union." The most prominent active Communist Party members within the FTA included Theodosia Simpson, Velma Hopkins, Viola Brown, Moranda Smith, Christine Gardner, Robert Black, Clark Sheppard, John Henry Miller, Jethro Dunlap, and Vivian Bruce. The anti-communist sentiment of not only the more conservative/liberal labor unions, but the national community at large felt that the "Communist Inspired" militant party members prevented settlements at the time of negotiations. The general sentiment perceived that the tactics the Communist Party members of the FTA used would "lead to trouble and possibly to race rioting." Phillip Murray President of the CIO had held strong anti-communist political and theoretical beliefs, but even he himself was convinced that "anti-Communism played into the hands of labor’s enemies." Phillip Murray held and shared many of the core beliefs that members of the Communist Party in the FTA and the FTA in general agreed to. Some of those beliefs included, "continued cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union, and he was committed to maintaining the CIO as an inclusive federation of politically diverse industrial unions." Despite having conflict with the FTA, Murray felt that organizing against labor’s enemies was more beneficial to workers as opposed to focusing energy fighting against the FTA whose political and tactics mirrored those of the Communist Party. Interracialism At a time when big labor unions were racially prejudiced, the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers (FTA) took a stance of organizing community members of racial backgrounds. African American and Black members of the FTA held high ethics of racial pride and had held a strong foundation of solidarity that transcended the boundaries of race. For African American/Black members of the FTA, the black church had played a huge influence on their politics of interracialism. The black church held the belief "whites would cast off the sin of racism and embrace the brotherhood of all people, in part by the secular radicalism of a left-led union, and in part by popular anticolonialism." Organizers of FTA and local black and white leaders were diligent in seeking to break down any racial barriers that would prevent class solidarity from prospering. In 1944, the FTA had found themselves on the tail end of a controversial issue that had arisen in a court hearing that had to do with the contract negotiations between Reynolds and Local 22. White workers in the Employees Association were involved in a shouting