The Daily Worker

N.A.A.C.P. Leaders Back Murderous Attack on Croppers
Support Lies of Alabama Police of "Outbreak" and of Threats Against Alabama Governor

NEW YORK.—True to Negro masses and betrayers of C.P. misleaders yesterday rush to defend southern landowners. In a statement they have not one word of the murderous police attack on the share croppers union at Camp Hill, Alabama. As in the Scottsboro case their attack is directed not at the boss murderers, but at the Communist Party and the Negro and white workers supporting it. They refer to the attack on the croppers as an "outbreak," thus supporting the police lie that the croppers fired first, instead of in self-defense.

These misleaders are quoted by the New York Tribune of accusing the Communists of "having stirred up the outbreak in a desperate and vain effort to win the so-called Negro proletariat to the Communist Party."

In a statement to The Times, Walter White attempts to justify the boss terror and to bolster up their lies that the millions of workers who have protested the lynch verdict against the nine Scottsboro boys were "threatening" the life of Governor Miller of Alabama because they dared demand the release of the boys and hold him responsible for their safety. White said:

"We have feared trouble because of the manner in which the Communists have made bombastic and empty threats in the Scottsboro cases."

William Pickens, too, came to the defense of the Alabama bosses, declaring that the "outbreak" was "a Communist matter pure and simple."

In the meantime, giving the lie to the pretenses of these misleaders that have been interested in the fight to save the Scottsboro boys, a letter received by the Southern district of the I.L.D. from Eugene Williams, one of the boys was transmitted to the national office of the ILD. The letter hails the activities of the I.L.D. in the mass fight to free the boys, and declares:

"The Scottsboro boys are joyous at execution stay. I am thankful to be living today. You was right, for if you all had not taken part in our case, we would be in worst hell today, and I sure am glad that you all appeal our case for I am innocent and I don't want to die for nothing and I want you all to take the case and strut your stuff with it."

Leroy Patterson, another of the boys, added a postscript to the letter that "I would have been washing roots by now if not for you."