Part 1

The Negro Workers

by EUGENE VICTOR DEBS

_Address delivered Tuesday, October 30, 1923, at Commonwealth Casino, 135th Street and Madison Avenue, N. Y. C._

Price 10 cents

Published by THE EMANCIPATION PUBLISHING COMPANY, New York City

ADDRESS delivered by EUGENE VICTOR DEBS

On TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1923 At COMMONWEALTH CASINO 135th Street and Madison Ave., New York City Under the Auspices of the 21st A. D. Socialist Party of New York

_Chairman_ _Chairman, Committee of Arrangements_

FRANK R. CROSSWAITH G. OLLENDORFF

_Preliminary Speakers_

JAMES ONEAL _Author “The Next Emancipation”_

A. PHILLIP RANDOLPH _Editor “The Messenger”_

LUCILLE RANDOLPH _Aldermanic Candidate 21st A. D._

HON. JUDGE JACOB PANKEN

INTRODUCTION

After the preliminary speeches by Comrades James Oneal, author of “The Next Emancipation”; A. Phillip Randolph, editor of “The Messenger,” and Mrs. Lucille Randolph, the chairman of the meeting, Frank R. Crosswaith, presented Mr. Debs with the following glowing remarks:

“And now, comrades and friends, the moment that we have all so anxiously awaited is here. I know with what eagerness you yearn for the eloquent voice, the sweet and inspiring personality of this great man, and his great message. Here is a personality full of that precious tenderness so rare in the average individual, but so much in evidence with Eugene V. Debs. (Applause.)

“Seven years ago I joined the Socialist Party, little did I dream then that I would be the recipient of such an enviable honor as this: the honor of presenting this great character to an audience even though it be in this segregated section of New York City. I stand before you, friends, and say, in all boldness, that I am indeed proud of this honor, and equally proud to be a Socialist hailing this modern crusader as my comrade.

“I have read some history. I have read of such stalwart figures as John Brown, Frederik Douglass, Wendell Phillips, Elijah Lovejoy, Denmark Vessey, Sojourner Truth and others; I have followed with pride the record of their contributions to human progress, as told in the eloquent though mute pages of history. But in reading of these great benefactors, one thing impresses me most of all, and that is, that during their lifetime these brave men and women were despised by society—society ridiculed them, persecuted them, even lynched some of them; then, after they were dead, after their eyes had been closed by the remorseless hand of death, after Mother Earth had opened wide her unprejudiced arms and pressed their lifeless limbs close to her maternal bosom, it was then only that the world recognized their greatness and built monuments to them. In other words, these historic characters came into their own only after they were dead and then garlands were woven for their graves. This, my friends, has been the conduct of the blind majority in every age toward the far-sighted few.

“But here is one whose greatness the world is now beginning audibly to acknowledge, before death shall have silenced his song-seeped soul. Here is a man that is loved, honored and revered in every section of the civilized world where the brutal hands of capitalism and tyranny rule and where the common people hunger for liberty and life. Yes, wherever men thirst for the cooling waters of knowledge and freedom, the name of Eugene V. Debs is known. (Prolonged applause.)

“Tempted as I am on this historic occasion to make a speech, I will, nevertheless, resist the temptation by presenting to you Freedom’s most fearless fighter, oppression’s most valiant foe, Labor’s most eloquent and loyal champion, the Negro’s true friend—Comrade Eugene V. Debs.” (Thunderous and prolonged applause.)

Appeal to Negro Workers

By EUGENE V. DEBS

At Commonwealth Casino

135th Street and Madison Avenue New York City

_Tuesday Evening, October 30, 1923_

Mr. Debs: Friends and Comrades and Fellow-workers—I feel especially complimented by the invitation which has made it possible for me to stand in this inspiring presence to-night. I must first of all thank you and each of you in all sincerity for this very cordial greeting—this hearty manifestation of your sympathy and goodwill for the cause for which I am to speak to you to-night, and for the all too generous introduction of my young Comrade, the Chairman of the occasion, which touches me too deeply for words. I return my thanks to the dear little children whose floral offerings so enrich and reward me for the little that I have been able to do in the service of this great cause. The one regret of my life is that I have so little to give in return for all that is given me.

This great movement which I have been trying to serve; this movement in the interest of a higher social order, a nobler humanity, a diviner civilization that has given me my principles and my ideals and the right to live and to serve—I am only sorry that it is in my power to give so little in return.

I am more than glad to see the colored people represented here to-night. From the beginning of my life my heart has been with them. I never could understand why they were denied any right or any privilege or liberty that the white man had a right to enjoy. I never knew of any distinction on account of the color of the flesh of a human being. Indeed, when I think of what the colored people have been made to suffer at the hands of their supposedly superior race, every time I look a colored brother in the face I blush for the crimes that my race has committed against his race. (Great applause.)

I do not speak to my colored friends to-night in any patronising sense; I meet them upon a common basis of equality; they are my brothers and my sisters, and I want nothing that is denied them, and if there is one of them who will shine my shoes and I am not willing to shine his, he is my moral superior. (Applause.) One reason why I became a Socialist was because I was opposed to this cruel discrimination against human beings on account of the color of their skin. I never could understand it. When I travelled over the Southern States thirty-five years ago organizing the workers, oh, what a desolate, unpromising situation it was! I made my appeal to them wherever I went, to open their doors to the colored workers upon equal terms with the white workers, but they refused. Poor as most of them were, they still felt themselves superior to the colored people.

It is one of the surest indications of their own ignorance and their own inferiority (applause); but, of course, they are not conscious of it. There is what they call a race prejudice, that is simply another name for ignorance (applause), and you can trace it to that and that alone. It is comparatively easy to forgive a man who has wronged you, but it is a very difficult thing to forgive the man that you have wronged. And this is the attitude in which we find our colored brother who has been the victim of this so-called civilization during the last two centuries; and if there is any man who has read the history of the institution of chattel slavery on American soil, from its beginning—from its inception through all of its frightful stages, and who does not blush for himself and for his Anglo-Saxon race, it is because he is something less than a real human being. (Applause.)

Stolen from their native land, torn from their families ruthlessly by the brutal hand of conquest, and then thrown aboard vessels and herded like animals, half of them perishing on the way over from starvation or disease or ill-treatment, and the rest put upon auction blocks and sold to the highest or lowest bidders, and then through the years that followed designedly kept in ignorance and then despised, persecuted and punished because of their alleged inferiority!

The colored man has just as much in him that is potential and capable of development as the white man (great applause); and all he needs is a chance, that is all; he has never had that chance. (Renewed applause.)

I am sometimes surprised to think of the claims that are made in the name of religion and the much-vaunted Christian civilization that has everything in it but Christianity. (Applause.) Even in the great Christian Church the colored people have got to sit aloft—(A Voice: “Next to Heaven.” Laughter.)—and I have had many a heated argument down in the Southern States and sometimes narrowly avoided trouble, making the contention that the colored man was a human being and had some rights that the white man ought to respect. (Applause.)

I remember on one occasion down in Atlanta, we had a Labor meeting and they had a loft to which the colored people were admitted. It was so far aloft that I could hardly see them (laughter) and I wondered if they could hear me; but they did, because their ears were attuned to a voice that had some promise for them. (Applause.) And I noted in the course of my address that I received no applause from below; it all came from the loft. (Laughter.) I paused long enough to say “the intelligence of this audience is in the gallery” (laughter and applause); and if they had had intelligence enough to understand what I said, I might have been lynched that night. (Laughter.)

On another occasion down at Montgomery, Alabama, where I was to speak at the Opera House, they had the line sharply drawn and said no colored people should be admitted. It so happened that the colored people had worked most faithfully and energetically for the success of that meeting, and when they appointed a committee which came to my hotel and notified me that they were to be excluded, I said, “We will go there together, and if you are excluded, so will I be excluded; if you cannot be admitted, I will not speak.” (Great applause.) Well, there is one thing that the “superior” white man loves better than he hates the Negro, and that is the coin. (Laughter.) The manager had $50 coming for the use of the Opera House, and he wanted the money, and when I said I wouldn’t speak unless he opened the doors to the colored people, he changed his mind very reluctantly to receive his $50. (Applause.)

When we were organizing the American Railway Union in 1893, I stood on the floor of that Convention all through its deliberations appealing to the delegates to open the door to admit the colored as well as the white man upon equal terms. They refused, and then came a strike and they expected the colored porters and waiters to stand by them. If they had only admitted these porters and waiters to membership in the American Railway Union there would have been a different story of that strike, for it would certainly have had a different result.

I remember one occasion down in Louisville, Kentucky, where we were organizing and they refused to admit colored workers to the union. A strike followed—a strike ordered exclusively by the white workers. After having ignored the colored workers and refused them admission, the strike came and the colored workers walked out with the white ones. Notwithstanding they had been excluded and insulted, they went out, and the strike had not lasted long until the white men went back to work and broke the strike, leaving the colored men out in the cold in spite of their loyalty to the white workers.

I have a word to you workers—you colored workers—about your duty in this campaign—your duty to yourselves, your families, your class and to humanity. I am not here asking for anything for myself. If I were seeking office, you know, I would not be in the Socialist Party. (Applause and laughter.) I want to speak to you very plainly to-night, especially you colored people, and have you understand that it is not in my power to do anything for you but to take my place side by side with you. That is all I can do. (Applause.) But while I can do nothing for you there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves. (Applause.) There is one thing that I want to impress upon your minds to-night; it is self-respect. You can compel the respect of others only when you respect yourselves. (Applause.) As long as you are willing to be the menials and servants and slaves of the white people, that is what you will be. (Applause.) You have to realize that there are 12,000,000 of you in this nation, and that if you will unite and stand together and be true to each other, you will develop a power that will command respect. (Applause.) As long as you are unorganized—as long as you are indifferent, as long as you are satisfied to remain in ignorance you will invite contempt and receive it, but when you rise in the majesty of your manhood and womanhood, close up the ranks and stand together, you will command respect and consideration and you will receive it. (Thunderous applause.) It is the only way you ever will receive it. Everything depends upon your education. You have a brain; you can develop your capacity for clear-thinking. That is a duty owing to yourselves and your class, to your race and to humanity. (Applause.) That is the appeal I am making to you to-night.

Haven’t you been long enough in the service of the capitalist parties to realize that they have no earthly use for you save only as they can perpetuate their system and keep you in servitude? The Republican party has trafficked in you, lo, these many years; the party that is unspeakably corrupt but still claims a monopoly of Abraham Lincoln and brazenly calls itself the party of Lincoln—what use have they for you? There was a time in my life, before I became a Socialist—when I was still young and had the vanity of youth and the ambition and enthusiasm of a boy—when I permitted myself as a member of the Democratic party to be elected to a State Legislature. I have been trying to live it down. (Laughter.) I am as much ashamed of that as I am proud of having gone to jail. (Applause and laughter.)

There is a peculiar fatality that seems to hang over me. Every time I am nominated as a candidate for President by the Socialists, the capitalists send me to jail or to the penitentiary. (Laughter.) Some paper said: “Debs started for the White House and got as far as Atlanta.” (Laughter.)

I was, as I have said, a member of a Legislature. I used to meet with the politicians—Republicans as well as the Democrats; I became familiar with their political methods; I heard them over and over say in campaigning: “Now, we have got to figure on how to handle the “Nigger” vote; how much does it amount to and what will it take?” Well, a thousand colored voters are worth about one job on the police force or a mail carrier; if there are only about 500, why, a spittoon-cleaning job at the courthouse. That is about all they have ever given you and all they ever will give you. They do not associate with you; they have nothing in common with you. They want you segregated. When a race riot of any description comes, they are always armed against you. You know what they have done for you in the last thirty years in the way of recognizing you decently as human beings and giving you an equal chance with other human beings to work out your destiny.

Now, if you still persist—you colored people—in remaining in either the Republican or the Democratic party, you are stultifying yourselves; you are insulting your race; you are barring the door in your own faces—the door that leads to emancipation. The time has come for you to realize what your position is in these capitalist parties. They are both alike. I challenge anybody anywhere to show me the slightest difference between them from the working man’s point of view.

I am speaking for the workers to-night. It does not make any difference to me where they were born or what the color of their skin may be, or what their religion is, or their creed, or anything of that kind. I ask no question as to that; they are all of the working class, the lower class, the class that does all of society’s useful work, that produces all its wealth, and makes all the sacrifices of health and limb and life through all the hours of the day and night; the class without which the whole social fabric would collapse in an instant. It is this class regardless of color that creates and supports all civilization; this class that in all the ages of the past, throughout history, in every nation on earth has been the lower class; for the badge of Labor has always been the symbol of servitude and upon the brow of Labor there has always been the brand of social inferiority.

In the ancient world your ancestors were slaves, owned by their masters, whipped by their masters, put to death by their masters the same as other domestic animals. In the Middle Ages for a thousand years the serfs were not allowed to own an inch of soil; they could work only on condition that they produced for the benefit of the idle, aristocratic lord and baron who owned the land and who rioted in the luxury wrung from their sweat and misery. They also fought for him to enlarge his domain believing in their ignorance it was their patriotic duty to fight and die for the sovereign baron who looked down upon them with contempt. You are no longer the slave or the serf, but you are the wage earner in the present capitalist system. Your interests are all identical; you do all the useful, productive work but you do not work for yourselves; you have no legal right to work; you can work only if you are permitted to work by the owners of the tools with which you work. You made the tools and use the tools; but they own them and they might almost as well own you; for as long as you work with their tools, what you produce belongs to them; they become fabulously rich producing nothing while you remain poor producing everything. And this applies to white and black alike.

The race question as we come to understand it, resolves itself into a class question. At bottom it is a class question. The capitalist cares no more about the white worker than about the black worker. What he wants is labor power—cheap labor power; he does not care whether it is wrapped up in a white skin or a black skin.

Has he one bit more consideration for the white slave than he has for the black slave? No, not at all; they are all the same to him regardless of color; they are all in the working class; they are his legitimate prey. He owns the natural resources; he owns the tools; they have got to produce for him.

Under chattel slavery, the colored man seized with the aspiration to be free, ran away from his master. You do not run away from yours; when you run it is not away from but toward the factory whistle; you are afraid you won’t get there soon enough. You work for your master and he becomes rich, and he does not know you; and why should he? He belongs to the upper class; you are in the lower class. He is useless and that is why he is in the upper class. (Laughter and applause.) Parasites all go to the top; they all float on the surface.

But now comes an election! That is the season of the year when their politicians come before you white and black workers. They do not discriminate against you colored people then. On the contrary they are glad to look into your intelligent faces and tell you that the beads of honest sweat that glisten on your manly brow are more precious than the jewels that blaze and flash in the coronet of a queen. (Laughter.) That is the one kind of jewelry—the one monopoly you absolutely control. They tell you that they are so greatly impressed by your intelligence and so proud to stand in your presence. But after the election is over they fold up their tents and like the Arab, they silently fade away. They do not associate with you; you do not belong to the same clubs they do. You do not play golf with them on their links; you don’t wear the same kind of clothes they do nor live in the same houses, nor eat the same kind of food. No; they are in a class of their own, notwithstanding you are all supposed to be absolutely equal before the law.

This is capitalism under which an insignificant minority of our people own and control the Nation’s industries—all the sources and means of our common life. They would if they could own the sunlight and have a meter on every sunbeam. They have taken possession of about everything else. You are at their mercy. When you work it is by their consent; when you work it is for them; when you work it is primarily to produce profit for them; not to enable you to support your wife and children; that is purely incidental.

Under this system you workers white and black are scarcely above the animal plane. You work and produce like the silkworm; like the coral insect that builds islands and continents and perishes as it builds; and when you die you leave no trace behind that you were ever upon earth.

You are not hired to think but to work. That is why they call you “hands.” You will hear them say: “I work a hundred hands”; I work fifty “Niggers.” Black “hands”; white “hands”; all “hands” (laughter); not men, but “hands.” The capitalist calls you his “hands”; he himself is not a hand; he is a head; he lives in a palace and you are his “hands”; and the “hands” vote on election day to perpetuate the system under which he is the head and they are the hands; in which he is at the top and they at the bottom; and that is why the “hands” are told that this is the greatest country on the face of the earth—the one country in which all enjoy equal liberty.

The time has come for you to open your eyes and to stand erect and to realize that you have a head as well as hands; that you can think as well as work; and if you will but unite and think and act in accordance with your intelligence, you need no longer to deform your hands in the interest of the parasites that hold you in contempt. They are an insignificant minority and yet they rule in every department of this Government, and they rule through your ignorance, and the Socialist is frank enough to tell you that you are ignorant that you may become intelligent.