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Essex, and in the Bethlehem company town at Sparrows Point; SWOC announced it
had signed up 156 steel workers. Immediately after the canvass* SWOC began a
series of open air meetings with a rally at Eden and Monument Streets in East
Baltimore. A major focus of SWOC's organizing activities was the community, and
organizers held numerous meetings at locations like East Baltimore's Finnish Hall,
sponsored events in conjunction with ethnic associations, and even leafleted at
•7
churches.'
Like its benefactor, the UMW, and like the CIO as a whole, SWOC stood
for interracial unionism. In Baltimore, this stance was particularly important, for
nearly 25% of the workers at Sparrow Point were Black. Moreover, a fledgling
tradition of interracial unionism had already been established in the region when,
starting in 1934, Edward Lewis and the Baltimore Urban League staff helped the
local Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers integrate. The Amalgamated was
subsequently absorbed into SWOC, nationally and locally. Baltimore SWOC stood
by its anti-racist principles. It assigned former Pittsburgh steelworker, Arthur
Murphy, an experience trade unionist and a national organizer for the Negro
National Congress, to lead the Maryland campaign along with white organizers
Israel Zimmerman and state senator Robert Kimball.
From the inception of the campaign, Murphy and Zimmerman immediately
began meeting with Black community leaders including BUL's Edward Lewis,
NAACP's Thurgood Marshall, the Afro's William N. Jones, and Rev. D.E. Rice to
discuss organizing plans. They initiated a series of educationals in the Black
community including a conference in October at Pythias Hall and a mass meeting
that same month at Faith Baptist Church. Furthermore, SWOC in Baltimore did
not confine its appeals for racial unity to the Black community. Through mass
leafleting and press releases, SWOC accused Bethlehem Steel of "gross
discrimination" against Black workers before a region-wide audience, a charge that
the company management hastened to refute. And at the first SWOC outdoor rally
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