Andor D. Skotnes, The Black Freedom Movement and the Worker's Movement in Baltimore, 1930-1939, Rutger's PhD, 1991,
Image No: 347
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Andor D. Skotnes, The Black Freedom Movement and the Worker's Movement in Baltimore, 1930-1939, Rutger's PhD, 1991,
Image No: 347
   Enlarge and print image (63K)            << PREVIOUS   NEXT >>
347 (A) Every form of economic and political justice and all civil rights and privileges guaranteed to him as citizen by the Constitution of the United States. (B) Laws against Jim-Crowism. Laws against the crime of lynching.^ In his campaign, Broadus Mitchell emphasized point seven and defined it to include a good portion of the traditional agenda of the Baltimore Black freedom movement. At a PUL picnic (and PUL was key to the efforts of the younger Socialists in this campaign) in Baltimore's Druid Hill Park in July, Mitchell called for a state ami-lynching law, equal schools for Blacks, equal pay for Black teachers throughout the state, admission of Blacks to state-run graduate and professional schools including those of the University of Maryland, scholarships for Black students to study out-of-state if in-state programs were unavailable, an end to Jim Crow laws, and employment of Blacks on the police forces, in the fire houses, and by government offices and departments through Baltimore and Maryland. These demands, and Mitchell's often rather detailed elaborations of other platform points, were placed within a gradualistic socialist framework. "I would dedicate the State to the principle of public ownership of public utilities," he remarked to a Sun reporter. To come up with concrete, plausible plans for moving Maryland toward socialism, Mitchell assembled a research committee, independent of the Socialist Party's State Campaign Committee. The membership of this research committee read like a who's who of Baltimore's young, militant Socialists and their close sympathizers, including Edward S. Lewis of the Urban League. In practice, Broadus Mitchell's campaign defined the actual parameters of the SP campaign of 1934. Clarence Mitchell felt quite comfortable running for office as part of such a campaign, much as he felt comfortable working with Broadus Mitchell and the latter's closest allies; the Forum felt comfortable organizing Clarence Mitchell's campaign. Because of earlier gerrymandering, the fifth legislative district, where Clarence Mitchell ran, was overwhelmingly white and