Toward Freedom

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Touré F. Reed. Toward Freedom

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Toward Freedom

The series is a collaboration between Verso Books and Jacobin magazine, which is published quarterly in print and online at jacobinmag.com.

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Headed by black economist Abram L. Harris, the committee encouraged the NAACP to transform itself into a center for workers’ education and agitation. Harris thus urged the association to develop courses intended to assist blacks in making sense of their place in industry while simultaneously promoting interracial solidarity. He also called upon the civil rights group to educate workers about unionization and the importance of political participation. Finally, Harris suggested that the NAACP grant more authority to local chapters, allowing locals to circumvent the board of directors and national office so that they might pursue more aggressive agendas.21

Institutional concerns precluded pursuit of the goals and prescriptions advised by the Amenia Conference and Harris Report respectively. Executive secretary Walter White asserted that the financial crisis made implementation of the Harris Report infeasible. The aims of the Harris Report likewise bumped up against the sensibilities of influential benefactors such as Julius Rosenwald, who were unnerved by the growing economic militancy among African Americans.22 Thus, while Walter White hoped to reinvigorate the association by connecting with the masses, the NAACP did not institutionalize the kind of class agenda called for by Amenia and the Harris Report until the late 1930s. Instead, the association would attempt to enhance its viability in the mid-1930s through a vigorous anti-lynching campaign.

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