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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations - 13. Negro Strategy
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Chapter 39. Improvement and Protest Organizations 855
Instead of unification there seems to be need for further sfecialization.
It is a pressing need that concerted action be taken to integrate Negro
workers into the labor movement.^ It is a task of educating white and Negro
workers and of fighting those labor organizations that discriminate against
Negroes. This work cannot very well be done by any of the existing organ-
izations without their becoming less efficient in the tasks they now perform
and without their becoming weakened by losing some of their present
white—and Negro—^support. The Negro labor movement, which we thus
propose, should also be interracial in order to be optimally strong and
efficient. The chief difficulty in the way of its realization at present is the
split in the American labor movement. Negro workers as a national group
cannot afford to cast their entire lot in with the C.I.O., the A.F. of L., or
with the John L. Lewis insurgents. Meanwhile, the local and occupational
centers of a Negro labor movement that already exist are outposts, the
importance of which should not be underestimated, nor should the services
rendered for these groups by the N.A.A.C.P. and the Urban League.
Negroes also need an agency to carry on—locally and nationally—
a
political collective bargaining with the political parties.^ This organization
is the most difficult one to effectuate, since—unlike the others—it should
preferably be a pure Negro organization. In order to work effectively it
should be narrowly specialized to play the political game. It should, fur-
ther, be manned by the most intelligent, the freest and the most respected
Negro leaders. It should not be affiliated with any of the political parties.
The National Negro Congress, in its short history, has shown how this task
should not be approached.
There is also need for a legal aid agency concentrating its work on im-
proving the law enforcement of the South. The N.A.A.C.P. cannot function
as such. To the degree that it does, this weakens it by drawing too heavily
on its financial and personnel resources. Such an agency should preferably
not be set up separately for Negroes, but should be an agency to defend the
rights of all poor and disadvantaged people.® It should not assist in the
prosecution of strategic cases only, but of all cases where there has been
injustice and illegality.^
Some of the wisest Negro thinkers have understood that the Negro
* See Chapter i8, Section 3$ Chapter 38, Sections 6 and 7. Similar proposals are made
by Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell, The Black Workers and the New Unions
(1939), especially pp. 425-4345 and W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn (1940), p. 207.
^ See Chapter 23, Sections i and 2.
®See Chapter 26, Section 4.
’*The Civil Liberties Union does this sort of work, but its activity is not concentrated
in the South and it restricts its work to defense of civil liberties rather than to all legal
aid. The Union has some political ideals, which restrict its ability to get money. The
organization we propose should be completely nonpolitical.
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