The Illinois standard. [volume], September 18, 1948, Page 4, Image 4

About The Illinois standard. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1948-1949

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
Editorial 1
Whole system of
Jim Crow exposed
Henry Wallace’s recent tour of
the South is the most important
contribution to the welfare of our coun
try made by any political party in the
last eighty years.
The tremendous implications of this
tour, both nationally and internationally,
are not yet fully understood even hy
large sections of the American people
who are fighting for the Progressive
Party throughout the country’.
We can appreciate this fact if we
take a quick glance at the results
of Wallace's open letter to Premier
Stalin a few months ago. If we did
not fully understand the world
wide implications of this act then,
we now know that it is the leader
ship of Henry Wallace that is re
sponsible for the present situation
in which we find the Great Powers
coming to grips with the funda
mental issues of peace.
The United States, the Soviet Union,
Gieat Britain and France are holding
meeting after meeting despite the frantic
efforts of American Big Business to
blind us to this truth by means of a
carefully planned campaign of confu
sion and red-baiting.
It is in this light that we must
viewT Wallace’s tour of the South
where he spoke at 30 public non
segregated meetings in 28 cities in
7 states all within a period of seven
days, traveling an estimated four
thousand miles.
We must not make the mistake of
assuming that this tour was just a matter
of improving race relations or insuring
a larger Negro vote for the Progressive
Party in November.
Henry Wallace, exercising his
great courage, honesty and integ
rity, has exposed the whole rotten
system of Jim Crow, even as the
leaders of the two old parties try
to ignore it.
He has proved to himself, to America
and to the world that the system which
breeds Jim Crow is the system which
has kept the United States from exer
cising its great strength through the
United Nations, in behalf of world
peace.
Understanding this great lesson,
the Negro and white people in con
cert with labor and all progressives,
will redouble their efforts, will har
ness their tremendous energies to
fight it out during the next period
to show organized reaction in this
country that we can achieve victory
for the Progressive Party in No
vember. I
HENRY WALLACE SAYS:
They haven't heard
the last from Illinois
1r WAS NOT just by accident
that Chicago was the place from
which I announced to the nation last
December that I was an independent
candidate for the presidency of the
United States. Chicago and Illinois
played a large
role in helping
me to decide to
become a candi
date.
In the splen
did campaign
which you waged
in the judicial
election here in
Cook County in November, 1947,
you demonstrated that the Ameri
can people are ready to break with
the unholy, undemocratic biparti
sans. You showed that the American
people were eager—and able—to
come out fighting for a new political
party of their own.
They have come out fighting—we
have that new political party and
you loyal people of Illinois have
played a mighty part in its forma
tion. But we still have a big fight
on our hands. In their desperation,
the corrupt machines of the Demo
crats in Cook County and the Re
publicans downstate openly collab
orate in an attempt to keep us off
the Illinois ballot.
ISAY that any state which keeps
the Progressive Party off' the
ballot is depriving the people of a
free election. I say that the fight for
the ballot in Illinois is also a fight
to defend the Constitution of the
United States. If they destroy your
right to vote for the Progressive
Party, they destroy your basic con
stitutional right.
We pledge ourselves to an all-out
fight to enforce this constitutional
right.
In pledging to live by the Con
stitution, we have earned enemies.
And we are proud of our enemies:
The men who stand for Jim Crow.
The men who stand for Taft
Hartley.
The men who support fascists in
Greece and China.
The men who prefer an atmos
phere of war, because they profit
by it.
The men who hated Franklin
Roosevelt and the New Deal and
who now find their unity in hatred
for the Progressive Party.
These men, Republicans and
Democrats bound together by hate,
are using every mechanism which
bipartisan fear can suggest.
YES, our all-out fight for con
stitutional democracy has earned
us enemies. But it does not matter
if they call us red or black, if they
lie about us or egg us or stone us. We
will not join the Republican
Democratic poker match which gov
erns out of the back room—from
the bottom of the deck.
The shopworn, the discredited, the
cheap political tricksters have joined
with those who all their lives have
practiced black reaction. They have
set up one camp, though there are
many banners.
AND WHAT are they joined
against? What are we that they
should forget old feuds to fight
against us?
We are those who stand against
the course which leads to war.
We are those who would take
from the hands of monopoly the
power to say who shall starve and
who shall feast.
We are those who protest a policy
toward minority groups that is ad
ministered by a policeman’s night
stick. We are those who feel attacked
whenever the color of man’s skin
or the color of his political beliefs
is the official excuse for brutality,
whether at home or abroad.
We must go now into every home
in this state, onto every street corner.
We must tell the people who we are.
We will stand up and take the jeers
of hirelings.
We must work—we will work, so
that on Nov. 2 the people of Illinois
can clearly choose.
I
By PETER WILLIAMS
ROSE ROSE (nope, we’re not stut
tering!), Prog. Party’s office manager at
187 N. LaSalle, quotes the Irish maid
who tended her room in a New York
hotel:
“Shure, that Wallace, he’s a foin
man, he is, that one. It’s myself
that went all the way to Philadel
phia to hear him at that conven
tion, and shure a wonderful speech
it was that he made there. . . . But
some of me friends are awful re
actionaries, they are. Shure, and do
you know what they tell me? They
say, ‘Shure, and why don’t ya be
goin’ back to Roosia where ya came
from?’ ”
☆ ☆ ☆
GLAMOR-PUSS Uta Hagen is com
ing to Chicago to star in “Street Gar
Named Desire.” Maybe you heard . . .
that Uta attended the founding conven
tion of Progressive Party in Phila. as a
delegate!
_A_ _A_ _A_
I *-» *->*
Just between us Progressives—a
helluva lot of Sun-Times newsmen
signed Wallace petitions!
☆ ☆ ☆
CLARK FOREMAN, who covered
Wallace’s Dixie tour, writes in the N.Y.
Star: “A representative of Time and
Life on the tour wore a Dixiecrat but
ton.” ’Nuff said about Time & Life!
☆ ☆ ☆
THERE’S a Welcome Home Party
for artist Margaret Taylor Goss, just
back from an art trip to New York, at
DuSable Community Center, 4845 S.
W abash, Saturday, Sept. 18, 9 p.m.
-A- -A, .A,
MIMI WOLFSON, mother of little
1 lA -year-old Rowena Jill Wolfson who
was accidentally struck down and killed
by an auto last week when she wandered
into Cambridge street, wants Standard
readers to help her. Mrs. Wolfson has
no photographs of her little girl.
But a lot of photos were taken of
Mrs. Wolfson when she and her baby
“walked” the picketlines around City
Hall last Friday at noon, protesting the
denial of a place on the ballot to the
Progressive Party. If you possess any of
these photos, or know anyone who does,
I contact Mrs. Wolfson at 524 W. Locust.
ly'umTarr D«WSO!l9 |»il4‘k VHIII' lljl^s!
ET’S hope that Rep. William Daw
son. the Democrats’ gift to the na
tion from the South Side’s 1st district,
has cleaned all the receipts, correspond
ence, and other material out of his
Washington office.
Around the City Hall they’re betting
that he won’t be going back to the cap
ital next January.
There are several reasons, these wise
acres say, why Dawson can consider his
political days numbered.
First, he’s up against a really formid
able opponent in the person of the Pro
gressive Party’s Earl B. Dickerson, prom
inent businessman and civic leader.
Dawson himself supported Dickerson
as the most qualified man in an alder
manic runoff in the late ’30s, after
Dickerson had bested Dawson in the
three-way primary. As far back as 1929
Dickerson, although a liberal, was en
dorsed by even the Tribune.
Second, Dawson’s fight against a
movement to strengthen the Dem
ocrats’ civil rights plank at their
Philadelphia convention exposed
his failure to work for the best in
terests of his Negro constituents.
Third, the devastating blast against
Dawson by the former assistant publicity
director of the Democratic National
Committee, John H. Young III, is sup
posed to have hurt Dawson plenty.
There was too much circumstantial
evidence to back Young’s eye-witness
charge that Dawson is “playing a game
of segregation and selling his own people
down the river.”
And finally, Dawson’s own record in
Congress is doing him no good. He was
absent from sessions of the House more
frequently than the rest of the Illinois
representatives put together!
HOMER AYRES, farm relations di
rector for the United Farm Equip
ment & Metal Workers of America
(CIO), was in town this week with
some interesting observations about po
litical developments in rural areas.
Farm prices have broken and seem to
be headed for a steady decline, Ayres
says, and the farmers are worried.
Their fears turn to anger, however,
when they see International Harvester
boosting its prices on farm equipment
at the same time. (By the way, the day
after Harvester boosted its prices, it was
named in a government anti-trust suit.)
But Ayres points out that the farmers
can’t be won by the progressives unless
some real spadework is done out in the
countryside. Trade unionists and Pro
gressives should get out and meet the
farmers, he feels. They’ll find it time
well spent.
An encouraging development along
this line in Illinois is the appointment of
Conrad Komorowski and Charles Fisher
to be downstate organizers for the Pro
gressives.
A CHICAGOAN who helped
Georgia’s People’s Progressive Par
ty collect signatures claims that “there
is a march forward in Georgia.”
The Chicagoan, Michael Le Glaire,
predicts that “the world will be astound
ed when it sees the vote cast for Henry
Wallace in the South.”
Mai Coghlan, GOP candidate for
state’s attorney, certainly isn’t
qualified for that job, but his press
agent is very well qualified for his
job. He’s Frank Doherty, ex-Sun
staffer and member of the fabulous
Doherty clan (Jim of the Trib, Tom
of the Herald-American, Eddie the
free-lancer, and Bill of the Sun
Times).
Frank by the way, used to work on
the Standard once himself, he tells us.
But it was another paper altogether, the
American Daily Standard, which was
published here a couple of decades ago.