A. Yes.
The official admits that there are colored workers in his trade, that some have applied for membership, and that there have been complaints of race discrimination. His statement concerning efforts to organize Negro laborers would seem to have little meaning in view of his assertion that the growth of white membership during the past year was one hundred percent, while that of Negro membership was zero.
It may, however, be interesting to note that a man who joined this Union about the time this letter was written, said the President of the Union gave him the following pledge:
“I pledge that I will not introduce for membership into this Union anyone but a sober, industrious, WHITE person.”
Very often union officials are apt to point to their constitutions which guarantee that no color line be established, and say that the colored people make little effort to organize, and that they are really not trying to get into the Union. “Why don’t the Negroes organize locals of their own?” they ask. The assertion that colored people are making little effort to become organized is undoubtedly true, for it may be presumed that if they had continuously, insistently and in sufficient numbers knocked at the doors of the trade unions the barriers would have been unable to withstand the strain and would have opened to them. But unfortunately the attitude of the trade unions developed among the Negroes a feeling of hopelessness which is detrimental to both the Negroes and the labor movement. “What’s the use?” is the reply usually given by skilled colored workers when asked why they do not join the unions. They know well enough that they will not be admitted, and that even if they were accepted they could never hope to secure a job from the Union. This spirit goes even further, and is fraught with the most imminent danger. A very intelligent colored labor official said, that there is developing among many Negroes the feeling that the most laudable action is to do anything which will harm or break the labor movement.
A Row of Model Houses Originally Built by a Steel Company for its Colored Workers, but used by Foreign Laborers at Present Because of the Protest of the People in the Neighborhood.
That this fatalistic and dangerous attitude of the colored people is not groundless is again evidenced from our study of the situation. The attempt of union officials to becloud or to ignore the issue by saying that the colored people make no effort to become Union members, and do not try to organize their own locals is disclosed by the following case:
On January 1st, 1917, a group of about thirty unorganized Negro plasterers sent the following letter to the Operative Plasterer’s and Cement Finishers’ International Association of the United States with offices at Middletown, Ohio.
Pittsburgh, Pa., January 1st, 1917.