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of the national Workers Alliance of America, and the national NAACP intervened
increasingly in the local Baltimore scene.
During the 1935-1940 period, the period that defined the major forms of
social movement that would predominate locally for the next decades, the local
Black freedom and workers' movements fell increasingly into line with their
respective national movements. Hence the NAACP regenerated and became the
center of the local freedom movement and the CIO emerged as the most dynamic
force of the local workers movement. It is therefore tempting to postulate that,
after a brief experimental interlude in the first half of the 1930s, traditional forms
in each movement had again reasserted themselves, and the traditional distance
between the movements had reappeared. However, such a proposition would be
deceptive, for, as an examination of the courses of the two movements will show,
the traditional forms and relationships of these movements had themselves been
transformed by a matrix of forces including the local legacies of the early
Depression years.
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