Hard Times (50 page)

 

 

There were three reasons Roosevelt wanted war. One: you had ten million Americans unemployed after six years of the New Deal. The other one: to be a war President, you became a great man overnight. And then, he hoped to put through a United Nations, of which he would be the author—and the uncrowned ruler of the world. With his dreams, I could speak at length. But that’s another matter.

Roosevelt would have gone down in history as a great President after the first two terms. But he made a mistake, going for the third term. Jim
Farley and all the rest fought it. His tragic mistake was when he was a sick and dying man, caved in, mentally and physically, and he insisted on a fourth term. “I’m the indispensable man.” All that bunk.

He had all this fanatical, radical legislation introduced. They were not based on American customs. They were all Socialistic, and Socialism always fails. I know as much about this as anybody, ’cause I debated Norman Thomas, whom I have a very high idea of, at least ten different times.

Of course, Socialism has tremendous ideals. If everybody was an angel, Socialism would be wonderful. If everybody worked for everybody else and for themselves and for the country, it might work. But it’s never worked in any big country. Maybe a small country of five million….

I’m for the right of everybody to speak: Democrats, Republicans, left, right, freedom people, extremists, so on. The only thing Communism fears is the word “freedom,” and they fear that like the devil is feared by Christians. HR 2290 was the best report ever written on Communism. I’m only sorry I didn’t keep that $5,000 and spend it to print a million copies.

 

POSTSCRIPT:
“Al Smith was a very dear friend of mine. He loved this country, and he hated Communism. I was asked by Republican leaders if I would go down and see Al Smith at the Empire State Building … and ask if he would run on the Republican ticket for the United States Senator against his old friend, Robert Wagner. It was shortly before Al’s death. Much to my surprise, he said, ‘You know, Ham, I’d like to run and beat Wagner. I would like to go to Washington and as a Senator, get up and oppose all the New Deal Socialistic legislation. And ridicule it. And I can do it.’ ” It was a matter of Smith’s failing health, apparently, that kept him from making the race. “And he said, ‘My heart is not as strong as it should be. And I have a very good job here, $50,000.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Al, as far as the job is concerned, we’ve been in touch with Mr. DuPont, who pays the salary, and he will continue the salary, regardless.’ ” The Colonel withdrew the request: “Because I, too, believed he could be elected. But not at the expense of his life.”

 

FOR A SHORT TIME, I was an organizer in Harlem. It was an interesting period that gave rise to the Negro literati. James Weldon Johnson was around. And, of course, one of the great men of the century, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. Professor Alain Locke of Howard … and young Negro writers following the path blazed by money-mad white writers. Two exceptions were the poets, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.

I was asked by the Party to go to Pittsburgh to take charge of a new school there—of miners and metal workers. It was in the heart of the Depression. Unemployed Councils and hunger marches were organized.

I’d been arrested in a demonstration in which a thousand Negroes and whites had carried the furniture of an evicted white family back into their home. In the trial, I defended the other arrested men, as well as myself. The jury brought out a verdict of not guilty.

I was arrested while speaking to black and white miners in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. On one occasion, there was talk of lynching me. White and Negro workers placed their picket line around the prison and marched all night.

On another occasion, I was thrown into jail without any charges being made. At twelve o’clock at night, gun thugs came to my cell, saying they were going to transfer me to another jail. I knew the town had only one jail. I thought this was it.

I was put into a Ford, and we started out of town. The three men began to talk among themselves in a language I did not understand, but which I recognized as Slavic. I asked them in Russian what they were going to do to me. They were very much surprised in hearing a black man talk Russian. We began to discuss my stay in Russia.

We soon came to a wooded section in the road. The car was stopped, and I was told to get out. I thought I’d be shot trying to escape, as the charge was usually made. But one of them kicked me, and they drove off.

 

The Unemployed Councils were a creation of the Communists, though in the main their composition was made up of non-Communists. I recall men and women being shot, engaging in these activities. There were hundreds charged with sedition, conspiracy, on one pretext or another. But it was a period of great schooling.

Many times, the Councils started at a meeting in which it was proposed that delegations be sent to City Hall or to the state assembly—demanding
food and work. These committees would come back and report to their community. Out of these events, came the Unemployed Councils. There followed the idea of hunger marches. To city halls, to city councils. I led one of a few thousand into Uniontown. When we arrived, the cossacks were there in great number. I mounted the steps and began to speak. In a short time, the city council and the mayor came down and called a meeting. A delegation went into the City Council. I spoke for them. They immediately voted $6,000 for relief. It was a small amount, but it was a small town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had been in Pittsburgh only a short time when the Scottsboro Case broke. In April, 1931, nine Negro lads were arrested, and the trial took place in Scottsboro, Alabama. They were riding a freight, seeking work. Some were seeking hospital care, which they could not get in their home town. It was a freight train going from Tennessee to Alabama, in which a
large number of white lads, who were also jobless and penniless, were moving restlessly from one place to another. When the lads were arrested, both white and black were charged with vagrancy. Until the sheriff found out there were two white girls, in overalls, on the same train.

Under pressure, the girls were forced by the police to say they had been raped by the nine Negro lads. Both these girls had been forced, by economic conditions, into prostitution at an early age.

 

 

I immediately sought the services of Samuel Liebovitz. He was one of New York’s leading criminal lawyers and he had never lost a death case. He told me, “I’ll bring these boys back and throw them in your lap.” I told him, “No, you won’t. These are political prisoners. They are arrested and being tried for a purpose … to terrorize the Negro people.”

Liebovitz handled the case in a masterly fashion. The freight train on which these lads were riding had forty-nine cars. Liebovitz had a replica made of this train, every car placed in the position it originally occupied. In the trial, he forced the complainants, these two girls, to show what car the rape had taken place in. He showed the judge that this car had been full of gravel, that the gravel had come up to the level of the car’s sides. Had these girls been raped, their backs would have been lacerated….

Judge Horton reversed the conviction. He fairly analyzed the evidence and showed that much of it was inadmissible. And yet the case of the Scottsboro Boys lasted for seventeen years, from 1931 to 1947. That’s when the last of them, Heywood Patterson, the most outstanding and courageous of these lads, was released.

It was a
cause célèbre
, which brought into action millions of people all over the world. And led me, inexorably, I think, to see the role of the American Government in the persecution of the Negro people. The case went twice to the United States Supreme Court. There was evidence, both in law and in fact, sufficient to enable the court to dismiss the case. Instead, on each occasion, these boys were sent back to go through the torture and agony of their prison life, and the racist persecution to which they had been subjected. I began to see clearly this conspiracy to perpetuate racism as an institution in our life.

 

 

One of the most interesting features of the case. It showed the tremendous power of struggle to awaken both the consciousness and understanding
of people. Ruby Bates, one of the young white girls, was a remarkable person. She told me she had been driven into prostitution when she was thirteen. She had been working in a textile mill for a pittance. When she asked for a raise, the boss told her to make it up by going with the workers. She told me there was nothing else she could do.

After she had been going with the white workers, the police called her in. They didn’t want to arrest her for prostitution, but she had to have what they called Nigger Day. On a certain day, she had to go with black workers, so if they wanted to charge a black man with rape, to organize a lynching bee, they would have a man who could not deny he had gone with her.

 

Ruby and I had an opportunity of speaking together. We brought her to New York, when she expressed a desire to tell her story, the true story. She met Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick. And I took her to see Elmer Rice, the playwright. When Wexley’s play
¹³⁰
appeared, she made a speech, and so did I.

 

She told how she had been threatened with imprisonment unless she charged these boys with rape. She told how Victoria Price, the other girl, had been implicated in a murder charge, and how this threat of prosecution was held over her head. She told how the authorities promised to give Victoria a house in Scottsboro, if she testified as they wanted. Ruby found it impossible to be a party to a crime of this magnitude.