152

American?*

The interracial dances did not end. One held on the following Saturday at
the Polish American Hall was successful and resulted, according to Louis Berger of
International Labor Defense and the Baltimore Communist Party, in no violence or
disturbance. Berger, in fact, believed that progress had been made in re-educating
some of those who had attacked the dance the week before; he described how the
speeches at the dance convinced the "Polish and American young workers who were
present.. .that they had been duped into making the attack last week," and that
workers of "all nationalities and colors" must unite. The city government, though,
was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with these dances and the publicity they
were generating. It barred an interracial dance at Tom Mooney Hall on Saturday,
January 21, and guests were turned away by the police at the door. Because
interracial dancing was not illegal in Baltimore, the police claimed that Mooney
Hall was unsafe for any gatherings, and a court battle ensued. Not to be diverted,
an integrated dance was held at a hall on nearby Lloyd Street only a few days later,
and there is no further record of attacks on party dances, or of the city government
attempting to impede the party's integrated cultural activities.^2

Trade-Union Work tlirough 1933

The activities of Baltimore Communists in the workers* movement in the
early 1930s involved trade-union work as well as unemployed work. Of course, with
a huge section of the working-class unemployed and the employment of the rest
under constant threat, no sharp distinction could be made between these two forms
of working-class organizing, a fact the Communist Party recognized by making the
Unemployed Councils a part of its revolutionary trade-union federation, the Trade
Union Unity League (TUUL). In 1932, though, the party's focus, nationally and in
Baltimore, began to shift increasingly toward organizing among the employed.