The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E
The Home Front By WILLIAM E BOHN Seoreeafion— The Ofher Si«M 1HAVE lately given thit dobatiag club what turned out to he a good deal of a jolt. Two high-minded ladies and one gentleman...
...Presumably, politics also were discussed...
...Avery had been provoking the union and defying the government Finally the union struck...
...Chopiel* Keeps Cool "Father X, the Roman Catholic chaplain, speaking to us in our so-called library, gave us thia gem ef consolation: 'ah you ten boys are from the North...
...A commission was appointed after the last one to investigate the causes, and the report was never made public...
...But Montgomery Ward locals which sre controlled by Bridges refused to recognise the strike...
...That's the way it is...
...Opportunity to make good at something, to prove themselves, seems to be tbe dynamic force holding them together, pushing their...
...It seems to me thst here in the Nsvy no white officer can justify the ways of America to God or man, certainly not to us enlisted colored men...
...The commander of a great naval training station once made thia statement to us colored boys during our boot training: 'If your house were on fire, would you atop to clean the house or would you put the fire out...
...Ah, but the hope in the hearts of theae black boys...
...The lid is the white officers and their hierachy of power...
...Too many cooks were spelling the broth...
...City officials are being warned of a third riot in Harlem...
...People Are Talking About: T HE people are talking about: • The Demaree Bess article in the Satevepott which blueprints what went on at Teheran...
...The colored Protestant boys hsve s separate service here in the Recreation Hall, but we don't practice anything like that' "Pious hypocrisy, despair, damning consolation—all are there in thia remarkable jumble of contradictions...
...This action waa backed by Bridges...
...We don't ride in the seme buses...
...In the light of CIO's political action campaign*, unity is more than ever necessary...
...You must make sure you don't err on the side of idealising these Negroes because of the unfairness and injustice ef the white man...
...We are restricted to ear barrack area...
...Churchill's speech in Parliament, which praised Communism in Yugoslavia, Monarchy in Greece, Democracy in France, and Franco Fascism in Spain...
...Your Negro American is a spiritual cripple, a grinning, scraping black ape to 'Mistah Charlie, sah,' and often enough a murderous black brute to his black brothers and staters...
...Two high-minded ladies and one gentleman explained in friendly, reasonable tones just why they think segegratioa of Negroes and whites is a good thing...
...There ia one telephone in our Recreation Hall for 750 Negroes on the base...
...So words will fly—but only behind closed door...
...The talk now is that the Steel Worker* will begin to negotiate with the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers leading towards the creation of a giant Metal Products Union in CIO...
...They are hurt, bitter, resentful against the white man, but they are too intent on making good to spend their time hating...
...Reinhold Niebuhr will be given an honorary Doctorate by Harvard at the commencement exercises...
...Well, the South haa always been the South and will always be the South...
...The major reason for these amalgamations is te guard against a collapse of the weaker union...
...Have yea read carefully, my fine, unprejudiced advocate* of segregation...
...1 thought I sensed a feel of guilt earner his glib and easy words...
...Our head Welfare Officer said to us: "There are 60 seats in the movie act aside for your kind of people...
...They give me just what 1 wanted...
...This Is what the Communist line means in practice...
...But keep your gun aimed at the injustices...
...Mr ere the atitouchmblet of the Memphis Navy...
...forward...
...For we have te aie toilets marked 'Special.' Those used by the whites are marked 'Men...
...Chungking has sent a warning to Washington that if additional supplies are not obtained and the Communist menace finally settled, China may be in * difficult position to hold out during the Monsoon season...
...Milton Murray, President of the American Newspaper Guild, haa resigned as labor publicity director of CIO's Political Action Committee...
...They resent, most of all, southern Negroes who have been North awhile and have then returned South...
...We want you to come to the regular place of worship...
...They feel they get along very well with white people...
...There isn't anything much we can d* about it...
...The Mexican Communists are renewing their campaign against the antiStalinist refugees in Mexico City...
...Sidney Hook's article in The New Leader on St John's Ballyhoo...
...MhttAlmay The meeting between President Roosevelt and Senator Wheeler last week, which a large part of the press overlooked, was on the invitation of the President and dealt mainly with the merger of several communications companies to compete with the British Cablet and Wireless...
...Although CIO has a no-strike pledge, this strike was backed by all the responsible leader* of CIO...
...Economic and employment discrimination are creating wide frictions...
...It cant aB be just cussedness snd jealousy...
...You could not, at least, doubt their good intentions...
...I warn you, this is a report that must be taken seriously...
...There was that story of old Peter who said, "Come night, I want to go where I don't have to hear a white voice...
...It seems to me these people sre so warped and crippled that they just cant see an issue straight for the life ef them...
...Describing her, he hunted for explanations: The class of persons her status limited her to resents •foreigner*' from the North trying to meddle...
...If Bess ia to be believed, the big three arranged for an imperialist stabilization of the world...
...Markooaha Fischer's book My Live* in Rtustia which hi a warm and simple human document on dayto-day living in Russia...
...It has the educational world agog...
...The Sesfaren Int'l Union ia waging a bitter campaign against Joe Carraa and the NMU, charging that Curran sold out the seamen by agreeing to a cut in the seamen's wsr risk bonus...
...The beat chapters deal with person...
...Among the others waa a young colored matron from Harlem who was inttantly on the defensive...
...The word Trotskyites" I* an inverted form Of red hsitinr...
...They make a very successful living out of the miserable oppression and bleak lives of these millions of black people of the South...
...I have a couple of letters from a young colored man who is being trained at the Naval Air Technical School at Memphis, Tennessee...
...Let me tell you I »m at the bottom ef a black cesspool with * white lid over it I am strangled and stifled by the bnitslity an sheer, utter swinishness and deceitfulness of these blacks to, each other...
...Lew Michener, CP Party-liner who led the North American Aviation strike during hi* isolationist days, is on trial in the UAW...
...relationships and the role of the purges...
...The City of Memphis and the State of Tennessee have nothing on the Memphis Navy in this respect...
...And with all this hate and pettiness, sre these people pious and religions...
...Thia attitude baffles me not a little...
...Afterwards we can continue with the cleaning.' That's the level of the Hitlerite sophistry we sre indoctrinated with...
...Kurt List's article in the May Politics on "The Music of Soviet Russia," an exhaustive survey of changing trends...
...They have fine homes and live at a standard well above the average...
...This is a black maa ¦peaking...
...IrS easy he knap gaol bka.that ahapiaia...
...lobor Note* ^Vs first predicted in this column several weeks back, Phil Murray'* Steel Workers will take in the Aluminum Workers Union...
...The St...
...He talk* about a cesspool with s whit* lid over it It wiU be well for n* te listen...
...They mada it all sound rather plausible...
...They want them to hare everything first class—schools, parks, transportation, jobs...
...They want to be good aviation mechanics...
...The most important thing about life is not having a good house or enough to eat or a job equal to the next man's...
...Bet my Negro mates here jive sad laugh at the white ma a aad his master talking...
...Bat thi* i* secondary te the story of his "scabbing" in the»Montgomery Ward case, as revealed by The New Leader and other papers, which has really made union leaders angry...
...They are not against Negroes...
...Paul local, when it received a request from Chicago strike leaders not to handle scab goods, re-affirmed its no-strike pledge— in effect saying they would handle scab good...
...Warped 5o.l...
...Save us all from heaven if we're to share ft with such as theae...
...What matters ia what life does to you down inside where you live with yourself...
...I was told, too, that some Negroes prefer segregation...
...As a matter of fact members of this srticulate class do...
...This past week I have received many more letters than I can print...
...We can*t%expeet the war to change things very much...
...like thai and hide it er defend it without being debased inside "But thM It a class ef colored folks being twisted aad warped ia a worse way...
...But they think we should all move along more smoothly if the colored citizens had their good things by themselves end we had our blessings by ourselves...
...1 THINK you ought to know," this member of the naval slrforce writes, "we colored boys refer to this station ss the Memphis Navy, for it practices 'the law for the separation of the races' with meticulous care...
...The charges are secret but hss to do with the disbursement of funds...
...But two of them I must digest for you...
...You have a stiff neck when you get out of there...
...He ha* been bitterly assailed by R. J. Thomas, David Dubinsky, and others...
...They want to be good at anything the white-man-God sets them at...
...What happens to what some folks still call your soul...
...Last week the Daily Worker carried a dispatch claiming that Julian Gorkin, Victor Serge and other "frotskyites" wen responsible for-the railway strikes...
...You'll see some of your buddies there, I am sure.' There are, however, actually only 45 seats in the back of the theatre—and, brother, I mean in the back...
...Inside and Out By MURRAY EVERETT The triages Story ALTHOUGH more than half of the CIO top leadership is hopping mad at the recent actions of Harry Bridges in sabotaging the Montgomery Ward strike and then promising a postwar no-strike pledge, it 1* probable that no public action will be taken at the mid-June session of the CIO Executive Board...
...Now the Mexican Labor Newt, controlled by Lombardo Toledano's friends, repeats the charge, and the Communists undoubtedly will point to the Mexican Labor Neu>* •« •proof...
...We don't dare enter the sumptuous, well-stocked, well-equipped Recreation Halls (half-a-desea of them) of the whites to buy s coke er make a telephone call...
...That floor doesn't slope, and the 45 colored boys who get in have to stretch and crane to see anything over the heads of the 3,000 whites who sit in front of them...
...This young naval volunteer aaw some of the highclasa Negroes, professional men, eahege tea th are...
...And I'm glad, for that saves them...
...Publicly, Bridges has' been rebuked for his statement saying that labor will adopt a no-»trike pledge after the war...
...We don't feel that you should have a place of worship separate from the white boys...
...That the Negress at* hurt no eae can doubt You can't know a thine...
Vol. 27 • June 1944 • No. 23
