THE NEGRO'S HUNGER FOR FREEDOM
Otto, Max C.
The Negro's Hunger For Freedom WHAT THE NEGRO WANTS. Edited by Rayford W. Logan. The University of North Carolina Press. $3.50. Reviewed by Max C. Otto NOT long ago, an acquaintance of mine...
...Logan's chapter, "The Negro Wants First-Class Citizenship," takes the reader to the center of the situation that has to be dealt with: "The Negro Problem in the United States is today a national problem spawned from 240 years of slavery and the northward migration of Negroes incident to 2 world wars...
...The question is, what kind of persons are we are going to be allowed to be...
...Not taking him ser-ously, I nevertheless explained...
...ONE of the deep-flowing dynamic chapters in the book is by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, widely known as a leader among Negro intellectuals...
...Du Bois who, it appears, finds the basic cause of the evil to be the white man's exploitation of the Negro's labor, Mr...
...And fixing me with his one eye, the other being sightless, he summarized our treatment of the Negro from the importation of the first white slaves to the latest race riot...
...The complete integration of black labor into the maximum productive capacities of American industry is a problem which must be courageously faced, and it presents new frontiers to be explored an,d settled by the vigorous movement of American industrial labor...
...Unlike Mr...
...Now you can put this down for certain," he said, "that easy solution isn't going to work any longer...
...He was a Negro, the caretaker of a New York City apartment building, to whom I have often listened with profit...
...Reviewed by Max C. Otto NOT long ago, an acquaintance of mine stopped me cold as I was holding forth on one of our most difficult social problems...
...Townsend finds it in the social and economic setup as a whole...
...Incidentally, the chapter throws light upon the long-standing disagreement between Burghardt Du Bois and Booker Washington...
...His 30 pages are an effort to make clear the kinship of all the exploited and to show the way toward a better future through a socially conscious labor movement...
...fair wages, so that we can live like hitman beings, and the chance to educate our children...
...We won't stay put...
...Although Mr...
...It is called "My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom," and it recounts significant changes which have occurred in the outlook and insight of this eminent American during his more than 60 years of strenuous endeavor for the emancipation of the darker skinned races...
...This note—the immediate and pressing necessity of facing the conditions under which our Negro fellow citizens live and of dealing with them constructively before they get quite out of hand—is sounded again and again in this cooperative study...
...Willard S. Townsend, president of the United Transport Service Employees of America ("Red Caps" to you and to me), looks upon discrimination against the Negro as of a piece with the discrimination practiced against all the underprivileged of whatever race...
...Its 14 chapters are by distinguished Negroes representing right-wing, left-wing, and in between social philosophy...
...What is this Negro problem...
...The idea back of the request," says W. T. Couch at the beginning of his 15-page publisher's introduction, which is in itself an arresting document, "was that the country, and particularly the South, ought to know what the Negro wants, and that statements from leading Negroes might throw some light on this important question...
...Common sense, devotion to our democratic ideals, and the imperatives of our natural security and our moral leadership in world affairs demand its immediate improvement and ultimate solution...
...It is presented with restraint, but only an insensitive reader will fail to detect the fire of resentment that smolders underneath the surface, or feel disposed to find fault with it...
...Oh, that's what you mean," he replied...
...We can't...
...This new alignment of forces must re-affirm its beliefs in the righteousness of justice, equality, ami human decency for all men against the degradation of organized poverty, hypocrisy, and spiritual bankruptcy...
...Negroes are expected "to keep their place," and if they don't, they must expect trouble...
...that's a white man's problem...
...And we are going to get it or get killed in the attempt...
...Even if it had been feasible to discuss all the authors and to quote from each of them, and if the review were ever so much better done, the result would still fall deplorably short of what is there in the book itself...
...I've never come upon it...
...The philosophy of racial equality which is set forth in this chapter is one which none but a gifted, highly intelligent, fair-minded, and dedicated human spirit could have achieved...
...And the same writer has justice and logic on his side when he says: "We want an equal share not only in the performance of responsibilities and obligations but also in the enjoyment of rights and opportunities...
...All we ask is a job...
...He told his story quietly, yet with a kind of bitter eloquence, and the substance of it was this...
...Couch disagrees with the editor and most of the contributors on basic problems, he believes that the authors are truly representative...
...Most Negroes in all parts of the United States have been relegated today to third-class citizenship...
...We're entitled to it...
...Wait a minute," he interrupted...
...We have room for at most 2 quotations from this study extraordinarily rich in facts, analysis, and realistic-idealistic insights: "What this means to the Negro wage-earning community in its awakened efforts to advance its own security on a level with that of other sections of the working population is one of the major questions affecting the whole future course of American industrial democracy...
...s * * This conversation—and of course there was much more of it—was just the right preparation for reading the book, What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan, professor of history at Howard University...
...The opening paragraph of Mr...
...He wants complete economic, political, and social equality—in short, full democratic rights...
...Those are the facts," he concluded, "and they show that the white race has a problem on its hands...
...But that's not a Negro problem...
...Vice President of the International Workers' League, has put in this way: "The Negro wants to be free...
...HERE then is a brief introduction to a remarkable book...
...that the Negro really wants what they say he wants, and that he reasons about democracy, equality, freedom, and human, rights just as they do...
...The book was written at the request of the University of North Carolina Press...
...If there was ever a book to be read and pondered by the American people, this is it...
...Were going to be persons, whoever likes it or doesn't like it...
...It is our number one domestic failure and our number one international handicap...
...He wants freedom from every form of discrimination on account of race or color...
...Logan puts it, "The Negro in general suffers more kinds of inequality than does any other minority in the United States, be it racial, religious, cultural, or economic...
...Below all their differences they agree on what Doxey A. Wilkinson...
...There are college presidents, professors, newspaper editors, writers, and labor leaders...
...It should lend all efforts to the eradication of these social and economic diseases, and exhort those who live after them to be satisfied with nothing less than the full dignity and honor of free men...
...Then grabbing a broom as if it were responsible for his people's troubles, he put a lot o' unexoressed, pent-up agitation into sweeping the sidewalk...
...We want to live a decent, civilized life, as you do...
...As Mr...
...The Negro having been forced into a condition of social inferiority, was given just enough opportunity to make him conscious of his inferior status, but not enough to enable him to work his way out of it...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 27
