Marxism and Negro Liberation by GUS HALL NEW YORK NEW CENTURY PUBLISHERS ABOUT THE AUTHOR GUS HALL, tha author of this pamphlet, is the ational ecretar)' of the Communist Party. Formerly a steelworker, he helped to organize the C.I.O. Steelworkers Union in the 1930's. He is one of the eleven Communist leaders convicted in the notorious Foley Square " thought control" trial aimed to muzzle opponents of the Truman-Wall Street war drive. He is presently free on bail while the conviction is under appeal before the U.S. Supreme Co urt. He is an outstanding working-class champion of the peace, freedom and security of the people. As qne of the fore· most leaders of the Communist Party, he has made many out­ standing contributions in the application of the science of l\larxism-Leninism to American conditions. A avy veteran of the last war, he is also the author of Peace Can Be Won!, Hands Off Korea atUl Formosa, and Which Way fo r Young Americans. This pamphlet contains the text of his address at a meeting in celebration of egro History Week, held in ew York, in February, under the auspices of the Communist Party. l'ublishtd by N~<w CENTURY PUBLISHERS, 83:1 Broadway, New York 3, N. Y. May, 195-1 PJ\INT£0 IN U.S.A. MARXISM and NEGRO LIBERATION THE HISTORY of the l egro people is a great history of a great people. Above all it is a history of struggle, bloodshed, heroism and sacrifice. It is a history of tremendous obstacles overcome, of struggle against heavy odds. It is the history of generations that struggled against their enslavement by the white rulers of the United States. These struggles have left a proud and glorious legacy, inherited by each succeeding generation as a guide in its own struggles which carry forward the struggles of the past. Because of the struggles and activities of the egro people, the U.S.A. is in every way better off. They have added much in every field to the achievements of the people of the United States. The lessons to be drawn from the history of the egro people are many and varied not only for the egro people but for all the oppressed and exploited. What are some of the lessons and out­ standing characteristics of the struggles of the egro ·people that stand out even to a casual observer of egro history? Militancy and skill in the struggle against great odds. The great odds arise from the fact that the Negroes were pirated from Africa-the land of their historic nativity, brought to a new, strange land in chains. From African co untries and tribes having various languages, distinctive cultures and dissimilar levels of economic and political development, they were transported like cattle, seized and impressed into bondage, first by their slave­ master colonial ruling class and subsequently by the U.S. slave­ master nation. In later years, these odds arise from the fact that the growing Negro nation remains under the domination of th 3 most ruthless and the most powerful capitalist co untry in the world. At each turn of history the Negro people have merged their struggles with the cause of social progress. In 1776 it was the fight for independence. In 1861-65, it was the struggle for the abolition of chattel slavery; in 1941, the struggle against fascism. At each turn of events, the Negro people have joined forces and united with the class or groups fighting for progress. In the early period it was with the capitalist class and the farmers, the artisans and working men. In the present period, the trend is to unite with the working class, the class now leading the march toward the next stage of progress. One of the most important lessons for the working class is the historically affirmed fact that there can be no major social advance in the United States as long as the masses accept, defend or are passive and neutral toward the oppression and subjugation of the Negro people. The attitude of the working class to the Negro people is, and will be, a yardstick by which to measure all progress against capitalism and reaction. The working class will finally understand this truism when it realizes that the absence of such understanding has hampered its struggles in the past. The oppres­ sion of the Negro people, a devastating indictment against U.S. capitalism in itself, likewise has been and remains a major weapon in the hands of the capitalist class in exploiting and oppressing the working class and farm masses. Finally, the masses must learn to see the importance of the fact that the Negro people have always fought against the ruling class, the common enemy of all the common people of the United States of America. INTEGRATION IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT EQUALITY In their own way, for their own ends, the ruling class and its apologists also take note of egro I li!'>tory Wrrk. They use the 4 week in an attempt to camoufl age the evil evidence of their unre­ lenting subjugation, oppression and discrimination. against the egro people. They conjure up mirages of the great progress they have made toward "conferring equal rights on Negroes." But, in fact, they opened Negro History Week by taking the lives of seven innocent men in Martinsville. The New York police cold­ bloodedly shot the Negro G.I. Derrick, but Jim Crow's apologists say, "we are now in a transition from a segregated to an integrated society." The Trenton Six sit in the death house, but the defenders of the slave market say, "the tide of integration is sweeping in." They arrest, handcuff and conspire to imprison the greatest scholar U.S. capitalist society has produced in the last half cen· tury, the' distinguished Negro author and now outstanding advo· cate of peace-Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois. To speak of integration without equality, without freedom, is dangerous demagogy. Without equality and freedom, integration is an impossibility. Even the slavemaster spoke about the one big "family" made up of the slaves and their masters. Words about integration are meaningless when the average in· come of a white rural family in the U.S.A. is $1,600, while the average income of a egro rural family is $559. AU the punitive powers of the government enfo rce the "Nurem· berg Laws" of Dixie, which proscribe the status of the Negro nation in our country as a disfranchised, segregated, pariah caste-unrepresented in government and unspoken for in the law courts of the land! Such phrases about "the progressive integration of Negroes in the total life of the United States" are meaningless when the l egro people comprise 9.8 percent of the population, but receive less than three percent of the national income. These figures give only a general idea. The conditions of the Negro workers and sharecroppers are much worse than the picture they convey. The masses of egro people are not tied to the land with chains a'> were the chattel slaves. Instead they are tied to the land r 5 sharecroppers with the chains of poverty, debts, mortgages. The sharecropper cultivates the land with a plow and a mule. He gets "one-tenth of a crop from a half of a farm." This relationship to the land is the economic heart of the slave conditions of the Negro masses in the South. After the Civil War the land in large part stayed in the hands of the old landlords. In cases where the land was taken away by the freed slaves, it was given back to the former owner. The freed slaves were free, but had no land on which to make a livelihood. So they were forced into the system of sharecropping and peonage. The word "progress" sounds somewhat hollow when, as late as 1940, it is officially reported that 70 percent of Negro homes in the South are without running water; 70 percent without elec· tricity; 27 percent had no water supply at all. In Baltimore, the fact that 20-percent of the population are Negro and occupy only two percent of the living space, is a cold fact, but to the Negro people it means cold Aats. In Chicago, in ghetto houses formerly built for 1,127 families, 3,580 families and 646 single people are forced to live. How can one speak of integration when in Mississippi they spend annually $71 for each white child attending school, and $11.96 for each Negro child attending a Jim-Crow school. In Louisiana they spend $121.32 for each white child and $46.25 for each Negro child. The Negro teacher in the South earns today a mere $10 to $15 more a month than she did 70 years ago. She knows that in Mississippi the wage of a white teacher is $1,107 per year while a Negro teacher gets $342 per year. It is not easy for her to teach that "progress has been made." The breaking of Jim-Crow laws in some of the industries is an important step forward. But when you take into consideration that today 64 percent of the Negro workers are in the unskilled ca tegories, it becomes clear this is only a first step. Eighty-seven years after the freeing of the slaves, it is dangerous 6 for the Negro citizen to vole. Masses of egro citizens, the great majority, are kept from voting by the poll tax, by state laws and by the fear of being shot, as has happened to so many.