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were to some extent in the interest of the whole Black community. And, again, the
interests and proclivities most associated with the administrative petty bourgeoisie
combined in the freedom movement with those of the other groupings in the social
bloc. The Black freedom movement in Baltimore was not a petty-bourgeois
movement; it was a movement of the whole community, an expression of a long
gestating culture of a historically-established Black community. Nonetheless it was
a freedom movement with definite middle-class overtones and leadership.
By the end of the 1920s, the Black freedom movement in Baltimore was in
ebb. Its major organizations, from the NAACP, to the Urban League, to the
Women's Cooperative League, to the Black trade unions were at low points in their
activity. The Afro, as was its role at such times, repeatedly reminded the semi-
dormant organizations of their responsibilities, with little effect. As if in
frustration, iheAfro staff, in July 1929, took the unusual step of initiating a struggle
against Jim Crow by themselves.
The only part of Baltimore's transportation system that was segregated in
1929 was the United Railways bus system. These buses were de facto segregated:
white bus drivers would refuse to pick up Black passengers, or would harass them if
they managed to get on board. Blacks felt these discriminatory actions were a
matter of company policy, which, of course, the company denied. The Afro sent a
team of a light-skinned and a dark-skinned reporter out with a photographer to test
and document this discrimination. The resulting evidence was published in the
paper, and a call was made to Black Baltimoreans to go out and make their own
tests. Additionally, the Afro, contacted the company, the Public Service
Commission, and the mayor about the situation and published the results of those
contacts. An ad hoc group of Black Baptist ministers answered the Afro's call, and
began to test the bus company's policy/-*
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