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Much, but not all. As we will see below, a small group of Socialist Party
members, starting in 1933 with a significantly different approach, created the
People's Unemployment League (PUL), one of the most impressive organizations
of the unemployed in the country. In a little more than a year, PUL's membership
numbered 18,000. Of course, these Socialists did not pioneer the issue of
unemployment in Baltimore as the Communists did, and they undoubtedly
maneuvered in space opened by the CP and fell heir to its successes. Nevertheless,
the successes of the PUL are testimony to some of the inadequacies of the
Baltimore CP's unemployed practice, and ultimately to certain weaknesses in the
Third Period line.25
The Cultural Front
"Every week," former Communist seamen Bill Bailey has recalled, the
Baltimore Communist Party held "a social event of some kind... either in
the city, or in an outer community like Highlandtown." Juanita Jackson
Mitchell, a Black community activist, also remembered party-organized
social events: The Communists came into the community and had these
interracial dances down at the New Albert Auditorium on Pennsylvania
Avenue.. ."^"
In fact the Communist Party and its allied organizations held dances and
socials— some large, some small— in various working-class neighborhoods in
Baltimore from the early 1930s. These socials were a part of the Communist
Party's attempt to devise cultural as well as a political forms to meet the needs of
the popular classes and to attract them to its movement. Workers, neighborhood
people, and progressives might be attracted to a social event and thereby become
interested in the party politically, or those already interested in the party politically
might have that interest reinforced through participating in an event like a dance.
Additionally, the socials gave overworked party activists a recreational
break. As Bailey recalled, "Only on Saturday or Sunday night was there a chance to
relax, by attending either some politicized social, a dance or a gathering, or
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