You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Friday January 1, 1904
From the International Socialist Review: "The Negro and His Nemesis" by Comrade Debs
Eugene Debs
In this month's issue of the
International Socialist Review, Eugene Debs answers a letter from an anonymous Illinois Socialist. Mr. Anonymous, as Comrade Debs refers to him, fears that economic equality across the color line will lead to social equality which will lead to intermarriage and the ravishment of white women by black men. The reply made by Mr. Debs to this letter is a long one, and we, therefore, have included only the final summation:
The African is here and to stay. How came he to our shores? Ask your grandfathers, Mr. Anonymous, and if they will tell the truth you will or should blush for their crimes.
The black man was stolen from his native land, from his wife and child, brought to these shores and made a slave. He was chained and whipped and robbed by his "white superior," while the son of his "superior" raped the black child before his eyes. For centuries he was kept in ignorance and debased and debauched by the white man's law.
The rape-fiend? Horrible!
Whence came he! Not by chance. He can be accounted for. Trace him to his source and you will find an Anglo-Saxon at the other end. There are no rape-maniacs in Africa. They are the spawn of civilized lust.
Anglo-Saxon civilization is reaping and will continue to reap what it has sown.
For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.
Nor shall my door or my heart be ever closed against any human being on account of the color of his skin.
Eugene V. Debs.
SOURCE
International Socialist Review
-of January 1904
From: The International Socialist Review:
A Monthly Journal of International Socialist Thought, Volume 4
-pages 411-17, using scroll bar at bottom of document
http://books.google.com/...
Photo: Eugene Victor Debs circa 1904
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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Thursday January 1, 1914
Ludlow Tent Colony, Colorado - Federation Committee Sends Telegram to Governor
Linderfelt and his cavalrymen.
Following the assault by Lt. Linderfelt upon the young boy and Louis Tikas at the Ludlow depot, the Colorado Federation of Labor Investigating Committee came to the tent colony and began taking testimony from witnesses. What they heard so concerned them that John Lawson, as chair of the committee, decided to immediately send a telegram to Governor Ammons:
We did not expect to report to you until we had completed the taking of testimony at all camps, but in our judgment the following serious matter should be reported to you at once: Lieut. K. E. Linderfelt, of the cavalry stationed at Berwind, last night at Ludlow brutally assaulted an inoffensive boy in the public railroad station, using the vilest language at the same time. He also assaulted and tried to provoke to violence Louie Tikas, head man of the Ludlow strikers' colony, and arrested him unjustifiably. Today, in the presence of one of our number, he grossly abused a young man in no way connected with the strike, also making threats against the strikers in the foulest language. He rages violently upon little or no provocation and is wholly an unfit man to bear arms and command men as he has no control over himself. We have reason to believe that it is his deliberate purpose to provoke the strikers to bloodshed. In the interest of peace and justice, we ask immediate action in his case.
Louie Tikas has been released as a result of this telegram, but Lt. Linderfelt remains stationed at Berwind, near to the Ludlow Tent Colony.
The Committee found that it was Linderfelt's men who left the barbed wire on the ground for the horses to trip over. They have been cutting fences in the area so that they can more easily ride across the fields. According to Lawson:
They cut the wire themselves and were too lazy to gather it up. They were responsible for the [cavalryman's] fall.
Furthermore, the men sent by Linderfelt to cut wire around the tent colony, took that rusty barb wire and stuffed it down the well which is the source of drinking water for 1200 men, women and children.
SOURCE
Out of the Depths
The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader
-by Barron B. Beshoar
(1st ed 1942)
CO, 1980
Photo: Linderfelt and His Cavalrymen
http://margolis.faculty.asu.edu/...
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Wednesday January 1, 2014
More from the International Socialist Review of January 1904:
The following Resolutions are from the Platform of the Socialist Party of America as cited in the January 1904 issue of the Review:
NEGRO RESOLUTION
Resolved, That we, the Socialists of America, in national convention assembled, do hereby assure our negro fellow worker of our sympathy with him in his subjection to lawlessness and oppression, and also assure him of the fellowship of the workers who suffer from the lawlessness and exploitation of capital in every nation or tribe of the world. Be it further
Resolved, That we declare to the negro worker the identity of his interests and struggles with the interests and struggles of the workers of all lands, without regard to race or color or sectional lines; that the causes which have made him the victim of social and political inequality are the effects of the long exploitation of his labor power; that all social and race prejudices spring from the ancient economic causes which still endure, to the misery of the whole human family, that the only line of division which exists in fact is that between the producers and the owners of the world- — between capitalism and labor. And be it further
Resolved, That we, the American Socialist Party, invite the negro to membership and fellowship with us in the world movement for economic emancipation by which equal liberty and opportunity shall be secured to every man and fraternity become the order of the world.
SOURCE
See link above.
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Stand Still Jordan-Paul Robeson
It will chill-a my body
It will chill-a my body
It will chill-a my body,
But not my soul
Stand still Jordan
Stand still Jordan
Stand still Jordan
Lord, I can't stand still