The NNC represented one of the first efforts of the 20th century to bring together under one umbrella black secular leaders, preachers, labor organizers, workers, businessmen, radicals, and professional politicians, with the assumption that the common denominator of race could weld together such divergent segments of black society. It was the Communist Party’s effort to build support among activists in the black mainstream. The evolution of the NNC dramatized the growing convergence of outlook between Communists and activist black intellectuals that had taken shape in the protests of the early Depression years and reached full fruition during the years of the Popular Front.