Frank crosswaith biography
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Frank Crosswaith
Frank Rudolph Crosswaith (1892–1965) was a longtime socialist politician and activist and trade union organizer in New York City who founded and chaired the Negro Labor Committee, established on July 20, 1935, by the Negro Labor Conference.[1]
Early life
[edit]Frank R. Crosswaith was born on July 16, 1892, in Frederiksted, St. Croix, Danish West Indies (the island was sold to the United States in 1917 and became part of the U.S. Virgin Islands). His parents were William I. Crosswaith and Anne Eliza Crosswaith. He emigrated to the United States in his teens. While finishing high school, he worked as an elevator operator, porter and garment worker. He joined the elevator operators' union and when he finished high school, he won a scholarship from the socialist The Jewish Daily Forward to attend the Rand School of Social Science, an educational institute in New York City associated with the Socialist Party of America.[1]
Career
[edit]Crosswaith founded an organization called the Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers in 1925, but this work went by the wayside when Crosswaith accepted a position as an organizer for the fledgling Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Crosswaith maintained a long association wi
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Black Socialist and Trade Unionist Frank Crosswaith Should Be a Household Name
On a summer night in June 1942, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters leader A. Philip Randolph approached the microphone before an electric crowd of mostly black Harlemites at Madison Square Garden. Eighteen thousand people had jammed into the stadium to attend a mass rally of the March on Washington Movement (MOWM). Organized by Randolph, the gathering highlighted issues of discrimination in defense jobs, segregation, and lynching.
One of the many things attendees were anticipating was the announcement of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia’s first black appointment to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Many thought it would be Randolph. But instead, a less familiar figure was named: black socialist and labor activist Frank Rudolph Crosswaith.
Crosswaith never attained the same recognition as other early black socialists, such as Randolph or Hubert Harrison. But he played a critical role in building support for both trade unionism and socialism among black Americans and in forging the institutional links between the labor movement and early civil rights organizing.
Throughout his long and productive life, Crosswaith never wavered in his belief that a strong interracial labor movement and democrat
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