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144  9 The Double V Years and Marriage in New York City In broken health, out of money, and politically depressed over the state of world affairs, Edwards virtually withdrew from public life after returning from Mexico in early 1940, but the United States’ entry into World War II would soon give her renewed energy for the Double V campaign—the fight for victory against fascism abroad and victory in the war against Jim Crow at home. After harassment by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Chicago, marriage and a move to New York City would take her life in a new direction and open new outlets for her political activism. She renewed left-liberal coalitions with Communists, facilitated by the wartime alliance between Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, though, FBI surveillance and health problems would follow her to New York. As soon as Edwards got back from Mexico in early 1940, she changed doctors but still failed to find the source of the severe health problems that often crippled and confined her to home. She attended an annual meeting of the National Association of Housing in Pittsburgh in mid-May, but suffered a great deal and limited her activities. On July 15, 1940, in a letter to Mary McLeod Bethune , of the National Youth Administration, she apologized for not yet having The Double V Years and Marriage in New York City 145 written an article on Bethune Cookman College, like she had promised in a meeting with her the previous summer.“Unfortunately I have been ill almost continuously since our conference and have been unable to write even sufficient to keep abreast of my current correspondence,” she explained. “I have recently changed Doctors and begin to hope for some real recovery.”1 At the time of Edwards’s return from Mexico, the National Negro Congress was in turmoil as a result of fallout from the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The NNC had not held a national conference since 1937. At the third conference, in April 1940, the organization imploded. A. Philip Randolph resigned the presidency to protest the NNC’s subservience to the foreign-policy directives of the Soviet Union and at that time isolationist views of CIO leader John L. Lewis. In Randolph’s view, the NNC had become the financial captive of the Communist Party and the white CIO unions closely tied to Communists who had maneuvered behind the scenes to oust him as president and replace him with Max Yergan.2 It is not clear how Edwards reacted to Randolph’s resignation and the breakup of the Popular Front coalition.Although she was back in the United States at the time, she did not attend the NNC conference in 1940. Other than her role in the founding conference in Chicago in 1936 and her efforts to build bridges to the NAACP in early 1937, she had not played a significant role in the national organization. She had been elected one of the vice presidents at the 1937 conference in Philadelphia, but she was in Spain at the time and so did not attend. In fact, she did not go to any of the NNC’s national conferences after the first one. Despite her friendship with Executive Secretary John P. Davis, tensions existed between them over policy issues. She had resigned as head of the Women’s Committee in the fall of 1937. Her only contribution to the NNC after that was to give a talk on Mexico to the Cultural Committee of the NNC’s Chicago Council on June 30, 1940.3 In Edwards’s speech to the Cultural Committee, she sketched out Mexico’s economic history, particularly its domination by foreign capital. She called attention especially to the role of Edward L. Doheny in the oil industry south of the border. She pointed out nationalist resentments against the domination of Mexico’s resources by American and British capitalists. After praising the reforms of President Cárdenas, especially his successful literacy campaign in rural areas, Edwards noted that Mexico would soon elect a new president. American oil interests were backing the candidacy of General Juan Andreu Almazán, she argued, while the masses and President Cárdenas were supporting Manuel Ávila Camacho.4 Despite tensions with James Ford, Louise Thompson, and other top Communists over the 1939 conference of the American League for Peace and Democracy in Washington, DC, the evidence suggests that Edwards kept her 146 Thyra J. Edwards pro-Soviet position...

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