“Nothing Less than Full Freedom” Radical Immigrant Newspapers Champion Black Civil Rights

Abstract

Dissent from white ethnic hostility to blacks, as well as American segregation, was expressed in the pages of left-wing newspapers. Slovak Rovnosť ľudu and Polish Głos Ludowy (“People’s Voice”) demanded “nothing less than full freedom” for blacks, urging readers to embrace anti-lynching campaigns and the FEPC. Anti-integration housing riots were, to Głos Ludowy, manifestations of American fascism. The paper argued anti-black rioters were given “a skull-dugging support from certain sections of the Polish press.” The Communist Slovak paper, Rovnosť ľudu (“People’s Equality”) likewise condemned white mobs attacking black war workers seeking to enter Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Project, and as early as 1937 letter writers to the paper “Condemned Prejudice Against Black Workers.” The same year the paper denounced discriminatory lending practices at the Home Owners Loan Corporation, a prescient exposé of the racially skewed provision of social benefits. After the war both papers declared lynching of black veterans and racial segregation were American-style Hitlerism. Both papers’ commitment to the wartime interracial Popular Front dissented from the more dominant embrace of whiteness. Głos Ludowy long continued its advocacy of racial equality. Extensive coverage was granted to civil-rights campaigns, while every white terrorist attack on activists was unequivocally denounced. The paper called the murder of Florida’s NAACP leader “a shame and blot upon America” that had “the earmarks of genocide.” “A burning concept of equality for the colored races” was articulated.