also took up benign issues. The party's newspaper, The Daily Worker, started agitating for integration of major league baseball in the mid-1930s. The party also made a point of integrating its dances and other social events and continued to ostracize and expel members accused of "white chauvinism". 1939–1945: World War II The signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact damaged the party significantly in the black community. A. Philip Randolph resigned from the Negro National Congress in protest and black newspapers throughout the North condemned the party for its rapid volte face. The CPUSA attacked its opponents as warmongers. When Adolf Hitler's forces invaded the Soviet Union, the party switched to an all-out support for the war effort. It denounced Randolph's proposed March on Washington against employment discrimination in war industries, arguing that it might harm production. But the CPUSA still demanded that defense contractors integrate and took steps to combat "hate strikes" and white-led race riots in Detroit. 1946–1959: post–World War II era In 1946, the NNC and the ILD merged to form the Civil Rights Congress. The CRC continued its activities during the height of postwar attacks on the Communist Party, denouncing discrimination in the judicial system, segregated housing, and other forms of discrimination that blacks faced in both the North and the South. The party had hopes of remaining in the mainstream of American politics in the postwar era. Benjamin J. Davis Jr. ran for and won a seat on the City Council in New York City in 1945, advertising his membership in the Communist Party and drawing on both black and white support. That era did not last. New York City changed the rules for electing members of the City Council after Davis' election. Davis lost the next race in 1949 by a landslide to an anti-communist candidate. He was under indictment for advocating the overthrow of the United States government, and this did not help his candidacy. The CRC became increasingly isolated in this new climate as former allies refused to have anything to do with it. Represented by William Patterson and Paul Robeson, it attempted to file a petition entitled "We Charge Genocide" with the United Nations in 1949 that condemned the treatment of black citizens in the United States. Patterson was convicted a year later of violating the Smith Act; in 1954 the Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. declared the CRC to be a subversive