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SECTION III
TRANSITIONS AND POSSIBILITIES, 1934-5

Nationally, 1934 and 1935 marked a transition period in the history of the
Great Depression economically (the decline bottomed out and began an
excruciatingly slow rebound), in state policy (the first phase of the New Deal was
fully implemented, then collapsed), and in the social struggle (a gradual
groundswell of activity developed, punctuated by heroic events). These years also
marked a transition period in Baltimore. The social movements in this region had
itheir heroic event in the so-called Baltimore Soviet, during which the seamen on
the waterfront took over the administration of their relief system, asserted control
over virtually all hiring in the port, and unleased a strike wave against the shipping
companies. The Baltimore Soviet raised the possibility - specter, from the point of
view of its enemies - of a kind of workers' democracy that had long been the dream
of the most radical traditions in the U.S. labor movement.

The social movements of Baltimore also had their groundswells as the Black
freedom movement expanded decisively beyond its youthful core in the City- Wide

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libung People's Forum and continued to broaden and diversify, as the unemployed
movement led by the People's Unemployment League continued its phenomenal
growth, and as the workers movement in the shops and factories, among the
organized and unorganized, began to stir. These groundswells raised a number of
possibilities, but none was more important than that implicit in the convergence of
the locally-based social organizations that appeared in the earlier 1930s, and that
had previously operated in largely separate, parallel arenas. At the center of this
convergence, was, on the one hand, the youthful leadership of the Black freedom
movement plus some of its more militant elders; on the other was the left-wing
leadership of the unemployed, trade-union, and legal defense movements, grouped