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in turn, become so greedy that they keep out the majority of working people, by high dues and initiation fees, they no longer represent the interests of the laboring class.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.

The A.F. of L., which claims a part of the responsibility for the East St. Louis outrage, is playing with fire. The American Negro may join hands with the American capitalist and scab them out of existence. And the editor of The Voice calls upon Negroes to do this. We have stood the American Federation of Labor just about long enough. Join hands with the capitalists and scab them out of existence—not in the name of scabbery, but in the name of a real organization of labor. Form your own unions (the A.C.E. is already in the field) and make a truce with your capitalist enemy until you get rid of this traitor to the cause of labor. Offer your labor to capitalism if it will agree to protect you in your right to labor—and see that it does. Then get rid of the A.F. of L.

The writer has been a member of a party which stood for the rights of labor and the principle of Industrial Unionism (the 20th century kind). He understands the labor conditions of the country and desires to see the working man win out. But his first duty, here as everywhere, is to the Negro race. And he refuses to put ahead of his race’s rights a collection of diddering jackasses which can publicly palliate such atrocities as that of East St. Louis and publicly assume, as Gompers did, responsibility for it. Therefore, he issues the advice to the workers of his race to “can the A.F. of L.” Since the A.F. of L. chooses to put Race before Class, let us return the compliment.