to ride into power on your votes; then after election they give you Brownsville and lynching bees. Do you wonder that General Clarkson, a grandson of the [58] great abolitionist, when he gave up his job as collector of the Port of New York, said that he was sick of the way in which the Republican party was selling you out? The Republican party is always engaged in selling you out—or in selling out the working people of this country. Do you doubt it? Then ask yourselves why is it that a Republican Congress has never said a word or done anything about the disfranchisement of nearly three million Negro voters in the South? Read the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution and you will see that the Republican party has always had the power to stop it. But just now I want to get you interested in the one party that strikes at the very root of your trouble and that of every workingman in the country—white and black alike. I want you to see what is the attitude of the Socialist Party toward the American Negro. And for that reason I am introducing to you the following declarations of the attitude made by Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate for President, and by other members of the party. Compare its straight-forward, uncompromising utterances with what the other two parties have said and done; then look yourself in the face and say whether it is worth you while to sell your birthright and your future freedom—yes, and that of your children and your children’s children—for a mess of political pottage.

[57]

[58]

[59]

 THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 

It is not an easy task to plead in the courts of the oppressor against oppression and wrong. It is not easy to get the judgement of the white men of the world against the white man’s injustice to the black. But nevertheless the attempt must be made and made again until the seared conscience of the civilized world’s hall throbs with righteous indignation at such outrage. “To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men. The human race has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised against injustice, ignorance and lust, the Inquisition yet would serve the law and guillotines decide our least disputes. The few who dare must speak and speak again to right the wrongs of many.”

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