Negro Sanhedrin

[1] Among the groups initially solicited was the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a radical semi-underground organization affiliated with the Workers Party of America.

[4] He urged the adoption of a program calling for an end to racial segregation in the housing market, termination of colonialism in Africa, legally binding contracts to protect tenant farmers, abolition of anti-miscegenation laws, and diplomatic recognition of Soviet Russia by the United States government, among other things.

[7] Convention chairman Miller short-circuited the agenda of the radicals, however, using his power to appoint an official of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce as head of the Sanhedrin's Labor Committee.

[8] Those resolutions which were passed were severely tempered from the preferred wording of the radicals, including a comparatively mild rebuke of labor union locals for exclusion of black members rather than ringing condemnation of the leadership of the American Federation of Labor[7] and opining in favor of equal pay for workers without respect to race and organized financial assistance to the struggling agricultural workers being crushed by the agricultural depression that gripped the nation.

"[9] In this the Sanhedrin was a great failure, with the factional activities of the Communists in Chicago deeply resented and the organization banned from a subsequent and final gathering held in Washington, D.C.[8] Nor would the Sanhedrin movement be a successful or lasting vehicle for the coordination of activity by the myriad of mainstream black organizations, with momentum dissipating almost immediately after the close of the Chicago gathering.