Frank-ly Speaking - Give Ear to our Critics (1951 archives)

Instead of pinning the label of "communism" on virtually all adverse" criticism and tossing it into the ashcan, it would pay our leaders to give ear and evaluate such criticism purely on its merits. We are a considerable distance away from perfection; that being so, there is room for improvement in our way of life.

These comments" are the result of a letter published recently in the Christian Science Monitor by Seyd Mohammed Sarodio, who said he was going back home to Jakarta, Java, after spending six years in America. Sarodio is a non-white and, as such, views the U. S. through the eyes of a colored man. He is also one of the many millions of non-whites who are the victims of discrimination while they are being told hypocritically that our democracy is the best thing in the whole world.

Hitting directly at bur established doctrine of white supremacy, Sarodio said to America in his letter:

"You are self-righteous and talk too much about ideals. You are a fanatically racial people, and do not like anyone of a different color. This prejudice is so "deep and pervasive that it expresses itself in business, in schools, in social parties, in politics, in industrial and labor life, and even in churches.

"Your values are different. These values are reflected in your manners, which are crude; in the home life, which is strained and full of divorces, and in a loose sex life."

White is always right, says Sarodio. This doctrine of white supremacy causes America to support "white imperialism" and the exploitation of colored peoples, and the brown man from Java charges:

"In the world issue of right and wrong, Americans always take sides With their fellow white men. This is true whether the issue involves imperialism, power politics, or strategical maneuvers. You are always in concert with white people,

"Africa and what remains of Asia are still under the white man—European—and you support him by all kinds of methods. That is why we cannot trust the American Point Four program. To us, that is just another trick."

In one breath America "spouts idealism to disarm people" and in the next breath "as soon as they are disarmed America cuts their throats economically, militarily and politically. You Americans always want to be the upper dog. If people disagree with you, they are no good and are wrong," Sarodio continued.

Declaring that "Americans pride themselves as the chosen people because they rule the world with their ideas and influence, their trade and armies," he said that this power is "material and will not last. But pride will not let you see the truth, and you have too much comfort to want to admit or change it."

His conclusions are based on three years at Ohio State, two years at Fordham and one year at Columbia universities, plus living in various towns and cities throughout the nation. Conditions were "about the same in all these places," he said, and concluded:

"I am going home, therefore, to my people and tell them to cultivate our own ways and try to avoid contamination of yours. This is better for me and for them."

At just about the time this letter appeared, a class in government, the United Nations and education at Columbia University heard a noted speaker say that "there is no real UN so far as the darker races are concerned."

This speaker was James B. Lawson, president of the United African Nationalist movement, who lectured on "Trusteeship and Non-Selfgoverning Territories In Africa." Showing the same kind of criticism as that evidenced in Sarodio's letter, Lawson said:

"To me, trusteeship is just a new word for slavery or the old colonialism. The trusteeship agreements for existing trust territories were drafted by the controlling power in each instance and submitted to the general assembly for improvement only. These agreements were drafted to facilitate imperialism. Conditions in the existing trust territories are no better than conditions in the acknowledged colonies; in some instances, they are even worse than in the colonies."

Under trusteeship, Lawson said, African and other countries "are being drained of their resources to rebuild Europe. None of this money is used for proper education of the people to whom the territory actually belongs, nor for proper health facilities, nor to industrialize these territories. This proves there is no real UN so far as the dark races are concerned; it is just the same old slave masters or new ones."

By ignoring such complaints, we are merely piling up for ourselves a tidal wave of hate which, sooner or later, will sweep over us. Would it not be better to stop now and right these wrongs while there is still time?

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v2n3/Frankly%20Speaking.html

Honolulu Record, August 18, 1949, vol. 2 no. 3, p. 8

frank-ly speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

VI. Depression and War: Labor Weakens Itself

I have been forced, reluctantly, to the opinion that when Franklin D. Roosevelt was buried, the intelligence of many of our most powerful labor leaders was laid to rest with him. That is the kindest explanation I know for the suicidal folly that is now official policy of the top national CIO leadership. When the CIO was created about 15 years ago, it was believed that its aggressive, realistic program would liberalize the hidebound AFL conservatives. For a time this was true, but today we find Phil Murray and Co. slipping into the same thought patterns so recently condemned, as typical of Bill Green and associates: This has been a deep disappointment to those of us who looked upon the CIO to give real guidance to the working people.

Currently, the CIO officially backs the double-talking Truman administration with its program for World War III, if necessary, to bail Big Business out of a depression. Murray and his boys have allied themselves with the gigantic trusts and monopolies, thus strengthening the hands of those who have been organized labor’s bitterest enemies. At the same time, the CIO has been sinfully weakened as the alliance became stronger. It just doesn’t make sense. For it is impossible to strengthen reaction and at the same time fight it. Had the CIO leadership held to its original principles instead of virtually offering the organization as a sitting target for the powerful union busters who have master-minded the nation’s brink-of-war program, we would have no Taft-Hartley law nor the divisive Red-baiting tactics which so weaken organized labor that it cannot adequately protect itself from outside attacks.

The Wagner Act came into being in 1935 under Roosevelt. Its purpose was to prevent employers from using their economic power to keep their workers from organizing. As for the strength of Big Business, the Temporary National Economic Committee of the U. S. Senate, set up in 1938, reported: “Corporations in modern times are economic states with power in many instances fully as great as that of political states of the American union.” Remember, this report was made prior to World War II, which saw mergers and the creation of new financial empires far more powerful than any which had previously existed. Unions basically, are the allies of the general public in keeping these “economic states” from growing so strong they can defy all efforts toward public control. Here in Hawaii the ILWU is the barrier to complete dictatorship over the Territory by the Big Five, but on the Mainland many right-wing unions have lost the will to resist. They have forgotten they cannot side with both the “economic states” and the public. So the top leadership of organized labor backed the Truman doctrine in Greece and Turkey and then the Marshall plan based upon the continuation of colonial slavery by the ruling classes of Western Europe, even though imperialism, through the exploitation of cheap labor, lowers the living standards of workers in capitalistic countries. Today, production and real wages in the Marshall plan countries are still below pre-war levels and there is rising unemployment in Western Europe as well as America. Meanwhile, profits remain terrifically high.

By going down the line with the bi-partisan warmongers and swooning at the proper times to the slick siren songs of the Truman gang, labor is now saddled with Taft-Hartley, which got its ideological leadership from White. House anti-union action in the threatened rail strike of a couple of years ago. The witch-hunting of the federal government set the pace for witch-hunting within the CIO.

Last year, Wallace and the Progressive Party warned organized labor that it could expect no relief from Taft-Hartley or the excesses of Big Business if it supported the two parties of Wall Street, the Republicans and the Democrats. But those who had gone down the line for Wallace as Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944 now would have nothing to do with him and tried to kick out those who backed their former fair-haired boy.

Since the 81st Congress went in last January, the prophesies of the Wallaceites have become painfully true. A GOP Congress passed Taft-Hartley and a Democratic Congress has failed to repeal it. The living standards of American workers have dropped and jobless ness has risen Management’s key weapon of Red-baiting, which pits union brother against union brother, has weakened the whole trade union movement, thus automatically increasing the dictatorship of Big Business. Instead of leading the fight for peace and security and opposing profit-grabbing and world domination by the billion-dollar corporations, the top leadership of organized labor still swoons to the siren songs of the Truman gang.

But there are bright spots on the dark labor horizon Among them are the refusal of such unions as ILWU, Marine Cooks and Stewards, Farm Equipment United, Electrical Workers, Mine, Mill and Smelter, and a few others to march to self-destruction with Murray, Walter Reuther, Emil Rieve and the rest of the labor traitors.

There is also growing dissatisfaction among rank-and-filers who followed their leaders’ advice and voted for Truman, only to have Taft-Hartley still chained to their necks, the warmongering Atlantic Pact, a continued high cost of living and layoffs. Those who have gone along and eliminated the so-called Communists from leadership have learned the hard way that management is no more inclined to give a living wage to a “purged” union than to one which will have no part of the anti-Communist hysteria. How long the mentally feeble leadership, under these conditions, will be able to keep its errand boy job for Wall Street is a matter for conjecture. Truth is, the Bill Greens and Phil Murrays no longer have the psychology of labor. They think like corporation presidents, peddling labor instead of autos or radios. Yet, if we are to have peace, prosperity, equality and real democracy, organized labor must reject the aid to imperialism given by Green, Murray and Co. and become militantly independent. (to be continued)

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v2n2/Frankly%20Speaking.html

Honolulu Record, August 11, 1949, vol. 2 no. 2, p. 8

frank-ly speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

V. Depression and War: Paul Robeson’s Stand

Two distinguished Americans are leading the resistance movement against the drive of Big Business toward World War III as a way out of the new depression and for preservation of tremendous profits through global domination. They are Henry A. Wallace, former vice president, and Paul Robeson, singer and actor.

You don’t hear much about Wallace in the islands. Out here he gets the silent treatment. On the Mainland he is lambasted or ignored. Recently the propaganda guns of the warmongers have been turned on Robeson, and the errand boys of Big Business, who live on the crumbs tossed by the trusts and monopolies, have taken up the cry.

The intensive effort to discredit Robeson and render his leadership ineffective, thus confusing his followers and making them potential supporters of the suicidal and selfish policies of Big Business, began during the World Peace Conference at Paris in April. With vicious inaccuracy, Paul was quoted by the daily press services as saying that “American Negroes would never go to war against Russia.”

Despite generations of experience common to Negroes of being caricatured by the daily press, despite the common knowledge that the white newspaper can seldom be trusted to print truthful accounts of events concerning Negroes, there were many of the “professional Negro leaders” who took the published report as gospel truth and rushed into print to vilify one of the most famous men of our time, regardless of color. They were like faithful dogs, trying to curry favor with their masters.

But what has been most encouraging to the fighters for peace has been the reaction of the Negro people who, acting on the same distorted reports, have rejected the “me too, boss” attitudes of their so-called leaders and have written letters to the Mainland press, both Negro and white, supporting the alleged stand of Robeson.

What Paul said, however, is different from what the press services reported. Instead of saying that “American Negroes would never go to war against Russia,” he said that Negroes would not “join in a war of aggression against Russia.” There’s all the difference in the world between those statements. The 1,800 delegates from 52 nations at the Paris conference, including Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, world famous scholar and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Paul himself have denied the first report and confirmed the accuracy of the second statement.

Here is what else Robeson had to say:

“The emphasis on what I said in Paris was on the struggle for peace, not on anybody going to war against anybody.

“Go and ask the Negro workers in the cotton plantations of Alabama, the sugar plantations in Louisiana, the tobacco fields in South Arkansas, ask the workers in the banana plantations or the sugar workers in the West Indies, ask the African farmers who have been dispossessed of their land in the South Africa of Malan, ask the Africans wherever you find them on their continent:

“Will they fight for peace so that new ways can be opened up for a life of freedom for hundreds of millions and not for just the few; will they fight for peace and collaboration with the Soviet Union and the new democracies; will they join the forces of peace or be drawn into a war in the interest of the senators who have just filibustered them out of their civil rights; will they join Malan in South Africa who, just like Hitler, is threatening to destroy 8,000,000 Africans and hundreds of thousands of Indians through hunger and terror; will they join their oppressors or will they fight for peace?”

To these words may be added those of Mrs. Eslanda Goode Robeson, his wife, who told a Wallace Peace Rally held recently in Madison Square Garden, New York:

“I know that every sensible Negro in this country, professional leaders notwithstanding, feels that if he must fight any future war for democracy, the proper place to begin such a fight is right here.”’

That, frankly, is the attitude of many of America’s 15,000,000 Negroes, whose oppressive treatment has set the pattern for discrimination against other non-white groups, not only on the Mainland but in other possessions arid dominated areas such as the Hawaiian Islands.

Disillusionment has followed both world wars of this century, sold to America as “crusades for democracy.” The Negro was promised equality after World War I and instead got a wave of lynchings, riots, and revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Even though World War II was a duel to the death against the kind of fascist racism most Negroes taste with their daily bread, there were those who remembered the unkept promises of 1917 and preferred bearing arms against the Bilbos and Rankins of the South than against Hitler.

That is why Paul Robeson says that the bulk of the Negro people will not be inclined to support any aggressive war planned by Big Business against the Soviet Union or any other nation which is known to have abolished jim crow and color discrimination. There is no desire among the Negro masses to strengthen the hands of their own oppressors The feeling is growing that if there must be fighting, let it be against the Dixiecrats, the northern perpetrators of such raw deals as the frame-up of the Trenton Six in New Jersey, and those who use the happenstance of color to restrict job Opportunities and housing.

That is why efforts to discredit Paul among the plain people have fallen flat, and also why all the big guns of thought control, including the aptly named un-American committee, have been turned against him. No aggressive war planned by Big Business can be successful without the support of the 15,000,000 American Negroes, one tenth of the population. It should be obvious by now that mere words won’t get Negro support; it can be forced only through guns and the absolute terrorism of fascism. Therefore, the fight for peace and against fascism has as its natural allies the Negro people and, with them, the other non-whites who stand in a similar position. (To be continued)

Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson seems to be a signficant missing piece.

He taught at the school Stanley Ann attended in Washington.

I had suggested at an early ACORN thread that Paul Robeson connected the Dunham’s to Frank Davis from an editorial I read by American Thinker’s blog.

Paul Robeson is mentioned in the columns Davis use to write in Hawaii:

http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/Frank_Marshall_Davis_4.pdf
Page 62

Bio of Paul Robeson:
http://homepage.sunrise.ch/homepage/comtex/rob3.htm
Born Paul Leroy Bustill Robeson, April 9, 1898, in Princeton, NJ; died of a stroke, January 23, 1976, in Philadelphia, PA; son of William Drew (a clergyman) and Maria Louisa (a schoolteacher; maiden name, Bustill) Robeson; married Eslanda Cardozo Goode, August 17, 1921; children: Paul Jr. Education: Rutgers College (now University), A.B., 1919; Columbia University, LL.B., 1923.

Career
Admitted to the Bar of New York; employed in a law firm, 1923; actor; stage appearances include Simon the Cyrenian, 1921, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, 1924, Show Boat (musical), 1928, Othello, 1930 and 1943, and Toussaint L’Ouverture, 1936; films appearances include Body and Soul, 1924, The Emperor Jones, 1933, Sanders of the River, 1935, and Show Boat, 1936; singer; recording and performing artist.

Awards: Badge of Veterans of Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 1939; Donaldson Award for outstanding lead performance, 1944, for Othello; American Academy of Arts and Letters medal, 1944; NAACP Spingarn Medal, 1945; Champion of African Freedom Award, National Church of Nigeria, 1950; Afro-American Newspapers Award, 1950; Stalin Peace Prize (U.S.S.R.), 1952; Peace Medal (East Germany), 1960; Ira Aldridge Award, Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, 1970; Civil Liberties Award, 1970; Duke Ellington Medal, Yale University, 1972; Whitney M. Young, Jr., National Memorial Award, Urban League of Greater New York, 1972. Honorary degrees from Rutgers University, Hamilton College, Morehouse College, Howard University, Moscow State Conservatory, and Humboldt University.

Paul Robeson—singer, actor, civil rights activist, law school graduate, athlete, scholar, author—was perhaps the best known and most widely respected black American of the 1930s and 1940s. Robeson was also a staunch supporter of the Soviet Union, and a man, later in his life, widely vilified and censored for his frankness and unyielding views on issues to which public opinion ran contrary. As a young man, Robeson was virile, charismatic, eloquent, and powerful. He learned to speak more than 20 languages in order to break down the barriers of race and ignorance throughout the world, and yet, as Sterling Stuckey pointed out in the New York Times Book Review, for the last 25 years of his life his was “a great whisper and a greater silence in black America.”

Born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1898, Robeson was spared most of the daily brutalities suffered by African Americans around the turn of the century. But his family was not totally free from hardship. Robeson’s mother died from a stove-fire accident when he was six. His father, a runaway slave who became a pastor, was removed from an early ministerial position. Nonetheless, from his father Robeson learned diligence and an “unshakable dignity and courage in spite of the press of racism and poverty.” These characteristics, Stuckey noted, defined Robeson’s approach in his beliefs and actions throughout his life.

Having excelled in both scholastics and athletics as a youth, Robeson received a scholarship to Rutgers College (now University), where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and chosen valedictorian in his senior. He earned varsity letters in four sports and was named Rutgers’ first All-American in football. Fueled by his class prophecy to be “the leader of the colored race in America,” Robeson went on to earn a law degree from Columbia University, supporting himself by playing professional football on the weekends. After graduation he obtained a position with a New York law firm only to have his career halted, as was recalled in Martin Baulm Duberman’s Paul Robeson, when a stenographer refused to take down a memo, saying, “I never take dictation from a nigger.” Sensing this episode as indicative of the climate of the law, Robeson left the bar.

While in law school, Robeson had married fellow Columbia student Eslanda Cardozo Goode, who encouraged him to act in amateur theatrical productions. Convinced by his wife and friends to return to the theater after his departure from law, Robeson joined the Provincetown Players, a group associated with playwright Eugene O’Neill.

(snipping theatric claims to fame)

Continued travels throughout Europe in the 1930s brought Robeson in contact with members of politically left-leaning organizations, including socialists and African nationalists. Singing to, and moving among, the disadvantaged, the underprivileged, the working classes, Robeson began viewing “himself and his art as serving the struggle for racial justice for nonwhites and economic justice for workers of the world,” Huggins noted.

A critical journey at that time, one that changed the course of his life, was to the Soviet Union. Paul Robeson author Duberman depicted Robeson’s time there: “Nights at the theater and opera, long walks with [film director Sergei] Eisenstein, gala banquets, private screenings, trips to hospitals, children’s centers, factories ... all in the context of a warm embrace.” Robeson was ecstatic with this new-found society, concluding, according to New York Times Book Review contributor John Patrick Diggins, “that the country was entirely free of racial prejudice and that Afro-American spiritual music resonated to Russian folk traditions. ‘Here, for the first time in my life ... I walk in full human dignity.’” Diggins went on to assert that Robeson’s “attraction to Communism seemed at first more anthropological than ideological, more of a desire to discover old, lost cultures than to impose new political systems. ... Robeson convinced himself that American blacks as descendants of slaves had a common culture with Russian workers as descendants of serfs.”

Regardless of his ostensibly simple desire to believe in a cultural genealogy, Robeson soon become a vocal advocate of communism and other left-wing causes. He returned to the United States in the late 1930s, Newsweek’ s Saal observed, becoming “a vigorous opponent of racism, picketing the White House, refusing to sing before segregated audiences, starting a crusade against lynching, and urging Congress to outlaw racial bars in baseball.”

After World War II, when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union froze into the Cold War, many former advocates of communism backed away from it. When the crimes of Soviet leader Josef Stalin became public—forced famine, genocide, political purges—still more advocates left the ranks of communism. Robeson, however, was not among them. National Review contributor Joseph Sobran explained why: “It didn’t matter: he believed in the idea, regardless of how it might be abused. In 1946 the former All-American explained his loyalty to an investigating committee: ‘The coach tells you what to do and you do it.’ It was incidental that the coach was Stalin.” Robeson could not publicly decry the Soviet Union even after he, most probably, learned of Stalin’s atrocities because “the cause, to his mind,” Nation contributor Huggins theorized, “was much larger than the Soviet Union, and he would do nothing to sustain the feeding frenzy of the American right.”

Robeson’s popularity soon plummeted in response to his increasing rhetoric. After he urged black youths not to fight if the United States went to war against the Soviet Union, a riot prevented his appearing at a concert in Peekskill, New York. But his desire was never to leave the United States, just to change, as he believed, the racist attitude of its people. In his autobiography Robeson recounted how during the infamous McCarthy hearings, when questioned by a Congressional committee about why he didn’t stay in the Soviet Union, he replied, “Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay right here and have a part of it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?”

In 1950 the U.S. Department of State revoked Robeson’s passport, ensuring that he would remain in the United States. “He was black-listed by concert managers—his income, which had been

Robeson’s passport was restored in 1958 after a Supreme Court ruling on a similar case, but it was of little consequence. By then he had become a nonentity. When Robeson’s autobiography was published that year, leading literary journals, including the New York Times and the New York Herald-Tribune refused to review it. Robeson traveled again to the Soviet Union, but his health began to fail. He tried twice to commit suicide. “Pariah status was utterly alien to the gregarious Robeson. He became depressed at the loss of contact with audiences and friends, and suffered a series of breakdowns that left him withdrawn and dependent on psychotropic drugs,” Dennis Drabble explained in Smithsonian. Slowly deteriorating and virtually unheard from in the 1960s and 1970s, Robeson died after suffering a stroke in 1976.

(snipping books authored, viewable at link)

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n2/Frankly%20speaking.html

Honolulu Record, August 9, 1951, vol. 4 no. 2, p. 8

Frank-ly Speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

Ralph Bunche as Ambassador

According to Doris Fleeson, syndicated columnist whose articles appear in the Star-Bulletin, there is another move under way to have Dr. Ralph Bunche named U. S. ambassador to Russia. Sponsors of the plan believe the noted Palestine mediator should be used in the war against communism and say that his appointment would be a “living refutation to Communist racial propaganda against the United States.”

Thus far, Dean Acheson has not agreed. The Secretary of State does not want to seemingly aid aspiring politicians with large Negro voting blocs, nor does he want to set a precedent of naming officials because they represent minorities. And on this point the Star-Bulletin had an editorial on Saturday, August 4, which stated, among other things:

“Practical Side of Present Unrest”

“All peoples everywhere, want equality. That is a practical side of the world’s present unrest which too many people like Mr. Acheson, who long ago achieved equality, fail to recognize.”

Since Secretary Acheson says he always tries to appoint the best qualified man for the job, regardless of color, the afternoon daily charges the head of the State Department with “disavowing” his own words. He is not considering Dr. Bunche without regard to his Negro ancestry. He is, on the contrary, handicapping him on account of it.”

I am glad to see that the Star-Bulletin is back of the proposal to name Dr. Bunche the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. I believe that not only I, but virtually all of America’s 15,000,000 Negroes would take pride in such an appointment. it would mark a milestone in U. S. history.

Act As a Diplomat But Not As a Tool

But at the same time, most of us would expect Dr. Bunche to act as a diplomat and not as a tool of the white supremacists who would hope to use him to silence criticism of discrimination against America’s non-whites instead of eliminating that discrimination.

Frankly, I do not believe that Dr. Bunche would allow himself to be used in such a fashion in the war against Russia. For this same Dr. Bunche is one of the nation’s most vocal persons in calling attention to jim crow and denial of equal opportunity. It was not too long ago that he refused a top post in the State Department because he would not live in the segregated atmosphere of our national capital.

Speaking before the 42nd annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held a few weeks ago in Atlanta, Ga., Dr. Bunche had this to say:

“It is imperative that we go much further than we have gone thus far in applied democracy for all Americans. Pull equality is the answer, and the Negro can never be content with less. We must all keep battering away at the undemocratic barriers of discrimination and segregation.”

Appointment Would Not Bring Equality To 15 Million

Nobody knows any better than Dr. Bunche that his appointment as ambassador would not bring full equality to all Americans. He knows that housing restrictions, job discrimination, jim crow in education and denial of civil rights would not automatically end for 15,000,000 Americans. Ho would not dare say to Russia:

“Look at me. I am living proof that there is no such tiling as white supremacy and racism in America.”

As a matter of fact, we could appoint a Dr. Bunche as ambassador to every other nation in the world and it still would not eliminate the stigma of the legal lynching of the Martinsville Seven in Virginia, or Willie McGee in Mississippi, or the recent race riots in Cicero, Ill. and near Washington, D. C., and Dallas, Tex.

Yes, people everywhere want equality. But it must be equality for all, not for one or two individuals selected in the hope they can be used for propaganda purposes.

Pass and Enforce Strong Civil Rights Laws

As one Negro woman in California phrased it: “I’m tired of having Ralph Bunche waved like a flag in front of me. I want to live wherever I can afford to pay rent, and I want my husband and son to have the best jobs their abilities will permit. Of course I’m proud of Ralph but until these things happen, he’s just one Negro who happened to get ahead. Look back and see how the rest of us live.”

“If the politicians want to silence Russian criticism of white supremacy in America, they have the soundest and surest means already in the palms of their hands. Let them pass strong civil rights laws and then throw the full weight of the Federal government back of them to insure their enforcement. Then you won’t need to talk of appointing a Negro as ambassador to Russia purely for propaganda reasons.

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n9/Frankly%20Speaking.html

Honolulu Record, September 27, 1951, vol. 4 no.9, p. 8

Frank-ly Speaking

By Frank Marshal Davis

Let’s End Capital Punishment

I sincerely hope that the good people of Hawaii, as a result of the Palakiko-Majors case, will demand that the next session of the legislature destroy that relic of barbarism known as capital punishment.

I was against legal killing long before I learned, through my experiences as a working newspaperman, that too often capital punishment is used as a device to maintain white security. But more on this point later.

It seems to me that the doctrine of an eye for an eye should have passed away with the Middle Ages. I cannot agree that one murder is righted by another murder, even though the second has official sanction.

No Logical Excuse for Capital Punishment

Nobody is a born criminal, according to the best scientific thought. This means that they get that way as they develop. And they develop within the framework of the society which may eventually put them to death. In other words, a civilization which permits the creation of criminals may later kill them for acting the way our civilization permits them to act.

Years ago, before we realized the influence of environment on the individual, capital punishment seemed a logical solution. But in a day and age when we have an understanding of the forces which shape an individual’s attitude toward society in general and determine his relationships with other persons, there is no logical excuse for the society-sanctioned murder called capital punishment.

Thus far, psychologists have not been able to determine exactly why, of two individuals reared in decidedly friendly environments, one will become a criminal and the other will develop into what is known as an average citizen. But we do know that delinquency and criminal careers are more prevalent among those boys and girls brought up amidst poverty, crowded slums, broken families, poor health conditions, unsupervised recreation, etc.

Death Is No Solution

Since we also know that crime is expensive, both in terms of money and human ability, it seems to me only elementary to correct the conditions that breed crime by insuring every child adequate housing, food and clothing; sympathetic schooling, intelligently directed recreation and guidance, sufficient medical facilities, mental hygiene and counseling (both for himself and parents), and seeing that each will have a chance not only to develop himself to the full extent of his potentialities but that, when developed, he will have the opportunity to use his ability for the benefit of society as a whole.

Then if, despite receiving friendship instead of hostility from society, he develops into an antisocial creature, then that individual should be institutionalized and given tasks under strict supervision which could aid society. Putting him to death is no solution.

Furthermore, with our present public approaches to delinquency and crime lagging miles behind scientific thought, we quite often invoke capital punishment in a kind of unpatterned, irresponsible fashion. We let one set of people go free after an hour in jail, as in the Massie case, and want to kill others, as with Palakiko and Majors.

Yet when you delve deeper, maybe it is not unpatterned and irresponsible. Many powerful people boast that “America is a white man’s country,” and insist they are going to keep it that way. To anybody who takes the trouble to dig up the facts, capital punishment is often used as a device to maintain white supremacy.

Law for Whites and Non-Whites

The non-white population of the United States is roughly, one-tenth of the. whole. I have before me a recent report issued by the Bureau of Prisons of the U. S. Department of Justice which shows that of the total of 2,831 persons legally executed during the 19-year period of 1930-48, only 1,253 or less than half were white. The remaining 1,578 were non-white.

All except a very small per cent of American non-whites are Negroes. There were 1,528 Negroes executed. The remaining 50 were members of other non-white groups.

Those who have studied the matter know it is seldom that a white person is executed for a crime against a non-white. In the deep South they may not even be arrested. Remember that quadruple lynching in Georgia five years ago which the FBI still hasn’t solved? Or the rape, of a Negro mother by a number of white soldiers mentioned in last week’s RECORD? Weapon Aimed Primarily At

Non-Whites

On the other hand, Negroes may be put to death on trumped up charges, or when the evidence is either suppressed or ignored. For instance, seven Negroes were killed by the State of Virginia a few months ago at Martinsville, and in Mississippi, Willie McGee was executed despite evidence that none was actually guilty of the ‘ charge of rape. But that is the prevailing Dixie pattern and it now and then spills over into other parts of America.

I would be against capital punishment on purely humanitarian grounds. But when this device is used to maintain white supremacy and is a weapon aimed primarily against non-whites, it should be gotten rid of as an enemy of the principles of democracy.

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n7/Frankly%20Speaking.html

Honolulu Record, September 15, 1951, vol. 4 no.7, p. 8

Frank-ly Speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

The Johnson Plan For Peace

“Communism cannot be stopped by military means . . . We can have an honorable peace with Russia, if we are willing to take the initiative. But it will mean revising many of our present policies and attitudes.”

These are the opinions of Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, Washington, D.C. largest Negro university in America. Long noted as a keen student of domestic and international affairs, the renowned educator in a recent interview spelled out a plan for establishing a lasting peace between the U. S. and the Soviet Union—if we have the will for peace.

President Johnson said he believes peace with Russia and Communism is possible “in such a way as to preserve the institutions and practices of freedom which are the precious heritage and achievement of the western world, and in such a way as to enhance those institutions and practices of freedom.”

Price for Peace Consistent With Our Honor

As for war:

“There are some forces in the world which cannot be stopped by military means. Communism is one of them. Communism is a powerful revolutionary movement in the realm of ideas and human organization.

“If peace is to be achieved with Russia and with the Communists it must be achieved in the field of ideas and in the field of human organization.”

The U. S. must take the initiative in establishing such a peace and we are free to take this initiative now, said Dr. Johnson. But it will require a great price of us. Yet this price is within our power and consistent with our honor.

“If we do pay the price of peace, it will result in the functioning of our nation on a higher level than at any other time in its history, and could possibly win for us not only peace, but the esteem and affection of the entire human race,” he pointed out.

Abolish Colonialism, Support Global Economic Reconstruction

There are two points to Dr. Johnson’s program. One is the abolition of colonialism and the other is world-wide economic reconstruction which we should support to the tune of something like $25 billion annually.

“It requires the United States, first of all, to accept and to discharge the responsibility of bringing the Western powers, of whom she is the leader, to a deliberately planned and programmed liquidation of the remnants of colonial power in Asia, Africa and America, and to give up once and for all the imperialistic habits of political domination, economic exploitation and social humiliation of Asiatic and African peoples,” the educator said.

“These habits are themselves the very essence of violence. They invite distrust and violence in return. It is not conceivable that the Western powers can win the confidence and goodwill of the peoples of Asia, and Africa as long as these habits persist in ever so reduced an area.

Overcome Animal-Like Struggle for Existence

. “It requires the United States, secondly, to accept the moral responsibility toward the whole human life which goes with our enormous scientific, technical, organizational and productive genius and to go into the United Nations with a program of economic reconstruction on a worldwide basis, designed to overcome the animal-like struggle for existence which up to this time has prevailed over the earth, and to bring about adequate subsistence in food, clothing, housing and health for every human family of every race, color, nationality and culture on the earth, within the generation now before us.

“As the proponent and leader of this program, it requires the United States to support it with , magnificent and responsible adequacy, in an amount which may be equal to one-tenth of our annual productive power—about $25 billion per year.

“It requires that we set this program before the world, not as an accessory to our military program, but as the main objective in relation to which our military program is only a protective fence-building operation.

Plan On Highest Level Of Statesmanship

“Now this is a plan on the highest level of statesmanship, designed to recognize and encourage to the. maximum the Russian and Com munist belief that a world-wide conquest of the struggle for existence is possible and to offer them a well-planned and magnificently supported way of working toward it by consultation and democratic cooperation on a world encompassing basis, as an alternative to the procedure of aggressive war and the violent and subversive establishment of totalitarian states which we so greatly fear.”

There you have the Johnson plan for peace. What do you think of it? Your comments are invited.

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n6/Frankly%20Speaking.html

Honolulu Record, September 6, 1951, vol. 4 no.6, p. 8

Frank-ly Speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

Dicatorship of the Mind

Last week’s column, titled “What Is Loyalty?” in which the question of safe and disloyal ideas was discussed, was written before the seven local arrests. This new development therefore makes it possible to raise the issue of thought control on a concrete local basis.

The tempest around Judge Delbert Metzger’s decision to reduce bail and an editorial in last Friday’s Star-Bulletin, show with amazing clearness, how far we have gone down the road to dictatorship of the mind.

Our system of government provides for separation of the executive, the judicial and the law-making branches. This is supposed to provide checks and balances, to keep one from complete domination over the others. But it looks now as if this basic concept is being tossed out of the window, along with the First and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution.

Thought Control Now Covers the Courts

Judge Metzger has served two terms. From all I can gather, he has an enviable record for strict adherence to the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. He evidently believes wholeheartedly in an independent judiciary. In his decisions, he has been guided by his conscience and the finest traditions of American jurisprudence. In the past, that is all we have asked of a judge.

But today, it is different. When Judge Metzger refused to bow to the dictates of the executive branch of government in the setting of ridiculously large bail in the case of the seven accused of violating the Smith Act, powerful members of the law-making branch of government and the White House announced he would be purged.

What this means it that thought control now covers the courts. Those judges who believe in an independent judiciary are to be intimidated and liquidated, when possible, if they refuse to bow to the dictates of Congress and the White House. Instead of preserving the Constitution, they are to subvert it to the convenience of Washington. No matter what the Eighth Amendment says about excessive bail, they are to ignore the Constitution and set excessive bail if Washington so orders.

Some Will Not Succumb To Prevailing Hysteria

But it is comforting to know that there are some men of such high principles and sound belief in democracy and the Constitution that they will not succumb to the prevailing hysteria. Judge Metzger is one of these Supreme Court Justices Black and Douglas are two others who stand as beacons in the deepening gloom.

By no stretch of the imagination can they be called Communists or fellow-travellers. Instead, they are sufficiently far-sighted and level-headed enough to know that the official pattern of anti-Communist action threatens the traditional rights of all Americans.

For once we accept the principle that one group may be outlawed and jailed for holding unpopular beliefs, what is there to prevent this from happening to any other minority group if it pleases those in power?

I think that coming generations—if the world survives the threat of atomic annihilation—will look upon the Supreme Court decision in the Smith Act in much the same way that we now glance back at the infamous Dred Scott decision of nearly 100 years ago.

Swallow Race Bias, Says Star-Bulletin

It was on March 6, 1857, that Chief Justice Roger B. Taney handed down a majority decision holding, in effect, that “a Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect” and stating that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were not for Negroes.

As in the recent Smith Act decision, there were two dissenting justices. History has proved the majority of seven wrong in the Dred Scott case and the two dissenters right; I believe that history will prove Chief Justice Vinson and the majority of six wrong when they stated, in effect, that “a Communist has no rights which others are bound to respect” and indicated that the Declaration and the Constitution are not for them.

Coming now to the Star-Bulletin lead editorial of Friday, August 31, the final paragraph stated, among other things, that any time you find a man or a newspaper trying to “overplay alleged ‘race discrimination’ . . . beware!”

To me, the meaning is obvious. In the drive for bigger and better thought control, the afternoon daily would have the victims soft pedal or swallow race discrimination without protest, under the threat of being called “Communists.” If I or any other victim of jim crow object to such treatment, or if a newspaper exposes and opposes such undemocratic conduct, then those who refuse to conform to white supremacy are to be termed “disloyal” and “subversive.”

As a matter of fact, race discrimination cannot be overplayed. After all, it has no business existing in a democracy. It must be completely eliminated, and the only way to get rid of it is to expose it and fight it. To those who have never been hurt by the white supremacists, race discrimination may not be real and can be viewed only as alleged, but to the families of the Martinsville Seven and of Willie McGhee, or to that air force veteran in Cicero, Ill., or to those who are barred from public places in Honolulu solely because of color, it is a cruel fact. And no amount of name-calling or thought control will keep us from fighting against it until it is completely destroyed.

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n4/Frankly%20speaking.html

Honolulu Record, August 23, 1951, vol. 4 no.4, p. 8

Frank-ly Speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

The Dewey Philosophy

In his speech at a luncheon meeting here Saturday, Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York, two-time unsuccessful presidential candidate, stated flatly the backbone of bi-partisan foreign policy when he said:

“The time is coming when it will be necessary to draw a line and say: ‘This is the free world and no part of it shall be allowed to become Communist.’ “

The truth of the matter is that Dewey is late, as usual. That became our official policy with the signing of the Atlantic Pact. Our aid to the French in Indo-China and our intervention in Korea are the results of this policy.

But what burns me up is the naked gall shown by Dewey and the rest who shape our foreign policy when they assume that America has some divine right to dictate to other peoples and nations the kind of government they may have. It is a contemporary version of the master race theory we were supposedly trying to destroy in Nazi Germany.

Force and Violence To Deny Self-Determination

What Dewey says, in effect, is that we must use force and violence, if necessary, to keep a nation from accepting communism even though the majority of the people of that nation have expressed a desire for communism.

As a matter of fact, the people of America have the right to establish a socialist or communist government if they so desire. The right to replace one form of government with another is an historic right. It was the backbone of the Declaration of Independence and was repeated often by Lincoln, the immortal leader of the party whom Dewey pretends to follow. Some 200 years ago an English king had Dewey’s idea and used force and violence to try to keep the people of the 13 American colonies from forming the kind of government they wanted.

But Dewey is not interested in the desires of the people to improve their lot. Had he lived, during the days of Jefferson and Hancock and Franklin and the others who laid the cornerstone for our nation, I firmly believe he would have sided with the British. In his speech here Saturday, he praised the French forces in Indo-China and the English in Malaya. And what are these forces doing? They are trying to crush the efforts of the non-white peoples of Indo-China and Malaya to win independence and control of their lands, just as did the people of the 13 colonies less than 200 years ago.

Colored People Interested In Status of U. S. Negroes

To further show Dewey’s character, not long ago Doris Fleeson mentioned in her syndicated column that Dewey, while in Singapore, was “shocked to find an incident of racial prejudice involving a few hundred people out of 150,000,000. is front-page news in Singapore and elsewhere and considered worthy of a four-column photograph on page one.” This “incident” was the recent race riot at Cicero, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.

To Dewey, this disgraceful spectacle was a minor thing. His indignation was not that such could happen in America, but that it should get around to the rest of the world! What Dewey refused to see is that the majority of the people in Singapore are as dark or even darker in their skin coloring as the Negro war veteran who was the victim of mob action in Cicero. And to the people of Singapore, there is this unanswered question: If America is as democratic as it claims to be, if the U. S. has the kind of government which Dewey says it has, why are there such incidents as the Cicero riot aimed at a fellow citizen purely because he is the same color as the majority of the people of Singapore? You get the idea that none may criticize or change one iota of what Dewey calls the “free world.” This means that the colonial peoples must be content with their inferior lot under their white European masters, while internally we are expected to turn our backs on a Cicero riot and give three extra-loud hurrahs for Dr. Ralph Bunche. Anything else is communism and must be fought.

Actually Calls for International Loyalty Probe

What Dewey and the rest of our foreign policy makers are calling for is a kind of international loyalty probe.

Here at home individuals have been blacklisted and fired from government jobs and private employment because they dared openly to fight against conditions and practices which they believe to be completely contrary to democracy. They opposed the status quo; automatically, they were disloyal.

The people who are fighting to throw off French and British domination in Indo-China and Malaya also oppose that status quo. They, too, are disloyal. And by putting them down, the French win praise from Dewey for helping preserve the “free world.”

The free world of Gov. Dewey is being molded into the shape of official America, with its reverence for the status quo. That means the undiscriminating preservation of what is bad along” with what is good, and in this we have the basic weakness of the whole matter.

Can We Stop, Change For the Better?

I know of no person with even moronic intelligence who wants to toss out the many good things in America. But in the eyes of certain powerful people, an attempt to eradicate anything evil is interpreted as a move to wipe but everything. It’s either all or nothing at all. Do not harm one little hair on the head of our beloved status quo, or you will be considered an outlaw.

That, as I see it, is the Dewey philosophy. Even with our guns and planes and money and atom bombs, how much of it can we force upon the rest of the world?

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n5/Frankly%20Speaking.html

Honolulu Record, August 30, 1951, vol. 4 no.5, p. 8

Frank-ly Speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

What is Loyalty?

Since we are in a period which finds loyalty probes and oaths in every direction, you will please pardon me if I ask a simple question of the powers that be. That question is this: Just what is loyalty? Of course I know that in a general way, loyalty is supposed to mean support of America and its institutions. But when you get down to concrete thinking, just what does this mean? To be loyal, must you give support to each and every institution? Is everything sacred? If not, what can you attack without being labelled disloyal?

Disagreement Found Even In High Places

I have looked a long time for a satisfactory answer and to date have found none. Nobody in authority has as yet spelled out what must be unquestioningly supported, and what (if any) may be safely attacked.

There is disagreement even in high places, on the question of loyalty. Discrimination, segregation and racism are American institutions, as one-time Chairman John Rankin of the un-American committee publicly pointed out And yet the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, has spoken for the overthrow of these institutions by suggesting passage of civil rights legislation. To the powerful white supremacists, this is unquestioned disloyalty. And it is a fact that Negroes and Jews have been kicked out of Federal jobs on charges of disloyalty because they actually fought for the program that Truman has verbally supported.

Similar examples may be cited in the concrete areas of labor union activity, free speech, public housing, etc. One person may be considered disloyal for endorsing a program outlined by other persons who are not considered disloyal; or disloyalty may be pinned upon an individual for exercising the rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

What Are Dangerous and Safe Ideas?

As of now, loyalty is a kind of erratic ghost which changes shape and locale whenever it wishes. Yet we are supposed to be able to recognize it and say to our fellow-Americans: “Loyalty is a tall, broad-shouldered man with iron-gray hair and a mole on his right cheek about one inch above his black moustache. He lives in that green house at the corner of Cottage and Straight Streets.”

In an article some tune ago in the Saturday Review of Literature, Henry Steele Commager of Columbia University, professor of history and noted author, had this to say:

“If you are going to silence or punish men for disloyalty, you must first determine what is loyalty. If you are going to apply Mr. J. Edgar Hoover’s ‘easy test’ of a subversive organization: ‘does it have a consistent record of support of the American viewpoint?’ you must determine officially what is the American viewpoint.

“If you are going to dismiss men for membership in subversive organizations, you must establish what are non-subversive activities and organizations. If you are going to discourage or silence dangerous ideas, you must establish what are safe ideas.”

Who Will Decide?

And thus we come to the core of the problem: Who is going to spell out concretely and precisely which are the safe ideas that may be openly expressed by the American public? Who is going to decide what ideas are disloyal and dangerous and list them as thoughts which must not be expressed by Americans?

Let us say that the White House decides to lei the nation know exactly what is loyalty and disloyalty. A special commission is then appointed. It has the job of sifting and cataloging all ideas. But that will take years, maybe generations, for mankind has held many ideas since his appearance upon this globe. Meanwhile, to be on the safe side, people would be forced to go along with no thinking at all, thus turning us into a nation of puppets. But maybe that’s the idea, after all.

During this period, what happens to science, literature and the original thinking that makes for human progress? To be on the safe side, all the scholars would have to be liquidated. Imbecility would be the only guarantee of safe and unmolested living.

“Every Thinker Puts . . . Stable World In Peril”

For the bald truth is that thought control perils conservatives and reactionaries along with radicals. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “Every idea is an incitement,” and the noted philosopher, John Dewey, has written:

“Let us all admit the case of the conservative; if we once start thinking, no one can guarantee where we shall come out, except that many objects, ends and institutions are surely doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can predict what will emerge, in its place.” The ultra-conservatives have all but wrecked the free enterprise system, cornerstone of capitalism, by monopolies, trusts and cartels. Hitler’s thinking led to World War II and the death of an estimated 40,000,000 human beings. The Nazi bid for world control was the result of thinking by the extreme right.

Nation Heads for Disaster When . . .

Turning directly to economics, what ideas are loyal and which disloyal to capitalism? Is it disloyal to oppose the gigantic octopus corporations who control meat packing, etc., and demand that their tentacles be severed? If this is disloyal then where does that place the government, which has anti-trust laws and a special antitrust division of the Department of Justice?

This nation has a lot of questions to answer before we can determine what loyalty is. Meanwhile, in place of exact definities, there is a general official attempt to shut off all criticism and dissent. To be on the safe side, nobody should praise or criticize anything not praised or criticized by the “safe” leaders in Washington. The result would be inertia and apathy where energy and independence once flourished.

I must agree with Professor Commager when he says:

“A nation which, in the name of loyalty or of patriotism or of any sincere and high-sounding ideal, discourages criticism and dissent, and puts a premium on acquiescence and conformity, is headed for disaster.”

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v4n8/Frankly%20speaking.html

Honolulu Record, September 20, 1951, vol. 4 no.8, p. 8

Frank-ly Speaking

By Frank Marshall Davis

“Unbelligerence” vs. Discrimination

Several persons have called my attention to the article on Herb Jeffries the Negro crooner, appearing in the September 3 issue of Life magazine.

Permit me to say at the outset that it is an excellent article for Life, since it paints a picture of discrimination that undoubtedly is foreign to the majority of readers of this widely circulated publication.

But despite its many good points, there is one with which I and many other Negroes disagree. It is the emphasis placed by the Life writer on the “unbelligerent” attitude of Jeffries toward racism.

Discrimination Costs $30 Billion Annually

Shortly after reading the Life story, I came across an item which said that Elmo Roper, noted public opinion analyst, had estimated that racial and religious discrimination in industry is costing the nation’s economy close to $30 billion a year.

In addition to the loss of purchasing power brought about by low wages and limited job opportunities, Roper cited the wasteful expense of maintaining segregated schools, housing, hospitals and other public facilities. He also pointed to the high cost of crime, delinquency, sickness and social maladjustment which can be traced to prejudice and discrimination.

To bring this close to home, undoubtedly the crime, delinquency and social maladjustment which shaped the lives of Palakiko aria Majors was partially the result of discrimination against non-haoles in the Territory. It is no secret that here in Hawaii, haoles often draw higher pay than non-haoles for doing the same job; low wages often lead to the breaking up of families with the resultant scarring of the lives of the children. Society then pays a high price later for the delinquency it has created through discrimination.

Although prejudice hits Jews, and in some areas Catholics, as well as all non-white groups, its chief victims because of then numbers and historic condition, are Negroes.

Tactics of “Unbelligerence” Cannot Erase Discrimination

But the cold fact is that discrimination cannot be erased through the tactics of “Unbelligerence,” no matter what the Life writer might think. I doubt that Herb Jeffries himself would advocate unbelligerence as a general weapon.

For a half-century the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has taken the lead in the fight against discrimination, and its guiding light is militancy and more militancy.

The breaking down of discrimination in education, which finds many Negroes entering universities in Dixie; the equalization of teachers’ salaries; the ending of restrictive residential covenants, and the many other gains on the civil rights front are the result of intelligent militancy instead of unbelligerence.

Doesn’t Pay To Have Segregated Schools

The Pair Employment Practices Commission, established by executive order of President Roosevelt at the start of World War II, came into being only because militant Negroes threatened a mass march on Washington. Since then many firms, which previously barred Negroes, Jews and Mexicans from jobs, have them regularly employed and several states have set up their own Fair Employment Practices Commissions.

As a result of these definitely belligerent actions by the NAACP and other organizations, many persons have come to realize that discrimination is a tremendously costly business. It doesn’t make sense for poor states such as Mississippi and Georgia and other Dixie commonwealths, to split their comparatively scarce dollars and duplicate their educational facilities just to keep two groups separate. The result is that neither group gets first class education.

Not only does the $30 billion sacrificed yearly on the altar of the god of prejudice make a mockery of democracy and hurt us in the eyes of the rest of

The world, but it is a disgraceful waste and unsound economically. It’s the same as pouring that amount of money down a rat hole.

Militancy Necessary To Bring About Improvements

Last week I spoke of a plan advanced by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, to establish peace between our nation and Russia and bring up the standard of living of the rest of the world. That would require an estimated annual expenditure of $25 billion. Simple arithmetic shows that ending discrimination in America would provide not only the funds needed for worldwide rehabilitation, but would leave a total of $5 billion for domestic use, or else taxes could be reduced by that amount.

But unless you are militant about fighting discrimination, how are you going to point out these facts to the general public and thus move toward their correction?

In 1903, a Department of Commerce and Labor was created. The Department of Labor, as now constituted, was finally organized in 1913.

Profits of 30 large oil companies soared to around $1 billion in the first half of 1951. That’s a 42 per cent increase over the 1950 period.

[MR. DAVIS]

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