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affiliated with the BFL and the AFL, and Black workers were barred from its
unions. On the other hand, a good number of skilled Black construction workers
were present in Baltimore, but because of AFL Jim Crow, they had to work as
laborers. Lewis initially investigated whether the CIO was in a position to organize
integrated construction unions to rival the AFL unions. But, while the Maryland
CIO had called for a CIO construction workers drive as early as 1936, and while
one of the first locals of the fledgling CIO industrial construction union was
ultimately chartered in Baltimore in 1939, Lewis found in mid-1939 that the CIO
would not be able to respond to the needs of Black construction craftsmen any time
soon. Hence Lewis decided on a different tact: to organize an independent
grouping of Black construction workers to insure that Blacks got their quota of jobs
on the federal projects and to batter their way into the AFL craft unions.

In May 1938, the Baltimore Building Trades Association was formed with
Robert De S. Tutman as president and Edward Lewis as advisor. By August 1938,
the BTA was comprised of 191 workers from nearly a score of construction crafts.
By this time the BTA was both actively pressuring the AFL Building Trades
Council to integrate, and was offering to supply craftsmen to city and federal
construction projects. Progress came slowly, with Lewis consciously using the CIO-
AFL rivalry to embarrass the latter into concessions. First, a Black architect was
chosen for a housing project. Then, in September 1939, the Building Trades
Council agreed to work toward the integration its construction unions (an
agreement that was not binding on the unions themselves). Then, the BTA forced
a bricklayers' union local to accept two Black bricklayers from Virginia who were
already members of the union. Finally, a breakthrough occurred when on March
27,1940, after lengthy negotiations, the first Black AFL building trade local in the
history of Maryland was chartered as Local 544 of the International Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners. Accepting a segregated local was very distasteful to Lewis