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| 128 SELECTED COMMUNIST JRONT ORGANIZATIONS PEOPLE'S INSTITUTE OF APPLIED RELIGION 420 Transportation Building, Detroit, Michigan________ This organization founded in August, 1939, by Reverend Claude Clossie Williams, formerly a Presbyterian minister, is said by Williams to have been at its conception a voluntary organization of rural and urban ministers "whose purpose was to apply the principles of cooperation and brotherhood. The most recently reported aims and purposes of the organization were illustrated by the program of the People's Congress of Applied Religion sponsored by the subject organization in Detroit, July, 1944* Among the plans of action discussed at this Congress were plans: (a) for the utter defeat of all Fascist forces (b) for racial equality (c) against anti-Semitism (d) against the poll tax (e) for the organization of all workers into labor unions and act for the wholehearted support of principles and conditions set forth at the Teheran Conference. • In the past, it is said that "institutes" have been held in various' states and larger meetings in July, 1941, by this organization in Memphis, Tennessee, and at Misco Homestead, nenr Wilson, Arkansas* Sources state these meetings were conducted as religious revivals- but the- programs were actually a scriptural justification of Communist doctrine and an attempt to incite the under-privileged people to open rebellion against the wealthy classes. In Detroit the organization has made attacks against the Ku Klux ICLan, Gerald L*K»Smith and the America First Committee, as well as other groups and persons labelled as Fascists in an article entitled "Hell Brewers of Detroit". The following persons are listed as officers and sponsors of the organization: Claude C« Williams, Director Edna Joyce King, Executive Secretary Merrill 0. Bates, Treasurer Owen H.-Whitfield ) A . . _. ™.i«.»*,. A T nu ~ -it \ Associate Directors Winifred L. Chapell ) Frances L. Price, Assistant Secretary Lynd VJard, Artist Sponsors James Luther Adams John A. MacCallum Frank C. Bancroft C. F. Maclennan Cedric Belfrage Paul G. Macy V'alter G. Berhman Harold P. Marley L. M. Birkhead Francis J. McConnell Henrietta Buckmaster N. Brunett Magruder Malcolm C. Dobbs Jack R. McMichael, Jr. James Dombrowski John Miles |