Vol. 78/No. 28      August 4, 2014

Fighting Racism in World War II — a collection of articles and other writings on the struggle against racist discrimination and government repression targeting the Black struggle from 1939 to 1945 — is one of the Books of the Month for August. The Communist Party USA backed Washington’s anti-labor and racist policies as part of its support for the U.S. rulers’ war drive. Both the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the largest African-American newspapers, and the Militant were among the targets of the U.S. government’s assault on workers rights. The excerpts below are from articles in the Militant written in 1942. Copyright © 1980 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

The Pittsburgh Courier, a few weeks ago, began a campaign known as the “Double V,” which stands for “double victory for democracy at home and abroad.” Several other Negro newspapers and many Negro organizations have endorsed this campaign, saying that a victory in this war will not be adequate or satisfactory unless democracy is also victorious at home.

This is certainly far from a radical or antiwar slogan. As a matter of fact, for many people it is only a cover for unqualified support of the war.

But even so, the Stalinists are opposed to it — because it places the struggle against Jim Crow in this country on the same plane as the war against the Axis!

Last week, at a symposium on the Negro press in New York, Eugene Gordon, Negro writer for the Daily Worker, came out against the Double V slogan because “Hitler is the main enemy” and “the foes of Negro rights in this country should be considered as secondary.”

The other Negro newspapermen present — who also support the war — sharply disagreed with Gordon’s position on this question. …

They know how hard it would be to try to sell the Negroes a paper, claiming to represent their interests, which told them that their struggle for equality is “secondary.” They know how the Negro people would repudiate a paper that tried to convince them that Hitler is their main enemy when they can still feel on their backs the oppression of the American Jim Crow ruling class.

The Stalinists, on the other hand, don’t care a hang about the interests or aspirations of the Negro masses — they are in no way dependent on them. Their policies are decided for them not by what the masses want or need, but by what the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union wants or needs. …

The present activities of the Post Office in preventing the Militant from going through the mails are closely connected with the whole struggle to smash Jim Crowism in the United States.

The Post Office’s objections to the Militant are not based on what we have to say about the Negro struggle alone. What the Post Office dislikes about this paper is its whole prolabor policy. But an important part of this policy is its uncompromising stand against Jim Crowism wherever it exists, including Washington.

Mr. Calvin Hassell, assistant to the solicitor of the Post Office Department in Washington, has stated that in his opinion “to urge Negroes to fight for their rights at the present moment” justifies the withholding of any issue of a paper from the mails.

Of course, Mr. Hassell and those in the administration whose orders he is carrying out do not like to have the Negro people told that they should fight for their rights in wartime as in peacetime. They don’t like it when the Militant prints such articles. But they also don’t like it when any other paper, including the Negro press, does the same.

As an example of the administration’s attitude on this question, we reprint sections of an editorial printed in the March 14, 1942, issue of the Pittsburgh Courier, entitled “Cowing the Negro Press”:

In view of the hysteria that seems to be the inevitable accompaniment of war, colored citizens will not be surprised to learn that their only militant spokesman, the Negro press, is being closely watched and investigated by government agents.

Offices of at least two of the largest Negro newspapers have been visited by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since Pearl Harbor.

Mrs. Charlotta A. Bass, editor and publisher of the militant “California Eagle,” states that FBI agents have visited her office and interrogated her about possible receipt of Japanese or German funds because her paper courageously condemned color discrimination and segregation in National Defense.

This sort of thing is an obvious effort to cow the Negro press into soft-pedaling its criticism and ending its forthright exposure of the outrageous discriminations to which Negroes have been subjected. …

Now we are not trying to pretend that the Militant is like the Negro press. For one thing, our paper has a more consistent policy against all the forces responsible for Jim Crow; for another, our paper advocates the only program to achieve racial equality.

But the Militant is like the Negro press, or a great part of the Negro press, in this respect: we both expose Jim Crow practices, and we both tell the Negro masses to fight for an end to them.

If the Militant can be suppressed for this “crime,” isn’t it obvious that the administration’s next step would be to go after the more outspoken Negro papers? Wouldn’t the administration consider cracking down on the activities of organizations like the March on Washington movement? Wouldn’t it have the effect of making many Negro editors less likely to print things for which this paper was gagged? Wouldn’t all this result in a setback to the movement for Negro equality?

The Militant fights for the rights of all the workers, and that is why its suppression would be a blow to the whole labor movement. It would be at least as great a blow at the struggle for Negro emancipation. That is why all workers, including the Negro workers, should protest the activities of the Post Office Department.  
 
 
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