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1935, Lewis had worked with the ACW, the ILGWU, and the Amalgamated Iron,
Steel, and Tin Workers (AISTW) at Sparrows Point to build racially integrated
locals in Baltimore, and had been called to Norfolk, Virginia, by the ACW to help
them to organize Blacks and whites together. An example of the fruits his efforts
bore came in January 1935, when the tenth district of AISTW held its initial
meeting on Eastern Avenue in Baltimore with both Black and white delegates
present and passed a resolution condemning racial discrimination in employment
When the delegates went out to eat, they found that local restaurants were
segregated; they left the first restaurant in unison when Black delegates were
refused service, then forced the second restaurant to integrate.
In late 1935, Edward Lewis was chosen to be part of Lester Granger's Urban
League delegation to the AFL's national convention, where he and his colleagues
worked in support of the efforts of A. Philip Randolph and others to abolish
discrimination in the trade unions. As is well known, that convention was the site
of two major controversies: a major outcry resulted when AFL president Green
shelved the report and resolution written by the special committee on racial
discrimination in the AFL and submitted a far weaker resolution from the AFL
executive committee; and a decisive break occurred between the forces grouped
around John L. Lewis favoring industrial unionism and the craft unionist leadership
of the AFL. In the wake of these controversies, the threat of a split in the U.S.
labor movement arose. Edward Lewis told the Afro that such a split would be "the
most encouraging news in ten years" for unorganized workers generally and African
American workers in particular. The history of both the Black freedom movement
and the labor movement in Baltimore in the period after 1936 proved him right.58
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