The Scottsboro Mother in Austria, Daily Worker (Article, June 1932)
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The Scottsboro Mother in Austria
By J. Louis Engdahl (Berlin)
The Nazi (Hitlerite) press (Kampruf, Vienna) has savagely declared that it would be a good thing if the Scottsboro Negro boys were burned alive in the electric chair. It argued that they were members of an inferior race which would thus be lessened in its numbers, making for the strengthening of the Nordic superiority and purity.
But the toiling masses thought differently. After having demonstrated their solidarity with the oppressed Negro masses in the United States on the Scottsboro issues, both on International May Day, May First, and on Scottsboro Day, May 7th, they poured out in unexpected numbers to greet the Scottsboro Negro mother, Mrs. Ada Wright, in Vienna. Not only workers, however, but intellectuals and other middle class elements joined the thousands of whom 234 joined the International Red Aid.
Trying to Mislead Masses
Unlike Germany, where the greater part of the bourgeois and social-democratic press sought to ignore the message of struggle that the Scottsboro mother had brought to Europe, the Viennese press, from Nazi to Communist, carried tremendous broadside of publicity. This , with the exception of the Hitlerite organs, was mostly favorable, tribute to the tremendous mass appeal of the Scottsboro issue. The social-fascist (Socialist Party) press, the mouthpiece of the of the Austrian left Socialist Party leaders, who are peculiarly adept in the use of social-demagogy, sought to exploit the Scottsboro issue to the utmost, just as they had brazenly raised the slogan "Defend the Soviet Union!" on May Day.
Socialis Honor Negro Slave Owners
In the great mass meetings, however, attended by great numbers of socialist workers, the speakers placed the question, "But what does the Socialist Party actually do to help free the Scottsboro boys" and the thundering answer came back, especially from the Socialist Party workers, "Nothing"
In fact, on the very of Mrs. Wright's visit to Vienna, the Socialist Party was putting the finishing touches on the program for the opening of one of its municipal apartment houses to be christened "The George Washington," in memory of the first American president, who was a Negro slave-owner. Thus the Socialist Party leaders, in the days when Austria is going hat in hand to French and British imperialism for financial assistance to bulwark is poverty-stricken shilling, also beg at the door of Wall Street imperialism for American favors, inviting the American ambassador and his whole diplomatic staff with the tourist colony to lead in the dedication ceremonies.
The Austrian International Red Aid secretary had been arrested at the May Seventh demonstration, the charge being put forward that she had mentioned that in some countries the workers had stoned the windows of American embassies. Mrs. Wright received greater police attention in "Socialist" Vienna than in any city yet visited. Plainclothes police at the station followed her in a taxi to the hotel where she was taken. The same police sat at a nearby table as she lunched in the hotel's dining room. They were at the demonstration in the evening and followed her to the cafe where she was taken later by some of Vienna's workers. Then they again followed her to the hotel. The next day they called for inspection of passports and detailed questioning. They were without doubt in an excellent position to give full information to the nervous U.S. ambassador who has already been forced to listen to the demands of several delegations of Austria's workers. Vienna's demonstration selected another such delegation.
Writers Support Campaign
In Vienna Mrs. Wright conferred with Ernest Toller, world-famous author and playwright, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Germany's famous physician and others on the development of the work of the Committee for the Liberation of the Scottsboro Negro boys, which is carrying on a tremendous activity in Austria as well as in Czecho-Slovakia and Germany. They both pledged themselves to continue their activities with greater energy. Toller had just come from Budapest where he had attended a Writers' Congress. Young Communists had just carried through a Scottsboro demonstration before the U.S.embassy and were being hounded by the police. Toller created a furor in the congress by declaring that instead of persecuting the young Communists, a protest should be launched against the proposed Scottsboro murder. Dr. Hirschfeld declared he would himself personally visit the American ambassador in Vienna and demand the release of the Scottsboro boys.
On the day Mrs. Wright came to Vienna, the newly elected municipal council went into session with the 15th National Socialist (Hitlerite Fascist) members who stormed through a six-hour session calling the 66 Socialist Party member Jews and demanding that right of citizenship for Jews and aliens be taken away. The reply of the Socialists to the Fascists was that Fascists were descendants of Jews and the offspring of various nationalities. No touching of vital working-class problems. Race and national purity has, of course, become a myth in Vienna, that stood at the crossroads of Europe for 2,000 years. Today, however, its working class, with 500,000 jobless out of a population of 6,000,000 is being united also on the Scottsboro issue of class and national oppression from across the far Atlantic.
