“Organize and Fight Against Lynching!”

The attempt to organize Negro and white textile workers in the South during the 1930s was bitterly resisted by a combination of the employers and adherents of the Ku Klux Klan.  Among their weapons were lynchings.

This leaflet, addressed to Negro and white workers, was issued in the early 1930s by the International Labor Defense (ILD), which sent courageous lawyers from the North to defend imprisoned strike leaders.  It had a photo of  Ella Mae Wiggins, leader of the textile strike in Gastonia, North Carolina, songwriter and mother of nine children, who was killed during the strike.  On the reverse side of the leaflet (not shown) was a photo of the Gastonia 7, who were imprisoned during the 1929 strike.

See Labor Defender magazine cover issued by the ILD in June 1929.

See also political cartoon “Prejudices of Race and Nationality Benefit Only the Master Class”.