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conservative forces arose again two weeks later when Bethel AM £ Church barred a
scheduled ami-lynching protest meeting sponsored largely by the ILD (three of the
four scheduled speakers were ILD- or CP-related, although the fourth was the Rev.
Peter Ainslie, the venerable founder of the Baltimore Urban League and a
patriarch of the white social liberals). Specifically, the banning of the meeting was
ordered because Bernard Ades was scheduled to speak. According to Bethel
AME's pastor, Rev. C.C. Ferguson, Ades "was too closely allied with a program that
was not in keeping with the best interests of the race," and that he made
"unnecessary attacks on the clergy and the church." An organizer of the meeting
accused Ferguson and the Bethel AME board of trustees of barring Ades because
he was "of a different faith." It was, however, more likely that some of the more
moderate forces in the Black freedom movement, especially among the clergy, were
becoming uncomfortable with the role played by Communists and Communist-led
organizations. The protest meeting, though, went off as planned; it was simply
moved a few blocks to Cosmopolitan Church.33

Some friction between the CP and more radical elements of the Black
freedom movement also developed at this time. Clarence Mitchell, in an interview
in 1981, recalled a protest meeting he attended during the ami-lynching movement
of 1933:

I remember a big meeting that the Communists had at a place called
New Albert Auditorium, which was a place up on Pennsylvania Avenue, long
since demolished. But one of the things that I was so disgusted with them
about was, they brought up a number of people from the Eastern Shore of
Maryland. There was one poor old gentleman about 80 years old, I guess,
who got to describing the conditions, and he said, "And there's nothing we
can do about that."

Well, this crowd just tore into him and did all sorts of insulting things.
And the poor old man was up there trying to explain, and he said, "Well,
what can we do?" And somebody yelled out in back, "You can fight!" I
thought this was so bad - 80 years old, what could he do against that
crowd?34