Roosevelt is preparing to go in. The dirty bloody work is going to be done, and as usual whenever dirty work has to be done, the Negroes are going to be called upon to do the dirtiest part of it. Whenever blood is to be shed, the rulers of this country see to it that the Negroes shed theirs. That is a privilege and an honor of which they never deprive the Negro. They take away his vote, give him the worst jobs, shove him into the dirtiest slums, kick him out of restaurants, lynch him. But when they want people to die for “democracy,” to. dig trenches in France, to build roads, to clean latrines, while enemy bombers rain their bombs, then they are sure to come looking for Negroes. There the rulers of this country are perfectly willing to see that Negroes have their full rights.
But 1939 is not 1914. Today hundreds of thousands of Negroes are saying to themselves:
“Why should I shed my blood for Roosevelt’s America, for Cotton Ed Smith and Senator Bilbo, for the whole Jim Crow, Negro-hating South, for the low-paid, dirty jobs for which Negroes have to fight, for the few dollars of relief and the insults, discrimination, police brutality And perpetual poverty to which Negroes are condemned even in the more liberal North?”
When the ordinary working Negro asks this question, what can the war-mongers say to him? Nothing. Nothing but lies and empty promises of better treatment in the future.
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