as well as we, are fully alive to the fact that we can never raise our standard of living and better our conditions so long as they can keep us split, whether on race, craft, religions or national lines, and they have tried and are trying all these methods of division in addition to their campaign of terror, wherein deeds have been and are being committed that would make Diaz blush with shame, they are so atrocious in their white-livered cruelty. For this reason, that they sought to organize all the workers, A. L. Emerson, president of the Brotherhood, and 63 other Union men, are now in prison at Lake Charles, La. under indictment, as a result of the Massacre of Grabow where three Union men and one Association gunman were killed, charged with murder in the first degree, indicted for killing their own brothers, and they will be sent to the gallows, or, worse, to the frightful penal farms and levees of Louisiana, unless a united working class comes to their rescue with the funds necessary to defend them and the action that will bring them all free of the grave and levees.
Further words are idle. It is a useless waste of paper to tell you, the negro workers, of the merciless injustice of the Southern Lumber Operators’ Association, for YOUR RACE has learned through tears and blood the hyenaism we are fighting. Enough. Emerson and his associates are in prison because they fought for the unity of all the workers.
Will you remain silent, turn no hand to help them in this, their hour of great danger?
Our fight is your fight, and we appeal to you to do your duty by these men, the bravest of the brave! Help us free them all. Join the Brotherhood and help us blaze freedom’s pathway through the jungles of the South.
“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing but your chains to lose! You have a world to gain!”
COMMITTEE OF DEFENSE,
BROTHERHOOD OF TIMBER WORKERS,
Box 78, Alexandria, La.
Solidarity, September 28, 1912
Sources: (1) “A Negro Woman Speaks,” The Independent 54 (September 18, 1902), pp. 2221–24; (2) “The Race Question a Class Question,” The Worker (October 2, 1904); and (3) “Negro Workers!” appeal drafted by the Committee of Defense, Brotherhood of Timber Workers, Alexandria, Louisiana, published in Solidarity (September 28, 1912).
John Bracey, August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, Black Workers and Organized Labor (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1971).
Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).
Jacqueline Jones, The Dispossessed: America’s Underclass from the Civil War to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
———, A Social History of the Laboring Classes: From Colonial Times to the Present, Problems in American History (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1999).
Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931).