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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 51, 20 December 1948. p. 2.
ranscribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The struggle to win democratic rights for the Negro people will enter a new climactic Stage when the 81st Congress meets next month. In order to gain victory in this struggle, the enemies of Jim Crow must have a clear understanding of the strategy that will be employed against us.
The struggle for Negro equality is no longer a problem restricted only to the Negro community and the radical movement. One evidence of its new position was the prominence of the civil rights issue in the recent election campaign. Another evidence is the stream of documents on various aspects of the problem – the most famous being the report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, the latest being the report on segregation in Washington. (See details on Page 1.)
These documents testify to the rising strength, militancy and Stubborn effectiveness of the Negro struggle as well as to the dynamic economic and social changes in the Negro’s status made by the unionization of the mass industries and the continued Negro ’urbanization during the last decade and a half.
But there is another aspect of these reports – a dangerous aspect – to which insufficient attention has been paid. And that is the prestige which they create for their sponsors and signers as “progressives” who can be looked to for leadership in the fight against Jim Crow.
If talk is cheap, then signing reports is cheap too. Put your name to some document on the Negro question and overnight you can become a champion of Negro rights, hailed for your courage and liberalism. The more radical the document sounds and the more insistently it repeats charges that have been made a thousand times, the more heroic you are.
Many an enviable reputation has been built in this way by people who never lifted a finger to abolish the Jim Crow system. Hubert Humphrey, the Senator-elect from Minnesota who got national fame for pushing the civil rights plank at, the Democratic convention, is a case,in point. And there are many labor leaders whose progressive reputations on the Negro question are not .always justified by their actions as distinguished from their talk. For an example, (see the item about Philip Murray in Notes from the News on Page 4.)
This does not mean that the Trumanite liberals and labor leaders are going to confine themselves to talk on the Negro question when Congress meets. If they did, their progressive reputations would wither away as fast as they grew up, and they know it. They know that the time for mere talk and declarations and reports is reaching its end because the Negro people have had enough of such tricks, see through them and will not be satisfied unless action is taken. The liberal-labor coalition leaders know also that the Negro struggle acts as a ferment, stirring the working class into struggle, and they want, if possible, to quiet it down. For all these reasons we can expect that they will carry on a noisy campaign for certain reforms, and that changes will be made.
Yes, changes will be made. Negroes will be appointed to additional posts in the government. Truman may set up a few interracial units in the armed forces. Congress may pass some watered-down version of an anti-lynching or FEPC bill. Some action will probably be taken to ease up on the pattern of strict segregation in the nation’s capital, which embarrasses the government in its international relations.
The purpose of these moves will be to convince the Negro people that a real change in race relations is being undertaken, that the way to achieve equality is through the “gradual” process of parliamentary reform, that Negroes can and must rely on the Democratic politicians, and especially the Trumanite liberals, to lead them to the promised land. All this is false to the core. Negroes who fall for this deception will experience the effects that follow the eating of soft-soap.
It is false because all of the changes envisioned by the liberals remain within the Jim Crow framework. Like unscrupulous landlords, they will replace some of the, broken windows and lay on a hew coat of paint, but the rotten Jim Crow structure itself will remain standing. They don’t Want and are incapable of making fundamental changes, no matter how radical their talk becomes.
The report on segregation in Washington is as radical gg such documents can ever be. “It is not the poor whites who set the pattern, but men of acknowledged culture and refinement, the leaders of the community,” says the report. Furthermore, the “dominant real estate, commercial and financial interests” are responsible for planning segregation “as a matter of good business,” and the government for practicing discrimination in all departments.
Hubert Humphrey, Philip Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt and Walter Reuther, among others, sponsored this report. The question that must now be put to them is this: Do they propose to deprive the “dominant real estate, commercial and financial interests” of the political and economic power that these interests are able to use against the Negroes? The answer is obviously No, as we can observe from their political behavior during the 1948 campaign when they worked to preserve the capitalist two-party system and to return to office the Democratic administration under which these evils have continued or , grown worse during the last 16 years.
Naturally, it is necessary to fight for minor changes while engaging in the battle for the basic changes. But never forget this: Equality cannot be a half-way thing. Either you have it in all spheres or you don’t really have it at all. And if you don’t have it in all spheres, then whatever gains you may make in any sphere, far from being secure and lasting, will be subject to sudden loss at the hands of the ruling class. That was the bitter story of the Jewish people in Germany, and the danger exists, if we don’t abolish the capitalist cause of race oppression, that it will be repeated on a larger and bloodier scale with regard to Negroes in the U.S.
The reformist theory of “gradual” gains, which the liberals want substituted for the fight for full equality, is not a new one. It has a long and instructive history, beginning with Booker T. Washington, and has had ample opportunity for over half a century to prove its value, in action. And yet the report on Washington admits that segregation there is worse today than it was 50 years ago. If Negroes continue to follow such a program, the grandchildren of the present Humphreys and Murrays will undoubtedly sponsor another report in. 1998, saying substantially the same thing.
Full economic, political and social equality in our time – not in some, far distant future – must remain the unswerving demand of militant Negroes and white workers. We can accept the support of liberals for specific measures in line with our main objective (FEPC, anti-lynching, anti-poll tax bills, etc.). But we dare not yield the leadership of the Negro struggle to these liberals or to place an ounce of political credit in them, because their final objective is quite different from ours and because we will have to fight them as well as the conservative supporters of capitalism when we launch upon the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government which alone can institute true equality for all races and colors.
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