Threatened and attacked, fingerprinted and mugged, jailed and held incommunicado—that is the story of three YOUNG SOUTHERNERS and potentially of all those Southerners who are struggling against mob rule and lynch law in Dixie.
—Marge Gelders, circular letter, August 23, 1940
In this momentous period of world history, there is a binding solidarity existing between the youth of the South and all democracy loving people. We have always been opposed to Fascism in whatever form it occurs. Hitlerism and its Aryan theories of racial superiority gives comfort and courage to KKK-ism everywhere. . . .
—Esther Cooper, quoted in Daily Worker, September 23, 1941