421

her mother would "tell the ministers to stay off the third Sunday of the month,
because that's Freedom Sunday."  The Sunday educational meetings continued for
decades, and in the 1950s featured speakers like Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Fred
Shuttleworth, and Medgar Evers. '^

The mass character of the branch was also reflected in its organizational
structure. Very early, the renovating local branch opened a regularly staffed office
so that the organization would be easily accessible to the community. Also, the
branch constructed a series of committees with clearly defined functions (the legal
redress committee headed by Carl Murphy was one of the more active) to draw its
members into activity. Moreover, at least on occasion, the branch structured itself
almost as a community organization, with regional and even block committees. It
appears, though, that this kind of neighborhood-based organization was more or
less short-term and focused on specific campaigns such as membership drives or the
protracted voter registration campaign that began in 1942.^

Additionally, Lillie Jackson devised a method both of encouraging greater
membership recruitment and of making leadership positions more available to
rank-and-file activists: anyone who signed up one-hundred members during a
membership drive was put on the branch board. Juanita Jackson Mitchell later
remembered that Roy Wilkins, while visiting Baltimore, became concerned that the
branch was exceeding the constitutional limit on board size. Lillie Jackson
reportedly told Wilkins that the branch always sent in its national dues and told him
that "you run your little red wagon and I'll run mine.   '

The mass organizational character of Baltimore branch was a sharp break
with the pre-1935 NAACP and with the older organizational tradition of the
Baltimore freedom movement. While other organizations, such as the Cooperative
Women's Civic League and the Housewives' League, had had large memberships,
these organizations were not at the center of the movement and were often not
directly involved in protest activities. Previously, the main freedom movement