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 art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“When a man’s partner’s killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him, he was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. As it happens, we’re in the detective business; well, when one of your organization gets killed, it’s, it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere.”
—John Huston (1906–1987)
“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)