to
the next so that a new crowd may be accommodated. Yet that
is just what must be done in many instances up that way now.
There must be more churches established in all the large
cities of the North and East and Northwest for our people or
serious results will obtain in the future.

He considered the opportunity and duty of the C.M.E. Church as great
and urgent. He recommended the purchase of vacant white churches
offered for sale and the transfer of some of the best pastors. He
urged that there be launched a movement for a great centenary rally
for $500,000 with which to take advantage of the great opportunity
which confronted the race in the North.

Before the migration movement the strength of the negroes in labor
unions was largely in the South. In this section they were found
in considerable numbers in the carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers,
longshoremen and miners unions. In the North, however, they were
not generally connected with the unions mainly for the reason that,
excepting the hod carriers, teamsters, asphalt and cement workers and
a few other organizations of unskilled laborers, they were not found
in any occupation in sufficient numbers to necessitate being seriously
considered by organized labor. The necessities of the industrial
situation created by the war, however, brought thousands of negroes
north and into trades and occupations in which hitherto they had not
been found at all or only in negligible numbers. A change in attitude,
therefore, was necessary. At the 1910 annual meeting of the National
Council of the American Federation of Labor a resolution was
unanimously passed inviting negroes and all other races into the Labor
Federation. The officers of the Federation were instructed to take
measures to see that negro workmen as well as workmen of other races
be brought into the union. In 1913 this action was reaffirmed with the
assertion that

Many years ago the American Federation of Labor declared for
the thorough organization of all working people without regard
to sex, religion, race, politics or nationality; that many
organizations affiliated with the American Federation of Labor
have within their membership negro workmen with all other
workers of their trade, and the American Federation of Labor
has made and is making every effort within its power for the
organization of these workmen.[151]

At its 1916 annual convention held in Nov