Duke Ellington, one of the greatest musical artists of the 20th century, plays an inter-racial, joint benefit for the Trade Union Unity League and the American Negro Labor Congress in Harlem.

‘Ball At Rockland to Build Circulation for Labor Unity, Liberator’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 6 No. 320. March 17, 1930.

Wm. Z. Foster, general secretary of the Trade Union Unity League, and one of the committee of 110,000 in Union Square, pointed out to the committee that is arranging the Liberator-Labor Unity Ball to be held at Rockland Palace, Saturday, March 22, that over 1,000,000 workers participated in the unemployment demonstrations on March 6 in the U.S.A., and that they were workers of all nationalities and races.

In the South, Chattanooga, Tenn., Winston-Salem, etc., Negro and white workers fought side by side for the demands of the unemployed as issued by the T.U.U.L.

Foster urged all workers to sup- port the press of the T.U.U.L. and the American Negro Labor Congress, as a way to organize the masses of workers that answered the call of the T.U.U.L. and the Communist Party by militant street demonstrations in every city in this country. “Labor Unity and the Liberator are the voices of the militant working class in this country and must be given every support,” Foster said.

An extensive and unusual program has been arranged at the ball to include Edith Segal and Allison Burrough in their famous “Black-White” dance, and Duke Ellington’s orchestra for dancing.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v06-n320-NY-mar-17-1930-DW-LOC.pdf