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community organizations that the Forum's founders had participated in. The top
office in the Forum was that of president, held by Juanita Jackson during the
Forum's first four years and by Howard L. Coi nish, professor of mathematics at
Morgan College, for the subsequent six. Other officers included the vice presidents
(who numbered as many as a half dozen at time), whose duties included chairing
the Friday night mass educational meetings on a rotating basis; recordingT
corresponding, and financial secretaries; a treasurer and an assistant treasurer.
These officers, along with the president made up the executive committee.
Additionally there were a large array of standing committees or bodies, each with
its own chair or director, including the ushers, the chorus, the dramatic unit, the
social committee, the sick committee, the publicity committee, the auditing
committee, the research committee, the civic committee, and the ways and means
committee. The variety and character of the committees testifies to the range of
individual interests that the Forum attempted to meet, and to the importance of
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culture and sociability in organizational life.
A review of the names of officers and chairpeople of the Forum in its early
years reveals an interesting fact: women played a remarkably important role in the
top leadership of the organization. This was not completely unusual, of course, for
as we have seen, there was tradition of female activism and leadership in
Baltimore's Black community; the degree of women's leadership in the Forum was,
nonetheless striking. Of course, the Jackson sisters set the tone for this. Juanita, in
particular, dominated the Forum's direction during its first four years — its most
important and influential period — especially after her sister, Virginia married and
left town in 1933. Juanita Jackson's importance to the Forum can perhaps be
illustrated best by the fact that as late as 1940, five years after she left the
organization for a staff position in the national office of the NAACP in
Washington, D.C., she was still listed at the top of its list of officers as "Founder,"
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