to organize negroes
not now affiliated with unions in the shipbuilding trades. Another
resolution was to the effect that negro porters, cooks, waiters
and waitresses, section hands and all negro railway employes to be
organized. The press reports of the convention under date of June 12,
said:

Dr. R.R. Moton, Principal of the Tuskegee Institute, and J.R.
Shillady, of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, are authors of a communication asking for
closer cooperation between white and colored workers. They ask
that Mr. Gompers prepare a statement on his stand toward
negro labor, and charge that some unions discriminate against
colored workers. They urge consideration of revision of
union charters to permit negroes to become members. The
communication was referred.[155]

These efforts were not without some result, for sentiment began to
change. In its August, 1918, issue the editor of the _Labor News_ of
Detroit, Michigan, said:

The time has arrived for the American labor movement to
face squarely the fact that the negro is a big factor in our
industrial life, and that he must be taken into account in the
adjustment of our economic differences. Never again can the
negro be ignored. Time and time again the selfish masters of
industry have used him to batter your organizations to pieces,
and, instead of trying to win him over, you have savagely
fought him, because they used him as a strikebreaker. But
the negro must be made to see the value of organization to
himself, and he must be incorporated into and made a part of
the great labor movement. It is a stupid policy to try to keep
him out. Let us work to shift him from his present unhappy
position, where he is despised by the big business element,
notwithstanding his utility as a strikebreaker, and hated by
unionists for his loyalty to the open shop element. Unionism
must welcome the negro to its ranks.

[Footnote 148: _Southwestern Christian Advocate_, New Orleans, La.]

[Footnote 149: Ibid.]

[Footnote 150: Report of Bishop's Council, A.M.E. Church, 1917.]

[Footnote 151: Report of Proceedings, American Federation of Labor,
annual session, 1913.]

[Footnote 152: Report of Proceedings, American Federation of Labor,
annual session, 1916.]

[Footnote 153: Report of Proceedings, American Federation of Labor,
annual session, 1917.]

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