When Africa awakes: The "inside story" of the stirrings and strivings of the new Negro in the Western worldHarrison, Hubert H.
History
When Africa awakes: The "inside story" of the stirrings and strivings of the new Negro in the Western world
Harrison, Hubert H.
African Americans; African Americans -- Race identity; United States -- Race relations
“Rights are to be won by those who are ready and willing to fight, if
necessary, to have those rights respected.”
Who says this? Theodore Roosevelt. So does President Wilson. So does the
U. S. Government. That is why we went to war with Germany. Our country
always acts upon the best and highest principle and we Negroes have just
begun to see that our country is quite right. Therefore, we are willing
to follow its glorious example. That is all.
_The Negro and the Labor Unions_
There are two kinds of labor unionism; the A.F. of L. kind and the other
kind. So far, the Negro has been taught to think that all unionism was
like the unionism of the American Federation of Labor, and because of
this ignorance, his attitude toward organized labor has been that of the
scab. For this no member of the A.F. of L. can blame the Negro. The
policy of that organization toward the Negro has been damnable. It has
kept him out of work and out of the unions as long as it could; and when
it could no longer do this it has taken him in, tricked him, and
discriminated against him.
On the other hand, the big capitalists who pay low wages (from the son
of Abraham Lincoln in the Pullman Co. to Julius Rosenwald of the Sears
Roebuck Co.) have been rather friendly to the Negro. They have given
their money to help him build Y.M.C.A.’s and schools of a certain type.
They have given him community help in Northern cities and have expended
charity on him— and on the newspapers and parsons who taught him. Small
wonder, then, that the Negro people are anti-union.
Labor unions were created by white working men that they might bring the
pressure of many to bear upon the greedy employer and make him give
higher wages and better living conditions to the laborer. When they, in
turn, become so greedy that they keep out the majority of working
people, by high dues and initiation fees, they no longer represent the
interests of the laboring class. They stand in the way of this class’s
advancement—_and they must go_. They must leave the way clear for the
20th century type of unionism which says: “To leave a single worker out
is to leave something for the boss to use against us. Therefore we must
organize in One Big Union of all the working-class.” This is the type of
unionism which organized, in 1911, 18,000 white and 14,000 black timber
workers in Louisiana. This is the I.W.W. type of unionism, and the
employers use their newspapers to make the public believe that it stands
for anarchy, violence, law-breaking and atheism, because they know that
if it succeeds it will break them.
This type of unionism wants Negroes—not because its promoters love
Negroes—but because they realize that they cannot win if any of the
working class is left out; and after winning they cannot go back on them
because they could be used as scabs to break the unions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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