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although they may have increased the insularity of the much of the Black freedom
movement in the years after 1935 as compared to the growing convergence between
the freedom movement and elements of the workers' movement in 1933-1935.
The final NAACP-related campaign in the 1935-40 that requires mention
here was not officially sponsored by the NAACP, but was very important for
NAACP mass base-building. This campaign was the struggle against taverns and
liquor outlets in residential Black neighborhoods, a struggle that resulted in a
network of neighborhood protective associations throughout African American
Baltimore.
The battle against taverns in Black neighborhoods was a particular passion
of Lillie Jackson's. This passion was not, however, simply a function of Jackson's
Methodist rejection of alcohol, even though, as NAACP activist Verda Welcome
later testified, Lillie Jackson "was a teetotaler, she and her children." Rather, it was
a product, as Clarence Mitchell testified, of her desire to defend Black residential
neighborhoods, not just against taverns, but from all types of commercial
endeavors. Jackson, however, saw liquor outlets as the paramount commercial
threat to the community. Juanita Jackson Mitchell later recalled that her mother's
opposition to taverns was related to her beliefs about family and children:
My mother was later to preach this at NAACP meetings. Protect your
family. She crusaded against an aspect of racial discrimination, the bringing
in of alcoholic beverage outlets, taverns, in the same area as churches and
schools. She fought that and taught the people to fight it because our
children are like flowers, and they have to grow up in the sunshine and open
spaces and the like. And she organized the people to fight it.
And Willie L. Adams, who made a fortune from the proceeds of the taverns that he
owned, surprised an interviewer in 1976 when he explained another aspect of why
people like Lillie Jackson were opposed to taverns - and why he himself supported
their efforts:
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