The Civil Rights Congress (CRC) was established in 1946 to, among other things, "combat all forms of discrimination against…labor, the Negro people and the Jewish people, and racial, political, religious, and national minorities." The CRC arose out of the merger of three groups with ties to the Communist Party, the International Labor Defense (ILD), the National Negro Congress, and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. CRC campaigns helped pioneer many of the tactics that civil rights movement activists would employ in the late 1950s and 1960s.