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432
August 1936, the executive committee of the AFL suspended the CIO unions from
the federation. At the national convention in Tampa later that year, expelled them.
By that time, the CIO had gone its own way, and its unions did not even send
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representatives to the Tampa convention.
Between the 1935 and 1936 AFL conventions, the CIO, in region after
region, broke from the local structures of the AFL and emerged as far and away the
most dynamic force in the workers movement. In May 1936, the controversies of
the national federation reached AFL bodies in Baltimore and Maryland. In early
May, at the convention of the Baltimore Federation of Labor, a resolution backed
by the local ACW (which had only recently rejoined the BFL), ILGWU, and others
to support the CIO failed by only 60 votes out of a total of 375. Also, J. Fred
Rausch of the Building Trades and the PUL opposed AFL stalwart Joseph
McCurdy for the BFL presidency and lost by only 88 votes. Despite a growing
insurgency, the BFL stood fast by the national AFL leadership and craft-unionist
tradition; the only significant break with the past at the 1936 convention was the
election of the first woman delegate to the BFL executive board.
Later that same month the Maryland-District of Columbia Federation of
Labor met in its annual convention in Hagerstown, Maryland. This organization,
which like the BFL was presided over by Joseph McCurdy throughout the 1930s,
also faced an insurgency. In addition to the Baltimore-based industrial unionists,
the prominent forces in the opposition at this convention included the United Mine
Workers from Western Maryland, the ClO-oriented textile workers from the
massive Celanese Corporation acetate plant in Cumberland, Maryland (they were
seated at the convention but allowed not vote), and militants from Washington,
D.C. Taking no chances, the convention leadership managed to defeat a resolution
on industrial unionism and the CIO in committee. However, a resolution to
prohibit Jim Crow and to hire Black organizers, offered by C.V. MacDonald of the
Washington laundry workers, made it to the floor, where it was vocally supported
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