Page:The American Negro by Allen, James S..djvu/19

 Negroes occasionally to act as strike-breakers, they have in other strikes been among the most militant of fighters. Negro lumber workers in Louisiana struck with white workers, in 1913, against the Southern Lumber Operators Association. With “complete and defiant solidarity,” as described in a statement at the time, the strikers stood for many weeks against the great lumber trust. During the 1908 coal strike in Alabama, Negroes were the backbone of the struggle and they also played an important part in the coal strikes in the Birmingham areas in later years. They proved equally militant in the Chicago stockyards strike of 1921. During the 1927 coal strike Negroes played an active part in the left-wing movement. And Negroes were among the most militant fighters in the 1931 coal strike led by the National Miners Union. In recent dress strikes, in New York City, under the leadership of the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union, Negro women strikers played an important part. In the future, with a clear class-conscious militant union organization like the Trade Union Unity League to lead both white and black strikers, the Negro worker will show his true mettle as a working-class fighter.

Middle-class Negro leaders take the position that the Negro workers must depend primarily for advancement upon the white employers and not trust their fellow workers, Negro and white. This is how Professor Kelley Miller of Howard University, a Negro institution, expresses it: “For the Negro wantonly to flout their [the capitalists'] generous advances by joining the restless ranks which threaten industrial ruin would be fatuous suicide. … Whatever good or evil the future may hold in store for him, today’s wisdom heedless of logical consistency demands that he stand shoulder to shoulder with the captains of industry.” (American Mercury, November, 1925, p. 313.)

The general attitude of the Negro church is summed up admirably by Bishop Carey: “I believe that the interest of my people lies with the wealth of the nation and with the class of 19