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We Want Land!

Fourth, we want to be respected for what we are and can do. We want an even chance to enter into any field of endeavor, and to be recognized there and given an opportunity for advancement, on the basis of our merits and our abilities, and not on the basis of the color of our skins.

Fifth, we want a chance to own the land our people have worked on for generations. Throughout the South, the majority of our people toil on the land- working small plots that are part of great plantations. They live as peons. The share-cropping system, day by day, drives hundreds of thousands of our people into semi-serfdom. they are not even free to leave these plots for the landlords keep them constantly in debt and put them on the chain-gang if they are found "escaping." Those who plow or pick the cotton should own the land it grows on!

That is what we want.

That is what we have a right to expect.

But what are the conditions?

First, what are our chances of becoming useful and prosperous citizens, having steady work and getting decent and steady pay?

"College Grad? Grab the Broom"

There is an old saying that we are "first to be fired and the last to be hired." Unfortunately, except in cases where there is a strong progressive trade union movement, that is still the case.

Trade schools where we could become specialists close their doors in our faces. Employers won't consider giving Negroes positions as skilled workers. The spectacle of a college trained Negro presenting himself for a job and the employer replying: "So you're a college graduate! O.K.- grab the broom" is all too common.

From the biggest corporations, like the auto plants of Henry Ford and the big packing plants, through the steel mills of Tom Girdler, down to the railways and the street car systems, our people are barred from the positions of skilled workers. And did you ever hear of a Negro office worker, or office executive, or lawyer or doctor, employed by a big corporation? The doors of the skilled trades and professions are slammed in the face of our young people before we can even get a foot over the ledge.

Because we are barred from these trades and professions- because we are thought fit to become only janitors and porters, laundresses and house-maids, shoe-shine boys and waiters, we are the ones who suffer most from unemployment, we are the ones who have the least chance to get a decent living, we are the ones who have least security in our jobs.

Jim Crow in the North Too

Second, what chance do we have to enjoy a pleasant and attractive personal and home life? First of all, we must recognize that without two things-money and security- a really happy home life is not possible. The fact that better-paid jobs are not open to us, the fact that we have less security in our jobs than anyone else, the fact that we