Viewing page 14 of 17

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

WORKERS CORRESPONDENCE 

Guadeloupe, 1930

Comrade:

The call to the International Conference of Negro workers did not leave the workers of Guadeloupe indifferent. The papers spoke a lot about it. Due to the cyclone of September 12th 1928, our resources came to an end. At the time when we had started to recover, a strike of agricultural workers took place, the results of which are the following: 

Dead - 3
wounded - 4
jailed - 5

This is the capitalist proceedure! ... and above all of the French Government whose slogans are: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! Let me tell you about the meaning of this trinity. These three words have been separated by three periods. We should read: Liberty, none, equality, none, fraternity, none!

This is the slogans of the capitalists!

In order to defend the comrades in jail we had to spend much money. It is impossible for us to make the trip from Guadeloupe to England. We know that our Negro comrades from the United States are seriously endgames in the success of the London Conference. At this great Conference we should hope to present our misery, and the sufferings of the workers of Guadeloupe under French Imperialism.

Fraternal greetings, Ponte. 


International Negro Workers’ Review. 

December, 1930. 

Comrades: 

I think we can be of great aid to each other. Our paper can furnish you with a weekly digest of Southern conditions and you in turn can give us great aid by supplying us with information about the movement and conditions of the Negro masses in colonial countries- something we need very much in internationalizing our struggles. 

Our main task in the South is to break thru the wall of white chauvinism- we will not be able to make a step forward unless we do that. For that reason our paper concentrates chiefly in combating the “white supremacy” ideology of the South and clearing the way for United struggle of white and black toilers against Yankee imperialism. The deep crisis, eating away at the vitals of both Negro and white workers and farmer here, is doing much in the way of opening he eyes of the white workers towards unity in the struggle with their black brothers. 

I am sure that in the name of the readers of the Southern Worker, which is still but a very young paper, I can send our fraternal greetings of solidarity and best wishes for success in achieving your aims to the new international Negro paper of struggle. 

Fraternal yours, 

Jim Allen, “Southern Worker”. 

Note: The “Southern Worker” is a weekly paper of the Communist Party of the United States for the workers of the Southern part of the USA, We invite our readers to correspond with the paper. -Editor. 

28



Negro Workers’ Review- Hamburg. 

Comrades:

I am a white marine worker. Greeting to the International class struggling Negro workers!
Gee!, things are rotten here in the South- soup lines, bread lines, flop houses; the city jails are full. The cossacks chase the unemployed workers out on the prairies to starve. The g. d. cowards wont fight back, many are doing the “dutch” Taking poison. For me I am waiting for the barricades, they can’t come too quick for me. I and going up in my fifties but I’ll fight the 100 percenters. Comrades send us some German papers, Negro workers of Africa write to your brother workers- white and black in the South. I am sending you in this letter some letters from other workers here at Galveston.

Revolutionary greetings

A.W.- Galveston, Texas, USA. 


Starving ex-soldier for United fight. 

Atlanta, Ga. 

Am unemployed for 8 months. Was a soldier in the world war where I fought for Wilson’s equality and democracy for Negroes. Because of the wounds I received in battle, I cannot get a job. They want younger fellows who they can work like the devil for nothing at all. 

The City here opened up a Community a Kitchen dump. Everyday, hundreds of unemployed, starving Negroes and whites, go there with their two cents and get a can of slop. But the Negroes, because of the discrimination there, are not going any longer. They would rather starve than be insulted as they are down there. 

When a Negro does get past the insulting red tape and question cards he has got to fill out, then he finds that he must have two cents and a tin can in order to get a cupful of stinking mixed vegetables and a hunk of stale bread. The whites get their choice of soup or milk and some of them have coal delivered to their homes. 

The Negroes are not putting up with these miserable conditions and are organizing into the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, to fight discrimination of all kinds, off the job and on the job. 

-Unemployed Negro Ex-Soldier. 


Other News from the USA

A “League of Struggle for Negro Rights” was organized at St. Louis, in the USA during September. 

Charlotte, N.C.- Three Negro boys, aged 15, 16, and 17, were sentenced to serve 15 years in the penitentiary for wounding a 15-year-old white boy scout in a scuffle. The white boy scout had a rifle and one of the Negro boys a revolver. Solicitor Carpenter, of Gastonia fame, used all his arguments of “white superiority” and “patriotism”. 

29