Obama’s daddy.
Trusteeships (and later colonies) were a net drain on the economy of the home countries.
Similar to, although considerably less so, the way we've made a profit by invading Iraq and stealing their oil.
BTW, this is the time period during which the US was pressuring the colonizers to pull out, resulting in almost complete decolonization during the later 50s and 60s.
http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/articles/v2n3/Gadabout.html
Honolulu Record, August 18, 1949, vol. 2 no. 3, p. 4
A 7 LB. GIRL was born to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Marshall Davis at 8:41.Monday morning. The mother was reported to be doing nicely and “Frank-ly Speaking”’ will appear on the RECORD’S editorial page next week as usual.
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)
I wonder how the Jakarta street kids of 1951 would've treated me, especially if I walked around with a chip on my shoulder like this guy.
Reminds me of Stugeon's law. Some guy was complaining that he'd heard about these science fiction novels and the wonderful things in them. He read some and said that 90% of them were crud. Theodore Sturgeon responded to the critic, "90% of everything is crud".
Agitprop. Can't defeat the charge so just "agree" to set it aside. Commie.
Thank you for fantastic research, Calpernia.
Pinging for Historical Archives.
BUMP for later reading.
************************** Mark for reference material ************************
Thanks to all who contributed