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The demagogic slogan of "national unity" means that Roosevelt, has been promoted to full leadership of the rulers of America and they are nationally united against the people, to make more profits, by starvation, by clamping down on the civil rights of the people, on the basis of war.

[bold]The Anti-Lynching Bill- Touchstone of American Democracy [/bold]

In urging unity of the nation behind his budget message, the President ended on the note that now is the time for everyone to come together, forget past quarrls [sic], and so establish once and for all that democracy as a system still remains unchallenged as the best way of life yet devised by man.

For whom? might be the query of the Negro. How can he forget past quarrels when Negroes in the South still remain disenfranchised? How can he forget past quarrels when in the heart of the nation's capital, prejudice against the Negro abounds?

Only recently, at the premiere opening of "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," Negro citizens in Washington picketed the theatre because Negroes are not allowed to mingle with whites in the unwritten laws of American democracy.

High in the annals of achievements of American progress for 1939 is the passage of the Anti-Lynching Bill in the House of Representatives for the first time. But reaction in the person of Representative Rankin of Mississippi recorded the typical yearly slander when he shouted in the House:

"You are trying to placate a few nigger communists who are infecting the gallery."

"Nigger Communists..." And in this slander, the Tory Representative Rankin paid unwilling tribute to the Negro Communists who have, together with white Communists, fought for the passage of the Anti-Lynching Bill, fought against distortions of the role of Negroes in American history, fought against every manifestation of prejudice where the Negro was concerned.

Representative Rakin rants, with the Bilbos, Ellenders, Cotton Ed Smith, because his idea of democracy is being challenged by progress. 
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As it was challenged by Angelo Herndon, Negro Communist, who led the fight for Negro and white unemployed workers in the heart of the deep South, in Georgia.

As it was challenged and brought to a new high by Ben Davis, young Communist editor of the [italics]Daily Worker,[/italics] who, in the Senate caucus hearings upset the dignity of the "Democratic reactionaries" and "Republican hypocrites" by exposing the truth.

The President has never once raised his voice in support of the Anti-Lynching Bill.  It is still the touchstone of American democracy, and it will require even greater mass support if it is to become law.  Current reactionary lies to the effect that lynchings no longer take place, therefore there is no need for an Anti-Lynching Bill, must also be answered.  In the year 1939, 20 "silent lynchings," the new technique of reaction, minus the mob, took place.  Since 1940 already five lynchings have occurred.  This - in face of the reactionaries' lie that this is a "Lynchless year."  That is why the voice of progress must be raised even louder and clearer to Pass the Anti-Lynching Bill!

[bold]The 1940 Elections[/bold]

  Negroes constitute a balance of power in most of the major cities of the nation.  Already there is being recorded in the press bids for their support by both Democratic and Republican parties - twin parties of reaction.  These old traditional major parties have today less of a division on real issues and political currents in American life, than in any former period of their existence.  On a domestic scale both the Republican and Democratic parties fully agree to scrap all labor and social legislation as much as possible, to militarize labor, to drastically curb civil liberties, to lower the standard of living of all the people.  They are both agreed on dubbing peace lovers, and fighters for democracy - "fifth columnists," because they both want to bring about America's entry in the present war.  The real fifth columnists can be most easily recognized, because it is they who most openly sow the seeds of race prejudice, the seeds of Negro-baiting, or if they don't do

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