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98 Cards in this Set

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Henry Wallace,
Was supported by black New Yorkers in his bid for the vice presidency (instead of Truman) in 44, and for commerce secretary in 45. Ran for president for the progressive party in ’48. He also “embraced more vigorous civil rights positions than the democrats.” He was accused of being a pawn of Moscow.
Progressive Party
In 48 more then 50 blacks ran for national office on the progressive ticket. Ran Henry Wallace for president in ’48. Most progressives were not communist, but they defended the right of Americans to be communist. Formed the national committee to elect Negroes to public office.
To Secure These Rights
Written in ’47 by Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights. Called for the total abolition of racial or religious segregation and discrimination in the United States by withholding funding from groups who continued to discriminate. It shaped civil rights movements for the next 20 years, and some parts, like the bit against police brutality haven’t been legislated.
Morgan v. Virginia
1946 decision which outlawed segregation on interstate travel. The plaintiff was Irene Morgan
stand-inners
Biondi uses the term in quotations to refer specifically to the pool at the palisades park, well not to the pool, but rather to the people who asserted their right to be there by showing up and defying segregationist policies. Since it wasn’t at a restaurant or something it was a stand-in instead of a teach-in
CORE
Congress of Racial Equality, founded in ‘42 worked towards racial equality in New York. Worked directly against the palisades park by filing state and federal lawsuits against it.
James Peck
Was on the freedom rides in ’61 and on the front lines of the palisades thing in ’47. He was beaten by police and security guards who fractured his rib and cut up his face
Modern Trend Progressive Youth Group
Worked with CORE against segregationist policies specifically in the Palisades Park case. – that’s it on that
restrictive covenants
part of a property deed, which restricts who the property, can be sold to, usually on racial grounds. They developed after rulings in the 1910s ruled racial zoning unconstitutional. Robert Weaver called race restrictive covenants “ the most dangerous” of segregationist devices because they “give legal sanction and consequently respectability to residential segregation,”
Met Life
Insurance company with less then dubious employment history. Also created Stuyvesant town, which was designed as a low rent modern community for veterans, which, of course, did not include black veterans. That was supported by a new state law, the urban redevelopment companies act. Met life also built some token projects in black neighbor hoods, but those were “for negros.”
Stuyvesant Town
Build by Met Life it was supposed to provide low rent, modern, spacious apartments for WWII veterans. It was brutally exclusionary. A practice that was continually defended by state law and court rulings. Initialized in 1943, occupation was scheduled to begin in 1947, and on June 26 of the same year three black veterans sued for their right to live there. In July the ruling came down, housing was not a civil right, so the three veterans had no right to sue.
Shelley v. Kramer
Reversed Kemp v. Rubin that ruled racially discriminatory covenants lawful. Shelly v. Kramer, which was ruled on May 3, 1948, argued, “judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants violated the 14th amendment. But it didn’t stop government support for exclusionary housing. That support just changed from the judicial to the executive branch through the FHA (federal housing administration)
Black Popular Front-
* With increase of unionization and urbanization in 40’s= larger base for black left
* Negro People’s front cuz it united ideologically diverse groups; elks, fraternities, women’s clubs, churches and urban leagues AND left wing black activists, trade unionists, and politicians
* Goal= eliminated racial discrimination and segregation
* Drawn to communist party due to its involvement in civil rights struggle
* Helped put racial justice in mainstream interest
UE- United Electrical Workers,
* created in 1936 associated with antiracist activism,
* by 1952 the UE had successfully negotiated fair employment clauses in 47 contract.
* It had the largest number of women in the organized labor movement
* Purged from Congress of Industrial Organizations(CIO)
* Elaine Perry = first black woman district organizer for the UE; organized transportation for labor force to get to work when Teletone wanted to move locations (maybe in order to break UE)
* Involved with Conference to end discrimination 1951,
NMU- National Maritime Union
* Left led CIO union
* Made it policy to send out mixed crews on ships in 1947
* Supported passage of anti-poll tax, anti-lynching and FEPC legislation
* Many members joined during depression to improve working conditions, eradicate racial barriers to promotions, and raise wages in industry
* 1950 Port Security Act forced Coast guard to dismiss any maritime worker whose views didn’t parallel that of the NMU’s conservative ruling population
Hugh Mulzac
* First black captain of Merchant Marine
* Advocates of military desegregation used his ship to prove that mixed crews were capable of outstanding wartime performance
* He was a civil rights activist, popular front idol and black war hero
* 1950 NMU banned him from sailing due to communist ties, fought back and sued the government

o 1955 Ninth Circuit threw out Coast Guard’s blacklist
o 1960 federal court ruled that the blacklisting was a form of illegal discrimination
Ferdinand Smith
* UNM black vice-president
* Highest ranked black labor official in CIO
* Because he was pro-communist leftist he was ousted in 1947
* 1949 became secretary of HTUC
* Deported back to Jamaica where he continued activism in labor and anti-imperialist movement
NLVC- Negro Labor Victory Committee
* Organized to in order to press for more jobs for blacks in defense employment
* Goals were to encouraged black workers to join unions, end exclusion of black workers from trade unions with color bars, to win a permanent FEPC, push fight for complete equality for blacks and to make the labor movement a BIG part of the black advancement
Negro Freedom Rally
* Gala pageants at Madison Square Garden in ‘43, ‘44, and ‘45
* Major political event that promoted and helped draw support for the black struggle for equality
People’s Voice
* Leftist Harlem weekly; published by Adam Clayton Powell and Charles Bauchanan
* Edited by Doxey Wilkerson
* Encouraged social consciousness and political activism and therefore gained increased subscribers in 40’s
* Supported Ben Davis in 1945 reelection contest over city council seat
* Supported Roy Soden
* But as state and private sector surveillance increased the attacks on the People’s Voice increased as well
Ives-Quinn Act-
passed in 1945
* It was the first law prohibiting racial and religious discrimination in private employment
* SCAD was established to enforce it.
* Represented success in black wartime mobilizing and breadth of grassroots lobbying campaigns
* Also significant because many groups came together to fight for it instead of fighting against one another
SCAD-
State Commission Against Discrimination
* Created to enforce Ives-Quinn act
* Due to the way it was written to gain Republican support the commission was only going to persuade compliance not force it
* Moved very slowly
* Its interpretation of the Ives-Quinn law seemed to work against lack economic advancement because it frequently ruled that both affirmative action and direct action tactics were impermissible
Doxey Wilkerson-
* Member of the NNC, Communist activist,
* Howard Professor
* Editor of the People’s Voice
* Believed that not changing seniority system could hurt the temporary racial peace forged by CIO
* Believed that blacks were finally inside organized labor and that this lead to the unity in unions and why they were so strong
Robert Moses
* Powerful New York Parks commissioner
* Opposed the fair employment bill
o Said the bill hurts employers
o Said Business would be driven out of state
* Head of Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority
* Didn’t enforce fair employment in his projects
* Engineered the passage of the Urban Redevelopment Companies Act in order to ensure Met Life would be free to bar blacks from Stuyvesant Town
* Pretty much a racist who thought he was the shit and loved segregation
Algernon Black:
head of the City-Wide Citizens’ Committee on Harlem. Believed segregation stimulated racial prejudice and feelings of superiority among whites and was a veteran of Popular Front organizing. Head of NY State Committee against Discrimination in Housing (NYSCDH) and was best known for his efforts against housing discrimination.
Lena Horne:
A popular singer and actress in the 1940s and 1950s, she also worked (as well did Walter White) to combat racial stereotyping on the silver screen.
Charles Collins:
A black trade unionist and graduate of NY’s City College, he delivered keynote address in March 1946 at the Communist-sponsored East Coast Conference of Negro Trade Unionists and Their Supporters in NY. Encouraged Black labor leaders to get involved in community battles over politics, housing, and police brutality. Was also a Local 6 and AFL leader. Formed and ran for the People’s Rights Party in the 1946 NY state senate elections, but lost.
City College:
A tuition-free college in New York City. Many black activists in the New York civil rights struggle graduated from City. It was the first free public institution of higher learning in the US.
Thelma Dale:
A Howard grad and part of the National Negro Congress, she wrote “The Status of the Negro Women in the US” in 1947. In 1952, she persuaded the Progressive Party to nominate a Black woman as a vice-presidential candidate. Was accused as “red” by Dorothy Funn in 1953
Pauli Murray:
A Hunter College graduate, she was the first Black woman Episcopal priest. She was also a civil rights advocate, lawyer, feminist, poet, and teacher.
Jackie Robinson
The first Black major-league baseball player, in 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Was a strong integration activist, but testified against Paul Robeson before HUAC in 1949, where he tried to separate the struggle against racism from Communism. Years later, he was filled with doubt at the statement he’d made.
Hattie Brisbane
A Brooklyn NAACP activist who was part of the Brooklyn chapter of the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America’s Committee for Equal Job Opportunities. In this committee, she helped organize a picket line around a White Tower restaurant in the city, and after a week the restaurant, pressured by the success of the boycott, hired 4 Black counter workers. Later in life, she became active in the police brutality struggle after her son was assaulted by police officers.
Civil Rights Congress
After assaults against blacks trying to vote in 1946 in Mississippi, the CRC (formed 1946) sent investigators, challenged it in court, and tried to get President Truman to intervene. This succeeded in getting federal hearings on voting rights in Miss. Was listed as a “subversive” organization in 1947.
Liberal Party
Formed in 1944 by members of the ALP who objected to working with Communists. Gave Earl Brown their nomination in 1949 for City Council of NYC.
American Labor Party
A left-wing party created during the Depression and used post-WWII in the struggle for Black representation. Nominated Charles Collins for senate in 1946, and in that same year nominated the Bronx’s first Black candidate for US Congress, Roy Soden. Started to weaken in the 1950s and disintegrated under the huge weight of anticommunist repression.
George Schuyler
A conservative Black writer and columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier. Produced material for the Benjamin McLaurin campaign in the NY City Council elections, calling the Black Belt idea “ a ploy for segregation.”
Ted Poston
p. 117 “It is a small wonder,” wrote Ted Poston in the New York Post, “that between the formation of the Mortgage Conference in 1934, and its court-ordered dissolution, Harlem erupted with two major property-oriented riots.”

p. 118 Baker aired her side of the story through Ted Poston, a reporter for the New York Post. The first African American reporter on a major New York daily, Poston wrote evocative, powerful narratives on the postwar Black freedom struggle.

p.226 Ted Poston later identified Title I as a cause of the 1964 Harlem Riot, because it had uprooted Blacks from neighborhoods where they “had previously lived peacefully for generations” such as Manhattan’s west side and lower east side, and sent them uptown.

Ted Poston broke through the white media ceiling as well as made known many black causes, such as exhibited by his identification of Title I as the cause of the 1964 Harlem riot.
Hubert Delaney
p. 28 (Edwart Guinier) moved to New York City and completed his degree at tuition-free City College. Many Black activists in the New York civil rights struggle graduated from City, or if they were women, Hunter College, including Hope Stevens, Louis Burnham, Hubert Delaney, Charles Collins, Victoria Garvin and Pauli Murray.

p. 39 In 1930 twenty-eight-year-old Hubert Delaney, a federal prosecutor and rising star in new York City who was originally from North Carolina, ran for the House on the Republican ticket. By 1934 Delaney, who had worked his way through City College as a red cap at Pennsylvania Station, was the highest paid African American federal appointee in the nation, and had won 493 of the 500 cases he had argued in U.S. District Court. Mayor La Guardia named him tax commissioner and later a judge in the Court of Domestic Relations. The brother of Sadie and Bessie Delaney, authors of a celebrated family memoir, Judge Delaney sat on the NAACP board of directors and became a major civil rights leader in New York City. Ten years after Delaney’s run for Congress, Ira Kemp, a popular Black nationalist soap-box operator and organizer of “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaigns, ran for Congress as a Republican and almost won. This near upset induced Albany elites to reassess uptown politics, and the next round of redistricting paved the way for the election of Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the first Black Congressman from New York state.

p. 40 Lad Guardia, the Republican/Fusion mayor until 1945, appointed Myles A. Paige to the Court of Special Sessions and Jane M. Bolin and Hubert Delaney to the Court of Domestic Relations, now known as Family Court.

p. 88-89 Judge Hubert Delaney, a former member of the YMCA Board of Directors for twenty-two years, called the Penn Station contract a “direct violation of a policy of integration which we fought long and hard to win.” “Railroads,” Delaney insisted, have no right to determine the policy of any YMCA branch.”

p. 150 Negro History Week had featured such luminaries as Kenneth Clark, Hubert Delany and Thurgood Marshall, exemplifying the identification by the Black middle class with the Black working class and poor that was a hallmark of the 1940s activism.

p. 161 (on Du Bois being arrested for being an ‘unregistered foreign agent’ of an unnamed country) Judge Hubert T. Delany, who had voted against the NAACP’s firing of Du Bois, believed that the indictment was meant to silence civil rights leaders. “Our so-called leaders,” he wrote Du Bois, “have folded their tents, closed their mouths and become apologists for all of the injustices our government permits against the Negro today.”
p. 179 The red scare destroyed the judicial career of one of the most respected African American judges and civil rights leaders in the nation. Hubert T. Delany, a former U.S. attorney, city tax commissioner, and since 1845, a justice in the Court of Domestic Relations, hailed from a prominent North Carolina family and was a member of the NAACP Board of Directors. But like many Black professionals of his generation, he embraced cosmopolitan, prolabor, anticolonial politics. Judge Delany was also a vocal critic of the red scare, particularly for the chilling effect it was having on the African American rights movement and the damage being done to civil liberties. “I’m sick of hearing about the rights Russians don’t have – I’m concern about the rights we don’t have here in this country,” Judge Delany said in 1952 speech. In 1955 Democratic mayor Robert Wagner declined to reappoint Judge Delany. “I feel I do not agree with some of the positions he has taken,” the mayor stated, without ever identifying them. The American Bar Association had labeled Delany “outstandingly qualified”, its highest ranking. Delany felt that he was being punished for vigorous civil rights advocacy, and declared that “if a Negro cannot speak out in defense of Civil Rights and justice for his people, then this is a sad day for America.”

Wagner’s decision sparked an outcry from the city’s liberal civic and religious leadership. There was speculation that the Catholic archdiocese had exerted pressure on the mayor, since Delany had participated in Black-Jewish advocacy for secular liberalism and the separation of church and state. But he had also joined Popular Front organizations. And the Federal Bureau of Investigation had compiled a file on Delany as a result of his membership in the New York City chapter of the National Lawyer’s Guild, a group cited by the attorney general as a subversive organization. His file was composed of newspaper articles from 1937-1953 chronicling his support for various antiracist causes as well as his critique of the red scare at the height of the Cold War.

p.193-194 (William Delany, crippled from polio, beaten unconscious by white police officers) The “police in Harlem,” wrote (Hubert) Delany, “consider that they have the God-given right . . . to keep the peace with the night stick and blackjack whenever a Negro attempts to question their right to restrict the individual’s freedom of movement.” “Police brutality,” he insisted, “has been the mode in Harlem for years. The nurses and staff at Harlem Hospital see the blood results daily. No policeman in Harlem has been convicted for police brutality or murder in over thirty years of many unnecessary killings, and hundreds of causes of brutality.”

p.196 (two teachers threatened with dismissal by the Board of Education for being ‘communist’) After Judge Hubert T. Delany made “a stirring appeal” for action, a group of citizens formed the Committee to Retain Gilgoff and Rosenbaum, chaired by a Brooklyn Rabbi.

p. 201 Judge Hubert Delany felt that White was sacrificing the independence and integrity of the NAACP by rushing to the defense of the U.S. government against charges of abetting and tolerating racial violence.

p. 202 At Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, Judge Delany denounced the FBI’s obsession with rooting out “reds” while murderous bigots riot in the land.

p. 231 Judge Delany, who gave the keynote address (to the A Conference to End Discrimination in Levittown at Hofsra College, Jun 1951)

p. 246 The Urban League of Greater New York organized the Intergroup Committee on Public Schools with Clark, Hubert Delany, Ella Baker and other Harlem leaders.

p. 259 Cleveland Robinson and Morris Doswell, both veterans of the postwar labor-left, played leading roles in negotiating for the bewery workers, and Hubert Delany, the former judge and civil rights veteran, was asked to be the arbitrator.

p. 278 (Lee Lorch) After Penn State accused him of being a Communist and fired him, Judge Hubert Delany helped him secure a position at fisk.

Judge Hubert Delany was one of the most respected African American judges and civil rights leaders in the nation. He was a supporter of Black-Jewish advocacy as well as a champion for civil rights and human rights. His career was destroyed by the red scare in retaliation for his outspoken critique of the red scare and its effect on the African American civil rights movement.
We Charge Genocide
58 Five years later, as executive secretary of the Civil Rights Congress, Patterson submitted We Charge Genocide, a petition that detailed the enormity of American racial violence and exposed the complicity of local, state and federal officials.

p. 200-201 William Patterson, executive director of the CRC, defied government efforts to stop him, and presented We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government against The Negro People to the UN Secretariat in Paris in December 1051. … The 225-page petition exhaustively documented the litany of postwar racial abuse around the country – including 153 killings of African Americans – and presented a legal argument that identified systematic violence and terrorism as a component of a governmental policy of subordinating a national minority. … The United States succeeded in tabling We Charge Genocide at the United Nations, but its effort to persuade several Black American leaders to publicly oppose the petition produced mixed results. The State Department, according to a historian of his episode, “called on prominent African Americans to denounce the petition as so much communist propaganda.” The United States wanted to counter this troubling narrative of American society. It saw the petition as calculated anti-Americanism that disrupted the government’s efforts to project an image of racial harmony.

A 225-page petition that detailed the U.S. government’s crimes against the Negro People
Adam Clayton Powell Jr
The first Black Congressman from Harlem and most influential political leader, pastor of Abyssian Baptist Church and a city Councilman until he won election to Congress from Harlem in 1944. Progressive, his base was the Black church and working-class Harlem, an advocate for the labor left. 1946 All Harlem Legislative. Hazel Scott, his wife, was severely boxed in by the red scare and blacklisted. After that Powell changed his stance a little, and became less gungho for civil rights (this was a class discussion, but I can’t remember where Biondi talked about it)
Conrad Lynn
p. 171 Ella Baker and Conrad Lynn, two other prominent African American radicals with roots in the anticommunist left, came to see a right-wing agenda in the postwar anticommunist crusade, and opposed it.
Ewart Guinier
Nominee (ALP) for Manhattan borough president. Guinier ran on a platform that ‘reflected the various struggles of the New York civil rights movement: jobs for all; an end to police brutality and discriminating in housing; an inclusive bias-free curriculum in schools “free of witch hunts”; and for Harlem, a public market and more schools, hospitals and librarys.’ He lost, but garnered 38% of the vote. Shows how third party and insurgents can affect the political make up and platforms of parties.
Wilson Record: The Negro and the Communist Party
p. 171 … traced the shifts in the official Communist Party stance on the Negro question since the formation of the Communist Party. The shifts, they argued, illustrated the duplicitous and foreign nature of Communist ideology, especially the Black Belt thesis. Record’s work, part of a prestigious series by liberal intellectuals, took the Communists seriously as influential radicals, but stressed their manipulation of Black grievances and empty posturing. His message was that “the Communists have enagaged in a lot of fuss about race equality in the post-war period, but have done little about it.”
Manning Johnson
“Manning Johnson was a star Black ex-red who testified in the Smith Act trial, in Congress, even in southern state legislatures in layer years on behalf of segregationists who were using the anticommunist apparatus to thwart the civil rights struggle. Johnson later admitted that he had lied at trials. In the 1949 HUAC hearings about Paul Robeson, Johnson testified that Robeson aspired to be “the Black Stalin” among African Americans. … Johnson wrote that the “betrayal of the Negro people may well come through Communist corruption of the Negro intellectual,”… The Black was, in Johnson’s hands, a potent brew of racial inauthenticity and neurosis.
McCarthyism
Was used to break down and ruin many lives, impacted the civil rights struggle hugely. Communists had been allies, however, in the red scare it was dangerous to be an communist or associate of. Some Powers used McCarthyism to purge and eliminate ‘dangerous’ leftists others attempted to use it as a way to remove dissenters (NAACP) and look better to the general public. Biondi argues that McCarthyism is crippling to the movement.
Lindsay White
p. 165 In response, Lindsay White, president of the Harlem branch of the NAACP, stressed to his membership that divisive issues such as foreign policy were off-limits in Washington.

p. 166-167 Lindsay White also reported that racial frictions were created by white CEO representatives barring Black NAACP delegates.

p. 189 The national staff wanted to halt picketing after three days, in order to “prevent persons from left-wing affiliations from participating,” while Lindsay white, leader of the new York branch, wanted to continue.

p. 263 Lindsay white of the Harlem NAACP endorsed the “think while we buy” campaign, which also won support from the Urban League of Greater New York, Harlem YMCA.
Teachers' Union
p. 174 In 1950 the Teachers’ Union was removed as the collective bargaining anget of teachers. The union had supported the CP’s opposition to U.S. foreign policy and expressed admiration for the Soviet Union, but it also represented important positions in the indigenous American left.

p. 245 In 1951 the left-wing Teachers’ Union, with which the board had broken relations after its expulsion from the CIO, produced a remarkable study of textbooks currently used in the public schools. … The Teachers’ Union “makes a sharp distinction between censorship – which it opposes – and the elimination of material containing racist stereotypes, distortion of historical and scientific fact, and bias, whether conscious or unconscious, toward allegedly ‘inferior’ peoples.”
Ebony
p. 158 Walter White continued the assault in “The Strange Case of Paul Robeson” printed in Ebony in Feb 1951.

p. 182 This new mood was epitomized in the popular Black-owned national magazine Ebony, published by Johnson Publications in Chicago…
On Whitman Avenue
1946 Broadway play directed and starred by Canada Lee, written by Maxine wood, addressed racism encountered by any family moving to Whitman Avenue, challenged white audiences to confront their racism, and inspired white liberals, like Eleanor Roosevelt, to confront how honestly they really wanted liberty.
Mortgage Conference of Greater New York
formed in 1934, consortium of 38 of the cities leading bank and trust companies; banks in the MCGNY were required to use racial covenant laws in property deeds. Was broken up in 1948 by the "federal consent decree"
Color-Blind Strategy
- Policy used by SCAD in its first decade, which prided itself on not forcing compliance in fair employment laws, rather just asking and counseling. Better at ridding anti-Semitism than racism.
Thomas Dewey
- Republican Governor of NY from 1943-1955, approved the Ives-Quinn Act (for fair employment) in 1945, prohibited racial and religious discrimination in private employment, also in 1948 signed the Fair Educational Practices Law, barred racial and religious discrimination in nonsectarian private institutions. Argued that integration equaled the absence of legal sanction for discrimination.
Rabbi Stephen Wise
of the liberal American Jewish Congress, once sued Colombia University (p.106) b/c he argued it should loose tax exempt status b/c discrimination was barred in instittions that were tax exempt. He lost. Was an avid proponet for the enforcement of Fair Educational Practices LAw.
ULGNY
Urban League of Greater New York
Quinn-Olliffe
- Fair Educational Practices Act signed by Dewey in April 1948, barred racial and religious discrimination in nonsecretarian private institutions, and created a position to recieve complaints.
National Association of Real Estate Boards
declared that intentional race mixing was a violations of its code of ethics, a policy which the FHA supported.
Joseph Dorsey
The lead plaintiff in the 1947 case suing Met Life concerning racial discrimination in Stuyvesant Town. (p. 124) He was a former Army captain, a social worker, father, and lived in a tenement in Harlem. State Supreme court ruled against him - this defeat had the affect of radicalizing all housing advocates.
Frederick Ecker
Met Life President, worked with R. Moses to get the passage of "Urban Redevelopment Companies Act," which made it legal to discriminated in housing, on the logic that if not, no insurance or banks would give money. Strongly against race mixing.
The Riverton
the housing project Met Life began in 1944 in Harlem, which was billed as being "for Negroes." Met with much objection from the NAACP and other groups in that "as long as housing projects outside Harlem maintain a closed door approach, the Riverton becomes a segregated, Jim Crow housing project." (p. 123) Since Riverton was proposed after the passing of the 1944 Davis-Isaacs Law, it would be legally open to whites, which caused opposition to question Met Life pres. F. Ecker as to why interracial policy was ok in Riverton, but not in Stuyvesant. He replied, "what makes you think Riverton with be an interracial housing project?" (p. 124)
Dorothy Funn
a capitol hill lobbyist for the National Negro Congress, opposed the filibuster of FEPC by southern dems as "fascist fire brewing." Supported the nomination of Henry Wallace in 44 as vice-pres and in 45 and secretary of commerance. Was a member of the NLVC. Had joined the Communist Party to fight for racial justice during WWII (p. 174) In May of 1953, the House Committee on Un-American Activities questioned her, and in order to save herself she named the names of dozens of her former comrades. Her testimony as a black woman was applauded by conservatives and pitied by liberals. She testified that she and her communist allies had worked for the passage of FEPC, anti-poll tax, and anti-lynching bills, but she would not give in to pressure to call them "communist inspired." (p.175)
Josephine Baker-
(1906-1975) American-born French expatriate who later became a French citizen (1937), entertainer, most well-known for singing (but also a dancer in her early career), starred in 3 films. In the 1950s she adopted 12 orphans of different ethnicities and nationalities. She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the U.S which lead to the integration of shows in Las Vegas. She was the only woman to speak at the March on Washington in 1963 alongside MLK. After MLK’s assassination she was approached by his wife, Corretta Scott King, who asked if she would take his place as the leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, but she declined stating that her children were “too young to lose their mother.” Mentions in the book: she was mistreated at the Stork Club, leading her to team up with the NAACP in the launching of a media/political campaign against white privilege at the Stork Club, this led the Federal authorities to pressure U.S. employers to not hire Baker (186-189) , while visiting NYC with her French husband she went to 36 hotels before getting a room (81), was bridged the entertainment and political worlds: danced at the Cotton Club, appeared in Broadway musical Shuffle Away, and was later elected to the NY state legislature (187).
Grassroots
- according to Phyllis: local level movements, NY was a fertile place for these
Guy Brewer
283 Georgia-born Chair of Citizen’s Committee to End Police Brutality, Democratice district leader, an outspoken critic of police practices, assaulted by a police office on election day in Harlem 1945 and then convicted for disorderly conduct, self proclaimed non-Communist, supporter of the Davis resolution (called for public hearings on police brutality) (73), Leader of the Jamaica, Queens branch of the NAACP, spoke against the NAACP’s refusal to allow branch interaction with other organizations, was a proponent of the militant methods of the MOWM (165) denounced top NAACP officials for the barring alleged Communist members of the NAACP from attending a convention in Washington in 1948 (166), proposed a boycott of Florida’s multimillion dollar citrus industry after a bombing killed a Floridian NAACP leader and his wife, replaced Kenneth Brown as state assemblyman in Queens, 1967 (218)
Red Channels
a 213-page expose of alleged “Communist Influence in Radio and Television” published by Counterattack (org staffed by ex-FBI agents and funded by antiunion corporate sources), mentions that Hazel Scott (star of first black television show, the Hazel Scott Show, pianist, and wife of Adam Clayton Powell) was listed in Red Channels b/c of suspicious affiliations with left-led Committee to End Jim Crow in Baseball.
J. Edgar Hoover
204 (1895-1972) well-documented personal racist, 1st director of the FBI (for 48 years), helped destroy Paul Robeson’s career (155), feared strong Black leadership, was opposed to racial equality, thus placed so many Black leaders under scrutiny (161), used Roy Wilkins via their mutual obsession with Communism and hatred for MLK to damage the Civil Right Movement by exchanging information about alleged Communist w/FBI (170), friend of Walter Winchell (see below) (187), Stork Club regular (189)

He was also probably a closeted gay man (Ian's Note)
Bandung-
was a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent, organized by Egypt, Indonesia, Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), India, and Pakistan, which took place on April 18-April 24, 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia, and was coordinated by Ruslan Abdulgani, secretary general of the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The conference's stated aims were to promote Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation and to oppose colonialism or neocolonialism by the United States, the Soviet Union, or any other "imperialistic" nation. There Adam Clayton Powell told the flobal media that “racism in the U.S. was on the way out.” … “A few years ago Washington was an open cesspool of U.S. democracy… Today it is a place of complete equality. Every hotel, restaurant, amusement place, school and golf course is completely integrated.” (186)
Walter Winchell
- powerful network radio commentator and Hearst newspaper columnist, regular attendee of the Stork Club, considerable power in smearing celebrities (187), praised the military service of African American soldier and saw himself as a “friend of the Negro” (187), friend of Billingsley and Hoover, was angry when Walter White tried to enlist him on their side of the Stork Club case and used his media outlets to ridicule the protest, and called Josephine Baker a Communist, helped pressure U.S. employers not to hire Baker, destroyed Barry Gray’s career, his own career was downturned after the Stork Club incident (189-90)
Stork Club
- a fashionable Manhatten eatery that had a reputation for snubbing non-white patrons (186), owned and operated by Sherman Billingsley, located in NYC, when it snubbed Josephine Baker the incident “reenergized the civil rights struggle” (188), NAACP launched a picket line, Hoover refused to involve himself in the conflict, city wanted Billingsley to issue a pledge of nondiscrimination, but he refused, people’s involvement in the Stork Club case could lead to the destruction of their career (189), led to the state passed law that shifted the manner of combating discrimination in public accommodations from a criminal infraction to a civil rihts violation handled by the State Commission against Discrimination, the case also generated nation publicity (190)
Enus Christianii
– an African American grad student of NYU who was shot by a security guard in 1952, who claimed that Christianii went “berserk,” Christianii has gotten into a scuffle with a white student after protesting a white frat’s dart board w/ a racist caricature of a black woman as the target, was a married veteran attending school on the GI bill, was active in the NAACP and the Community FEPC, he helped get confederate flags and “stereotyped jewish hooked nose masks” removed from local stores, an joined efforts t win new jobs for Black workers, students at NYU organized a campaign to pressure the district attorney to prosecute the security guard but were unsuccessful (203)
Cora Walker
president of he Harlem Lawyers Associations, civic leader, she pushed for increased female participation in politics (220), she was a Republican, she stressed that education was the way to change men’s attitudes and improve women’s opportunities, rand against Constance Baker Motley in the 1964 Harlem state senate race, her campaign emphasized self-help, criticized the welfare system, said that Harlem schools should be improved rather than busing their student to other neighborhoods, but Motley beat Walker easily (284)
Anna Arnold Hedgeman
a little-heralded member of the 1st generation of national civil rights leaders, New Yorker, black democratic party activist, assistant to mayor of NY, Robert F. Wagner Jr., in 1954, who ran the MOWM’s Washington office, appointed executive director of the National Citizen’s Committee for the Reelection of President Truman, she ran the Committee for a Permanent FEPC after the war, she linked the 1940s and 1960s civil rights struggles, helped organize the 1963 march on Washington & lobbied the all-male “big five” civil rights leader to include black women on the speakers list stage (144), moved from Washington back to Harlem in 1952 and witnessed the political change: a dormant NAACP, local meetings calling for black unity, etc. (261)
Harold Stevens
born in S.C. on a farm, was inspired to go to law school upon hearing about the lynching of a black woman and her two brothers, attended Boston College Law School, where he converted to Catholicism, devoted himself to bringing his liberal social consciousness to the Catholic Church, involved himself in the struggle for black worker’s rights by bringing cases to the FEPC during the war, became a judge (211-212), was a counsel to the BSCP, member of the NY assembly from 1947-1950,
Hulan Jack
born in St. Lucia, 1940s Harlem legislator who voiced the quintessential Double V-link (19), harlem democratic assemblyman who introduced a bill along with Elijah Crump that barred the admissibility of the evidence obtained from an unlawful search (75), introduced a bill along with William T. Andrews to ban covenants restricting the sale or lease of property based on race of religion, a Baptist who converted to Catholicism, called “a political Catholic” by A.C. Powell, became the first African American borough president of Manhattan, participated in Popular Front politics , introduced many civil rights measures, voted against the Feinberg Act (law barring members of “subversive orgainizations” from holding civil service jobs) (215), introduced an amendment to the penal law that imposed new constraints on the free speech rights of members of “subversive organizations,” resigned from office in 1960 after being convicted of accepting an illegal gift- a contractor had redecorated his apartment (216), twice introduced legislation prohibiting the creation of use of school districts to promote segregation (242)
Constance Baker Moley
in 1950 wrote original claim in Brown vs. Board; first woman elected to New York State Senate 1964; first woman and first African America Manhattan Borough President 1965
NYSCDH:
New York State Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, (pgs 115, 131, 133-135, 184, 224-225, 227, 229, 233, 236, 239-240) studied upstate New York cities in the 1940s and found an unwritten policy to limit black residential space; helped win passage of the Wicks-Austin Law; helped negotiate Stuveysant Town in 1952 with Met Life; drafted Sharkey-Brown-Isaacs Law in 1954 with American Jewish Congress
redlining
“bank policies that deprive Black homeowners and Black neighborhoods of loans”; created “segregated living patterns”
The Housing Act of 1949
“authorized expenditure of half a billion dollars for urban redevelopment”; “seen as a weapon against the poor”, “Title I… authorized an unprecedented uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes” some moving up but most moving into poorer and more congested areas;
move-ins
protests against residential segregation in which Black families would live in residences legally leased to white residents; circumvented restrictive covenants with sub-leases of extended guest stays
children apart
refers to the educational segregation of minority students due in part to housing segregation; resulted in poor education for Black and Puerto Rican children
James Lawson
); organized Nashville Student sit-ins in 1960, served time in jail for evading the draft; led United African Nationalist Movement and denounced involvement of white women stressing sexual tension; later involved with United Nations
NNLC
National Negro Labor Council, (pgs 263-268, 286); formed by “a group of progressive and Communist Black labor activists; compromised by Communist relations during red scare; connected race and class but advertised little socialist propaganda; used cultural (theatre, art) work; gave equal rights to women; disbanded in 1956
Hughes vs. Superior Court
); in 1950 Supreme Court ruled that picketing which advocated retail stores hire a percentage of black workers was not protected by the constitution due to filling quotas
HTCU
Harlem Trade Union Council, (pgs 149, 159, 252-254, 256-257, 264); founded by Ewert Guinier and Ferdinand Smith in April 1949; philosophy: “the Negro working class was the most progressive and consistent force among the Negro people”; drew on progressive labor network in New York as well as black church and civic leaders; involved with brewing industry protests; became Greater New York Negro Labor Council
Local 968:
union with Negro membership for longshoremen; conducted a sit-down strike against Joe Ryan; threatened by talk of Communist ties; merged with Brooklen Local 1814 in 1959
A New World A’Coming:
book written by Roi Ottley; published in 1948; about racial scene in Harlem and New York
The Riverton
1944 Met Life houses in Harlem, “an affordable middle income development ‘for Negroes’”; opposed by NAACP for promoting residential segregation leaving black residents in Harlem, however more widely supported (including by the Urban League) for being non-segregated housing
Cold war liberalism:
were a group that was anti-communist, avoided mass mobilization strategies
UPWA
(United Public Workers of America): organized local, state and federal workers, they helped black workers get better wages and better jobs. They used an antiracist unionizing strategy. In 1947 they led a campaign to save the jobs of 2,000 female black workers.
Hazel Scott
a star of the first black television show, hazel scott show. She was blacklisted, which meant the government thought she was associated with the communist party. She was married to clayton powell. They accused her of entertaining soviet troops alongside of American troops during the war. She appeared before the HUCA, they ended her tv show and erased all of her other broadcasting jobs
Benjamin Davis
was a national leader of the us communist party and an architect of black power front politics in NY. Born in 1903 graduated from harvard law school. He fought hard for civil rights. his ideas soon sent him to jail.
John Derrick
was a Korean war vet that was shot and killed by two white police officers. His death started riots in harlem. His death also mobilized many protests in harlem.
Up South
a crime wave swept through NY in early 1950s, lots of blacks were shot and killed. Caused blacks to mobilize and tried to make change, they got the FBI to investigate the killing of john derrick
Paul Robeson
born in VA in 1899. went to Rutgers, was valedictorian, was great at sports and got many awards. Went to Columbia law school, after school sing and preformed a lot. Also was very progressive and joined the anti-lynching campaign. He constantly crisized the us. The US government took away his passport; it took 8 years to get it back. The US government erased his name from history.
Lawrence Bailey
the chair of the Legal Redress committee in the Jamaica branch. He and guy brewer sued the NAACP
LCCR
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights): a group organized to lobby for antidiscrimination legislation. Became a prominent presence on capitol hill. It marked the establishment of civil rights in Washington DC
Herbert Hill
was the labor director for the NAACP, he played a huge part in the civil rights movement. He was a writer and wrote in a lot of progressive papers and magazines
Jane Brolin
was appointed to the court of Domestic relations, family court. Was the first black female judge in the US. Wanted to stop racial voilence Served for forty years, devoted her life to justice. Was also the first black female grad from yale law school.
Canada Lee
a star that was active in the civil rights struggles in NY, he came under attack from the us government for her ideas and associations. He was willing to work with the communist party. He became a major star in the 1940s. he spoke at rallies, he was blacklisted and his radio show was canceled and his stage and screen jobs vanished