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forces in the national power structure and felt that they had been listened to. Their
testimony did not however mark a turning away from mass agitation as a tactic in
the anti-lynching fight. Mass ami-lynching work and education around the
Costigan-Wagner bill continued throughout 1934 and into 1935. In March 1935, the
Forum reported the collection of another thousand signatures on a petition asking
F.D.R. to intervene and facilitate the passage of the then-stalled Costigan-Wagner
Bill.64
In addition to a broadening of its practical activities in 1934, the Forum also
experienced a political-ideological broadening. Ira De A. Reid, speaking of the
intellectual life of Black Baltimore, wrote during that year that:
The problems of peace, economic reconstruction, and public discussion offer
the most fertile field for true interracial activity. Yet the extreme race-
consciousness of the Negro group has tended to prevent its active interest in
matters of public import other than n.vial adjustment.
A perusal of the topics addressed at the Forum's Friday night meetings, of course,
indicates that Reid probably did not have the Forum in mind when he made this
charge. Nevertheless, as if in answer to Reid, the Forum began to address issues of
peace and economic reconstruction in a wider and more interracial framework than
ever before. Two developments best signify this change.
First, the Forum was a constituent part of the interracial peace movement
that began to emerge in Baltimore in 1934. On May 16, the Women's International
League for Peace and Freedom announced that a delegation from Baltimore would
participate in the mass meeting and disarmament demonstration to be held in
Washington, D.C., on World Goodwill Day later in the month. The African
American groups participating included the Forum, the Morgan College League for
Industrial Democracy (LID), and representatives from Coppin Normal School; the
predominantly white groups included the Liberal Club of Johns Hopkins, the
Goucher College LID, the Young People's Socialist League, the Society of Friends,
the Baltimore Council of Churches, the YMCA, and representatives from the
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