Matt N. and Evelyn Graves Crawford papers

Matt Nathaniel Crawford, Jr., born in Anniston Alabama (May 18, 1903), was fourth of five children of Matt N. and Emma Goodgame Crawford. He spent his formative years in Oakland, California, where his family moved in 1911, becoming active participants in the life of the small African American community in the San Francisco Bay area. He attended public schools in Oakland, graduating from Oakland Vocational High School. In 1921 Crawford went to work as an insurance clerk. In the mid-1920s he prepared for a career in chiropractic medicine and graduated from the San Francisco College of Chiropractic and Drugless Physicians in 1927. He practiced in an Oakland office with two partners for ten years during the 1930s until the depression forced the closing of the practice.

Throughout the 1920s Matt Crawford was active in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and in two social and civic organizations: The Acorn Club and the Phyllis Wheatley Club. During this time he met Evelyn Phyllis Graves (b. 1899), whom he married on September 1, 1929. They had one child, Evelyn Louise (1938).

In June 1932, Crawford traveled to Moscow with a group of young black Americans, including Langston Hughes and close family friend, Louise Thompson, to make a film on Black life in the United States. Though the project ("Black and White") was abandoned, Crawford and other members of the group toured the USSR for several months. Through this travel experience he became interested in socialism and developed a new political and social consciousness that led to active participation in the International Labor Defense campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys of Alabama. He worked closely with William L. Patterson, a Scottsboro case attorney, and they became close friends and collaborators, a relationship that lasted throughout their lives. The fight to save the Scottsboro Boys marked the beginning of Crawford's involvement in the civil rights movement; it convinced him that socialism was the hope for justice for black people, and he joined the Communist Party.

During the 1930s and 1940s Crawford was involved in many civil rights, labor rights and social justice campaigns. He was a founder of the National Negro Labor Council, which fought for equal employment opportunities. He became involved in campaigns to fight discrimination against black workers who wanted to join trade unions and became director of the Northern California Minorities Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (1944-1945). He held the position of Assistant Director of the Council for Civic Unity (1946), and became the West Coast Regional Director of the National Negro Congress and the Civil Rights Congress (1947-1948). Also during the 1940s Matt Crawford began his long time friendship with Paul Robeson and became an active member of the Independent Progressive Party presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace (1948).

From 1949-1958, Matt Crawford worked for the Consumers Cooperative of Berkeley, first as food clerk and later as assistant manager. He then moved into a new career as loan officer and later manager of the main branch Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union in Berkeley. During his final years with the credit union, his wife, Evelyn died (1972). Crawford retired in 1974, but remained active in the credit union movement as an advocate, board president, and member. In the 1970s and 1980s Crawford continued to be actively involved in community affairs. He served as president of the Berkeley Black Caucus and was appointed to the Alameda County Consumer Affairs Commission and later the Alameda County Retirement Board.

In 1978 Crawford married Frances Dunham Catlett, a retired San Francisco social worker and artist. He continued to travel extensively and to pursue his interests in gardening, photography, and alternative healing until his death in Oakland, California on August 26, 1996.