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The National Negro Congress (NNC) was an organization that was created to help the fight against racial and economic inequality. Created in 1935, it eventually became associated with other organizations to promote African American well being, including parties with socialist agendas which eventually lead to mistrust from the federal government and the dissolution of the NNC in 1947.

Origins
The National Negro Congress, also known as the NNC, was formed in 1935 at Howard University to unify the black community in the fight towards racial equality. The conference was originally put together under the title "The Position of the Negro in Our National Economic Crisis", with many important figures in attendance such as W.E.B. Dubois, Emmett Dorsey, and Howard Myers who was a member of the New Deal's National Recovery Administration, though they had different views on many things they collectively agreed that the unifying of the black community and focusing on race and class should be their main priority, they hoped to make an impact against the laws the kept a majority of African Americans in poverty due to unfairly low wages. John P. Davis, with knowledge gained from his time spent with government advisers and other organizations that proved to be too weak in his eyes, decided to form the NNC to provide a united front by giving a call to action for all black organizations to build a coalition for the civil rights of their fellow African Americans.

Let Us Build a National Negro Congress
The NNC was fighting for multiple new benefits, for example some new benefits given by the New Deal, including the Wagner Act and The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, didn’t necessarily apply to African American Laborers because they were limited by industries whose unions prohibited African Americans as members. John P. Davis in his pamphlet Let Us Build a National Negro Congress with Frederick Douglass on the cover listed what their coalition should strive for; on top of wanting to aid the NAACP in the fight for better education for young African Americans, they also fought...
 * 1) "For the right of the Negroes to jobs at decent living wages and against discrimination in trade unions and elsewhere… for the organization of Negro workers with their white fellow workers into democratically controlled trade unions.
 * 2) For relief and social security for every needy Negro family, and for genuine social and unemployment insurance.
 * 3) For aid to the Negro farm population, to ease the burden of debts and taxation, for the right of poor farmers, tenants and sharecroppers to organization and bargain collectively
 * 4) For the fight against mob-violence, lynching and police brutality; for the right to vote, serve on juries and enjoy complete civil liberties.
 * 5) For complete equality for Negro women; for the right of Negro youth to equal opportunity
 * 6) To oppose war and fascism, the attempted subjugation of Negro people in Ethiopia, the oppression of colonial nations throughout the world; for the independence of Ethiopia”

Conferences
In anticipation of their first conference in Chicago on February 1936, The NNC worked on a local level by creating sponsored committees to garner more attention for the coalition. In the beginning they garnered some support from organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban League, some even serving as board members on the NNC’s national board. Their first meeting brought 750 delegates from twenty-eight states to Chicago, among those 750 were strong influential figures like Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright. It was here that these delegates could get together and debate issues that need resolving for the black community in the fight for Civil Rights. What made the NNC so unique in the beginning was the leaders willingness to listen to the demands of the public, allowing them to be apart of the process.

After the success in helping with Steel Labor Strikes, also known as the Little Steel Strikes along side the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), the NNC had their second conference which took place in October 1937 in Philadelphia.

Complications
From the beginning the NNC had varied political parties involved in the organization that included Socialists, Republicans, Democrats and Communists. The organization was plagued by issues and was constantly being criticized by outside forces claiming that they organization would never be able to get everyone to work together in the same direction. Even though they were able to agree on somethings, many problems were approached in conflicting ways due to the varied political backgrounds of its members. These problems ultimately lead to its downfall.

Those outside forces commonly referred to the NNC as a Communist Party, knowing the NNC was fighting for what African Americans wanted but that they lacked fiscal stability without the communist party. For a short while they were able to get the support from the NAACP, wanting to be apart of this newly founded organization, but soon the additional support from them also waned.

They received pressure from other African American organizations such as the Chicago Council of Negro Organizations (CCNO). They wanted to join forces but the NNC but felt the two organizations differed on a lot of issues and didn't want to be affiliated with them. Eventually Davis chose to compromise and consented to unifying the CCNO, but they never fully integrated like planned.

Davis joined forces with members of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) such as John L. Lewis, because he believed that they had similar views when it came to the rights of laborers. Some activists agreed with this action but it was not well received by others, considering it a risk aligning themselves with predominantly white organizations.

Downfall
With the Communist Party controlling the reigns it became clear that despite Davis’ efforts, the NNC had very little to do with the black community in the end. The 1940’s Convention marked the end of Randolph’s contribution after he resigned as president of the NNC, claiming that it was no longer a “Negro” congress because it no longer catered to the black community. After that there was nothing left for Davis to do but give up his efforts and pursue a career in publication

Their affiliation with CIO proved to be a mistake when in the midst of the NNC continuous struggle to stay afloat the CIO cut ties with the NNC in 1946, claiming that they didn't participate in the organizations activities or endorse them in any way.

After this the NNC was forced to rely more on the communist party, and began to slowly lose its members; some even going to the authorities to give a list of Communist members within the group. This garnered them a lot of attention from the FBI placing the NNC on the short-list for monitoring, often wiretapping the NNC's offices. Many members tried to move on from the orginziation but some were often brought in for questioning by the authorities and convicted just from being associated with the NNC, even if there was no proof of communist sympathies outside of their connection to the NNC. Davis himself claimed to be in frequent communications with the Communist Party in order to clear close friends from conviction.

The National Negro Congress’ lack of success is said to be caused by many things, but one the more predominant reasons being that John P. Davis tried to do too much too fast. He didn’t adequately develop his ideas and because of this Davis failed to build a strong platform for the black community; instead of an incremental approach he wanted to see a dramatic change right away.

Important Figures
Multiple important figures were involved with the NNC. For example, John P. Davis of the Joint Committee on National Recovery, also known as the National Industrial League, helped to form the National Negro Congress in 1935 and continued on in the organization as national secretary. He often wrote pamphlets with laid out arguments of the abuse African Americans faced in their various trades and to promote the unity of the black community to fight against the general lack of civil rights in the United States. In one of his pamphlets he states, "In this deepening crisis of monopoly capitalism, of which the existing industrial depression, with its myriad and varied concomitant social disabilities and degradations, is an acute manifestation, the Negro in politics, industry. Education and his entire social life is faced with a decisive and imperative challenge, to develop and fashion a new and powerful instrumentality with which, not only arouse and fire the broad masses to action in their own defense, but to attack the forces of reaction that seek to throttle Black America with increasing Jim-Crowism, segregation and discrimination. It therefore seems eminently proper, timely, fitting and necessary, that a National Negro Congress, which will express the struggle of the Negro of all fronts, such as civil and political liberties, labor, social service, political, fraternal and church interests, through the respective organizations."He wastes no time getting into the hard truths of black injustice, often bringing up individual cases where the power of white supremacy prevailed in the justice system. He also brought attention to the media’s lack of sympathy towards the lynching of black Americans, trivializing these stories by reporting the news as if it were entertainment and not the death of a human being. He even goes on to compare African Americans to Jews in Nazi Germany stating that what is happening to the Jews will soon be what happens to Negroes all across the nation unless they collectively fight against the corrupt system.

A. Phillip Randolph was the first President of NNC and originally the founder and leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. In the NNC's beginnings he wanted to build a unified movement on a national level; he wanted to work with progressive white groups predominantly in labor unions because they had similar concerns as black labor workers. After a while he eventually became ill and started focusing his efforts on other causes leaving Davis to do a lot of the organizing himself.

Books

 * Davis, John P. Let Us Build a National Negro Congress. Washington, D.C.: National Sponsoring Committee, National Negro Congress, 1935.
 * Gellman, Erik S. Death Blow to Jim Crow:The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights. Edited by Waldo E. Martin, JR. and Patricia Sullivan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
 * Kirby, John B. Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era: Liberalism and Race. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980.
 * Davis, John P., ed. The American Negro Reference Book. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966.