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performances by the Labor Chataqua from Brookwood Labor College early May
1933, by organizing a 10-day Street Carnival in September, and by holding
recreational events like picnics. The PUL also made its members aware of existing
educational opportunities at such community institutions as the Open Forum and
o
the Workmen's Circle and encouraged the unemployed to take part.
Finally, as PUL chairman Rev. Clarence W. Whitmore put it, the league
proposed "to cooperate with other community forces in promoting all constructive
measures to restore and safe-guard the economic security, health and general
welfare of all the people of the State of Maryland.*1 Because of the fragmented
character of the social struggle in Baltimore, action to pursue this goal came a little
slower than action in other areas. In mid-April 1933, the PUL sent delegates in
mid-April 1933 to the Socialist Party-initiated Continental Congress for Economic
Reconstruction; the following July it joined with a number of forces in Maryland to
sponsor the spin-off Maryland Convention of the Continental Congress of Farmers
and Workers. At the end of October, the PUL became part of the burgeoning anti-
lynching movement by passing a resolution demanding punishment for lynchers of
George Armwood in Princess Anne and, along with a number of other
organizations, sending representatives to protest the lynching directly to Governor
Ritchie. By December, PUL was involved in the Maryland Ami-Lynching
Federation as an organization, and a PUL leader was vice president of the
Federation.
In summary, the PUL became, in a very brief period, one of the largest, most
ethnically diverse, most active, and, in many ways, most remarkable organizations
of the unemployed in the United States. How did this happen in Baltimore, where
the tradition of labor struggle was relatively weak and organized labor relatively
ineffective; where Jim Crow was so entrenched and the distance between racial-
ethnic groups so large? And why was the PUL so organizationally successful, while
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