I try not to think too much on things – just try to stay above water and not dwell too much. But I have a little more time on my hands these days since they’ve shortened my schedule at South Works If I thought it was to share the burden among everybody at the steel mill it would sit all right with me, but it’s obvious that the boss is giving special treatment based on skin color. Aren’t we all in this together?

I voted for President Roosevelt. For the first time in my life, no one kept me from the polls with fake taxes, impossible tests or beatings. I guess I thought the vote would mean something, but here I am on a three-day work week, sitting in my crumbling apartment on the South Side of Chicago, and I’m hoping for the best and expecting the worst. My wife and daughters aren’t home. The girls are in school, and Susan is looking for housework. They can’t see me just sitting here, listening to the radio. So many celebrations around me, but I just can’t help thinking:

I left my home in Mississippi for this?

I have to say, the beer is flowing all over the Black Belt. Last month they started allowing bottles with a 3.2% alcohol content. I’m thinking, maybe there are factories re-opening or expanding because of the new laws. Maybe there’s a job out there for me with more hours.

It was ridiculous, prohibition, to begin with. People always find a way, and all of these politicians were afraid to end this stupidity. Even the President only became “Wet” by the time the convention came around. Why did they stop all this? To restore self-government, protect individual rights, and to put an end to “crime, intemperance and social decay.” I can recall getting flyers from temperance groups in the South, wanting to ban alcohol for these very same reasons.
Susan’s less thrilled than I am; she went to a “Dry” Church in Mississippi. But even she admits it’s better to have saloons than Speakeasyss. Take away the forbidden nature of something and it loses its power. I know a little something about that. It’s the same reason I get along better with my white co-workers after they’ve gotten to know me over a beer. Things are better once they’re less mysterious.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to hit the bottle – I’m just curious to see what’s going to happen next.

I’m feeling a little calmer today. I guess I have a little of what you would call, perspective. Susan brought home last night’s edition of the Defender that she was reading on the El. The courts may not be able to protect a group of boys in Scottsboro, Alabama. They might be lynched for looking the wrong way at a white girl.

That is what I left behind in the South. Like my father and his father before him, we were tired of being rural country boys sharecropping other people’s land for next to nothing and bringing home even less to show for it. And on top of it all, having to fear robes and burning crosses when night would come.
We moved to Chicago when Susan and I married. Jeaneatte and Anne-Marie never saw Mississippi. Things may not be great, but they will never have to see what I have seen. But I tell them stories of their grandfather, freed at the end of the War, who lived the toughest life of anyone I know. Yes, it’s true that Binga State Bank has been closed for three years, so that’s how long it’s been since we’ve seen our savings. We’ve traded one set of worries for another, but I look at the children in these pictures of the South and think, there but for the grace of God…

I’m trying to stay optimistic. You know that phrase, “The Grass is always greener on the other side?” I caught a glimpse of some very green grass today. Some organizers were trying in vain to start a union at Southworks. It won’t succeed, not the way U.S. Steel does business, but I’ve heard that the President is trying to change the way businesses work. Still, the idea of all of us in the factory helping eachother just seems so great. Well, great for some people. The union isn’t open to colored men. I suppose I understand it – the community takes care of its own. It’s the same in the Black Belt, when I can turn to my neighbors for help. Nonetheless, it’s just another upward move waving in front of my face that I can’t reach.
My daughters came home in a similar mood. They went to an art class at a high school in Elgin, where there are very few blacks. They went on and on at dinner about how well-kept, how nicely dressed the other kids are, how small the classes are. Jeanette has a whole new list of books she wishes she could read. They were very unhappy at the thought of going back to their squalid, overcrowded school on the South Side. I told them some stories of my one-room rural school house to cheer them up.
But I know better than anyone how hard it is to see opportunities and be unable to grab them for myself.

Dear Mr. President,

I wanted to say how thankful I am that you are our President. My first ever vote went to you, even though my family has always been loyal to Republicans. I can tell that you speak truth over the radio. My wife listens to you when she is at work.
I have never taken a dime of relief in my life. My family, my neighbors, we could always turn to each other. But now, I don’t know where else to turn. They have cut back my hours at work again. My daughters need new shoes, and everyone knows that if white women are looking for work, they’ll get the jobs as domestics over a colored woman any day.
Those work camps you started look like they’ll help some folks, but I can’t leave my family right now. I’m no good to them here, but I’m more harm than good if I’m gone. We need job security right here, in the city. As neighbors we would like to organize for our fair share. My company won’t let me get relief from any charities either.
I watch friends fired over less qualified whites, and little outside encouragement to change their luck. Isn’t there anything you can do? My family and I would be forever grateful.

Sincerely,

Solomon Horton

I’m so mad I could spit. The situation at Betsy Ross School has become unacceptable. My daughters have been trying to learn under these conditions for too long. The place has gotten so overcrowded that they can only stay in the classroom for 3 hours a day. They’ve redistricted the neighborhood, and white children don’t even have to attend Betsy Ross even though it’s a white neighborhood. There is only one white child in the whole school.
We went to the school board to protest with some other parents this morning. Susan wants to keep the girls home if they’re crammed into a room with 40 other students and one teacher. But Susan has to work, and for the most part, so do I! How am I supposed to better their situation if I’m stuck in my own? They go to a white school, I work at a white-owned steel mill, and we need them to survive. Do you know what the superintendent told my wife? “If you don’t back down, I’m gonna send you back to the Jungle where you belong!”
I’m so agitated, but you’re not allowed to be an agitator anywhere, even if you’re only trying to get what’s fair.
No one can help me, and I can’t even help my family or myself.

The South Works cut my hours again. They blame the NIRA, saying they have to give everyone equality, which means we have to just accept more cuts. My children aren’t learning a thing, and there’s no work to be had for Susan. Still, we decided to go to the opening of the World’s Fair. It’s called a Century of Progress. They opened a “Rainbow City”, with bright buildings changing the skyline.

It was nice to take in the Skyride and see the city from the air. Jeanette saw our neighborhood. I chose to look the other way.
We weren’t that fortunate at the Darkest Africa exhibition. People said to be our ancestors were whooping and dancing half-naked in cages.
“Send you back to the Jungle where you belong”. My family doesn’t belong in Mississippi either. We don’t belong at the restaurant on the fairgrounds that refused us service. When times are tough it seems that the spaces we manage to carve for ourselves get smoothed away.
Our banks close, our jobs get lost, our children go without, just like the rest. But I keep hearing that the NRA is helping the working man. To me it just seems like the Negro Removal Act.
But I can’t think about that right now. Anne-Marie wants an ice cream cone, and as a family we’re taking in a Century of Progress.

Help is on the way, said the President. He just passed laws saying that anyone can organize; it’s their right. White workers were all buzzing at South Works today. People like me hung back. It’s not that we aren’t hungry for a fair shake, believe me. It’s about time. But we’re skeptical. For so long these white men have worked next to us but in faraway neighborhoods as a means of keeping us apart. Now, it’s time for solidarity?
Worst of all, South Works is insisting on a Company Union. It’s not a trade union, we’re still not independent. Company Unions might be following the letter of President Roosevelt’s law, but definitely not the spirit. It’s more of the same. They decide what you can ask for and they set your wages. Sure they send a basket of food to a man they’ve fired, but a worker can’t even take steps to help his family because the boss won’t allow it.
I’ve heard that the Steel Workers’ Committee might send someone over here to help fight for Trade Unions. If they help us organize, I’ll join. If we’re getting a chance to form something all together, side by side, I want to be a part of it. Right now I have to worry about my family, and this law isn’t doing enough to help the people that really need it.