Abstract
In the late 1920s, George Francis McCray began to build his reputation in the black national press as a vigorous proponent of race consciousness and racial solidarity. Influenced by Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), he promoted the themes in opinion pieces for the Chicago Defender newspaper. The establishment of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1935 resulted in a broadening of McCray’s activism. Paradoxically, he used his newspaper labor column to direct race consciousness toward the promotion of interracial labor unionism as a means of empowering workers, fighting discrimination, and opening up jobs to blacks. His political and civic work in this period revolved around labor education and research in service to movements for civil rights, labor rights, and social justice. PostSecond World War his work expanded to include themes of African liberation, pan-Africanism, and international labor solidarity.
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