Chapter 64 Statement in Support of the Struggle of Black Americans Against Racial Discrimination[1]

(August 8, 1963) Mr. Robert William, a black American leader who is now taking refuge in Cuba and the former chairman of the Monroe branch of the NAACP in North Carolina, has asked me twice this year to issue a statement in support of black Americans in their struggle against racial discrimination.I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the Chinese people, to express firm support for the struggle of black Americans against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights. There are more than 19 million black Americans, accounting for about 11 percent of the total population of the United States.They are enslaved, oppressed and discriminated against in society.The vast majority of blacks were disenfranchised.They are generally confined to the most menial and despised labor.Their average salary is only one-third to one-half of that of whites.They have the highest unemployment rate.They cannot go to school, eat at the same table, or travel on the same bus or train as whites in many states.Governments at all levels in the United States, the Ku Klux Klan[2] and other racists often arrest, torture and kill black people arbitrarily.In the eleven southern states of the United States, about 50 percent of the blacks in the United States live together.There, the discrimination and persecution suffered by black Americans are particularly appalling.

Black Americans are waking up, and their resistance is growing stronger.In recent years, the mass struggle of American blacks against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights has a growing trend. In 1957, blacks in Little Rock, Arkansas, fought fiercely against the local public schools that did not allow blacks to enroll.The authorities used armed force against them, resulting in the Little Rock incident that shocked the world. In 1960, blacks in more than two dozen states staged sit-ins to protest racial segregation in local restaurants, stores, and other public places. In 1961, blacks protested the segregation of public transport with the "Free Riders Movement," which quickly spread across several states.

In 1962, the struggle of blacks in Mississippi for equal access to college was suppressed by the authorities, resulting in bloody tragedy. This year, the struggle of black Americans began in Birmingham, Alabama in early April.Unarmed and unarmed black people were subjected to mass arrests and the most brutal suppression just because they held rallies and marches against racial discrimination.On June 12, Mega Evers, a black leader in Mississippi, was even brutally killed.The irritated black masses, defying violence, fought more heroically, and quickly won the support of black people and people of all walks of life across the United States.Right now, a national struggle is raging and growing in nearly every state and every city in America.The American black group has decided to hold a "freedom march" to Washington on August 28 with 250,000 people.

The rapid development of the American black struggle is a manifestation of the increasingly sharpened class struggle and national struggle in the United States, which has caused growing anxiety among the American ruling group.The Kennedy[3] administration was insidiously double-handed.On the one hand, it continues to condone and participate in the discrimination and persecution of blacks, and even dispatches troops to suppress them; A set of so-called "civil rights plans" was proposed in Congress in an attempt to paralyze the fighting spirit of blacks and deceive the domestic masses.However, this approach of the Kennedy administration has been seen through by more and more blacks.The fascist atrocities committed by American imperialism against black people have exposed the essence of so-called democracy and freedom in the United States, and exposed the inner connection between the reactionary domestic policy of the U.S. government and the aggressive policy abroad.

I call on workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened bourgeois elements and other enlightened people of white, black, yellow, brown and other races all over the world to unite against the racial discrimination of American imperialism and support black Americans. The fight against racial discrimination.National struggle, in the final analysis, is a question of class struggle.It is only the reactionary ruling clique of the white race that oppresses blacks in the United States.They in no way represent the white majority of workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, and other enlightened people.At present, it is a small group of imperialists headed by the United States and the reactionaries of various countries supporting them who oppress, invade and threaten the vast majority of nations and peoples in the world.They are the minority, we are the majority.Of the three billion people in the world, they are no more than ten percent at most.I firmly believe that with the support of more than 90 percent of the people in the world, the just struggle of the black people in the United States will surely be victorious.The heinous colonial and imperialist system prospered with the enslavement and trafficking of black people, and it will end with the complete liberation of the black race.

According to the "People's Daily" published on August 9, 1963. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ note [1] This statement was issued in the name of Mao Zedong. [2] The Ku Klux Klan is a racist terrorist organization in the United States.Established in 1866 by slave owners in the southern United States to suppress blacks and maintain slavery, it has become a tool for American reactionary forces to promote racism and implement fascist rule. [3] Kennedy, then President of the United States.