On 3 February 1929, the American Negro Labor Congress took place in Philadelphia. The organisation had been founded by Lovett Fort-Whiteman in 1925.
The audience was addressed by Industrial Workers of the World activist Ben Fletcher. Fletcher claimed, according to a report in the Industrial Worker:
"if industry was organized for use rather than for profit, and if all those who are able to work, were put to work for a few hours each day for about five days, we could produce all that is necessary to make life happy and contented, eliminating unemployment, hunger, poverty, and the many other evils which is the common lot of the toiling millions."
Furthermore, Fletcher argued:
"that a Negro employer is as ruthless as a white employer, or a Chinese, or Japanese, that the question confronting the workers is not race. That we are in the midst of an intense class struggle, and the workers must organize as a class and prepare to take over the management and operation of industry in the interest of suffering society, as the solution of the vexing problems confronting society."
American Negro Labor Congress - WCH | Stories
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