The difficulty in organizing the colored people into a separate organization along Trade Union Lines was thus explained by a very prominent Negro leader. The Negro, he said, is escaping from the tyranny of the South to the freedom of the North. In the North he is opposed and at times even mobbed by white laboring men. Strange as it may seem, the industrial captain in the North is the Negro’s only friend. He at least is interested in him; he goes after him to bring him North, provides food and shelter for him, pays him better wages than he received in the South, and in many instances gives him medical attention, and helps him bring his family here. Can you expect him under the circumstances to alienate and betray his only friend in the North, for the trade unions whom he fears and distrusts? It is obvious that the trade unions will have to make a more attractive appeal to convince the Negro that they are really his best friends. Their duty and policy are clear. Theirs is a struggle for the protection of the working people, in order to secure for all the oppressed some of the enjoyments of life. Theirs is a continuous battle for organization, the organization of all workers, irrespective of race, color and creed. The Negro’s own problem and his tragedy in slavery and in freedom is probably best summarized in the following lines taken from the Emporia Gazette and written by William Allen White: “If the black man loafs in the South he starves. If he works in the South he is poorly paid, more or less in kind--chips and whetstones--and his wife becomes a ‘pan-toter.’ If he leaves his own estate in the South and goes to work in Northern industry, he is mobbed and killed.” “He was brought to these shores from Africa a captive. He is held by his captors in economic bondage today--forbidden to rise above the lowest serving class. He is herded by himself in a ghetto, and if, while he is there, he reverts to the jungle type, he is burned alive. If he tries to break out of his ghetto, and, by assimilating the white man’s civilization, rise, he is driven out by his white brothers.” “If he goes to school, he becomes discontented and is unhappy and dissatisfied with his social status. If he does not go to school and remains ignorant, he is then only a ‘coon,’ whom everybody exploits, and who has to cheat and swindle in return, or go down in poverty to begging and shame. There aren’t ships enough in the world to take him back to the land of his freedom; there isn’t enough for him here except on the crowded bottom rung of the ladder, and there, always, the grinding heel of those climbing over him topward is mangling his black hands.” “Race riots, lynchings, political ostracism, social boycott, economic serfdom. No wonder he sings: “Hard Trials-- “Great tribulations, “Hard trials-- “I’m gwine for to live with the Lord!”