MIA > Archive > C.L.R. James
The Negro’s Fight, Labor Action, vol. 4 No. 13, 8 July 1940, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Mr. Chairman and Delegates:
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is holding its conference, and we can truly say that it has never held a conference at a more critical period in the history of humanity. Today we live while one war rages in Europe and Africa, another rages in Asia and preparations for American entry into one, the other or both, are going on openly before us.
We speak in the name of the Negro people but we are all Americans. We must think in terms of the country as a whole. If the country goes to war, then the Negro people are at war.
The war, we are told, is a war for democracy and Mr. Spingarn, our president, has just told us that “No Negro will be found in the ranks of the Fifth Column.”
Now the Fifth Columnists are the enemies of democracy, the men who preach and practice race-prejudice, the enemies of human equality, the persecutors of the poor, all the things for which Hitler, France and Mussolini stands. We of the NAACP know that these enemies of the people and friends and admirers of Hitler are found in every country and we openly declare war against them. In this country you can look for them in those who propose an end to social legislation and labor unions.
The NAACP therefore, calls upon President Roosevelt immediately to declare:
That we think is the plain duty of the President, and we can assure him that if he were to take the lead in enforcing these elementary laws of democracy, we would be more impressed with his anger against Hitler and Hitlerism abroad and Fifth Columnists at home.
Mr. John L. Lewis has also spoken to us and he seems to be asking us to support the Republican Party. We Negroes have supported the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the past, and wo have nothing to show for it. For the most part we are working people and Mr. Lewis is a labor leader. We therefore, as working people, propose to him the following:
On such a program the NAACP would support Mr. Lewis for President and it can assure him that it will not only mobilize 99% of the Negro vote in America but will make of every Negro a propagandist and agitator among the white workers for a real democracy in the U.S. In this way the NAACP would advance the colored people, would make its contribution to the prosperity and the well-being of all Americans, and would carry on the only real war for democracy that can be fought today.
Last updated on 8.9.2012