Howard Fast
Source:
Messages to the Congress of the People, Kliptown, Johannesburg, 25th and 26th
of June, 1955,
http://historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/ad1812-eg3-2-3-3-001-jpeg-pdf
(Wits University Research Archives, University of the Witswatersrand, South Africa),
page 4.
Transcription: Juan Fajardo.
Fair Use: Marxists Internet Archive (2023).
From:
Howard Fast: United States of America:
The announcement of the Congress of the People of South Africa, joining together the many mass organisations of coloured people, is an event of worldwide importance – and it extends hope to all people of the earth who love freedom and cherish the dignity of man.
One of the unique features of the times we live in is the action of people in their own organisations against war and for peace and democracy. We are now witnessing the mighty concourse of people’s representatives assembled at Helsinki in response to the call by the World Council of Peace. Again and again, we have seen the people of the earth stretching out their arms across national boundaries asking for international solidarity, for unity in the face of fascism and tyranny. This could not be otherwise, for we are now entered into the period which marks the beginning of the unity of mankind – a unity in which we will build the kind of life and civilization that good men have always dreamed of.
In the light of this your Congress takes on enormous significance; and to us in America it has a particular, a special importance. We have long said here in the United States that the treatment of the Negro people and the response to such treatment is the measure of a man’s conscience. Thus it is that many of us entered into the struggle for Negro rights and for the unity of black and white almost at the time when we were able to think. For myself, a lifetime of such struggle lies behind me, and I have come to realise ever more deeply that the process of this splendid worldwide struggle is the process of the liberation of mankind.
Now I can talk to you only with my voice; but let me assure you that thousands of other Americans stretch out their arms toward you and open their hearts to you. You meet in no narrow cause but in the name of the noblest aspirations of mankind. All honour to the coloured pople of South Africa in their struggle for liberation! All honour to the unity of black and white against fascism! Your cause is inevitable and your triumph though difficult is a part of man’s life and man’s history! With all my heart I salute you!