The Broad Ax

THEY DIDN'T RUN AWAY

State authorities who are supervising and directing efforts which are being made to curb the ravages of the relentless Mississippi River, are gloating over the fact that, working practically unguarded, 600 convicts from the state prison, a large percentage of whom are Negroes, are toiling heroically without thought of escape, on the levees to save Louisiana's fertile farmlands from the merciless waters.

This column recalls the time when police patrol wagons in the streets of New Orleans would swoop down upon groups of Negroes, rush them to the police station, where, after a perfunctory trial, thirty and sixty-day sentences were meted out in whirlwind style.

No one decries the application of convict labor to the task of saving lives and property: and no one would rejoice at the escape of the prisoners whose conduct has forfeited their right to the enjoyment of honorable society. One does lament the fact, however, that many of the Negro convicts who are now working on the levees have probably been sentenced and are serving time after farcical trials and without the same just and nondiscriminatory procedure and treatment which the state laws exact for accused whites.

And we hope that when leniency is extended to these loyal convicts, white and colored, who are now striving to save the state's citizens and property from further disaster, no racial lines of demarcation will be permitted to influence the granting of parole or pardon. Louisiana with her enthralling history and beauteous fairy tales, has much to do to place herself "on the square" with the suffering Negro population. Here is the prayer that she may move forward in Justice, rather than backward in Injustice.