{"value"=>"<p>Thomas Russell Jones launched the Unity Democratic Club (UDC) in 1959, in the Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, with a dynamic group of interracial and community activists. Bertha Jones, Grace and John O. Killens, Ruth Goring, Mary Woods, Ruth and George Brooks, Andrew Cooper, and Ernest Crishlow were some of the key participants. UDC reached out to the low income tenants of the housing projects, but also to middle-class and professional African Americans, churches, block associations, and parent groups. It called for an end to discrimination in the labor movement, and under the slogan \"Buy Where You Can Work\", campaigned for equal opportunity employment for Black residents in the businesses and factories along Fulton and Nostrand Avenues. UDC organized aggressive voter registration campaigns and worked hard to bring disenfranchised residents back into the political process. It organized workshops to educate Black and Latino Brooklyn residents about the election process: the importance of primaries, the selection of delegates and candidates, and the role of district leaders. In 1960, the group began fielding candidates for state and city elections, and thus played a leading role in chipping away at the hegemony of white candidates in majority Black and Latino communities. During the 1962 primaries, Thomas Russell Jones and Ruth Goring defeated the Democratic Party regulars, Samuel Berman and Carrie Lark, for the leadership of Brooklyn's 17th District. During the general elections for that year, Mr. Jones also won a seat in the New York State Assembly as a representative of that district.</p>"}