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the Socialist Party, the main connections to the Black community used by the PUL
were forged directly by a handful of individual Socialists, above all, by Broadus
Mitcheil. Mitchell's exceptional anti-racism and his own direct involvement in the
Black freedom struggle was the result of his personal beliefs and actions that long
pre-dated his membership in the SP. By the early 1930s, he had a long history of
involvement in the struggle for racial equality in Baltimore.
Mitcheil was reared in a white Southern family that was not only liberal (a
rarity), but explicitly anti-racist (rarer yet). His father was attacked for favoring
"blacks over white womanhood" and lost his job as president of Richmond College
because he advocated special funds go to a Black college rather than one for elite
white women. In Baltimore, Mitcheil was among a small group of whites (including
Rev. Ainslie and John Carey, a Quaker businessman) and Blacks (including Dr.
B.M. Rhetta) who founded the Baltimore Urban League (BUL). In early 1922, to
prepare for the establishment of the BUL, Charles S. Johnson, director of the
National Urban League's Department of Research oversaw a three-month study of
Blacks in industry in that city; Mitcheil and Rhetta, as chairman and vice-chairman
respectively, headed up the Industrial Committee of the Inter-Racial Conference
that worked with Johnson on the study. Following the completion and publication
of the study, the process of organizing the Baltimore chapter began, and finally, on
May 9,1924 the announcement of the formation of the Baltimore Urban League
was made. Broadus Mitcheil was the chair of its first Executive Committee.
Through the process of the industrial survey and the process of directly organizing
the BUL, Mitcheil came to know leaders from all sectors of the Black community:
political leaders like W. Ashbie Hawkins and William L. Fitzgerald, political-
ideological leaders like Carl Murphy of the Afro-American, religious leaders from
many of the Black churches, and educational leaders from the "colored" school
system and Morgan College. In fact, many of these leaders were on the BUL's
advisory board. And the all important connection to Carl Murphy was
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