OMINOUS RACE CONFLICT IN AMERICA

...In general, however, the trend of unionization," says Mr...

...Until yesterday this color-mindedness held among the vast majority of our old-line craft unions, to the despair of progressive labor leaders and their sympathizers...

...race prejudice) give common sense guidance to those in or out of schools who realize how central to the whole democratic adventure is the collective handling of our racial relations...

...In the long run, the attitude of the rank-and file of the unions reflects the attitude of the community in which they work...

...He takes up the separate unions in which Negroes are organized and finds that the worst discrimination occurs among members of the railway brotherhoods and the hugely expanded machinists and boilermakers in the shipbuilding industry where employment is bound to fall directly after peace comes...

...The expected mass introduction of new labor-saving mining machinery will serve as a severe test of racial equality in the selection of skilled men to tend *these machines...

...Northrup's part) are slowly but surely making a dent in the dark cell-like structures that many AFL officials use for brains...

...There will be a heavy drop in employment in the bituminous fields where Negroes in the union serve on important committees, and as officials as well...

...Northrup's thoughtful, fact-filled book, Organized Labor and the Negro, gives reason to hope that this situation so ominous for all our democratic future is changing for the better...

...The splendid work done by the Fair Employment Practices Committee under the courageous direction of Malcolm Ross, the militant activities of such Negro leaders as Philip Randolph, and such organizations as the Workers Defense League (the omission of the mention of the work»of the WDL is un-« pardonable on Mr...

...In these discriminatory unions, Negro workers, in order to get a job, must carry a card...

...Reviewed by McAlister Coleman IN 1838, Frederick Douglass, who was to become the nation's most eloquent propagandist for the freedom of his enslaved people, came, with his wife, from Maryland to settle in the whaling town of New Bedford, Mass., one of the stations of the "underground railway" and a city noted for its sympathy with the Negro cause...

...The ve: ins of seniority and promotion, which Mr handles in masterful fashion, were unde ter this book was written, by the disgracefu the Philadelphia traction lines...

...Then they are carefully segregated from their white brothers, with the privilege of paying dm that is left to them...

...The author's suggestions as to "What We Can Do About It" (i.e...

...THE chief reason why the trend of union organization "appears favorable to Negroes," is the CIO's policy of industrial unionism "to bring about the effective organization of the working men and women of America regardless of race, color, creed, or nationality...

...Moreover the national officers of the CIO unions have, by and large, a consistent record of practicing what they preach in regard to the treatment of Negroes...

...Douglass was a skilled ship caulker by trade and he had hoped to take up his profession amid friendly surroundings in the New Bedford shipyards...

...This Will be a boon to all teachers distressed by the increasing signs of racial tensions in their class-rooms, tensions brought about in the main by this glorious war for democracy...

...That puts it up to us, no matter how far we may be removed from union politics, to see to it that, starting from scratch, we are vigilant to detect and to stamp out the first sparks of prejudice in our own backyards...

...Even among the United Mine Workers of America, which has a splendid record of equalitarianism, there will be a tough postwar problem in connection with machine mining...

...Dent-making is, to be sure, a slow and painful process, and it is a question whether or not the younger and more impatient Negro workers, notably those now in our Jim Crow army, find much comfort in it...

...Northrup, "excludes Negro workers from membership nor segregates its colored members into Jim Crow local unions...

...For that purpose Hortense Powdermaker, assistant professor of anthropology at Queens College, New York, has made an important contribution in her little handbook for high school students called Probing Our Prejudices...

...It is one of that invaluable series of books sponsored by the Bureau for Intercultural Education at 119 West 57th Street, New York City...

...Then, more than a century ago, American workers even in Abolitionist Massachusetts were showing the same color prejudice as their white bosses...

...When he obtained employment in one of these, however, the white workers grounded tools and walked off the job, and Douglass had to look for a new job as a common laborer along the waterfront...

...No national CIO union," says Mr...

...Northrup in his summing up, "appears favorable to Negroes...

...It fully meets its purpose of helping high school students to become aware of their own prejudices, "to understand the nature, origin, and effect of prejudices, and to suggest activities which can help reduce them...