The first two items were excerpts from the 1968 article, “A Short History of The Militant” by Joseph Hansen, a central leader of the Socialist Workers Party and the paper’s editor at various times. In this article, Hansen explained that the editors aimed to maintain the Militant as “a fighting paper integrated with the supreme task of our times—to build a combat party of the working class in the tradition of Leninism.”

One of the Militant’s contributions to the fight for socialism over three-quarters of a century has been the publication of articles or documents that later became pamphlets or books published by Pathfinder Press, or its predecessors, going back to the Russian Revolution of October 1917. This includes the first Pathfinder book ever published—The Third International After Lenin by Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky.

As an illustration of this side of the Militant as the voice and organizer of the communist movement, we publish below the article “Roosevelt dead, Truman in.” Outlining the pro-Jim Crow record of U.S. presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman—both Democrats—the article first appeared in two installments in the May 12 and May 19, 1945, issues of the Militant. Roosevelt had died on April 12 of that year and was succeeded by Vice-president Harry Truman. The article was later published in the Pathfinder book Fighting Racism in World War II by C.L.R. James and others, which is a week-by-week account of the struggle against racism and discrimination in the United States from 1939 to 1945. All the material in this book is reprinted from the Socialist Appeal from 1939 to 1941 and the Militant after that, or from pamphlets issued by Pioneer Publishers, Pathfinder’s predecessor. Socialist Appeal was the name the Militant adopted between August 1937 and January 1941.
 

In mobilizing the armed forces for a purported war of “democracies against fascism” he refused to allow Negro and white Americans to be integrated into the same regiments. Jim Crow was thus togged out in official army uniform. That was Roosevelt.

He often condemned the Nazi racist ideology, but could never find time to say one word against the widespread brutalities against and murders of dark-skinned American troops in the southern states of his own country. He spoke out against the lynching of a fascist by the irate Italian workers, but during his entire twelve years in office he completely ignored the dozens of lynchings of Negroes.

Almost every concession he made…was a token concession made—by strange coincidence—just before election time. The basic grievance of Jim Crow in the army was consistently ignored in his official utterances and in his Democratic Party platforms. The only major advance of the Negro masses under his regime was the FEPC [Fair Employment Practices Committee]—and that was granted only in a frantic move to avert a march of a hundred thousand Negroes on Washington. That was “our friend” Roosevelt.

According to all indications the forces of Jim Crowism, white supremacy, and second-class citizenship for the Negro will be greatly strengthened under “liberal” President Truman. His home is the state of Missouri, where colored farmers were recently driven off their land. Both his parents were proslavery. His close associates in the Senate and now in the presidency are anti-Negro and antilabor reactionaries such as the South Carolinian, James F. Byrnes, who threatened to filibuster the antilynching bill “until the year 2 000 if necessary.”

Although Truman has denied membership in the Ku Klux Klan, Michael Carter, who interviewed him for the April 21 Afro-American, states that he would be “at home on a cotton planter’s veranda where the colored people…bow and scrap.” When queried about the lack of a forceful plank on racial equality in the party platform he retorted, “Why shouldn’t we conciliate the South?”

The Nation of April 21, 1945, quotes a 1940 speech before the National Colored Democratic Association. “Before I go further,” said Truman, “I wish to make it clear that I am not appealing for social equality for the Negro. The Negro himself knows better than that, and the highest types of Negro leaders say frankly they prefer the society of their own people.”

The plainest handwriting on the wall, however, is the fact that the Hearst press and other organs of the most rabid antilabor and anti-Negro forces in America have taken Mr. Truman to their breast and acclaimed him as one of their own.

Lest we forget, Harry Truman, the new chief executive, is the same Truman who supports segregated schools in Missouri, who believes that Negroes should be physically thrown out of restaurants in his home town of Independence, and who stated that he has never invited a Negro to his home for dinner and never will.

He is even now laying the groundwork for anti-Negro attacks in which the fascist agents of big business will be whitewashed and the Negroes themselves blamed. This is proved by his statement quoted in the Call of April 23, 1945. “Negroes,” said Truman, “are going too far in St. Louis. There Negroes have started a ‘push day’ once a week, when they shove white people out of bars. Why, St. Louis is sitting on a keg of dynamite. And they’ve got a ‘push day’ in Washington, too! I won’t let my daughter go downtown on the streetcars on Thursday any more. It’s not safe. They push white people off the streetcars.”
 

Celebrate Militant’s 75th anniversary

Below is a list of the programs to celebrate the Militant’s 75th anniversary. Unless otherwise noted, the events will be held at the Pathfinder bookstore in each city: see the directory. A number of events were already held the November 15-16 weekend.

ALABAMA
Birmingham
Sunday, November 23, Dinner 3:00 p.m. Program 4:00 p.m.
Speakers: Brian Taylor, former Militant staff writer; Ezekial Hameen, longtime Militant reader; Cristian Juarez, Perspectiva Mundial reader; Susan Lamont, Socialist Workers Party.

CALIFORNIA
San Francisco
Saturday, November 22, Reception 6:00 p.m., Program 7:00 p.m.
(Location to be announced)
Speakers: Dennis Richter, Mark Gilsdorf, Emily Paul.

FLORIDA
Miami
Saturday, November 22, Dinner 5:00 p.m., Program 6:00 p.m.
Speakers: Seth Galinsky, former Militant staff writer in Nicaragua; Nicole Sarmiento, Young Socialists, participant in Third Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange.

Tampa Saturday, December 6, 7:30 p.m.
Speakers: Karl Butts and Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party; Francis Sesler, plaintiff in class-action lawsuit by Black farmers against USDA; Rudolfo Valentín, Carpenters Union member.

GEORGIA
Atlanta
Saturday Nov. 22, 7:00 p.m.
Speakers: James Harris, SWP National Committee, former staff writer for the Militant; Willie Cotton, Young Socialists

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston
Sunday November 23, 2:00 p.m. Speaker: Laura Garza.

NEBRASKA
Omaha
Friday, Nov. 21, 6:30 p.m.
SOMA building, ‘R’ Street between South 31st and 30th Streets.
Speakers: Lisa Rottach, member of UFCW local 271, correspondent for the Militant.

NEW JERSEY
Newark
Saturday, November 22, Dinner 6:30 p.m., Program 7:30 p.m.
Chair: Patrick O’Neill, staff writer for the Militant;
Speakers: Paul Mailhot, member of Socialist Workers Party, former Militant staff writer.

NEW YORK
Manhattan
Friday, November 21, Dinner 6:30 p.m., Program 7:30 p.m.
Chaired by Argiris Malapanis, editor of the Militant.
Speakers: Martin Koppel, editor of Perspectiva Mundial; Stu Singer, former Militant staff writer; Olga Rodriguez, Socialist Workers Party; Iris Baez, fighter against police brutality; Naomi Craine, former Militant editor.

OHIO
Cleveland
Friday, November 21, Dinner 6:30 p.m., Program 7:30 p.m.
Speakers: Helen Meyers, Socialist Workers Party; and Romina Green, has reported for the Militant on Argentina.

PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia
Friday, December 5, 7:30 p.m.
Speakers: John Staggs, John Studer, Hilda Cuzco.

Northeast Pennsylvania
Saturday, Dec. 6, Dinner 6:00 p.m., Program 7:00 p.m.
Speakers to be announced

TEXAS
Houston
Saturday, November 22, Buffet 5:00 p.m., Program 6:30 p.m.
Speakers: Henry Cooper, KPFT radio and leader of Latinos por la paz; Tom Leonard, active in building the SWP for the past half century; Anthony Dutrow, 2003 SWP candidate for Houston mayor; Brian Williams, former Militant staff writer; Tom Kleven, Texas Southern University professor and longtime defender of the Cuban Revolution; Robin Maisel; Militant reporter/participant in Vietnam antiwar movement; Jason Wattley; recent Militant subscriber.

WASHINGTON
Seattle
Friday, November 21, Program 7:30 p.m.
Speaker: Chris Hoeppner.

WASHINGTON, D.C.
Saturday, November 22, Dinner 6:30 p.m., Program 7:30 p.m.
Speakers: Sam Manuel, Washington, D.C., Militant Bureau Chief, Janice Lynn and John Hawkins, former Militant staff writers.

AUSTRALIA
Sydney
Friday, November 28, 7:00 p.m.
Speakers: Joanne Kuniansky, Communist League; Bob Aiken, participant in Militant reporting trips to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea; Peter Weitzel, president of Australia-Cuba Friendship Society in Sydney; Christian Bava, student activist and Perspectiva Mundial subscriber

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