|
349
serious possibility of the emergence of an interracial radical leadership core, well
placed in a range of Baltimore's social movements. Moreover, working from their
respective bases in the Black community and the unemployed movement, the
possibility of this leadership core engineering an alliance between significant
sectors of the freedom movement and the workers movement was at least
conceivable.
These possibilities were heightened further by the fact that, during the 1934
campaign, a sharp break occurred between the Socialists' main radical competitors,
the Communist Party, and the City-Wide Young People's Forum. In late October,
the Forum announced the program for its Friday night meeting on the governor's
race, and only the candidates or their representatives from the Republican,
Democratic, and Socialist parties had been allotted time; breaking past tradition,
the Communist party had been omitted. Communist gubernatorial candidate
Bernard Ades immediately requested that he party and his party be included in the
program, but the Forum's executive committee failed to respond to his request.
Reached by an Afro reporter to explain the omission of the CP, Forum vice-
president Clarence Mitchell (president Juanita Jackson was out of town) explained
that time permitted presentations on only three candidacies. Pressed for further
explanation by the reporter, Mitchell was evasive. In the news article, the Afro
reporter speculated that the exclusion of the CP might be explained by the conflict
between the Forum leadership and Ades after the latter ridiculed Juanita Mitchell's
presentation at the Costigan-Wagner hearings in February/*
In response to its exclusion by the Forum, the Baltimore Communist Party
issued a long statement subsequently published in the Afro. According to the CP
statement, Forum leaders first intimated that the CP was left out of their program
because of the personal dispute between Ades and Jackson. Then, the statement
continued, at the Forum meeting itself, Juanita Jackson stated that the Forum had
|
