In the U.S., the European term "fellow-traveller" was adapted to describe persons politically sympathetic to, but not members of, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), who shared the political perspectives of Communism. In the 1920s and 1930s, the political, social, and economic problems in the U.S. and throughout the world, caused partly by the Great Depression, motivated idealistic young people, artists, and intellectuals to become sympathetic to the Communist cause, in hope they could overthrow capitalism. To that end, black Americans joined the CPUSA (1919) because some of their politically liberal stances (e.g. legal racial equality) corresponded to the political struggles of Black people for civil rights and social justice, in the time when Jim Crow laws established and maintained racial segregation throughout the United States. Moreover, the American League for Peace and Democracy (ALPD) was the principal socio-political group who actively worked towards peace by way of anti-fascism rather than by pacifism; as such, the ALPD was the most important organization within the Popular Front, a pro-Soviet coalition of anti-fascist political organizations.