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NOMINATING SPEECH BY ELLA REEVE BLOOR PROPOSING James W. Ford FOR VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY IT IS one of the high points of my long life spent with the workers and farmers of America to be able to present to this Nominating Convention of the Communist Party the name of an able and beloved comrade, as the Vice-Presidential nominee of our Party. This comrade is a Negro comrade who has added luster to the name of his people and who has strengthened and inspired their struggles for freedom and liberation. We are proud that one of the best sons of the Negro People is a member and leader of our Party. He symbolizes the ceaseless efforts of the Negro people to free themselves from the oppression and lynch terror. At the same time he represents and symbolizes the fact that our Party is the champion of the Negro people, that we will never rest until Negro and white workers, shoulder to shoulder, win the final emancipation of the Negro people as part of the freedom of all enslaved humanity. This comrade represents the fighting traditions of the Negro people against oppression. He is the Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass of today. His people see in him a leader through his own example, through his tireless work, his heroism, shows them that path of struggle along which lie freedom and liberty. At the same time tens of thousands of white workers know him as a hard fighter for the working class in New York and throughout the country. We know him as as the champion of militant trade unionism, as a fighter for the unemployed, as a war veteran 12 who has fought for the bonus and every need of his fellow veterans. He is a worker and a son of workers who has never spared himself in battling for his class and for his people. I have watched him grow and develop to meet the ever-greater problems of his people and his class. His work is known far beyond the limits of our own country. He is known for his work in behalf of the oppressed Negro peoples and of the colonial peoples, of all those victimized by imperialist rule throughout the world. He is a member of the general staff of the working class of the world -the Executive Committee of the Communist International. But you people of Harlem here in this great hall today are even prouder that he is the leader of the Communist and Negro liberation movement in Harlem. Four years ago you chose this comrade to take his place beside Comrade Foster as the banner bearer of our Party. Today I ask you once again to call upon him to stand with Comrade Browder, as the Communist representative of the American people. Together they will help forge the unshakable unity of Negro and while toilers which will blaze the way to the final emancipation of all humanity. Comrades, I give you as our candidate for the Vice-President of the United States, James W. Ford. 13
Transcription Notes:
Fixed on capitalization mistake; the rest should be good to go.