[1] The movement was led by Oscar Brown, Sr., a leading civil rights activist from Chicago, Illinois.
During World War I, he served as a lieutenant in France, returning to graduate from Howard University with a degree in law.
The primary goal of statehood was to ensure that the benefits of the New Deal were fairly allocated to African American citizens.
The organization gradually declined due to the lack of support, and the other outside federal forces prohibiting the creation of the 49th State.
"[7] In 1934, the organization, headquartered in Chicago, posed to America the challenge of creating a new state within the federal union to be governed and populated exclusively by blacks.
The creation of a forty-ninth state would be "an opportunity for the nation to reduce its debt to the Negro for past exploitation.
The 49th State was to be a place where "the millions of black folk could be free to till the fields and get the benefit of their toil; where they could find and keep jobs in industry and commerce, in transportation and other utilities, in the building trades, in editing daily newspapers, where, in all the affairs in our civilized life, Negro women and men could advance as far as their abilities permit.
For the remainder of the decade, the fires of separatism burned, mostly as a product of black involvement in the Communist Party.