STRIKE STRATEGY
from the unions, of barring their advance to better jobs in industry, and of generally feeding the race prejudices of the whites, dovetails exactly with the aim of the employers to drive the Negro worker into scabbery.
This program of the employers, the strike strategist must relentlessly combat. At all costs the Negro workers must be united with the whites to make common cause against the exploiters. But this can only be accomplished by complete suppression of race antagonism in the trade unions and by a loyal defense of the Negro workers' interests. This is easier said than done.
The whites are stubborn in their prejudices, and it is not surprising that, after innumerable betrayals by reactionary trade union leaders and in view of the oppression they suffer from the whites on all sides, the Negro workers are suspicious of even the most sincere white union leaders and slow to hearken to their words. But this is no insuperable obstacle. More and more the Negro workers are realizing the necessity for trade union organization. The formation recently of the Brotherhood of Railway Porters is only one sign of many. Negroes are splendid strikers, as has been demonstrated time and again in the Miners' and other unions where the whites have given them half a chance to function as unionists. When the white unions refuse to admit Negroes separate organizations must be built for them.
The problem of uniting them firmly with the white workers will never be accomplished until they are admitted freely to all the unions, until the organized white workers remove every bar against their securing the better grades of work, until they are whole-heartedly received by the white workers as loyal proletarian comrades in the great struggle for working class emancipation. The strike strategist must never lose sight of the problem of the Negro worker in American industry.
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