Organization
The group was formed at a radical conference in Detroit held on April 27–28, 1946. Early goals included abolition of HUAC and protecting southern workers' right to unionize. In December 1947, the National Negro Congress merged into the group. International Labor Defense (ILD) national secretary William Patterson led the group throughout its existence. Frank Marshall Davis served on the organizations National Executive Board. Patterson also headed the Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago, with Davis also on the faculty and Board of Directors.
The group gained about 10,000 members. It was generally stronger on the coasts and weak in the South, but it did conduct several major campaigns to defend the legal rights of Southern Blacks. It also created more than 60 local chapters which sought to combat racial discrimination, racist stereotyping, and legal injustice in their communities.
The U.S. Congress and courts weakened the group with legal restrictions in 1951. In 1956, members voted to disband.
Read more about this topic: Civil Rights Congress
Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“The organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that what in itself would enable us to construct it richly plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance, making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden. We are condemned to slavery to the means of liberation.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)
“In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Your organization is not a praying institution. It’s a fighting institution. It’s an educational institution right along industrial lines. Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)