The Northwest Enterprise

NEGROES WOULD FIGHT AGAINST SOVIET RUSSIA IN A WAR BETWEEN U.S.A. AND U.S.S.R.

This question has become a hot and controversial issue because of an alleged statement by Paul Robeson that Negroes would not fight against Russia in a war between the United States and Soviet Russia. From my experience among and working with the great masses of Negroes, this question carries with it its own obvious answer. Negroes would fight against Soviet Russia in a war between the USA and USSR.

Another question which seems quite pertinent suggests itself. Why would Negroes fight against Soviet Russia? The answer to this question carries its own obvious answer. The answer is because nothing has been done by Soviet Russia for Negroes to merit their loyalty or their disloyalty to the United States.

In the first place there are practically no Negroes in Russia. Therefore, Russia has no record of having occasion to do anything for or against Negroes in the Soviet Union.

Some of the Communists and their fellow travelers will insist that Negroes are obligated to the Soviet Union because it has abolished discrimination against minorities in Russia. While this may be true it is difficult to see how this has a bearing on the loyalty of Negroes in the United States.

Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have never maintained any dread of discrimination based upon race or color but in spite of that the possibility of war between these countries and the United States is unlikely. There can be no question as to which side Negroes would fight on.

The Communist fraternity and their allies in the United States are claiming the allegiance of the Negro because of their so-called fight for Negro rights such as the Scottsboro case, Angelo Herndon and several other notable cases. The fact to this contention is that the Scottsboro boys would have been free long before any of them were released from prison had the Communists kept their hands off the case so that the whole South could have judged the case without any crime and embezzle it to the Negro in daily lots approved.

Whenever there is any mention of Communists coming into the South to tell white Southerners what to do about the Negro. Last Communist support in the North East or West is seen as oft the Negro on any cause simply means out to a Klan.

It is even true with respect to the Negro and the Communist is also true of Communist and Labor Cooperation from (Continued on page 4)
Would We Fight?

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Communists in any fight for labor is like waving a white flag before a bull to the opponents of labor. Labor, like the Negro, has a hard enough battle to organize, at best. But it is worse when its causes are championed by Communists whose allegiance is recognized as being to an alien country. Soviet Russia.

Now, the reason for the statement by Paul Robeson was not difficult to see in this period of world tensions. The Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan and the Atlantic Pact are viewed as curses upon the heads of Russia and all the countries in the Soviet Domain. Therefore, propaganda, replete with misconceptions, half truths, outright lies, are cooked up and spread abroad throughout the world with a view to exposing the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan and the Atlantic Pact as an international conspiracy of capitalist countries to destroy Russia and her satellites and the common working people of Europe, Asia and Africa. To split or capture world opinion on this question of support of the Marshall Plan and the Atlantic Pact, Soviet Russia planned a series of dramatic and spectacular statements concerning the conditions and attitudes of various nationalities, races and workers in the respective countries and their place in a war between said countries and Russia. Communist leaders such as Thorez, Communist spokesman of France; Togliatti, Communist voice of Italy; and Eugene Dennis, secretary of the Communist Party in the United States, without equivocation, stated that in a war between their countries and the Soviet Union, Communists in their countries would join the forces of the Soviet Union and refuse to fight against Russia, which they style as their fatherland and the fatherland of all workers.

We are not too amazed or bewildered at the statement on the question of the Negro not fighting against the Soviet Union in the event of war between that country and the United States, by Paul Robeson. Of course, Paul Robeson, at a meeting in the Rockland Palace, where he addressed a huge mass meeting, Sunday, June 19, which turned out to welcome him home from Europe, stated, according to a report in the World Telegram, Monday, June 20, after bitterly criticizing American newspapers because of distortions, indicated that he had been misunderstood at the recent Paris Peace Conference in April.

'It was unthinkable that the Negro people of America could be drawn into a war with the Soviet Union, assuming, of course, that it was a war between the Soviet Union and the United States.'

Reasons why Negroes would not take sides in a war with the USSR against the USA are well-nigh self-evident. In the first place, all of the roots of the life of Negroes in the United States are sunk deep in the political, economic and social soil of the country. If Negroes hope to win political power and freedom; they don't expect to win it in Russia. They hope to win it in the United States. If the Negroes hope to win economic security and progress; they don't expect to win it in Russia. They hope to win it in the United States and the West Indies and Africa. If Negroes hope to flower in the arts, sciences, literature, philosophy and religion, they don't seek to attain this goal in Russia. Their expectations and the possibility of their realization are primarily here in the United States. If the world position of the Negro people is to be broadened and strengthened with a view to securing more substantial liberty and justice, it must come as a result of the expanding power and influence of the Negroes in the capitalist democracy of the United States, the West Indies and Africa.

This does not mean that some Negroes may not go to various countries of the world to work and live. Some may even migrate to Russia, if Russia will accept them, which of course, is doubtful. This would not be unique or strange for the Negro. It has not been unique or strange for white Americans. H. O. Tanner, the son of Bishop H. W. Tanner of the AME Zion Church, left America and settled in Paris and became a renowned artist, a painter. Americans are familiar with the fact that Henry James, the brother of William James, the American psychologist, forsook the United States for England where he lived and worked, and has become one of the great minds in the field of literature.

But the great masses of Negroes in the United States know of no other country as their fatherland than this country. This is true of white Americans too. It is proper. All that the American Negro is or isn't was made possible here in the United States of America. This is so in education, politics, economies, industry, business, professions, art, science and religion.

Recognizing all of the limitations and shortcomings of the American empire system, and even were the conditions worse than they are, the Negroes would have no alternative save to work and fight in this country to improve their lot for freedom and justice in order that American democracy may work for them along with other Americans.

Negroes in America know America. They know that it is no shining angel of light. They know that it is no white lily of social purity. They know it is not even a complete democracy. They even know that all white Americans are not wholly free as witness the lack of suffrage of the poor whites in the Bible-belt of the South. Yes, Negroes know that American wage earners have not achieved economic security, justice or freedom. They know that white American workers are hard put to it to make ends meet because of the American profit system. But they also know that the American workers have the highest standard of living of any workers in the world. They also know that the American labor movement is the most powerful labor movement in the world. They know, too, that Negro workers with all of their handicaps, disappointments, set backs, exploitation and oppression, are the most highly organized, the most highly paid, the most highly educated, the most aggressive and powerful of any colored workers anywhere in the world.

Negroes know that they have a right here in the United States, to hire a hall or to get up on a soap box on the highways in the United States and preach the gospel of civil rights and liberties. They know they have the right to speak and write not only against the Congress and the courts of this land, but, even the President of the U. S. A. in the interest of winning their rights. They also know that they have the right and opportunity to organize and fight for political preference, and election in the legislatures of America, federal, state and municipal. They know they can point to Negroes in various legislative assemblies in the country on various levels, city, state and federal. They also know they can point to judges who have been elected or appointed by citizens in the country to the courts of the land who are passing upon cases involving peoples of all races, colors, creeds, national origin and ancestry.

But, this of course, should not lull them into a false sense of security. Negroes have a long way to go. They have not won freedom and security of their property and person in the South. Negroes are still lynched. Negroes are still disenfranchised. Negroes are still victims of mobs. Hundreds of thousands of Negroes are deprived of educational opportunities. Ku Kluxism is reviving. But, all of these evils must be and will be met by an aroused, awakened, aggressive, militant and progressive Negro people of this nation. Negroes who have any brains at all know that salvation must come from within. There is no other road.

Negroes who read and think are aware of the fact that the great masses of the Russian people are slaves to the tyranny of totalitarian Stalinism. Russian people are hounded, harassed and harangued by a secret police known as the MVD. Negroes know that millions of Russian workers have substandard living rations. They know there is only one party in Russia the Communist Party. They know that dissenting and diverging opinions from the Communist Party line will result in their liquidation-their death.

While much has been made of the Soviet Union for abolishing discrimination, developments in Russia satellite countries belie this assumption.

In Hungary, seven Zionist leaders were recently victimized and jailed on the claim they held Zionist ideas and were attempting to flee the country, a so-called, democracy, in an effort to reach Israel. In Czechoslovakia, Archbishop Beran, under the sinister stare of the Communist Secret Police, warned fellow Catholics not to believe any confession that may be extracted from him. In a Budapest courtroom, Jews wept as sentence was pronounced on accused Zionists.

All of us are fully familiar with Cardinal Josef Mindszenty's case. Where is there liberty in the Russian system? Where is liberty in the courts that are within the Russian orbit? The answer is clear. Liberty is dead! Communists killed it! But let us not permit Communists to destroy Liberty here.

Thus, Negro Americans only hope and salvation lie in the preservation of democracy where they can present their case to the world within the framework of free speech, free press, free assembly, right of petition, trial by jury, freedom from seizure and search, freedom of worship, freedom to organize into trade unions, freedom to join any political party to fight for their rights. Without these freedoms, that only exist in the Western democracies, the Negro and other minorities as well as labor, are hopeless and helpless.

Now it is not all a phantasy or apostasy or treason to one's country for a citizen to condemn it, denounce it and roundly and severely criticize it in the public press, at home and abroad. This has been done, and ought to be done, especially if said country is neglectful of its duty in according justice and freedom to its own citizens because of, race or color, religion, national origin or ancestry, or if it oppresses others. But it is an entirely different thing for the Negro or white citizen of the United States to take the position that if war, either between the United States and Russia or any other country, takes place that he will refuse to fight for the USA or will join the forces of Russia. Persons in the United States in case of war, if it conflicts with their religious or moral philosophy of peace have a right to refuse to fight against Soviet Russia or any other country. That a person will not take up arms in any war because he is opposed to war on principle is wholly justifiable. There are many pacifists who hold this position. But it is an entirely different thing for any citizen of this country, white or black, to say that he will not fight Russia.

It was also not beyond the realm of reason for Negroes to take the position that they would not bear arms again in a Jim-Crow Army, but not only if the USA fought the USSR. The only sound position is to oppose fighting in a segregated army because it destroys the manhood of Negro youth, besides it is in conflict with every principle of democracy and Brotherhood. Happily progress is being made in abolishing jim-crow in the Army of the USA.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1949

The only exception which should be made by Negroes who are fighting Jim-Crow in the armed forces is that in a war between the United States and Soviet Russia, preference and support should be given the United States because the victory of the USA means the continuance of the opportunity and right to fight for the abolition of Jim-Crow in the military forces, whereas, if Russia won, it would mean the end of democracy and freedom and loss of the opportunity to even express criticism in any form against the evil of discrimination and segregation in the Army or anywhere else. Negroes should think it over.

Thus, while fully aware of Paul Robeson's sentiment against discrimination and segregation in its varied and variegated forms in the United States, the remedy does not lie in devising a pro-comintern escapism and betrayal of his country. The remedy does not lie in deriding and decrying the United States and extolling and lauding and commending the so-called virtues of the Soviet Union. The remedy does not lie in becoming a part of the Communist Fifth Column of the United States which only serves as an agency to split the country in order that the Russian forces may find it easier to capture and control the American mind. We believe that Paul Robeson is not only naive but that he is the wrongest good-able Negro in the United States. His heart may be right but his head is wholly wrong.

It just does not make sense for Negroes to add to the handicap of being BLACK another handicap of being RED.