THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS

The decision of the United States Supreme Court ordering a new trial for the eight Negroes convicted in the Scottsboro case can hardly be less acceptable to the nation at large than to the editors of the New Masses and the Daily Worker. The New York Herald-Tribune probably reflected preoccupied public opinion on the subject when it headlined its story on the pronouncement as "Red Riot at High Court"; Communist ballyhoo of the case excuses editors and public alike for confusing justice with Communist propaganda. In this respect the case threatens to equal the "Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti."

It has long been the policy of the Communist party to make a strong play for the sympathy of the Southern Negro, not with any hope of ballot victories, but with the purpose of gaining allies for the ever-threatening revolution. In this instance their championship of the Scottsboro boys appears to have been at best ill-advised. The race prejudice which grips the South did not need the addition of a red-phobia to assure the accused Negroes of an unfair trial, but the Communists increased the difficulties of their proteges when they made an issue of the affair.

The red smoke-screen has obscured the whole underlying strife of which the case is a symptom. Race hatred is a canker present no less in the vitals of America than in India. South of the Mason-Dixon line the Negro is deprived of almost every constitutional and natural right to which man may lay claim. Lynchings and packed juries are so common where the Negro is concerned that these evils have never been subject of much comment. Whether the Southern white is right or wrong it is impossible thus cursorily to determine, but one of the great unfaced and dangerous issues of the nation is the legal status of the Negro.