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with continuing negotiations on their other demands. By a rather circuitous route,
a militant UAW movement had finally arrived in Baltimore. Local 239 would,
however, remain rather volatile and unpredictable through the remainder of the
1930s. In early 1939, after national president Homer Martin had been ousted in
favor of R J. Thomas, this local, after again ejecting James Blackwell along with a
number of CIO leaders, voted to support Homer Martin and to reject the
"Communists." Subsequently, when the local realized that its stand took it outside
of the national UAW, it reversed itself.-^
Organizing in the steel industry also accelerated during 1937. Nationally-
speaking, 1937 was the year of the great breakthrough in steel, when, on March 2,
US Steel capitulated to SWOC without a strike. It was also the year of a great
setback, when SWOC lost its national strike against Little Steel (as the Bethlehem,
Republic, National, Youngstown, and Inland companies were collectively known)
after the famous Memorial Day Massacre of workers. Given the dominant position
of Bethlehem Steel in the region, it was clear that Baltimore was a Little Steel
town, and the course of the local campaign in steel was fundamentally shaped by
that fact.36
Nevertheless, even the SWOC campaign at Sparrows Point made progress in
fits and starts during this year. In early March, for example, union pressure
contributed to a rise in the minimum wage at Sparrows Point to $5 a day. At this
point SWOC organizer Frank Murphy claimed that over 4,000 Black workers had
signed SWOC cards. On March 18, SWOC made its first direct approach to
Sparrows Point management to discuss employee bargaining rights — with, of
course, no success. The movement suffered a setback by proxy during the Little
Steel strike, in which Sparrows Point workers did not participate; former SWOC
organizer Mike Howard told author Mark Reutter that "It was a low, low time."
Moreover, the local SWOC had to fight constantly against intimidation by
Pinkerton agents and armed company police that were the hallmark of Bethlehem's
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