OF THE AMERICAN BLACK PEOPLE AGAINST
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
(August 8, 1963)
Mr. William Robert, a U.S. black leader who was once chairman of the
National Association of Coloured People, North Carolina Branch, and who is
now in exile in Cuba, this year has twice asked me to issue a statement to
support the struggle of the American black people against racial discrimination. I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the Chinese people,
to pledge firm support to the struggle of the American black people against
racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.
There are altogether more than 19 million black people in the United
States, occupying almost 11 percent of the whole population. They are in a
social position of enslavement, oppression and discrimination. Most of them
are deprived of the right to vote. Generally they are obliged to engage in the
heaviest and most despised work. Their average wage is only one-third to half
of that of the white people. Their rate of unemployment is the highest. In
many states, they are not allowed to study in the same school, eat at the same
table, or travel in the same bus or train with the white people. The governments at all levels in the United States, the Ku Klux Klan and other racialists
constantly arrest, torture and murder black people at will. About 50 percent
of the black people dwell in the eleven states of southern U.S., where
discrimination and persecution against them are particularly appalling.
The American black people are awakening and their resistance is becoming
stronger day by day. In recent years, there is a growing tendency of their mass
struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.
In 1957, the black people at Little Rock city in Arkansas waged a fierce
struggle against the local public schools which barred black students and pupils.
The local authorities used armed force against them, creating the Little Rock
Incident which shocked the world.
In 1960, black people in more than 20 states held "sit-in" demonstrations
in protest against racial segregation practiced in the local restaurants, stores
and other public places.
In 1961, black people held "Freedom Rides" against the racial segregation
on buses and trains, which swiftly spread to several states.
In 1962, the blacks of the Mississippi state were suppressed by the local
authorities, resulting in blood-shed, when they launched a struggle for equal
right to enter university.
This year, the black people's struggle started in the beginning of April
from Birmingham, Alabama. The bare-handed blacks were, to our surprise,
arrested en masse and suppressed most barbarously just because of holding
meetings and demonstrations against racial discrimination. On June 20 the
black leader Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi. Defying brute force,
the enraged masses of black people carried on their struggle even more bravely,
and quickly won the support of vast numbers of black and other people of all
social strata throughout the country. A nationwide powerful and tumultuous
struggle is unfolding at present in almost every state and city in the United
States, and it is continuing to upsurge. The American black organizations have
decided to stage a "freedom march" on Washington of 250,000 people on
August 28.
The rapid development of the struggle by black people is a manifestation
of the sharpening of the domestic class and national contradictions in the
United States, and it has aroused increasing disquiet among the U.S. ruling
circles. The Kennedy administration has adopted an insidious double-dealing
approach. On the one hand, it continues to connive at and participate in
discriminating against and persecution of black people, even sending troops to
suppress them; on the other hand, it has affected a posture of "upholding
human rights" and "safeguarding the civil rights of black people," calling on
black people "to be patient" and submitting to the Congress a set of so-called
civil rights plans," in an attempt to paralyze black people's will to fight and
dupe the general public. However, more and more black people are seeing
through these tricks of the Kennedy administration. The fascist atrocities of
U.S. imperialism against the black people have disclosed the essence of the
so-called U.S. democracy and freedom, as well as revealed the inner link
between the U.S. government's reactionary domestic policies and its foreign
policy of aggression.
I appeal to the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened
bourgeois elements and other enlightened personages of the white, black,
yellow and brown races all over the world to unite to oppose the racial
discrimination of U.S. imperialism and support the American black people's

struggle against racial discrimination. National struggle, in the final analysis,
is a question of class struggle. It is only the reactionary ruling circles of the
white people in the United States that are oppressing the black people. They
can in no way represent the overwhelming majority of the white people, the
workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals and enlightened elements. At
present, it is a handful of imperialist powers headed by the United States and
the reactionaries who support them who are oppressing, invading and threatening the vast majority of nations and peoples in the world. They are the
minority while we are the majority. Among the world's population of three
billion they are less than 10 percent at the most. I am convinced that the
American black people's just struggle, with the support of more than 90
percent of the people of the world, will surely be victorious. The evil
colonialist-imperialist system rose with the enslaving and trafficking of the
black people, and it will certainly come to an end with the complete liberation
of the black people.
(From People's Daily, August 9, 1963)