‘© the General Assembly of
the United Nations at its
last session in Paris went Wil-
liam. Pa'tterson with one of the
most terrible of all documents.
On behalf of 15 “million
American Negroes, ‘Patterson
charged the U.S. governnrent
with genocide. And his docu-
ment petitioned the United Na-
tions to ‘hear that charge.
Patterson, secretary of the
American Civil ‘Rights Cong-
ress, made sure that the high-
est authorities of UN received
the petition.
He delivered it to Trygve Lie,
Secretary-general of UN, Luis

Padilla Nervo, president of the °

‘General Assembly, and Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt, chairman of
the Commission on Human
Rights.

The secretary-general, the
president and officials of UN
Were careful to see that the
petition was not ‘considered ‘by
the assembly or any of its com-
mittees.

But genocide is carefully de-
‘fined as a crime in the con-
vention adopted by the UN on
December 9, 1948. The defini-
tion is worth quoting because it
€nauble one to judge just how
far the charge of Patterson and
many millions of American
Negroes is justified. The con-
vention says:

“Genocide means any of the
following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or
Mm part, a national, ethical, rac-
jal or religious group as such.

“(a) Killing members of the
group.

“(b) Causing serious bodily
or mental harm to members of
the group.

“(¢) Deliberately inflicting on
the group conditions of life cal-
culated to bring about its phy-
Sical destruction in whole or in
‘part.

“(d) Imposing measures in-
tended to prevent births within
the group.

“(e)  Forcibly transferring
children of ‘the group to an-
other group.”

& &

_ 1 saw Patterson in London
Just before his return ‘by air
to New York, where 'U.S. im-
migration officials seized ‘his
Passport.

He described to me in precise

unemotional terms — the is a
lawyer as well as a defender of
Civil liberties — all the many

Ways in which successive Amer-
Ican governments have commit-

CRETE RES Ee PIT a OCU UL hn Pi il i a

Genocide.
vilest crime of all

HELENE

ted these most horrible of all
crimes.

And, of course, he quoted ex-
amples. It is these examples
which clothe the legal indict-
ment in ‘horror and anguish.

@ Dr. M. A. Santa Cruz, a
Negro dentist of ‘Pulaski, Vir-
ginia, is one example.

He was beaten to death on
February 6 last year by two
white toughs who were molest-
ing two Negro girls. He tried
to defend the girls; he was kill-
ed.

@ There were ‘three Negro
children — Ruby ‘Nell Harris,

PR ne nL tb

aged four; Mary Burnside,
eight; Frankie Thurman, 12, of
Kosciusko, Mississippi, who
were killed on January 8, 1950,
‘by three white men, Leon Tur-
ner, Malcolm White and Windel
Whitt.

The men also raped Pauline
Thurman, 17, and shot Thomas

Harris, father and stepfather

of the children, who died of his

wounds.

e There was Roland : Te
T. Price, 20-year old ex-service-
man killed in Rochester, N.Y.

A world language ?

A'N a common language, such

as Esperanto, be a major

factor in advancing the cause
of peace and socialism?-

The fact is, one-third of the
World’s population has achieved
or is advancing to socialism
Without a common: language.
The world peace movement un-
Ites hundreds of millions in
Common ‘action without such a
language.

Why, then, should not peace
and world-wide socialism ‘be
achieved without a common
language?

It is the world-wide victory of
Socialism that will first create
the conditions for a common
language. But even this would
not occur at one stroke, but
Would involve several stages.
n his essay on_ linguistics,
Stalin suggests:

“\ . . after the victory of
Socialism on a world-wide
Scale . . . national equality will
have heen put into practice;
the policy of suppressing and
assimiliating languages will
lave been abolished . . . and

it will become possible for na-
tional languages freely to en-
rich one another through co-
operation.

“ /. there will emerge first
the most enriched single zonal
languages, then the zonal lang-
uage which will merge into...
a new language which will have
absorbed the best elements of

‘the national and zonal lang:

uages.” ;

But today, when world-wide
socialism ‘has not been estab-
lished, the question of a com-
mon language must be seen
quite differently.

Particularly for the colonial
and dependent peoples, their
fight is in part a fight for their
own national languages (and
national cultures). against the
attempt to force on them the
language (and “way of life”)
of the imperialist countries.

The problem of internation-
al unity today is not primarily
a matter of .an international
language, but of unity: in ac-
tion for peace and independence.

For example, few of us know
the Malay, Chinese or Korean
languages, but it is clear with-
out ‘such knowledge that our
international duty is to fight
for and end to the war in
Malaya and an armistice in
Korea.

An artificial language like
Esperanto is itself an additional
foreign language with a word
stock drawn entirely from Eur-
ope (and Western Europe main-
ly), having nothing at all*in
common with the language of
the East.

The one delegate who spoke
in Esperanto at the World
Peace Conference in , Warsaw
put the whole translation sys-
tem out of action. Nobody
could understand it.

It would be a diversion to
fight for Esperanto as a major
means to winning peace and
socialism. At the same time
every worker for peace will
welcome tthe efforts of Esper-
antists in the cause of world

peace.

Se

oy six policemen, who fired 25
bullets into him after he had
complained in a restaurant that
he had been given short change.

One policeman drew a gun
and took Price outside, five
others joined the murder. They
were all cleared.

@® And Robert Maillard; 37-
year-old Negro salesman, shot
and killed in Lyons, Georgia,
on November 20, 1948, after
the had led a campaign defend-
ing the right of Negroes to
vote.

@ .And Nathan Roberts, 23-
year-old ex-serviceman, shot
and killed in Sardis, Georgie,
when he failed to say “Yes;
sir’ to a white man...

The list is long: there have
been 10,000 known murders.

But that is not all. There is
the question of terrorism
against every Negro in Amer-
ica.

The terrorism, the beatings
and floggings and murders and
burnings that keep Negroes
from voting in the South.

The attacks on households
that prevent Negroes from
moving their homes from strict-
ly defined areas in such cities
as Chicago, Washington and
New York.

There is the aill-pervading
conspiracy that prevents 90 per-
cent of Negroes from taking
any but the lowest and worst-
paid jobs.

There is bad housing that
condemns Negroes to an early
death—their life is, on average,
eight years shorter than a
white man’s.

e

All these things are genocide
as the UN convention has de-
fined that disgusting crime. All
of them are known to all the
people in the U.S. They are
all known to the world.

And certain consequences
flow from them, affecting all

of us in this country and every-
where. Patterson described
these consequences also:

“Genocide in the U.S. must
inevitably lead to fascism.
Its frightful reaction on hu-
man rights is clearly discern-
ible.

“And it has been demon-
Strated ‘that the germs of
world war are inherent in a
racist attack on the nationals
of a country from their own
government. The proof is in
the ‘history of Hitler Ger-
many.”

Patterson paused and turn-
to read from the petition:

“We solemnly warn that a
nation which practices ‘gen-
ocide against its own nation-
als may not be long deterred,
if it has the power, from
genocide elsewhere.

“The lyncher and the atom
bomb are related. The first
cannot murder unpunished
and unrebuked without so en-
couraging the latter that. the
peace of the world and the
lives of millions are endan-
gered.”

Then ‘the read also to me a
passage from a speech he had
intended to deliver to the UN
assembly:

‘Tf the power of evil>men
caught in ‘the act of murder-
ous assault on their own na-
tionals, is not challenged by
United Nations, when and
where shall hapless folk find
redress for their grievances?”
Well, the American-dominated

UN has made no challenge. But
there is one other court to
which 15 million Negroes can
turn.

It is the court of world pub-
lic opinion, and particularly the
opinion of all working and pro-
gressive people.

To that court Patterson turns.
You who read this are part of
that court.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 29, 1952 — PAGE $