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forces from the center and left of the movement. The driving force behind this
meeting and the federation it produced was an alliance between PUL-based
Socialist Party militants, the Black youth of the Forum, and more activist elements
of the Urban League. Of these forces, the Socialist militants may have been the
initiators: among other indications of this, the planning meeting for the Wilkins-
Baldwin meeting was held at the home of Socialist leader Elisabeth Oilman, as was
the subsequent meeting to elect the federation's leadership. The cooperation
between the Forum activists and the Socialists in this endeavor was the beginning of
an important relationship.
The federation's leadership group itself was quite balanced between old and
young. Black and white, liberal and radical. Rev. Peter Ainslie was the honorary
chair, with Rev. Asbury Smith as acting chair; George Murphy, an elder of the
Afro's Murphy clan was to be a vice-chairman along with liberal Reform Rabbi
Edward Israel. Among the array of other officers, though, were a series of names
that indicated the character of the alliance at the federation's core: Broadus
Mitchell, Elisabeth Oilman, and Frank Trager of the SP; Clarence Mitchell and
W.A.C. Hughes of the Forum; Edward Lewis of the BUL. Interestingly, Rev. C.Y.
Trigg of the NAACP was to aid in special committee assignments. All in all, the
Maryland Anti-Lynching Federation was the most significant local organizational
initiative to come out of the protests of the Armwood lynching/^
Another organizational initiative during the ami-lynching protests was less
successful. Although Rev. Trigg, president of the local NAACP, was much in
evidence during these protests, his organization continued to be little more than a
shell. A special protest meeting was therefore scheduled to attempt to resuscitate
the local NAACP, and the national executive secretary of the NAACP, Walter
White, was brought to town to make the major presentation of the evening. The
hope was that the meeting could begin a process of rebuilding the local branch, but
to no avail. The Baltimore NAACP continued to limp along as the broader Black
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