JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The author of this curious work1, Pasquale Russo (who also wrote "Negro Slavery or Crime of the Clergy" and "Tony the Immigrant" among others) makes a case against the K.K.K., and also manages a conjoined condemnation against the "Church"--and that being, so far as I can tell, the Catholic Church--all the while building a very strong pro-labor (Socialist?) overview for the improvement of the condition of the working classes. This seems a little unusual to me as the K.K.K. was also anti-Catholic, making similar arguments against that religion as Mr. Russo. Mr. Russo's reasoning behind the attack here seems to be that the Church was in its way complicit with the actions of the K.K.K. by being against labor, as was the Klan, and so with this thinking the Church was pro-K.K.K. and anti-working class by restricting the freedom of the laborer, and against "the solidarity of the white and colored". There is very strong support in the pamphlet for the Negro worker (the "N" in "Negro" being capitalized at a time when even that small dignity was rejected by many in the publishing industry), railing against the segregationist policies of the "United Federation of Scabs" (the American Federation of Labor, A.F.L.) and Samuel Gompers and for being the "lickspittles" of the ownership class. The pamphlet was published at an interesting time--1923--for the main aspects of the work: there was significant anti-Catholic leanings high and low throughout the country; the K.K.K. was about halfway through its second very short-lived revival before its collapse later on in the decade; the African American as a race and as a worker class was still very abused; and the infatuation with Socialism and the newly-formed Soviet Union was young and growing. So the pieces of history were there, though they are in a jumble.
The pamphlet is a highly problematic but forensically-interesting work, and speaks to its times in a number of ways--that said, I am not sure where this fits in with anything, and how much of Mr. Russo's self-published philosophy was shared and how much of it was simply an externalized internal insight.
Overall my little graze through this pamphlet left me a little tired and depressed--it did give me some sort of understanding of something, but I don't know what.
Notes:
- Pasquale Russo, Ku Klux Klan, Church and Labor, 1923; published by Mr. Russo in Chicago (833 Sedgwick Street). 7x5", 59pp. Provenance: Library of Congress, with their surplus/duplicate rubber stamp on the rear cover. WorldCat/OCLC locates 16 copies.
When I looked up 833 Sedwick on Google it seems as though it is just an empty lot wit a fence made of found bits of corrugated metal and chain link.
Comments