The Daily Worker, Vol. 5 No. 358 (p. 6)

February 25, 1929

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Problems of the Communists in the South

By John H. Owens

The rapid industrialization of the south is creating a new and complex problem for the Communist Party. Prior to the 1928 presidential campaign, no really serious attempts had been made by the Party to invade the "solid" south, this phase of the work being limited to such theoretical slogans as "abolish lynching," "full social equality," "abolish 'Jim-Crowism.'" The realization of a concrete program for this section of the country will require the earnest consideration of the best analytical minds of the Party.

Contrary to the general conception, even among Communists, the vast majority of southern Negroes are not revolutionary, not even radical. Given a moiety of peace, property and security, they are content to drift through life. Not that they are devoid of ambition—rather the opposite, but this ambition attacks of accepted American traditions of individualism, getting on in the world, highly competitive effort and the like. With all its social and political restrictions, the south can boast of a rising class of black bourgeois elements.

Another ideological factor which must be given close attention is the peasant psychology possessed by many Negroes. This reflected in their social outlook, a tendency to ape, frequently to exaggerate, the manners and morals, the prejudices and political theories of the ruling caste.

The average southern white is an inferior individual who attempts to hide his inferiority complex by a pretentiousness of manners, an assumed superiority based upon color only and, therefore, the inherent inferiority of the black race.

The rural Negro is frequently prejudiced against the town Negro and adopts a patronizing attitude toward "educated Negroes." This is but the reflex of the white planter's psychology who doubts the wisdom of educating his "niggers." In his opinion, it makes him upshit, refractory and generally untrustworthy as good field hands. "Education puts social equality notions in a nigger's head."

Thus the Negro manhood of the south is individualized and degraded until it accepts as natural and inevitable such derogatory institutions as concubinage, peonage, chain ganga, segregation and a host of other festering evils which are damning indictments of white capitalist civilization in America. By a peculiar mental twist the Negro endures these evils by refusing to recognize them and the southern Negro as well as the southern white bitterly resents criticism of his community by an outsider.

Some Negroes go so far as to defend their "good white folks" even though these same good white folks are lecherous planters with colored concubines.

The inferiority complex which is forced upon the Southern Negro explains his attitude towards his own female kind. He accepts the white man's evaluation of colored womanhood as well as of other things in life. It also explains in part the difficulties of competent Negro leadership in the South. A Negro leader is not acceptable to a certain part of the race until the white folks have put the seal of approval upon him. This means that he must be "safe and sane" according to the most orthodox and fundamentalist viewpoint of the average Southern white. This inferiority feeling also partly explains the willingness and frequency with which colored women enter into misalliances with white men, though the economic phase of the matter is highly important and must not be forgotten.

The poor whites of the South are so obsessed with the psychology of "We must keep the niggers down" that it hampers intelligent action for their own advancement. They are encouraged in this by the upper class whites, who being more class conscious and more practical use this race prejudice for their own economic security.

This prejudice on the part of the whites is also caused by fear. Conscious of the injustices which the Negroes have suffered for generations, the Southern whites cannot but quake at the thought of retaliation. This is reflected in such sadistic orgies as the lynching and mutilation of Negro men and ripping up pregnant women. That this prejudice has no biological foundation and is not inherent in either race is evidenced by the willingness of Southern white males clandestinely to cohabit with colored females.

The crisis in agriculture, the evil of the single crop production, the ball-weevil which ruins that one crop (cotton), changing farming conditions in the south, concentration of land ownership and mechanization of farming), are potent forces tending to weed out the poor and inefficient owners both black and white and reduce the number of agricultural laborers needed to work the productive acreage. These dispossessed ruralites become a part of the city proletariat and are absorbed by the expanding industries of the South: the mines, the mills, the factories.

In an article "The North and the South Today," Current History Magazine for November, 1927, the author has this to say:

"Now, Southern enterprise and Northern capital combining have made the South the outstanding commercial wonder of the day. For example, a line of creameries, backed by Northern capital, stretches from Washington to New Orleans and the great Southern hydroelectric development has likewise been brought about largely by New York, Philadelphia and Boston money.... One by one the smaller Southern industries are being strengthened or acquired by Northern capitalists. In Randolph County, North Carolina, fifteen of the seventeen cotton mills have been purchased with Northern capital and in Selma two of the three and this is typical of the condition throughout the South. In fact, unobtrusive forces are everywhere at work breaking down the barriers and soon the last one will have fallen.

"Just as soon as the Negro taboo and the fundamentalist religious taboo disappear, we may expect Party lines to disappear also. North and South Carolina with more spindle hours than Massachusetts will not continue to blow hot and cold" on election days.

"But the Southern states, though nationalized and cooperative are still conservative, more so, perhaps than those of the North because of the absence of the foreign element. They are far removed from Sovietism or 'Red' Republicanism and they respect the courts and love the Government."

How will the changing economic conditions affect the social relations of the races? How will the Southern white workers, grounded in race prejudice, react to Communism which preaches and practices race equality? How will the Negro respond to a suggested alliance with the "po' white trash' whom capitalism has consistently pushed forward as his traditional enemy'? Perhaps the economic forces at work contain the potentialities of an answer. Who knows? Here is a problem which requires all of Communist fortitude and courage.