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ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Tne Black Freedom Movement and the Workers' Movement
in Baltimore, 1930-1939
by Andor D. Skotnes
Dissertation Director:
Professor Norman Markowitz
In 1930, the Black freedom movement and the workers' movement were at
low ebb in the Baltimore metropolitan area. Ten years later, both movements had
grown to embrace thousands and had made impressive gains. This dissertation
studies these two movements as they developed during the 1930s, the overlapping
communities from which they emerged, the variety of organizational forms and
activities they generated, and the ways they interrelated with each other.
The development of these two movements occurred in three phases. During
the first phase, 1930-1934, both movements were strongly local in character. Key to
this period were: the City-Wide Young People's Forum (the Forum), a local
organization of African American youth; the racially-integrated People's
Unemployment League (PUL), by 1934 one of the largest unemployed
organizations in the country; and several initiatives of the Baltimore Communist
Party.
During the second phase, 1934-1935, the processes of the earlier period
culminated in several important events, including the "Baltimore Soviet," when
Communist-led seamen took control of the relief and hiring systems on the docks;
the growing cooperation between the Black youth leadership of Forum and the
white leaderhip of the PUL, climaxing in the Socialist Party campaign of 1934; a
major legal victory over Jim Crow with Murray v. University of Maryland.
Underlying these events was a tendency toward convergence between segments of
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