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Stands For" carried for over a decade on the editorial page of the newspaper.
Secondly, it is significant that the pan of the traditional agenda that the first
Forum-initiated campaigns focused on had to do with opening employment to
Blacks in relatively middle-class fields. From the beginning, Forum organizers had
been clear that the unemployment among educated Black young people had been a
major stimulus to the formation of the organization. It is also significant that the
targets the Forum chose and the its justification for the demands it made,
emphasized both the need to open professional employment to Black youth and the
need of the whole Black community for Black welfare workers (54% of those on
relief were Black) and librarians (98% of the clients of the branch concerned were
Black). The Forum chose issues that it saw as representing the interests of both its
direct social base and the broader Black community. Mayor Jackson
misunderstood this completely when he pointed out, in response to the Forum's
petitions, that Blacks were already employed at the Pitcher Street branch of the
library in minor capacities.*^

The Baltimore Urban League didn't fully understand the duality of the
interests the Forum was attempting to serve either. Juanita Jackson Mitchell
recalls that Forum activists were unhappy when the first Black social workers hired
came from outside the city.

The Urban League said, well you can't argue about the fact that they are
getting those who were trained in social work. But we had a lot of college
graduates who could have done the social work they were doing. When it
came to us they had to be so overly well trained. We were kind of
disappointed. One of our members of the Forum, Elsie Bevin, became a
social worker. They took her because we were raising quite a bit— we were
actively urging appointment of some of these young people who were
Baltimore young people and college graduates.

Parenthetically, the Forum found its first major alliance with the Urban
League former less than satisfactory in another way. Forum member Clarence
Mitchell later testified that there was also some irritation among Forum members