The Freedom Now Party was a short-lived political party in the United States founded in August 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It had a Black membership. It was indirectly linked to the Socialist Workers Party. It existed from 1963 to 1965.
In 1963 elections, the party appeared on the ballot in Connecticut, Michigan, New York and Washington, D.C. Hoping to earn one million votes, the party fell far short of its initial goal. In 1964, the party's efforts were primarily directed toward Michigan. In that year, 39 members ran for office. Most prominent was Rev. Albert Cleage, who ran for Governor of Michigan. [1] Cleage, a black pastor at the Central Congregation Church in Detroit, received 4,767 votes (0.15%) and the party soon collapsed. [2]
One of its most prominent members was Paul Boutelle. Boutelle ran for State Senate in Harlem in 1964 and, following the collapse of the FNP, was the Socialist Workers Party nominee for president in 1968. [2]
Prominent black intellectuals and activists were involved in the party's founding, including:
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America who had split from the main organization in 1899.
The Socialist Party USA, officially the Socialist Party of the United States of America, is a socialist political party in the United States. The party was established in 1973 as one of the successors to the Socialist Party of America, which had broken up a year prior, resulting in another group called Social Democrats, USA and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (split).
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Asa Philip Randolph was an American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American-led labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a prominent voice. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against racist labor practices helped lead President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully maintained pressure, so that President Harry S. Truman proposed a new Civil Rights Act and issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 in 1948, promoting fair employment and anti-discrimination policies in federal government hiring, and ending racial segregation in the armed services.
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Cleve Andrew Pulley, better known as Andrew Pulley, is an American former politician who ran as Socialist Workers Party (SWP) nominee for Vice President of the United States in 1972 and one of three nominees the party put forth for President of the United States in 1980. Pulley was also the SWP's nominee for mayor of Chicago in 1979 and has also run for the United States Congress in the state of Michigan.
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