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Title: The Negro: Author: Lucy E. Parsons Date: 3 April 1886 Language: en Topics: class struggle, working class Source: The Alarm
Who has stood upon the seashore and watched the weird dash of the
ceaseless waves and has not become tired of their monotonous sameness?
Still there was occasionally a wave which could attract and fix our
attention for the time being by rearing its cap above the rest and thus
become conspicuous.
Who but a devoted soul in this labor movement does not at times become
tired—a weary tiredness, verging on a disgust at the apparent sameness
and dreary monotony of the wage system as depicted by those engaged in
the noble work of exposing the hideous inequalities of the present
economic system? Yet, like the waves, there arises amid all this
monotony a wrong sometimes as much or more glaring in all its details
that not only is our attention attracted but our sympathies are
enlisted.
Who, surrounded even as we are in the midst of organizations whose
mission it is to depict the wrongs to which the propertyless class are
subjected, could help but stand aghast and heave a sigh and perchance
drop a tear as they read the graphic account flashed to us of the awful
massacre of the poor and defenseless wage-slaves in Carrolton, in the
state of Mississippi? Defenseless, poverty-stricken, hemmed about by
their deadly enemies; victims not only to their misfortunes, but to
deep-seated, blind, relentless prejudice, these our fellow-beings are
murdered without quarter.
This is the history in brief: The plain unvarnished facts of this most
damnable outrage which, with it and similar occurrences almost
innumerable of a like nature perpetrated upon these people, should bring
a tinge of indignation to the cheek of every soul who can at all
comprehend the meaning of the word Liberty!
While these are the plain facts, what is the lesson it teaches? Are
there any so stupid as to believe these outrages have been, are being
and will be heaped upon the Negro because he is black? Not at all. It is
because he is poor. It is because he is dependent. Because he is poorer
as a class than his white wage-slave brother of the North.
And to the Negro himself we would say your deliverance lies mainly in
your own hands. You are the modern Helot. You sow but another reaps. You
till the soil but for another to enjoy. Who is this other one who
continues to enjoy the fruit of your industry? Are they not the idle few
who you but lately acknowledged as your masters, and are not these
loafers practically your masters yet in so far as absorbing all your
labor product without even being compelled to return you sufficient to
keep you in decent food and clothes? For they are not even actuated by
the monied interest which they had in you in former years. The
overseer’s whip is now fully supplanted by the lash of hunger! And the
auction block by the chain-gang and convict cell!
The same land which you once tilled as a chattel slave you still till as
a wage-slave, and in the same cabin which you then entered at eve not
knowing but what you would be sold from wife and little ones before the
morrow’s setting sun, you now enter with dread lest you will be slain by
the assassin hand of those who once would simply have sold you if they
did not like you.
Verily your situation is still deplorable. Will the soft, smooth words
of the bidder for your vote emancipate you from these conditions? Who
has tried the delusive thing more faithfully than you have? Has it done
you any good? Will prayer stay the hand of the oppressor? Who has prayed
with more zeal than you? Of what practical good has it ever been to you?
Then clearly your road to redemption lies not along these paths. But
your course in future, if you value real freedom, is to leave politics
to the politician, and prayer to those who can show wherein it has done
them more good than it has ever done for you, and join hands with those
who are striving for economic freedom.
Can you divine what this freedom means? Homes for the homeless producer
of today, and only those who produce shall have them, and no longer
shall the industrious many feed the idle few, who riot in luxury and
ease.
As to those local, periodical, damnable massacres to which you are at
all times liable, these you must revenge in your own way. Are you deaf,
dumb and blind to the atrocities that you are subjected to? Have the
gaping wounds of your dying comrades become so common that they no
longer move you? Is your heart a heart of stone, or its palpitations
those of cowards, that you slink to your wretched abode and offer no
resistance? Do you need something to nerve you to action? Then look in
the tear-stained eye of your sorrowing wife and hungry children, or
think of your son, who has been sent to the chain-gang or perhaps
murdered upon your door-steps. Do you need more horrible realities than
these to goad you on to deeds of revenge that will at least make your
oppressors dread you? And this is the beginning of respect! Do you ask
me what I would do if I were like you, poor, unarmed and defenseless?
You are not absolutely defenseless.
For the torch of the incendiary, which has been known to show murderers
and tyrants the danger line, beyond which they may not venture with
impunity, cannot be wrested from you.