The negro workers

by Eugene V. Debs

On another occasion down at Montgomery, Alabama, where I was to speak at the Opera House, they had the line sharply drawn and said no colored people should be admitted. It so happened that the colored people had worked most faithfully and energetically for the success of that meeting, and when they appointed a committee which came to my hotel and notified me that they were to be excluded, I said, “We will go there together, and if you are excluded, so will I be excluded; if you cannot be admitted, I will not speak.” (Great applause.) Well, there is one thing that the “superior” white man loves better than he hates the Negro, and that is the coin. (Laughter.) The manager had $50 coming for the use of the Opera House, and he wanted the money, and when I said I wouldn’t speak unless he opened the doors to the colored people, he changed his mind very reluctantly to receive his $50. (Applause.)

When we were organizing the American Railway Union in 1893, I stood on the floor of that Convention all through its deliberations appealing to the delegates to open the door to admit the colored as well as the white man upon equal terms. They refused, and then came a strike and they expected the colored porters and waiters to stand by them. If they had only admitted these porters and waiters to membership in the American Railway Union there would have been a different story of that strike, for it would certainly have had a different result.

I remember one occasion down in Louisville, Kentucky, where we were organizing and they refused to admit colored workers to the union. A strike followed—a strike ordered exclusively by the white workers. After having ignored the colored workers and refused them admission, the strike came and the colored workers walked out with the white ones. Notwithstanding they had been excluded and insulted, they went out, and the strike had not lasted long until the white men went back to work and broke the strike, leaving the colored men out in the cold in spite of their loyalty to the white workers.

I have a word to you workers—you colored workers—about your duty in this campaign—your duty to yourselves, your families, your class and to humanity. I am not here asking for anything for myself. If I were seeking office, you know, I would not be in the Socialist Party. (Applause and laughter.) I want to speak to you very plainly to-night, especially you colored people, and have you understand that it is not in my power to do anything for you but to take my place side by side with you. That is all I can do. (Applause.) But while I can do nothing for you there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves. (Applause.) There is one thing that I want to impress upon your minds to-night; it is self-respect. You can compel the respect of others only when you respect yourselves. (Applause.) As long as you are willing to be the menials and servants and slaves of the white people, that is what you will be. (Applause.) You have to realize that there are 12,000,000 of you in this nation, and that if you will unite and stand together and be true to each other, you will develop a power that will command respect. (Applause.) As long as you are unorganized—as long as you are indifferent, as long as you are satisfied to remain in ignorance you will invite contempt and receive it, but when you rise in the majesty of your manhood and womanhood, close up the ranks and stand together, you will command respect and consideration and you will receive it. (Thunderous applause.) It is the only way you ever will receive it. Everything depends upon your education. You have a brain; you can develop your capacity for clear-thinking. That is a duty owing to yourselves and your class, to your race and to humanity. (Applause.) That is the appeal I am making to you to-night.

Haven’t you been long enough in the service of the capitalist parties to realize that they have no earthly use for you save only as they can perpetuate their system and keep you in servitude? The Republican party has trafficked in you, lo, these many years; the party that is unspeakably corrupt but still claims a monopoly of Abraham Lincoln and brazenly calls itself the party of Lincoln—what use have they for you? There was a time in my life, before I became a Socialist—when I was still young and had the vanity of youth and the ambition and enthusiasm of a boy—when I permitted myself as a member of the Democratic party to be elected to a State Legislature. I have been trying to live it down. (Laughter.) I am as much ashamed of that as I am proud of having gone to jail. (Applause and laughter.)

There is a peculiar fatality that seems to hang over me. Every time I am nominated as a candidate for President by the Socialists, the capitalists send me to jail or to the penitentiary. (Laughter.) Some paper said: “Debs started for the White House and got as far as Atlanta.” (Laughter.)

I was, as I have said, a member of a Legislature. I used to meet with the politicians—Republicans as well as the Democrats; I became familiar with their political methods; I heard them over and over say in campaigning: “Now, we have got to figure on how to handle the “Nigger” vote; how much does it amount to and what will it take?” Well, a thousand colored voters are worth about one job on the police force or a mail carrier; if there are only about 500, why, a spittoon-cleaning job at the courthouse. That is about all they have ever given you and all they ever will give you. They do not associate with you; they have nothing in common with you. They want you segregated. When a race riot of any description comes, they are always armed against you. You know what they have done for you in the last thirty years in the way of recognizing you decently as human beings and giving you an equal chance with other human beings to work out your destiny.

Now, if you still persist—you colored people—in remaining in either the Republican or the Democratic party, you are stultifying yourselves; you are insulting your race; you are barring the door in your own faces—the door that leads to emancipation. The time has come for you to realize what your position is in these capitalist parties. They are both alike. I challenge anybody anywhere to show me the slightest difference between them from the working man’s point of view.

I am speaking for the workers to-night. It does not make any difference to me where they were born or what the color of their skin may be, or what their religion is, or their creed, or anything of that kind. I ask no question as to that; they are all of the working class, the lower class, the class that does all of society’s useful work, that produces all its wealth, and makes all the sacrifices of health and limb and life through all the hours of the day and night; the class without which the whole social fabric would collapse in an instant. It is this class regardless of color that creates and supports all civilization; this class that in all the ages of the past, throughout history, in every nation on earth has been the lower class; for the badge of Labor has always been the symbol of servitude and upon the brow of Labor there has always been the brand of social inferiority.

In the ancient world your ancestors were slaves, owned by their masters, whipped by their masters, put to death by their masters the same as other domestic animals. In the Middle Ages for a thousand years the serfs were not allowed to own an inch of soil; they could work only on condition that they produced for the benefit of the idle, aristocratic lord and baron who owned the land and who rioted in the luxury wrung from their sweat and misery. They also fought for him to enlarge his domain believing in their ignorance it was their patriotic duty to fight and die for the sovereign baron who looked down upon them with contempt. You are no longer the slave or the serf, but you are the wage earner in the present capitalist system. Your interests are all identical; you do all the useful, productive work but you do not work for yourselves; you have no legal right to work; you can work only if you are permitted to work by the owners of the tools with which you work. You made the tools and use the tools; but they own them and they might almost as well own you; for as long as you work with their tools, what you produce belongs to them; they become fabulously rich producing nothing while you remain poor producing everything. And this applies to white and black alike.