From Plantation

to Ghetto Third Edition

August Meier and'Elliott Rudwick
 $12.93

From Plantation
to Ghetto
Third edition

AUGUST MEIER and

ELLIOTT RUDWICK

This classic work has now been exten¬

sively revised to reflect recent scholarship
on such topics as slavery, post-Civil War
urban life, the origins of the Negro church,
and the black family. The authors also
discuss the changing occupational and
economic status of blacks in America
today, recent developments in the school-
integration controversy, and the new poli¬
tical activism.
From Plantation to Ghetto, which be¬
gins with the slave trade and the early
experience of blacks in America, inter¬
prets black ideologies and protest move¬
ments throughout our history, and par¬
ticularly in the twentieth century. It
discusses the rise and accomplishments of
the NAACP, nationalist organizations
such as the Garvey Movement and the
Black Muslims, the influence of socialists
such as A. Philip Randolph and Bayard
Rustin, the early development and later
ascendancy of direct action, the role of
CORE and SNCC, and Martin Luther
King and other leaders. It deals with the
turbulent history of race riots and black

(continued on back flap)

E Meier* Augustt 192 3—
1 85
M4 From plantation to
197 6 ghetto
BC£CK

© THE BAKER 4 TAYLOR CO.

From Plantation to Ghetto
FROM
PLANTATION

by August Meier

and Elliott Rudwick

TO
GHETTO
THIRD EDITION

American Century Series

Jjjj Hill and Wang New York

A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Consulting editor: Aida DiPace Donald

Copyright © 1966, 1970, 1976 by August Meier and Elliott Rudwick

All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., Toronto
ISBN (clothbound edition): 0-8090-4792-6
ISBN (paperback edition): 0-8090-0122-5
First edition, October 1966
Revised edition, July 1970
Third edition, 1976
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication' Data

Meier, August.
From plantation to ghetto.
(American century series)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Negroes—History. I. Rudwick, Elliott M.,
joint author. II. Title.
E185.M4 1976 973'.04'96073 75-43729
For Robert Curvin
and Louis R. Harlan
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/fromplantationtoOOOOmeie
Preface

In this book we have attempted an analytical, inter¬

pretive, and interdisciplinary history rather than a narrative ac¬
count. We have assumed that the reader will have a knowledge
of the facts of American history and we have focused less on
what whites were doing about blacks than on what Negroes
themselves were doing. Moreover, certain topics have been
omitted altogether, and special emphasis has been placed on
ideologies, institutional developments, patterns of interracial
violence, and protest movements.
Gloria Marshall of the anthropology department of the Uni¬
versity of Michigan very carefully read and criticized the first
chapter, which greatly benefited from her suggestions. William
H. Pease and Jane H. Pease of the history department at the
University of Maine kindly let us have a copy of their paper,
“Antislavery Ambivalence: Immediatism, Expediency, and
Race,” prior to its publication. James M. McPherson of the
history department at Princeton University very generously
went through his notes and supplied us with data on black
participation in the abolitionist movement from 1861 to 1870.
In the preparation of the final chapter of this new edition we
were greatly indebted to Alex Poinsett, senior editor at Ebony
magazine, for an illuminating interview and for permitting us to
see his unpublished manuscript on black politics. The discus¬
sion of interracial violence during Reconstruction owes much to
the research of two graduate students of ours, Melinda Martin
Hennessey and the late Gerald T. Martin.
We wish to thank Professor Robert Curvin of the political

Vll
Vlll PREFACE

science department of Brooklyn College for his perceptive criti¬

cism of an earlier version of Chapter VIII. We are indebted to
Mrs. Barbara Hostetler for doing much of the typing. Finally
we wish to express our deep appreciation to the Kent State
University Center for Urban Regionalism and its director,
Eugene P. Wenninger, for facilitating the preparation of this
edition.

August Meier
Elliott Rudwick
Contents

Chapter I 3
The West African Heritage and Afro-American History

Chapter II 27
Black Men in Agrarian America: Slavery and the Plantation

Chapter III 87
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities: Manumission, Alienation,
and Protest

Chapter IV 153
A Dream Betrayed: Negroes During the Civil War and Recon¬
struction

Chapter V 194
“Up from Slavery”: The Age of Accommodation

Chapter VI 232
Black Men in the Urban Age: The Rise of the Ghetto

Chapter VII 271

The Black Revolt of the 1960’s

Chapter VIII 314

The Legacy of the Black Revolt

IX
X CONTENTS
Selected Bibliography 359

Index 389

Map of West Africa 9

Map of the Slave Coast 28
From Plantation to Ghetto
 I
The West African Heritage and
Afro-American History

The black experience in the United States has been

largely shaped by two contrasting environments. The first was
the Southern staple-producing farm and plantation, on which
the vast majority of pre-twentieth-century Negroes worked, in
the beginning as slaves and later as sharecroppers. The second
was the urban ghetto, predominantly a twentieth-century crea¬
tion, which grew primarily as a consequence of the migration of
rural Negroes to the cities of the South and North.
Thus black life and culture in America have developed within
the context of a subordinate status whose leading institutional
manifestations have been the plantation and the ghetto.
Within these two environments, created by a dominant major¬
ity, blacks have both assimilated the culture of the whites and
developed what is widely regarded as a distinct, though loosely

3
4 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

defined, subculture. On the one hand, Negroes adopted the

egalitarian values of the American democratic creed and the
middle-class values regarding wealth and upward mobility; on
the other hand, their ideologies and institutions differed from
those of the whites because blacks had to cope with the reality
that democracy, economic opportunity, and social acceptance
were not extended to them.
Wishing to be fully accepted as American citizens, yet alien¬
ated from the larger society, Negroes have been looked upon,
and have looked upon themselves, as a separate ethnic group
within that society. One facet of this ethnocentrism has been
an awareness that exclusion from the mainstream of American
life was related to their African origin.

1
What the African background has meant for blacks in the
United States can be discussed under two major categories. One
is an analysis of the ways in which American blacks have per¬
ceived and felt about Africa. The other is an investigation of
the degree to which the distinctive aspects of the American
Negro subculture may in part be derived from African ways of
life.
Over the years black Americans have displayed a broad range
of views and attitudes about Africa, many of them laden with
considerable ambivalence. Race prejudice and discrimination
compelled Negroes to identify themselves as being of African
descent, yet because the white conceptions of black inferiority
and African savagery were absorbed by many Negroes, they
displayed embarrassment over the allegedly primitive culture of
the ancestral continent. At one extreme was the tiny handful of
individuals who said that as Americans they had no more inter¬
est in Africa than they had in any other foreign land. At the
other extreme was the minority—at times a substantial one—
who rejected completely the possibility of achieving a satisfac¬
tory existence in the United States and advocated colonization,
or the return of black Americans to the African homeland.
Between these there was a broad spectrum of opinions. Practi-
The West African Heritage 5
callv universal among articulate nineteenth-century blacks was a
pride in the accomplishments of ancient Africa, particularly
Egypt. Equally universal was the view of contemporary Africa
as heathen and savage. But it was generally believed that Afro-
Americans, supposedly the most civilized portion of the black
race, had a special duty and responsibility to assist in the uplift
and moral and spiritual redemption of the homeland. Some
thought of commercial ventures as playing a part in this mis¬
sion, but for the most part the stress was on the role that Negro
churches should play in sending missionaries to civilize and
Christianize the allegedly immoral, primitive, and idolatrous
inhabitants of Africa. Exclusively nationalist sentiments, look¬
ing toward the establishment of a new national homeland in
Africa for oppressed black Americans, were less commonly held
but, nevertheless, existed throughout the history of Negroes in
America and, at certain times, flowered into highly significant
and dramatic movements. From time to time eminent black
intellectuals have espoused colonization or emigration; yet its
chief appeal has been to the poorest class of blacks—the group
which has been the most alienated from society and, therefore,
the group most likely to identify with Africa.
Such was the range of views among nineteenth-century Afro-
Americans. They had wide currency until the present genera¬
tion. But as early as the turn of the century, W. E. B. Du Bois,
the sociologist, historian, and noted protest leader, enunciated a
new approach. Possessed of a deep emotional commitment to
Africa and people of color throughout the world, Du Bois was
probably the first American Negro to express the idea of Pan-
Africanism: the belief that all people of African descent had
common interests and should work together in the struggle for
their freedom. He also appears to have been the first American
author to describe the great medieval kingdoms of West Africa,
and he was among the first to regard the nonliterate societies of
sub-Saharan Africa as possessing complex and sophisticated cul¬
tures. Finally, he was apparently the first person to suggest that
the culture of black Americans had been substantially influ¬
enced by the cultures of Africa.
6 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Du Bois was well versed in the literature produced by Euro¬

pean explorers and historians. His early writings on Africa were
thoroughly imbued with the new knowledge that was a by¬
product of European penetration and conquest of the African
interior in the late nineteenth century. Since then, historians
and anthropologists have added greatly to and refined our
knowledge of African history and culture. It took time, how¬
ever, for Du Bois’s picture to spread, even among Negroes.
Although Carter G. Woodson, the influential scholar and
propagandist for the study of the Negro’s past and the founder
of the Journal of Negro History, expressed similar ideas, few
indeed accepted Du Bois’s suggestion that American Negro cul¬
ture owed much to the African way of life. Du Bois’s views on
this subject were based more on mystical yearnings than on
hard factual data; it was not until Melville J. Herskovits in 1941
published his Myth of the Negro Past, based on extensive em¬
pirical research, that the thesis became widely debated.
The title of Herskovits’s book suggests very well the view¬
point, not only of whites, but also—until very recent decades—
of most blacks regarding the African past. Ordinarily when
blacks expressed pride in Africa they pointed to the antique
past. The myth that Du Bois, Woodson, and Herskovits were
bent on destroying was a dual one: (1) that the ancestral cul¬
tures of the black Americans were primitive, with Africans
making no contributions to the culture of the world; and (2)
that under the slave regime practically all evidence of African
culture—except perhaps for some survivals in music and dance
—had been destroved.
j

Having set forth the myth, let us now turn to a brief presen¬
tation of some of the salient facts.

2
Africa south of the Sahara was known to medieval Muslims
as the Beled es-Sudan, or “Land of the Blacks.” Today the term
“Sudan” is restricted to the broad belt of grassland lying south
of the Sahara and north of the tropical rain forest that occupies
the Guinea Coast and the Congo River Basin. The peoples who
The West African Heritage 7
became the chief source of the Negro population in the New
World resided in the forested area and in the southern portions
of the western Sudan. The chief theater of operation for the
transatlantic slave trade was along the West African coast be¬
tween Senegal and Angola. Some slaves came from deep in the
interior, but ordinarily the range of the slave trade lay within
three hundred miles of the coast. Thus the great majority of
Negroes who were brought to the New World came primarily
from the area drained by the Senegal, Gambia, Volta, Niger,
and Congo Rivers.
The theater of much of the Sudanese cultural history that we
are about to relate was actually located to the north of the area
from which New World Negroes came. Yet we cannot separate
the history of the southern Sudan from that of the northern
Sudan. Moreover, the institutions of the Sudanese societies had
important influences on the societies of the Guinea Coast, and
some of the most important slave-trading kingdoms encom¬
passed territory in both the rain forest and the Sudan. It there¬
fore seems appropriate to begin the storv of the American
Negro’s African heritage with a brief sketch of the cultural
history of the western Sudan.
Modern scholarship places the western Sudan among the im¬
portant creative centers in the development of human culture—
along with the ancient Near East, the Indus and Yellow River
valleys, and Mesoamerica. In each of these places an unusually
high agricultural productivity achieved during the Neolithic
period sustained a relatively dense population and thus ulti-
matelv led to a profound transformation in social institutions.
In each case the social complexities arising out of the increasing
number of inhabitants resulted in the development of social
classes, urban centers, and despotic theocratic monarchies.
The importance of the domestication of plants and animals
as a catalyst for these institutional changes cannot be overesti¬
mated. It is possible that, as the anthropologist George Peter
Murdock has suggested, the western Sudan was among those
centers in which agriculture was an indigenous invention, thus
duplicating the achievement of the inhabitants of Southwest
8 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Asia, Mesoamerica, and possibly other places. The staple grains

of the Sudanese complex of crops, comparable to the wheat and
barley of the Near East and the maize of the New World, were
pearl millet and sorghum. Among the other important culti¬
vated crops probably first domesticated in the western Sudan
were okra, the kola tree (the original source of the stimulant in
cola drinks), the watermelon, sesame, and cotton. Murdock’s
thesis, based chieflv upon plant distributions and data from
historical linguistics, has not yet found support in the slim
archaeological investigation thus far done in West Africa.
Others insist that the knowledge and techniques of plant culti¬
vation were not developed independently in the western Sudan
but diffused into this area from Southwest Asia, via Egypt.
Whatever archaeologists eventually find in regard to the origins
of agriculture in West Africa, subsequent cultural development
in the Sudan paralleled that which occurred in Mesopotamia
and Egypt, in China and India, and in Mexico and Peru. By the
second millennium b.c., according to Murdock, or by the open¬
ing of the Christian era, according to more conservative author¬
ities, the Sudan had developed large-scale, complex kingdoms.
An important factor in the proliferation of urban societies
and empires in the western Sudan was the trans-Saharan trade.
Though little of certainty can be established about this com¬
merce during the early millennia, it is known that the introduc¬
tion of the camel during Roman times greatly facilitated it.
Three major routes emerged in the western half of the Sahara
Desert. Of these the most important, until the end of the six¬
teenth century, ran from Sijilmasa in present-day Morocco to the
Upper Niger River area. The prominence of this route was
based on the proximity of its southern terminal entrepots to
Wangara, the gold-producing territory around the headwaters
of the Senegal and Niger Rivers. The principal southbound
commodity was salt, an item in scarce supply in the Sudan but
plentiful at the Taghaza salt mines in the Sahara Desert. Lesser,
but important, items in the traffic were Negro slaves from the
Sudan and luxury textiles from the Mediterranean. Control of
the Wangara goldfields was a leading consideration in the
 Black Men in Agrarian America
rnrn 9

West Africa
10 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

minds of the empire builders of the western Sudan. The signifi¬

cance of this, the westernmost route, is evident in the fact that
the prosperity of the three most important and largest states in
early West African history—Ghana, Mali, and Songhai—was
largely based Upon this traffic in gold and slaves, salt and cloth.
Each in turn controlled the southern entrepots of the Moroc¬
can trade, most notably the city of Timbuktu. Timbuktu, on
the edge of the desert, close to the Niger at the most northern
point on its course, by the end of the twelfth century had
become the major international market where the products of
the Niger Valley were exchanged for those of northern Africa.
It also became the leading commercial and intellectual center of
West Africa.
The earliest West African state of which we have any written
account (and archaeological work has barely begun) was the
empire of Ghana. The state was founded, probably in the
fourth century a.d., by the Soninke people on the southern
fringe of the Sahara, where they were in a position to benefit
from the caravan trade between Morocco and Wangara.
Though the exact boundaries of the kingdom are in dispute, it
is generally agreed that Ghana was located north and west of
the great bend in the Niger River, the empire at its height (in
the tenth century) extending as far west as the upper portion of
the Senegal River. The rulers were pagan, though the capital,
Kumbi-Kumbi, consisted of two towns—one pagan, which con¬
tained the fortified residence of the king and his court, and the
other Muslim. Arabic was the written language of the empire,
and both Muslims and pagans held high office.
For some time before its downfall the kingdom of Ghana had
been threatened by the Islamized Berber peoples to the north
and west, and in 1076 it was conquered by the Berber Almo-
ravides, originally a Muslim sect in the lower Senegal Valley.
The Almoravides empire lasted a century, and for a brief period
stretched from the Sudan almost to the Pyrenees. Though
within a dozen years the Soninke peoples had regained their
independence, the place of the former kingdom of Ghana was
now occupied by a number of warring states. Finally, in 1240,
 The West African Heritage 11
the ancient capital Kumbi-Kumbi was completely destroyed by
the rising kingdom of Mali.
Mali, which thus gave the coup de grace to the history of
Ghana, shared the center of the Sudanese stage with the king¬
dom of Songhai from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.
Both had obscure origins, dating back perhaps to the seventh
century a.d. The original territory of Mali was located on the
Upper Niger, west of the Great Bend. Songhai’s capital was
situated on the middle section of the river, east of the Great
Bend. Both states were converted to Islam in the eleventh cen¬
tury, and the economic prosperity of both was based chiefly
upon their importance as trade entrepots. Little is known about
the historv of Songhai, which gradually expanded north and
south along the Niger River, until the fourteenth century, but
Mali had achieved prominence before the middle of the thir¬
teenth centurv. Ultimately the Mali empire stretched from al¬
most the Atlantic eastward beyond the Niger, and from the
Sahara to the rain forest. It reached its apogee under the illus¬
trious Mansa Musa (1307-32), who annexed Songhai. Even
prior to this addition to his kingdom, Mansa Musa had dazzled
the Mediterranean world with an elaborate pilgrimage to
Mecca. His retinue of sixty thousand and his lavish gifts of gold
made his name a legend among both Muslim and Christian
nations.
After the middle of the fourteenth century, Mali entered into
a long decline, while Songhai, which had regained its indepen¬
dence shortly after the death of Mansa Musa, gradually estab¬
lished itself as the leading power in the western Sudan. Under
Askia Muhammad I (1493-1528), who acquired the remnants
of the Mali empire and invaded the Ilausa states to the east,
Songhai, whose territories reached nearly to the Atlantic and
almost to Lake Chad, became the largest empire in West Afri¬
can history. With Askia’s encouragement of trade and learning,
Songhai enjoyed an enormous prosperity, and the University of
Sankore at Timbuktu became one of the great centers of learn¬
ing in the Muslim world. Despite its imposing magnificence,
however, the Songhai empire was shattered by the Moroccan
12 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

invasion of 1591 and the western Sudan was divided among

several smaller kingdoms.
To the south, the inhabitants of the rain forest along the
Guinea Coast followed a similar pattern in their cultural his¬
tory, excepbthat many important developments came consider¬
ably later. Since Sudanese crops were not suitable for cultivation
in the tropical forest, other foods had to be domesticated, and
different agricultural techniques were needed. Agriculture seems
to have come to the Guinea Coast by the time of the Christian
era. The staple crops were not grains but root crops—chiefly
yams. Once the Bantu-speaking peoples of the Lower Niger
Valley became farmers, they were equipped to cultivate the
Congo River Basin. The earlv centuries of the Christian era
witnessed the Bantu migration into central and then eastern
and southern Africa and the displacement of the food-gathering
Pygmies and Bushmen as the Bantu took over almost all of the
southern half of the continent. The subsequent increase in
population among the rain-forest peoples by the second millen¬
nium a.d. made possible the establishment of despotic states
modeled upon the political institutions of the Sudanese king¬
doms to the north. They shared with them certain institutional
and ritual forms, including the important role played by the
queen-mother or queen-sister, which were unknown outside of
Africa. Thus the European slave-trading nations dealt not only
with coastal tribes but also with proud kingdoms like those of
the Mani-Congo in present-day Zaire and Angola, and of the
Ashanti, the Yoruba, and the Dahomeans, whose boundaries
stretched from the Guinea Coast into the southern Sudan.

3
West African societies in the slave-trade area ranged from
small tribes to large kingdoms of a million or more; from small
groups where kinship ties were the source of all authority to
large states with complex political institutions. These societies
were characterized bv economic specialization and a monetary
system based on the cowrie shell to facilitate trade. The larger
The West African Heritage 13
ones had a system of social classes and a hierarchical territorial
political organization. Interlacing and underpinning these polit¬
ical, economic, and social class arrangements were a deeply
rooted and intricate kinship system extending from family to
clan, and an elaborate web of religious belief involving the indi¬
vidual, the kinship groupings, and the entire society. Although
these societies differed widely among themselves, their many
basic cultural similarities make it possible to form some valid
generalizations about the cultural background of New World
Negroes. While in the discussion that follows our examples will
be drawn from the larger and more complex of these societies,
such as the Dahomeans, the Ashanti, the Mossi, and the
Yoruba, most of what we say, except for the class structure and
political institutions, applies generally to the ancestral peoples
of the New World blacks.
Throughout the entire area the economy was basically agri¬
cultural, although along the coast there was some fishing and,
inland, poultry was raised as the main source of meat. Farming
was done with the hoe, men ordinarily doing the heavy work of
breaking the soil. Among the Ashanti both sexes cultivated the
crops; the Dahomeans allocated this work to women, while
among the Yoruba most of it was done by men. Larger, heavier
tasks were performed cooperativelv by the men. Among the
Dahomeans, for example, fields were cleared and houses built
by a voluntary cooperative male group known as the dokpwe.
'[’he dokpwe also played an important role in funeral services;
thus it was an institution with both religious and economic
functions.
Economic specialization involved the elaboration of a num¬
ber of crafts, most notably ironworking, weaving, wood carving,
basketry, pottery making, and bronze casting. The craftsmen’s
products often had an aesthetic function, and have been much
admired by Western artists and art critics since the turn of the
century. Especially notable were the bronze and brass castings
made by the cire-perdue process. Craftsmen in most of the
societies were organized into craft guilds, ordinarily along kinship
14 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

lines, which set prices and often acted as mutual-aid societies.

Among the Yoruba the guilds of craftsmen and women traders
exercised considerable political influence on the town councils.
Much of the internal commerce of each West African society
was in the’* hands of women, some of whom were producer-
traders, while other women were nonproducing middlemen. In
most West African societies local and interregional trade was
facilitated by the existence of complex systems of markets, held
daily and periodically in villages as well as in towns. External
trade was controlled by the royal heads of state. Among the
Ashanti and in Dahomey the right to trade in certain items—
notably slaves, gold, and European imports—required personal
authorization from the king, who levied fees for granting such
privileges. The West African societies thus had an unusually
elaborate economic organization for nonliterate peoples, an eco¬
nomic organization comparable, for example, to those of the
Inca and Aztec empires in the New World.
The larger societies were characterized by specialization not
only in economic pursuits but in other spheres of life as well,
and there developed a degree of social stratification sufficient to
lead some scholars to characterize them as possessing a class
structure analogous to that in Western societies. Thus in
Dahomey there was an elaborate hierarchy. At the bottom were
the slaves, chiefly war captives. The children of slaves—except
for those on the king’s estates, where a kind of hereditary serf¬
dom existed—were absorbed into the families of their owners.
The backbone of the society was a class of free farmers and
artisans. At approximately the same social level were the ordi¬
nary temple priests and diviners. The upper class consisted of
the higher elements in the priesthood and the king’s officials.
Because members of the royal clan were not permitted to hold
office, these functionaries were drawn from the ranks of the
freemen. At the top stood the large but parasitical royal clan,
whose members did no work, and at the apex was the monarch
himself.
In general, land in West African societies was owned in per¬
petuity by corporate kin groups who would alienate it only on
I he West African Heritage 15
the rarest occasions. Individual members inherited or were ap¬
portioned land for their own use, and they owned and could
freely dispose of the goods they produced. In all kingdoms of
West Africa the land was considered to “belong” ultimately to
the paramount ruler, a consideration that signified recognition
of the king’s sacred authority over and responsibility for the
kinship groupings and territorial units making up his domain.
The svstem of land ownership is only one indication of the
importance of the family and larger kinship groupings in Afri¬
can societies.* Highly complex groups formed on the basis of
descent and of marriage and residence were important in mat¬
ters of politics and religion as well as in matters of livelihood
and inheritance. And as is the case in most societies, certain of
these kinship groups were the primary agents through which
individuals learned the norms and values of their cultures.
Descent was usually traced either matrilineally or patriline-
allv. In a matrilineal society, all those males and females whose
descent was traced through a line of mothers to a single female
ancestor formed a descent group or lineage. In a patrilineal
society, all those persons descended from a common ancestor
through a line of fathers formed a lineage. Groups of lineages
tracing their descent from a common ancestor formed a clan. In
many cases the members of each clan believed themselves de¬
scended from a divine animal ancestor; thus in Dahomey the
roval clan claimed descent from a leopard. Exceedingly impor¬
tant as members of all these kinship groupings were the dead
ancestors. They were revered and given sacrifices. They had
power to work evil or good for their relatives and descendants.
rFhe people believed that their ancestors participated intimately
in the conduct and guidance of family, lineage, and clan affairs.
The clan head, as a rule its oldest living male member, served as
the link between the ancestors and the living and therefore
exercised considerable power over the clan’s members. Among

* Because African kinship systems are complex and very different from
those in Western societies, the following discussion is somewhat technical.
We thought a correct treatment preferable to an oversimplified and there¬
fore distorted one.
16 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

the Dahomeans he controlled the use of the communal lands of

the clan, could force the clan members to work the lands, was
consulted in all marriages, and was treated with ritualistic
respect.
Ordinarily the West African family group was what anthro¬
pologists term an “extended family/' It comprised two or more
generations of adults descended from a common ancestor, their
spouses, and their children, all sharing a single residential unit,
often termed a compound. A compound frequently consisted of
a group of dwellings enclosing a courtyard, often with a fence
surrounding the entire group of buildings. Polygyny was every¬
where recognized as a suitable or preferred form of marriage. In
a number of societies, such as Yoruba and Dahomey, each wife
had a separate room or dwelling within the compound, living
with her husband in rotation with his other wives. In patrilineal
societies the extended family occupying a compound typically
comprised a man, his wives and children (i.e., sons and unmar¬
ried daughters), his brothers and their wives and children, and
his adult sons and their wives and children. Although the adult
sisters and daughters of men in such a household would ordi¬
narily marry into other extended families, they would still retain
membership in their father’s lineage, while their husband and
children belonged to other lineages. A comparable situation
occurred in matrilineal societies, such as the Ashanti, except
that a man and his wives often lived with, and were considered
as belonging to, the extended family headed by his maternal
uncle.
In both patrilineal and matrilineal societies the head of an
extended family was usually one of the oldest males. Typically
he exercised considerable power over the members of the
household. When the head of a compound died, the next
younger brother, or the eldest son, or the oldest male in the
household succeeded him. When the size of a family became
too large to be supported by the land resources in the com¬
pound, a younger brother or son would establish a new house¬
hold in the same or a different communitv. This household
j

continued to acknowledge its relationship to the parent com-

The West African Heritage 17
pound, however, and the various members of the newly formed
residence remained members of their original descent groups or
lineages.
Political units varied in character from autonomous villages
to despotic centralized monarchies. More than any of the other
societies in the West African slaving area, Dahomey resembled
the European absolute monarchy. At the base of its political
pyramid was the local village chief, appointed by the king but
to some extent responsive to the family heads who formed the
village council. The villages and towns were grouped into twelve
districts, each governed by a royally appointed official with fiscal
and administrative functions. The king was nearly an absolute
ruler, a sacred figure, mediating between the people and the
powerful royal ancestors. The king himself chose his heir from
among his eligible sons. He was the highest judicial officer and
had the final decision on appeals brought from cases heard by
lesser officials. He appointed all of his administrators. Chief
among them were the royal executioner, who exercised the
power of a prime minister; the official in charge of the princely
class; the governor of the coastal region, who also dealt with the
European traders; the chief gatekeeper, who supervised the
officers and residents of the royal palace and headed an espio¬
nage system; the commander in chief of the army; the minister
of the interior, who supervised markets, agricultural operations,
and the ingenious system of tax collections; and the royal
treasurer.
Women played an important role in the administration of
political affairs in Dahomey. Each major official had a female
counterpart known as his “mother,” who took precedence over
him at court and supervised his work. When officials reported
to the king, groups of women were present whose duty it was to
remember what had been transacted. Women also had an im¬
portant role in the army, and, since they were technically re¬
garded as wives of the king, these female soldiers were kept
secluded from all men.
Dahomey was a more centralized and absolute monarchy
than its contemporaries. Elsewhere the sacred rulers of the
18 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

larger societies had not achieved this concentration of power.

Chieftains of villages and town subdivisions were often selected
by the council of local family heads from among the members
of a particular lineage in which the right to this office inhered.
Provincial ’governors and the king himself were chosen in a
similar way by a council consisting of the heads of the powerful
lineages in the provincial or national capitals. Often the queen-
sister or the queen-mother was a powerful figure in her own
right, with lands and slaves of her own and considerable influ¬
ence over the king. Among the Ashanti she actually nominated
the king. In most cases a king’s council had at its disposal a
recognized procedure by which it might depose a ruler. Among
the Yoruba, when his council sent him an ostrich egg, the
Alafin, ruler of Ovo and paramount ruler of all Yorubaland,
knew he was expected to commit suicide. This limitation on the
king’s power, the elective nature of the office, the interregnum
between the death of one ruler and the appointment of his
successor, and the decentralized nature of the political hierarchy
were responsible for centrifugal forces in most West African
monarchies that gave them a quasi-feudal appearance. Although
we lack the information to verify the hypothesis, it is likely that
this characteristic was also true of the earlier Sudanese empires,
which Mediterranean travelers described as constantly threat¬
ened by rebellious vassal states.
Religion permeated West African cultures. Typically there
were complex notions regarding a person’s souls or spiritual
attributes. Elaborate funeral services were the rule because the
spirits of the dead ancestors were regarded as sacred beings,
powerful in determining the destiny of kinship groups and
states. Great gods, sometimes arranged in groups or pantheons,
as well as numerous lesser, local deities, also had their roles in
determining the course of human affairs. Elaboration of reli¬
gious beliefs was carried to especially great lengths among the
Dahomeans, but a brief examination of their ideas and practices
illuminates the religious life of West Africa generally.
The Dahomeans held that each individual had five different
souls or spiritual attributes, one of which survived as an inde-
The West African Heritage 19
pendent soul after a person died. Impressive ceremonies were
held periodically to deify the dead ancestors. There were also
annual rituals honoring and worshipping them, the rites includ¬
ing frenzied dancing and animal sacrifices. The yearly “cus¬
tom” for the royal ancestors was an especially important occa¬
sion, since they were the guardians of the state. At these events
and after the death of a king, criminals and captured prisoners
of war were among the sacrifices. Like peoples in many parts of
the world, the Dahomeans believed that a human being was the
most valuable sacrifice they could offer to a revered and power¬
ful deity.
The Dahomean great gods were organized into three pan¬
theons—Sky, Earth, and Thunder. The most important deity of
all was Mawu, the Moon Goddess, who presided over the Sky
pantheon with her husband, Lisa, the Sun God. They were the
parents of the other chief deities—including Sagbata, head of
the Earth pantheon, who was responsible for bringing crop
abundance, and Xevioso, head of the Thunder pantheon, with
control over rain and fire, rivers and oceans. Connected with
the worship of the great gods was a belief in fate. One could
effect a change in his destiny by offering sacrifices to Legba, the
trickster god, who relayed to the other deities Mawu’s directions
concerning the execution of men’s destinies. Each pantheon
had its own cult, its own priests, its own group of adherents.
Initiation into a cult came onlv after a long period of training,
and in the final ceremonies the initiate performed a frenzied
dance, during which he was regarded as being literally possessed
by the deity, who “rode” on his head and inspired his motions.
Finally there was Da, the serpent, symbolizing the sentient, elu¬
sive, moving aspect of life, the dynamic element in the world,
and evident in fortune, smoke, roots, and the umbilical cord.

4
As we have already noted, although Du Bois and Woodson
believed that Africanisms were present in American black cul¬
ture, it was the work of the anthropologist and Africanist Mel¬
ville J. Herskovits that made this thesis a focus of controversy
20 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

among students of American Negro life and culture. Not only

did Herskovits insist that Africanisms existed in the Afro-
American subculture, but he held also that some of these cul¬
tural traits had been transmitted to the whites. Herskovits’s
method was basically that of making a comparative analysis of
West African cultures, the cultures of blacks in the Caribbean
area and Brazil, and the patterns of life among what the soci¬
ologist Charles S. Johnson has called the “folk Negro” in the
United States. Supported by impressive ethnographic fieldwork
both in West Africa and in black peasant communities in the
West Indies and Dutch Guiana, Herskovits’s findings com¬
manded attention. Scholars agree that in Brazil and the Carib¬
bean area much of African culture has survived and that in
those countries there has been a synthesis of African and Euro¬
pean cultural traditions. African religious and familial institu¬
tions, linguistic elements and folktales, mutual-aid societies, and
musical and dance forms have had a marked effect on the life of
New World Negroes south of the United States. Haitian
vodun, for example, is a syncretism of Catholic and African
religious beliefs and practices, with various African gods being
equated with Catholic saints. (Vodun, rendered in English as
voodoo, is itself a Dahomean word meaning “deity.”) Thus was
repeated the age-old process of religious syncretism, of which
Christianity, combining as it does elements of Judaism, Hellen¬
istic philosophy, and Oriental mystery religions, is itself a
superb example.
Controversy arises as to the degree to which African survivals
are to be found in the United States, where Herskovits himself
held that they were less common than in the Caribbean and
Brazil. The higher proportion of whites to blacks in the sections
where slavery held sway, the absence of mountains or jungle
fastnesses where escaped slaves could develop a stable commu¬
nity without white interference, and the generally more repres¬
sive slave codes in the United States, which made it difficult or
impossible for slaves to maintain social and religious organiza¬
tions of their own, all militated against the survival of Afri-
The West African Heritage 21
canisms. Yet Herskovits believed he had identified numerous
evidences of such survivals.
For certain items, Herskovits’s claims are incontrovertible.
Since Lorenzo Turner’s epoch-making book Africanisms in the
Gullah Dialect (1949), it is accepted that the peculiarities of
vocabulary and syntax among the inhabitants of the coastal Sea
Islands of South Carolina and Georgia—where Africanisms are
undoubtedlv strongest because of the relative isolation of Negro
communities—were derived from Africa and not, as was once
widely held, from archaic dialects of sixteenth-century England.
African influence upon American Negro music and dance, both
of which have diffused into the culture of the white population,
is also generally recognized and accepted. Much of lower-class
black folklore, magic, and medicine—especially of a generation
and more ago—can be traced to African origins. Much of the
content in Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus tales, doctored
though it was for white audiences, is genuine folk material with
African roots. Notable in this connection are the stories revolv¬
ing around the rabbit, who, as an animal trickster, is a central
figure in African folklore. Herskovits also asserts that similarities
between mutual-benefit societies and funerary practices in the
United States and those in West Africa demonstrate African
survivals, though proof for this is more difficult to establish.
Where the chief controversy arises, however, is over Hersko-
vits’s assertions regarding religion and family life.
E. Franklin Frazier, in his Negro Family in the United States
(1939), one of the classics of American sociological literature,
described what he called a matriarchal pattern that is frequently
found among lower-income black families. These are extended
families in which the central figure is the mother or the grand¬
mother. She functions as an authority figure and as a bread¬
winner and is the one who holds the family together. Such
families are often characterized by marital instability and deser¬
tion on the part of the husband. Herskovits held that this pat¬
tern developed out of the adjustment of African family institu¬
tions to the brutalizing conditions of Negro life in America. He
22 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

referred to the importance of women in African societies, espe¬

cially their economic role, not only as farmers, but even more
significantly as the chief traders in the village and urban mar¬
kets (a situation that exists in Haiti today). He referred also to
the prevalence in African societies of polygynous family systems
and to the custom of each of a man’s wives having her own
dwelling. In such situations, Herskovits held, the bonds of iden¬
tification and affection—even in patrilineal societies—were be¬
tween the children and their mother rather than between the
children and their father.
There are of course alternative explanations for the preva¬
lence of the matriarchal or, to follow modern anthropological
usage, matrifocal family patterns among lower-income black
people. Some scholars have held that they are the heritage of
slavery, for if any family bonds were respected by the slave¬
owners, they were usually those between mothers and their
young children. Other researchers have used a psychoanalytic
approach and have stressed white society’s emotional emascula¬
tion of the black male. Whatever the origins of the matrifocal
patterns and their acceptance among lower-class Negroes, the
twentieth-century urban environment has served to perpetuate
them. Historically the lower-class black woman found it easier
than a man to obtain and hold a job. The husband, unable to
fulfill the economic functions expected of a man in our society
and unable to accept the social inadequacy that his wife’s supe¬
rior earning power suggested, would often desert his family.
Thus both authority in the family and responsibility for its
economic support are often shouldered by the woman. The
matrifocal familv,J 7
one in which a woman is head of the house-
hold, has been, therefore, a functional adjustment to social real¬
ities rather than a survival of Africanisms. Support for this view
comes from West Indies studies. While recent scholarship on
black Americans has not been concerned with testing Hersko-
vits’s thesis, investigations in the West Indies have either im¬
plicitly or explicitly criticized his views on the black family.
There, family patterns appear to be well correlated with eco¬
nomic factors. Investigators of Negro life in the West Indies
The West African Heritage 23
accord slavery a role in originating and/or perpetuating matri-
focal patterns but view their persistence in some places today as
mainly rooted in modern economic and social conditions.
As for religious survivals, Herskovits maintains that the reli¬
gious hysteria characteristic of lower-class evangelical churches
and pentecostal sects, among both whites and blacks, reflects
the influence of the intensely emotional and frenzied African
ceremonies. The phenomenon of religious “possession/’ in
which the enthusiast feels united with a deity, is well known to
anthropologists. Its manifestations range from epileptic fits
among the Arabians and the Siberian shamans, through the
visions of the ancient Near Eastern Christian hermits, to
trances of Hindu mystics, to the fantasies induced among
American Indians by starvation, self-mutilation, or drugs, to
“getting religion” by the sanctified among the Holy Rollers,
spiritual Baptists, and similar groups. Among American Negroes
this phenomenon is especially common in lower-class Baptist
and Methodist Churches, the pentecostal sects, and such cults
as Daddy Grace’s House of Prayer for All People. Similar forms
of religious possession are found among the white sects and
cults and Baptist churches that are the counterparts of the black
lower-class religious institutions. Herskovits, calling attention to
the emotional type of religious service that came with the Great
Revival of the early nineteenth century, attributed the particu¬
lar patterns of religious hysteria that developed at camp meet¬
ings and revival services to contact with slaves who attended
such gatherings. His thesis is that here, as in Plaiti, we find a
form of religious syncretism. Herskovits also saw syncretism in
the high proportion of blacks, perhaps as many as two thirds,
belonging to the Baptist Church. Pointing to the importance of
the river cults in West African religion, he held that slaves
flocked to the Baptist Church because of the similarity between
West African practices and the total immersion required for
initiation into the Baptist Church, a rite found also among the
pentecostal sects and such cults as those of Elder Micheaux and
Daddy Grace.
Frazier, who was Ilerskovits’s most articulate critic, regarded
24 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

such interpretations as nonsense. Most Negroes, he insisted,

became Methodists and Baptists because these churches were
the only ones that really proselytized among blacks, as they had
a general interest in society’s downtrodden people. Baptists
especially* appealed to Negroes, he wrote, because their highly
decentralized form of church organization and congregational
autonomy made it possible for blacks to govern their own insti¬
tutions and assume leadership positions without difficulty.
Moreover, there is a functional explanation for the emotional
character of worship in most lower-class black churches. The
evangelical churches have always appealed primarily to lower-
class people because of the escape that “getting religion” offers
from the burdens of everyday reality. Frazier argued that every
significant aspect of lower-class Negro religious life can be ex¬
plained as arising out of the social milieu in which American
blacks found themselves, without recourse to explanations in
terms of African survivals.
It can be argued of course that the aspects of African culture
which have survived in the United States are those which have
had a functional value; that the African family institutions were
modified and adapted to meet the exigencies of life for the slave
and the freedman in America; and that the African forms of
religious possession fulfilled important needs for the oppressed
black people and indeed for lower-class whites as well. Actually
there is no necessarvJ contradiction between Herskovits’s
emphasis upon the persistence of African cultural traditions and
the functional explanations offered by sociologists like Charles
S. Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier.
Whether the distinctive cultural characteristics of the black
community are viewed as survivals of an African heritage or as
functional adjustments to the specific situation in which Ameri¬
can blacks found themselves, the Afro-American way of life is a
subculture, a variety of the larger American culture. Unlike the
cultures of black peasants and urban masses in countries to the
south, what survives of African culture in the United States is
relatively limited. Such Africanisms as persist are not evenly
distributed among all groups in the black population. They
The West African Heritage 25
proved strongest among the rural Sea Islanders of Georgia and
South Carolina, where contact with whites was extremely lim¬
ited, and in the permissive atmosphere of Latin-oriented Louisi¬
ana, where vestiges of African 'Voodoo” existed until recent
vears. Such Africanisms as do remain are characteristic of the
life of the lower classes rather than the middle and upper
classes. As with other ethnic minorities in our society, those
Negroes who have moved up the economic and social ladder
have, as part of the process of upward mobility, assimilated
white middle-class ways in speech, family life, religious services,
and values far more than did lower-class blacks.
Herskovits’s thesis certainly remains a provocative and sug¬
gestive one. Some of his contentions are undoubtedly correct
and there is no argument about them. But in its more contro¬
versial aspects, no definite conclusions can be drawn concerning
its validity in explaining the existence of a black subculture in
America.
Herskovits’s ideas originally evoked a stormy response from
most articulate Negroes and from most whites interested in race
relations. These people were busy fighting the charges that
blacks were inferior to whites and therefore unable to assimilate
white American culture and adjust to white American middle-
class society. Black intellectuals like the sociologists Charles S.
Johnson and E. Franklin Frazier described distinctive patterns
of life among the black lower classes as being responses to the
social oppression and economic degradation that they suffered.
Beginning with the late 1950’s, however, Herskovits’s thesis has
been more hospitably received. The rise to independence and
power on the part of the new African nations gave American
blacks new feelings of identification with and pride in the an¬
cestral continent. Prominent scholars belonging to the Ameri¬
can Society for African Culture (AMSAC) embraced the theory
of negritude propounded by the international parent body,
the Society for African Culture, with headquarters in France.
This theory holds that the descendants of Africans everywhere
in the world exhibit in their culture and in their thought
certain ineradicable evidences of their African origin. The
26 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

stirrings and achievements of the black revolution in the United

States have also stimulated among American Negroes a new
feeling of racial identity—of accepting themselves as blacks
rather than trying to imitate whites—and, concomitantly, a new
interest ill the race’s past.
What then is the significance of the African—especially the
West African—cultural heritage for American Negro history?
Undoubtedly it contributed something to the quality of black
life and institutions in the United States; and to some extent it
provided materials that American blacks refashioned to cope
with the problems they faced in the New World. Throughout
American history, Africa provided for American Negroes an
ancestral homeland with which they identified in various ways
and to various degrees. Not until the middle of the twentieth
century, however, did the rise of African nations to indepen¬
dence and international influence make large numbers of blacks
genuinely proud of their West African heritage. Both the
changing role of Africa and the civil-rights revolution gave Afro-
Americans a new sense of identity. As a result articulate blacks
became more receptive to the idea that Africanisms survived in
their way of life.
Thus, changes on the world scene and in the blacks’ status in
the United States have made acceptance of Herskovits’s thesis
far more widespread among black Americans and, for that
matter, among American whites as well. We shall do well to
keep his views in mind, and we shall have occasion to refer to
them again. Nevertheless, the major forces shaping Negro life
in the United States, from the first use of black men on the
tobacco farms of Virginia to the civil-rights revolution spawned
in the modern cities, lay in the American environment. It is
mainly to the plantation and the ghetto that we shall have to
turn if we are to understand Afro-American life and history.
 II
Black Men in Agrarian America:
Slavery and the Plantation

1
The institution of slavery had long been known in
both southern Europe and Africa, but the rise of the European
traffic in African slaves was the product of two major develop¬
ments in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: the emergence
of the national monarchies facing the Atlantic and the Com¬
mercial Revolution.
Quite naturally, the new nations sought wealth and empire in
Africa and the New World. Once Spain and Portugal had
broken the commercial preeminence of the Italian city-states,
Holland, France, and England successfully entered the contest
for a share of the African trade and for empires in the Americas.
Soon Africa became the major source of labor for the exploita¬
tion of the tropical and semitropical regions of the New World.

27
28 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

The Slave Coast

Black Men in Agrarian America 29
Both the slave trade itself and, even more, the wealth that
flowed from American staple crops cultivated by Negro slave
labor created much of the prosperity and power that made first
Portugal and Spain, later Holland, France, and finally England,
each for a span of time a dominant commercial and imperial
state in Europe. The African slave trade and slavery were,
therefore, major factors in the quickening of European com¬
merce, industry, and banking and in the shift of economic
power from the Mediterranean countries to northwestern
Europe—all of which constituted the Commercial Revolution.
The European traffic in slaves with sub-Saharan Africa devel¬
oped easily and without opposition because slavery was an
indigenous institution on both continents. While slavery had
virtually disappeared from northwestern Europe after the de¬
cline of the Roman Empire, it continued to exist in Mediter¬
ranean countries. During the later Middle Ages both Christians
and Muslims engaged in a thriving slave trade that extended
from the shores of the Black Sea to the countries bordering on
the Atlantic Ocean. On the Iberian Peninsula slavery persisted
through the medieval Muslim occupation and the Christian
reconquest. Indeed the basic structure of both the later trans¬
atlantic slave trade and the New World plantation system had
been developed by Italian merchants trading in the Black Sea
and raising sugar on Sicily, Cyprus, and Crete. At the opening
of the fourteenth century, in fact, Negro slaves could be found
on the Cyprus sugar plantations.
Among West African peoples, sources of slaves included
criminals, people pawned by their lineages as security for loans
and enslaved if the debts were not repaid, and captives taken in
war. Slavery in these noncapitalist societies differed markedly
from the highly exploitive system developed by Europeans on
Mediterranean and New World plantations. The use of slaves
as plantation laborers on the vast estates of the Dahomean king
was exceptional. Some, in societies like Dahomey and Ashanti,
were sacrificed to the powerful royal ancestors. But as a rule
slaves were employed as domestic or household servants. More¬
over, slaves in African societies had certain rights. Among the
30 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Ashanti they could marry free people, even royalty; they could
own property (even other slaves); and they could not be killed
without the king’s permission. In the kingdom of Benin in
coastal Nigeria, slaves or their children were permitted to earn
enough to purchase their freedom. Slaves of the Dahomeans,
the Ashanti, and the Ibo of the Niger Delta commonly
achieved free status through adoption into the families of their
masters. Rulers among the Yoruba and the Muslim Hausa
states of northern Nigeria frequently chose slaves for high offi¬
cial positions. Among the Dahomeans, kings sometimes selected
the son of a favorite slave wife to succeed to the throne.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to engage in the
slave traffic with sub-Saharan Africa. During the Middle Ages,
gold from the Wangara area had reached Europe through Arab
intermediaries trading at Timbuktu, and the origin of European
trade in West African slaves was actually subsidiary to Prince
Henry of Portugal’s attempt to tap the Sudanese gold marts.
Thus, at first the European trade with Africa resembled the
older trans-Saharan traffic; not until the end of the seventeenth
century did slaves become the primary object of interest. In
1441 the first cargo of gold and slaves arrived in Lisbon. By 1482
the Portuguese had explored the coast as far as Angola and
erected a fort at Elmina on what later became known as the
Gold Coast (modern Ghana). By the end of the century Spain
had recognized Portugal’s claim to exclusive trading rights in
Guinea.
The Guinea Coast that presented itself to the Portuguese
slavers and their successors was an inaccessible stretch of land
offering few harbors. The mouths of its navigable rivers were
obstructed by sandbars that proved a perennial problem to the
traders. Between the area around the Senegal and Gambia
Rivers (Senegambia), which was the major source of slaves
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Angola, which
became a leading source by the nineteenth century, lay the
heart of the slave-trading belt during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Europeans divided this belt into four
Black Men in Agrarian America 31
main sections, each named after what was at first its leading
export: the Grain Coast, from Sierra Leone to Cape Palmas,
source of the grains of melegueta pepper; the Ivory Coast,
from Cape Palmas to modern Ghana; the Gold Coast, a stretch
of about 160 miles; and finally the Slave Coast, extending from
the Volta River to the Niger Delta and beyond and including
the coastal areas of modern Dahomey, Togo, and Nigeria.
The Portuguese, like other nations later, conducted a lively
trade with Africa in gold, slaves, pepper, and ivory. In the fif¬
teenth centurv, substantial numbers of Negroes were brought
into both Spain and Portugal. In these two countries Africans
were accorded the protection that the law and the church had
historically provided for slaves. There were no bars to emanci¬
pation or intermarriage, and eventually the Africans’ descen¬
dants were absorbed into the general population. A few
achieved distinction—the most notable was Juan Latino, who
became a Latin professor and humanist at the University of
Granada in the sixteenth century. Negroes, usually as servants,
accompanied many of the Spanish explorers. Estevanico, the
most famous of the Negro explorers, played a major role on the
expedition searching for the Seven Cities of Cibola. Subse¬
quently black people were with the French Jesuit missionaries
in the exploration of Canada.
After the discovery of the New World, the slave trade soon
became a major enterprise. Without the labor supply derived
from Africa the economic development of the Americas would
have been greatly retarded. The sparse Indian population on
the Caribbean islands was enslaved first and died out under the
brutal conditions. The earliest Negro slaves brought to the New
World arrived at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Be¬
cause of the rapid spread of sugar cultivation introduced first in
Brazil, the slave trade grew rapidly. Roughly a century later,
between 1620 and 1650, the English, Dutch, and French all
secured firm footholds in the Caribbean. After the introduction
of sugar cultivation in their colonics during the 1640's, the slave
trade expanded. All three of these northern European powers
32 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

turned to it with zest, seeking to supply their own colonies with

slaves and to encroach upon the Spanish colonial market as
well.
It was the Dutch who first really challenged the Portuguese
monopoly. In 1611 they built a fort on the Gold Coast and
before the middle of the century drove out the Portuguese, who
thereafter confined their operations to Angola. During the
second half of the seventeenth century the Gold Coast became
an arena of intense competition among the European powers.
The peak of the slave trade was reached in the eighteenth
century. By then the major share of the traffic had shifted from
the Gold Coast to the Slave Coast, with England becoming the
leading slaving power.
For two centuries the European powers conducted the traffic
through chartered monopolies. The first English company to
engage seriously in the slave trade was .the Royal Adventurers
into Africa, chartered by the crown in 1660 and reorganized in
1672 as the Royal African Company. The company imported
gold, ivory, and dyewood directly from Africa into England and
purchased slaves for the New World. In 1698, following the
trend among all the slave-trading powers, England ended the
monopoly of the Royal African Company and inaugurated an
era of free competition, which produced a dramatic increase in
the slave trade and brought real wealth to the country. In addi¬
tion to servicing the needs of the English colonies, British ship¬
pers became major suppliers for the colonies of other European
powers, so that during the late eighteenth century, British mer¬
chants, chiefly from Liverpool, were handling roughly half the
European slave traffic.
The dissolution of the Royal African Company's monopoly
was also commercially advantageous to merchants in the En¬
glish mainland colonies. Some of them had engaged in the slave
traffic since early in the seventeenth century. Because the
British companies chartered for the Guinea trade were inter¬
ested mainly in supplying the lucrative sugar-producing West
Indies, rather than in satisfying the lesser demands of the conti¬
nental colonies, throughout the seventeenth century most of
Black Men in Agrarian America 33
the slaves brought to the mainland came from the Caribbean.
With the end of the Royal African Company’s dominance, the
number of slaves imported into the continental colonies in¬
creased sharply. During the last thirty years of the seventeenth
century, the slave population of Virginia grew slowly from
around 2,000 to 6,000. In the first decade after the end of the
monopoly in 1698, 6,369 slaves were brought into the colony. As
the demand for slave labor in the southern continental colonies
grew, it became profitable to bring entire shiploads of blacks
directly from Africa. During the eighteenth century the sources
of slaves for British North America were principally African.
Merchants in all sections of the mainland provinces partici¬
pated in the slave trade, but preeminent were those from the
Massachusetts and Rhode Island seaports. Rhode Island
entered the slave trade much later than Massachusetts, prob¬
ably around the beginning of the eighteenth century. By mid¬
century Newport and Providence surpassed their rivals in
Boston and Salem. From then until the official closing of the
slave trade in 1808, the traffic flourished in Rhode Island and
formed the basis of some of the greatest fortunes in the state.
In Africa itself the commerce in slaves developed into a rela¬
tively complex operation. Because the African rulers valued
their inland monopoly, Europeans were generally confined to the
coast; only in Senegambia did they penetrate far inland to
trade. It was rare for Europeans themselves to engage in raids to
obtain captives. Not that they had any scruples—some of the
earliest traders did in fact participate in raids—but Europeans
found it easier to depend for their supply upon African rulers
and merchants.
European settlements, in the form of forts and sporadically
occupied trading posts known as factories, were commonest in
Senegambia and on the Gold Coast. At both types of establish¬
ments agents bought slaves and held them until the arrival of
one or more slave ships. Along the Grain and Ivory Coasts,
where no forts or factories were established, the Africans used
smoke signals to indicate their readiness to trade. They came
out to the European ships in canoes or, sometimes, waited on
34 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

shore for a party from the ship. Along the Slave Coast the
Africans successfully discouraged European fortifications. Near
its western end was Whydah, where all the principal slaving
nations of Europe maintained representatives. Here the ruler
permitted’ only mud forts and forbade establishing them within
three miles of the sea. In the Bight of Benin and in Calabar,
where European forts and factories were absent, the river estu¬
aries and the numerous mouths of the Niger provided safe
places in which to conduct the traffic directly from the slave
ships.
A slaving ship usually spent several months picking up cap¬
tives on the shores of Africa, stopping first at one place and
then another. The supply was uneven and a vessel might wait
many weeks until the slaves were brought from the interior.
Europeans found that a wide variety of goods was essential for
trading, and since the demand for them differed from place to
place, the prudent trader selected his stock with care. Among
the most important goods used in exchange for slaves were
cowrie shells and cotton cloth obtained from the East India
Company; iron bars; firearms; gunpowder; brass rings, which
were cut into pieces to make bracelets and collars; and liquor.
On the Gold Coast alone 150 items were required; the almost
exclusive dependence of the eighteenth-century Rhode Island
traders on rum was highly unusual.
Warfare was the major source of slaves for the African rulers
and merchants who traded for European goods. The traffic was
originally a by-product of war, but given the insatiable demands
of the European powers and the steady rise in the number of
slaves sent to the New World, a number of scholars have as¬
sumed that by the eighteenth century the trade itself had be¬
come the major cause of military conflict among the West
African states. The most recent scholarship, however, noting
the marked variations over time in the availability of slaves
from any particular area, suggests that enslavement continued
to occur principally as a by-product of wars fought for other
reasons rather than as a result of systematic slave-catching ex¬
peditions. Kidnapping was another significant source; lesser
Black Men in Agrarian America 35
sources included enslavement for debts and crimes. In the Ibo
area, east of the Niger River, slaves were obtained through
oracles, of which the Aro Chukwu was easily the most powerful.
Because political organization did not extend beyond the village
level among the Ibos, the trading settlements of the Aro people,
who had established colonies at river crossings and intersections
along the interior trade routes, became the sites of courts where
individuals and clans sought adjustment of their disputes. The
Chukwu deitv, serving as the highest court of appeal, levied
fines on guilty7 parties, which were paid in slaves. The Ibos
believed that these captives were eaten by the god, though
actuallv thev were sold to the coastal merchants. Where the
J J

coastal rulers did not conduct wars for slaves, merchants who
dealt with Europeans bought slaves for resale at the interior
markets. By whatever means they were obtained, the slaves in¬
tended for overseas trade were tied or fettered together and
often marched hundreds of miles to sea. Along the Lower Niger
River they were bound to the floors of canoes for the voyage
downstream.
When a slave ship arrived it was first necessary to present a
gift (or “dash”) to the local ruler or his officials. Before com¬
mencing to trade with the African merchants, the Europeans
were required to buy the king’s slaves at an inflated price. The
king also levied a tax (or “comey”) on all slaves and goods
obtained from African traders. Once the ruler’s slaves had been
sold, the whites could then bargain with the private traders. If
there were not enough slaves immediately available, the Euro¬
peans often advanced the goods necessary to enable coastal
middlemen to travel to interior slave markets. The European
merchant’s physician carefully examined the slaves in order to
avoid purchasing ill, maimed, or elderly people. In the Niger
Delta and Cross River—at Brass, Bonny, and Calabar—the
slaves were immediately put on board the ship at anchor in the
river estuary. In Whydah, on the other hand, where the trade
was very well organized first by the king of Whydah and later by
the king of Dahomey, who placed the province under a power¬
ful viceroy, the traders were compelled to keep the slaves in the
36 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

king’s barracoons (temporary prisons) until the condition of

the surf permitted transfer to the waiting ships. The king of
course profited handsomely from payments charged for this ser¬
vice. In these barracoons the traders took the precaution of
branding their slaves on the breast with a hot iron to prevent
the king from substituting captives of poor quality.
Slaves thus obtained by the Europeans frequently displayed
overt resistance. Although carefully guarded, they sometimes
jumped overboard in attempts to escape. When not eaten by
sharks, which nearly always surrounded slave ships, they might
deliberately drown themselves if in danger of recapture by the
slaveowners. Some slaves mutinied aboard ship, especially while
the vessel was still anchored off the African shore. For example,
on the Nancy, lying at anchor at New Calabar in 1769 with 132
slaves, the Negroes revolted, attacking several of the crew,
whose members fired upon the slaves, killing six and wounding
others. When Africans onshore heard the gunfire, large num¬
bers of them surrounded the vessel in their canoes. Finding her
poorly manned, they rescued all the slaves and plundered the
ship of everything on board, leaving it a complete wreck. Slave
mutinies were rarer in mid-ocean, yet a number of them oc¬
curred. For example, on the Narborough in 1753, some blacks
who had been given considerable freedom so that they could
help run the ship obtained firearms and massacred all of the
white crew except a few members who were forced to steer the
craft back to Bonny.
By far the worst part of the slave’s journey was the "Middle
Passage” from the African coast to the West Indies or the
American mainland. This voyage generally lasted between forty
and sixty days, and the overcrowded conditions were indescrib¬
able. Most eighteenth-century slave ships had two decks with
the ’tween-deck space reserved for slaves. In a Newport slaver
the average height between decks was three feet ten inches.
Men, women, and children were each placed in separate com¬
partments on the slave deck, the men bound together with iron
ankle fetters.. The slaves were made to lie with their backs on
the deck, the men secured to chains or iron rods attached to the
Black Men in Agrarian America 37
deck, squeezed so tightly together that the space allowed to
each person was about sixteen inches wide and five and a half
feet long. In the Liverpool ships toward the end of the century,
the average height between the decks was five feet two inches.
This permitted even worse crowding, for a shelf extending six to
nine feet from the sides of the ship was placed midway between
the two decks, and both the lower deck and the shelf were
packed tightly with slaves. On the small sloops and schooners
that lacked ’tween decks, the slaves were placed on a temporary
platform of rough boards laid over the barrels in the hold.
There are recorded instances where the space between such a
“deck” and the one above was less than two feet. Most of the
ships used after the trade had been outlawed were of this type,
and during this later period of great risks and greater profits,
slaves were stowed closer than ever, forced to lie on their sides,
back to back, spoon-fashion. Where the space between decks
was two feet or more, the slaves were placed sitting up in rows
or crowded into each other’s laps.
Conditions like these were described by eyewitnesses. Alex¬
ander Falconbridge, an eighteenth-century ship’s surgeon,
wrote:

... In favourable weather they are fed upon deck, but in

bad weather the food is given them below. Numberless quarrels
take place among them during the meals, more especially when
they are put upon short allowance, which frequently happens, if
the passage from the coast of Guinea to the West India islands,
proves of unusual length. . . . Exercise being deemed necessary
for the preservation of their health, they are sometimes obliged
to dance, when the weather will permit their coming on deck.
If they go about it reluctantly, or do not move with agility, they
are flogged. . . . The poor wretches are frequently compelled to
sing also. . . .
The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the negroes dur¬
ing the passage, are scarcely to be enumerated or conceived . . .
the exclusion of the fresh air is among the most intolerable. For
the purpose of admitting this needful refreshment, most of the
ships in the slave trade are provided, between the decks, with five
or six air-ports on each side of the ship. . . . But whenever the
38 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

sea is rough, and the rain heavy, it becomes necessary to shut

these, and every other conveyance by which the air is admitted.
The fresh air being excluded, the negroes [’] rooms very soon grow
intolerably hot. The confined air, rendered noxious by the effluvia
exhaled from the bodies, and by being repeatedly breathed, soon
produces fevers and fluxes, which generally carries off great num¬
bers of them. . . . the floor of the rooms, was so covered with
blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence
of the flux [i.e., dysentery], that it resembled a slaughter-house.
It is not in the power of human imagination to picture to itself
a situation more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves
having fainted, they were carried upon deck, where several of
them died. . . . The surgeon, upon going between decks in the
morning, to examine the situation of the slaves, frequently finds
several dead, and among the men, sometimes a dead and living
negro fastened by their irons together. When this is the case,
they are brought upon the deck, and being laid on the grat¬
ing, the living negro is disengaged, and the dead one thrown
overboard.

The mortality from the bloody flux (dysentery), smallpox,

and other diseases was often considerable. There are cases on
record where whole shiploads, including the entire crew, went
blind from ophthalmia, first contracted by the slaves in their
filthy and crowded conditions. Very sick Negroes were some¬
times thrown overboard, as the underwriters would not pay for
slaves who died on the ship. Although one authority estimates
that, on the average, slave losses en route were about 16 per¬
cent, there were many cases where one half to two thirds of the
slaves on a ship were dead by the time it arrived at the West
Indies.
Given the incomplete and scattered nature of the data, it is
difficult to estimate the total number of slaves brought from
Africa to the New World. Philip Curtin, the first person sys¬
tematically to analyze and synthesize the available evidence,
estimates that between nine and ten million Africans reached
the New World in the three and a half centuries of the trans¬
atlantic slave trade—perhaps 1.5 million before 1700, about six
million in the eighteenth century, and approximately two mil¬
lion in the nineteenth century. Of the total, less than 5 percent
Black Men in Agrarian America 39
were imported into British North America. Thus the United
States received only a minor share of the Africans obtained for
the transatlantic slave trade, the bulk of whom went to Brazil
and the Caribbean. Therefore, the fortunes of the Newport
slave traders rested on the traffic with the West Indies.
Contrarv to popular impression and despite the social disrup¬
tion it caused, the transatlantic trade did not generally lead to a
breakdown in West African social and political organization. In
Angola, it is true, the Portuguese slave trade led to the disinte¬
gration of the extensive Mani-Congo kingdom. Because its ruler
opposed the traffic, the Portuguese turned to his provincial offi¬
cials, who supplied slaves in exchange for firearms that enabled
them to challenge their king’s authority. In West Africa, from
the Gold Coast to the Niger Delta and Old Calabar, the over¬
seas slave traffic encouraged the development of a substantial
mercantile group whose fortunes were based on the slave trade.
Where Europeans found strong despotic kingdoms, and rulers
willing to supply their wants, the trade thrived from the start.
Where these did not exist in West Africa, the slave traffic
called them into being, or, as in the Niger Delta, stimulated the
establishment of oligarchic and monarchical city-states. With
the profits derived from the trade, and more particularly with
the firearms obtained from Europeans in exchange for slaves,
old rulers strengthened their power, and new autocratic king¬
doms, such as Dahomey and Ashanti, arose. The role of fire¬
arms was crucial, fust as the Moroccans had quickly destroyed
the Songhai empire in the sixteenth century because the latter
lacked guns, so the strategically placed societies of the rain
forest and the southern Sudan were able to overpower their
poorly armed neighbors.
It is difficult to ascertain with any degree of precision how
profitable the slave trade was. Complete records are lacking;
profits and losses fluctuated from one voyage to another, de¬
pending on the prices both in Africa and in America and on the
numbers surviving the transatlantic crossing. Recent research
suggests that profits may not have been as great as they were once
believed, but voyages with monetary returns ranging from one
40 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

third to one half or more on the original investment were fre¬

quent. In the late eighteenth century Liverpool profits of 100
percent and more were not uncommon. Not only was the slave
trade profitable in itself, but it was the base upon which the
colonial industry and commerce of European powers rested. In
the plantations of the New World, it supplied labor for culti¬
vating the staple crops of sugar, cotton, tobacco, and indigo.
The slave traffic was an important incentive to English industry
and to agriculture, fishing, and rum manufacture in the north¬
ern colonies on the mainland.
The Middle Passage received its name because it was re¬
garded as the middle leg of the system of triangular trading that
by the eighteenth century became such a prominent feature of
the slave traffic. From England various manufactured prod¬
ucts—chiefly textiles, metal goods, and liquor—were exported
to Africa, where they were exchanged for slaves. From the pro¬
ceeds of slaves sold in the West Indies, sugar was bought and
shipped to England. Each leg of the voyage was a profitable
venture, and the whole business stimulated the shipbuilding,
textile, and metallurgical industries. Colonial merchants also
found the triangular trade exceedingly profitable. New England
rum was exchanged for slaves in Africa, molasses was obtained
with the proceeds in the West Indies, and in turn was manu¬
factured into rum for use in the fur trade with the Indians, for
sailors on the fishing fleets, and for further trade with Africa.
Officially the African slave traffic was outlawed by European
countries during the early nineteenth century, but it actually
persisted illicitly. In 1807 both England and the United States
enacted legislation that the African slave trade would be illegal
effective January 1, 1808. By 1850 other European nations in¬
volved in the traffic had followed suit, and Brazil, the largest
market for African slavers, had joined the list. England, the
world’s leading naval power, was a prime force in obtaining the
cooperation of countries like Spain and Portugal, which per¬
mitted the British Navy the right to search suspicious ships
carrying their flags. The African coastal waters could have been
patrolled with a fair degree of effectiveness if the United States
Black Men in Agrarian America 41
had seriously tried to suppress the trade. The United States,
however, would neither give England the right to search vessels
flying the American flag nor herself dispatch enough ships to
handle the matter. Searches by the United States Navy were
spasmodic, and cases brought to court in the United States were
often lost through legal technicalities because of sympathetic
judges in both the North and South. Consequently, the flag of
the United States became the most desirable one for slave
traders; during the 1850’s nearly all slave ships carried it.
Because slavery in the French West Indies ended during the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, and because England had
outlawed slaverv in her colonies in 1833, the principal markets
for this illicit trade were Brazil and Cuba. It is impossible to
know how many slaves were smuggled into the United States.
According to a recent estimate, perhaps fifty thousand reached
this country between 1808 and 1860. There is evidence that
slaves from Africa were being landed on the Georgia coast in
American vessels as late as 1858 and 1859. Unquestionably it
was United States policy—or lack of it—that largely was respon¬
sible for the continuation of this commerce. Not until 1862,
when the Lincoln Administration signed a treaty giving the
British the right of search and seizure was the trade destroyed.

2
The first Negroes who landed at Jamestown in 1619, probably
in a Dutch warship that had seized them from a Spanish slaver,
did not become slaves but were assimilated into the system of
indentured servitude that existed in the colony. The data are
too meager for a clear picture of the development of black-
white relations in seventeenth-century Virginia, but it appears
that gradually, over the next half century, two interrelated de¬
velopments occurred: the degradation of black men to an in¬
ferior position in society and the emergence of a system of
slaver\'. Fragmentary evidence indicates that by 1640 black ser¬
vants in Virginia occupied a status distinctly subordinate to
white bondsmen. Not until the 1660’s, however, was a rudi-
42 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

mentary slave code enacted. This pattern of events stood in

marked contrast with the situation in the British West Indies,
where, around 1640, under the influence of the Spanish and
Portuguese models, a full-blown system of plantation slavery
swiftly matured.
In Virginia as early as 1630 a white man was sentenced to a
sound whipping for having sexual relations with a black woman.
A decade later a court case involving three runaway servants
suggests that some black people might already have been slaves.
All three received thirty lashes. The two who were white were
sentenced to an additional year of service for their masters and
three years for the colony, but the black was assigned to servi¬
tude for life. In the same year the Virginia House of Burgesses
specifically denied Negroes the right to bear arms. In 1643 it
passed a law declaring that black female servants over sixteen—
but not white servants—were to be included among the tith-
ables. The House also placed limitations on the terms of inden¬
tured servants, specifically omitting Negroes. The next year,
asked to determine the legal status of a particular black servant
who had been sold as “a slave for-ever,” this assembly decided
that he should only "serve as other Christian servants do.” But
clearly he had already served an unusually long period—twenty-
one years. In the 1640’s inventories of estates showed that Ne¬
groes were consistently listed as more valuable than white ser¬
vants. The number of years remaining to be served ordinarily
appeared in the case of whites, but no such notations were
made for blacks. Virginia court cases of the early 1650's indicate
that in selling black servants life servitude was specified, as well
as the fact that their offspring inherited their status.
By the mid-seventeenth century, then, court decisions were
reflecting the existence of slavery. Negroes entering the colony
thereafter lacked indentures, and slavery was limited to people
of African ancestrv. Nevertheless there were anomalies. Some of
the earlier black indentured servants not only gained their free¬
dom but bought Negro servants of their own and acquired
considerable property. For example, Anthony Johnson, who
came to the colony perhaps in 1621, appears to have been free a
Black Men in Agrarian America 43
year or so later and by 1651 imported five servants on whose
headrights he received 250 acres in Northampton County.
Richard Johnson, a carpenter, imported two white servants in
1654, for which he obtained 100 acres. A third black was
granted 550 acres after importing eleven people. Ironically, one
of the earliest decisions holding a Negro bound to life servitude
involved a plaintiff who sued Anthony Johnson in 1654.
Such cases were exceptional. Blacks by this time were cus-
tomarily slaves. But the first law referring to slavery was an act
of 1661, decreeing that if a white servant fled with a black, the
former was required to make up the time missed by the latter.
The very casualness of this rather incidental reference makes it
apparent that Negro slavery had been the custom for some
time. The following year, reversing the English common law
providing that children followed the status of their fathers, the
Virginia House of Burgesses enacted a statute declaring that
children born in the colony would be bond or free according to
the status of their mothers. Even yet, however, some doubt
existed about holding Christians in perpetual bondage, and
legislation settling the matter was passed in 1667. This law
decreed that “baptism doth not alter the condition of the per¬
son as to his bondage or freedom.”
At that time white servants still formed the backbone of the
farm labor force. In 1671 there were two thousand black slaves
in Virginia and six thousand white servants out of a total popu¬
lation of forty thousand. With the development of large-scale
plantation agriculture toward the latter part of the century and
the ending of the Royal African Company’s monopoly of the
slave trade in 1698, Negro slavery rapidly took precedence over
white servitude.
The evolution of Negro servitude in Maryland closely paral¬
leled that of Virginia, but in Carolina, founded later, there was
no such period of uncertainty. Negro slavery was expressly pro¬
vided for in the Fundamental Constitutions of 1669 and from
the beginning was actively encouraged by the proprietors. In
Georgia, founded in 1733, the proprietors first excluded slavery
on what they judged to be sound mercantilist grounds. Im-
44 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

pressed by the example of South Carolina, however, the settlers

clamored for slaves and permission was granted in 1750.
The characteristics of the different staple crops cultivated in
the colonial South influenced the size of farming units and the
concentratiQn of the black population. Tobacco was the staple
crop in the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Virginia and Maryland
and in North Carolina. In South Carolina plantation agricul¬
ture did not really develop until the introduction of rice cultiva¬
tion at the end of the seventeenth century. The evidence
suggests that whites failed in their first attempts at rice cultiva¬
tion. Ironically, it is likely that slaves familiar with its technol¬
ogy in Africa made possible its successful cultivation in
tidewater South Carolina, thus accelerating the rapid expansion
of slavery there in the first part of the eighteenth century. Later,
after the middle of the century, indigo also became a major
crop. After Georgia was opened to slavery, the cultivation of
these two crops quickly spread to that colony. Of necessity, rice
and indigo were concentrated in the low-lying, moist, and hot
Sea Islands and coastal lands. Tobacco could be grown in the
hilly back country and to a considerable extent was cultivated
on small units by white farmers with few or no slaves. On the
other hand, the technology of rice cultivation, with its extensive
irrigation system, promoted large plantations and the use of
slave labor. During the 1780’s, the average size of slaveholdings
in the counties surrounding Charleston, South Carolina, was
about three times the average holding in the principal planta¬
tion counties of Maryland and Virginia. In 1790 the largest
slaveholder in the tobacco colonies, the noted signer of the
Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton,
held 316 chattels, while in the Charleston district one planter
held 695 and five owned over 300 slaves apiece. The black popu¬
lation was chiefly concentrated in the tidewater areas of the
Chesapeake colonies, South Carolina, and Georgia, where the
largest plantations were located. In such counties Negroes in
fact outnumbered whites, although South Carolina was the only
colony where slaves were consistently in the majority through¬
out the eighteenth century.
Black Men in Agrarian America 45
With the increase in the numbers of blacks, the fear of law¬
lessness and insurrection rose, leading to the passage of strin¬
gent slave codes regulating their activity. There were also
sporadic attempts in Virginia and South Carolina to limit the
importation of slaves (efforts often disallowed by the king’s
Privy Council). While the codes varied from colony to colony,
generallv they provided that slaves could not carry arms, own
property', or leave their plantation without a written pass.
Murder, rape, arson, and in some cases robbery, were capital
crimes; common punishments for lesser offenses were maiming,
whipping, or branding. After insurrectionary plots were dis¬
covered in the Charleston area in 1739 and 1740, South Caro¬
lina strengthened its slave code, sharply limiting the assembling
of slaves and prohibiting the sale of liquor to them. The policy
of increasing the severity' of the legal restrictions upon slaves—
and sometimes on free Negroes as well—was almost universally
employed throughout the period of slavery as a response to
servile rebellions.
North of Chesapeake Bay, slave labor was not so economi¬
cally profitable, and slavery never secured as firm a foothold.
New Jersev and New York were both familiar with slavery on a
small scale during the period of Dutch settlement. Indeed the
Dutch West India Company, itself a major slave-trading orga¬
nization, and the Dutch government hoped to stimulate agri¬
culture bv encouraging the importation of slaves into New
Netherlands. Importations increased noticeably under the En¬
glish, but in both these colonies slavery never involved large-
scale plantation agriculture. In New York there was a wide¬
spread distribution of small slaveholders, Negroes forming
about 12 percent of the population during the eighteenth cen¬
tury. In both colonies Negroes worked in a wide variety of
occupations—as farm laborers, domestic servants, miners, and
artisans (ironworkers, carpenters, coopers, tanners, shoemakers,
millers). Although bondage in New Jersey and New York was
far less harsh than in the South, their slave codes were not very
different from those of the tobacco and rice colonies. A slave
revolt of serious proportions in New York City in 1712, and
46 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

hysteria over a possible, but unproved, conspiracy in the same

city in 1741, guaranteed that the codes would be kept as severe
as those in the South.
Although at the end of the eighteenth century the Pennsyl¬
vania Quakers were in the vanguard of the antislavery move¬
ment, certain Quaker merchants had played a significant role in
the slave trade. The institution of African servitude was firmly
rooted in Pennsylvania during most of the colonial period. In
the southern part of the colony, slavery on a small scale devel¬
oped in the early 1700’s and retained its viability there into the
second half of the century, though not for economic reasons.
Rather, the possession of slaves, used chiefly in domestic capac¬
ities, was valued as an aristocratic status symbol. In the colony’s
urban center, Philadelphia, on the other hand, slaves were far
more important economically. Slave importations there reached
a peak during the Seven Years War (1756-63), when the sup¬
ply of indentured servants was cut off and black bondsmen
provided important services as mechanics and artisans. Though
the slave code does not seem to have been too different from
that of other colonies, contemporary reports indicate that
slavery in Pennsylvania was relatively mild and the slaves were
permitted considerable latitude in their activities.
The New England colonies, important though their role was
in the slave trade, valued black labor even less than the middle
colonies. There is evidence of the presence of Negro servitude
in each of the four New England colonies (Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire) by the
middle of the seventeenth century, but by 1700, blacks num¬
bered only about one thousand in a population estimated at
ninety thousand. At no time did Negroes constitute as much as
5 percent of the people in any of these colonies, with the excep¬
tion of Rhode Island, where blacks were recorded in 1749 as
being 11 percent of the population. This was the one New
England colony where something resembling the plantation sys¬
tem of the South developed.
Since New Englanders were in close commercial contact with
the West Indies, Negro servitude there did not go through the
Black Men in Agrarian America 47
lengthy evolutionary process that had been the case in Virginia
and Maryland. The first shipment of West Indian slaves prob-
ablv arrived at Massachusetts Bay in 1638; three years later, the
colonv recognized slavery in the Body of Liberties of 1641. This
law was later adopted bv Plymouth and Connecticut. Perhaps
because of the libertarian spirit of its founder, Roger Williams,
Rhode Island proved to be something of an exception; its law of
1632 prohibited enslavement and limited involuntary servitude
to a period of ten years. But this statute was openly violated and
in 1708 slavery received legal recognition.
New England’s economy was diversified and so was the
Negro’s work. Many black people were employed on small
farms, but in the fertile Narragansett area of Rhode Island, they
were used on the large dairy and cattle-raising estates by the
local landed aristocracy known as the Narragansett planters.
The number of slaves on these farms ranged from five to forty,
and although most of them were in dairying, others raised sheep
and cultivated vegetables or tobacco. New England Negroes
also worked as house servants and coachmen; as laborers in
shipbuilding, lumbering, ironworking, cooperage, distilling, and
other industries; as skilled artisans in blacksmith and carpenter
shops, tanneries, and printing shops; as apprentices to doctors,
and even as physicians themselves.
Slavery in New England was the mildest in the colonies.
Because the Puritan slave code was modeled on the Old Testa¬
ment slave law, it afforded greater recognition to the slaves as
persons and permitted them more legal rights than did slave
codes elsewhere. There were the usual limitations on the slave’s
behavior of course—rules designed as elsewhere to prevent con¬
spiracies and robberies. Slaves were forbidden on the streets at
night after nine; they could not strike a white person. The sale
of liquor to them was prohibited. Unlike the colonies to the
south and except for capital punishment for a limited number
of crimes, punishment was confined to whipping; there was no
maiming, dismemberment, or branding. As property, slaves
were subject to taxation like other goods and chattels; they
could be bought, sold, and inherited. On the other hand,
48 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

masters were specifically forbidden to kill their slaves (though

no master ever appears to have been executed for doing so);
slaves could acquire, hold, and transfer property; they could
offer testimony against whites even in cases in which black
people were not involved (in contrast to the South and New
York, where this was explicitly forbidden); they were entitled
to a jury trial (though they could not serve on juries). Slaves
were expected to obey the sexual standards legally set for
whites. Marriages were duly solemnized and legally recorded in
the same manner as for whites, yet slave families were fre¬
quently broken up through sales and the settlement of wills.
Masters could be as cruel in New England as elsewhere, but
relationships tended to be paternalistic, as in Pennsylvania,
where most slaves were either household retainers or worked
closely with masters in shop and field. Slaves could not vote, of
course, but they held mock elections in each of the New
England colonies at which a black "governor’' was chosen
amid much festivity. Apparently these "governors” exercised
some control over the slaves and appointed "judges” and
"sheriffs” to handle minor violations.
In New England more attention was paid to the slaves’ reli¬
gious conversion and education than in any of the other colo¬
nies. How many became Christian is not known, but these
converts faced the usual contradictions. For example, those who
were considered members of the Congregationalist Church did
not vote in church affairs and sat in a rear section or in the
gallery. Some Negroes were so well trained by their masters that
they managed farms and stores and had charge of ships and
warehouses. Newport Gardner, a slave of Caleb Gardner of
Newport, Rhode Island, received music lessons and soon be¬
came so proficient that he opened a music school and taught
both blacks and whites. A few slaves turned to literary composi¬
tions. The most famous of these was poetess Phillis Wheatley,
purchased as a young girl when she was brought from Africa in
1761 by a mistress who taught her to read and write.
Clearly slavery in New England was not of the same order as
in the South or even in New York and Pennsylvania. The fact
Black Men in Agrarian America 49
that slaves could even sue their masters not only signified a
status superior to that of the slaves farther south but helped
pave the way for emancipation. In the 1760’s and 1770’s a
number of individual black people successfully sued for their
freedom in the Massachusetts courts. Though they uniformly
won these suits, the procedure was slow and expensive. Such
legal decisions applied only to the individuals who brought the
action and therefore left the mass of slaves untouched. Yet
these cases established a pattern, and in 1783, in the noted
Quok Walker case, the state supreme court declared slavery in
Massachusetts unconstitutional.

3
Quok Walker was liberated on the grounds that since the
preamble to the state constitution of 1780 declared that all men
were born free and equal, slavery was illegal. To the Massachu¬
setts Supreme Court, the ideology of the American Revolution
was fundamental law and not an abstraction. Indeed, the Revo¬
lutionary era proved to be, relatively speaking, a pinnacle of
antislavery sentiment and racial egalitarianism.
Negroes themselves, especially in New England, cited the
principles of the Declaration of Independence in requesting an
end to their servitude. In January 1777, a group of Massachu¬
setts slaves petitioned the state legislature, claiming a natural
God-given right to freedom and asserting “that Every Principle
from which Amarica has Acted in the Cours of their unhappy
Difficulties with Great Briton Pleads Stronger than A thousand
arguments in favours of your pet[it]ioners. . . .” During the
Revolutionary War a number of white Americans, especially in
the North, such as John Jay and Abigail Adams, were seriously
concerned with the moral issue involved in slavery. Farther
south, slaveowners like George Washington and Thomas Jeffer¬
son looked forward to its gradual abolition. Only in South Caro¬
lina and Georgia was support for the slavery system undimin¬
ished.
The antislavery and racially egalitarian tendencies of the
Revolutionary era resulted from four converging streams of in-
50 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

fluence. One, of course, was political: the struggle for indepen¬

dence against English tyranny. Another was economic: slavery
in the North had never been especially remunerative anyway,
and in the tobacco counties of Virginia, Maryland, and North
Carolina Atictuating prices and declining fertility of the land
tended to make the plantation regime only marginally profit¬
able.
Antislavery enthusiasm was also fed by two major intellectual
traditions. One was the eighteenth-century European Enlight¬
enment. Rooted in John Locke’s environmentalist psychology
and defense of individualism and revolution, the ideals of the
Enlightenment, with its belief in human liberty, natural rights,
egalitarianism, cosmopolitanism, and human progress, provided
as much justification for antislavery and the cause of the free
Negro as for the Revolution itself. The two leading American
representatives of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Franklin, were both much concerned about the prob¬
lems of slavery and the future of blacks in American society.
The ideals of the Enlightenment coalesced with an older
stream of religious antislavery thinking in America. The earliest
opponents of the slave trade and slavery were a handful of
religious thinkers, chiefiy Quakers. It was primarily the eigh¬
teenth-century Quaker pamphleteers John Woolman and
Anthony Benezet who brought the issues before the public. In
1754-5 the Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Friends decreed
that persons engaged in buying or selling slaves would be ex¬
pelled. In 1775 they helped to found the first antislavery society
in America, and the following year ruled that all members must
emancipate their slaves. Friends meetings in the tobacco belt
were drawn to the same decision, and even some substantial
slaveholders among them emancipated their slaves rather than
leave the church. The Quakers also exercised considerable infiu-
ence in New England, where, joined by a Puritan stream, the
movement against slavery gained great momentum during the
years prior to the Revolution.
It should be noted that white antislavery men were not nec¬
essarily believers in the psychological equality of the races.
Black Men in Agrarian America 51
Many actually accepted the notion of black inferiority and
advocated colonization, or the expatriation of blacks, as the only
satisfactory solution to the race problem. Thomas Jefferson well
illustrated the ambivalences and contradictions of many of even
the most advanced thinkers on the subject. Jefferson, through
inheritance and matrimony, became a large slaveholder, owning
well over two hundred blacks. To Jefferson, slavery was a moral
evil, unjust to Negroes and deleterious to the character of
whites. From his first term in the House of Burgesses he had
displayed a strong interest in facilitating the manumission of
slaves. Although he greatly favored a program of gradual eman¬
cipation, Jefferson personally freed only a few of his own slaves,
and these were mostly closely related to him by ties of kinship.
Moreover, Jefferson did not conceive of the two races living in
the same nation on an equal and harmonious plane. White
prejudice, black remembrance of oppression, and “the real dis¬
tinction which nature has made” would “divide us into parties,
and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in
the extermination of one or the other race.” While not dog¬
matic on the subject of racial differences in ability, he suspected
that blacks might be “inferior to the whites in the endowments
both of mind and body.” Although strong circumstantial evi¬
dence supports the claim made by the children of Jefferson’s
slave Sally Hemings that he was their father, Jefferson himself
expressed fear of the race mixture that he believed would follow
emancipation. Not surprisinglv, therefore, he proposed that
freed Negroes be settled in their own societv in the interior of
the continent, far removed from the whites. On the other hand,
he was interested in evidence of Negro ability. In 1791, as Sec¬
retary' of State, he appointed the black mathematician and
almanac maker Benjamin Banneker of Maryland to the staff of
the commission that surveyed the site for the national capital.
To Banneker he wrote, “Nobody wishes more than I do to see
such proofs as you exhibit that nature has given to our black
brethren talents equal to those of the other colours of men, and
that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the
degraded condition of their existence both in Africa and
52 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

America/’ But to some others Jefferson took a different line,

voicing a suspicion that much of Banneker’s work had been
produced by a white friend. Until the very end of his life,
Jefferson retained his ambivalent attitudes about Negroes.
The inconsistencies that marked the thinking of Jefferson,
who to this day symbolizes more than any other man the ideal¬
ism of the Revolutionary era, were mirrored in the conduct of
the Revolutionary War itself. Despite the more favorable cli¬
mate, prejudice and discrimination still abounded, as the pol¬
icies about the use of black soldiers demonstrate. All the
colonies had laws excluding Negroes from militia service, but, as
in crises during the French and Indian Wars, in the first battles
of the Revolution in the spring of 1775 these laws were over¬
looked. In fact a number of Massachusetts slaves were freed to
fight in the army. By summer, however, Washington and his
staff ordered the termination of black recruitment, and during
the winter of 1775-6 both the states and the Continental Con¬
gress acted to prohibit their enlistment. The protests of free
Negroes were mostly in vain. The British had no such qualms,
and Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, promised freedom to
slaves who fought alongside the British. Though the Southern
slaveholders were frightened, and though large numbers of Ne¬
groes from Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia did join the
English, recent scholarship has discounted the effect that Dun-
more’s proclamation of 1775 was formerly supposed to have had
in prompting a reversal of American policy regarding the use of
black troops. Beginning in 1777, nevertheless, the manpower
problems compelled state after state—and in 1779 the Conti¬
nental Congress—to reconsider the earlier stand. By the end of
the war, both Congress and most of the states promised that
slaves who enlisted would receive freedom when their military
service was over. Only Georgia and South Carolina, despite
urgent pleading from Congress and the military, prohibited
black enlistments entirely.
Freedom through service in the armed forces was only one of
the fruits Negroes gained from the Revolution. The movement
to emancipate slaves made considerable headway in the North-
Black Men in Agrarian America 53
ern states and the upper South. The antislaver}’ society founded
in Pennsylvania in 1775 was reorganized in 1787 with Benjamin
Franklin named as president. In 1785 antislaver}7 men founded
the New York Societv for Promoting the Manumission of
Slaves, with John Jay as president. By 1792 antislavery societies
existed in each of the states from Massachusetts to Virginia. All
of them attacked the slave trade and most pleaded for the
eventual abolition of slavery. Some, however, agreeing with
Jefferson on the future of the two races in America, advocated
the deportation of free blacks from the United States.
Moreover, Northern states took steps to free their slaves.
State legislatures usually provided for gradual emancipation.
Pennsylvania in 1780 passed a law directing that black people
born after that year were to be free at the age of twenty-eight
and until then were to be treated as apprentices. In 1783, as
pointed out earlier, Massachusetts ended slavery by court de¬
cree. Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784 passed acts of
gradual emancipation, as did New York and New Jersey in 1785
and 1786, though the latter two states did not enact effective
legislation until 1799 and 1804, respectively. In the upper
South, Virginia and North Carolina passed laws encouraging
owners to emancipate their slaves. Thus in 1783 Jefferson per¬
suaded the Virginia legislature to make it lawful for a slave¬
owner by will or other instrument in writing to free his slaves.
Though the law held masters responsible for the support of the
blacks they freed, a wave of manumissions followed. The high-
water mark in antislavery legislation was the Northwest Ordi¬
nance of 1787, which prohibited slavery in the Northwest Ter-
ritorv.
J

In that same year, however, the Constitution was written.

From the point of view of American Negroes, the Constitution,
coming at the close of an era of distinct improvement in their
status, must be regarded as a retrogressive document. During
the debates at the Constitutional Convention, opposition to
slavery and the slave trade was voiced; yet because of the
strength of the slave states, the framers of the Constitution gave
protection of property rights in slaves higher priority than the
54 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

protection of human rights. In three circumlocutory clauses

that avoided the direct mention of slaves or Negroes, the Con¬
stitution clearly recognized and legitimized the existence of
slavery. It provided that for purposes of direct taxes and appor¬
tioning representation in the House of Representatives, each
slave would count as three fifths of a person; it prohibited Con¬
gress from stopping the slave trade before 1808; and it bound
states to assist in returning to their masters fugitive slaves who
had fled across state lines. Six years after the Constitution was
written, Congress passed its first fugitive-slave law to implement
the provisions of this clause, and Eli Whitney invented the
cotton gin. Together the Constitution and the gin were pro¬
phetic symbols of a fateful reversal in the fortunes of black
Americans.

4
The late-eighteenth-century technological revolution in cot¬
ton manufacturing, which marked the opening phases of the
Industrial Revolution in England, also strengthened plantation
slavery in America. Cotton, first domesticated in Africa and an
important textile in the Middle East and India, had been known
to Europe for centuries. But it was the remarkable series of
inventions in the spinning and weaving of cotton and the appli¬
cation of water and, later, steam power to the production of
cotton cloth that sharply lowered the price of cotton textiles
and created a great demand for the raw lint.
Cotton had been grown in the colonies, but serious interest
in its commercial possibilities developed only after the emer¬
gence of the new English textile factories. The barrier to cotton
becoming a major staple crop was the particular variety grown
in the United States; the lint stuck tightly to its fuzzy seeds and
it could be separated only by laborious work. Planters began to
experiment with varieties of West Indian cotton, and in 1790 a
South Carolina planter harvested the first successful crop. This
long-staple "sea-island’7 cotton was of very high quality, in every
way superior to the short-staple upland cotton previously grown
in the United States. Moreover, it had a striking commercial
Black Men in Agrarian America 55
advantage because its seeds could be separated easily from the
lint. But climatic conditions made it possible to grow sea-island
cotton only on the low-lying coast and Sea Islands of South
Carolina and Georgia. Then in 1793 Eh Whitney invented the
cotton gin, a simple device for separating the seeds from the
lint, making the production of the short-staple cotton highly
remunerative.
Although recent research suggests that on the eve of the
invention of the cotton gin plantation slavery, even in the
upper South, was more vigorous than had previously been be¬
lieved, certainly Whitney’s work fostered immeasurably the ex-
traordinarv expansion of the slave system that followed and
fastened it firmly throughout the Southern states. Almost at
once cotton became the staple crop in the Georgia and Carolina
piedmont between the coastal plains and the Appalachians.
Cotton lent itself to cultivation on small farms, though large
plantations were more profitable. Coastal plantation owners
staked out new lands in the piedmont, while yeoman farmers
bought slaves and tried to rise into the large-scale planter class.
After 1800 cotton cultivation spread to North Carolina, south¬
eastern Virginia, and over the mountains into Tennessee. Then
planters realized that the fertile alluvial soils of Mississippi and
Alabama and the bottomlands in Louisiana and Arkansas were
superior to the upland soils, and they streamed southwestward.
Actually the cotton gin had been introduced into the lower
Mississippi Valley in 1795. Under the French, Spanish, and
British, the Gulf Coast and the lower Mississippi Valley had
already developed plantation economies based on the cultiva¬
tion of rice, indigo, tobacco, and Creole cotton—a long-staple
variety originally from Siam. In 1795, the year that Spain ceded
to the United States the territory lying east of the Mississippi
and north of the 31st parallel, the planters of the Natchez area,
anxious to make Creole cotton commercially profitable, eagerly
adopted the cotton gin. About the same time that large-scale
cotton agriculture appeared on the eastern seaboard and in the
Natchez area, another major staple, sugar cane, was introduced
in the delta land of southeastern Louisiana, then owned by
56 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Spain; by 1796 it had proved a definite commercial success. A

decade later there were eighty-one sugar estates, a number of
them the property of refugees from the Haitian Revolution,
who undoubtedly gave sugar production a real stimulus in
Louisiana.
Ironically it was this Haitian Revolution that provided addi¬
tional land for the expansion of slavery in the United States.
The French Revolution of 1789 precipitated an uprising in
Haiti in 1791, and after a bitter struggle the French recognized
the freedom of the slaves. The leader of this revolution was
Toussaint L’Ouverture, who was at the height of his power
when Spain ceded the Louisiana Territory back to France in
1800. Napoleon, envisioning a grand empire in North America,
with Haiti as its base, determined to overthrow the revolution¬
ary government. Toussaint was captured, but this did not de¬
stroy the revolution. When yellow fever and the persistence of
the Haitian black men finally defeated the French armies,
Napoleon gave up his scheme, selling the Louisiana Territory to
the United States in 1803.
In the early years of the nineteenth century there was a
steady growth of both the slave and white populations in the
Mississippi Territory, but down to the War of 1812 the chief
expansion of the cotton economy was in the Carolina-Georgia
piedmont. Thereafter, as small farmers and large planters alike
moved steadily southwestward, they discovered in Alabama and
Mississippi two especially desirable sections for cotton cultiva¬
tion. One was a strip of black soil curving from south-central
Alabama into northeastern Mississippi; from it came the name
“Black Belt,” which originally referred to the color of the soil.
The other, and larger, area embraced an alluvial bottomland on
both sides of the Mississippi from northern Tennessee south to
the Red River. In Louisiana and Arkansas cotton agriculture
was also concentrated in the rich river valleys north of Baton
Rouge. After crossing the Mississippi, the cotton growers ad¬
vanced into Mexico and played a crucial role in the events
leading to the acquisition of Texas. This westward expansion of
slavery and the cotton kingdom provided the principal focus for
Black Men in Agrarian America 57
the sectional political controversies—the Missouri Compromise,
the debate over the acquisition of Texas and the Mexican
War, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and
the Dred Scott decision—that eventually reached a climax in
the Civil War.
Although rice, tobacco, and sugar cane remained important
crops in some sections of the South, cotton was indeed king.
Production rose from 13,000 bales in 1792 to 461,000 in 1817,
over 2 million bales in 1840, and nearly 5 million bales in 1860.
The states from Alabama and Tennessee westward to Texas
produced one sixteenth of this cotton in 1811; they produced
one third in 1820, almost two thirds in 1840, and three fourths
by 1860. Bv midcentury nearly three quarters of the slaves were
involved in cotton agriculture. This rapid expansion of the cot¬
ton kingdom was made possible by two factors: a large supply
of suitable but inexpensive land, and an increasing—though
never sufficient—supply of slaves. Virgin land and slaves were
the most valued possessions of the rapidly advancing cotton
frontier. The speed with which the cotton kingdom spread was
due in part to the planter’s carelessness with the land. When
fertility declined after ten or twenty years, he simply moved to
another plantation, often in an adjoining state. Large planta¬
tions tended to replace small farms in the fertile Black Belt and
alluvial river bottoms. Population statistics demonstrate the
prevalence of large-scale plantations. In Alabama and Missis¬
sippi, slaves formed nearly half the population in the middle of
the century, and among the plantation counties of the South¬
west, as in the coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina, the
proportion of slaves in the population often surpassed 60 and 70
percent.
dlie rise of the cotton kingdom involved an enormous migra¬
tion of slaves in a generally south westward direction. In 1820
the area that was ultimately to include the states of Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas contained
about sixty thousand slaves; by 1860 the region had ten times
that number. Natural increase played its role, but this growth
represented chiefly a vast movement of slaves from the Border
58 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

and Atlantic states to satisfy the insatiable demand of the ex¬

panding cotton kingdom. Many slaves were brought to the
Southwestern states by Eastern planters, who either established
their families on their new estates or operated them as absentee
owners .’Others were moved through the interstate slave trade.
Virginia was the leading exporter of slaves—nearly 300,000
left her boundaries between 1830 and 1860. Maryland was also
an important exporting state during the early nineteenth cen¬
tury. After 1830 the Carolinas and then Kentucky, Tennessee,
and Missouri joined the list. In the 1850’s even Georgia was
included. This geographical shift reflected not only the enor¬
mous and ever-increasing demands for slaves by the Southwest¬
ern states but also the progressive exhaustion of the soil in the
tobacco and older cotton regions. As far back as 1787, it was
openly charged on the floor of the Constitutional Convention
that Virginia’s delegates favored the prohibition of the foreign
slave trade not for humanitarian reasons but because they
wanted the market value of their slaves to rise.
Slaves sold in the interstate trade were largely obtained either
from impecunious planters who disposed of them to pay off a
debt, or from executors of wills settling an estate. Such trans¬
actions sometimes involved hundreds of slaves. In the largest
sale on record from a single owner, the executors of the estate
of James Bond, the biggest cotton planter in Georgia, disposed
of his 566 slaves for a total of over $580,000 in 1860. Pierce
Butler, owner of another great Georgia estate, was forced in
1859 to sell approximately 400 slaves to pay off his debts.
Historians are now in general agreement that the deliberate
breeding of slaves for sale was only rarely practiced. Yet, among
planters everywhere, the prospect of multiplying the value of
slave property through natural increase was eyed with pleasure,
and owners often consciously took steps to encourage it by re¬
warding child-bearing slaves. A slave woman’s proved or antici¬
pated fecundity was universally an important factor in deter¬
mining her market value; advertisements and planters
commonly referred to fertile females as "good breeders.” Some
eminent Virginia citizens openly stated the economics of the
Black Men in Agrarian America 59
matter. As the leading historian of the domestic slave trade,
Frederic Bancroft, has said, slave rearing “became the source of
the largest and often the only regular profit of nearly all slave¬
holding farmers and of many planters in the Upper South.” He
concluded that “next to the great and quick profit of bringing
virgin soil under cultivation, slave-rearing was the surest, most
remunerative and most approved means of increasing agricul¬
tural capital. It was advised and practised bv the wisest rural
slaveowners.”
Usually planters who encouraged the natural increase of their
slaves sincerelv regretted—often for sentimental and moral as
well as economic reasons—the necessity of periodically dispos¬
ing of a valuable part of their “capital,” but it was, of course, an
everyday occurrence. Admittedly it was considered bad form to
separate families, and planters who did so often sold their slaves
secretly or only after first attempting to sell them together
Traders playing up to this desire for respectability, even the
most unscrupulous ones, advertised that they did not split fam¬
ilies. Auction records and manifests of slaves sent to New
Orleans, however, prove that separation of families was the rule
rather than the exception. When families were advertised for
sale, they almost always included only the mother and her
younger children, and often not even all of them. Youngsters of
ten or twelve were generally considered single. Since even
smaller children could be marketed more profitably individually
than in family groups, it was not uncommon for four- or five-
vear-olds to be sold that wav.
j J

Slave traders ranged from itinerants, who scoured the rural

counties of the Border States, to large-scale entrepreneurs oper¬
ating their businesses even in the most fashionable hotels on
the main thoroughfares of the principal cities. The largest and
most successful had interstate operations. Franklin & Armfield
owned three vessels, which made fortnightly voyages between
New Orleans and Alexandria, Virginia, during the trading sea¬
son. Bolton, Dickens & Company, the largest slave traders in
Memphis during the early 1850’s, had branch offices in Lexing¬
ton, Kentucky, and St. Louis and Vicksburg. Slave traders
60 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

might be "commission agents/' or "auctioneers/' who sold for

planters on a commission basis of usually 2.5 percent, or they
might privately engage in buying slaves for speculation and re-
sale. Commonly a slave trader did both. Frequently auctioneers
and coirimission merchants were also agents for those who
wished to hire out their slaves, a practice universal throughout
the South. The more successful resident traders in a city oper¬
ated slave prisons housing their own slaves and those of other
traders as well. Slaves might make the journey to the markets of
the Deep South by ship or, in the 1850's, by train, but the chief
method of transporting them was overland on foot. Travelers
reported seeing coffles of up to two hundred and even more,
the men shackled together, marching across the countryside,
and it was said that such groups could cover about twenty-five
miles a day.
All the Southern states enacted elaborate slave codes, care¬
fully defining the status of the bondsmen and enforcing their
subordination in the social order. Fundamentally these codes
were much alike, partly because the newer states copied their
laws from the older ones and partly because the nature of the
slave system determined certain types of regulations. In the
years after the Revolutionary War there was a tendency toward
humanizing the slave codes, but the laws became more strin¬
gent during the nineteenth century, particularly in the Deep
South.
Basically slaves were regarded as property and as such had no
rights. They could not be parties in lawsuits, except indirectly
where a free person sued for a slave’s freedom; nor could they
offer testimony in court except against other Negroes. They
could not make contracts to buy or sell goods, and, with some
minor exceptions, property ownership was forbidden. Since
bondsmen could not make contracts, their marriages had no
legal standing. On the other hand, the Southern states carefully
guaranteed the slaveowner's rights in human property. Severe
penalties were set for the theft of slaves, and when a slave was
executed for a capital crime, the state ordinarily compensated
his master. Owners could of course sell or hire out their bonds-
Black Men in Agrarian America 61
men. When used as security for loans, slaves could be seized for
the benefit of creditors. Masters writing their wills could divide
their slaves as they wished, even if it was necessary to separate
families or to sell the slaves to obtain cash for the estate.
Those states where slavery flourished discouraged the manu¬
mission of slaves. "The Border States erected no such barriers,
other than insisting that manumitted slaves must not become
public charges because of age or illness. The states of the upper
South (Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina) insisted that
manumitted slaves must leave their borders. But in the Deep
South legislation on the subject became increasingly severe.
Most outlawed private manumission early in the nineteenth
centurv, the only exceptions being made by special acts of the
legislature for particularly meritorious bondsmen. A master
could still provide in his will that his slaves be sent to a free
state and manumitted, but in the 1840’s and 1850’s even this
practice was prohibited in several states of the Deep South. A
man could always send his slaves out of the state and free them
while he was still alive, but private manumissions became an
increasinglv rare phenomenon in the years before the Civil
War.
A major part of the slave codes in all the Southern states was
the provision for control and discipline. Slaves were not per¬
mitted to leave plantations without permission, and any white
person finding a slave “at large’’ without a pass could take him
to the authorities. If a slave forged a pass or free papers he was
guilty of a felony. Except for a few places, bondsmen were not
legally permitted to hire out their own time or to live by them¬
selves. Slaves were not allowed to possess firearms. They could
not visit whites or free blacks or receive them as visitors. Slaves
could not assemble or hold a meeting unless a white man was
present. A slave could not preach except to the slaves of his own
master and on his master’s premises with whites present. It was
also against the law to teach slaves to read or write or to give
them reading matter. Slaves were not allowed to strike whites
even in self-defense; to do this, or to use insulting language
toward a white man, was a crime. On the other hand, for a
62 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

white man to kill a slave was seldom regarded as murder. Crimi¬

nal codes were more severe on slaves and free Negroes than on
whites. Slaves were subject to the death penalty for rape or
attempted rape of a white woman, murder or attempted mur¬
der, revolt or attempted revolt, poisoning, robbery, and arson—
and, under some circumstances, striking a white person. The
death penalty was usually enforced against slaves only when
whites were the victims.
Slaves, though property, were thus accountable as persons for
their acts. In the colonial period, they had been tried before
special courts consisting of justices of the peace and, in some
states, of slaveholders. During the nineteenth century, most
states provided for jury trials in capital crimes, but still the
accused could not expect fairness. Those convicted were most
often sentenced to a whipping since jail terms or the death
penalty would deprive masters of laborers.
All of the Southern states provided for a patrol system to
guard against unlawful assembly, the secreting of firearms, or
insurrection. All adult white males, whether slaveholders or not,
were required to serve periodically. Since slaveholders preferred
to evade this onerous duty by employing substitutes or paying
fines, the patrols often consisted of poor whites who were jeal¬
ous of the wealthy planters and vented their hostility on black
people. Slaveholders constantly went to court charging that
patrollers had illegally whipped their slaves. The patrol system
was uneven in its implementation; in regions with many slaves
and during periods of actual or rumored insurrection, it was
vigorously enforced. Otherwise the system was operated more
casually.
In addition to holding slaves accountable for their behavior,
Southern slave codes recognized the slaves as persons in certain
other respects. Some codes regulated hours of labor and fined
masters for failing to provide slaves with proper food and
clothes. During the colonial period penalties for killing a slave
were light. Changes occurred after the Revolution and ulti¬
mately all Southern states made malicious killing punishable as
murder. By midcentury branding, ear cropping, and other muti-
Black Men in Agrarian America 63
lations had pretty much disappeared as punishments for slaves,
both at law and in practice. Most codes had come to regard
cruelty as an offense, even if it did not lead to death. In prac¬
tice, however, the courts emasculated the application of these
laws, and convictions for maltreatment of slaves were extremelv
rare. I’his was inevitable, for black people could not testify
against whites, white witnesses were naturally hesitant about
appearing against other whites, and it was almost impossible to
find a white jury that would convict. Tlius, such slight protec¬
tions as the law provided Negroes were, for the most part,
unenforceable.
More important than some of the legal provisions in mitigat¬
ing the severity of the slave code was the fact that the laws were
often ignored. Not only were petty crimes handled directly on
the master’s estate, but even in the more serious offenses, the
owners, who did not wish to lose the labor of a slave even
temporarily, often failed to notify the authorities. Some mas¬
ters, acting out of a sense of paternalism or from a desire to
encourage good morale among their bondsmen, allowed their
slaves to meet together without the presence of whites, to travel
at large without passes, to trade without permits, to hunt with
guns, and to hire out their own time. Nor was it rare for a
master to teach a slave to read and write. A few owners even
permitted their slaves to live independently, allowing them vir¬
tual freedom. Generally, in times when fears of slave revolt
were in abeyance, there tended to be a certain laxity in the
enforcement of the codes, and the paternalism of masters to
favorite slaves led to violations of the strict letter of the law.

5
Despite the decline of slavery in the Northern states, the
slave population in the whole country more than quadrupled
from less than 700,000 in 1790 to about 3,200,000 in 1850 and
then rose to nearly 4 million in 1860. At midcentury about
400,000 of these lived in towns and cities; the majority, about
1,800,000, were cotton producers; the rest mainly raised to¬
bacco, hemp, rice, and sugar cane. During the 1850’s, on the
64 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

southwestern frontier in Texas, the majority of the early cow¬

boys were Negro slaves.
While the great mass of slaves were field hands, others were
engaged in a variety of nonfarming occupations. In addition to
the house’servants and the skilled artisans of the plantations,
there were skilled artisans and mechanics in the towns. Slaves
were also used for many kinds of heavy labor: in the turpentine
industry, in sawmills and quarries, in the coal and salt mines of
Virginia, in the saltpeter mines of the Mammoth Caves in
Kentucky, and in the iron mines and furnaces of Virginia, Ken¬
tucky, and Tennessee. They labored as deckhands and firemen
on riverboats, as dock workers, as laborers on the construction
of canals and railroads. They worked in the tobacco factories of
Virginia, in textile mills from Virginia to Mississippi, in cotton
presses, in tanneries, in shipyards, and in laundries of many
towns.
Although the typical slave was a cotton cultivator, he did not
necessarily work on a large farm or plantation. Nor did the
majority of white Southerners own slaves or plantations. In the
South in 1860 there were only 385,000 slaveholders in a free
population of 1,500,000 families, so that only one quarter of the
Southern whites had a vested interest in preserving the institu¬
tion of slavery. Slaveholding families were concentrated in cer¬
tain states, particularly in the belt from Georgia to Louisiana,
where one third or more families owned slaves. Among them
were a few black slaveowning plantation families, mainly
located in South Carolina and Louisiana. For example, at the
end of the eighteenth century one Negro resident of St. Paul’s
Parish, South Carolina, held about 200 bondsmen. In 1830
members of the Meytoier family in Natchitoches Parish, Louisi¬
ana, owned a total of 212 slaves, Antoine Decuire of Pointe
Coupee Parish possessed 70, and Martin Donatto of Plaque-
mine Brule Parish had 75. In the same year the two largest
Negro slaveholders in South Carolina were listed as owning 84
slaves each, and the leading Negro slaveowner in Virginia,
Benjamin O. Taylor of King George County, had 71. This class
Black Men in Agrarian America 65
of Negro slaveholders, tiny to start with, declined sharply in the
years before the Civil War.
"Faking ownership of twenty slaves as the minimum for mem¬
bership in the planter class, a study of the census data reveals
that the great majority of Southern slaveholders could not be
called planters. In 1860, 88 percent of them held fewer than
twenty slaves, 72 percent held fewer than ten, and nearly 50
percent held fewer than five. Most of those in the planter class
owned between twenty and fiftv slaves, approximately ten thou¬
sand owned fifty or more, and only three thousand persons
owned more than a hundred slaves. Yet the majority of slaves
lived on plantations—over half of them on farms worked by
twenty or more slaves, and a quarter of the slaves lived in units
of fiftv or more. At the other end of the scale, only a quarter
lived on farms worked by fewer than ten slaves. Large units
were more common in the lower South, and most of the large
slaveholdings were concentrated in those areas best suited for
staple crops, such as the alluvial river bottoms with their fertile
soil and ready access to markets. These included the Louisiana
sugar parishes, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, the Natchez region
in Mississippi, the Black Belt of Alabama, and the coastal rice
lands and Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. In some
plantation counties, slaves outnumbered whites by more than
two to one, while in other counties of the South there were very
few slaves and not a single plantation.
The organization of work varied according to the crop and
the size of the farm. Rice planters used the task system, where
individual slaves were held responsible for a given amount of
daily work, which they completed at their own pace. Other
staples were usually cultivated under the gang system, where
slaves worked together until the task was finished. Tobacco
could be grown on small farms better than the other staples.
Sugar cane, which required heavy investments in refining ma-
chinerv, was limited exclusively to large plantations.
On small farms, especially those with a half dozen slaves or
less, there was little or no labor specialization. In the fields the
66 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

master personally directed the slaves’ work. On medium-sized

farms, worked by from ten to twenty slaves, there was a limited
amount of specialization, with perhaps a couple of slaves
trained in manual skills and one or more engaged in domestic
work. On’such a farm the owner did not work in the fields but
confined himself to the business aspects of his enterprise, typi¬
cally delegating the supervision of slaves to his sons or a slave
foreman. Many of these foremen were given considerable re¬
sponsibility in running the farm.
Nearly half the slaves belonged to the 25,000 planters who
owned thirty slaves or more. It was on such large plantations
that the system achieved its highest complexity, specialization,
and efficiency. Practically all plantations of this size had over¬
seers to supervise the work of the slaves or, where the owner
was an absentee, to run the entire operation. Planters constantly
complained of the inefficiency and incompetency of their over¬
seers, and few stayed on the same plantation for more than a
few years. Yet the larger estates found it impossible to do with¬
out them. Overseers were usually white men, but a significant
number were blacks—especially on the Atlantic Coast rice plan¬
tations—and these were highly trusted and successful managers.
Beneath the overseer were typically one or more slave drivers,
men who were part of the system of coercion. They kept order
among the field hands and were authorized to discipline them.
On the larger plantations several drivers were used and were
responsible to a head driver, who acted as a suboverseer. House
servants were a class apart from the field hands. So were skilled
artisans—blacksmiths, carpenters, and others. Some of the plan¬
tations, with very large slave forces, had full-time workers who
drove wagons, cultivated vegetable gardens, tended livestock, or
performed other duties.
Because there was a decline in efficiency of operations when a
plantation had over a hundred slaves, planters with large slave-
holdings usually owned two or more plantations. One Louisiana
owner of seven hundred slaves divided his holdings into six
plantations, with six overseers, two doctors, a general agent, and
a bookkeeper. Absentee ownership was naturally found among
Black Men in Agrarian America 67
large estates such as this. A few, like the Virginia and Carolina
planters who preferred to live on their ancestral estates, owned
plantations great distances away in the Southwest, which they
visited annually but for the most part left to the care of their
overseers. Planters who divided their holdings into several con¬
tiguous or nearby plantations were similarly absent most of the
time, entrusting the major responsibilities to their overseers, as
did urban lawyers and businessmen who were only part-time
planters.
Plantation slaves lived on a subsistence basis. Ordinarily their
living quarters consisted of a single or double row of cabins near
the overseer’s cottage. A minority of masters attempted to pro¬
vide neat, weatherproof cabins, at times with two or three
rooms, a modicum of decent bedding, and perhaps some other
scanty furniture. But most slaves lived in rude, drafty, leaky,
clapboard shacks, with only the crudest furniture. As for cloth¬
ing, a standard winter supply for a man was two shirts of coarse
cotton, two woolen trousers, and a woolen jacket. In the spring
he had two cotton shirts and two cotton trousers. Every year he
received a pair of shoes. The standard food allowance consisted
of hominy and fatback, with a basic weekly ration of a peck of
cornmeal and three or four pounds of salt pork. Some masters
attempted to give their slaves a varied diet and encouraged
them to cultivate their own gardens. Recent research, stressing
the way in which slaves supplemented their diet by hunting,
fishing, and raising yams and sweet potatoes, suggests that the
bondsmen’s food supply was not as skimpy as most scholars
previously believed.
The plantation way of life evolved a complex and often
subtle system of discipline over the slave population. Treatment
varied widely, from the paternalism of some slaveholders to the
sadistic cruelty of others. Acts of disobedience were most com¬
monly punished by flogging, and few adult slaves ever com¬
pletely escaped the whip. Slaveowners who habitually used
severe physical chastisement were common enough. Just about
every farmer believed that slaves responded only to firm treat¬
ment and at least periodic whippings. Brutality was more fre-
68 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

quent on the large plantations, particularly those in the more

newly developed states of the Deep South. A few slaveholders
built their own jails; others used public jails—but incarceration
penalized the master as well as the slave. Chains and irons were
employed to control runaways, and a strong deterrent was the
threat of sale to the Deep South cotton and sugar plantations.
In addition, there were several forms of indirect controls.
Slaves worked long hours—well into darkness during busy sea¬
sons, especially at harvest time—and it was necessary to reward
and cajole as well as to threaten in order to get the work done.
Work was stopped on Sundays and sometimes all or part of
Saturday, and slaves could look forward to holidays, such as
Good Friday, Independence Day, “laying-by time” after the
harvest, and Christmas. On these occasions passes were granted
freely by many masters. Christmas, particularly, was a time of
celebration, slaves often being allowed considerable freedom
and even the use of liquor. Some masters distributed gifts at the
end of the year or compensated slaves with money for perform¬
ing extra work or allowed them to hire out their own time.
Denial of weekend passes, work on Saturdays and Sundays, and
confiscation of crops in truck patches were some of the milder
punishments owners used.
Other indirect controls were implicit in the social stratifica¬
tion system of the plantation. Because of their privileged posi¬
tions, slave overseers, foremen, artisans, and domestic servants
showed considerable loyalty to the planters. The identification
between such slaves and their owners was sometimes so com¬
plete that in a number of instances they acted as informers
concerning impending slave revolts. Moreover, despite the fre¬
quency with which masters broke up slave families through
sales and the settlement of estates, they encouraged stable mari¬
tal and family relationships among their bondsmen, since these
improved morale and discouraged running away. Finally, mas¬
ters employed religion as a form of control over the slaves. After
it was understood that baptism did not confer freedom and that
the Southern wings of the Methodist and Baptist Churches had
no intention of applying their egalitarian concepts to the tern-
Black Men in Agrarian America 69
poral status of the slaves, many planters saw advantages in hav¬
ing slaves attend religious services. Some owners even built
chapels on their plantations. Of course, such planter-sponsored
religious observances emphasized the otherworldly aspects of
Christianity, rather than the impulse toward social justice in the
Judaic-Christian tradition, and promised salvation to those who
obeyed their masters. From the masters’ perspective, therefore,
Christianity functioned as an anodvne to help slaves accept
their lot in this world. In fact, during the decade preceding the
Civil War, white missionaries were more active among the
slaves than ever before.
Historians have long engaged in a debate as to how harsh
Southern servitude was. Many of the first generation of post-
Civil War historians viewed the system as oppressive and cruel.
This interpretation was developed further by the school of
black historians that emerged with the Association for the
Study of Negro Life and History, founded by Carter G. Wood-
son in 1915. By then, however, a Southern white perspective on
slavery was moving into the ascendancy among the majority of
white historians. U. B. Phillips, a Southerner writing early in
the twentieth century who did the first detailed research into
the plantation system, pictured United States slavery as an
essentially benevolent, paternalistic institution that functioned
as a civilizing force for savage Africans. A generation later, in
the 1940's and 1950's, John Hope Franklin and Kenneth
Stampp reversed this picture. Stampp in particular painstak¬
ingly went over the ground traversed bv Phillips and, on the
basis of a fresh and more comprehensive evaluation of the evi¬
dence, systematically contradicted all of Phillips’s major con¬
clusions.
Over the past decade and a half there has been an increasing
effort to understand the nature of United States slavery by
placing it in the broader context of New World slavery and
comparing it with the institution as it developed in Latin
American countries. In large part this comparative thrust
stemmed from an attempt to understand how it was that de¬
spite the ubiquitousness of slavery as an institution in the
70 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Americas, the postemancipation era in the Latin American

countries proved to be one of relative egalitarianism in compari¬
son with the racist patterns that evolved in the United States. It
was Frank Tannenbaum who, nearly a generation ago—in a
slim volume that for a decade was pretty much ignored by
students of United States slavery—first suggested that the roots
of this difference in race relations lay in fundamental differences
between slavery in the United States and that which developed
in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World.
Developed further and given wide currency by Stanley Elkins in
his controversial Slavery, published in 1959, the Tannenbaum-
Elkins thesis, as it came to be known, maintained that the slave
system of the Latin American countries was markedly less op¬
pressive than that of the United States. Three aspects of Ibe¬
rian culture were offered to account for the difference. First,
there was the tradition stemming from Roman law. The Iberian
Peninsula had known slavery throughout the Middle Ages, and
its slave codes had been rooted in the continuing tradition of
Roman civil law. This juridical tradition in its late phases,
under the influence of Stoic philosophers and jurists, had done
much to mitigate the evils of Roman slavery since it viewed a
slave as a man with certain natural human rights and as equal
spiritually with other men. The protections afforded slaves
under Roman law were retained in the Iberian legal systems.
Second, the Catholic Church, while recognizing the legality of
slavery, insisted upon the essentially human character of slaves,
their spiritual equality before God, and the importance of their
religious and moral training and behavior. Third, the Iberian
culture, with its lack of a middle-class or Protestant ethic
rationalizing economic behavior, may have had some impact
upon the character of Portuguese-Spanish slavery in the New
World. The preoccupation of American slave owners with fi¬
nancial profits was more likely to stifle human impulses.
According to the Tannenbaum-Elkins thesis, it was argued
that while slavery could be and often was as cruel in Latin
American countries as in the United States, the slaves' legal and
social status was quite different. A slave was permitted by law to
Black Men in Agrarian America 71
testify against whites; he could bring his master to court for
excessive cruelty; he could own property and engage in buying
and selling. Slaves could hire themselves out, save the earnings,
and purchase themselves. Nothing stood in the way of manu¬
mitting slaves. In fact, in the absence of evidence to the con¬
trary, a Negro was considered free rather than a slave, and free
Negroes had the rights of other citizens. Moreover, both church
and state interceded to protect the well-being of slaves. In
Brazil and many of the Spanish colonies there was an official
protector of the slaves, and magistrates were directed to make
periodic investigations of the plantations to see how the bonds¬
men were treated. Church officials took a similar interest. In
contrast with the United States, the church required the bap¬
tism and religious training of all slaves and insisted upon the
sanctity of marriage. And the church encouraged manumission
as a good deed in the sight of God. Emancipating slaves was
part of an “honorific tradition,’’ fulfilled on many occasions—
on the birth of a first son, on the marriage of the master’s
children, on a national holiday, and at other festive times. In
the United States the churches acquiesced in the slave system
and religion buttressed it. It took a Civil War to emancipate
the slaves here, and even then they were not really accepted as
citizens. None of the Latin American countries underwent such
a traumatic experience, and in all of them, while discrimination
did not completely disappear, the Negroes were generally ac¬
cepted as part of the body politic.
Although the Tannenbaum-Elkins thesis won wide accep¬
tance, it soon came under increasing attack from a variety of
specialists, chiefly students of Latin American and Caribbean
history and society. Evidence was adduced to demonstrate that
laws were one thing, actual practices another; that relatively
humane codes prepared in Lisbon, Madrid, and Paris were
easily ignored by planters in America; and that colonies with
identical laws might vary widely in practice. More significantly,
it was pointed out, first by students in the behavioral sciences
and then more belatedly by certain historians, that the charac¬
ter of slaveiy varied over time within a country and might vary
72 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

between different parts of the same country. Thus, in Cuba,

slavery prior to the nineteenth century was a relatively mild in¬
stitution, with the provisions of the imperial code operative; but
with the introduction of sugar cane and the rapid development of
intensive cultivation of that staple, slavery there became exceed¬
ingly harsh, characterized by a high death rate and sustained by
enormous human importations from Africa. Northeastern
Brazil, the first area in the New World to develop a sugar-
plantation regime, experienced its harshest slavery very early. By
the nineteenth century, however, slavery in the declining sugar
plantations there assumed a less rigorous, more paternalistic
character. Meanwhile, on the new coffee plantations in south¬
ern Brazil, the institution developed all the cruelty, the over¬
work, and the high death rate that typified slavery at its worst.
Most Caribbean countries had a similar experience. In general,
slavery was harshest in recently opened areas of high agricul¬
tural productivity, where a “boom” psychology of high profits
characterized the owners of large plantations. On the other
hand, the institution tended to be milder on small farms, where
the owners had direct and intimate daily contact with their
bondsmen, or in sections where the land had declined in fertil¬
ity and the planting families valued an aristocratic style of life
over high financial returns. For the United States, the subject is
still highly controversial and under intense investigation, but
there is evidence of similar patterns. Thus very recent scholar¬
ship on early colonial Maryland and South Carolina reveals
extraordinarily high death rates when intensive cultivation of
tobacco and rice was first introduced, suggesting the existence
of gross exploitation and callous disregard for the lives of the
slaves in these periods of expansive slave agriculture. Such a
high death rate does not seem to have accompanied the subse¬
quent rise of the cotton kingdom, a situation not yet fully ex¬
plained and only partly related to the fact that so much of this
expansion came after the closing of the transatlantic slave trade
resulted in high prices for slaves. But unquestionably, even
though they never matched the pattern of the early colonies or
the Caribbean, the new, large-scale plantations in states like
Black Men in Agrarian America 73
Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, where land and labor were
exploited for immediate financial return, usually had harder
work conditions than the more paternalistically organized, older
tidewater plantations.
As the recent assessment of Latin American and Caribbean
slaver}' shifted, United States slavery no longer appeared to be
one of unmitigated oppression, the harshest system in the his¬
tory of the New World. There is evidence that, in the very
period when the Southern slaveholders were tightening the
slave codes so as virtually to prohibit manumission, the diet,
housing, and health of the slaves in the United States was
actually improving.
Accordingly, the standard of living of Southern slaves was con¬
siderably higher than that of their Latin American counterparts
(although in all countries there were enormous variations over
time and between different regions, and even among different
plantations in the same areas). Nothing illustrates this differ¬
ence in living standards more dramatically than the fact pointed
out earlier that, while the United States was a very minor
importer of slaves, by the nineteenth century it had become
the world’s major slave power. In 1825 its one and three-
quarter million slaves represented over a third of all the slaves
in the New World. In the Caribbean and Brazil the death rate
of slaves was so high that during most of their history the slave
populations did not reproduce themselves and were sustained
only bv large imports from Africa. In the United States after
about 1720, however, natural increase rather than importations
was the chief factor accounting for the striking increase in the
slave population. Various factors contributed to this differ¬
ence—including the greater prevalence of virulent diseases in
tropical countries and the very low proportion of women in
slave populations brought directly from Africa—but overall the
conclusion seems warranted that the bondsmen in the United
States were better treated than their Caribbean and Brazilian
counterparts.
Scholars are by no means in agreement about the reasons for
the relatively less oppressive treatment of slaves in the United
74 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

States. There are two major and contradictory points of view on

the matter. On the one hand there is Eugene Genovese, to a
large degree rehabilitating the analysis of U. B. Phillips without
that historian’s racist views. Genovese holds that United States
slavery was essentially a “precapitalist” economic institution,
with a slaveowning class that was paternalistic rather than en¬
gaged in unrestrained exploitation: a class that was guided less
by pecuniary norms than by an aristocratic ethic. The economic
historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, on the other
hand, insist that slavery was a highly rationalized profit-making
system. Planters, desiring to maintain slave morale and assure
high productivity, found it necessary, not only to apply force
but also to keep the slaves in good health and to place great
reliance on both material rewards and opportunities for ad¬
vancement within the slave hierarchy. In fact, Fogel and Enger¬
man maintain that—as in modern industry—there is no neces¬
sary contradiction between paternalism and good old-fashioned
profit making.
Such views of planter paternalism, whether they are based on
the aristocratic mentality of the planter class or on rational
economic calculations, romanticize the institution of slavery.
Still, it is no longer possible to correlate postslavery race rela¬
tions with the character of the slave system. In Latin America
and the Caribbean—even in the British West Indies—white
prejudice and discrimination were by no means absent, but the
slaves’ descendants fared far better than in the United States. A
country like Brazil, for example, has simply lacked an ideology
of racism such as has characterized the United States. Scholars
have explained these differences by referring to demographic
and economic factors. Given the very high ratio of blacks to
whites in both the British West Indies and Latin America, and
given the low proportion of females in the white population
during the early history of these countries, there was much
miscegenation. Children of such unions, as well as their
mothers, were frequently given their freedom. Accordingly, a
significant class of free blacks, mostly of mixed ancestry, devel¬
oped. Because of the relative scarcity of white offspring, these
Black Men in Agrarian America 75
free people of color received substantial advantages from their
white fathers—a situation that occurred far more rarely in the
United States. With whites few in number, the free Negro
population proved essential for carrying out important eco¬
nomic tasks that in the United States were performed by white
artisans and small farmers. Thus the free people of color estab¬
lished a favorable economic foothold. In other words, the evi¬
dence being accumulated bv scholars would suggest that it was
not the nature of the slave system but the status of the emerg¬
ing class of free Negroes during the slave regimes that shaped
postemancipation race relations. It is probably no accident that
the United States, the one slave society that sought to system¬
atically degrade the free Negroes and to place insuperable bar¬
riers in the way of manumission, became the most racist society
in the New World.

6
The earlier historians of slavery were concerned chiefly with
how plantations were run, how slaves were managed and con¬
trolled by their masters, and the degree to which the bondsmen
accepted or rebelled against the regime. These scholars dealt
only to a limited extent with the nature of slave life and culture.
This was partly due to the biases and interests of historians;
until very recently, for example, the only serious work on the
slave family had been that of sociologist E. Franklin Frazier.
Partly it was also due to the nature of the sources—plantation
records and slaveowners’ correspondence that were written from
the perspective of the masters; the observations of Northern
and foreign white visitors whose direct contacts were mostly
with the owners rather than with the slaves; ex-slave autobiog¬
raphies that were treated with skepticism because they were
originally written as a form of antislavery propaganda; inter¬
views with elderly survivors of the slave regime done three
quarters of a century after emancipation and until recently not
readily accessible to scholars; and stories, songs, and other sur¬
viving elements of folk culture, another form of oral tradition
that historians were not inclined to utilize.
76 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

In the past decade or so, however, a veritable revolution has

occurred in the way in which scholars have approached the
bondsman’s life under slavery. The militant black consciousness
that flowered during the 1960’s sensitized scholars to the impor¬
tance of carefully assessing slavery from the slaves’ perspective
and to the likelihood that slaves possessed a rich and distinctive
subculture. Simultaneously, historians were developing a new
interest in the life of the inarticulate masses and new tech¬
niques to study this subject. Students of Southern slavery ex¬
ploited the hitherto largely ignored slave autobiographies and
reminiscences; following the lead of folklorists and anthropolo¬
gists, they developed methods of utilizing oral tradition; and, in
addition, they made increasingly sophisticated use of slave¬
owners’ records.
The result has been the development of a remarkable consen¬
sus on the institutions and culture created by the slaves.
Whether one views Southern servitude as harsh or as paternal¬
istic, the older view that slavery virtually denuded Negroes of a
culture of their own has now been discredited. Instead, it is
universally recognized that, within the slave regime, blacks
demonstrated a striking resiliency and found enough ''social
living space” to develop a community and subculture, which
enabled them to maintain a group identity and to cope with the
oppressive institution in which they found themselves. No¬
where has this new perspective of historians produced more
important results than in analyses of the slave family and slave
religion. White culture and the masters’ actions played a role in
shaping both, it is true, yet it is just as true that what emerged
was as much or even more a product created by the slaves
themselves.
In actual practice, of course, the policies of masters regarding
slave family relations varied widely. Many treated the whole
matter extremely casually, but many others encouraged at least
the formalities of married life. Some carefully supervised their
slaves’ marital affairs, demanding fidelity and discouraging
adultery and divorce. Slaves ordinarily had to secure the permis¬
sion of their master before marrying. Often a simple ceremony
Black Men in Agrarian America 77
was performed, such as jumping over a broomstick in the pres¬
ence of the master; sometimes slaves, particularly skilled artisans
and domestics, were married in the master's house by a slave
parson with festivities following. On the other hand, much in
the slave regime promoted marital and familial instability. Slave
marriages were not recognized by law; slave sales were a fre¬
quent disrupter of family life; the miscegenation that resulted
from the white males’ sexual exploitation of female slaves, while
at times involving stable and affectionate concubinage, also dis¬
couraged slave married life. In addition, evidence points to sig¬
nificant matrifocal tendencies. To the extent that family ties
were respected by slave traders, mothers and young children
were the ones most likely to be sold together. Since both sexes
worked in the field at the same tasks and were supplied with
food, clothing, and shelter by the master, the role of the father
as provider was downgraded. Nor could the father assume the
role of his family’s protector. If his wife or children were beaten
he was unable to do anything about it. The many instances of
miscegenation in which the white father failed to take responsi¬
bility for his offspring also encouraged matrifocal tendencies.
Slaves nonetheless managed to create and sustain a stable
family life, with two-parent male-headed households evidently
the norm. This was especially true on paternalist!cally run
plantations where slave sales were few. There slave families
achieved marked stability and continuity through three or four
generations. Evidence from postemancipation Freedmen’s Bu¬
reau records
%
recentlvJ obtained bv J
Herbert Gutman demon-
strates the universality of slave marriages across the South and
how such marriages typically had been broken not through
voluntary separation—though this did occur—but through
separations forced bv sales and estate settlements. That slaves
themselves often had a good deal to say about their marital life
is revealed bv the many who prevailed upon their masters to
permit them to marrv spouses owned by others, often at a fairlv
considerable distance. Masters who were considerate or desirous
of maintaining good slave morale frequently purchased such a
spouse. Slaveowners often stressed the promiscuous nature of
78 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

slave sex relations. What they failed to perceive was that slaves
developed their own norms in such matters. Though premarital
sex relations were accepted and children born out of wedlock
suffered no indignities, once a slave woman married and settled
down with one man, adultery was severely discountenanced.
Fathers, within the limits of the system, played a paternal
role—customarily meting out discipline and doing what they
could to supplement the family diet by hunting and fishing.
The eagerness with which slaves hastened to legalize their mar¬
riages after the Civil War and sought to reunite with long-
separated families reveals the importance of this institution to
them. It now seems abundantly clear that however much many
masters might have encouraged nuclear, male-headed family life
—to improve slave morale, to discourage running away, or to
satisfy the owners’ own sense of morality—the major thrust for
the institution came from the slaves themselves.
If recent trends in historical scholarship have deemphasized
the extent of matrifocality among slave families and thereby
undermined the argument advanced by Herskovits regarding
African survivals in black family life, the same cannot be said
for the growing literature on slave religion. Yet the connection
between West African culture and the sacred world view of the
black bondsman is something far more subtle and complex than
the distinguished anthropologist ever imagined. As we have
seen, masters and churchmen encouraged the dissemination of
Christian doctrine among the slaves and, aside from “conjur¬
ing,” little in the way of specific Africanisms remained. But
what the slaves created was neither the Christianitv of their
j

masters nor the Christianity their masters intended to create for

them.
Although masters and white missionaries sought to shape and
supervise the slaves’ religious life, the blacks were able to retain
a considerable degree of religious autonomy. This was facili¬
tated by the development of a group of slave preachers and assist¬
ants to white missionaries. It has recently been argued that a
major reason for the success that Baptists and Methodists had
among the slaves was the fact that they, unlike Episcopalians
Black Men in Agrarian America 79
and Presbyterians, encouraged the development of a black clergy.
For their part, the slaves preferred to listen to their own
preachers and to worship separately from the whites. Many
masters gave in to this desire of the slaves and allowed them to
hold their own religious and funeral services. And where mas¬
ters refused permission, slaves would meet together secretly.
These slave religious services and ceremonies had important
consequences. They promoted autonomy from the whites and a
sense of community and solidarity among the blacks. They
lessened the degree of acculturation to the white man’s religion
and encouraged the survival of African cultural traditions. And
they facilitated the process by which slaves reinterpreted the
masters’ religious traditions, selecting those aspects of it that
met their needs, fusing these with certain elements of West
African religion, and thus creating their own Afro-American
sacred world view.
Compared with Latin America, African religion survived in
relatively attenuated form. In Protestant Christianity the slaves
did not find saints whom they could syncretize with African
deities as they did in Catholic countries; and the demography of
the American South, where only rarely did the ratio of slaves to
whites approach the overwhelming proportions found in the
Caribbean, made slaves in the United States considerably more
assimilated than those in the British West Indies. What the
American bondsmen did retain was the life-afhrming quality
that had characterized traditional African religion and that
stood in stark contrast with the sinful view of man that charac¬
terized orthodox Christianity. What the slaves found in—and
adapted from—Protestant Christianity was neither St. Paul’s
view of man’s sinfulness and his belief that masters were to be
obeyed, nor the dour doctrines of predestination that were still
so much in vogue, especially in the South. Rather what the
slaves drew from Protestant Christianity was a stress on the
spiritual equality of all people and a notion of God’s love which
enabled them to maintain both a sense of Christian charity
toward their oppressors and a spirit of love and solidarity with
their fellow bondsmen. Moreover, both the life-affirming qual-
80 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

ity of African religion and the distinctly Christian emphasis

upon spiritual equality provided the slaves with a sense of self¬
esteem that afforded vital psychological protection against the
oppressiveness of the slave regime.
Evidence’ for these observations is suggested in the Negro
spirituals. The psychological defense of the slaves’ self-esteem,
for example, is indicated by the way in which they consistently
pictured themselves as God’s chosen people. It is no accident
that the spirituals stressed so much the Old Testament heroes
like Moses, Joshua, Noah, and Daniel, all of whom God de¬
livered in this world. Actually the slaves’ world view did not
distinguish sharply between the sacred and the secular, between
past and present events in this world and the future in the
other world. What they developed was a sacred world view that
fused the concept of Moses, who led a people to freedom, with
that of Jesus, who redeemed suffering mankind—thus trans¬
forming the promise of individual redemption with the promise
of deliverance as a people in this world.
While this religious world view was not an ideology that
encouraged organized rebellion, it affirmed the human dignity
of the bondsmen in their own eyes, provided the psychological
basis for more quietistic forms of resistance, and, in short, was a
creative adaptation of elements in African and Christian reli¬
gion that enabled the slaves to cope with their hostile environ¬
ment and maintain their own culture and community.
n
/
Modem studies in social psychology have demonstrated that
members of minority groups react in various ways to their sub¬
ordinate status in society. They may hate and rebel against their
oppressors, or they may accept the inferiority assigned them by
the dominant group. They may assert social pride and empha¬
size the value of their own collective action, or they may at¬
tempt to assimilate the dominant group’s culture and strive for
acceptance in it. They may escape into religious otherworldli¬
ness. Or individuals may exhibit a paradoxical and complex
amalgam of these attitudes and reactions.
Black Men in Agrarian America 81
Undoubtedly, many slaves in the United States retreated into
a compensatory otherworldliness. For them, Christianity served
the function it had served so well for the slaves among whom it
first spread in the Roman Empire. Christian doctrines exalted
the meek and the lowly, making a virtue of accepting without
resistance the persecution that the slaves were forced to endure.
Yet, as already seen, religion also played a more complex and
ambiguous role—encouraging belief in the appearance of a de¬
liverer rather than open rebellion and simultaneously promoting
a feeling of Christian charity toward the masters and a sense of
self-worth that could prompt individual slaves on occasion to
defy their masters’ demands. Some who accommodated played
the clown and told the white man what he wanted to hear.
Although the slave elite—house servants, foremen, and skilled
artisans—so valued their privileged status that they often iden¬
tified with the master class, such people were acutely aware of
their marginal position. A high proportion of runaways had
been well treated by their masters; so were, not infrequently,
those who became leaders of slave revolts. There has been some
disagreement over the number of actual slave rebellions in
American history, and this is not surprising given the limita¬
tions of the available evidence. The total of two hundred, iden¬
tified by Herbert Aptheker, has been disputed by other scholars
who claim that the actual number was considerably less. The
most important ones were Gabriel’s Revolt (1800), the Den¬
mark Vesey Conspiracy (1822),* and the Nat Turner Insurrec¬
tion (1831).
The most serious slave insurrection, which occurred in South¬
ampton Countv, Virginia, in the summer of 1831, demonstrates
that the slaves’ religious tradition could on certain occasions
provide the seedbed for armed rebellion. Nat Turner, a thirty-
one-year-old Baptist slave preacher, led a band of rebels who
slew about sixty whites. In the years before the rebellion, the

* One scholar has suggested that the Vesey plot existed only in the
minds of hysterical whites. See Richard C. Wade, “The Vesey Plot: A
Reconsideration/’ Journal of Southern History 30 (May 1964): 143-61.
82 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

mystical Turner, viewing himself as a divine instrument to de¬

liver the race from bondage, had innumerable visions, one of
which he described in this way: “I saw white spirits and black
spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened—the thun¬
der rolled in the heavens, and blood flowed in streams. . .
Later, he became certain that God had instructed him to “arise
and prepare myself, and slay my enemies with their own
weapons. ... It was my object to carry terror and devastation
wherever we went/' On the morning of August 22, armed with
an ax, Turner entered his master’s bedroom and slew him, his
wife, and three others in the household. Thereupon, he and his
followers roamed the countryside and, within a matter of hours,
systematically massacred the whites. He later recollected: “A
general destruction of property and search for money and am¬
munition, always succeeded the murders.” With the arrival of
state and federal troops, more than a hundred slaves were indis¬
criminately slaughtered. At a court trial, thirteen slaves and
three free blacks were convicted and hanged. Turner, who man¬
aged to escape, was captured several weeks later and also
hanged.
It is one thing to delineate the types of responses made by
slaves to their status; it is another to state, with any degree of
precision, in what proportion each of these various reactions
occurred. Historians have disagreed with one another on this
matter, and the subject is now one about which swirls a major
debate in black historiography. U. B. Phillips asserted that
slaves were happy and revolts were few because of the benign,
paternalistic nature of the system and the innately childlike
character of Negroes. The black sociologists Charles S. Johnson
and E. Franklin Frazier rejected the notion of inborn racial
personality differences but also emphasized the accommodating
nature of the Negroes’ adjustment to slavery. Subsequently, his¬
torians like Kenneth Stampp and John Hope Franklin mini¬
mized the slaves’ enforced accommodation and underscored
instead signs of their rebelliousness. They have held that blacks,
like other men, naturally resisted tyranny and oppression. Mel¬
ville Herskovits, insisting that slave revolts would not have oc-
Black Men in Agrarian America 83
curred if blacks had adopted the white man’s views and had lost
their consciousness of group identity along with their African
cultural background, accented the importance of servile rebel¬
lion as reflecting the survival of Africanisms. On the other
hand, the most noted scholar on the subject of slave insurrec¬
tions, Herbert Aptheker, interpreted his data in the framework
of his Communist ideology, holding that oppressed classes are
constantly in revolt. Then, at the close of the 1950’s, Stanley
Elkins turned things completely upside down by asserting that
insurrections, as Phillips had said, were indeed relatively rare in
the United States and accommodation was the rule—not be¬
cause the system was benevolent or paternalistic, but because it
was extremely oppressive. Drawing upon the experiences of in¬
mates in German concentration camps, where there was very
little resistance and where many prisoners retreated into infan¬
tile behavior patterns and even admired their Nazi guards as
respected and revered father figures, Elkins suggested that the
picture of the “happy-go-lucky” slave, the “Sambo stereotype,”
contained an element of truth. He concluded that the develop¬
ment of such a personality type and of such patterns of adjust¬
ment underscore the horror, the dehumanizing quality of
slavery in the United States, especially in the generation before
the Civil War.
Thus, by the 1960’s, the major lines of interpretation regard¬
ing slave resistance and accommodation crisscrossed rather than
paralleled the major lines of interpretation regarding the nature
of the system itself. Scholars like Aptheker, Stampp, Du Bois,
and more recently John W. Blassingame, have stressed slave
resistance, while Elkins, who agreed with them about the insti¬
tution’s oppressiveness, stressed the psychodynamics of accom¬
modation. Conversely, one can reason in two ways from the
view of those who, like Phillips, Genovese, and Fogel and
Engerman, take a more benign view of the system: either that
the bondsmen were so well treated that they were not disposed
to resist, or that the system, by permitting the blacks to main¬
tain their own culture and sense of identity, provided the basis
for resistance and revolt. Historians, viewing the contradictions
84 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

in their work, and attempting to explain why slave revolts were

admittedly rather rare when compared with other slave societies
in the New World, have sought insights in cross-cultural com¬
parisons and have made a number of relevant specialized
studies.
Various reasons have been offered to account for the fact that
slave revolts in the Caribbean and South America were more
frequent and on a larger scale and that runaways were more
successful. For one, geographical factors played their part.
Mountainous terrain, for example, facilitated the cause of the
Haitian rebels under Toussaint L'Ouverture and the creation of
settlements of escaped slaves, or maroons, in Jamaica. Demo¬
graphic patterns have also been cited. In the Caribbean and
South American slaveholding areas, the proportion of blacks to
whites was generally far higher than in the United States, with
blacks commonly forming a majority of the population. (Yet in
the Mississippi Black Belt and the plantations of the Sea
Islands, areas of heavy concentration of slave population, slave
revolts seldom occurred.) Thirdly, given the density of the
black population, African survivals were stronger in Latin
American countries. Clearly these survivals contributed to some
of the rebellions there. Many insurrections in Bahia, Brazil,
originated in Muslim religious groups among slaves from the
Hausa states. The Haitian Revolution spread rapidly as drum
signals transmitted news of the first uprisings from plantation to
plantation, in the same way that messages were sent over long
distances in Africa. Indeed, a number of scholars, building on
Herskovits’s theories, have emphasized the relationship of rebel¬
liousness and organized revolt to African survivals. Yet the most
recent evidence on this is contradictory. A careful investigation
of Gabriel's Revolt in Virginia found that it was the most
highly assimilated slaves who were most rebellious; other
studies, notably those dealing with South Carolina, have been
impressed by the evident importance of African cultural tra¬
ditions.
Elkins's model of a dehumanizing slave system practically
stamping out resistance among slaves of the United States has
Black Men in Agrarian America 85
now been pretty well demolished by historians, but his very
correct position that revolutions do not, after all, originate
among those whom conditions make hopeless still raises impor¬
tant questions. People in such a situation are generally charac¬
terized by passivity, resignation, and accommodation to the
status quo. Some support is given to the Elkins thesis by a
statistical analysis of the geographical distribution of slave re¬
volts, which concludes that they tended to occur near cities or
in rural areas of paternalistic traditions. On the large planta¬
tions of states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, where
conditions were worst, slave revolts were extremely rare. Yet no
insurrections erupted in New England, the section of the coun¬
try where the slave system was least repressive, and there were
few instances of rebellion on the patriarchal plantations of the
Sea Islands in the nineteenth centurv. J
Research on urban
slaver\’ in the United States and on servitude in the Virginia
iron industry suggests that where slavery was most paternalistic
and where masters skillfully manipulated the reward system,
resistance and rebelliousness were likely to be minimal. On the
other hand, a thorough study of conditions in eighteenth-cen¬
tury Virginia indicates that the most highly skilled and best
treated among the plantation slaves were the ones most likely to
rebel and run away. The complexity of the whole question of
the connection between the degree of oppressiveness and slave
insurrections is shown in a painstaking investigation of the 1739
Stono Revolt in South Carolina, which reveals that as the plan¬
tation system in that colony grew more repressive, slaves be¬
came more restive and finally revolted openly. Yet, when as a
result of the rebellion the repression intensified, slave rebel¬
liousness subsided.
In actual practice, slave-master relationships were complex
and ambiguous—with cruelty mixed with sentimental attach¬
ment on the part of the masters, and deep resentment often
mixed with respect and sometimes even affection on the part of
the slaves. Bondsmen resisted the rigors of the slave system as
much as they could on a day-to-day basis, compelling masters to
respect their work rhythms, to permit them time to cultivate
86 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

their own gardens, to allow them to marry spouses belonging to

other masters, and to hold their own religious services. Of
course, there was considerable variation in all these matters, but
a growing body of evidence suggests that slavery operated less
on the ’basis of outright repression than through a subtle and
complex pattern of mutual accommodation between whites and
blacks. Moreover, it is now clear that the old debate over ac¬
commodation and resistance has oversimplified the issues. Slave
resistance and accommodation formed a continuum rather than
a polarity; the same person might be at different times and
under different circumstances both a rebel and an accom-
modator. Essentially, all slaves were both. A faithful house ser¬
vant might easily run away when the situation offered itself; the
most obsequious slave, when pressed too far, might surprise a
master or overseer with an act of violent retaliation, even mur¬
der. Men like Gabriel and Nat Turner had been among the
most fortunate bondsmen but developed a messianic vision of
freeing their fellow slaves.
Clearly, further research is needed to isolate the crucial vari¬
ables associated with servile insurrection. In view of the compli¬
cated nature of human behavior, the uneven character of the
institution of slavery, and the large number of variables in¬
volved-ranging from demographic and geographic factors,
through changes in the harshness of the system, to the degree of
cultural assimilation to white norms—it is not going to be easy
to generalize about the reasons for revolts or the lack of them.
In fact, given the complexities, it is likely that we will find that
not one but several different sets of circumstances provided the
seedbed of resistance and revolt.
 Ill
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities:
Manumission, Alienation, and
Protest

1
While slavery thrived on the plantation, it lan¬
guished in the cities. From the beginning there were significant
differences between urban and rural servitude. Most urban
slaves were domestic servants or unskilled workers, but a high
proportion were skilled artisans. Owners often derived a regular
income from hiring their slaves out by the year or for shorter
periods of time, skilled slaves commanding especially high
wages for their masters. Most of the slaves in the Richmond
ironworks and tobacco factories, where they were used for all
grades of labor from the most menial to the most highly skilled,
were hired bondsmen. Though the law increasingly frowned
upon the practice, some masters continued to encourage a slave

87
88 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

to find his own job and keep a portion of his earnings for
himself.
In the context of city life, slaves lived under fewer restraints
than in the countryside. In theory, slaves were not allowed on
the city streets without passes from their masters. In practice,
however, it was difficult to confine slaves to their quarters in
their masters’ courtyards; it was inconvenient to prepare passes
every time a servant was sent on an errand about the town.
Therefore, the urban slaves had considerable freedom in com¬
ing and going, simply because it was easier for their masters.
Moreover, a number of slaves, especially those hiring out their
own time, were permitted to live out. Their wooden shanties,
ordinarily in the alleys of the commercial areas and on the edge
of town, were inferior physically to the quarters in the master’s
yard, but the added degree of freedom was highly prized. In¬
deed, though the number of urban slaves declined, the number
of those living out rose. Also prized was the right to worship in
black churches, which were usually mixed congregations of free
people and slaves. Even some prominent white ministers de¬
fended the practice of permitting separate religious institutions
for Negroes. All these things allowed much informal socializing,
not infrequently in illicit dramshops run by white saloonkeepers
and, occasionally, by black ones as well. Although the public
feared that such gatherings were seedbeds of revolt and crime,
attempts to circumscribe this sort of activity largely failed. “A
city slave is almost a free citizen,” declared Frederick Douglass,
with pardonable exaggeration, when he compared his experi¬
ences in Baltimore during the 18 30’s with his earlier life on
Maryland’s eastern shore. “He enjoys privileges altogether un¬
known to the whip-driven slave on the plantation.”
In the two decades before the Civil War the size of the
urban slave population was falling, apparently because young
black males were being sold to the countryside, where prices for
prime field hands were rising extravagantly. At the same time,
however, the number of free Negroes increased substantially.
Divided almost equally between the North and South, their
numbers rose from about sixty thousand in 1790 to half a mil-
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 89
lion in 1860. The chief areas of concentration were: tidewater
Virginia and Maryland; the Virginia and North Carolina pied¬
mont, where there were numbers of blacks who owned small
tobacco farms; the Southern coastal cities of Baltimore, Wash¬
ington, Charleston, Mobile, and New Orleans; and the North¬
ern cities of Boston, Cincinnati, New York, and Philadelphia.
Free blacks were the most highly urbanized group in the coun¬
try; in 1860 over a third of those in the South resided in cities,
compared to 15 percent of the Southern whites and 5 percent of
the slaves.
In the Northern states emancipation laws effected the libera¬
tion of all slaves before the middle of the nineteenth century.
The free black population there had been augmented through
natural increase and through the arrival from the South of fugi¬
tives and slaves manumitted and sent North by their Southern
masters.
In the South the free black population was descended largely
from slaves emancipated by their masters because of faithful
personal service or because of close kinship ties. Indeed, a rela¬
tively high proportion of the free Negroes were of mixed racial
ancestry, usually the offspring of free black women cohabiting
with white men, but also, more rarely, of white women cohabit¬
ing with blacks. The number of free blacks grew especially
rapidly at the close of the eighteenth century. Thousands were
emancipated as a result of the antislavery sentiment of the
Revolutionary era; and during the 1790's substantial numbers of
free mulattoes, fleeing the Haitian Revolution, migrated into
Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans. The free black popu¬
lation, especially in the upper South, was further augmented by
runaway slaves who escaped from bondage into the relative
anonymity of the cities. In the last decades of the slave regime,
thousands of superannuated Negroes, who had been put off
Maryland plantations, crowded into Baltimore. A number of
skilled slaves, especially in the cities, purchased freedom by
securing permission to hire themselves out and keep a share of
the earnings. Though after 1830 it became more and more diffi¬
cult—and in most states practically impossible—for slaves to
90 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

obtain freedom legally as a gift from their owners or by self¬

purchase, the number of free blacks in the United States con¬
tinued to grow by the excess of births over deaths.
Given the varied sources of the free blacks, it is not surprising
that there were significant differences between those living in
the upper and the lower South. Mainly because the impulse to
manumission during and after the Revolution was confined to
Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, the free people of
color were heavily concentrated in the upper South. Even after
the Louisiana Purchase brought the substantial free Negro
population of New Orleans into the Union, only 13 percent of
the free blacks resided in the lower South. Moreover, while the
free blacks as a group were, compared to the slaves, dispropor¬
tionately of mixed ancestry, this was truer of the lower South
than of the upper South. The free blacks in the port cities of
the Deep South, descended primarily from people closely re¬
lated to whites and from the Haitian refugees, were predomi¬
nantly light-skinned. In the upper South, where so many of the
group were descended from runaways and from those freed in
the widespread emancipation of the Revolutionary era, the
majority were dark-skinned. Accordingly, it was in towns like
Charleston, Mobile, Savannah, and New Orleans that free
blacks of predominantly white ancestry most clearly developed
into a self-conscious social class.

2
With the possible exception of certain New England states,
the status of free blacks deteriorated in the course of the nine¬
teenth century. At best, the antebellum free people of color
could be described, in John Hope Franklin’s words, as “quasi-
free Negroes.”
In the South, of course, free blacks had never enjoyed many
rights. As time passed, legislation grew more restrictive, and
their status became increasingly similar to that of the slaves.
Throughout the region, laws required that the free Negro carry
on his person a certificate of freedom; without this document
he might be claimed as a slave. Because his movements and
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 91
activities were subjected to surveillance and regulation, many
local jurisdictions demanded that his name be registered with
the police or court authorities. Migration to another Southern
state was severelv restricted, if not completely prohibited, by
the 1830’s. Maryland, Tennessee, and North Carolina, the only
Southern states* that had accorded the franchise to free blacks,
bv 1835 had amended their constitutions to deprive them of the
right to vote. In the courtroom the free black could neither
serve on juries nor give testimony against whites. If convicted,
he was liable to punishment more severe than that imposed on
white men. He might be whipped prior to imprisonment or
even sold into slavery.
The Southern free Negro’s right of assembly was also pro¬
scribed. Evening activities were subject to a curfew in many
parts of the South, and meetings of benevolent societies and
churches frequently required the presence of a respectable
white person. Toward the end of the antebellum period, police
often forbade attendance at lodges, dramatic societies, or chari¬
table organizations. As a potential insurrectionist, the free black
was discouraged from entertaining slaves. Since his motives
were questioned, he could not own a gun or a dog without a
special license. As an additional safeguard, Georgia, Florida,
and Alabama required him to have a white guardian. Able-
bodied blacks not holding steady jobs might find themselves
classed as vagrants and sold into servitude for months or even
years.
In the North, there were differences in attitudes toward the
free blacks between the original states of the Union and those
carved out of the old Northwest Territory. Inequalities before
the law existed in the Northeast, but they were far more per¬
vasive in the Old Northwest, where many white Southerners
had settled and which retained strong commercial links with
the lower Mississippi Valley, especially before the building of
the Erie Canal. Ironically, despite the Northwest Ordinance’s

* In colonial South Carolina, prior to 1721, a few free blacks had oc¬
casionally voted.
92 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

prohibition of slavery, it was in this area that, next to the South,

free Negroes found the most hostile reception.
The Black Laws regulating the behavior of free Negroes in
the Old Northwest were in fact based upon the slave codes of
the Southern states. For a period the legislatures of Illinois and
Indiana evaded the antislavery prohibition of the ordinance by
enacting laws placing Negro youths under long-term inden¬
tures. In modified form the measures perpetuated the practice
of black slavery known in the Northwest Territory when it had
been under French and British rule. The Illinois constitution of
1818 expressly provided for the hiring of slave labor at the
saltworks near Shawneetown. Nowhere in the Old Northwest
or in the newer Western states could blacks exercise the right to
vote or serve on juries. They could not testify in cases involving
whites in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, or California. Most of
the Western states also banned intermarriage. The Northwest¬
ern and Western states attempted to discourage black settlers
by requiring them to register their certificates of freedom at a
county clerk’s office and to present bonds of $500 or $1,000
guaranteeing that they would not disturb the peace or become
public charges. Toward the end of the antebellum period, Illi¬
nois, Indiana, and Oregon excluded black migrants entirely.
Only Ohio, after a long battle, repealed its restrictive immigra¬
tion legislation in 1849. Though such anti-immigration statutes
were only erratically enforced, nevertheless they intimidated
Negroes. In 1829 an attempt to enforce an 1807 law requiring a
$500 bond precipitated a race riot in Cincinnati and a mass
black exodus to Canada.
In the Northeast, none of the states provided by law for
discrimination in the courtroom, and Negro testimony was
admissible in cases involving whites. Social custom, however,
barred blacks from sitting on juries, except in Massachusetts,
where a few Negroes served just prior to the Civil War. Black
men enjoyed the same voting rights as whites in all the original
Northern states for a generation after the American Revolution.
Then, one by one, between 1807 and 1837, five of them—New
Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsyl-
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 93
vania—enacted disfranchisement provisions. The laws of Con¬
necticut and Rhode Island did not disqualify those already on
the rolls, and in Rhode Island the prohibition was repealed in
1842.
The movement for disfranchisement in the Northeast was
usually related to the increasing political power of urban white
workingmen and the enactment of universal white manhood
suffrage. Negroes tended to vote Federalist, and later for the
Federalists’ heirs, the National Republicans and the Whigs.
This black tie with the aristocratic parties was no accident. In
New York, for example, where Negroes had been servants in
the homes of the wealthy, the paternalistic relationship helped
to bind black men to the Federalist Party. More than this,
prominent Federalists like John Jay and Alexander Hamilton
were active in the antislavery movement and in charitable work
among free blacks. Both noblesse oblige and partisan advantage
prompted such men to champion the cause of Negro suffrage.
In opposition was the Democratic Republican Party (by 1828
known as the Democratic Party), representing the interests of
the white working classes, who viewed the blacks as economic
rivals. Their prejudice was reinforced by partisan zeal, since
most blacks voted for what was generally conceived to be the
part}' of privilege. At the New York constitutional convention
of 1821, the Federalists favored a franchise based on property
qualifications without race discrimination, but the Democrats,
who were in the majority, secured the adoption of universal
white manhood suffrage; Negroes could vote only if they owned
a freehold estate worth $250. In Pennsylvania the Democrats
also agitated for the elimination of Negro suffrage. There race
riots and other forms of intimidation practically ended black
voting in Philadelphia even before the 1837-8 state constitu¬
tional convention legalized disfranchisement. In Rhode Island,
those blacks still voting in 1841 were a factor in defeating a new
constitution that provided for universal white manhood suf¬
frage. The following year the victorious conservatives rewarded
their black supporters by repealing the earlier racial restrictions.
rIhe legal restrictions imposed upon blacks by the Northern
94 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

states generated a steady stream of protest and agitation. Con¬

ventions and mass meetings passed resolutions, issued addresses
to the public, and sent petitions to governors and legislatures.
In campaigning for the franchise, for equal treatment in the
courts, for guarantees of civil liberties, and, in the Old North¬
west, for the abolition of the Black Laws, Negroes emphasized
that they were simply asking for basic citizenship rights. First
and foremost, therefore, they appealed to the democratic prin¬
ciples upon which the nation was founded. They advanced
other arguments as well to support their claims. They denied
the existence of innate racial differences, stressed the presence
of a thrifty and industrious class of Negroes, and on occasion
even enumerated at length the substantial property holdings
that free Negroes had acquired under unfavorable conditions.
They returned again and again to the theme that blacks were
native Americans, loyal to the nation that oppressed them.
Fortified with these persuasive arguments, they agitated for the
repeal of the Ohio Black Laws and, after achieving that goal,
attempted to secure the right to vote. They unsuccessfully fought
to stem the tide of disfranchisement in New York and Pennsyl¬
vania and were still propagandizing on this issue in both these
and other states on the eve of the Civil War.
Most of their efforts ended in failure. It is difficult to see how
it could have been otherwise. Evidences of thrift, sobriety, and
economic achievements, and the hortatory phrases of even the
most skillful writers, could scarcely influence a public that was
fundamentally hostile, or at best indifferent, toward them. A
minuscule proportion of the electorate even where enfran¬
chised, possessing only a few champions of equal citizenship
rights among their abolitionist friends, blacks lacked the power
essential to convince whites of the fairness of these often
humble requests. To protest against disfranchisement by refus¬
ing to pay a modest poll tax, as two black retail merchants did
in San Francisco in 1857, was an act both courageous and rare.
In view of their situation, black leaders could do no more than
protest by respectfully petitioning for the redress of their griev¬
ances, and continue to hope that someday moral virtue and the
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 95
acquisition of property would win the respect of their white
fellow citizens.
Besides legal restrictions in voting rights and the courts, there
were other forms of oppression. In Northern cities the most
extreme of these was mob violence. During the 1830’s and
1840’s, riots occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh,
Cincinnati, and other places. Most of these were pogromlike
affairs in which the blacks were so thoroughly terrorized from
the beginning that they failed to fight back. Yet other riots,
such as the Snow Hill riot in Providence in 1831, and the
Cincinnati riots ten years later, were characterized by some de-
gree of Negro retaliatory violence in their early stages. In the
Providence riot, a mob of about one hundred white sailors and
citizens advanced on a small black section; a Negro shot a sailor
dead, and within a half hour a large mob descended upon the
neighborhood, damaging many houses. In the Cincinnati riot, a
pitched battle was fought on the streets; the blacks had enough
guns and ammunition to fire into the mob such a volley that it
was twice repulsed. Only when the mob secured an iron six-
pounder and hauled it to the place of combat and fired on the
Negroes were the latter forced to retreat, permitting the rioters
to hold sway for two days without interference from the au¬
thorities.
More continuous and pervasive were the patterns of segrega¬
tion and employment discrimination. The Jim Crow, or segre¬
gation, laws were largely a product of the late nineteenth
century. Segregation by custom, however, and even occasionally
by statute, was already common during the antebellum period.
In the South segregation developed as one of the devices to
control the urban slaves and free Negroes. Separation in jails
and hospitals was universal. Blacks were widely excluded from
the public parks and burial grounds. They were relegated to the
balconies of theaters and opera houses and barred from hotels
and restaurants. The New Orleans street railway maintained
separate cars for the two races. Sometimes these practices were
codified in law: as early as 1816 New Orleans passed an ordi¬
nance segregating blacks in places of public accommodation.
96 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

The legal codes of Savannah and Charleston excluded free blacks

from public parks. Charleston, Baltimore, and New Orleans were
among the cities legalizing segregated jails and poorhouses.
In the North, black people were not legally segregated in
places of public accommodation, nor, except for schools, in pub¬
licly owned institutions. Custom, however, barred them from
hotels and restaurants, and they were segregated, if not entirely
excluded, from theaters, public lyceums, hospitals, and ceme¬
teries. Even in abolitionist Boston, the black was considered a
pariah in most circles. In 1846 Frederick Douglass wrote Wil¬
liam Lloyd Garrison from Ireland:
I remember, about two years ago, there was in Boston ... a
menagerie [that] I had long desired to see. ... I was met and
told by the doorkeeper, in a harsh and contemptuous tone, “We
don't allow niggers in here." . . . Soon after my arrival in New
Bedford from the South, I had a strong desire to attend the
Lyceum, but was told, “They don’t allow niggers in here!" On
arriving in Boston from an anti-slavery tour, hungry and tired,
I went into an eating house near my friend Mr. Campbell's, to
get some refreshments. I was met by a lad in a white apron, “We
don’t allow niggers in here!" . . . On attempting to take a seat
in the Omnibus [Weymouth], I was told by the driver, (and I
never shall forget his fiendish hate,) “I don’t allow niggers in
here!"
Traveling by public conveyance was difficult for blacks. In
Boston there were signs: "Colored people not allowed to ride
in this omnibus." In New York City blacks were refused street¬
car seats on certain lines, except on a segregated basis. Phila¬
delphia Negroes were restricted to the front platform of these
vehicles. Long-distance travel was even more of a problem.
On stagecoaches blacks usually rode on an outside seat, and
on the early railroads they often occupied filthy accommo¬
dations in a separate car. Steamboats offered the worst condi¬
tions, since blacks were almost invariably excluded from cabins
and required to remain on deck even in cold weather. On the
all-night trip from New York City to Newport, Rhode Island,
they usually had the choice of pacing the deck or sleeping
among cotton bales, horses, sheep, and pigs.
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 97
Southern blacks were unable to protest such treatment in
their section of the country, nor were Negroes of the Old
Northwest in a position to do much. Northeastern blacks did
protest vigorously, though without much success except in
Massachusetts. Some Negroes simply boycotted local omni¬
buses. Others—such as David Ruggles, the New York Under¬
ground Railroad leader—frequently tried to occupy seats
reserved for whites but were usually thrown into the street. On
one occasion in 1841 when Ruggles sought a first-class ticket on
a steamer bound from New Bedford to Nantucket, he was
beaten up bv the ticket seller for refusing to accept deck accom¬
modations.
When the early Massachusetts railroads provided separate
racial accommodations, blacks like Frederick Douglass were
forcibly dragged from the white coaches for defying segregation.
Aided by leading white abolitionists, Negroes petitioned the
legislature for remedial action. In 1842 Charles Lenox Remond,
a noted antislavery lecturer, testified before a legislative com¬
mittee of the Massachusetts House of Representatives: “The
grievances of which we complain, be assured, sir, are not imagi¬
nary, but real—not local, but universal—not occasional, but
continual, every day matter of fact things—and have become, to
the disgrace of our common country, a matter of history. . . .”
He added that a white man’s “social rights” guaranteed free
choice of personal friends but did not justify violating the
Negro’s “civil rights.” Sensing a change in public opinion, the
Massachusetts railroads abolished the separate coach for Ne¬
groes in 1843.
Another method of protest involved legal tests of segregation
practices. In 1854 a black woman sued after being forcibly
ejected from a New York City streetcar. The lawsuit was
handled by the Legal Rights Association, a black group, which
engaged twenty-four-year-old Chester A. Arthur as attorney.
Although she was awarded damages, Negroes continued to face
discrimination on the streetcars. In 1856, when a minister was
removed from a vehicle, the judge upheld the transportation
company on the ground that its business would suffer if Ne-
98 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

groes could sit anywhere they pleased. This decision was inter¬
preted to apply to omnibuses, hotels, and other public facilities.
Five years later a Philadelphia court also ruled in favor of a
transportation company’s right to bar blacks by force if nec¬
essary. •
Recent scholarship has found residential segregation and the
origins of the modern ghetto in the antebellum city. Actually,
before the Civil War urban blacks generally resided in racially
mixed neighborhoods. The homes of the more prosperous free
black artisans and businessmen were often scattered throughout
various parts of the city, singly or in small clusters. There was a
tendency, however, for black people to be concentrated in cer¬
tain neighborhoods or wards, but within close proximity to
whites. In the Southern towns the slaves who “lived out”
tended to move to the edges of the city, where they formed
neighborhoods predominantly, though not exclusively, black. In
Baltimore and Philadelphia there were blacks living in the alleys
between the main streets on which fashionable whites resided.
The most impoverished Negroes were the most segregated,
often in vice districts controlled by white overlords. New York
blacks were heavily concentrated in a few wards, where poor
whites also resided. In Philadelphia the worst slum consisted of
a few densely populated blocks inhabited by incredibly poverty-
stricken blacks living in unheated rooms, garrets, and tiny
wooden shanties lacking even the most modest comforts. In
Boston, Providence, New Haven, Cincinnati, and other seacoast
and river cities, black slum neighborhoods, with names like
“New Guinea,” developed first along the wharves. Later the
Negroes tended to shift to outlying sections known by such
names as “Nigger Hill.” As discrimination increased all over the
North, even the more prosperous colored men were often
drawn to predominantly black neighborhoods.

3
One reaction to the discrimination and segregation imposed
by whites was the formation in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century of free black community institutions. In
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 99
part this development also resulted from the growing number
of free blacks in the urban centers and their tendency to con¬
centrate in certain neighborhoods. Thus racial separation be¬
came even more deeply imbedded in American life.
The institutional organization of the black community took
two forms: the church and the fraternal or mutual-benefit orga¬
nization. Historically, the two were closely interrelated. The
distinction between the sacred and the secular was not closely
drawn. In a period when there were hardly any ordained minis¬
ters, it was natural for the mutual-aid society to perform both
religious and secular functions. Moreover, leaders were few in
the relatively small urban black communities, and where there
were ministers it was natural that they would play an important
role in all black affairs.
In Newport, Rhode Island, the mutual-benefit society pre¬
ceded the church bvJ manv J
vears.
J
The African Union SocietyJ
formed there in 1780 recorded births, marriages, and deaths and
provided for decent burials. The organization also assisted
members in times of distress and apprenticed Negro youths to
skilled artisans. In 1807 it merged with the African Benevolent
Society and established a free school. In 1824, under the aus-
pices of the society, the first black church in Newport was
formed. This pattern was not uncommon, although in some
communities the mutual-benefit society and the school fol¬
lowed, and were outgrowths of, the church and its activities.
The independent church movement stemmed from prejudi¬
cial treatment in white-dominated churches. In Southern and
Northeastern cities, free Negroes were admitted to membership
in white churches but generally were seated in galleries, “nigger
pews,” and “African corners.” Racial distinctions developed in
other aspects of church life, such as separate Sunday-school
classes, communion services, and baptisms. Talented blacks
were sometimes invited to preach and occasionally even to be
the pastor in a white church. One of the most celebrated ex¬
amples is John Chavis of North Carolina, who ministered to a
white Presbyterian congregation until the state prohibited
blacks from preaching in 1831. Generally, however, Negroes
 100 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

were required to assume an inconspicuous demeanor. Deeply

resenting these racial restrictions, they usually responded by at-
* tempting to form their own congregations within the predomi¬
nantly white denominations or to secede completely and
establish independent denominations.
Most Negroes were either Baptists or Methodists. Various
reasons have been offered to explain this fact, but one factor
must have been that originally, during the eighteenth century,
these two churches, appealing to the poor and downtrodden,
accepted both Negroes and whites on a basis of relative equal¬
ity, even in the South. Here and there, blacks ministered to
white or mixed Baptist congregations, and early in the nine¬
teenth century a black Baptist minister was elected first moder¬
ator of the Louisiana Baptist Association, which, except for
himself, was composed of white clergymen. By the 1790’s, how¬
ever, overt discrimination was becoming the more typical pat¬
tern in all of the churches.
The origins of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
Church illustrate Negro response to this change. Its leading
figure and first consecrated bishop was Richard Allen, a former
Maryland slave who had been converted to Methodism. Allen
in turn converted his master, who subsequently permitted Allen
to purchase his freedom. Moving to Philadelphia, Allen became
a circuit preacher and began attending the predominantly white
St. George’s Methodist Church in 1786. Allen gathered a group
of Negroes for prayer meetings at the church. Realizing that
blacks would not be able to achieve positions of true leadership
at St. George’s, he suggested establishing a separate place of
worship. The response of most of the Negroes was not enthusi¬
astic. Allen’s forceful personality was drawing ever larger num¬
bers of blacks to St. George’s, however, much to the annoyance
of the trustees, who stopped his prayer service and ordered
black communicants to sit in the rear of the gallery. When
Allen and another black leader, Absolom Jones, took places
toward the front of the gallery, they were peremptorily directed
to change seats in the midst of their prayers. Accordingly, Allen
and Jones departed from St. George’s with their followers.
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 101
Several months earlier, in April 1787, the two men had al¬
ready founded the Free African Society, a mutual-aid organiza¬
tion which experimented with nondenominational religious
exercises conducted along Quaker lines. The silent prayers and
meditation, however, were satisfying to neither Jones nor Allen,
who soon differed with each other on doctrinal matters. Jones
led his band of followers to establish the first black Episcopal
Church in America while Allen organized the Bethel African
Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794. For many years Allen
retained affiliation with the white Methodists, who ordained
him a deacon in 1799.
Parallel developments were occurring elsewhere. In Balti¬
more, during the late 1780's, after both races had worked side
by side in creating two interracial Methodist Churches, dis¬
criminatory practices evolved. One group of Negroes agreed to
become the “African branch” within the parent body and, with
financial support from the whites, opened the Sharp Street
Church in 1792. For many years whites continued to pay some
of the bills and supply a minister, who gave inadequate atten¬
tion to the needs of the congregation. Another group of black
Methodists in Baltimore seceded completely, for a while meet¬
ing in each other’s homes for religious services. In the early
1800’s they engaged Daniel Coker, a former slave, as their
pastor. Finally, in 1816, representatives of the various African
Methodist churches in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware,
and Maryland met in Philadelphia to form a national body.
Coker was first elected bishop, but before he could be conse¬
crated charges of scandalous behavior were circulated and
Coker withdrew in favor of Richard Allen.
If there were schisms and rivalries within the AME Church
from its very beginning, there were other differences that pre¬
vented all of the Negro Methodists from joining under one
roof. Some Methodists, like the members of the Sharp Street
congregation in Baltimore, preferred to form separate congrega¬
tions within the predominantly white denomination. Mean¬
while, contemporary with the developments in Philadelphia
and Baltimore, a comparable evolution was taking place in New
102 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

York, leading to the organization of the AME Zion Church in

1821. Throughout the antebellum period the New Yorkers and
Philadelphians were rivals for leadership of the free black com¬
munity, and this competition was apparently at the root of the
failure to form a united denomination.
Black Baptists also established their own churches. The two
earliest recorded instances were in Georgia and Virginia during
the Revolutionary War. Virginia blacks were in fact over¬
whelmingly Baptists. Leading Baptist churches in Richmond,
Norfolk, and Petersburg were originally mixed congregations,
and blacks were regularly licensed to preach and ordained as
ministers. In two rural areas during the 1790’s black pastors
briefly presided over white congregations. The First Baptist
Church of Richmond was predominantly black, had Negro
exhorters and assistant pastors to serve its large black member¬
ship, and sponsored black missionaries in Africa. Independent
black churches appeared in Williamsburg in 1781, in Petersburg
around 1800, in Norfolk in 1817, and in Richmond in 1842. In
the latter two cases the whites withdrew and left the blacks in
control of the original church building. Such black Baptist
churches had a high degree of autonomy. However, as a result
of the growth of repressive attitudes among the whites during
the 1830’s, they were required to have white pastors.
In the North, separate black Baptist churches first appeared
between 1805 and 1809 in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
In Philadelphia blacks were disturbed because the predomi¬
nantly white church had employed a succession of Southern
ministers who encouraged the congregation to regard the slavery
issue as a political question outside- the concerns of the church.
The black Baptists were also sensitive to the more frequent
manifestations of race prejudice that accompanied the growth
of the city’s nonwhite population through migration from the
South. In Boston the dissatisfaction of black Baptists led the
Rev. Thomas Paul, a recently ordained clergyman, to establish a
congregation as a gesture to ‘'independence and a more con¬
genial atmosphere.” He also aided a group of New Yorkers whose
reasons for favoring separation included the fact that “the
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 103
colored Methodists and Episcopalians had made similar proposi¬
tions to their respective churches with success. . . For a few
months Paul went to New York and filled the pulpit of what
later became known as the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Other
Baptist congregations followed in Northern and border cities.
Unlike the Methodists, the separate Negro Baptist churches
for years remained tied to the white Baptist conventions. The
first independent black Baptist conferences were the Providence
Baptist Association in Ohio, formed in 1836, and the Wood
River Baptist Association in Illinois, formed in 1838. Not until
1853 was a larger regional body, the Western Colored Baptist
Convention, created, and not until the 1890's was a truly
national Baptist organization of blacks formed.
Both the Negro Methodists and the Negro Baptists encoun¬
tered considerable difficulty in pursuing their work in the
South. Southern fears that gatherings of blacks were hatching
places for rebellion sharply limited the work of the black de¬
nominations. Travel restrictions imposed on free Negroes pre¬
vented several clergymen from the lower South from attending
the founding meeting of the AME Church, and the AME Zion
Church did not establish itself in the South until 1864. The
most noted AME congregation in the South was that organized
in Charleston, South Carolina, by the Rev. Morris Brown. De¬
spite police efforts to discourage the attendance of free blacks
and slaves, membership tripled in the next five years, but the
hysteria surrounding the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy in 1822
forced the closing of the church and Brown’s flight from
Charleston. From then on, the AME denomination was sup¬
pressed in most of the South.
Southern white Baptist ministers and board members closely
supervised the work of the black churches and the “colored
branches” of white congregations. After the Nat Turner Insur¬
rection of 1831, laws were enacted to circumscribe the activities
of black preachers and guarantee white domination of all
churches. The black ministry in North Carolina was completely
silenced. During 1832-3 Virginia and Alabama forbade blacks
to preach except in the presence of trustworthy whites. After
104 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

1834 Georgia required black preachers to secure a certificate

from ordained white ministers as a first step in applying for a
license. Black Baptist congregations in the state continued at
the sufferance of whites and largely became wards of the white
churches. In many Southern communities curfews prevented
black congregations from meeting in the late hours of the eve¬
ning. Clergvmen who accommodated themselves to these restric¬
tions, however, managed to attract large congregations. In
Mobile, when a trusted black preacher was found, the white
elders of the First Baptist Church allowed blacks to leave the
congregation and form the African Baptist Church. In a number
of other communities, whites were installed as the spiritual
leaders of the African Baptist churches. Apparently only in the
upper South—in parts of Maryland, Virginia, and the District
of Columbia—did some black Baptist congregations obtain the
right to fully direct their own affairs.
Among the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, separate black
congregations emerged but retained affiliation with the parent
bodies. The Presbyterian officials sought to avoid conflicts in
ecclesiastical government by providing that when presbyteries
and synods were held, delegates from black churches should
receive equal rights and privileges. In contrast, the Episco¬
palians maintained the attitude of a colonial power dealing with
natives. In Pennsylvania diocesan conferences, Negro churches
were completely denied representation. In 1852 Philadelphia’s
Church of the Crucifixion, a black congregation with white
vestry and clergyman, asked permission to send white delegates
to the Episcopal convention. Since this request might have
given blacks some slight indirect influence, it was denied. In the
New York Episcopal diocese, only delegations from white con¬
gregations participated in church government until shortly be¬
fore the Civil War. Furthermore, Bishop Benjamin T. Onder-
donk refused to admit Negroes as regular students in the
General Theological Seminary. In 1834 Onderdonk forced
Peter Williams, a black clergyman in the diocese, to resign his
office in the newly formed American Anti-Slavery Society. The
bishop suggested that affiliation with abolitionists was un-Chris-
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 105
tian. Despite these discriminatory practices, the Negro upper
class of New York and Pennsylvania tended to affiliate with the
Episcopal Church and, in fact, identified closely with the aristo¬
cratic white Federalist and Episcopal elite, which often took a
paternalistic interest in black affairs. For example, when Bishop
Onderdonk barred Alexander Crummell from the seminary,
William Jay arranged for the young black to secure his training
in Boston and England.
Articulate Negroes protested against church discrimination in
many ways. Sarah Douglass, a Philadelphia teacher, simply
ceased going to Quaker meetings, although her mother regularly
attended, sitting alone on “a whole long bench.” Frederick
Douglass abruptly walked out of a New England Methodist
church because blacks were denied participation in a com¬
munion service until all the white communicants had received
bread and wine. In 1848 Douglass suggested another method of
dramatizing grievances. He urged Negroes to enter white
churches, take the first available seats, and remain limp while
white deacons and clergymen pulled them to the street. The
New York Colored American in 1837 told readers to combat
discrimination by conducting a “stand in”: “Stand in the aisles,
and rather worship God upon your feet, than become a party to
your own degradation. You must shame your oppressors, and
wear out prejudice by this holy policy.”
The most characteristic form of black protest, however, was
the withdrawal from white churches and the formation of their
own congregations. Only a handful of Negroes consistently
opposed this kind of action. One of them was Frederick Doug¬
lass. He solemnly warned blacks that although their segregated
churches were created because of exclusionary practices of
whites, “complexional distinctions” in houses of worship or in
other social institutions were wrong and self-defeating. The race
church, said Douglass, benefited Negro haters by compounding
misunderstandings between blacks and whites and therefore
making racial equality harder to attain.
Like the churches, the mutual-benefit societies, whatever
their possible origins in slavery and ultimately in Africa, helped
106 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

the free blacks adjust to a hostile urban environment. Occupy¬

ing marginal jobs, many black families lacked the financial re¬
sources to cope with periodic crises such as serious illness and
death. In,the late eighteenth century, leaders urged blacks to
avoid reliance on charity and establish beneficial societies. They
believed that the mutual-aid organizations would encourage
thrift, industry, and morality; provide a method for upward
mobility; and prove to whites that blacks were self-respecting
citizens deserving equal treatment before the law. These so¬
cieties also offered members companionship, recreation, recog¬
nition, and prestige, which to some degree compensated for the
racial proscriptions facing them. The most extensive organiza¬
tional development appeared in the North, at least partly be¬
cause Negroes there were allowed greater freedom of move¬
ment.
The earliest recorded black mutual-aid organization was the
Free African Society formed at Philadelphia by Absolom Jones
and Richard Allen in 1787. Through the society, members
pooled their resources to “support one another in sickness, and
for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children.” Shortly
after its founding, the leaders persuaded influential whites like
Dr. Benjamin Rush, a pioneer antislavery leader in Pennsyl¬
vania, to support an application for land in potter s field for use
as a Negro cemetery. Survivors of members received financial
aid, and the Free African Society educated children not ad¬
mitted to a free school. Some attempts were also made to find
apprenticeships for orphans. Members were required to pay one
shilling monthly for distribution to the needy, “provided this
necessity is not brought on them by their own imprudence.”
This middle-class, moralistic tone pervaded other organizational
rules, such as one denying membership to those unwilling to
lead “an orderly and sober life.” Free African societies soon
spread to Newport and Boston.
Benevolent societies multiplied all over the North. By the
1830's in Philadelphia alone there were one hundred organiza¬
tions averaging about seventy-five members each. Many of
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 107
course were connected with churches, and some operated on an
occupational basis, such as the Coachman’s Benevolent and the
Humane Mechanics Societies. The Philadelphia Library Com¬
pany of Colored Persons maintained a well-furnished room with
several hundred volumes and scheduled public debates on
moral as well as literary topics. The Phoenix Society of New
York Citv, whose president was Bishop Christopher Rush, one
of the founders of the AME Zion Church, established a library
and school for Negroes and sought to encourage the study of
morality, literature, and mechanic arts.
In the South blacks also formed mutual-aid associations, al¬
though their activities were limited after white fears of slave
insurrections resulted in laws curtailing the assembling of
blacks. In 1790 a group of light-skinned Charlestonians estab¬
lished the Brown Fellowship Society, specifically providing that
black men were not eligible. The following year the Free Dark
Men of Color organized their own association, which evidently
flourished until after the 1820’s when its activities were cur¬
tailed by the fear of slave insurrections. The Brown Fellowship
Society, however, continued to function because of the connec¬
tions its artisan members maintained with influential whites
and because of the fact that the organization’s bylaws prohib¬
ited discussions at meetings of such controversial issues as
slavery. Baltimore was the Southern city with the largest num¬
ber of benevolent societies. Bv 1835 there were more than
thirty, with membership rolls ranging from 35 to 150. As in
other communities, several associations were organized by
trades, such as calkers, coachmen, and mechanics, with a num¬
ber maintaining savings accounts in local banks. Many other
communities had similar mutual-benefit and burial societies,
which frequently had to operate clandestinely. Even in Wash¬
ington, in 1855, police arrested twenty-four “genteel coloured
men” during a meeting of one of these societies. When appre¬
hended, they had in their possession a Bible, two volumes on
morality, the constitution of their benevolent organization, and
a document indicating their interest in buying the freedom of a
108 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

female slave. The police judge ordered one prisoner, a slave, to

be whipped, four free blacks to be sent to jail, and the others to
be fined.
More elaborate were the secret fraternal orders. With their
rituals, ceremonies, and regalia, they gave members even greater
prestige and also performed some economic functions of mutual
aid. The Masons and Odd Fellows were the two oldest Negro
orders; both obtained their charters from England because of
exclusion from white American orders. The founder of black
Masonry was Prince Hall, a soap maker and a part-time Meth¬
odist preacher and active leader in the Free African Society of
Boston. In 1775 Hall and other Negroes had been initiated into
a military Masonic lodge by British soldiers on duty at Boston.
Hall sought to establish a black lodge but was rebuffed by the
white American Masons. Applying for a warrant from England,
which he received in 1787, he formed an African lodge in Bos¬
ton and was instrumental in bringing Negro Masonry to Phila¬
delphia a decade later, where the organizers were Absolom
Jones, Richard Allen, and James Forten, the wealthy sailmaker.
About the same time a lodge was also founded in Providence,
Rhode Island. The organization spread rapidly throughout the
North and reached California with the Gold Rush in 1849.
Restrictive legislation made it more difficult for the Masons to
organize in the South. Nevertheless, as early as 1825 lodges
thrived in Baltimore and in the District of Columbia. The only
other Southern cities in which the Masons established a foot¬
hold were Louisville and New Orleans, where lodges were orga¬
nized at midcentury.
The Negro Odd Fellows formed their first lodge in the
United States in 1843, shortly after whites rejected the applica¬
tions of the Philomathean Institute of New York and the Phila¬
delphia Library Company and Debating Society. Peter Ogden,
a ship steward who already held an Odd Fellows membership
card from Liverpool, obtained British authorization to found
the Philomathean Lodge in New York. The black Odd Fellows
also organized in neighboring states, though their most flourish-
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 109
ing period did not come until the first part of the twentieth
century.
Between the founding of the Odd Fellows and the start of
the Civil War, a number of other national, quasi-religious, fra¬
ternal orders came into being, but most of them had only lim¬
ited influence until after the Civil War. As in the case of the
smaller mutual-benefit societies, Baltimore spawned a number
of these organizations, including the Galilean Fishermen, the
Nazarites, the Samaritans, and the Seven Wise Men.
While the independent churches and the mutual-benefit
societies contributed to the separation of the races, they were
also refuges from white supremacy. While they functioned in
part as an accommodation to the realities of American race
prejudice and discrimination, they were also an assertion of
black independence and racial self-respect. To blacks whose
ambitions were crushed by caste, they offered opportunities for
self-expression and the development of leadership. Prominent
figures in the churches and fraternal societies were from the
beginning ardent advocates of equal rights and abolition. In the
generation before the Civil War they provided leadership both
in the separate Negro Convention Movement and in the inter¬
racial abolitionist societies. Prior to the rise of militant anti¬
slavery they had also made a significant contribution to black
education.

4
The history of black education before the Civil War can be
divided into three rather distinct, though overlapping, stages:
(1) white philanthropy, (2) black self-help, and (3) public
support. With a few conspicuous exceptions, the general pat¬
tern was alwavs a segregated one. During the eighteenth cen¬
tury, religious organizations such as the Episcopal Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel, which worked in both the
North and the South, and the Society of Friends undertook ru¬
dimentary education of slaves and free Negroes to enable
them to read the Bible. Some antislavery societies formed dur-
110 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

ing the Revolutionary era also offered free Negroes an opportu¬

nity for elementary education. The New York Manumission
Society in 1787 opened the African Free School, which was so
successful,that six additional ones were added in the city by
1834. Ultimately they became part of the public-school system.
Under the auspices of the black churches and mutual-benefit
societies emerging at the end of the eighteenth century, free
blacks maintained their own schools. Even where white philan¬
thropic support was solicited, the initiative came from blacks
themselves. In Newport, Rhode Island, a white Episcopal rector
established a school for blacks in 1763. In 1807, eight years after
the school had closed, the leaders of the black community re¬
opened it through their newly organized African Benevolent
Society. The institution was operated with varying degrees of
success until the city took over. At Boston, Prince Hall led a
group of Negroes in 1787 in petitioning the Massachusetts
General Court for a school, since Negroes ''receive no benefit
from the free schools.” According to some authorities, a few
black children did attend the public schools with whites at the
end of the eighteenth century but most withdrew because of
ridicule and mistreatment. In 1798 some black parents, sup¬
ported by white friends, opened a private school in Prince
Hall's home. Seven years later the institution moved to the
African Meeting House. Not until 1820, however, was a black
public school opened, and within a short time Negroes lost
their right to use the white schools. Early in the nineteenth
century several Philadelphia Negro ministers organized schools
in their churches, and the Bethel AME Church founded the
Society of Free People of Color for Promoting the Instruction
and School Education of Children of African Descent. In 1812
the New York Society of Free People of Color established a
school for orphans.
In the South during the antebellum period, Negro education
never went beyond the second stage. By the beginning of the
nineteenth century a substantial number of free blacks, having
achieved a degree of economic security as mechanics and trades¬
men, were financially underwriting their own schools. In the
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 111
Deep South the Brown Fellowship Society of Charleston as early
as 1790 provided educational facilities as part of its mutual-
welfare program. Two decades later the Minor Society was or¬
ganized to educate indigent and orphaned children. In 1829 one
of the youth trained bv the Minor Society, Daniel Alexander
Payne, opened a school of his own for black children. In New
Orleans the Roman Catholic Church educated some Negroes,
but that city’s prosperous gens de couleur provided financial sup¬
port for several schools of their own, sent their older children to
France for instruction, and in 1840 established the Ecole des
Orphelins Indigents for the education of lower-class youth. As
the Southern race system grew harsher in the course of the nine¬
teenth century, the education of free blacks was restricted,
though never completely eliminated. In 1823 Mississippi forbade
groups of blacks larger than five to study together. In Charleston,
beginning in 1834, it became legally mandatory that a white
person attend each class meeting. Though Payne closed his
school and moved to the North, where he became a distin¬
guished AME bishop, some of the free black schools continued.
In many other parts of the South private classes were sometimes
held, even by philanthropically minded whites, often in violation
of state or city regulations.
In the Border States there was no such interference by public
authorities, but neither did these white educators actively assist
Negro schooling. Ihe first two schools that Negroes established
in Baltimore were in existence by the beginning of the nine¬
teenth century. One was under the auspices of the all-black Sharp
Street Methodist Church and the other was conducted by
Daniel Coker, the pioneer AME minister. Other black churches
were soon operating educational institutions, and during the
1820’s even adults received instruction at night in various sub¬
jects including Latin and French. Some white philanthropists
also contributed time, money, and teachers to supplement these
efforts. The first school for Negroes in Washington was formed
in 1807 by three illiterate black men, two of whom worked in the
navy yard. They constructed a small frame schoolhouse and
employed a white teacher. Beginning with the educational insti-
112 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

tution opened in 1818 by the Resolute Beneficial Society,

Washington’s blacks were not without at least one well-
administered school, and in their efforts they obtained the
cooperatiop of certain dedicated whites as well. Not until 1862
did the municipal authorities undertake to create schools for
blacks.
In the North free public education for all white youth was
the rule by the 1830’s, but the products of Horace Mann’s
famous crusade for the common school seldom included blacks.
In Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, Negroes received no
public-school funds until the middle of the nineteenth century,
and in Illinois and Indiana not until the eve of the Civil War.
Even where schooling was provided for Negroes, it was gen¬
erally separate and unequal. Segregation was simply the custom
in most places, but in some states it was legislated. A New York
statute specifically gave school boards the option of establishing
segregated institutions. Pennsylvania and Ohio required sepa¬
rate schools wherever the number of black pupils exceeded
twenty. Where blacks attended integrated schools, they usually
found themselves placed in special seats and subjected to other
indignities. Segregated institutions ordinarily operated on as
skimpy a budget as possible. An 1859 New York Tribune edi¬
torial noted that 'The school houses for the whites are in situa¬
tions where the price of rents is high, and on the buildings
themselves no expenditure is spared to make them commodious
and elegant. . . . The schools for the blacks, on the contrary,
are nearly all, if not all, old buildings, generally in filthy and
degraded neighborhoods, dark, damp, small, and cheerless, safe
neither for the morals nor the health of those who are com¬
pelled to go to them, if they go anywhere, and calculated rather
to repel than to attract them.” In city after city, Rochester,
Philadelphia, Hartford, and New Haven, the same gloomy pic¬
ture was evident in segregated schools—overcrowding and lim¬
ited supplies and equipment.
The tactics that Northern blacks employed in dealing with
public-school discrimination in the generation before the Civil
War varied with the conditions in local communities. During
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 113
the years in which Illinois and Ohio refused to provide for black
youth the educational opportunities offered to white children,
blacks raised money among themselves and opened schools that
supplemented those financed by the white abolitionists. At the
same time black state conventions appealed to the legislatures
to provide public education for members of the race. In certain
cities, like Rochester and Hartford, where Negro children were
insulted in the mixed public schools, black citizens successfully
appealed for separate schools during the 1830’s. Thus a segregated
school system might be inaugurated by the white authorities or
might be requested by blacks because it would be preferable to
no schools at all or to a mixed system where black children were
mistreated. In either case, once a separate system was intro¬
duced, blacks petitioned for greater financial support. Their
complaints sometimes led to school improvements. For ex¬
ample, a memorial from Hartford blacks in 1846 resulted in the
erection of a new building. New York Negroes, led by aboli¬
tionist Charles B. Rav, formed a Society for the Promotion of
Education Among Colored Citizens, which in 1857 submitted a
detailed analysis of the “caste” schools in the community.
Subsequently one institution was renovated and another con¬
structed to replace a school that had been torn down.
Many blacks worked to secure adequate training for their
children but accepted separate schools as a necessary evil.
Others insisted on a direct, frontal attack on the system of
segregation. Black newspapers and conventions constantly agi¬
tated on the issue, and numerous petitions were sent to the
public authorities appealing for an end to the discrimination.
Robert Purvis, of Philadelphia, refused to pay the school tax in
1853, and publicly announced that school segregation violated
“my rights as a citizen, and my feelings as a man.” During the
1850’s Frederick Douglass led a successful attack against the
separate school system in Rochester.
Probably the most notable desegregation campaign occurred
in Boston during the 1840’s and 1850’s. By then, integrated
schools existed in many Massachusetts communities, among
them Cambridge, New Bedford, Worcester, and Lowell. In the
114 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

early 1840’s black and white abolitionists of Boston sent many

petitions to the primary-school committee, but these were dis¬
missed on the grounds that neither law nor custom could efface
inherent distinctions between black and white children. In 1849
Benjamin Roberts sued the committee for excluding his daugh¬
ter from the school in her neighborhood and compelling her to
pass five white institutions on her way to the Negro school.
Roberts, who was represented by the white lawyer Charles
Sumner and the black lawyer Robert Morris, lost in the courts.
The state supreme court upheld the legality of segregation,
justifying it with the first recorded use of the separate-but-equal
doctrine. For the next several years many blacks conducted a
school boycott, arranging to have their children receive an edu¬
cation in neighboring communities. Hundreds of Negroes and
whites petitioned the Massachusetts legislature, and in 1855 it
enacted a law requiring public schools to admit students without
regard to color. Elsewhere, in spite of all efforts, when the Civil
War began, segregation prevailed for the overwhelming major¬
ity of Negroes attending public schools. Northern white private
schools that admitted blacks experienced opposition—even mob
violence—from local citizens.
At the college level some private institutions accepted blacks
and the first two to receive their A.B. degrees graduated from
Amherst and Bowdoin Colleges in 1826. Two all-black colle¬
giate institutions were developed during the 1850’s: in 1854
Presbyterians organized Ashmun Institute in Pennsylvania, later
known as Lincoln University, in order to train Negroes for mis¬
sionary work in Africa; in 1855 the Methodist Episcopal Church,
North, founded Wilberforce University in Ohio, transferring it
in 1862 to the AME Church.

5
Because of white prejudice and discrimination the over¬
whelming majority of free Negroes were unskilled laborers.
Black entrepreneurs found it difficult to obtain capital, since
lending institutions considered them poor risks. White busi¬
nessmen were reluctant to employ Negroes in skilled or white-
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 115
collar work. Where employers were willing to hire a black,
white laborers often refused to work with him. rPhe black
skilled artisan faced greater obstacles in the North than in the
South. The New York Manumission Society complained that
many students leaving the African Free School in the 1820’s
were idle because they could neither enter trades nor find jobs
and that the educated young Negroes often had no alternative
except to become sailors, cooks, waiters, coachmen, servants,
and common laborers. After Frederick Douglass fled from
Maryland to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1838, a sympa¬
thetic shipowner hired him as a calker, the trade he had learned
as a slave in Baltimore. When the other calkers would not
accept Douglass, he was forced into unskilled labor and took a
succession of jobs sawing wood, digging cellars, collecting rub¬
bish, and loading ships.
In the face of all these obstacles, nevertheless, a minority
made a comfortable living and a few founded modest fortunes.
The successful free black entrepreneurs catered principally to
well-to-do whites and were concentrated in the service trades.
There were many black barbers, hackmen, draymen, and owners
of livery stables. Others were blacksmiths, grocers, fashionable
tailors, restaurateurs and caterers, proprietors of coal and lum¬
ber yards, and occasionally hotel owners. Negroes were also en¬
gaged in the shoemaking and building trades in a number of
cities, especially in the South. Baltimore had many slave and
free black ship calkers. In Philadelphia sizable numbers of
blacks were carpenters, tailors and dressmakers, brickmakers,
shoemakers and bootmakers, and cabinetmakers. A handful of
colored men created and dominated the fashionable catering
business in the city* until the end of the nineteenth century,
making Philadelphia catering famous throughout the country.
James Forten, one of the city's principal sailmakers, employed
over forty white and black workers and, by the 1830’s, had
acquired a fortune of $100,000. William Still, the Underground
Railroad leader, was the proprietor of a successful coal and
lumber yard. In Charleston, as in certain other Southern cities,
free Negroes monopolized barbering, practically controlled the
116 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

building trades, and were prominent among the shoemakers

and butchers. The more outstanding carpenters or contractors
employed both white men and slaves. For a number of years,
the leading hotel proprietor was a free black named Jehu Jones.
In 1850, New Orleans free blacks included one architect, five
jewelers, four physicians, eleven music teachers, and fifty-two
merchants, exhibiting an even greater occupational diversity
than in Charleston. Most of the really wealthy black artisans or
retail merchants invested their money in real estate. George
Thomas Downing, the prominent caterer of New York and
Newport, and Thorny Lafon, the New Orleans merchant, each
acquired several hundred thousand dollars in this manner.
In the course of the nineteenth century the position of the
Negro artisan-entrepreneur deteriorated. As the white working
class grew in numbers in the Southern cities, its members made
determined efforts to exclude Negroes from the better-paying
occupations. Savannah ordinances of 1822 and 1831 barred both
slave and free Negroes from most of the skilled trades. In 1845
Georgia made it a misdemeanor for a black mechanic to make a
contract for the repair or construction of buildings. By the
1840’s the number of black draymen had declined sharply in
New Orleans.
In the North there was even less opportunity for black entre¬
preneurs. As in the South, their status worsened as the decades
passed. A detailed analysis of the unusually rich occupational
and economic data available on Philadelphia free blacks reveals
a sharp deterioration in their wealth and job distribution during
the three decades prior to the Civil War, with the skilled arti¬
san-entrepreneur losing out to white competitors. Moreover, the
arrival of nearly five million immigrants in the antebellum gen¬
eration posed an alarming threat to the Negroes’ already meager
economic chances. By the early 1850’s Douglass observed,
"Every hour sees the black man elbowed out of employment by
some newly arrived emigrant whose hunger and whose color are
thought to give him a better title to the place.” Most of the
newcomers who settled in the cities came from Ireland. Possess¬
ing no marketable skills, they became implacable competitors of
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 117
the blacks for the heavy laboring and menial jobs. The Irish,
who experienced discrimination from other white Americans,
vented their aggression upon the “Nagurs,” attacking them
around docks, railyards, and coal mines. Gradually, many Ne¬
groes were displaced as laborers in these areas and in other
occupations, such as hod carriers, waiters, barbers, even porters
and bootblacks. Black women, who could count on a degree of
economic security even when their husbands could not, began
losing positions as maids, cooks, and washerwomen. On the
waterfront, economic competition and hostility between the
two groups was exacerbated when employers, playing one race
against the other, hired black workmen as strikebreakers. In
New York Citv this policy produced among the predominantly
Irish longshoremen an intense animosity that came to a violent
climax in the bloodv race riots of 1863.

6
There was enough economic differentiation among the urban
blacks to provide the basis for a social class system. It should be
pointed out, however, that because of the limited occupational
opportunities open to Negroes and the high proportion of them
in the most menial job categories, their criteria for social class
membership diverged sharply from those of whites. Among the
slaves in the Southern cities there were distinctions based upon
color, occupation, and the prominence of one's master. Among
free blacks the chronically unemployed, unskilled laborers
formed the lowest class. Those who had regular employment,
especially if the job involved a degree of skill, formed a middle
class. In the North this group included even domestic servants.
Such middle-class persons were likely to be regular churchgoers
and members of the mutual-benefit societies. The upper
stratum included independent artisans and businessmen. While
the occupational distribution among elite Negroes varied from
city to city, broadly speaking it can be said that at the top were
the successful entrepreneurs, particularly the barbers, restau¬
rateurs, caterers, tailors, and contractors patronized by fashion¬
able whites; the house servants of the most socially prominent
118 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

white families in Northern cities; and the handful of well-

educated professional people in law, teaching, medicine, and
the ministry. In the South it included a tiny slaveowning black
aristocracy.
Occupation and wealth were the most important criteria of
class affiliation. There were also more subtle distinctions based
on skin color, education, church membership, and family back¬
ground. A long history of free ancestry was treasured, especially
if one’s forebears included distinguished white people. The
light-skinned elites of Deep South cities like Charleston and
New Orleans were particularly noted for their exclusiveness.
But generally such persons, with their advantages of birth and
background, were nearly everywhere disproportionately repre¬
sented among the economically successful and among the race’s
recognized spokesmen and leaders. A recent study of Phila¬
delphia reveals their striking preeminence among the city’s
black artisans and entrepreneurs, in the socially prominent
churches and clubs, and in the leadership roles of protest orga¬
nizations and other voluntary associations. The middle and
upper classes stressed homeownership, education, thrift, hard
work, and moral respectability. The upper-class black people
dressed conservatively, practiced an elaborate and formal eti¬
quette, cultivated the arts, and, in short, led lives characterized
by gentility and refinement. From this elite came the majority
of the race’s important protest leaders.

7
The racial ideologies of the free blacks—both before and
since the Civil War—can be analyzed from various points of
view. One can examine how the Negroes adapted to their needs
various elements in American social thought, such as belief in
political democracy, advocacy of thrift and industry, and faith
in the efficacy of education. One can describe how in some
situations and in certain periods Negroes have protested against
their status, while in others they were compelled to accom¬
modate to it. Finally, one can discuss black social thought as
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 119
ranging along a continuum of ideologies from assimilation to
nationalism.
At one end of this continuum have been the advocates of
complete biological amalgamation and cultural assimilation
with members of the dominant society, and the complete dis¬
appearance of blacks as a racial group. At the other end have
been those who advocated complete withdrawal from American
society and the creation of independent Negro states. Between
these two extremes have been those who held a great variety
of philosophies recognizing black people as American citizens,
yet emphasizing their distinctiveness as members of an ethnic
group. This intermediate category has included the advocacy of
attaining constitutional rights through self-help and racial soli¬
darity an insistence upon racial equality combined with prefer¬
ence for separate clubs and churches, and even the espousal of
the creation of all-black communities within the United States.
This ethnic dualism, this ambivalence, which is the product of
the contradiction between the values of American democracy
and the facts of race discrimination, was best articulated by
W. E. B. Du Bois. In the essav written earlv in this eenturv, he
said: “One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring
ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it
from being torn asunder. . . . He simply wishes to make it pos¬
sible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without
being cursed and spit upon by his fellows without having the
doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
In no case have blacks, even those completely favoring inte¬
gration and assimilation, been able to forget their connection
with an oppressed group. From this very alienation came the
desire for separate institutions operated without white interfer¬
ence, such as the church and the mutual-benefit society. The
gap between ideal and practice in American society meant that
blacks not only wanted to be a part of that society but that they
also found it desirable to develop their own group life within
it. Thus, ironically, the establishment of the separate black
120 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

church and fraternal organization was both a form of protest

against American racism and yet an accommodation to it.
It should be emphasized that the whole subject of the Negro’s
response to discrimination and search for freedom and hu¬
man dignity is a highly complex one, not easily condensed into
a few pages. For one thing, the diverse ideologies delineated
above have been combined in a bewildering variety of ways.
Both protest and accommodating leaders have advocated thrift,
industry, and economic accumulation. Usually these values have
been associated with the idea of blacks gaining acceptance in
American society by assimilating American middle-class ways.
These economic ideas have also been combined with the
advocacy of race pride and race solidarity to stimulate black
support of black business and, by thus achieving material suc¬
cess, to gain acceptance in American society. Finally, certain
highly nationalist movements, like the modern Black Muslims,
have combined the Puritan ethic with complete rejection of
American white society.
Negro thinking has varied under the impact of changing con¬
ditions. Gunnar Myrdal described the situation perceptively.
Noting that to a large degree blacks are "denied identification
with the nation or with national groups,” he observed:

to them social speculation, therefore, moves in a sphere of un¬

reality and futility. Instead of organized popular theories or ideas,
the observer finds in the Negro world, for the most part, only a
fluid and amorphous mass of all sorts of embryos of thoughts.
Negroes seem to be held in a state of eternal preparedness for a
great number of contradictory opinions—ready to accept one type
or another depending on how they are driven by pressures or
where they see an opportunity. Under such circumstances, the
masses of American Negroes might, for example, rally around a
violently anti-American, anti-Western, anti-White, black chauvin¬
ism of the Garvey type, centered around the idea of Africa as the
mother country. But they might just as likely, if only a slight
change of stimulus is provided, join in an all-out effort to fight
for their native country ... for the Western Civilization to
which they belong, and for the tenets of democracy in the entire
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 121
world. ... Or they might develop a passive cynicism toward
it all.

Keeping the foregoing observations in mind, we shall now

turn to an examination of the changing programs proposed by
Northern black leaders to achieve freedom for themselves and
for the slaves. Having previously indicated the nature of black
protest against specific kinds of discrimination, in the following
pages we will focus primarily on the Negro Convention Move¬
ment and on black participation in the antislavery movement.

8
As already noted, the deteriorating status of free blacks in the
North following the adoption of the Constitution was a prime
factor in the formation of separate community institutions. The
leaders of these organizations, despite their alienation from
American society, retained their faith that in God’s plan the
slaves wrould be freed and Negroes accorded equal rights in
America. Along with the more successful businessmen, they led
the early Negro agitation against both slavery in the South and
discrimination at home. On behalf of the bondsmen Northern
blacks held meetings and passed resolutions, listened to spirited
orations commemorating the legal closing of the slave trade in
the United States in 1808, and sent respectfully worded peti¬
tions to Congress. There was something ritualistic about much
of this activity. Whites were aware of but little of it, and most
of what they perceived they ignored. Quite naturally, therefore,
the black leaders tended to concern themselves mostly with
something they could hope to accomplish more readily: the
elevation of the Northern free people of color.
A very few exhibited an even greater degree of estrangement
than had the creators of the separate community institutions,
and, giving up all hope of a decent future in this country,
advocated colonization or emigration to Africa. As early as 1789
the Free African Society of Newport went on record as favoring
a return to Africa. In 1815 the prosperous New England black
122 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

shipowner, Paul Cuffe, took thirty-eight free Negroes to Sierra

Leone at his own expense. Cuffe was interested in colonization
primarily as an instrument for Christianizing the Africans and
destroying the slave trade. But there were indications of genu¬
ine colonizationist sentiment in a letter written by some of the
migrants: "Be not fearful to come to Africa, which is your
country by right. . . . Though you are free . . . Africa, not
America, is your country and your home.”
Actually, interest in colonization was much less common
among blacks than among white antislavery advocates. The
antislavery movement had flourished in the Border States after
the passage of emancipation laws in the North. Colonization
was espoused both by humanitarians who thought that free
blacks would fare better in a land of their own and by Southern
slaveholders who considered the free Negroes a dangerous ele¬
ment. In December 1816, a group of prominent Americans,
including Henry Clay, then speaker of the House of Repre¬
sentatives, established the American Colonization Society.
While claiming to be motivated by humanitarianism, the colo-
nizationists not only refused to oppose racist laws and customs,
but many actually supported and justified such barriers in order
to make the condition of the free blacks so humiliating and
debasing that, by comparison, the prospect of being transported
to Africa would seem inviting. Although colonizationists stated
that the establishment of an African "homeland” would ulti¬
mately encourage slaveholders to liberate their slaves in the
United States, actually some founders of the society suggested
that the exodus of free blacks would strengthen the institution
of slavery. Nevertheless, until after 1830 most of the white
antislavery advocates coupled their interest in the slave with
support for colonization as a solution of the American race
problem.
Before the Colonization Society was launched, those respon¬
sible for initiating it had consulted with Paul Cuffe, and there
were some blacks who subscribed to its program. This was espe¬
cially true in Maryland, where the largest and wealthiest of state
colonization societies existed. Daniel Coker of Baltimore sailed
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 123
for the society with about ninety free Negroes in 1820. As a
black colonization convention in Baltimore in 1826 stated, since
blacks were strangers in the United States and could never
enjoy full rights there, emigration to Africa was the only way to
obtain freedom.
In the main, free blacks were suspicious of the motives of the
American Colonization Society and strongly opposed it. Within
a few weeks after the formation of the organization, black
leaders in Philadelphia—among them Bishop Richard Allen, the
Rev. Absolom Jones, and James Forten—drew a large crowd to
the Bethel Church for a vigorous protest against the coloniza-
tionists. T he Philadelphia Negroes reminded America that in
past wars black people had “ceased to remember their wrongs
and rallied around the standard of their country. . . . Whereas
our ancestors (not of choice) were the first successful cultivators
of the wilds of America, we their descendants feel ourselves en¬
titled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil, which
their blood and sweat manured; and that any measure or svstem
of measures, having a tendency to banish us from her bosom,
would not only be cruel, but in direct violation of those prin¬
ciples, which have been the boast of this republic. ...” They
declared that their cause could not be divorced from their
brothers in bondage—with whom there were ties not only of
color but “of suffering and of wrong,” making it impossible to
“separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population in this
country . . . and we feel that there is more virtue in suffering
privations with them. . . .”
During the next years, free blacks in Northern cities for the
most part were not interested in emigration to Africa and were
hostile to the American Colonization Society, although several
prominent leaders, including Richard Allen, enthusiastically
supported an abortive Haitian colonization movement during
the 1820’s. In 1827 a group of New Yorkers founded the first
black newspaper, Freedoms Journal, edited by Samuel Cornish
and John Russwurm. The paper attacked the Colonization So¬
ciety, declaring that the organization’s true motives were not to
end slavery but to rid the nation of its free Negro population.
124 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Cornish soon resigned, and in 1829, after Russwurm joined the

colonizationists, Freedoms Journal folded. The Boston agent
for the paper had been David Walker, a clothing dealer who in
1829 published an incendiary pamphlet, Walker s Appeal, in
Four Articles. His hatred of slavery and the American Coloni¬
zation Society brought him to the conclusion that if whites
refused to grant emancipation voluntarily, blacks should break
the "infernal chains” by an armed rebellion.
The influence of the Colonization Society and its local
branches was shown in extreme form by the Cincinnati riot of
1829. Cincinnati’s black population had increased substantially
since the early 1820’s, causing special concern among the un¬
skilled whites, who demanded that the new arrivals be expelled.
This antiblack hostility acquired respectability through the
activities of the Cincinnati Colonization Society, which, since
its founding in 1826, had attracted the city’s most prominent
citizens. These influential leaders encouraged local newspapers
and ministers to agitate against the community’s free blacks,
and the society’s propaganda provided justification for the cam¬
paign to drive black people from the city. During the summer
of 1829, Cincinnati’s officials attempted to enforce the Ohio
Black Laws, which required Negroes to post $500 bonds guaran¬
teeing "good behavior.” While ghetto leaders petitioned for a
legislative reprieve, white mobs attacked. More than half the
black population fled to Canada and other parts of the United
States.
The Cincinnati riot dramatized, as had no previous single
event, the exposed and defenseless position of the free Negro in
American society. Fearing that it was the precursor of similar
outbursts elsewhere, black leaders called a conference for Sep¬
tember 1830, in Philadelphia, the first effort within the race to
effect unified action on a national scale. Bishop Allen presided
over this convention of black leaders, which was attended by
representatives from Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Repudiating
the principles of the American Colonization Society, they urged
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 125
those blacks unable to endure further oppression in the United
States to consider settlement only in Canada.
To the black delegates at the Philadelphia conclave, it was a
source of frustration that many sincere whites in the antislavery
movement supported the Colonization Society. Among these
men were Gerrit Smith, one of New York State’s wealthiest
landowners; Arthur and Lewis Tappan, prominent New York
merchants; and Benjamin Lundy, a coeditor of the Genius of
Universal Emancipation. This antislavery newspaper had re¬
cently suspended publication because of the outspokenness of
its other editor, William Lloyd Garrison. The year before the
1830 Negro convention, several Baltimore Negroes had been
instrumental in converting Garrison from his former sympathy
with colonization. Among them was William Watkins, “A
Colored Baltimorean,” who had ridiculed the organization in a
letter published in the Genius in 1828. He and the other Ne¬
groes failed to modifv Lundy’s attitude toward colonization
projects, but in 1829, when Garrison arrived in Baltimore, they
held extended talks with him and brought him around to their
point of view. In a biography of Garrison his children recalled:
“Garrison was slow to discover [the society’s] real animus. . . .
Some of his colored friends in Baltimore were the first to point
out to him its dangerous character and tendency, and its pur¬
pose to strengthen slavery by expelling the free people of color.”
Garrison also read Walker s Appeal, with its condemnation
of colonizationists, and although considering the call for a slave
rebellion “injudicious,” he found the pamphlet “warranted by
the creed of an independent people.” Impressed by the abilities
of men like Walker and Watkins, Garrison became furious
with the Colonization Society for seeking to convince the
nation that blacks were too degenerate to profit from American
civilization. Subsequently, black antislavery men in Philadel¬
phia, such as James Forten and his son-in-law, Robert Purvis,
impressed him with their refinement, their fervent belief in
emancipation, and their hatred of colonization. He addressed
the second national Negro convention (1831) in Philadelphia
126 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

and, the following year, published Thoughts on African Coloni¬

zation, containing a copious selection of “Resolutions, Ad¬
dresses and Remonstrances of the Free People of Color/’
demonstrating all too clearly the long-time opposition to the
Colonization Society from the race it was ostensibly aiding.
Before long, other influential whites such as the Tappans and
Gerrit Smith also renounced the organization. For helping to
enlist these white allies, the black leaders gratefully acknowl¬
edged their debt to Garrison, but on occasion they reminded
whites that, as the Rev. Charles Gardner, a Philadelphia Pres¬
byterian minister, said at the 1837 convention of the American
Anti-Slavery Society, free people of color had held numerous
meetings opposing the American Colonization Society when
Garrison was still a schoolboy.

9
The Negro Convention Movement, which began in 1830,
continued to function until the end of the century, but its most
important work was done during the antebellum period and
Reconstruction. National conventions were held annually from
1830 to 1835. Subsequently, they were held irregularly, as the
occasion seemed to warrant. No permanent organization was
effected. Usually a concerned group would issue a call to con¬
vention, and self-constituted ad hoc organizations in other cities
would send representatives, if they desired, to the state and
national conclaves. The movement was a Northern phenome¬
non until after the Civil War, for the participation of Southern
blacks in such gatherings would have subjected them to danger
at home. The Convention Movement was important because it
was led and attended by the most distinguished leaders of the
race—prominent ministers, physicians, lawyers, businessmen,
and, after the Civil War, politicians. More than any other
source, the conventions provide illuminating insight into the
thinking of articulate blacks on the problems facing the race.
The early conventions protested against slavery and, at
greater length, against the indignities facing the free people of
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 127
color. Besides condemning race prejudice, the convention
leaders sought to convince lower-class Negroes that they could
do a great deal to elevate themselves despite adverse circum¬
stances. If blacks would only try hard enough they would attain
“the standard of good society’’—temperance, industry, thrift,
and learning. The race was urged to stress schooling, good moral
character, and economic accumulation. An important part of
this economic program was a concern with training blacks for
the skilled trades. For the most part shut out from apprentice¬
ships, free blacks had little or no opportunity to learn these
crafts and therefore lacked an important means of becoming
independent and self-supporting entrepreneurs. Black leaders
therefore eagerly seized upon the proposal, put forth by white
abolitionists and reformers, that manual-labor schools would be
valuable for the lower classes, both white and black. Such
schools would teach not only a trade with which to earn a
living, but, by paying students for their work, would inculcate
the habits of thrift and industry. Negro leaders fervently be¬
lieved that training for the trades would free many members of
the race from menial, low-paying jobs. Unfortunately, the at¬
tempt sponsored by white and black abolitionists to establish
such a manual-labor school for blacks in New Haven failed
because of the hostility of local whites.
After 1835 there was no formal National Negro Convention
Movement until 1843. In part it foundered on the rivalry be¬
tween the New Yorkers and the Philadelphians. And in part its
suspension was due to a feeling that there was a serious contra¬
diction involved in advocating integration and equal rights by
means of an all-black or “caste” convention. After the appear¬
ance of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833, it seemed to
many that in view of substantial white interest, all-black con¬
ventions were no longer necessary or advisable.
Pennsylvania blacks like Purvis and William Whipper, a
lumber merchant, admonished the race to participate with
whites in all antislavery activities. Believing that the Negro
Convention Movement was especially self-segregating, they
128 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

sought to change its direction. In 1834 these black Garrisonians

formed the American Moral Reform Society for Improving
the Condition of Mankind, an organization that dominated the
black conventions of 1834-5 and ultimately replaced them. The
Moral Reformers, who held annual conferences until 1841, had
little influence except in Philadelphia and Boston. They sought
to turn blacks away from parochial racial interests to a concern
for uplifting “the whole human race, without distinction as to
clime, country, or complexion/’ In their dedication to a broad
humanitarianism, Whipper and other members even scorned
such terms as “Negro,” “colored,” and “African,” urging their
elimination from the names of churches, schools, and other
institutions. Whipper and his associates identified themselves as
“oppressed Americans” rather than “colored people.” They
subscribed to the view that as the entire society was regener¬
ated, Negroes would naturally share in the moral elevation
along with everyone else.
Opponents of the Moral Reformers pointedly noted that for
all the talk about integration, the organization was unable to
attract white members. Much of the criticism came from New
York, where many gibes originated in the Colored American, a
newspaper edited by Samuel Cornish. Commenting on their
use of the term “oppressed Americans,” he insinuated that the
Moral Reformers lacked race pride. He contended that they
were being too visionary in talking of solving the nation’s prob¬
lems without special attention to Negroes, the most deprived
segment in the population. He insisted that discrimination
forced black people to rely upon themselves to chart a program
that would topple racial barriers. In pressing for a stronger racial
consciousness and solidarity, the New York leaders laid the
groundwork for the revival of the National Negro Convention
Movement in 1843. One reason for this appeal to racial self-
help and solidarity and for the renewed interest in a national
convention was the growing feeling, especially strong among
New Yorkers, that white abolitionists were guilty of race preju¬
dice and of monopolizing power within the antislavery
movement.
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 129

10
The American Anti-Slavery Society, founded in 1833, merged
two rather distinct antislavery traditions. One was the Garri¬
sonian wing, with its supporters largely in Puritan New England
and Quaker Philadelphia. The other was centered mainly in
New York State and the Old Northwest; its roots lay in the
evangelical revivalism, led by the Presbyterian Charles Grandi-
son Finney, which had swept western New York and the Old
Northwest in the 1820’s. Its leading apostle was the dynamic
antislavery agitator Theodore Dwight Weld; its key financial
supporters were the brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan. In con¬
trast to earlier antislavery advocates, both groups demanded
"immediate abolition" of slaver}', both were anticolonizationist,
and both gave at least rhetorical support to the ideology of
racial equality. The two groups, however, split in 1839-40. In
part due to the irascible nature of Garrison’s personality, the
schism also involved important tactical and ideological issues.
Garrison insisted on relying only on "moral suasion.’’ He op¬
posed political action because slavery was recognized in the
Constitution, which he denounced as a "covenant with death
and an agreement with Hell." Garrison also insisted on mili-
tantly championing other reform issues, including women’s
rights. The Weld-Tappan faction was also interested in
women’s rights but felt that the slavery issue was of such tran¬
scendent importance that it should take precedence over every¬
thing else. They maintained that if antislavery societies
advocated other reforms, they would alienate many potential
supporters, dliey also concluded that propaganda or moral sua¬
sion would not of itself overthrow slavery, that political action
was necessary. In the split of 1839-40 most black leaders went
with the Weld-Tappan group into the American and Foreign
Anti-Slaver}' Society. A minority, chiefly in Boston and Phila¬
delphia, remained loyal Garrisonians.
Exactly what role did the black abolitionists play in the orga¬
nized antislavery movement, and what was the nature of their
relationship with the white abolitionists? Historians of the
130 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

black American have generally stressed the importance of the

black abolitionists’ role, while the historians of the antislavery
movement and the biographers of its leaders have usually writ¬
ten as if blacks played only a minor and incidental part. Some
recent scholars, quoting from speeches and letters of antislavery
leaders, have engaged in a spirited debate as to whether or not
the white abolitionists were genuine racial egalitarians. It would
appear to us that the fundamental question to be raised is: How
did blacks actually function in the abolitionist movement?
Garrison’s attack on the American Colonization Society
stemmed from his contacts with black leaders. Negroes were
especially appreciative of the support given their cause by the
new immediatist antislavery newspapers established in Boston
and New York. Garrison’s Liberator, founded in 1831, might
have died without the financial help of Negroes, who consti¬
tuted nearly 90 percent of the subscribers during its first year
and held meetings in several cities urging support for the publi¬
cation. James Forten purchased thirty-seven subscriptions be¬
fore the Liberator was a month old. The paper’s financial crises
were recurrent, and three years later blacks, then constituting
about 75 percent of the subscribers, helped save “our paper.” In
its pages Garrison published their articles, essays, letters, and
reports of their meetings. They passed the paper from hand to
hand and showed it to sympathetic whites. In Carlisle, Pennsyl¬
vania, a Negro barber shared his copies of the Liberator with
J. Miller McKim, who later became a prominent abolitionist
leader. Another newspaper that attracted substantial black sup¬
port was the Emancipator, founded in 1833 by a committee of
New York abolitionists. The Underground Railroad leader
David Ruggles and other black agents enthusiastically built up
the paper’s circulation.
Although black churches and mutual-benefit societies as well
as the National Negro Convention Movement had engaged in
antislavery agitation over the years, it was the white leaders who
seized the initiative in creating a national network of abolition
societies. It was in a Boston Negro church that Garrison and a
small group of white friends met to organize the New England
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 131
Anti-Slavery Society in 1832. Only after the plans had been
formulated were Negroes invited to participate. When the so¬
ciety’s constitution was approved, about one fourth of the
seventy-two signers were blacks. Among the local auxiliaries was
the Massachusetts General Colored Association, a fraternal and
antislavery organization founded in 1826, which affiliated with
the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Some blacks
always attended annual conventions of the New England so¬
ciety, and ordinarilv a few shared the platform with the white
speakers.
Only three blacks were listed on the official roll of the Phila¬
delphia conference that created the American Anti-Slavery So¬
ciety- in December 1833. The three men, James G. Barbadoes of
Boston, and Robert Purvis and the dentist James McCrummell
of Philadelphia, were also among the sixty-two signers of the
society’s
J
Declaration of Sentiments—a document which Garri-
son drafted at McCrummell’s home. Published accounts of the
convention suggest that black participation in debates and
motions was minimal. On one symbolic occasion Negroes had a
prominent role. On a motion to praise antislavery editors, the
convention resolved itself into a committee of the whole with
McCrummell in the chair. Robert Purvis was among those laud¬
ing Garrison. Yet when Purvis made a forceful speech, "impas¬
sioned, full of invective, bristling with epithets,” criticizing the
cautious and equivocal passage on colonization that the con¬
ferees had substituted for Garrison’s indictment, the conven¬
tion failed to heed him. Six Negroes were appointed to the
seventy-two-man Board of Managers, including the three named
above. One of the others was the Episcopal minister Peter Wil¬
liams of New York, who resigned before serving on it because
of pressure from Bishop Onderdonk. Purvis was named to the
nominating committee. Nevertheless, when it came to policy¬
making positions, blacks were conspicuous by their absence.
There were no black officers, not even among the twenty-six
vice-presidents, and none among the original nine-man Execu¬
tive Committee.
In addition to its interest in abolition, the American Anti-
132 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Slavery Society publicly opposed race prejudice and undertook

to advance the status of free Negroes in the North. The dele¬
gates asserted that since all men were "of one blood/' blacks
and whites should share equally in "civil and religious privi¬
leges." To help Northern blacks achieve their potentialities, the
conference recommended a program of moral elevation simi¬
lar to that adopted by the Negro Convention Movement. In
1834, the first annual report of the society declared that the way
to bear witness against race prejudice was to invite more of "our
colored brethren" into active affiliation with the organization.
Two New York Presbyterian ministers, Samuel E. Cornish and
Theodore S. Wright, received places on the twelve-man Execu¬
tive Committee, and James Forten and William Watkins were
among the fifty-eight vice-presidents. Nine Negroes were named
to the Board of Managers, constituting about 10 percent of its
membership. Although Cornish and Wright remained on the
Executive Committee, after 1834 no blacks were named as vice-
president of the society for several years, and beginning in 1837
there was a sharp reduction of Negroes on the Board of Man¬
agers to half a dozen or less a year.* Throughout the decade,
only a handful of blacks attended the society's annual meetings.
The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, with an ex¬
ecutive committee twice as large as that of the American Anti-
Slavery Society, appointed a somewhat larger number of Ne¬
groes, usually four, but sometimes only two, to that body. They
included Cornish and Wright, Bishop Christopher Rush, Dr.
James McCune Smith, who had been educated at the Univer¬
sity of Glasgow, the Congregationalist minister J. W. C. Pen¬
nington, and Charles B. Ray, Presbyterian minister, noted
Underground Railroad leader, and sometime-editor of the New
York Colored American. During the 1850's Ray and Smith each
served as recording secretary, though the more powerful posi¬
tion of corresponding secretary always remained in the hands of
a white man. After the loss of Cornish and Wright, Negro

* The Board of Managers was an unwieldy and honorific group; for

example, it numbered 131 in 1839 and 63 in 1841.
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 133
participation at the top levels of the American Anti-Slavery
Societv declined. Robert Purvis was a perennial vice-president,
however; Charles Lenox Remond served on the twelve-man
Executive Committee for five or six years beginning in 1843; and
between 1849 and 1832 Remond and Frederick Douglass were
among the three dozen men who sat on the Board of Managers.
From time to time, men like Purvis, Remond, Douglass, and
William Wells Brown sat on convention committees and occa-
sionallv addressed or presided over a convention session. A simi¬
lar pattern prevailed during the 1860’s. No blacks appear to
have had important positions in the American Anti-Slavery
Society during the Civil War. Only three, including Robert
Purvis, held any but honorary posts in the same organization
during the period 1865-70.
Negroes occupied prominent positions in some of the state
and local auxiliaries. Among the Garrisonians, Margaretta
Forten was secretary of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slaverv
Society and Purvis for years presided over the Pennsylvania Anti-
Slavery Society. A handful of black men worked as paid agents
and lecturers for the national societies. Negroes also partici¬
pated as speakers at annual meetings, black delegates contrib¬
uted to the discussions on the convention floor, and Purvis,
Wright, and others presided over business sessions and public
meetings. Yet the evidence indicates that their role in the affairs
of the antislavery societies was mainly symbolic. This conclusion
receives further support from the paucity of letters to and from
blacks in the papers of white abolitionist leaders; only Gerrit
Smith seems to have corresponded extensively with them. As
Douglass said in 1855:

Our oppressed people are wholy ignored, in one sense, in the

generalship of the movement to effect our redemption. We are a
poor, pitiful, dependent, and servile class of Negroes, “unable to
keep pace" with the movement . . . not even capable of “per¬
ceiving what are its demands, or understanding the philosophy of
its operations!" Of course . . . we cannot expect to receive from
those who indulge in this opinion practical recognition of our
Equality. This is what we . . . must receive to inspire us with
134 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

confidence in the self-appointed generals of the Anti-Slavery host,

the Euclids who are theoretically working out the almost in¬
soluble problems of our future destiny.

In view of the attitudes of some white abolitionists it might

be deemed surprising that blacks received any positions at all in
the affairs of the antislavery societies. In the early years, certain
auxiliaries excluded black people entirely. Shortly after the
Junior Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia was founded in
1836, a motion to accept members without regard to color was
passed by only two votes. In the same year the New York
women’s antislavery society adamantly refused to admit Ne¬
groes. When the Fall River, Massachusetts, Female Anti-
Slavery Society urged black women to affiliate, the organization
was nearly torn apart. In 1837 the Convention of the Anti-
Slavery Women of the United States took cognizance of the
matter and declared, "Those Societies that reject colored mem¬
bers, or seek to avoid them, have never been active or efficient,”
but took no steps to expel such auxiliaries. Because of these
attitudes, Negroes in places like Albany, Rochester, New York,
Nantucket, and Lexington, Ohio, formed segregated local auxil¬
iaries. In the published lists of auxiliaries, the American Anti-
Slavery Society often designated these by the word "colored.”
Although men like Weld, Garrison, and the Tappans dis¬
countenanced such exclusionist policies on the part of white
auxiliaries, and the practice certainly was not typical, blacks
were concerned that the white antislavery workers were not
completely unprejudiced. Even the most prominent white
abolitionists were criticized. For one thing, Negroes were disap¬
pointed that, in spite of the rhetoric of the 1833 Declaration of
Sentiments and of the many addresses by white abolitionists,
few of them actively participated in the fight against the dis¬
crimination faced by free people of color in the North. On the
floor of annual conventions Negroes repeatedly tried to make
the white abolitionists more conscious of this discrimination.
For example, at the 1849 meeting of the American and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Society, the famous abolitionist orator and Con-
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 135
gregationalist clergyman, the Rev. Samuel Ringgold Ward, who
was known as the “Black Daniel Webster,” told of racial exclu¬
sion in a medical college and in churches. The following year
Ray complained of discrimination in the churches and of how
Negroes, “compelled by self-respect to rent or purchase
churches for themselves,” had encountered obstacles to making
even this type of accommodation. Theodore Wright, speaking
before the New York Anti-Slavery Society in 1837, expressed
alarm over the “constitutions of abolition societies, where noth¬
ing was said about the improvement of the man of color! They
have overlooked the giant sin of prejudice. They have passed by
this foul monster, which is at once the parent and offspring of
slavery
The dissatisfaction ran deeper than this. Militant blacks
made numerous references to the insincerity of “professed
abolitionists.” They reported that many white abolitionists re¬
fused to admit Negro children to their schools or to employ
black men in their businesses other than in menial capacities.
Wright, in his speech before the New York Anti-Slavery Society,
denounced the sort of abolitionist who would invite a black
clergyman to his home but serve him dinner in the kitchen and
fail to introduce him to his family. “Our white friends are
deceived,” the New York Colored American declared in 1837,
“when they imagine they are free from prejudice against color,
and vet are content with a lower standard of attainments for
J

colored youth, and inferior exhibitions of talent on the part of

colored men.” Eighteen years later Douglass charged that aboli¬
tionist businessmen “might employ a colored boy as a porter or
packer, but would as soon put a hod-carrier to the clerk’s desk as
a colored boy, ever so well educated though he might be.” At
the 1853 convention of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society white abolitionists were openly attacked for failing to
employ blacks in the antislavery offices or in their places of
business, and Arthur Tappan himself was criticized for using
Negroes only as menials in his department store.
The blacks were right about the prejudice within the white
antislavery groups. It should be emphasized that the abolition-
136 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

ists were a distinct improvement over their colonizationist

predecessors and far in advance of the public opinion of their
age. Yet at the same time they were, in fact, ambivalent in their
relationships with blacks. One must therefore distinguish care¬
fully between their egalitarian rhetoric and their paternalistic
and prejudiced actions. They spoke feelingly of the "sins of
caste/’ but they were highly sensitive to charges that they advo¬
cated social equality and intermingling. They spoke of the im¬
portance of opposing discrimination against free Negroes, but
even where they fought for civil rights they often did so under
prodding from their black colleagues. Much of the activity on
behalf of free blacks consisted of exhorting the blacks to assume
the responsibility for their own elevation by acquiring wealth
and education and exhibiting good moral character. Due to
black pressure, in 1838 the Executive Committee of the Ameri¬
can Anti-Slavery Society praised Negroes for seeking advance¬
ment beyond unskilled jobs and urged abolitionists to offer
employment to black people—but employers affiliated with the
society were unmoved by this appeal.
The Anti-Slavery Society itself had at first bypassed Negroes
when hiring lecturers. The so-called "Seventy,” recruited by
Weld for antislavery speaking, were all whites. Not until 1839
did Weld suggest the names of several blacks as lecturers, say¬
ing, "They would do more in three months to kill prejudice
. . . than all our operations up to now.” At the outset of his
antislavery career Weld had helped establish schools for Cin¬
cinnati’s blacks and frequently, visited their homes and
churches. He believed that "persons are to be treated according
to their intrinsic worth irrespective of color” but felt that this
principle sometimes required "modifications”; a sincere aboli¬
tionist must ask himself if mingling with Negroes in public
would be "a blessing or a curse ’ to them. He regarded public
association with blacks as "an ostentatious display of superiority
to prejudice,” which could hurt the antislavery movement as
well as create mob violence against blacks. Weld even justified
his own exclusion of a black delegate from an antislavery con¬
vention in Ohio on the ground that if the man sat in the
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 137
convention, mobs would make renewed attacks on Ohio
Negroes.
The Tappan brothers displayed a comparable attitude. As in
Weld’s case, it is difficult to ascertain to what degree their
ambivalence and paternalism were blended with tactical con¬
siderations. Lewis Tappan, for example, was disturbed at the
failure of the arrangements committee to invite Theodore
Wright to speak at the 1835 convention. The committee did
allow Wright’s church choir to participate, but some members
of the society complained about “race amalgamation” because a
white chorus sang from the same platform. They charged that
the “choir mingling” had later helped to incite mob rioting.
Tappan believed that this accusation was merely a mask to
cover race prejudice. All the same, he himself did not want to
be regarded as advocating socializing with blacks; to Weld he
confided that aside from the “choir mingling” incident, the
only time he had ever attempted to “mix up the two colors”
involved occasional dinners with a few Negro gentlemen in the
course o* business conferences. Like his brother, Arthur Tappan
also condemned “caste usages,” but yielded to social pressures.
On one occasion he was severely criticized for inviting Samuel
Cornish to share his pew at church. Tappan called that action
the only effort at “amalgamation that I remember,” and he
vowed not to associate publicly with black people until white
citizens became more enlightened. The influential abolitionist
James G. Birney, candidate for President on the Liberty Party
ticket in 1840 and 1844, argued that granting “social privileges”
to blacks should be postponed until they had attained “civil
privileges.” In his judgment the failure to establish clearly such
a system of priorities jeopardized the entire antislavery move¬
ment, since the enemies of the blacks used the social equality
issue to defeat the cause of abolition.
The complexity of the attitudes of abolitionist leaders toward
blacks was most evident in the case of William Lloyd Garrison.
Actuallv Garrison could not work with anyone except on his
own terms, but he portrayed himself as unselfishly seeking to
encourage blacks to become independent, self-assertive citizens.
138 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

As the founder and editor of the earliest and the most cel-
brated of the abolitionist newspapers, financed at least in the
beginning almost entirely by Negro subscriptions, Garrison’s
chief personality difficulties with Negroes quite naturally in¬
volved black editors. Although in the early 1830’s he had urged
the development of a black press to vindicate the rights of the
race, when blacks decided to become editors, Garrison discour¬
aged them. In 1837 when Samuel Cornish sought support for
his proposed Colored American, one of the earliest black news¬
papers, Garrisonians opposed the venture. After Cornish went
ahead, Garrison sometimes criticized the Colored American's
policies and at other times acted as if the paper did not exist.
The editors of the Colored American were not intimidated. In
a pointed blast at Garrison, the paper criticized those white
abolitionists who "outwardly treat us as men, while in their
hearts they still hold us as slaves.” Years later, when Cornish
died, the Liberator carried no obituary.
More celebrated is the experience of Frederick Douglass.
Garrison discovered Douglass’s oratorical abilities at an anti-
slavery meeting at Nantucket in 1841, when the fugitive slave
rose from the audience to tell about the world from which he
had escaped and what freedom meant to him. On the platform
Garrison was so moved that he asked the crowd, "Shall such a
man ever be sent back to slavery from the soil of old Massachu¬
setts?” The spectators'arose shouting, "No, No!” Afterward the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society engaged Douglass to lecture
on his experiences as a slave. During the passing months he was
intellectually "growing and needed room,” and wanted to share
with audiences the ideas of his "reading and thinking,” rather
than simply mechanically perform his stage role as a slave. Offi¬
cials of the antislavery society, however, discouraged his striving
toward manhood and independence. Instead of applauding his
intellectual progress as an illustration of Negro potentiality,
they preferred to exhibit him publicly in his frozen status of
fugitive slave. Garrison told him, "Tell your story, Frederick.”
Others admonished, "We will take care of the philosophy. . . .
Let us have the facts.” As Douglass continued to acquire self-
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 139
confidence and literary skill, members of the society complained
that he seemed “too learned”: “People won’t believe you ever
were a slave, Frederick, if you keep on this way. . . . Better
have a little of the plantation manner of speech than not.”
Douglass went his own way. Within the next four years, he
published his autobiography and lectured in England. He re¬
turned to the United States, grateful for the help of abolition¬
ists but ambitious for greater independence and the opportu¬
nity to edit his own newspaper. Over the objections of Garrison
and his friends, Douglass moved to Rochester and founded the
North Star. At the time he was still a Garrisonian in his ideol¬
ogy, but after coming in contact with the political abolition¬
ists of western New York, he was gradually converted to their
way of thinking. In 1851 he frankly told a meeting of the
American Anti-Slavery Society' of his new views, whereupon
Garrison declared, “There is roguery somewhere.” Later Garri¬
son denounced Douglass as “destitute of every principle of
honor, ungrateful to the last degree and malevolent in spirit.”
Probably nothing could better illustrate the essentially pe¬
ripheral role in which whites sought to cast blacks than the two
anniversary celebrations of the American Anti-Slavery Society in
1853 and 1863. While the published proceedings of the twen¬
tieth anniversary reported in infinite detail the speeches of
many white delegates, the comments of the blacks received
perfunctory attention. In two instances the original remarks
themselves were evidently short, but in the only other case so
distinguished a person as the noted antislavery and feminist
orator Sojourner Truth rated only one sentence: “Previous to
the calling to order, Sojourner Truth (formerly a slave in the
State of New York) sang a plaintive song, touching the wrongs
of the slave, and afterwards spoke of the wrong Slavery had
done to herself and others.” Ten years later the American Anti-
Slavery Society' held its thirtieth-anniversary meeting. By then
the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued, Negroes were
accepted in the Union Army, and the abolitionists felt a par¬
donable pride in their accomplishments. Delegates like Garri¬
son, McKim, and Lucretia Mott, who had attended the found-
140 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

ing convention, reminisced about the early days. Several of the

surviving signers of the historic Declaration of Sentiments were
present, among them Robert Purvis and James McCrummell.
Yet neither was invited to speak, and in fact the only black man
addressing the convention was Frederick Douglass, who point¬
edly told the abolitionists that their task was unfinished until
Negroes were accepted in American society. If, as one partici¬
pant said, an abolitionist aim was to 'Vindicate the ability'’ of
blacks, the fact that neither Purvis nor McCrummell was asked
to speak does seem strange. Purvis especially had made signifi¬
cant contributions to the cause during the three decades.
Judging from these important anniversary celebrations,
blacks, in the abolitionist cast of characters, were regarded as bit
players or even as extras shunted off in the background, where
they would not detract from the stellar performance of the
whites spotlighted downstage center. The evidence suggests
that this limited participation was due to the ambivalence of
white abolitionists in their relationships with Negroes. The
whites appeared not to have encouraged blacks to seek other
than a few symbolic roles in the antislavery societies. While
Negroes received token representation in the offices of both the
American and the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Societies,
there is no indication that they were influential in shaping the
strategy and tactics of the organizations. Despite their reiterated
declaration that improvement of the black man’s status in the
North was "a most effectual means of promoting the abolition
of slavery,” the white abolitionists concentrated on the single
issue of converting other whites to antislavery. Since Negroes
recognized the reservations among the white leadership, they
organized much of their protest activities outside of the anti¬
slavery societies. It was no wonder that in the late 1850’s
J. Mercer Langston felt it advisable to form a separate, black
antislavery society in Ohio. And it was also no wonder that the
only Negro to achieve a position of real influence in antislavery
councils was Frederick Douglass, a man so Olympian in stature
that he compelled recognition. To be of influence even he had
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 141
to establish himself as essentially an independent force outside
either of the two major antislavery organizations.
Yet Negroes did play a vital role in antislavery activities. To
them must be given the chief credit for running the Under¬
ground Railroad. And from among the fugitives the antislavery
societies found some of their most effective lecturers and propa¬
gandists.

11
' Contrary to popular impression, and Southern fears, the
Underground Railroad was not a well-organized institution and
white abolitionists did not play a commanding role in it.1 The
work of the white abolitionists of course should not be mini¬
mized—some, like Levi Coffin of Newport, Indiana, and later
Cincinnati, were of great assistance to the runaways—but the
most arduous and dangerous part of the fugitive’s journey was
in the South, where there was seldom anyone to help him. And
once the fugitive did reach the North, it was usually the free
Negroes who took the initiative in aiding him. Individual blacks
opened their homes to runaways. Even more important was the
work of the organized vigilance committees in several Northern
cities, which elicited support from sympathetic whites but were
founded and essentially run by black men.
1 Slaveholders charged that whites on the Underground Rail¬
road were invading the South to lure away their bondsmen.!
Their view was distorted. John Fairfield’s activities in bringing
slaves out of Alabama and Kentucky and John Brown’s abduc¬
tion of slaves from Missouri were exceptional exploits that
sprang from the urges of daring personalities. More often than
not, such “conductors” were blacks who had escaped from the
South and returned to take others North. Tlarriet Tubman,
called the Moses of the race because of the large number of
trips she made to bring “passengers” to the promised land, was
the most celebrated of them. Iler journeys from the South
usually began on Saturday night, giving the fugitives more than
a day before their owners discovered their departure and
142 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

sounded the alarm for their return! She is reported to have thus
helped three hundred slaves to their freedom. Less famous was
Josiah Henson. Henson escaped from Kentucky "after a youth
full of good deeds to his master.” Making his way to Canada,
he later returned South to help the family of another fugitive to
escape, and thereafter made other trips, carrying away scores of
bondsmen.
Only a small percentage of the slaves who attempted to
escape actually were able to reach the North. Armed with cour¬
age and ingenuity, guided by the North Star, some began their
tortuous journey by stealing supplies from their masters, "bor¬
rowing” canoes or skiffs along the way, and finding lodging with
other slaves or free Negroes. William Wells Brown, later an
agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society and the first
American black novelist (Clotel; or the President's Daughter,
1853), escaped in 1834. He later recalled that his constant fear
of recapture forced him to travel only at night and to choose
between stealing food or going hungry. Although determined
"not to trust myself in the hands of any man, white or colored,”
he did receive assistance from Ohio abolitionists and an Indiana
Quaker. Finding employment as a steamboat workman in
Cleveland, he aided other fugitives en route to Canada and,
upon moving to Buffalo, opened his home to runaway slaves.
On occasion Brown helped rescue runaways in danger of being
recaptured by slave traders. Brown thus had received only mini¬
mal help from white abolitionists, extended after the major
risks were taken. Frederick Douglass, like Brown, later became a
leading agent in the Underground Railroad, an active partici¬
pant in the Rochester depot. Unlike Brown, in the course of his
own escape from Baltimore in 1838, Douglass received no help
at all from whites. Using a method frequently employed by
slaves escaping from Southern seaports, he borrowed a free sea¬
man's "protection” papers. When he was unable to find a job
in New York City, he finally revealed his plight to a sailor who
notified David Ruggles, a black printer-bookseller and secretary
of the New York Vigilance Committee. Ruggles supplied tem¬
porary lodging, later sending Douglass to New Bedford, where
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 143
he staved with a black family and started a new life “as a free
man.”
The vigilance committees arose in the middle 1830’s. The
New York Vigilance Committee—under the direction first of
Ruggles and later of Charles Ray, who was also secretary of the
New York State Vigilance Committee—collected pennies and
nickels, mainly from Negroes, to feed, clothe, and shelter fugi¬
tives arriving from the South. Some were helped to settle in
New York, while others like Frederick Douglass were sent to
other cities. Even runaways who had lived in the North for
years were always in danger of arrest. Because the fugitive slave
laws were designed to help masters, it was even possible for free
blacks to be kidnapped and taken South. The vigilance commit¬
tees attempted to prevent these kidnappings and made numer¬
ous propaganda appeals to protest them. In New York, Ruggles
was always on guard against slave agents and even compiled a
“Slaveholders Directorv” listing the names and addresses of
lawyers, law enforcement officers, and others who “lend them¬
selves to kidnapping.”
In other communities, such as Boston or Philadelphia, al¬
though whites collaborated with blacks on the vigilance com¬
mittees, most of the work was actually performed by Negroes.
In Philadelphia Robert Purvis was president of the vigilance
committee, while William Still, the corresponding secretary,
was the one who coordinated the rescue work. In Syracuse, New
York, the committee depended on the AME Zion minister
J. W. Loguen to shelter many runaways. In Rochester Frederick
Douglass and many other black men in the community assisted
fugitives. Douglass, “superintendent” of the Underground Rail¬
road station there, used his home as its headquarters and
equipped his office with a trapdoor and a secret stairway for
hiding fugitives. He spent many hours raising money to trans¬
port them to safety in Canada.
That the work of aiding the fugitives was largely done by
blacks rather than whites was attested to by abolitionists of
both races. James Birney, writing in 1837, described how slave
escapes were facilitated by other Negroes: “Six weeks ago, a
144 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

young married woman escaped from N. Orleans by steamboat

and was successfully concealed here [Cincinnati] by her
colored friends. Yesterday, her husband arrived, and at 5 o’clock
in the afternoon they were both in the Stage on their way from
this place to Canada. Such matters are almost uniformly man¬
aged by the colored people. I know nothing of them generally
till they are passed.” In the 1830’s Theodore Wright com¬
plained that members of antislavery societies had not taken
sufficient interest in helping fugitive slaves or protecting blacks
from kidnappers. Wright, among the founders of the New
York Vigilance Committee, appealed to whites to make the
work of the committee a basic objective of the American Anti-
Slavery Society. While limited aid was ultimately given by such
leaders as the Tappans, Weld, and Gerrit Smith, fugitive rescue
work did not receive the kind of support that Wright and his
colleagues sought. The New York Vigilance Committee had
emphasized that the institution of slavery could not be de¬
stroyed unless large-scale efforts were undertaken to alleviate the
plight of its victims in the North, but the antislavery societies
did not allow fugitive aid to detract from the basic goal of
abolition.
After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, however,
more whites became sufficiently aroused to help the vigilance
committees or, at least, to give tacit support. In 1851 two publi¬
cized cases demonstrated how Negroes aided brethren whose
liberty was threatened and how white juries were sympathetic
toward such activities. In Christiana, a southern Pennsylvania
town not far from the Maryland line, a slaveholder searching
for runaways died in a gun battle waged against a group of free
blacks who had armed to protect the home of one of their
fellows. Thirty-eight were charged with treason and confined in
jail to await a court trial. A jury deliberated only a few minutes
before finding the first “traitor” not guilty, and the govern¬
ment’s case collapsed completely. In Boston a black crowd
entered the courthouse where a fugitive from Virginia named
Shadrach was held in the custody of a United States marshal
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 145
during proceedings preparatory to a return to slavery. On signal
the Negroes seized Shadrach, spiriting him away to Canada.
Several alleged conspirators were prosecuted, but a divided jury
failed to find them guilty and the case was dismissed.
An important contribution of black people who had escaped
was their work as abolitionist propagandists. It is true that dur¬
ing the first years of the American Anti-Slavery Society the
leadership failed to make much use of black lecturers. In the
1830’s the first blacks to speak before local antislavery groups
were Theodore Wright, James Forten, Robert Purvis, and
Charles Lenox Remond, but all of these men were free Negroes
who had never been slaves. Although thev eloquently discussed
the peculiar institution, their presentations lacked dramatic im¬
pact. Former slaves, many of whom were fugitives, were even¬
tually asked to lecture. By the 1840’s Frederick Douglass, Wil¬
liam Wells Brown, Samuel R. Ward, Henry Bibb, Lunsford
Lane, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and many others
spoke to antislavery audiences all over the North. Their activ¬
ities probablv constituted the Negroes’ most important contri¬
bution to the abolitionist movement. In their speeches, and also
in autobiographical narratives, Negroes provided the most com¬
pelling propaganda against the institution of slavery, the fugi¬
tives serving as a constant reminder of the millions of slaves
who had not been able to run away. Audiences flocked to hear
these speakers describe the whippings administered by over¬
seers, the separation from loved ones sold down the river, and
the often hectic efforts to get beyond the reach of slave catchers
and bloodhounds. In the most personal terms, they told exactly
what slavery meant to them, and, speaking of what they had
seen and experienced, they were deeply convincing.
Henry Bibb moved audiences to tears with a recital of how
his wife, naked and bound, had been brutally whipped by an
intoxicated slaveholder. Bibb’s listeners would burst into cheers,
laughter, and applause a few moments later as he described
ways in which slaves outwitted their masters. Another crowd
pleaser was Henry “Box” Brown, who recounted his escape
146 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

from Richmond in a shipping box, which he later used as a

prop on antislavery tours. Though white audiences felt enter¬
tained, they usually also came away impressed by the resource¬
fulness and indomitable will to freedom that these lecturers
.

demonstrated. |The sense of momentary aloneness and appre¬

hension many runaways felt when they “crossed the line” to
freedom was vividly portrayed by Harriet Tubman: “I was free,
but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I
was a stranger in a strange land. . . Recounting the tale of
her escapes, she affected listeners with a profound faith in God
and in herself. 1
For the many thousands of whites at these antislavery meet¬
ings who identified themselves with the sufferings of these
speakers, there was often an opportunity to purchase their per¬
sonal narratives, which were widely circulated. For example, the
autobiography of Frederick Douglass received extensive distri¬
bution and the narratives of William Wells Brown and Josiah
Henson sold thousands of copies. This body of literature be¬
came an important propaganda force in the struggle to win
converts to the antislavery position and was supplemented by
biographical and autobiographical sketches of thousands of
slaves published by abolitionists. The printing presses kept turn¬
ing as more fugitives arrived in the North and more whites
joined the antislavery ranks.
Abolitionist writers heavily edited the bulk of these sketches,
but there is no doubt that Douglass, Brown, Bibb, and others
did their own writing. \From the printed pages emerged black
heroes whose aspirations for freedom and self-fulfillment repre¬
sented a variation of the American dream, and in this sense a
lesson in racial equality that aroused the interest and respect of
many white Northerners^ A contemporary reviewer of Doug¬
lass's My Bondage and My Freedom commented: “The mere
fact that the member of an outcast and enslaved race should
accomplish his freedom, and educate himself up to an equality
of intellectual and moral vigor with the leaders of the race by
which he was held in bondage, is, in itself, so remarkable that
the story of the change cannot be otherwise than exciting.”
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 147

12
The achievements of men like Douglass intensified black re¬
sentment of the patronizing attitude of the white abolitionists
who determined organization policies and made little effort to
treat Negroes as equal co-workers. Negroes were also dismayed
by the deteriorating economic situation and the futility of most
of their protests for equal rights. Later, they grew alarmed over
the threat to their very safety raised by the stringent Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850. Many concluded therefore that Negroes
must band together and help themselves. Critics might blast “a
caste convention to abolish caste,” but advocates of a separate
convention held that blacks should be less subservient to white
friends and should act independently to avoid the impression
that they merely echoed the words of white abolitionists. As
Douglass was to say in 1855, “It is well known that we have
called down upon our devoted head, the Holy (?) horror of a
certain class of Abolitionists, because we have dared to maintain
our Individualism.” Welcoming the growing recognition of the
fact that “our elevation as a race is almost wholly depen¬
dent upon our own exertion,” Douglass maintained that
while allies were useful, history had demonstrated that no op¬
pressed group had achieved its deliverance without taking “a
prominent part in the conflict,” rather than being used merely
to do “all the incidental drudgery of the warfare.”
The new spirit was manifested in several ways. One was the
revival of the Convention Movement in 1843. A second was a
serious discussion of the advocacy of violence and slave rebel¬
lions. Another was an experiment with an independent black
political party. There were also proposals for economic coopera¬
tion along racial lines. Finally there was a dramatic upsurge of
interest in colonization.
ITe National Convention Movement was revived with a
conference at Buffalo in 1843, and thereafter it continued an
active life through the rest of the antebellum period. Those
pressing for separate meetings denied any desire to eliminate
joint activity with whites in the antislavery societies or in a
148 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

political organization such as the Liberty Party. The 1848

National Negro Convention urged members of the race to “act
with the white Abolition societies wherever you can, and where
you cannot, get up societies among yourselves. . . . We shall
undoubtedly for many years be compelled to have institutions
of a complexional character, in order to attain this very idea of
human brotherhood. We would however, advise our brethren
to occupy memberships and stations among white persons, and
in white institutions, just so far as our rights are secured to
us.”
The 1843 convention was famous for the heated controversy
aroused by the Rev. Henry Highland Garnet’s speech entitled
“An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America.”
Garnet, a Presbyterian minister with a white congregation at
Troy, New York, urged the bondsmen to kill any master refus¬
ing to liberate them. Douglass, Remond, and others argued that
approval of Garnet’s address would create further hardship for
free blacks in the slave and Border States. A resolution endors¬
ing the speech failed by only one vote as the convention de¬
clared that “a righteous government” would destroy slavery.
At the next national convention, four years later, Garnet’s
address was discussed again and aroused far less disapproval.
Indeed, during the late 1840’s, the use of violence to destroy
slavery was being widely discussed by Northern black men.
After the address was printed in a special volume with Walker s
Appeal in 1848, a group of Ohio Negroes made plans to order
five hundred copies. Some black delegates at a Maine conven¬
tion suggested that the race was morally obliged to provide aid
in a slave rebellion, and at a Negro meeting in Boston there was
considerable sentiment favoring a fugitive’s right to kill in order
to save himself from capture. In 1849, when Douglass reminded
a white Boston audience of their grandparents’ militance in the
American Revolution, he declared, “I should welcome the intel¬
ligence tomorrow, should it come, that the slaves had risen in
the South.” The following year, shortly after Congress passed
the Fugitive Slave Law, Douglass suggested that “the only way
to make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter is to make half a
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 149
dozen or more dead kidnappers. . . . The man who takes the
office of a bloodhound ought to be treated as a bloodhound.”
Blacks in several state conventions attacked the law and coun¬
seled militant resistance. Men like Henry H. Garnet carried a
pistol, and Samuel R. Ward asserted that although the law
might try to enslave every black in New York there was still
“one Sam Ward—who will never be taken alive.”
Negroes were divided as to the proper course to take in regard
to political action. The 1843 convention voted overwhelmingly
to endorse the Libertv Party, though it was done only over the
strenuous opposition of Frederick Douglass and Charles Lenox
Remond, who, as loyal Garrisonians, warned that all political
parties were inherently corrupt and that only moral suasion
could free the slaves from bondage. State conventions in the
late 1840's and 1850’s agitated more on political rights than on
any other issue. In actual fact Negroes found political action
particularly frustrating just because they were barred from
voting in so many states. For those who were entitled to vote,
the question of which political party to support was fraught
with difficulties. Bv backing a minor abolitionist party they
would be throwing their votes away, but by voting for one of
the major parties thev would be compromising their principles
in supporting an organization that took only a mild antislavery
stand. Some backed the Liberty Party in the 1840’s and its
offshoot, the Radical Abolitionist Party of the 1850’s, but others
regarded it as a tactical error to support such a weak third party'.
Many supported the Whigs during the 1840's, as the better of
the two major parties. Others, including most of the delegates
to the National Negro Convention of 1848, endorsed the Free
Soil Party, despite their well-justified skepticism about the atti¬
tudes of its leaders on the question of Negro suffrage. Similarly,
the Republicans, bv calling merely for the exclusion of slavery
from the territories and remaining silent on the matter of
voting rights, placed blacks in a dilemma. Only reluctantly did
most of them support the Republicans as the best practical
choice. In desperation some New York State leaders turned
toward independent political organizations. At a convention in
150 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

1855 they established a New York State Suffrage Association,

with Frederick Douglass originally endorsing it and acting as
chairman. Intended as a black political party for the state, the
association hoped to serve as a balance of power in close elec¬
tions. It did not run candidates of its own, but threw its weight
behind the Republicans in 1856, 1858, and 1860. Nevertheless,
its existence symbolized the blacks' estrangement from the
mainstream of American politics.
Delegates to the black conventions of the 1840's and 1850's
agreed that the race should seek respectability and wealth
through mechanical trades and agricultural pursuits and
through the cultivation of thrift, industry, and good moral
character. Discouragement with the political scene, as well as
fears aroused by the inroads of immigrants into the unskilled
and menial jobs traditionally performed by Negroes, led the
noted Rochester Convention of 1853 to place strong emphasis
on racial solidarity and economic advancement. The delegates
repeatedly asserted that as American citizens they were entitled
to equality before the law, in schools, and in churches. But they
also took a more nationalistic position than any of the earlier
conventions by emphasizing the necessity of tightening the
bonds of racial unity. The conclave created a national council to
supervise a highly organized system of racial uplift. Blacks were
told that survival depended on using each other's economic
services whenever possible and plans were made to establish a
national register of black businessmen, mechanics, and laborers.
At the urging of Frederick Douglass, the convention also went
on record as approving the creation of a manual-labor school.
To encourage race pride, a national Negro museum and library
was also envisioned. While this comprehensive program was
never carried out, the 1853 convention was significant because it
clearly showed increasing support for an ideology of self-help and
racial solidarity in the face of the ever more critical situation in
which Northern free Negroes found themselves during the dec¬
ade before the Civil War.
Another manifestation of this disillusionment and frustration
and consequent stress upon racial unity, or what can be called
Negroes in the Antebellum Cities 151
black nationalism, was the rising crescendo of support for emi¬
gration to Africa and tropical America. There was a growing
interest in the subject beginning with the late 1840’s. In 1854,
1856, and 1858, black colonizationists held their own national
conventions. They differed among themselves as to what would
be the best site. Some opted for the Caribbean area, especially
for Haiti, whose ruler encouraged their aspirations. Several pre¬
ferred Lower California and the Far West of the United States.
But the most popular place was Africa. A few leaders even
made their peace with the American Colonization Society. All
agreed on the hopelessness of continued agitation for equal
rights in the United States. They agreed also in articulating a
nationalist ideology which insisted that Negroes had made a
contribution to world civilization in the past, and that by de¬
stroying the slave trade and redeeming and Christianizing
Africa, they would make one in the future. Episcopal clergyman
Alexander Crummell, who had received a degree from Cam¬
bridge University before going to Africa on behalf of the
American Colonization Society, summed it up best when he
described Liberia as "this spot dedicated to nationality, conse¬
crated to freedom, and sacred to religion.”
The leading emigrationist during the 1850’s was the Harvard-
educated physician Martin Robison Delany. Delany’s mind
oscillated between Africa and Central America as the most ap¬
propriate place for colonization, but he consistently denounced
the American Colonization Society, which he regarded as “anti-
Christian in its character, and misanthropic in its pretended
sympathies,” its leaders “arrant hypocrites seeking every oppor¬
tunity to deceive” the free Negroes. Better than anyone else
during the antebellum period Delany exemplified the dual eth¬
nic loyalties of the American Negro. On the one hand he be¬
lieved, “We are Americans, having a birthright citizenship-
natural claims upon this country—claims common to all others
of our fellow-citizens.” Yet Delany was pessimistic about the
black man ever achieving the full rights lie deserved as a citizen.
The only real solution lay in emigrating and establishing “a
national position for ourselves.” In 1859 he led an exploring
152 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

party up the Niger River, where he signed a treaty with the

Yoruba, granting him a tract for settlement by American Ne¬
groes. As he had written to Garrison several years before,
'‘Heathenism and Liberty before Christianity and Slavery!”
During the 1850’s probably most of the black leaders at least
toyed with the idea of colonization. Some, like the Ohio lawyer
J. Mercer Langston, who was later a congressman from Virginia
(1890-1), espoused colonization only briefly. Others, like
Henry Highland Garnet, Martin R. Delany, Alexander Crum-
mell, and Samuel Ringgold Ward, substituted a long-term
advocacy of emigration for their earlier intense absorption in
the campaign for equal rights, in 1858 a group of prominent
New York blacks founded the African Civilization Society for
missionary and colonization work. Even Frederick Douglass,
discouraged by the Republican Party’s moderate stand on
slavery in the election of 1860 and disillusioned by Lincoln’s
temporizing with the white South after he entered office, be¬
came more open-minded toward colonization. He had no inten¬
tion of emigrating himself, but on the eve of the Civil War he
was preparing to visit Haiti in order to investigate its possi¬
bilities for settlement by those American blacks who wished to
leave the United States. The Confederate attack on Fort
Sumter in April 1861 dramatically altered the situation.
The outbreak of the Civil War and the momentous events of
the succeeding years dissipated colonizationist sentiment. The
war and emancipation were to renew the Negroes’ faith in the
vision of a racially egalitarian and integrated American society.
But once again the American conscience, only temporarily
aroused by a wartime crisis, would fail to destroy what black
and white abolitionists alike described as the "sins of caste.”
 IV
A Dream Betrayed: Negroes
During the Civil War and
Reconstruction

For Afro-Americans the Civil War was, from its

beginning, inextricably bound up with their future and their
freedom. T hey saw it first of all as a war for the emancipation
of the slaves. Beyond this, they believed that the recognition of
their rights as men and citizens was at stake.
Neither the Administration at Washington nor white public
opinion in 1861 generally regarded the war in this light. To
them it was emphatically a war to preserve the Union, not to
end slavery, much less to obtain for Negroes the rights of citi¬
zens. Yet as the hostilities dragged on, the Union was ineluc¬
tably drawn toward incorporating emancipation and the recog¬
nition of the black as man and citizen into the goals of the war
and the postwar settlement.

153
154 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

1
At the outset of the war blacks and white abolitionists raised
two crucjal issues: the emancipation of the slaves and the right
of Negroes to bear arms in defense of the Union. The free
black men hoped that by fighting for the Union they would
contribute to the liberation of the slaves. Indeed, in the evolu¬
tion of Union policy, these two issues were closely intertwined.
When Lincoln issued his call for volunteers, blacks promptly
offered their services as soldiers. A mass meeting of Boston
blacks declared, "Our feelings urge us to say to our countrymen
that we are ready to stand by and defend the Government . . .
with 'our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. . . / ” But
all offers were rejected.
It was the slaves themselves who brought about the first shift
in Union policy. In May 1861 three runaways appeared at
Fortress Monroe in Virginia. General Benjamin Butler, upon
learning that they had been helping build Confederate fortifica¬
tions across the Chesapeake Bay, declared them contraband of
war. News of this action spread quickly; by the end of July nine
hundred Negroes had arrived at the fortress. Butler interpreted
the word "contraband” loosely. In fact, no one who came was
turned back. The first "contrabands” were put to work unload¬
ing vessels and storing provisions, but by July Butler decided to
employ them on the erection of fortifications. Using contra¬
bands became very popular. For Northerners, not prepared to
grant slaves freedom or allow them to fight against slavery, the
use of contrabands was a convenient formula for depriving the
South of its labor and employing that labor itself, without any
commitment to emancipation. In August, Congress passed the
first Confiscation Act, providing that slaves used on Confeder¬
ate fortifications were forfeited. In September, Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy, authorized naval officers to use fugitive
slaves even in fighting, though they were to have a rating no
higher than "boys” at a pay of $10 a month. But the national
Administration was evasive and noncommittal on employing
fugitives, and therefore the practice of field commanders varied
A Dream Betrayed 15 5
widely. Many refused to receive the contrabands and even al¬
lowed slaveowners to reclaim those who had entered Union
lines.
If the North hesitated, the South had no qualms about em¬
ploying black labor. From the start Negroes were used in build¬
ing fortifications. Slaves were also vital to the Southern war
effort both as food producers and industrial workers, particu¬
larly in the coal and iron mines. In early 1862 the Tredegar Iron
Works in Virginia advertised for a thousand slaves. In 1865
three fourths of the four hundred workmen at the naval works
in Selma, Alabama, were blacks.
Some free blacks volunteered to fight in the Confederate
Army. Among them were the New Orleans Native Guards,
composed of proud Creole Negroes whose predecessors had
served in a free black regiment during the War of 1812, win¬
ning the unstinting praise of Andrew Jackson for their role in
the Battle of New Orleans.* There has been considerable
speculation as to why free blacks offered their services to the
Confederacy. Fear or the desire to curry favor undoubtedly
played a part, and a number of free Negroes in the Charleston
and New Orleans areas were substantial slaveowners them¬
selves. In any event, the volunteers hoped to obtain better
treatment by demonstrating their patriotism. Such offers were
turned down, however, as they had been in the North. It was
only in the final agonizing months of the war that the Confed¬
erate government in desperation finally decided to enlist black
soldiers and emancipate slaves willing to fight.
Everywhere, as the Federals approached, slaves ran away from
the plantations. Except in the most isolated areas, they were
well posted on the progress of the war and regarded the arrival
of federal troops as the harbinger of their freedom. Many a
trusted servant, even some who had managed the plantations
during the war, departed at the first opportunity—to the sur¬
prise of their former masters. By the end of 1861 both the

* During the War of 1812 black sailors had also played a major role in
the Battle of Lake Erie.
156 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Union Army and Navy were employing contraband laborers,

cooks, and servants on a fairly large scale. In addition to the
labor they performed, runaways were also useful to the Union
forces as, sources of information regarding Confederate move¬
ments, positions, and occasionally even plans. Others served as
scouts and sometimes as spies. A few escaped slaves were valu¬
able as pilots on expeditions up the narrow, treacherous,
meandering channels of the coastal rivers. The most famous of
these was Robert Smalls, who, one night in May 1862, as the
pilot of The Planter, a former cotton boat converted into a
Confederate armed vessel, steered her with a party of sixteen
past the fortifications in Charleston Harbor to the Union naval
force outside.
Despite the contributions of the fugitives, their legal status
was a problem for Lincoln’s Administration. To have freed
them would alienate the Border States and pro-Union slave¬
holders in the South. It would also arouse the opposition of
Northern workingmen who feared an influx of Negroes into
Northern cities, where they would be serious competitors. But
the abolitionists, both black and white, agitated for emancipat¬
ing the slaves. In August 1861, the antislavery general John C.
Fremont, facing rebel guerrillas in Missouri, declared martial
law, confiscated all the property of rebels, and freed their slaves.
Lincoln promptly rescinded the order.
With the President unwilling to do anything to encourage
emancipation, the abolitionists shifted their goal toward secur¬
ing the employment of Negroes as soldiers. Because of the
suggestion of racial equality that this idea carried, it was
strongly opposed. Therefore the Administration moved halt¬
ingly, and then only under considerable pressure.
Toward the end of 1861, Union forces occupied several of the
South Carolina Sea Islands. The planters hurriedly departed
before the arrival of the troops, and the slaves were assigned to
cultivate cotton under the supervision of the United States
Treasury Department. In May 1862, General David Hunter
declared these slaves free and impressed the men into the Army.
Hunter created a furor with his First South Carolina “Volun-
A Dream Betrayed 157
teers,” both because the Administration regarded the general as
exceeding his authority and because the treasury agents and
missionaries in the Sea Islands complained that without warn¬
ing the Negroes had been seized in the fields while they were
working and forced into army duty. Lincoln angrily counter¬
manded Hunter’s emancipation order, believing that it jeopar¬
dized his own plan of compensated emancipation in the Border
States. The general disbanded his South Carolina Volunteers
on August 10, but already one company of the unit had seen
action on the Georgia coast.
By the summer of 1862, with the war going badly, Northern
opinion veered toward accepting the idea of arming the slaves,
an idea that blacks and white abolitionists had been urging
since the beginning of the war. In March, Congress had passed
an act forbidding officers to assist in capturing runaways and
returning them to their masters. On July 17, Congress passed
the second Confiscation Act, which emancipated all slaves who
had escaped from rebel masters and gave the President dis¬
cretionary power to use black troops.
Two weeks later General James H. Lane began to recruit
black companies openly in Kansas. In Louisiana, where Butler
had captured New Orleans in May 1862, caring for the large
number of contrabands proved a heavy responsibility. Since
many of the planters had taken an oath of allegiance to the
Union, Butler directed that the fugitives return to the planta¬
tions. But on August 22 he called for the recruitment of black
troops. Sensitive to the views of those who were reluctant to
arm the slaves, Butler technically simply activated the free
Louisiana Native Guards, but slave enlistments were accepted
from the beginning. Neither Lane nor Butler was acting on
authorization from Washington, and as late as August 6, Lin¬
coln stated publicly that he did not favor the use of black
troops. Yet less than three weeks later, on August 25, Secretary
of War Stanton personally directed General Rufus Saxton to
recruit a black regiment in the Sea Islands. Undoubtedly, Lin¬
coln had approved of this step. The First South Carolina Vol¬
unteers was reconstituted and placed under the command of
158 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

the Massachusetts abolitionist Colonel Thomas Wentworth

Higginson, whose book Army Life in a Black Regiment later
became a minor classic.
By the, time Stanton authorized the First South Carolina
Volunteers, Lincoln had already decided to issue the Emancipa¬
tion Proclamation. On July 21 he announced that fact to his
Cabinet. While it cannot be said with certainty what Lincoln’s
precise views were during the summer, it is quite likely that in
his mind the decision to arm the slaves was closely linked with
emancipation. Yet, though sentiment and pressure for freeing
and arming the slaves was rising, Lincoln did not show his
hand. When in a New York Tribune editorial in August,
Horace Greeley denounced Lincoln for subserviency to the
slavery interests and urged emancipating the slaves and enlisting
them in the armed forces, Lincoln replied that his duty was to
save the Union and that whether he freed all the slaves, or none
of them, or some and not others, depended on what seemed
best calculated to achieve that goal. It was the last of the alter¬
natives mentioned in this politically shrewd document that
Lincoln was going to use. The preliminary proclamation of Sep¬
tember 1862 stated that as of January 1, 1863, slaves in areas
held by rebels would be free.
Originally, Lincoln’s plan for emancipation was twofold:
compensation for the slaveowners and colonization for the
black people. Only in this way did he feel that Union men,
especially in the Border States, would accept freeing the slaves.
In March 1862, he sent Congress a message urging gradual
emancipation and proposing that the federal government assist
states initiating such a plan. Congress concurred and passed a
supporting resolution. In April 1862, Congress also abolished
slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation up to
$300 per slave. Lincoln advised the Border States to follow, but
they ignored his warning that, if the war continued, slavery
would be abolished in any case and without compensation.
Lincoln’s attitude toward Negroes was essentially a conserva¬
tive one, reflecting the racial biases of the vast majority of
American whites. It is doubtful that Lincoln believed that the
A Dream Betrayed 159
races were equally endowed; like Jefferson he thought it un¬
likely that Negroes and whites could live peacefully with equal
rights in the same country. He had long been an admirer of
colonization. Early in the war the Liberian and Haitian govern¬
ments had indicated an interest in attracting American Negroes
and ex-slaves to their countries and, in fact, employed agents for
that purpose. Lincoln, however, cherished the notion of settle¬
ment in Colombia’s Chiriqui Province (now in Panama). A
speculative, fraudulent company had sold Lincoln on the idea
that a black colony in Chiriqui could engage in coal mining and
supply the United States Navy with fuel at half the usual price.
Free Negroes attacked the proposal, and the scheme collapsed
when the nature of the company’s operations became clear.
Later, Presidential interest in a similarly unsound colonizing
venture on an island off the Haitian coast only led to tragedy
for the migrants. Many of them died under the unhealthy con¬
ditions and the survivors returned to the United States.
Lincoln had hoped to sweeten emancipation with coloniza¬
tion, and Congress even appropriated money for it. Although
his Chiriqui dream failed, the President went ahead with his
plan for emancipation. Blacks and white abolitionists were
jubilant when on January 1, 1863, Lincoln finally issued the
Emancipation Proclamation. Abolitionists—and popular tradi¬
tion since—magnified the significance of this act far beyond
what it actually accomplished. Although it declared free those
slaves still in rebel hands and authorized the use of black troops
for certain purposes, it is hard to see that it did more for blacks
than the second Confiscation Act. For the slaves still in the
Confederacy, freedom of course depended upon the further
progress of the Union armies. Since the proclamation did not
even claim to free the slaves of the Border States or those
working on plantations in areas like the Mississippi Valley
(where many slaveowners had taken an oath of allegiance and
pledged their “loyalty” to the national government), from a
legal point of view, it was really the Thirteenth Amendment,
approved by Congress in February 1865 and ratified in Decem¬
ber, that actually emancipated all the slaves. Practically, of
160 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

course, slavery as an institution disintegrated with the end of

the war. Thus the importance of the Emancipation Proclama¬
tion was chiefly symbolic. It rallied the North through an ideal¬
istic appeal, encouraged the Negroes to escape and take up
arms, and supported the hand of antislavery friends abroad in
their efforts to prevent diplomatic recognition of the Con¬
federacy.
After the Emancipation Proclamation the recruitment of
black troops was gradually accelerated by the national govern¬
ment and some of the states. Massachusetts's antislavery gov¬
ernor was enthusiastic, but New York’s Democratic governor
refused to request authorization for black troops. In fact,
though the use of blacks was welcomed as a relief to the battle-
weary white troops, sentiment in New York and many other
parts of the North was still highly prejudiced.
An important source of conflict continued to be rooted in
economic competition. Stevedores and longshoremen in all the
major inland and coastal ports attributed the failure of strikes to
black strikebreakers. In July 1862, the employment of black
stevedores on Ohio riverboats precipitated the burning of Cin¬
cinnati’s black section. Not until Negroes retaliated and burned
several homes in the Irish neighborhood did the mayor seriously
attempt to restore order in the community. Violence and race
riots erupted in other Northern cities, but the worst outbreak
occurred in New York in July 1863. The traditional hostility
against Negroes had been further inflamed when the conscrip¬
tion law was passed four months earlier. On July 13, the day
after announcement of the names drawn for the first draft, a
crowd raided the draft headquarters, looted stores, set fire to
warehouses, and clubbed and lynched black people. For four
days the riot continued. People employing Negroes were at¬
tacked and their properties sacked. A mob even burned down
the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue. After the riot
subsided, businessmen raised over $40,000 as a relief fund.
When the first New York black regiment departed for the front
in March 1864, its members were feted by the city’s most dis¬
tinguished citizens. The New York Times congratulated the
A Dream Betrayed 161
community upon a ‘'prodigious revolution” in sentiment—
though the careful student can see in this not a profound shift
in public opinion but an act of atonement, or a continuing
paternalistic concern for the Negroes on the part of New York’s
upper classes.
The black population in the North was rather small, and if
anv substantial black recruitment for the Union forces was to
take place, it would have to be among the Southern freedmen.
At the end of March 1863, Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas
was assigned the task of enlisting Negro troops in the Missis¬
sippi Valley. Thomas, in speaking to white Union troops in the
course of his travels, made the project palatable to them by
offering numerous commissions in the black regiments. Thus
the creation of these new regiments offered enticing prospects
for ambitious white soldiers of all ranks. Thomas’s work was a
distinct success: in March of 1865, nearly two thirds of the
Union troops in the Mississippi Valley were Negroes. Alto¬
gether about 180,000 Negroes served in the Union Army, where
they comprised about 9 or 10 percent of the total enlistment.
Nearly 50,000 were in the navy, amounting to about one
quarter of the total naval forces.
Negro servicemen faced hardships unknown to the white sol¬
diers and sailors. One very serious problem was the Southern
policy of either killing black soldiers and their white officers,
even those who surrendered, or forcing the captured blacks into
slavery. The most notorious instance followed the battle of Fort
Pillow, on the Mississippi above Memphis, in April 1864. A
rebel force captured the fort, and of the 262 Negroes stationed
there, scores were massacred after surrendering. Lincoln warned
of retaliation on Confederate prisoners, though the effectiveness
of his threat was debatable. The conclusion of Dudley Cornish,
the leading scholar on black soldiers in the Civil War, is that
the main result of the barbarous Confederate policy was to
make the black troops fight harder, more ruthlessly, and with
more determination, since they could expect no mercy.
A black serviceman had to contend with other difficulties.
Having come reluctantly to the conclusion that Negroes might
162 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

serve in the armed forces, the Union military leaders saw no

reason to consider black soldiers the equals of whites. In fact,
one of the arguments against the use of Negro soldiers had been
skepticisrq about their courage in battle, despite the evidence
that blacks had served effectively in the American Revolution
and the War of 1812. To inform the public about the bravery
of earlier black servicemen, abolitionists circulated pamphlets.
At the bloody battles of Port Hudson on the Mississippi below
Vicksburg in May 1863, at the battle of Milliken’s Bend on the
Mississippi a few weeks later, and at Fort Wagner in South
Carolina in July 1863, black troops again and again proved their
valor. Even though the assault on Port Hudson and the attempt
to take Fort Wagner were Union defeats, the steadfastness of
the blacks and the high death rate sustained by them impressed
many whites. Yet, for the rest of the war, black soldiers con¬
tinually had to prove themselves. Always there was the lingering
suspicion that they were not the equals of whites. Even some
generals, like William T. Sherman, refused to the very end of
the war to use Negroes in combat.
A disproportionate number of black troops were thus rele¬
gated to laboring rather than combat duties, and there were
other evidences of discrimination as well. Negroes were resent¬
ful that few black men were ever commissioned. There was
even reluctance to promote Negro soldiers to the grade of ser¬
geant. The highest-ranking black officers were eight majors in
the medical corps, one of whom became a lieutenant colonel,
and Martin R. Delany, who was commissioned a major of in¬
fantry at the very end of the war. Aside from chaplains, the
number of black commissioned officers did not exceed one hun¬
dred. Most of them served in the Louisiana Native Guards, and
even there, when black officers died in battle, they were usually
replaced with whites.
The pay provisions were also discriminatory. The War De¬
partment paid black privates $10 instead of the $13 a month
received by whites, and of the $10, $3 were withheld for cloth¬
ing, rather than permitting the Negro soldiers to purchase it as
A Dream Betrayed 163
white soldiers did. Even the few Negro commissioned officers
were drawing only $10 a month. The Massachusetts governor
proposed that the state pay the difference for the black troops
of the state, but the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments
rejected this compromise because on principle they believed
that the federal government should end the wage discrimina¬
tion. Finally, in July 1864, Congress passed a bill granting equal
pay to those Negro soldiers who were free when the war began
in 1861, but it was not until March 1865 that it passed an act
providing for full payment for all black soldiers retroactive to
the date of enlistment.
The efforts of the black and white abolitionists combined
with the exigencies of war had led the Union government to
free the slaves and enlist Negroes as soldiers. Thus the first steps
toward freedom and toward recognition of the black as a hu¬
man being had been taken.

2
Nevertheless, there were other problems clamoring for atten¬
tion-economic conditions, education, civil rights, and the
franchise. These were the big issues of the Reconstruction pe¬
riod, as far as blacks were concerned, and they were also raised
during the war. The basic questions at stake were: What would
be the future of Negroes in the United States? Would they be
full-fledged citizens? Or would the pattern of the Revolutionary
era be repeated, and would the promise of American life prove
elusive once again?
Just as the black leaders had protested discrimination against
free Negroes and fought against the institution of slavery during
the antebellum period, so during the war they held that the
emancipation of bondsmen would leave the task of the blacks
and their friends only half done. Articulate blacks expressed a
vision of a land of equality, and they realized that freeing the
slaves would be but the beginning of their work. In this they
were far ahead of most white abolitionists. Frederick Douglass
set forth the situation clearly enough in addressing the TTiird
164 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Decade Anniversary Celebration of the American Anti-Slavery

Society in December 1863:

I am . . , of those who believe that the work of the American

Anti-Slavery Society will not have been completed until the black
men of the South, and the black men of the North, shall have
been admitted, fully and completely, into the body politic of
America. ... A mightier work than the abolition of slavery now
looms up before the Abolitionist. This society was organized,
if I remember rightly, for two distinct objects: one was the eman¬
cipation of the slave, and the other the elevation of the colored
people. When we have taken the chains off the slave, as I believe
we shall do, we shall find a harder resistance to the second purpose
of this great association than we have found even upon slavery
itself.

The views of many Northern Negroes on the future of the

race were exemplified by the proceedings of the National Con¬
vention of Colored Men, held at Syracuse, New York, in
October 1864. With Frederick Douglass in the chair, about 150
leading black men formulated a program of action for the
months that lay ahead and organized a National Equal Rights
League, selecting J. Mercer Langston for president. They were
cognizant of the fact that the majority of Northern states still
failed to grant blacks the ballot, and they entertained no illu¬
sions that either party—even the Republican—was unpreju¬
diced toward Negroes. Their two chief demands were abolition
and political equality. To those, including some abolitionists,
who thought Negroes should be satisfied with “personal free¬
dom”—the right to testify in courts of law, the right to own,
buy, and sell real estate, the right to sue and be sued—they
countered that without the right to vote, “personal freedom”
was meaningless. Though Henry Highland Garnet expressed
continuing support for colonization, in the light of the changed
situation since 1860 most of the delegates were prepared to
stake all on their American nationality. While addressing the
nation on matters of abolition and citizenship, the convention
exhorted the freedmen to moral, educational, and economic
A Dream Betrayed
j
165
elevation. However, at a time when ex-slaves in the South were
clamoring for land through expropriation of the plantations,
this convention of Northern black men sidestepped that basic
issue and confined itself to a resolution recommending that
Negroes from all parts of the country settle “as far as they can,
on public lands/'
Subsequent conventions, both in the North and South, down
to the end of the Reconstruction period, played variations upon
these same themes. As in the antebellum period some leaders
were disturbed by the idea of meeting in segregated “caste"
conventions—and indeed with the passage of the Fourteenth
Amendment and the Reconstruction acts, the frequency of
state conventions declined noticeably and national conventions
tended to be devoted to efforts to secure specific achievements.
For example, the national convention of 1873 was called for the
purpose of rallying support behind Sumner’s Supplementary
Civil Rights Bill. During the period of Presidential Reconstruc¬
tion (1865-6), when the Southern states passed the highly dis¬
criminatory Black Codes that attempted to remand Negroes
almost to a state of servitude, the black state conventions in the
South took a remarkably sycophantic tone—stressing the impor¬
tance of behaving well and of acquiring education and property
instead of rights, even abjuring at certain conclaves any interest
in the ballot. In general, however, the Southern elite Negroes,
who met in state conventions from New Orleans to Richmond,
expressed the same ideologies as the national conventions. In
one such meeting, the black citizens of Norfolk exhibited a
typical range of interests when in an “Address ... to the
People of the United States," they urged Negroes to form asso¬
ciations for the agitation of political rights and equality before
the law, labor associations to protect colored farm workers, and
land associations to aid the freedmen in buying farms.

3
The elite blacks tended to place primary emphasis on civil
and political rights, but what the ex-slaves wanted most of all
was land of their own to cultivate and the opportunity to secure
166 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

an education. Their interest in political activity was somewhat

less intense. The freedmen’s desire for land mirrored the
American faith in property and landownership, in middle-class
virtues and pioneer independence. As was true of peasants the
world over, the slaves’ whole lives had been bound up with the
soil and its cultivation; to them freedom, respectability, and
getting ahead were inextricably associated with farming their
own land. Southern planters, on the other hand, wanted to
depart as little from antebellum conditions as possible, and
Northern politicians and philanthropists were divided on the
propriety of confiscating Southern plantations and carving
homesteads out of them for the freedmen. Consequently, the
plantation system survived, though organized along new lines,
and the sharecropping and crop-lien systems developed as a
replacement for the slave-labor system.
The evolution of the sharecropping and crop-lien systems be¬
gan during the Civil War itself. In 1861-2, as the Union armies
entrenched themselves on the South Carolina Sea Islands and
in the Mississippi Valley, the government was confronted with
the problem of providing for the physical needs of the blacks.
There was also the problem of cultivating and harvesting the
cotton wanted by Northern textile mills and a potential source
of revenue for the Treasury. In the ensuing years the freedmen
suffered from the lack of forethought on the part of govern¬
ment officials and from power rivalries between the Treasury
and Army Departments, both of whom were given imprecise
control over the affairs of freedmen and plantations. They
suffered also from differences of opinion among the missionaries
and philanthropists who were sincerely trying to assist the
blacks. Not until the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau in
March 1865 was it definitely settled that the War Department
would have the responsibility of protecting and providing for
the welfare of the freedmen. At no time was congressional ap¬
proval obtained by the advocates of land expropriation and sub¬
division for the sake of the freedmen. The result was confusion
in freedmen’s affairs, gross exploitation of the Negroes by un¬
scrupulous entrepreneurs and, in some cases, by dishonest mis-
A Dream Betrayed 167
sionaries and army officers, and frustration for the freedmen
who had anticipated, with good reason, receiving land of their
own. The disillusionment that many abolitionists, missionaries,
and Radical Republicans felt with the state of black progress by
the 1870’s was mainly a consequence of this extraordinary mis¬
management of freedmen’s affairs.
After the federal authorities occupied the Sea Islands in
November 1861, the Treasury Department paid the freedmen
low wages to work on confiscated cotton plantations supervised
bv agents from the private freedmen’s aid societies of the
North. The missionaries disagreed among themselves: one seg¬
ment favored land redistribution, while the rest, fearful that
such a policy would encourage laziness, preferred the wage sys¬
tem, which they hoped would stimulate thrifty freedmen to
purchase their own land. After the administration of freedmen’s
affairs on the islands was transferred from the Treasury Depart¬
ment to the War Department in July 1862, General Rufus
Saxton encouraged economic independence among the Negroes
bv dividing plantations into small family units. The Treasury
Department, however, decided to sell most of these plantations
for unpaid taxes. Although a few blacks were able to buy some
of this land, most of it fell into the hands of white entrepre¬
neurs. The most noted of these was Edward Philbrick, who
organized a company among his Boston friends with the inten¬
tion of uplifting the freedmen and proving their superiority
over slave labor, while personally making a financial profit.
After operating a highly lucrative venture for a few years, he
sold his properties. Meanwhile, when General William T. Sher¬
man came to the Beaufort area on his sweep across the South¬
eastern states, he issued his famous Order No. 15 of January
1865, which definitely appeared again to guarantee Negroes the
right of preemption on the plantation lands. After the war,
when President Andrew Johnson restored most of the planta¬
tions to their former owners, blacks who had bought some of
Philbrick’s land were able to retain title, but thousands of
others who had purchased directly from the government lost
their holdings. Similarly, in Mississippi, the army made another
168 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

unsuccessful attempt to provide Negroes with the opportunity

to obtain homesteads. On the plantations of Jefferson Davis
and his brother, Negroes were encouraged to run their own
affairs under the leadership of Benjamin Montgomery, a freed-
man who had formerly been a slave overseer on one of these
plantations. But this promising community disbanded when
some of the land reverted to its former owners and the rest of it
was sold to other whites.
Elsewhere, practically no effort was made to encourage black
landownership. In the Mississippi Valley, Virginia, and North
Carolina it was federal policy to permit the original owners to
run their plantations or, if they had fled with the retreating
Confederate forces, to lease the land to Northern entrepre¬
neurs. Neither group had any philanthropic concern for the
blacks. In Louisiana, where many planters had taken an oath of
loyalty to the government, General Nathaniel P. Banks issued
regulations in 1863 and 1864 requiring the freedmen to return
to the plantations and work for extremely low wages. Under
Banks’s orders, the Negroes were forbidden to leave the planta¬
tion without a pass, and "insolence” or the absence of "perfect
subordination” could result in freedmen losing pay or food
rations. Black and white abolitionists condemned the Banks
program of servitude; Frederick Douglass charged that "it prac¬
tically enslaves the Negro and makes the Proclamation of 1863
a mockery and delusion.” The New Orleans Tribune, a Negro-
Creole publication, found little difference between the serfdom
imposed by Banks and the old Louisiana slave code:

If we except the lash, which is not mentioned in these com¬

munications, one is unable to perceive any material difference
between the two sets of regulations. All the important prohibi¬
tions imposed upon the slaves, are also enforced against the freed-
man. The free laborer, as well as the slave, has to retire into his
cabin at a fixed hour in the evening; he cannot leave on Sunday,
even to visit friends or simply to take a walk in the neighborhood,
unless he be provided with a written authorization. ... It is
true that the law calls him a freeman; but any white man, sub-
A Dream Betrayed 169
jected to such restrictive and humiliating prohibitions, will cer¬
tainly call himself a slave. . . .
j

The only aspect of the Banks program that blacks applauded

was the provision establishing a common school system.
Those who hoped that the government would divide the
plantations and distribute the parcels among the freedmen were
disappointed. The editors of the New Orleans Tribune in
1864—like many of the black delegates to the South Carolina
constitutional convention in 1868—regarded the tillers of the
land as rightfully entitled to the possession of the soil and urged
the creation of a new class of small landholders as the founda¬
tion of a truly republican form of government. Washington
paid no attention. The Tribune might optimistically assert that
“revolutions never go backward,” but the fact of the matter was
that the policy of leasing the plantations to former Southern
planters and Northern adventurers remained the general prac¬
tice in Louisiana and along the Mississippi Valley from Mem¬
phis to Vicksburg and Natchez as federal forces moved South.
Lessees interested in making a fast dollar could rent the planta¬
tions for ridiculously low sums, paying the black laborers very
little in wages. In some arrangements, blacks were paid partly in
food, clothing, and medical care, but lessees had endless oppor¬
tunities to fleece the Negroes of what little they had, and
medical care was practically never provided. Government agents
interested in the blacks’ welfare attempted to draw up regula¬
tions to mitigate the problems, but at best these were compro¬
mises with the demands of the plantation owners and the
lessees. At worst they w;ere flagrantly ignored.
Despite the government’s failure and the unwillingness of
whites to sell land to blacks, a significant number of ex-slaves
bought farms after the wrar. Northern observers, Freedmen’s
Bureau agents, and missionaries enthused over the evidence of
such progress. Examples were cited of Negroes who had pooled
their resources to buy plantations, which they then divided
among themselves. A Boston planter-philanthropist on the Sea
170 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Islands reported “a black Yankee” whose industry and sharp

dealing had put him ahead of the others on his plantation:

Limus in his half-acre has quite a little farmyard besides. With

poultry-houses, pig-pens, and corn-houses, the array is very im¬
posing. He has even a stable, for he made out some title to a
horse, which was allowed; and then he begged a pair of wheels
and makes a cart for his work; and not to leave the luxuries
behind, he next rigs up a kind of sulky and bows to the white
men from his carriage. As he keeps his table in corresponding style
. . . the establishment is rather expensive. So, to provide the
means, he has three permanent irons in the fire, his cotton, his
Hilton Head express, and his seines. . . . While other families
“carry” from three to six or seven acres of cotton, Limus says he
must have fourteen. . . . With a large boat which he owns, he
usually makes weekly trips to Hilton Head, twenty miles distant,
carrying passengers, produce and fish. . . . He is all ready to buy
land, and I expect to see him in ten years a tolerable rich man.

If Northern authorities were indecisive and confused on what

to do with the freedmen, Southern lawmakers were not. During
1865 and 1866 they enacted the Black Codes as a system of
social control that would be a substitute for slaverv, fix the
Negro in a subordinate place in the social order, and provide a
manageable and inexpensive labor force. Blacks who were un¬
employed or without a permanent residence were declared
vagrants. They could be arrested and fined and, if unable to
pay, be bound out for terms of labor. States enacted careful
provisions governing contracts between employer and laborer-
in several states the words “master” and “servant” were freely
used—and particularly in South Carolina the terms of the con¬
tract were minutely defined. Stiff penalties were provided for
those who did not fulfill these contracts or who encouraged
blacks to evade them. These statutes generally guaranteed
Negroes the right to sue and be sued and to own property, but
they ordinarily could not bear firearms, could testify only in
cases involving blacks, and in Mississippi could own only certain
types of property. South Carolina went so far as to exclude
Negroes from skilled trades and some types of businesses. Mis-
A Dream Betrayed 171
sissippi, Florida, and Texas even enacted Jim Crow transporta¬
tion laws.
In the face of the Black Codes of 1865-6 and the intransi¬
gence of the planters on the one hand, and of President
Andrew Johnson’s pro-Southern attitude on the other, the
Freedmen’s Bureau found it difficult to do much for the eleva¬
tion of the black men. Its efforts to distribute among the freed-
men the abandoned lands that Congress placed under its
jurisdiction were thwarted by Johnson’s decision to return these
properties to pardoned Confederates. Its desire to protect the
freedmen with labor contracts was frustrated by the enormity of
the task and by the resistance of the planters. The bureau drew
up its own contract forms, but these bore a striking similarity to
the unsatisfactory regulations arranged by the army during the
war. The planters received considerable disciplinary authority
over their employees, who were forbidden to break the con¬
tracts. "Through special courts created by the Freedmen’s Bu¬
reau, the blacks enjoyed some protection from abuse by their
employers. Planters resented the bureau’s interference in their
affairs, its attempt to provide protections for Negroes, and the
powers of its courts. Yet from the point of view of the freed¬
men, the bureau’s contracts were coercive instruments substitut¬
ing federal force for the antebellum slave codes, and many
bureau officials—paternalistic where not actually prejudiced
against black men—in fact viewed their basic duty as compel¬
ling Negroes to work. In Mississippi, the bureau’s courts did not
function and the contracts provided by state law were allowed
to remain in effect. Like the bureau’s contemporaries, historians
have disagreed over the way in which the bureau actually oper¬
ated, though recent research indicates that it was a far less
radical, pro-black agency than traditionally believed.
Even more uncertainty surrounds the process by which the
system of farm tenancy known as sharecropping emerged from
the labor contract system that prevailed during the Civil War
and early Reconstruction years. Under a sharecropping arrange¬
ment the freedman, instead of working for a wage, rented a plot
of land and paid to the plantation owner a certain proportion of
172 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

the cotton crop. The origins of this system are extremely ob¬
scure. There is at least occasional evidence that some wartime,
army-supervised contracts provided for sharecropping as an
alternative to the wage system. Planters generally would have
preferred a system whereby Negroes contracted by the year to
work for specified wages, but the shortage of available cash right
after the war encouraged them to adopt a plan whereby they
shared the crop with the black workers. A number of scholars
hold that the freedmen themselves were largely responsible for
the development of sharecropping, because they regarded the
contract labor system, under which they worked in labor gangs,
as too reminiscent of slavery times. Where they were unable to
purchase their own land, as was usually the case, the Negroes
preferred to be renters rather than hired laborers. Renting was
desirable, even under a sharecropping rather than a cash ar¬
rangement, because tenants could organize their own time and
be more independent than a hired laborer. Moreover, they
could raise their own food.
Planters, however, also found advantages in the sharecrop¬
ping system. Hired laborers would work no harder than forced
to and, despite the law, might break their contracts. But share¬
croppers had a vested interest in the crops, which they could not
afford to leave standing in the field. Originally the arrangement
was one that probably motivated them to work hard for their
own advancement. Moreover, the evolution of the system was
complicated by the fact that it was not uncommon at first for
hired laborers to be paid in whole or in part with a share of the
crop at the end of the year. For some years, in fact, until the
courts straightened out the matter, the two types of sharecrop¬
ping were not clearly distinguishable.
Whether the chief original impetus came from the planters
or from the black peasants, the Freedmen’s Bureau officials
encouraged and often required the sharecropping contract. The
practice was also stimulated by the shortage of cash resulting
from poor crops in 1866 and 1867. Before the end of Recon¬
struction the sharecropping system appears to have been quite
generally adopted. As late as the 1880's, however, the specific
A Dream Betrayed 173
terms varied from place to place, and there were still planta¬
tions with mixed systems of cultivation, encompassing hired
laborers, cash renters, and sharecroppers. Indeed cash renting
and hired-laborer work remained significant aspects of the
Southern agricultural labor system.
Typically the croppers kept one quarter to one half of the
crop, depending on what they supplied in the way of mules,
tools, and seed. Planters’ evaluations of the system varied.
Complaints were made against the inefficiency of the unsuper¬
vised tenant farmers, who lacked initiative to improve their
plots and maintain the capital improvements on the planta¬
tions. Yet the system had its profitable aspects for the planter,
and especially for those who, commonly enough, were not
overly scrupulous. It was the planter who weighed the cotton
and kept the accounts. Owing to the inadequate schools, the
croppers were only semiliterate, and, in view of the locus of
power in the rural South, even if they knew what was going on,
they were unable to assert their rights. This system reached its
depths in the crop lien. The croppers paid heavily for the pur¬
chases they were compelled to make at the plantation store.
Buying food and clothing on credit with the crop as lien, they
were charged high prices, outrageous interest rates, and were
forced to depend upon the planter’s rendition of accounts.
After the crop was sold, they were likely to end up in debt to
the planter, particularly in a poor year. Out of this arose the
system of debt peonage, whereby insolvent croppers, unable to
repay debts from one year to another, were required bv law to
work indefinitely for the same unscrupulous planter.

4
If land ownership was central to the lower-class freedmen’s
wishes, close to it in importance was the desire for education.
Identifying it with the superior status of white men, the freed-
men naturally shared the American passion for common school
instruction. Old and young flocked to the schools opened by the
missionaries as the federal armies moved southward.
The freedmen’s aid societies that sprang up in the North in
174 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

1861-2 among both whites and blacks aimed to provide the

contrabands with food, clothing, medicine, and the rudiments
of an education. The activities of the white societies are better
known, both because of white tendencies to ignore what Ne¬
groes were doing and because the work of the white groups had
greater financial resources and was therefore more extensive.
Northern blacks were active as well, under both religious and
secular auspices. Among the outstanding Negro freedmen’s aid
societies were the Contraband Relief Association and the
Union Relief Association of Israel Bethel Church (AME), in
Washington; the Contraband Committee of Mother Bethel
Church, in Philadelphia; and the Freedmen’s Friend Society of
Brooklyn. The African Civilization Society switched its activ¬
ities from colonization to establishing schools among the con¬
trabands in Washington. Between 1862 and 1868 the African
Methodist Episcopal Church contributed nearly $167,000 to¬
ward freedmen’s aid.
The white nonsectarian benevolent associations that domi¬
nated the work among the freedmen during the war underwent
kaleidoscopic reorganization between 1862 and 1866. Sectarian
missionary societies entered the field in 1864, and after the war
they displaced the secular groups. Even the most important of
the organizations assisting the freedmen, the American Mis¬
sionary Association, which had been founded by leaders of the
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1846 as a nonsec¬
tarian antislavery missionary organization, ultimately became an
arm of the Congregational Church.
While the freedmen’s aid societies performed a valuable ser¬
vice in providing various forms of relief for the contrabands,
their most permanent contribution was in education. Appar¬
ently the earliest school for contrabands was opened by Mary
Chase, a free Negro of Alexandria, Virginia, on September 1,
1861. Two weeks later, Mrs. Mary Peake, a black woman,
opened the first of the freedmen’s aid societies’ schools, under
the auspices of the American Missionary Association, near For¬
tress Monroe in Virginia. Early in the following year Northern
abolitionists energetically took up the task of education among
A Dream Betrayed 175
the freedmen. As the Union armies advanced, increasing oppor¬
tunities for “good work” led to a proliferation of freedmen’s aid
societies. The overwhelming majority of workers sent South by
the white benevolent societies were Caucasians, but there were
some Negroes among them. Charlotte Forten, granddaughter of
James Forten, joined the teachers at Port Royal, South Caro¬
lina, in the summer of 1862. Francis L. Cardozo, a free-born
Charlestonian educated at the University of Glasgow, was the
first principal of the American Missionary Association’s Avery
Institute in his native city.
rIhe mushrooming activities of the freedmen’s aid societies
would not have been possible without the endorsement of the
federal government and the active cooperation of the military
authorities, whatever the strains and stresses that the coopera¬
tion between these two very different groups entailed. In fact,
in 1863-4 in Louisiana, it was the military authorities who cre¬
ated the first system of public schools for freedmen in New
Orleans and its environs. This pattern of joint participation
between the missionaries and the War Department was ex¬
panded under the Freedmen’s Bureau, which gave hundreds of
thousands of dollars to Negro education between 1866 and
1870. Under the terms of the law, the bureau supplied the
buildings while the freedmen’s aid societies paid the salaries of
the teachers. Since in many cases the Northern philanthropic
groups had difficulty in raising enough money, the bureau often
rented buildings owned by the freedmen’s aid societies, and
with this money the latter paid their teachers.
With the financial resources at its disposal, the bureau was
especially helpful in establishing some of the stronger schools
that included college departments. In part because of the close
relationships General O. O. Howard, commissioner of the bu¬
reau, enjoyed with his fellow Congregationalists of the Ameri¬
can Missionary Association, and in part because of the superi¬
ority of the leadership and administration of the AMA schools,
that organization benefited more than any of the others from
Howard’s funds. The bureau financed only one collegiate insti¬
tution of its own, Howard University in Washington, but the
176 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

roster of American Missionary Association schools included

most of the finest institutions of black higher education:
Atlanta University, Fisk University in Nashville, Talladega Col¬
lege in Alabama, Tougaloo in Mississippi, and, the fountain¬
head of industrial education in black schools, Hampton Insti¬
tute in Virginia.
The response of the freedmen to instruction was enthusiastic.
Missionary teachers were uniformly impressed by the ex-slaves’
passion for learning. A teacher at Port Royal, South Carolina,
recorded how families moved across the river so that their chil¬
dren could attend school; one woman “came to school daily
with a baby in her arms and two boys by her side. They all stood
up to read together.” In 1866 the Freedmen’s Bureau superin¬
tendent of education not only found that Negroes of all ages
were attending school but that black children attended more
regularly than white ones. Especially impressive were the nu¬
merous efforts of blacks to develop their own schools, hiring the
teachers and even erecting buildings. In December 1866, South
Carolina blacks raised $1,000 for their schools; in Georgia at
that time there were ninety-six schools supported in whole or in
part by the freedmen, who owned fifty-seven of the buildings.
Such efforts ranged from the newly taught and barely educated,
who were engaged in teaching those unable to read at all, to
more elaborate efforts under adequately equipped teachers. At
Goldsboro, North Carolina, in 1865, for example, the Freed¬
men’s Bureau superintendent of education found that “two
colored young men, who but a little time before commenced to
learn themselves, had gathered one hundred and fifty pupils, all
quite orderly and hard at study. A small tuition was charged,
and they needed books. These teachers told me that no white
man, before me, had ever come near them.”
As a result of congressional action in 1867, Southern Negroes
were enfranchised and new constitutions written in each of the
ex-Confederate states. The new regimes, adopting a reform in¬
stituted in the North a generation earlier, provided for universal
common-school education. In the constitutional conventions
held in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Virginia, there was con-
A Dream Betrayed 177
siderable debate over the question of school segregation, and
South Carolina and Louisiana provided for legally unsegregated
schools. In South Carolina the black members of the conven¬
tion insisted that the state constitution explicitly make schools
open to all, though they predicted that the two races would of
their own accord tend to go to separate educational institutions.
In the end only New Orleans instituted a system of mixed
elementary and high schools. South Carolina leaders made no
effort to compel acceptance of black youth in white schools,
and the university was the only integrated school in that
state. Virginia, which very shortly passed under the control
of the whites, or “Redeemers,” * quickly enacted a law requiring
school segregation. Everywhere in the South where it was not
specificallv demanded bv legislation, the administrative policy
of school boards was separation. Without exception the segre¬
gated schools were inferior and failed to give Negroes even the
rudiments of an adequate education.
Consequently, the real burden of training a black professional
elite and an educated leadership fell upon the missionary
schools. The Northern teachers conceived of their task in broad
terms. They aimed to give the rudiments of learning necessary
for the ex-slaves to function as free men even in a rural environ¬
ment; to inculcate habits of thrift, industry, and Christian char¬
acter, which would enable their students to rise to middle-class
status (hence the homilies on middle-class ethics and the inter¬
est in “industrial” classes for sewing and various trades and in
manual-labor schools like Hampton); to train teachers for the
public schools (hence the prevalence of normal schools on the
secondary level); and to provide a college education for those
intending to enter other professions. There was much conde¬
scension and paternalism among the white missionaries, particu¬
larly among those advocates of industrial education who
thought higher education unsuitable for the freedmen, at least
for the present; but there was also much serious interest in

* “Redeemers” is a term used to refer to the men under whose leadership

the South was restored to white domination.
178 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

proving Negroes capable of the highest intellectual endeavor

and in encouraging the full participation of the ex-slaves in
American society.
In the e^rly years the missionary schools concentrated on
elementary- and normal-school training because, in the short
run, this was the most essential and also because the public
schools were so inadequate. In fact, until the twentieth century,
private secondary institutions were the chief source of compe¬
tent black public-school teachers in the South. Moreover, the
missionary societies discovered that in order to obtain qualified
college students, they needed to maintain their own elementary
and secondary departments. For years the college departments
were small. Even the very best black colleges maintained ele¬
mentary- and secondary-school programs until well into the
twentieth century. Leading liberal-arts institutions like Touga-
loo College in Mississippi and Spelman College (founded in
1881 as Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary) were originally supe¬
rior normal and industrial schools and did not offer liberal-arts
college programs until around 1900.
The development of private schools on all levels, especially
those aspiring to offer collegiate work, was in part a philan¬
thropic mission and in part the result of denominational ambi¬
tions. Ordinarily each of the private colleges was connected, at
least informally, with a church established to proselytize among
the Southern Negroes. This was particularly true of the Meth¬
odist Episcopal Church, North, which developed a sizable
Southern black membership and opened schools in most of the
Southern states. Among the more important Methodist institu¬
tions whose origins go back to this period were New Orleans
University (later merged with Congregationalist Straight Uni¬
versity to form Dillard University), Clark College in Atlanta,
and Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The
Episcopalians and Presbyterians established only a few schools,
but the Baptists did extensive work, though only a few of their
numerous institutions became really outstanding. Among the
most successful ones were Shaw University in Raleigh, North
A Dream Betrayed 179
Carolina, Virginia Union University in Richmond, and More¬
house College (originally Atlanta Baptist College). The Bap¬
tists and Methodists were the only denominations that founded
medical schools in connection with their colleges: Leonard
Medical School at Raleigh, Meharrv in Nashville, and Flint in
New Orleans.
Of these Northern-based, predominantly white denomina¬
tions, only the Baptists worked out cooperative arrangements
whereby the independent Negro connections (or organizations)
of the same faith contributed to the support of these missionary
schools and colleges. On the other hand, the various black
Methodist denominations established their own elementary,
secondary, and collegiate institutions in the South. With the
advance of the Union Army, black Baptist churches sprang up
everywhere and the AME Church spread rapidly throughout
the South. The AME Zion Church was especially successful in
North Carolina under the zealous missionaryJ work of the Rev.
J. W. Hood, who took an active part in freedmen’s educational
and political affairs and made North Carolina the new center
for his denomination. After the Civil War the black members
of several Southern white churches established their own de¬
nominations. With the religious expansion went an interest in
the education of the freedmen, though meager financial re¬
sources limited activity in this field. Both Methodist and Bap¬
tist white churches founded a number of elementary and
secondary institutions. Then in 1878 the Colored Methodist
Episcopal Church (established in 1870 as the result of a
friendly withdrawal from the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South) opened Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee. The AME
Zion Church founded its only college, Livingstone, in North
Carolina, in 1879 under the leadership of J. C. Price. When he
died in 1894, Price was an accommodationist leader of such
prominence that had he lived he might have occupied the place
later held by Booker T. Washington. Finally in 1881 and 1885,
the AME Church established its first two Southern colleges:
Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina (an outgrowth
180 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

of Payne Institute, established at Cokesbury in 1871), and

Morris Brown College in Atlanta.
In the South during the three quarters of a century following
Reconstruction, most of the leading professional men and many
prominent businessmen were the products of the church-related
colleges and Howard University, although above the Mason-
Dixon line leading physicians, lawyers, and teachers were more
likely to have graduated from the best Northern colleges and
universities. The Southern church colleges also served as trans¬
mitters of Northern polite culture to the children of the mod¬
estly educated artisan elite of the postwar years and as a route of
upward mobility for men of humbler status. However, in regard
to these matters, there was a hierarchy among the colleges in
each of the states and major cities. Generally the Congrega-
tionalist schools were the best and therefore the most presti¬
gious, while the black-owned institutions were the least highly
regarded. This was chiefly a response to a condition whereby
the relative financial strength of their backers determined the
quality of instruction offered by the schools. Congregationalist
Atlanta and Fisk Universities were the fashionable institutions
in their respective cities, though both Atlanta and Nashville
had several black colleges, and in Nashville the Methodist
Meharry Medical College attracted many upward-mobile young
men. In fact Fisk and Atlanta became the most highly regarded
Negro schools in the entire South, and along with Howard and
Lincoln Universities produced the largest number of distin¬
guished alumni. On the other hand, in Virginia, where the
Congregationalists sponsored Hampton Normal and Agricul¬
tural Institute, Virginia Union University (Baptist) was the
leading liberal-arts college. And in South Carolina, where upper-
class and aspiring Charleston children attended the American
Missionary Association’s secondary school, Avery Institute,
there was no Congregationalist college and a high proportion of
the state’s leaders were therefore graduates of the Methodist
Church’s Clafin University.
The contribution of the private colleges was made against
A Dream Betrayed 181
enormous odds. Even prior to the cessation of Freedmen’s Bu¬
reau assistance in 1870, Northern philanthropy had declined
precipitately. A few years later the panic of 1873 curtailed the
income and operations of the schools even further. Meanwhile,
beginning in the late 1860’s, the violence, including murder and
arson, perpetrated bv Southern whites against the Northern
schoolteachers and their institutions, forced a number to close
their doors. Moreover, fewer whites felt a commitment to work
among the freedmen, and mediocrity increased in the ranks of
the white instructors. Nevertheless, despite the intimidation,
despite the difficulties in obtaining financial support and quali¬
fied teachers, the schools struggled on. In the 1880's and 1890’s
the millionaire philanthropists began to turn their attention to
black schools, but even then the assistance was directed more
toward providing industrial training than college education.

5
In addition to recognizing that education and the opportu¬
nity- for economic advancement were essential for full participa¬
tion in American society, or in the “body politic,” as the phrase
of the time went, black people also focused their attention
on the full attainment of constitutional rights—on full equality
before the law.
During the war Negroes and white abolitionists continued
their campaign of antebellum days against discrimination in the
North. Bv 1865 Congress repealed the 1825 act prohibiting
blacks from being mail carriers and provided that black wit¬
nesses were not to be excluded from federal courts. In a number
of states Negroes took the initiative in fighting oppressive legis¬
lation. As a result of this pressure, in 1863 California repealed
its antiblack testimonv law. In 1865 and 1866 Illinois and
J

Indiana repealed their anti-Negro testimony and anti-Negro

immigration legislation, more widely known as the Black Laws.
In Illinois the agitation was conducted by a Repeal Association,
organized by Chicago black men under the leadership of the
prosperous merchant-tailor, John Jones.
182 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

The situation in the 1860's is thus comparable to that in the

1960's: changes in white sentiment connected with the Civil
War made it possible for Negroes to achieve their successes, but
it seemed that black men still had to battle every step of the
way for the recognition of their rights of citizenship. Even
where legal impediments to civil rights were removed or did not
exist, patterns of segregation retained much vitality. Under the
leadership of the noted caterer and protest leader, George
Thomas Downing, of New York and Newport, Negroes fought
against segregated schools in Rhode Island and in 1866 suc¬
ceeded with a campaign that had begun in 1857. They also
protested against the continuing use of segregated streetcars. In
Washington incidents occurred when streetcars refused to pick
up black people. Afro-Americans protested and Senator Charles
Sumner obtained a law prohibiting such discrimination in 1865.
The practice continued, however. Not until Sojourner Truth
secured the arrest and dismissal of a streetcar conductor who
had assaulted her was the matter settled. Even more celebrated
was the agitation against discrimination on horsecars in Phila¬
delphia. Under the leadership of William Still, Negroes intensi¬
fied their fight on this issue during the Civil War. Securing the
support of an impressive array of white citizens, they neverthe¬
less failed with appeals to the streetcar company and the city
authorities. Finally, in 1867, the state legislature passed a law
prohibiting segregation in public transportation. Only Massa¬
chusetts, however, actually outlawed discrimination in hotels,
restaurants, theaters, and other amusement places.
In the South, segregation was extended as a tool of racial
domination in place of slavery. Most of the segregation, how¬
ever, was still customary rather than legal, and considerable
historical research is needed to determine its exact extent. Also
deserving of careful inquiry is the extent to which Negroes
protested against the discrimination. The New Orleans black
press denounced the "star" streetcars intended for Negroes, and
in 1866 groups of Negroes blocked their passage in the streets.
Consequently, the military authorities required the provisional
A Dream Betrayed 183
governor to outlaw the separate streetcars. In both Charleston
and Richmond in 1867, black men decided to defy streetcar
segregation. In Richmond violence resulted, but in Charleston
the military commander ordered an end to the discrimination.
During the period when black men were holding elective office
in South Carolina, legislation was passed penalizing discrimina¬
tion in places of public accommodation, and Negroes used
theaters in the leading cities and the first-class railway cars. In
Louisville, in 1871, Negroes protesting against transportation
segregation entered the horsecars reserved for whites until they
wrested the right to ride in them without discrimination. And
in Savannah, the following year, the city’s black citizens con¬
ducted a successful two-month boycott against the Jim Crow
horsecars.
Meanwhile, Congress had turned its attention to civil rights.
In 1866 it passed over President Johnson’s veto the Civil Rights
Act, which defined American-born Negroes as citizens and
enumerated certain rights to which they were entitled: to sue
and be sued; to give evidence; and to buy, sell, and inherit
property'. It also provided vaguely that Negroes had the right to
the full and equal benefit of all laws. The Fourteenth Amend¬
ment, proposed by Congress in June 1866, and ratified July
1868, added a similarly loosely worded constitutional guarantee
against discrimination by the states. Continuing segregation in¬
dicated that the amendment did not include sufficient sanc¬
tions, and black men accordingly threw their vigorous support
behind Senator Sumner’s Supplementary Civil Rights Bill,
which specifically offered protection against segregation in trans¬
portation, schools, and public accommodation. The largest of
the Negro national conventions, held in Washington in 1873,
was devoted entirely to propagandizing for this bill, which,
with the clause providing for mixed schools deleted, was
finally passed in 1875. When blacks tested the law in Northern
and Southern cities, thev discovered that there were many eva-
sions and violations. Moreover, thev soon found the machinery
of enforcement so cumbersome and relief so uncertain that they
184 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

ceased trying to secure the rights that it aimed to guarantee.

Eventually, in 1883, the Supreme Court declared the law un¬
constitutional.

<5

The history of the Negro’s political rights followed a course

roughly parallel with that of civil rights. Black leaders con¬
sidered the right to vote as central to all others. They viewed it
as the means to gain and protect their other rights in American
society. At the same time, extending the franchise to Negroes
would vindicate American institutions before the world. Time
and time again during the war black leaders agitated on the
question, and it became a major theme in the postwar Negro
conventions. A convention of Pennsylvania leaders declared in
1868:

The vote of one black man now—today—right here in his native

land, is worth to the nation, to liberty, to the securing of our
rights as citizens, and the establishing of the Republic on the
eternal foundations of truth and justice, more than is involved in
the theory of civilization of all other parts of the world. It is
America that you have to civilize, to Christianize, and compel
to accept and practically apply to all men, without distinction of
color or race, the glorious principles and precepts laid down in her
immortal Declaration of Independence. To build up a nation
here, sacred in freedom, as an example to the world, every man
equal in the law and equally exercising all rights, political and
civil ... is the surest way to civilize humanity.

Southern blacks were also evincing interest in the franchise.

In November 1863, a mass meeting of New Orleans black men
petitioned the state’s military governor, requesting the right to
vote in the election for delegates to the forthcoming state con¬
stitutional convention; and in January 1864, they petitioned
President Lincoln on the same matter. Lincoln wrote to the
provisional governor, suggesting privately that the constitutional
convention consider granting the ballot to at least some of the
antebellum free Negroes. Nothing was done about this pro-
A Dream Betrayed 185
posal, and continued efforts to secure the vote failed until Con¬
gress acted in 1867.
The Reconstruction Act of 1867 provided that each of the
Southern states was to be placed under a military governor until
a convention, chosen on the basis of universal manhood
suffrage, wrote a constitution that would meet the requirements
set by Congress. The constitutions thus adopted did extend the
suffrage to all adult male citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment,
proposed by Congress in 1869 and ratified the following year,
reinforced the Reconstruction Act and the new Southern state
constitutions. It also secured the vote for Negroes in those
Northern states where they were disfranchised. Because these
states in the North failed to ratify the amendment, its ratifica¬
tion by the reconstructed Southern states actually enabled black
men in many parts of the North to exercise the franchise.
The constitutional conventions called in accordance with the
Reconstruction Act of 1867 all contained black members. Only
in South Carolina, however, were they in the majority in the
convention, and Louisiana was the only other state where they
comprised as many as half the delegates. Nor can it be said that
blacks and their white carpetbagger allies together controlled all
of the conventions. In Georgia, for example, the influence of
native whites was so strong that the legislative seats were appor¬
tioned to the advantage of the predominantly white counties.
The first legislature elected after the constitution was adopted
even ousted its Negro members. Before departing, Representa¬
tive Henry M. Turner, an AME minister, delivered a sarcastic
denunciation from the floor of the House. But blacks were not
readmitted until the state supreme court ruled in their favor in
1869.
As a result of the new constitutions Negroes were elected to
public office in all the Southern states. The highest position
held was that of United States Senator. Two men, Hiram
Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, represented Mississippi in the
United States Senate, the former for a two-year unexpired term,
the latter for a full term that began after Reconstruction had
been overthrown in the state. Fourteen black men sat in the
186 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

House of Representatives between 1869 and the end of Recon¬

struction in 1877. The highest state office attained was lieu¬
tenant governor. Two men held this office in South Carolina,
one in Mississippi, and three in Louisiana. P. B. S. Pinchback
served as acting governor of Louisiana for over a month when
the carpetbagger chief executive was on trial for corruption.
Negroes served as secretaries of state in Florida, Louisiana,
Mississippi, and South Carolina; as superintendents of educa¬
tion in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi; and as
state treasurers in Florida and South Carolina. Jonathan C.
Gibbs was first secretary of state and then superintendent of
public instruction in Florida; Francis Cardozo acted first as sec¬
retary of state and then as state treasurer in South Carolina. J. J.
Wright, who had been the first black lawyer in Philadelphia,
was an associate justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court.
John R. Lynch, who was later a congressman, served as speaker
of the Mississippi House of Representatives.
An adequate analysis of black leaders and how they func¬
tioned at all political levels remains to be made. Only now are
scholars beginning to make the kinds of studies that are needed
if we are to deal with these matters. The majority of Afro-
American officeholders—especially at the local level—were
probably ex-slaves, but most of them came from relatively privi¬
leged origins: from among the skilled and better educated
bondsmen, from the antebellum Southern free people of color,
and from the North. The most careful study of the subject we
have, an analysis of New Orleans^ reveals that black political
leadership there was drawn chiefly from the local antebellum
free people. This appears to have been an exceptional case,
however. Some of the black politicians like Francis Cardozo and
South Carolina’s Congressman Robert Brown Elliott, both of
whom graduated from college in Great Britain, were well-
educated men whose training was far superior to practically all
of the white officeholders during Reconstruction or after. A
high proportion of the black political leaders were ministers and
teachers.
The white Southerners who overthrew Reconstruction, and
A Dream Betrayed 187
their apologists ever since, have charged Negro domination and
corruption as justification for their acts. Actually, at no time can
blacks be said to have been in control of anv J
Southern state.
None was ever elected or nominated for governor. Only in the
lower house of the South Carolina legislature were black men
ever in a majority. South Carolina was the only state with a
black serving as supreme-court justice, Mississippi the only one
that sent Negroes to the United States Senate. Obviously, even
in these two states, where Negroes were over half the popula¬
tion, they never reallv controlled the governments since the
highest state office eluded them and the majority of important
offices were always in white hands. And for a state like Georgia,
where there was only one black congressman and no blacks at
all in high executive or judicial office, the charge of Negro
domination is clearly without substance. Over time black politi¬
cal activists grew more assertive in demanding better repre¬
sentation in important offices, and in a state like South Carolina
some headed important committees in the legislature. But at no
time did blacks enjoy offices or influence anywhere near com¬
mensurate with the support they gave the Republican Party,
even though the party’s tenure in office in the Southern states
was made possible only by the black vote.
Nor can it be said that Negroes were consistently identified
with the corrupt elements among the carpetbaggers and scala¬
wags. Actually, the highest costs of state government arose from
the corruption associated with railroad construction and rail¬
road subsidies. Democrats participated in these as much as
Republicans, and the post-Reconstruction regimes as much as
or more than the Radical Republican regimes. Mississippi, with
more black officials than most Southern states, had no graft on
the state level and very little lower down in the political hier¬
archy during Reconstruction but a considerable amount of it
under the Redeemers afterward. In Louisiana and South Caro¬
lina, where corruption seemed especially flamboyant, certain
prominent black politicians supported conservative coalitions
that attacked the corrupt elements in the Republican Party. In
Louisiana, Pinchback appears to have been an opportunist, but
188 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Lieutenant Governor Oscar }. Dunn fought the corrupt group.

In South Carolina, Martin R. Delany and R. H. Cain, a two-
term congressman and later bishop in the AME Church, for a
while at least supported the Democrats in preference to the
graft-ridden elements in their own party.
Most historians have concluded that, as a group, black politi¬
cians accomplished little. The exact way in which black politi¬
cians functioned during Reconstruction, however, has never
been analyzed. Negroes were ranged on all sides of the complex
factional politics that characterized the Reconstruction regimes.
Coming from diverse social backgrounds, they cannot be said to
have demonstrated overwhelming unity even on key issues like
the land question. Their support was courted by white political
leaders; those in high offices and on committee posts often had
an important voice. Yet it seems likely that just as the white
Republicans failed to accord blacks a proportionate share of
high offices and legislative seats, so in the decision-making proc¬
ess they tended to ignore their black colleagues. The two sena¬
tors from Mississippi, for example, were rather conservative
men who were useful as symbols for the black voters. Neither
they nor the more militant protest leaders were ordinarily in¬
cluded in the inner circles of Republican Party decision makers.

7
In any event, whether black politicians were powerless or
influential, corrupt or incorruptible, Southern whites resented
them. In the 1860’s, as in the 1960’s, the Southern white man
perceived the black man as a threat to his security, his status,
his dominance. During the 1870’s white Southerners used a
variety of methods to reassert their control. In states where
Negroes were in a minority or where, as in Georgia and Florida,
the apportionment of legislative seats favored the whites, it was
a relatively simple matter to overturn the radical regimes. In
some cases, notably Virginia, Negroes for many reasons sided
with the upper-class white conservatives. Even in South Caro¬
lina many blacks believed Wade Hampton’s promises when he
ran as the Democratic candidate for governor in 1876; and he in
A Dream Betrayed 189
turn kept his word to the extent that for years those Negroes
who had voted for him remained on the suffrage rolls. White
Southerners also terrorized Negroes and their white sympa¬
thizers from the North. Techniques of intimidation included
economic pressures against recalcitrant Negroes and violence in
the form of beatings, murders, and even race riots.
Between 1866 and 1898 there were scores of race riots in the
South. Although the peak of organized social violence occurred
in the two years before the election of 1876, Southern riots
continued into the twentieth century, with outbreaks of major
proportions erupting at Wilmington, North Carolina, and
Greenwood County, South Carolina, in 1898, and Atlanta in
1906. Most of these conflagrations were inspired by the desire of
whites to remove blacks from participation in the functions of
government, as officeholders and as voters, and generally they
were expressions of a fear of black domination. The great wave
of riots of 1874-6 accompanied the white Democratic drive to
“redeem” the South of Radical Republican control. The turn-of-
the-century outbreaks were designed to deprive blacks of the
limited political rights they still enjoved. Whites viewed these
events as such sharp wrenches of the social order that they
sometimes referred to a riot as a “rebellion” or a “race revolu¬
tion,” demonstrating, as contemporaries put it, “the determina¬
tion of leading white citizens to liberate the city from black
tyranny.”
Almost any attempt of blacks to realize their hope for a ra¬
cially egalitarian society could call forth violent repression from
whites. Thus the New Orleans riot of July 1866, whose death
toll was officially listed as forty-eight, occurred after Negroes
generated pressure to call a convention to amend the state con¬
stitution and obtain the suffrage. The Memphis riot of the
same year erupted when black soldiers took a Negro prisoner
from the custody of the Memphis police, who had a reputation
for brutality in the black community. When the police later
arrested two soldiers, shots were exchanged, killing one white
policeman and one Negro soldier. The whites interpreted these
incidents as evidence that “the niggers . . . are going to take
190 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Memphis.” The Savannah riot of July 1872 broke out when

Negroes challenged the segregated seating pattern on streetcars;
after a Republican meeting in which blacks demanded streetcar
integration, large numbers of whites and blacks attacked one
another albng the car tracks. The precipitating incident for the
Hamburg, South Carolina, riot of July 1872 occurred when the
all-black militia company commanded by a former Georgia poli¬
tician, Doc Adams, refused to interrupt their military drill to
allow two whites in a buggy to pass.
Most of the Reconstruction riots were actually pogroms, with
blacks being attacked and killed by whites. The whites received
relatively few injuries. This was true even of the riots that were
precipitated by an act of Negro resistance or retaliatory vio¬
lence. Thus the Meridian, Mississippi, riot of 1871, which
erupted in a town controlled by a coalition of white and black
Republicans, grew out of an altercation during a court trial of
three black politicians charged with "incendiary speechmak¬
ing.” One defendant interrupted a white witness to declare
heatedly, "I want three colored men summoned to impeach
your testimony.” After the witness moved toward him with a
stick, the defendant allegedly pulled a gun and accidentally
killed the judge. In the ensuing riot as many as twenty-five or
thirty blacks were murdered, marking "the end of Republican
control in the area surrounding Meridian.” At Memphis, in
1866, many blacks were frightened into inactivity, while others
fought off the attackers as best they could. At Fort Pickering,
located in the city, black soldiers pleaded for their guns but
were peremptorily refused by the military authorities. In des¬
peration a group of twelve to fifteen black soldiers "made a
rush” on the arsenal, but before they could secure the weapons,
the Negroes were stopped by a warning volley from the guards.
Memphis whites, led by police and firemen, invaded a black
residential area, killing forty-six Negroes, according to official
count. They also put the torch to ninety-one houses, twelve
schools, and four churches. The chairman of the congressional
committee that investigated this riot compared it to the massa¬
cre of black prisoners at Fort Pillow during the Civil War.
A Dream Betrayed 191
Black resistance was greater at Hamburg, South Carolina, in
1876. There more than two hundred heavily armed whites sur¬
rounded an armory in which Captain Adams and his men had
taken refuge. For more than two hours the Negroes exchanged
gunfire with the mob outside, and fled through the rear only
when the whites mounted a cannon in front. The pursuers
searched the homes of the blacks, flushed out about thirty men
from their hiding places, and forced them to kneel in the
middle of a street. Several prisoners were slaughtered as an
example to the rest, who were then set free while the whites
amused themselves firing at the figures fleeing in terror down
the road.
In the aftermath of the Hamburg riots came one of the
exceptional cases of extensive black aggressive violence during
the Reconstruction period. Congressman R. H. Cain presided
at an indignation meeting in Charleston, where the Negroes
threatened massive retaliation in the event of another outbreak:
“There are 80,000 black men in this state who can bear Win¬
chester rifles, and know how to use them, and there are 200,000
women who can light a torch and use the knife.” The furious
overflow crowd spilled into the street, blocking a streetcar from
passing. When a policeman made an arrest after ordering them
to move, the crowd freed the prisoner, shouting, “This is no
Hamburg/’ Several weeks later, a major riot was precipitated
when a crowd of black Republicans fought with a group of
black Democrats being escorted home from a meeting by the
latter’s white political associates. The blacks refused to report
their injuries, fearing implication in the riot, but when the
police finally separated the combatants, an emergency hospital
was set up to care for the injuries of over fifty whites. The
Negroes’ fury was unabated, and from midnight through the
early hours of the morning, they attacked any whites they saw.
Along King Street, the major business thoroughfare, they
smashed windows and looted stores. For several days thereafter,
the rioters continued their attacks on the side streets, defying
the authorities, while terrified whites dared not leave their
homes.
192 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

The Charleston riot, though not unique in the annals of

Reconstruction, was unusual. For the most part, Negroes were
the victims and whites the successful aggressors in the inter¬
racial violence of the Reconstruction period.

8
Southern whites were not entirely responsible for the success
of their methods. The fact was that the North had changed its
mind. Most Northerners had never been racial egalitarians, and
they had had to be pushed and shoved to accord equal constitu¬
tional rights to Negroes. When it came to essential economic
reform in the South, the North failed entirely. The economic
interests that had looked to the Republican Party and its con¬
tinued hegemony as the basis for advancing their own interests
eventually formed an alliance with substantial Southern busi¬
ness elements that had complementary needs. They arranged
for the Compromise of 1877, whereby Southern Democrats
acquiesced in the elevation of the Republican Rutherford B.
Hayes to the Presidency in the disputed election with the
Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Even those individuals who had
been most sincerely interested in the Negro became tired, dis¬
illusioned with the freedmen, and enamored of the idea of
sectional reconciliation. They had anticipated great things of
the black man. When, very largely because of the confusion
and halfheartedness of the policies of their supposed benefac¬
tors, the freedmen did not live up to these high expectations,
those verv benefactors concluded that the ex-slaves were not
J

ready for self-government. Corruption in high circles did not

disqualify whites for self-government, but somehow it did seem
to disqualify the Negroes, who had been notably less corrupt.
Thus, even the Northern humanitarians deserted the freedmen
and left them under the control of their former masters and the
even more hostile working-class whites.
All in all, the Northern whites—including many former
abolitionists—found it relatively easy to pay the price of sec¬
tional reconciliation. That price was the rejection of the idea of
a racially egalitarian society—and even the desertion of the
A Dream Betrayed 193
blacks’ fundamental constitutional rights. The Negroes’ vision
of a just and democratic society seemed doomed to frustration.
A hundred years after Emancipation, Martin Luther King could
still best express the extent of black participation in American
society by saying, “I have a dream. . .
 V
“Up from Slavery”: The Age of
Accommodation

1
During the generation following the Compromise
of 1877 Negroes throughout the country found themselves in¬
creasingly the victims of discrimination, proscription, and mob
violence. This was particularly true in the South, where the
withdrawal of federal military support from the last of the
“radical” governments and the acceptance of white and Demo¬
cratic hegemony in the South by the officials at Washington
left Southern Negroes without any effective defense. The result
was the unimpeded development of a race system that sup¬
planted the old institution of slavery as a mechanism of social
control.
Black voting fell off precipitately with the restoration of the
Southern state governments to the control of the Redeemers.

194
“Up from Slavery’’ 195
First by violence, primarily, and then by ballot-box stuffing,
false returns, and complicated registration and voting proce¬
dures, black political influence was effectively curtailed. It was
not at once completely eliminated, however. Democratic votes
were cast bv some Southern Negroes, who were mainly of the
old servant class, or successful, conservative farmers and busi¬
nessmen, with close ties to the antebellum Southern white aris-
tocracv. A Mississippi black owner of five hundred or six
hundred acres of land and more than one hundred head of
cattle, all acquired since the war, told a Senate committee in
1879 he voted Democratic “because I sympathize with my own
self, knowing that I expected to stay with them [the Southern
white Democrats] to make property if I could, and the South
has always been kind to me. My master that I lived with I
nursed him and slept at his mother’s feet and nursed at her
breast, so I thought my interest was to stay with the majority of
the country who I expected to prosper with.” Moreover, in the
predominantly black counties of both Mississippi and South
Carolina, during the 1880’s and early 1890’s, the practice known
as “fusion” appeared—the dividing up of offices between black
Republicans and white Democrats so that the former held a
seat or so in the legislature and a share of the less important
local positions. Indeed, there was something of a revival of
black voting as alliances with independent parties like the Vir¬
ginia Readjusters, the Greenbackers, and the Populists helped
stave off complete political effacement for a while; but this
trend only culminated in the final wave of race riots and consti-
tutional disfranchisement.
Mississippi in 1890 and South Carolina in 1895 were the first
states to amend their constitutions effectively to disfranchise
practically all Negroes; between 1898 and 1903 Louisiana,
North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia imitated them, fol¬
lowed by Oklahoma and Georgia in 1907 and 1908. Generallv
these revised constitutions required poll taxes and literacy
and/or property qualifications, which could be applied discrimi-
natorilv by voting registrars, especially in the case of literacy
qualifications. Some constitutions provided an obvious escape
196 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

hatch for Southern whites by the device of a “grandfather

clause,” which waived these requirements for those whose an¬
cestors had voted in 1860. Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, and
Texas employed poll taxes and other devices short of constitu¬
tional change. Between 1896 and 1915 all Southern states passed
legislation that permitted the Democratic Party, nomination by
which was nearly always tantamount to election, to declare only
whites eligible for voting in primary elections. The United
States Supreme Court consistently refused to intervene in these
disfranchisement regulations, until in 1915, it declared the
Oklahoma grandfather clause unconstitutional. In view of these
facts, and in the face of the riots in Wilmington, North Caro¬
lina, in 1898, and Atlanta, Georgia, in 1906, which capped the
disfranchisement campaigns in those states, Southern Negroes
became increasingly disillusioned with political activity.
The wave of disfranchisement legislation after 1890 was con¬
temporaneous with the Populist movement and the rise of the
so-called poor whites to political consciousness and power. The
agrarian protest of the Populist Party was rooted in the work of
the Northern and Southern Farmers’ Alliances that developed
during the 1880’s. Seemingly allied with the Southern Farmers’
Alliance was the Colored Alliance, formed in Texas in 1886
under the leadership of a white preacher who became its gen¬
eral superintendent. The Colored Farmers’ Alliance and Co¬
operative Union spread over the South and at its peak claimed a
membership of over one million. This figure would make the
Alliance one of the very largest black organizations in American
history. Unfortunately, only fragmentary evidence of its activ¬
ities survives, and so little is known about it. One would like to
ascertain, for example, whether the Colored Alliance was devel¬
oped by blacks because they were excluded from the white
Southern Alliance, or whether the Southern Alliance’s leaders
encouraged its development in the hope that they could control
it. That the latter may have originally been the case is suggested
by the existence of a rival National Colored Alliance, claiming
250,000 members, which did not merge with the larger group
“Up from Slavery” 197
until 1890. Like the white organization the Colored Alliance
sponsored farmers’ cooperatives. On many matters the plat¬
forms of the two organizations were quite similar. Yet there
were differences. The Colored Alliance favored the Lodge Fed¬
eral Elections Bill, designed to guarantee the voting rights of
Southern blacks in national elections through the use of federal
troops; the Southern Alliance opposed it. Publications of the
Southern Alliance often expressed antiblack views. In Missis¬
sippi it was an important force behind the constitutional con¬
vention of 1890, which disfranchised blacks, and in Georgia the
Alliance-dominated legislature in 1891 passed a Jim Crow rail¬
road-car law. In 1889 a group of North Carolina black men
accused the Southern Alliance of setting low wages for black
farmers and of influencing the state legislature to pass discrimi-
natorv laws. Two years later disagreement arose over a cotton
pickers’ strike fostered by leaders of the Colored Alliance; it was
opposed bv the Southern Alliance, many of whose members
employed black cotton pickers.
The Colored Alliance also suffered from internal tensions. At
times the black members and officers resented the actions of the
handful of whites who held administrative positions in the
organization—the general superintendent, people in compa¬
rable positions at the state level, and managers of some of the
cooperative stores. Moreover, most of the members were actu¬
ally opposed to calling the cotton pickers’ strike; some because
they were themselves farmowners and employers of labor, the
majority because they regarded such a tactic as futile and sui¬
cidal. In most parts of the South, in fact, the strike proved
abortive, and where a strike did occur it was quickly and ruth¬
lessly crushed. As a consequence, by the end of 1891, the
Colored Alliance had collapsed.
The paucity of data leaves unanswered a number of intrigu¬
ing questions. To what extent was the Colored Alliance, at least
in its early years, under the influence, guidance, even control of
the white Southern Alliance? To what extent did the Colored
Alliance engage in large-scale cooperative enterprise? And to
198 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

what extent did its members share in a conscious feeling of class

solidarity against the Redeemers and capitalists? If genuine soli¬
darity along class lines was evident in the Alliance, as claimed by
romantic writers seeking to establish a historical base for united
action of poor whites and blacks, why were blacks organized into
a separate Alliance? And how was it that the Alliance men and
Populists were later so easily led into extreme antiblack actions?
In spite of various gestures to obtain black support, attitudes
such as those exhibited in North Carolina and on the Lodge bill
would support the conclusion that whatever interracial solidarity
existed, it was not firmly rooted.
Confusing and paradoxical are the only terms to describe the
radical agrarian movement when it entered politics in the 1890's.
In South Carolina, Benjamin Tillman captured the Demo¬
cratic Party in the name of the radical agrarians, partly by
appealing to race prejudice. Under his leadership South Caro¬
lina became the second state to enact constitutional disfran¬
chisement. Yet in other situations, the agrarians did make
substantial efforts to obtain the support of Negroes, who re¬
sponded to a considerable degree. Even though the backcountry
whites were traditionally hostile to Negroes, and even though
the Lodge Federal Elections Bill alarmed Southern white
farmers and played into the hands of the Democrats, part of the
Populist political strategy was a coalition with black farmers. A
few Negroes were delegates to the St. Louis conference of
Farmers’ Alliances and other organizations in 1892, which in
effect launched the Populist Party in national politics. One
black served as assistant secretary at the conference. His election
was made all but unanimous on the motion of a white Geor¬
gian, who said, "We can stand that down in Georgia.” A
Negro’s name appeared on a call for the national nominating
convention held at Omaha by the Populist Party in July 1892.
In some states at least, black participation in the Populist
Party was significant. As early as 1890 the Kansas Alliance Party
nominated a Negro for state auditor, and at least a sizable
minority of black voters supported Populists in that state in
1892. In the same year, the Arkansas Populist platform con-
“Up from Slavery” 199
tained a resolution proposed by a black delegate, “that it is the
object of the People’s Party to elevate the downtrodden, irre¬
spective of race or color.” In Louisiana among the delegates to
the first convention of the party in that state were twenty-four
Negroes, one of whom was nominated for state treasurer but
withdrew. In Texas two blacks were named to the party’s execu¬
tive committee in 1891, and there were always colored members
of that body until 1900. In Georgia perhaps the most spectacu¬
lar effort to enlist black support occurred when Tom Watson,
the white Populist leader, openly espoused the cause of Negroes
and defended his black backers against violence. Generally,
Populist platforms in the Southern states denounced the con¬
vict-lease system* and lynching and supported political rights
for blacks.
The evidence concerning political coalitions between Repub¬
licans and Populists on state and local candidates is difficult to
evaluate. In a number of states in 1892, 1894, and 1896, fusion
was attempted—sometimes formally, sometimes informally. But
Populist fusion with Republicans did not necessarily mean with
blacks. In Georgia, for example, in 1896, the white Republican
leaders, whom Negroes accused of racism, supported the Popu¬
lists. On the other hand, prominent black members of the state
Republican executive committee maintained close connections
with upper-class white Democrats and urged black men not to
back the Populists. It was generally agreed by Negroes in a
position to know that in Alabama and Georgia black men sup¬
ported the Democrats rather than the Populists on the whole,
though of course this was accomplished largely by intimidation,
fraud, and other pressures. Broadly speaking, fusion tended to
be between the Populists and the Lily-white Republican faction
rather than between Populists and the Black-and-Tan faction of

* Under the convict-lease system, state and county governments leased

prisoners to plantation owners and industrialists for a small fee. An in¬
credibly brutal system of labor exploitation developed on plantations, in
mines, turpentine camps, and railroad construction. Black people who had
been convicted of committing petty crimes were the chief victims of this
system.
200 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

the party.* On the other hand, the election of 1896 in North

Carolina was a notably successful example of fusion between
Populists and black Republicans.
Of all Southern states North Carolina was the least discrimi¬
natory in its racial practices. For example, it sent a Negro to
Congress during most of the 1880’s and 1890’s. In 1894 fusion
was not officially adopted, but Republicans nominated the same
slate of state officials as the Populists. Populists failed to en¬
dorse the black candidates of the Republicans, but remained
silent rather than attacking them, and as a result the two parties
together acquired a majority in the legislature and elected other
state officials. Although certain eminent black Republicans had
been active in the arrangements, six of the black counties were
found in the Democratic column. In 1896 the Republicans
fused successfully with the Populists on most state and congres¬
sional offices, electing white Republicans to the offices of gov¬
ernor and senator and one black, George H. White, to the U.S.
House of Representatives. The campaign of 1898, however, was
marked by a vituperative and successful use of the race issue on
the part of the Democrats, resulting in the defeat of the fusion-
ists and its dreadful aftermath—the Wilmington, North Caro¬
lina, race riot. Disfranchisement followed as a matter of course.
The charge of black domination used by Democrats to wean
upland whites from the policy of fusion was, of course, a myth.
But it appears that the fusion arrangements here—and in other
states—were chiefly a marriage of political convenience rather
than a coalition signifying any genuine consciousness of com¬
mon class interest between blacks and lower-class whites. Simi¬
larly, in Kansas, where black support for the Populists was
unusually strong, endorsement was based, not on any ideologi¬
cal affinity with the views of the white agrarians, but on a
temporary alliance born of pragmatic politics.
All in all, it is difficult to say just how many Negroes espoused

* In the Southern states the Lily-whites were the white Republican fac¬
tion that sought to purge Negroes from leadership positions in the party.
The Black-and-Tan Republican faction was the one that included Negroes
and their white allies.
“Up from Slavery’’ 201
the Populist cause. Democrats were usually able to secure blacks
to speak and organize clubs against the Populists. Furthermore,
as in North Carolina, those Negroes who did support the Popu¬
lists usually remained Republicans. Frequently they were regis¬
tering a negative vote against the Democrats rather than for any
positive policy. The election returns showing heavy black sup¬
port for the Democrats in the Black Belt are, of course, open to
question. Many planters saw to it that their black tenants voted
for the Democrats, and the party also used intimidation and
fraud to obtain large majorities for its candidates. It was this
situation that caused Populists like Watson to turn against
black people and become extreme purveyors of racial hatred. In
general, Southerners’ deeply held prejudices could not be easily
eradicated, and most rank-and-file Populists never held any real
conviction of racial equality. The tendency to segregate Negroes
in Populist Party units and at Populist rallies bears eloquent
testimony to this fact. The Democrats found it all too easy to
destroy the party on the basis of an appeal of white supremacy.
The net result of the Populist movement, then, seemed to be
increased racial hatred and the embitterment of race relations.
In the disfranchisement campaigns at the turn of the century,
the conservative Democrats and the radical agrarians each vari¬
ously favored and opposed black suffrage according to what
seemed politically advantageous. At the Alabama state constitu¬
tional convention, for example, the small amount of support for
permitting Negroes the franchise was chiefly found among a
handful of conservative Democrats who had earlier benefited
from black votes and the endorsement of black Republicans.
One ambitious study, recently published, concludes that the
chief thrust for disfranchisement came from Black Belt planta¬
tion Democrats. Nevertheless, in view of the shifting positions
that both white factions took on the issue, the most valid con¬
clusion seems to be that each faction was motivated less bv J

ideological considerations than by the fluctuating tactical con¬

siderations of practical politics.
Like disfranchisement, the great wave of segregation laws
came with the entrance of the agrarians into politics. The occa-
202 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

sional laws and customary de facto segregation of the ante¬

bellum period and Reconstruction received new impetus after
Redemption. Statutes requiring segregation appeared first in the
field of education. By 1878 the majority of the Southern and
Border states placed legal sanction behind what was already
universal practice, and the rest of the states followed in the
1880’s and 1890’s. There was also growing discrimination in the
appropriation of school monies. By the end of the century,
funds for black schools were in many localities actually being
reduced; and, overall, while the average per capita expenditure
for Negro children rose slightly, the divergence in per capita
appropriations for the two races widened rapidly. One observer
reported in 1910 that in most of the Southern states at least
twice as much was spent per pupil on whites as on blacks. The
consequences in regard to attendance, length of school terms,
quality of buildings, and teacher pay and qualifications were all
too evident. Conservatives acceded to the desirability of indus-
trial education for the uplift of a "backward race,” but extrem¬
ists like Governor J. K. Vardaman of Mississippi, who voiced
the hatreds of the lower classes, objected to any sort of educa¬
tion for blacks.
During the post-Reconstruction years, segregation in trans¬
portation was less uniformly practiced, and laws on the subject
came later than on the schools. The earliest Jim Crow railroad-
car law was enacted bv J
Tennessee in 1881. There were increas-
ing incidents involving Negroes with first-class tickets who were
ejected from first-class or "ladies” coaches and Pullman cars,
though for financial reasons most Negroes of both sexes ordi¬
narily bought second-class tickets and rode in the smoking car.
As late as 1887, W. H. Councill, president of a black state
college in Alabama, who customarily purchased a first-class
ticket, was surprised to find himself directed to the smoking or
Jim Crow coach. He filed suit with the newly established Inter¬
state Commerce Commission, charging discrimination in rail¬
road rates since his ticket had not been honored in the first-class
coaches. Ruling on his and other similar complaints, the com¬
mission held that equal facilities must be provided for members
‘'Up from Slavery” 203
of both races, lliis decision prompted a rush of “separate-but-
equal” railroad legislation in the Southern states, all but three
of which passed such laws between 1887 and 1891. In practice,
first-class accommodations were not made available even to the
most refined Negro ladies, who were relegated to the coarse and
dirtv environment of the smoking cars, used also by white male
passengers with their cigars and profanity. The Supreme Court
nevertheless upheld the validity of the separate-but-equal trans¬
portation laws in the famous Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896.
On the other hand, transportation segregation was not yet uni¬
formly applied throughout the South. Blacks could still ride
with whites in the first-class coaches in Virginia and the Caro-
linas until those states passed Jim Crow car laws at the very end
of the century. Legislation requiring separate Pullman cars and
waiting rooms did not come in most states until after 1900,
though custom often supplied what the law left unsaid.
Thereafter the Jim Crow principle was applied with inexo¬
rable logic. For years streetcar segregation had been practiced
unevenly by Southern traction companies. Georgia enacted a
law on the matter in 1891, and after 1900 nearly all of the
Southern states passed such legislation. Segregation had pre¬
vailed at an early date in state penal and welfare institutions
and now became the universal practice in parks and other rec¬
reational facilities. As the textile industry moved into the pied¬
mont, certain states protected the underpaid white workers
against black competition by requiring segregation in the fac¬
tories. In 1913 there was even agitation in North Carolina for
restricting black farm ownership to certain areas. Beginning in
1910 a number of cities, including Baltimore, New Orleans,
Louisville, Atlanta, Augusta, and Richmond, passed residential
segregation ordinances, a practice that was declared unconstitu¬
tional by the Supreme Court in 1917.
The Southern race system also involved inequities in the
administration of justice. Although the Supreme Court insisted
that blacks had the right to sit on juries, they were, in fact,
almost completely excluded. The convict-lease system, with its
manv J
abuses, had been instituted in Louisiana before the Civil
204 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

War and elsewhere in the South during Reconstruction, but

under the Redeemers it expanded rapidly, to the profit of
planters and industrialists and the misery of the prisoners.
Lynching was another important instrument for maintaining
the racial system. The number of black persons lynched, most
of them in the South, reached its height in the 1880’s and early
1890’s, averaging about 100 a year during the two decades and
climbing to a peak of 161 in 1892.* Thereafter lynchings de¬
clined somewhat, though they grew in barbarity as the number
of those burned at the stake increased. Lynching was mainly a
rural phenomenon; in the growing Southern cities mob violence
became more common, exploding in the race riots at Wilming¬
ton, North Carolina, in 1898 and in Atlanta in 1906. Popular
opinion held that Negroes were lynched for raping white
women, and the hysteria arising from newspaper propaganda
about such attacks precipitated the Atlanta race riot. Actually,
in less than a third of the lynchings was the crime of rape even
alleged, much less proved. Underlying both the Wilmington
and Atlanta outbreaks was the hatred whipped up during the
disfranchisement campaigns in North Carolina and Georgia.
Thus, piece by piece, the patterns of disfranchisement, segre¬
gation, and racial subordination were brought to completion
during the early part of the twentieth century. It is important
to emphasize that this racial system evolved over a long period
of years. On the one hand, its roots went back to the antebellum
period; much de facto segregation had existed during the height
of Reconstruction; and mob violence was an essential element
in the strategy of the Redeemers who overthrew the radical
state governments in the 1870’s. On the other hand, as late as
the 1880’s distinguished Southerners were accepting Negro vot¬
ing as an accomplished fact, and in certain places blacks were
still being called “mister,” being buried in the same cemeteries
as whites, and being served in white restaurants. Black expecta¬
tions revealed the extent to which nonsegregated patterns per-

* The figure of 235 for 1892 is often given, but it includes whites as
well as blacks.
“Up from Slavery” 205
sisted. W. H. Councill, even though dependent on the favor of
state officials, did not become an “Uncle Tom” until after the
railroad-car incident mentioned earlier. In 1894 even the ac-
commodator Booker T. Washington noted with approval that
by boycotting the Atlanta streetcars Negroes had recently se¬
cured the abrogation of a newly instituted segregation policy. As
late as the period between 1898 and 1906, black citizens in
about thirtv Southern cities unsuccessfully employed the same
technique when Jim Crow trolley cars were introduced in their
communities. In Houston, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Savan¬
nah, the blacks even organized their own short-lived transpor¬
tation companies. In 1905 Jacksonville, Florida, residents
temporarily held the line by securing a court decision declaring
the city’s segregation ordinance unconstitutional. In the end, all
the efforts proved unavailing, and the wave of segregation swept
relentlessly on.
Southern Negroes might have continued the battle for their
constitutional rights, but by the opening of the century it was
clear that even the Supreme Court would permit only a very
narrow definition of those rights. In 1883 the Court voided the
Civil Rights Act of 1875 on the grounds that discrimination by
individual citizens was not prohibited by the Fourteenth
Amendment. The Court in 1896 went further and sanctioned
segregation laws, enforced by the police power of the states, on
the basis of the separate-but-equal doctrine. Then in 1898 it
upheld literacy and poll-tax qualifications for voting. Five years
later it refused to interfere with franchise restrictions that did
not explicitly disqualify people because of race, color, or previ¬
ous condition of servitude. Unis, the Court’s actions emascu¬
lated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and cloaked
with respectability the subterfuges enacted by the Southern
states.
One reason whv the South was able to flout the Constitution
J

was that by the end of the century Northerners were becoming

more hostile toward blacks. This is revealed by the actions of
the state governments, the attitudes of trade unions, and the
policies of the national administrations in Washington. Protec-
206 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

tive state legislation, black officeholding, and the racially egali¬

tarian policies of the Knights of Labor marked the 1880’s as a
period of rising status for Northern Negroes. But evasion of
state civil-rights laws was easy, the progress in politics and labor
proved temporary, and in retrospect it is clear that by the 1890's
the Republican Presidents had all but deserted the Negro’s
cause.
During the 1880’s blacks came to occupy positions in the
legislatures and city councils and in a few cases on the bench in
several areas of the North. Officeholding, which reached a high
point around 1890, thereafter declined. To be sure, in Illinois
there continued to be one or two Negroes in the legislature. But
in Massachusetts, for example, though blacks still received ap¬
pointive offices, the lawyer W. H. Lewis was the last one to sit
in the legislature (1902); and in Boston, where there had been
three blacks on the Common Council in 1894-5, only one
served in 1909.
As for civil rights, Northern states generally gave legislative
support to the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1874 Kansas and
New York followed Massachusetts’s earlier example in prohibit¬
ing segregation in places of public accommodation, and by 1880
blacks in the North secured recognition of their right to an
education, albeit usually a segregated one. After the Supreme
Court declared the federal Civil Rights Act unconstitutional in
1883, blacks and their friends agitated for state guarantees
against discrimination. California and almost all of the North¬
ern states east of the Mississippi River passed public accom¬
modation laws. The typical statute forbade discrimination in
restaurants, hotels, barbershops, theaters, public conveyances,
and places of amusement. California and the majority of
Northeastern states also abolished their separate schools.
Such laws, however, were of little value in the face of hostile
public opinion. Relatively few cases came to the attention of
the courts, the fines meted out to guilty parties were small, and
local custom, particularly in areas'contiguous to the South,
often acted as an effective deterrent to the exercise of rights
protected by legislation. Moreover, school integration was com-
“Up from Slavery” 207
monly accomplished at the expense of black teachers who were
excluded from jobs in the mixed systems. A student of condi¬
tions in southern Ohio in 1913 found that despite strong civil-
rights legislation Negroes were excluded from restaurants,
hotels, and some stores and were educated in separate schools.
About the same time another investigator reported that in
Pennsvlvania “this disposition to discriminate against Negroes
has greatly increased within the past decade/’ In Cleveland and
Boston, where abolitionist traditions lingered longest, where
schools were still integrated, and where a few Negroes achieved
significant successes in the white business and professional
world, even the old humanitarian supporters of the race were
becoming indifferent. Nothing illustrated the trend of the times
more dramatically than the race riots that occurred in New
York Citv in 1900 and in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908. In fact,
the New York riot was the first major racial clash in a Northern
city since the draft riots of 1863.
Two thirds of the Northern blacks at the turn of the century
were city dwellers, and like the 20 percent of Southern blacks
who also lived in cities, most of them still had to work at menial
occupations and at unskilled labor in heavy industry. In the
North employers continued to find Negroes useful as strike¬
breakers. It was mainly discrimination on the part of organized
labor that led Negroes to play this role in industrial conflict, a
situation that in turn further exacerbated the antipathy be¬
tween black and white workers.
Before the Civil War the weak trade-union movement had
been highly discriminatory, and during Reconstruction the
efforts of the leaders in the National Labor Union to include
blacks foundered on the hostility of the skilled white workers
who composed the membership of the organizations affiliated
with it. In the 1880’s, however, the Knights of Labor seriously
sought to recruit black members, even in the South, and for a
brief period a genuinely interracial trade-union movement
seemed possible. In 1886 it was estimated that the Knights had
60,000 Negroes in a total membership of 700,000. In all sections
of the country they formed both mixed and all-black assemblies.
208 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

A few of the latter admitted white members and became inter¬

racial. In the Southern cities craft unions had black locals; in
Savannah, New Orleans, and Galveston, Negroes were inte¬
grated in longshoremen’s units; and in New Orleans organized
labor called a sympathy strike in support of a union of black
draymen, who thereby won their demands. The Knights even
organized Southern Negro farmers. Among the cotton pickers
in Pulaski County, Arkansas, a group of perhaps a hundred
black Knights unsuccessfully struck for twelve days in 1886. In
the fall of 1887, nine thousand blacks and one thousand whites,
in a mixed union, struck against the Louisiana sugar planters for
higher wages. Except on a few plantations, the effort failed after
a long and bitter conflict.
By the end of the decade, the American Federation of Labor,
established in 1881, was superseding the declining Knights. At
first the AFL took a stand against discriminatory practices on
the part of its affiliated unions. In 1888 the International Asso¬
ciation of Machinists, a largely Southern organization, applied
for membership but was rejected because its constitution ex¬
cluded blacks. In 1890 the federation went on record as oppos¬
ing unions that barred black men and urged the machinists to
remove their restriction. Finally in 1895 the union dropped the
color provisions in its constitution and was accepted by the
federation. But the machinists eliminated the color line in
name only, as they maintained exclusion in the initiation ritual.
Similarly, the International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths was
barred from the federation in 1893 but admitted in 1897 after
removing the offending clause from its constitution only. By the
end of the century the AFL was even admitting unions with
exclusion clauses in their constitutions. Federation leadership,
although fearing the use of blacks as strikebreakers, was brought
to accept, even condone, the practice of barring Negroes from a
union or organizing them into powerless Jim Crow locals. A few
AFL unions—the cigarmakers, the coal miners, the garment
workers, and the longshoremen—did accept Negroes without
discrimination. Some others, fearful of black competition in the
“Up from Slavery” 209
skilled trades, admitted them with varying restrictions, dims
several building-trades unions barred Negroes in the North but
admitted them in the South, where there were still substantial
numbers of black craftsmen. In Nashville, where blacks out¬
numbered whites as artisans in 1880, whites joined the unions,
often learned the skills from the black members, and then,
having achieved a commanding majority, voted to eliminate the
Negroes from membership as rapidly as possible. By 1910 con¬
trol of the crafts in the city had passed to the whites.
By the turn of the century most unions excluded blacks to a
greater or lesser extent—a dozen openly, the majority by subter¬
fuges. Some unions, most notably perhaps the railroad brother¬
hoods, eliminated Negroes from certain types of work by
striking against their emplovers. Yet on the railroads and else¬
where there were occasional strikes notable for their expression
of interracial labor solidarity, as in the case of the Alabama coal¬
mine strike of 1908. In fact, of the AFL unions, it was the
United Mine Workers, with its thousands of black members in
the coalfields from Pennsylvania and Ohio to Alabama, that was
the most racially egalitarian. In that labor organization, despite
considerable ambivalence toward blacks on the part of the
white workers, blacks held office in the locals and, during the
1890’s, one served two terms on the union’s national executive
board. Of the labor federations, however, only the syndicalist
Industrial Workers of the World (organized in 1905) had an
explicit philosophy of interracial unity which it applied even in
the Deep South.
The policies of the Republican Partv mirrored the changing
attitudes of its Northern constituents. From championing the
black cause it shifted first to compromise and then to accep¬
tance of the Southern race system. The Compromise of 1877
revealed that the Republicans were unwilling to enforce the
Reconstruction legislation in the South. During the 1880’s
President Chester A. Arthur courted antiblack '“independent”
political organizations in the South in an effort to increase Re¬
publican strength. Not only did the party fail to halt mob vio-
210 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

lence and disfranchisement, but it was a Republican Supreme

Court that found the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional; and it
was a Republican Congress that in 1890 repudiated campaign
pledges by failing to pass the Lodge Federal Elections Bill.
Then, during the 1890’s, the Lily-white faction made its appear¬
ance, while Republican Presidents grew increasingly silent on
the question of black rights.
The impetuous Theodore Roosevelt alternately pleased and
angered Negroes by his actions. He won their approval by invit¬
ing Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, by
closing the Indianola, Mississippi, post office rather than acced¬
ing to white demands that he dismiss the black postmistress
there, and by insisting on appointing a black as collector of the
Port of Charleston despite powerful Southern and senatorial
opposition. At the same time, he was playing a shifty game with
the antiblack Lily-white Republicans. He spoke favorably of
Southern traditions and falsely asserted that most lynchings
were caused by sexual assaults on white women. In 1906 he
summarily discharged three companies of the black 25th Regi¬
ment on unproved charges of rioting in Brownsville, Texas. No
action of the President hurt and angered Negroes more than
this one. William Howard Taft’s pronouncements, while he
was still Secretary of War under Roosevelt, were also unaccept¬
able to Negroes, for he endorsed ballot restrictions and criti¬
cized higher education for blacks. The race had been pleased by
Roosevelt’s well-publicized appointments (though his policy
put fewer black men in office than his predecessors had), but
Negroes deplored President Taft’s open policy of not appointing
Southern black men to office where whites objected. The Lily-
whites made even more progress under Taft than they had
under Roosevelt. He permitted segregation to be introduced in
a few of the federal office buildings. By the election of 1912
Negroes faced a choice among the Democratic candidate, Wil¬
son, born in the South, who would make only the vaguest
promises to Negroes; the Republican candidate, Taft, who had
completely alienated the race; and the Progressive Party candi¬
date, Roosevelt, who appealed to black voters in the North but
“Up from Slavery’’ 211
refused to seat Negro delegates from the South at the Progres¬
sive Party convention. Under the circumstances most blacks
probablv voted for Roosevelt. Those who supported Wilson
soon discovered that he ignored Negroes when it came to
making appointments and that he permitted even greater segre¬
gation in the federal office buildings.
By the opening of the twentieth century, Southern extremists
were influencing public opinion in the North and West more
than before. A spate of ultraracist books appeared with such
titles as The Negro a Beast and The Negro: A Menace to
Civilization. Southern polemicists held not only that blacks
were an innatelv inferior, immoral, and criminal race that could
never catch up with the whites in civilization, but that in fact
freedom had caused a reversion to barbarism. Many of the
Southern propagandists believed colonization the only alterna¬
tive to violent extermination. There were differences in degree,
but scarcelv in basic outlook, between conservatives like
Thomas Nelson Page, who glorified the aristocratic plantation
tradition, and extremists like Governors Vardanian of Missis¬
sippi and Hoke Smith of Georgia, who voiced the hatreds of
the lower classes. In the North weighty scholarly opinion in the
biological and social sciences supported Southern racist doc¬
trines. Distinguished anthropologists and anatomists regarded
blacks as a separate species next to the ape, and eminent his¬
torians and political scientists reinterpreted Reconstruction in a
manner favorable to the white South. Almost alone among the
prominent social scientists, the anthropologist Franz Boas
maintained that innate racial differences were inconsequential.
Like the Southerners, Northerners widely believed that blacks
were less industrious, less thrifty, less trustworthy, and less self-
controlled than their own ancestors. These views were rein¬
forced bv the ideology of American overseas imperialism that
justified white racial superiority and the “white man’s burden.”
Probablv nothing symbolized so clearlv the thinking of the
American public about Negroes at the eve of the First World
War as the enormously popular racist melodrama, the movie
Birth of a Nation.
212 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

2
In the face of the deteriorating conditions of the late nine¬
teenth century, the dominant trends in Negro thinking shifted
gradually from protest to accommodation, especially in the
South. There was first of all a growing tendency to minimize
the value of political participation. A few leaders, especially
during the 1880’s, openly advocated supporting the Democratic
Party. More widespread was the belief that the race should
accept the disfranchisement constitutions. When Isaiah Mont¬
gomery, the lone black member of the Mississippi constitu¬
tional convention of 1890, advocated this, his remarks were
greeted with shock and dismay. “Judas” and “traitor” were
words commonly used to describe him. Yet five years later,
when the black delegates to the South Carolina constitutional
convention proposed the acceptance of literacy and/or property
qualifications, as long as they were equitably applied to both
races, it did not seem so extraordinary. This formula was ac¬
ceptable to the more conservative blacks. Even if honestly
applied, it would have disfranchised a greater proportion of
blacks than whites. In actual practice, of course, these qualifica¬
tions were administered dishonestly, drastically reducing the
remaining number of black voters. Nevertheless, the ideas pro¬
vided a face-saving device for Negroes by holding out the hope
that as they acquired property and education they could gain
the franchise.
If politics was closing as an avenue of racial advancement, if
segregation was growing apace, and if whites were becoming
more inimical, what route lay open for the ambitious blacks
who were striving to rise up from the disabilities of slavery?
Most Southern and many Northern leaders felt it lay in the
economic realm, and most articulate Negroes throughout the
country stressed the ideals of self-help and racial solidarity.
Protest organizations like the Afro-American Council,
founded in 1890, acted on the principle that since whites had
lost interest in blacks, black men would have to stick together
and help themselves. In extreme form the ideologies of with-
“Up from Slavery” 213
drawal were manifested in the continuing interest in African
colonization on the part of a few of the articulate and in efforts
to establish all-black communities.
Usually, however, self-help and racial solidarity were still
combined with an economic ideology that preached the acquisi¬
tion of middle-class virtues and black support of black business.
Advocates of this economic philosophy looked in two direc¬
tions. They insisted upon the necessity of Negroes “buying
black” if black business was to develop in the face of declining
white support for black barbers, artisans, and retail merchants.
They also held that if Negroes acquired wealth and middle-class
respectability, the race would thus earn acceptance from whites
and the walls of prejudice would crumble. On the one hand,
this cluster of ideologies functioned as an accommodation to
the system of segregation and discrimination; in fact, in contrast
with the 1850’s when this viewpoint was held by militant pro¬
test leaders like Frederick Douglass, in the expression of South¬
ern leaders it now became explicitly identified with a program
of conciliation and accommodation. On the other hand, this
way of thinking also functioned as a means of inculcating group
pride and self-respect.
This cluster of ideologies became dominant not only because
of the declining status of Negroes in American society but also
because there was a fundamental shift in the character of black
business and the Negro class structure. During the last third of
the nineteenth century, the entrepreneurial class in the black
community continued to depend in considerable part upon the
support of white customers. As before the Civil War, this group
was composed primarily of barbers, skilled artisans, hackmen
and draymen, grocers, and caterers. In certain Southern cities
the more prominent carpenters and masons had become con¬
tractors who built residences for whites. The more successful
among these entrepreneurs, along with the better-educated
ministers, still formed an important part of the black upper
class, but the inclusion of civil servants, postal workers, college-
trained teachers, Pullman porters of good family background,
the growing number of physicians, and an occasional lawyer
214 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

reflected the occupational diversification that had taken place.

Accordingly, by the end of the century the domestic servants in
wealthy families, the headwaiters and bell captains in fashion¬
able restaurants and hotels, and the stewards at exclusive
country clubs were beginning to decline in social status.
By aboht 1900 these economic and social changes were well
under way. A growing antipathy on the part of whites toward
trading with Negro businessmen and changes in technology and
business organization forced many of the small entrepreneurs
out of business. At the same time the urbanization of blacks
and the increasing tendency to live in ghetto neighborhoods
supplied a base for professionals and businessmen dependent on
the black market. Of course certain business people, such as
newspaper editors, undertakers, some barbers, and storekeepers,
had always relied on the Negro market, and these now grew in
number. The most important new enterprises catering to blacks
were banks (the first two founded in 1888), cemetery and realty
associations, and insurance companies.
Examples of what contemporaries referred to as “coopera¬
tive’' businesses were not lacking in previous years, but their
number rose sharply in the last decade of the nineteenth and
early years of the twentieth century. The most celebrated of the
earlier enterprises had been the Chesapeake and Marine Rail¬
road and Dry Dock Company, formed by the Baltimore ship
calkers after a strike against black mechanics and longshoremen
resulted in the dismissal of a thousand Negroes from the city’s
shipyards in 1863. The company operated successfully for
eighteen years. During the 1880’s and 1890’s exclusion from
white cemeteries and difficulties in borrowing money from
white lending agencies played an important role in the creation
of cemetery and building-and-loan associations. In Philadelphia,
for example, the first building-and-loan association was founded
in 1886; twenty years later the number in that city reached ten.
Successful realty companies also appeared, like one in New
York which, employing over two- hundred persons, was the
largest black enterprise in the city before the companv collapsed
around 1910.
“Up from Slavery’’ 215
Especially significant was the growth of Negro insurance,
todav the most important of black business enterprises. This
development was closely related to the mutual-benefit fraternal
organizations, which enjoyed a great boom beginning in the
1890’s. The 1880’s had been the heyday of the local, usually
church-oriented mutual-benefit and burial societies. Though
such organizations are to be found in the rural South to this
day, and though a few of them, like the Afro-American Indus¬
trial Insurance Society of Jacksonville, developed into full-
fledged insurance companies, by the end of the century they
were eclipsed by the fraternal orders. Among the secret orders
the Odd Fellows forged into the lead, growing from eighty-nine
lodges to a thousand lodges in the eighteen years between 1868
and 1886, and then more than quadrupling the number of its
lodges in the next eighteen years, 1886-1904. By 1906 the orga¬
nization had investments of $3 million. The Masons and the
black Knights of Pvthias (formed in 1880) also experienced
significant expansion. Among the nonsecret, quasi-religious fra¬
ternal orders, the Galilean Fishermen and the Independent
Order of St. Luke (founded in Richmond in 1865) were among
those enjoying phenomenal growth, but the most celebrated
was the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Re¬
formers founded in Virginia in 1881. Before it failed in 1911 it
had become a mutual-benefit stock company with a member¬
ship of 100,000, operating a bank, five department stores, and a
weekly newspaper in addition to its insurance department. In¬
spired by the success of these associations, the secret orders
improved their insurance features. Meanwhile, regularly
chartered mutual-aid and beneficial societies, specializing in
weekly sickness and health insurance, had appeared (the first
one in Baltimore in 1885). The final step in the evolution of
Negro insurance was the appearance of the regularly chartered
legal-reserve company, the first one being organized in Missis¬
sippi in 1909.
In the life of John Merrick, the man chiefly responsible for
North Carolina Mutual, one of the two largest black life-
insurance companies, one observes the evolution of black insur-
216 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

ance from the quasi-religious fraternal society through the

chartered mutual-aid organization to the legal-reserve company.
Merrick was a Durham barber who catered to upper-class
whites. In 1883 he and some friends obtained control of a quasi¬
religious fraternal order, the Royal Knights of King David.
Then in 1698 the business was twice reorganized, first as the
North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, and then as
an insurance company. Alonzo Herndon, who in 1905 founded
the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, today the chief rival of
North Carolina Mutual, had a similar personal career, though
his company began as a frankly commercial venture rather than
as a mutual-benefit society.
Related also to the fraternal organizations was the develop¬
ment of Negro banking. After the failure of the federally owned
Freedmen’s Bank following the panic of 1873, the first two
black banks were the True Reformers' Bank in Richmond and
the Capital Savings Bank of Washington, both founded in
1888. By 1900 there were four black banks. Thereafter the
number increased rapidly, reaching fifty-six by 1911. Most of
these, however, went under in subsequent financial depressions.
The great majority of the banks originated as depositories for
the fraternal orders. The importance of the fraternities in the
development of black banking is suggested by the fact that in
1907 the first and third largest in capitalization and deposits
were the True Reformers' Bank and the Mechanics Savings
Bank, the latter established in Richmond by the grand chan¬
cellor of the Virginia Knights of Pythias.
It is also noteworthy that although the secret fraternal orga¬
nizations like the Masons and the Odd Fellows had lost the
close connections with the churches that had existed before
the Civil War, the relationships between the ministers and the
mutual-benefit societies survived to a considerable extent in the
prominent role clergymen played in organizing the insurance
societies and banking enterprises. The True Reformers' Bank,
the Galilean Fishermen’s Bank, and the St. Luke's Bank were
all either founded by ministers or closely connected with the
churches. Again, in Philadelphia the pastor of the Berean Pres-
‘'Up from Slavery” 217
byterian Church organized the largest building-and-loan associa¬
tion in the state as a service provided by his “institutional”
church. Bv the end of the centurv, however, this ministerial
influence was declining, and it waned even more during the
twentieth century as the black community leadership and class
structure became more highly differentiated.
The impact of the newer type of business enterprise and the
expansion of the black entrepreneurial and professional group
were evident in the changing nature of the Negro class struc¬
ture. In general, between about 1890 and the 1920's the forces
of segregation and discrimination were instrumental in creating
a petite bourgeoisie of professionals and businessmen almost
completelv dependent for their livelihood on the black masses.
The majoritv were self-made men, of humble origin, on the
whole a darker-skinned group than the older upper class, less
likely to be descended from antebellum house slaves or from
free people of color. They formed an ambitious, striving middle
class, and the more successful among them were achieving
upper-class status before the First World War. The process
occurred at different rates and times in different cities, most
markedly in those communities where the largest in-migration
and residential segregation were taking place.
It was chief!v from the members of this rising middle class,
and from men of the older upper class who, like Merrick and
Herndon, turned from serving white customers to serving the
black community, that the main impetus for the philosophy of
Negro support for black business emanated. The whole process
is dramatically symbolized by a comparison of the sources of
two of the largest fortunes made by Negroes before the First
World War. R. R. Church of Memphis, the son of a wealthy
white man, was reputed to have amassed over a million dollars,
first as a saloonkeeper, and later out of speculation and invest¬
ment in white real estate between Reconstruction and the time
of his death in 1912. A few hundred miles north on the Missis¬
sippi River, with a business started in the 1890's, a St. Louis
laundress, Madam C. J. Walker, reportedly made a million dol¬
lars as a result of her invention of the first commercially success-
218 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO
ful hair-straightening process. Madam Walker was never
accepted by "the cream of colored society/’ but in the 1920's
her daughter became a noted social leader among the literary
and artistic elite in Harlem.

3,.
Interwoven with these changes in economic life and outlook
and in the class structure was the educational system. The pub¬
lic schools remained inferior. Even after the revised land-grant
college act of 1890 compelled each of the Southern states to
establish a black land-grant college, the only adequate higher
education could be obtained in the private schools. These insti¬
tutions, especially the better ones, continued to be identified
with middle- and upper-class blacks and were the source of the
great majority of black leaders, particularly in Southern commu¬
nities. This was especially true of the Congregationalist colleges
in the South and the Presbyterian Church’s Lincoln University
in Pennsylvania, in spite of their paternalistic reluctance to em¬
ploy blacks as teachers and administrators. (The Methodists
and Baptists, on the other hand, were more sensitive to black
opinion on this matter, for the Methodists had many Southern
Negro members and the Baptist schools were aided financially
by the black Baptist conventions. Both denominations were
using blacks to staff their schools well before the end of the
nineteenth century.)
In the 1890’s the liberal-arts colleges were being temporarily
eclipsed in popular esteem and financial resources by the rise of
industrial education. "Industrial education” was a catchall term
that included manual training, home economics, and prepara¬
tion for farming and for trades such as shoemaking, printing,
carpentry, and bricklaying. A number of abolitionists and ante¬
bellum Negro conventions had been interested in manual-labor
schools; during Reconstruction many of the freedmen’s schools
boasted of "industrial work,” which usually consisted merely of
home economics and odd jobs for the men. At several places,
however, most notably Hampton Institute in Virginia, success¬
ful manual-labor and vocational institutes were established.
“Up from Slavery'’ 219
In the 1880’s industrial education was widely adopted in the
curricula of white high schools, and, under the aegis of the John
F. Slater Fund, industrial and agricultural education on the
secondary level became popular among a large number of black
institutions, even among many known for their college depart¬
ments. Both Hampton Institute’s founder, Samuel Chapman
Armstrong, and the Slater Fund trustees viewed industrial edu¬
cation as particularly adapted to fitting Negroes for the environ¬
ment in which they were to live. At the same time it would
uplift them by creating a class of self-sufficient artisan-entre¬
preneurs in farming and the skilled trades. Throughout the
writings of the advocates of industrial education there was a
stress upon the moral virtues which it allegedly implanted and
which were regarded as essential to the Negro’s progress as a
man and a citizen. But in the view of these educators and
philanthropists it would be years—even centuries—before
blacks would be prepared to enjoy the rights of citizenship
equally with whites.
Industrial education was widely adopted because philanthro¬
pists encouraged it and because Southern whites saw it as keep¬
ing blacks in the subordinate position of working with their
hands rather than preparing them for professional careers.
Industrial training was a particularly expensive form of educa¬
tion. Therefore, in view of the inadequate funds received by
black schools, they had inferior, inadequate programs, except
for a few like Tougaloo and Spelman, Tuskegee and Hampton.
Ironically, the vogue of industrial education came when white
artisans were forcing Negroes out of the skilled trades. For both
these reasons the black graduates of industrial schools were usu¬
ally unable to practice their skills, and most of them became
teachers of the trades rather than the independent artisans the
propagandists for industrial education dreamed of creating.
Nevertheless, many black leaders found industrial education
appealing, partly because philanthropy subsidized it, and even
more because it fitted the moral-economic ideology of advance¬
ment that was in the ascendancy. And though clothed in a
philosophy of racial advancement, its advocates—from Samuel
220 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Chapman Armstrong to Booker T. Washington—saw it as a

platform of compromise and accommodation between the
North, the South, and the Negro. It satisfied those philanthro¬
pists and leading Southerners who opposed race equality, yet
liked to think that they were in favor of black uplift. Finally it
enabled many Negroes to convince themselves that it was a way
not only of obtaining money for black schools, but also of indi¬
rectly and ultimately elevating the race to the point where it
would be accorded its citizenship rights.
Although the major thrust of educational philanthropy in the
Southern states at the turn of the century was to improve the
quality of white public schools, black institutions received some
assistance in addition to that accorded to industrial education.
The Rockefeller interests, working through the General Educa¬
tion Board (founded in 1902), made some contributions to
black institutions and began the financial aid that was to make
Spelman College one of the two best-endowed colleges for
women in the South. Andrew Carnegie contributed libraries to
a number of black institutions, ranging from Booker T. Wash¬
ington’s Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute to Fisk Uni¬
versity. During the early years of the twentieth century other
funds for black education were established, most notably the
Anna T. Jeanes Fund (1905), which paid the salaries of super¬
vising teachers in order to raise standards in rural schools, and
the Julius Rosenwald Fund (1913), which contributed money
for the erection of school buildings.

4
Epitomizing these varied strands—accommodation, self-help,
racial solidarity, acceptance of disfranchisement, economic ac¬
cumulation and middle-class virtues, and industrial education—
and doing more than anyone else to popularize this particular
complex of ideas, was Hampton Institute’s most distinguished
alumnus, Booker T. Washington, who was catapulted into
world fame in 1895 by a speech he made at the Cotton States
and International Exposition in Atlanta.
Washington declared his belief that the solution of the race
“Up from Slavery” 221
problem would come through an application of the gospel of
wealth. He urged Negroes to stay in the South, since it was in
the South that the black was given a man’s chance in business.
Whites were urged to help uplift blacks and thereby further the
prosperity and well-being of the region. Coupled with this ap¬
peal to the white South’s self-interest was conciliatory phraseol¬
ogy and a criticism of Negroes. Washington deprecated politics
and the Reconstruction experience. He criticized blacks for for¬
getting that the masses of the race were to live by working with
their hands and for permitting their grievances to overshadow
their opportunities. He reminded whites of the loyalty and
fidelit\r of blacks, “the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and
unresentful people that the world has seen.” He denied any
interest in social intermingling when he said, “In all things that
are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as
the hand in all matters essential to mutual progress.” He asked
only for “justice” and an end to sectional differences and racial
animosities. These, combined with material prosperity, would
usher in a new era for “our beloved South.”
Washington advocated a conciliatory and gradualist philos¬
ophy. He minimized the extent of race prejudice or discrimina¬
tion and referred to Southern whites as the black man’s best
friends. He held that discrimination and prejudice were basi¬
cally the Negroes’ own fault. Poor and ignorant as most of them
were, blacks naturally alienated white people. They must, there¬
fore, take the chief responsibility for their own advancement.
Whites could help, but basically blacks would have to come up
from slaver\r by themselves. Accordingly, Washington accepted
segregation and criticized political activity. He believed that
economic accumulation and the cultivation of morality were the
methods best calculated to raise the black people’s status in
American society. Agricultural and industrial training was far
more appropriate for the mass of blacks, just then, than educa¬
tion for the professions.
Not perceiving the inexorable trends toward urbanization and
technological change, his program stressed farming and animal
husbandry and training in the handcrafts. He constantly de-
222 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

plored the tendency of black farmers to move to the cities, and

though his message was most successfully communicated to the
black urban businessmen, Washington’s vision was fundamen¬
tally of virtuous, landowning peasants proving their worth in
their native Southland. He even approved literacy and property
qualifications for voting; they would stimulate Negroes to ob¬
tain education and wealth. Yet, while stressing the need for
Negro self-improvement, Washington insisted that blacks
should be proud of their race and should loyally support it.
Especially should blacks support black businessmen, in order to
advance the race economically. With such solid economic foun¬
dations, blacks would receive their constitutional rights and the
respect of whites. But Washington was basically tactful, vague,
and even ambiguous, so that most whites confused his means
for his ends and assumed that for an indefinite period he antici¬
pated that Negroes would continue to occupy a subordinate
place in American society.
Booker T. Washington’s public image as an accommodator
was one thing; his covert behind-the-scenes activity was another.
Privately he appeared to contradict his public stance. He might
denounce higher education as a "bacillus,” but his own children
received not only training in the trades but a thorough ground¬
ing in the liberal arts. Overtly he might urge blacks to acquiesce
in the separate-but-equal doctrine; privately he had entree to
white social circles in the North and abroad that few Southern
whites could enter, and secretly he aided the fight against rail¬
road segregation. On one occasion, working through intermedi¬
aries, he hired a lobbyist to defeat legislation that, if passed,
would have encouraged segregation on interstate trains in the
North. Overtly he denied any interest in politics and urged
blacks to soft-pedal the desire for the franchise; behind the
scenes he was the most influential politician in the history of
American Negroes and surreptitiously fought the disfranchise¬
ment laws. He served as political adviser on. Negro affairs to
Presidents Roosevelt and Taft. All black men who were ap¬
pointed to office by Roosevelt, and most appointed by Taft,
were recommended by Booker T. Washington. Among his most
“Up from Slavery’’ 223
notable recommendations were: Robert H. Terrell, who served
as judge of the municipal court in Washington, 1901-21;
Charles W. Anderson, collector of internal revenue in New
York, 1905-15; and William H. Lewis, assistant attorney gen¬
eral, 1911-13. These were the highest federal judicial and ex¬
ecutive appointments of Negroes thus far made; and they were
not to be equaled or surpassed until after the Second World
W ar. Even more revealing of Washington’s private ideological
ambivalences was the way in which he clandestinely spent thou¬
sands of dollars financing the fruitless test cases taken to the
Supreme Court against the Southern disfranchisement
amendments.
Washington wielded more power within the black commu-
nitv than anyone else had ever done. This authority derived
from his political influence and from his popularity with the
philanthropists. No black schools received contributions from
Carnegie, Rockefeller, and lesser donors without Washington’s
approval. In short, ambitious men and institutions found it
difficult to get ahead without the Tuskegeean’s support. Wash¬
ington also assiduously cultivated influential leaders in the black
community; for over a decade it was impossible to achieve a
major position in the Negro churches if one attacked him, and
judicious advertisements and contributions kept the Negro
press in line.
Booker T. Washington’s career was truly a remarkable one.
Born an obscure slave in western Virginia, he rose to a pinnacle
of international fame. He appropriately entitled his autobiog¬
raphy Up from Slavery, and indeed his life epitomized what
thrift and industry—combined with talent and diplomacy-
might accomplish in an age of accommodation.

5
Despite Washington’s prominence, black protest never en¬
tirely disappeared. The Afro-American Council, which lasted,
with periods of inactivity, from 1890 to 1908, had been founded
as a militant protest organization and always retained some¬
thing of a protest outlook. Its sessions at the close of the
224 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

century were enlivened in fact by attacks on Washington by

such people as the noted antilynching crusader Ida Wells-
Barnett. By then, however, the Council was coming under
Washington’s influence, and after 1900 its annual conventions
expressed a rather mild point of view until Washington’s critics
obtained control in 1906-7. Even in the South, as our previous
discussion bf streetcar boycotts illustrates, protest activity had
not completely vanished, but the chief opposition to accom¬
modation came from a small group of Northern intellectuals.
For the most part they were an upper-class elite of editors,
lawyers, ministers, and teachers. The majority of them had at¬
tended prestigious Northern universities. From Harvard came
the two best-known critics of Washington’s policies: William
Monroe Trotter and W. E. B. Du Bois.
Trotter in 1901 founded the militant Boston Guardian, the
most caustic of the handful of newspapers that opposed Wash¬
ington. It epitomized the anti-Bookerite sentiment of “Radi¬
cal”* New England blacks. In July 1903, Trotter and his
associates unsuccessfully challenged the Tuskegeean for control
of the Afro-American Council. The following month the em¬
bittered Radicals precipitated disorder and pandemonium when
they heckled Washington at a public meeting in Boston. This
“Boston Riot” widened the cleavage between the two groups,
especially after Trotter was jailed and his antagonists financed a
libel suit against the Guardian.
A few months prior to this event, W. E. B. Du Bois had
published a volume of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, which
contained an incisive and critical analysis of Washington’s
leadership. James Weldon Johnson, the noted author and later
executive secretary of the National Association for the Ad¬
vancement of Colored People (NAACP), credited Du Bois’s
analysis of racial leadership with effecting “a coalescence of the
more radical elements . . . thereby creating a split of the race
into two contending camps.” During the 1890’s Du Bois, who

* “Radical” Negroes in this period were anti-Washington advocates of

militant protest.
“Up from Slavery’’ 225
held a doctorate from Harvard and was a professor at Atlanta
University, had supported most of Booker T. Washington’s
program. He had been a strong advocate of self-help and of
Negro support of black business, and in 1890 had even opposed
the Lodge Federal Elections Bill on the grounds that many
blacks were “not fit for the responsibility of republican govern¬
ment. When you have the right sort of black voters you will
need no election laws.” The chief differences between the two
men had been that Du Bois never flattered the white South as
Washington did and that Du Bois saw a place for higher educa¬
tion as well as industrial training. Now, in 1903, in Souls of
Black Folk, Du Bois, though he continued to share Washing¬
ton’s interest in racial solidarity and self-help, denounced the
Tuskegeean for condoning the caste system and for shifting to
blacks the major responsibility7 for their elevation. Du Bois held
that Washington’s accommodating ideology had brought to¬
gether the South, the North, and the Negro in a monumental
compromise that “practically accepted the alleged inferiority of
the Negro.’’ He observed that in the period of Washington’s
ascendancy segregation and disfranchisement laws had risen in
number, while philanthropic support for higher education had
declined, and he held Washington accountable for the accelera¬
tion of these trends. Because Washington’s popularity with
whites had led blacks to accept his leadership, criticism of him
had virtually disappeared. Du Bois hoped, however, that promi¬
nent blacks would now speak out, for it had become obvious
that justice could not be achieved through “indiscriminate flat¬
ten”; that Negroes could not gain their rights by voluntarily
throwing them away or obtain respect by constantly belittling
themselves; that, on the contrary, black citizens must speak out
constantly against oppression and discrimination.
In Du Bois’s view, the Negro race could be saved only by the
“Talented Tenth”—i.e., the minority who had received a liberal-
arts education and thus were in a position to elevate blacks both
culturally and economically. In his words, “Progress in human
affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of the
exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren.” Du
226 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Bois was disturbed by Washington’s exclusive preoccupation

with industrial education and the financial support whites gave
it at the expense of black colleges. Du Bois did not deprecate
industrial education and in fact agreed that it made a significant
contribution in teaching the masses of the race to work, but he
reminded Washington that many of the teachers of the indus¬
trial and elementary schools had attended liberal-arts institu¬
tions, and that until many more did so, black leadership and the
Negro race would be seriously retarded.
In order to inaugurate an organized program of public agita¬
tion for the Negro’s constitutional rights, Du Bois in 1905
founded the Niagara Movement. In sharp vigorous language
the Niagara declarations placed the responsibility for the race
problem squarely on the shoulders of whites. White America
was crisply told that blacks were dissatisfied and would continue
to be until they had obtained voting rights and "the abolition
of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color.” In
Philadelphia and Chicago its members actively opposed school
segregation. The movement’s legal redress committee won a
railroad segregation suit, receiving a judgment of one penny in
damages. Although the concrete achievements of the Niagara
Movement were indeed few, it clearly articulated the black pro¬
test, contrasting the Washingtonian assertions that Negroes
were content to make the climb from slavery by "natural and
gradual processes.” The Niagara men told whites that they
should not be lulled into thinking that "the Negro-American
assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apolo¬
getic before insult. . . . We do not hesitate to complain, and
to complain loudly and insistently.”
Washington used all reservoirs of power at his disposal to
silence his critics. He placed spies in radical organizations, at¬
tempted to deprive opponents of their government jobs, subsi¬
dized the black press to ignore or attack "the opposition,”
successfully exerted pressure to prevent the election of radicals
to high office in the black churches, and used his enormous
influence with the philanthropists to divert funds away from
educators who were inimical to him. Washington’s control over
“Up from Slavery'’ 227
the advancement of blacks in government, education, and the
church probably discouraged many ambitious men from affiliat¬
ing with the Niagara Movement.
The Niagara Movement was thus no match for Washington.
It was further weakened bv a rupture between Du Bois and
Trotter in 1907. After that the organization merely limped
along. Nevertheless, particularly in view of the Tuskegeean’s
opposition, it was significant because, as the journalist Ray
Stannard Baker reported, “It represents, genuinely, a more or
less prevalent point of view among many coloured people.”
While the Niagara Movement was losing its momentum,
liberal whites who had previously supported Washington were
becoming increasingly impatient with his tactics and with his
efforts to monopolize black leadership. Outstanding among this
group was Oswald Garrison Villard, the grandson of William
Lloyd Garrison and publisher of the New York Evening Post.
The tide of segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence
seemed irresistible and in 1908, in a letter to Washington, Vil¬
lard concluded that only “a strong central defense committee’’
could effectivelv advance Negro interests. In 1909, in response
to a call issued by Villard, a National Negro Conference was
held in New York which led to the formation of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Those
present included prominent members of the Niagara Move¬
ment and eminent white Progressives and Christian Socialists.
A number of the black radicals who attended, most notably Du
Bois, also considered themselves Socialists. It should be empha¬
sized, however, that only a small minority of white Progressives
were supporters of the NAACP. Most Progressives were either
supporters of Washington, likp- Roosevelt, or were, like Wilson,
quite indifferent to the Negro. In fact Washington’s petit bour¬
geois philosophy of thrift and industry and self-help reflected
the basic values of most American leaders at that period,
whether conservative or progressive.
In their speeches at the conference radical leaders like Ida
Wells-Barnett and Du Bois stressed the importance of the
ballot. The conferees denounced mob violence and segregation,
228 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

demanded academic training for the gifted, and above all in¬
sisted on the right to vote. The NAACP did not actually unite
with the Niagara Movement, but most of its members joined
the new organization. The interracial character of the NAACP
was essential to the success of its early work. The prestige of the
names of well-known white Progressives like Villard, Lillian
Wald, Jane Addams, John Haynes Holmes, Moorfield Storey,
and Clarence Darrow gave the agitation for Negro rights better
financial support and, more important, a wider audience. Ex¬
cept for Du Bois, who became director of publicity and editor
of the Association's organ, the Crisis, all of the chief officials
were at first white. Several of these white leaders seemed some¬
what paternalistic in their dealings with black associates in the
NAACP. Nevertheless, as Du Bois observed, the interracial ten¬
sions during the early days of the organization were mild when
compared to those in the abolitionist movement. In any case,
from the first the real backbone of the Association consisted of
an elite, college-educated black membership. By 1914 the Asso¬
ciation had six thousand members in fifty branches. Mainly a
legal-action organization from the very beginning, the NAACP
achieved its first important victory just a few months before
Washington's death in 1915 when the United States Supreme
Court declared the Oklahoma grandfather clause unconsti¬
tutional.
Beginning in 1909 Booker T. Washington took steps to limit
the effectiveness of the new organization, and the old pattern of
various forms of pressure was repeated. For their part Du Bois
and his black associates openly attacked Washington, though
Villard insisted that this was not the official policy of the
NAACP and encouraged the efforts of R. R. Moton of Hamp¬
ton Institute, later Washington's successor at Tuskegee, to
effect an understanding between the two groups.
For the first decade of the century at least, the majority of
articulate Negroes had supported Washington. This was even
true of many of the Northern intellectuals, for originally only a
small minority of them had deemed it desirable to battle the
Tuskegeean. Many of them, it is true, did not endorse his entire
“Up from Slavery'’ 229
program wholeheartedly, and others changed their attitudes
toward Washington over the years. Yet he enjoyed enormous
support in the black community. What were the reasons for
this?
First, there was the discouraging trend of the times. Protest,
agitation, political action had failed. There had been a definite
trend in the direction of accommodation in the 1880's and
1890’s, and at the turn of the century certain prominent protest
leaders, who would later be among Washington’s most promi¬
nent critics, in their despair thought that his method might be
of some help. Even Du Bois had expressed an ideology remark¬
ably similar to Washington’s. Only when it became evident
that the worsening situation persisted in the face of Washing¬
ton’s program did many who had supported him change their
minds.
Second, Washington’s emphasis upon economic development
and black support of Negro business undoubtedly attracted the
majority of the rising bourgeoisie, whose income was based on
the Negro market. And in the South those who still depended
on white customers were drawn to that side of his philosophy
that insisted upon the value of conciliating Southern whites,
whose respect for business acumen would, Washington be¬
lieved, lead them to patronize energetic black entrepreneurs.
Nor can one neglect Washington’s power over political ap¬
pointments and philanthrope as a third factor in shaping ideo¬
logical expression during his ascendancy, making the combina¬
tion of ideas he represented more palatable than they otherwise
would have been. There is a fascinating irony in noting, for
example, that the sine qua non in receiving Washington’s en¬
dorsement for political office was to declare constantly that, for
blacks, officeholding was unwise or unimportant. School offi¬
cials, finding Washington’s blessing essential for securing the
funds from the philanthropists, cultivated Washington and
endorsed his leadership and ideology. With ample backing from
Andrew Carnegie, Washington in 1900 founded the National
Negro Business League, which provided him with an influential
platform for propagandizing the values of thrift, industry, self-
230 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

help, and black support of Negro business, as well as for down¬

grading the values of agitation and the franchise. Washington’s
income from speaking and philanthropy enabled him to use
advertisements and, in half a dozen cases, actual subsidies to
encourage newspaper editors to support him and his program.
Finally, Washington’s very prominence in the eyes of white
America’drew black support for his program, his fame making
the complex of ideas that he represented far more acceptable
than it otherwise would have been. Beyond this, his achieve¬
ment made him the very image of success for countless thou¬
sands in the black community, a model to be not only admired
but emulated as well.
Space here will not allow exploration of the complexities of
thought in the age of Booker T. Washington. A number of
men shifted from one point of view to another. Some, especially
in the North, saw no contradiction in endorsing Washington’s
leadership while engaging in protest themselves; an overwhelm¬
ing majority of articulate Northerners supported both protest
and economic accumulation, both citizenship rights and racial
solidarity, and many tried to maintain friendship with both the
Bookerites and the Radicals during the bitter struggle. Du Bois
himself consistently encouraged the building of Negro enter¬
prise and enthused over black support of black business, or
what he described as a "group economy,” which he viewed as
the only way to advance the race economically, given the cir¬
cumstances under which blacks lived.
Though the Niagara Movement was disappearing by 1909,
black protest grew stronger with the founding of the NAACP.
At the very time that the NAACP, with its prominent backers,
was making black protest more respectable, Washington’s
power was declining. He had less political influence with Taft
than with Roosevelt and none at all with Wilson. Meanwhile,
it was clear that even if, as has been claimed, his conciliatory
program perhaps had slowed down the pace of deterioration in
the Negro’s status, it certainly had not halted the process.
Given this combination of circumstances, a revival of black
protest was almost inevitable. By the time Washington died,
“Up from Slavery” 231
even some of his closest friends found it wise to identify them¬
selves with the NAACP. And a year after his death, the
NAACP played an ironic master stroke by inviting James
Weldon Johnson, one of the most versatile figures in the Wash¬
ington camp, to join its staff as national organizer.
 VI
Black Men in the Urban Age:
The Rise of the Ghetto

After the Civil War and Emancipation, the major

watershed in American black history was the Great Migration
to Northern cities that began during the First World War.
According to the census of 1910, blacks were overwhelmingly
rural and Southern; approximately three out of four lived in
rural areas and nine out of ten lived in the South. A half cen¬
tury later Negroes were mainly an urban population, almost
three fourths of them being city dwellers. About half lived out¬
side of the old slave states. The changes in the texture of Afro-
American life that have resulted are enormous, though unfortu¬
nately the subject is one that has yet to be systematically
studied.

232
Black Men in the Urban Age 233

1
Migration of Southern black people searching for better con¬
ditions was not new. In the years since the Civil War there had
been a steady drift of blacks to Southern urban centers, along
with a trickle to the North. Negroes left the land at about the
same rate as Southern whites and for the same economic rea¬
sons. Moreover, there was a considerable interstate and intra¬
state movement of black farmers into newly developed agricul¬
tural lands, particularly in Florida, parts of Georgia and
Alabama, the Yazoo-Mississippi delta of northwestern Missis¬
sippi, and Arkansas and Texas, resulting in a net south westward
movement of the center of Negro population. At certain dra¬
matic times, such as during the Kansas Exodus of 1879, black
migrants, and more especially their supporters among the better-
educated classes, expressed an ideology that protested against all
aspects of race discrimination. But the main push seems to have
been economic. Negroes left worn-out land and moved toward
more fertile fields in an effort to raise themselves from day
laborers or sharecroppers to cash renters and even farm owners.
In fact, as the sociologist Charles S. Johnson has demonstrated,
often the largest black migration was into counties with the
highest incidences of mob violence and lynchings. Though the
evidence is sketchy, it appears that the peaks of black move¬
ment were during periods of acute economic crisis—toward the
close of the depression of the 1870’s, at the height of the Popu¬
list-agrarian agitation around 1890, and perhaps again during
the minor depression that hit the United States on the eve of
the First World War.
In 1912 the year-old National Urban League, the major social-
welfare agency working among blacks, reported that “the migra¬
tion of Negroes to the cities, as a part of the general movement
. . . to the cities, is a fact of common observation.” Between
1890 and 1910 the proportion of Negroes classified as urban bv
the United States census rose from about 20 to 27 percent. In
the latter year there were a dozen cities that had over forty
234 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

thousand Negroes. Between 1900 and 1910 large percentage

increases in the black population occurred in New South cities
like Birmingham (215 percent) and Atlanta (45 percent). New
York City had a gain of 51 percent, while Philadelphia and
Chicago each reported increases of more than 30 percent. The
growing northward movement was noted by Du Bois as early as
1903 when he asserted that "the most significant economic
change among Negroes in the last ten or twenty years has been
their influx into northern cities." About that time New York
had three fourths as many blacks as New Orleans, Philadelphia
had almost twice as many as Atlanta, and Chicago had more
than Savannah. During the next years the population move¬
ment produced even more striking consequences. According to
the census of 1910, two cities, Washington and New York, had
over ninety thousand Negroes. Three others, New Orleans,
Baltimore, and Philadelphia had over eighty thousand. Of these
five cities, only one was in the Deep South.
Those blacks who moved to the cities in the decades preced¬
ing the First World War entered an environment in which
racial lines were being more and more tightly drawn. One mani¬
festation of this trend was the expansion of residential segrega¬
tion. The pattern of Negroes living in scattered enclaves about
the town, with some individuals here and there living in white
neighborhoods, was giving way to larger concentrations of
blacks limited to one or two sections of a city. Mixed neighbor¬
hoods survived in the older sections of Southern seaports like
Charleston and New Orleans, but the New South mercantile
and industrial centers like Atlanta and Birmingham had known
only residential segregation. In the major cities of the Border
and Northern states the growth of ghettos was greatly accentu¬
ated. As the Fisk University sociologist and National Urban
League official George Edmund Haynes observed in 1913,
"New York has its 'San Juan Hill’ in the West Sixties, and its
Harlem district of over 35,000 [concentrated] within about
eighteen city blocks; Philadelphia has its Seventh Ward; Chi¬
cago has its State Street, Washington its Northwest Neighbor¬
hood, and Baltimore its Druid Hill Avenue. Louisville has its
Black Men in the Urban Age 235
Chestnut Street and its Smoketown: Atlanta its West End and
Auburn Avenue.” The rapidity and intensity of the process
varied from citv to city. Chicago blacks were the most highly
segregated in the nation, while those in Detroit, though con¬
centrated on the city’s east side, mostly still resided in mixed
neighborhoods.
The Great Migration of the World War I era stimulated
trends alreadvJ under wav.J
While blacks were clearlv dissatisfied
*

with the whole pattern of race relations in the South, it was an

economic crisis arising from several converging factors that pre¬
cipitated the population movement. Cotton agriculture was
suffering from the ravages of the boll weevil, which had entered
the United States from Mexico and gradually moved eastward
through Texas. Then in 1915 disastrous floods in Alabama and
Mississippi increased the misery of hundreds of thousands of
rural blacks. At the same time, Northern industry, fed by de¬
mands from the Allies in Europe, greatly needed unskilled and
semiskilled labor. Since the world war cut off immigration from
Europe, some Northern manufacturers encouraged the poverty-
stricken Negroes to leave the South. Their efforts were greatly
aided by several Northern black newspapers, particularly the
Chicago Defender, which painted a glowing picture of North¬
ern living conditions and denounced Southern racism. Indeed,
as in earlier periods, much of the explanation given by con¬
temporaries emphasized disfranchisement, Jim Crow, and mob
violence.
The result of all these forces was a clear-cut reversal of the
main tendencies in the black population movement since
Emancipation. The principal direction of black migration
shifted away from the undeveloped Southern rural areas toward
the cities, particularly of the North. Nearly a half million left
the South during and shortly after World War I and observers
found the effects startling. Eor example, Chicago’s black popu¬
lation jumped from 44,000 to 110,000 between 1910 and 1920,
while Cleveland’s more than quadrupled, rising from 8,000 to
34,000. There were accounts of Southern towns practically de¬
populated of Negro residents, of black preachers, physicians,
236 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

and morticians moving North because of the departure of the

people whom they served. Southern states and communities,
alarmed by the loss of cheap labor, blamed Northern labor
agents for enticing unwilling Negroes to make secret nighttime
departures. This wartime Great Migration intensified the
gradual changes in the pattern of life of Northern urban Ne¬
groes and^set in motion a population stream that was to con¬
tinue, in war and peace, prosperity and depression, until the
present day.

2
What were the conditions that the migrants met in the
“promised land”? There was the animosity of white workers,
even though black men obtained mostly the heavy, laborious,
unskilled jobs. In 1917 the fears and suspicions of whites
erupted into race riots in Philadelphia and Chester, Pennsyl¬
vania, and at East St. Louis, Illinois, where the most serious
racial outbreak in the twentieth century cost the lives of at least
thirty-nine blacks. Friction also resulted from the competition
between Negroes and whites for limited housing. Yet, despite
resistance both during and after the war, the ghettos expanded
irrepressibly, block by block.
White attitudes of racial animosity, which demanded the
exclusion of blacks from white residential areas, was the basic
factor responsible for the creation and expansion of the ghettos.
During the early decades of the northward migration, it was not
infrequent for Negroes who “invaded” white areas to suffer
personal beatings and stoning or bombing of their homes. Most
white realtors refused to sell black people homes in white
neighborhoods, and white property owners formed so-called
neighborhood improvement associations for the purpose of
keeping Negroes out. Typically they stressed their members'
fear of depreciated property values, a fear exploited by certain
real-estate agents—usually white—who engaged in the practice
of “blockbusting”—forcing panic selling on the part of whites
by moving in a Negro family. The dealers benefited handsomely
by the resulting rapid turnover of properties. After the U.S.
Black Men in the Urban Age 237
Supreme Court declared municipal residential segregation ordi¬
nances unconstitutional in 1917, many white improvement
associations resorted mainly to the restrictive covenant—an
agreement among the property owners of an area that they
would not sell to blacks. Until 1948 the courts upheld these
covenants; although in the face of inexorable pressures stem¬
ming from the growth of the black population they frequently
proved unenforceable in the long run, they were an important
instrument in impeding the expansion of black residential areas
and thus contributed to extraordinary overcrowding in the
ghettos.
In addition to these external pressures from whites, there
were also internal forces among blacks that contributed to the
increasing ghettoization of Negro life. Motivated by pride,
habit, and the need for mutual protection from rejection, Ne¬
groes found a refuge within their own community. Further¬
more, the institutional structure of the black community—the
churches, clubs, fraternal orders—were centered in the ghettos,
thus discouraging many from moving into distant white neigh¬
borhoods. And the concentration of blacks in specific parts of a
city proved beneficial to black politicians and businessmen who
based their careers on the support and patronage of the Negro
masses. Thus it is not surprising that, during the late 1950’s and
1960’s, fair-housing groups found relatively few black people
anxious to move into the white suburbs that were far from the
institutions and life of the black community.
In addition to promoting the growth of residential segrega¬
tion, World War I and postwar migration brought greater dis¬
crimination and segregation in other aspects of everyday life.
Jim Crow schools arose in manv Northern communities that
had never known them—partly as a result of the changing eth¬
nic character of residential neighborhoods, but also because of
deliberate gerrymandering and transfer policies on the part of
boards of education. Even in cities like Chicago or Boston,
hotels and restaurants that had previouslv served Negroes now
barred them. As conditions worsened, earlier black settlers
blamed the mass of Southern newcomers, with their awkward
238 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

and unrefined ways, for the more intense prejudice that all
blacks in the North now faced.
During World War I this pervasive pattern of discrimination
extended even to the treatment of black men as members of the
armed forces. Negroes were allowed to serve in the navy only as
messboys and were barred entirely from the marines. The army
accepted enlisted men, but planned originally not to commis¬
sion Negroes. The highest-ranking black officer, Colonel
Charles Young, was retired, allegedly on grounds of ill health.
Only after agitation by black college students, NAACP officials,
and a committee of prominent white citizens did the War De¬
partment finally establish a Negro officers’ training camp at Des
Moines, Iowa. Many criticized the NAACP leaders for endors¬
ing a segregated camp, but their position was that without
accepting such arrangements no Negroes would have been
trained as officers. In October 1917, 639 men were commis¬
sioned with the ranks of captain and first and second lieutenant;
later other Negroes became officers at unsegregated officer-train¬
ing camps and in the field. All served only as officers of black
units.
YMCA recreation units at army camps made no provisions
for Negroes. Conditions in the South were especially difficult
because of the actions of white civilians. At Houston in late
summer of 1917 black soldiers who had been insulted and
beaten by whites broke into an army ammunition storage room
and marched on the city’s police station. A riot followed that
cost many lives. After a perfunctory trial, thirteen soldiers were
hanged on charges of murder and mutiny, and forty-one others
received life sentences. A similar occurrence at Spartanburg,
South Carolina, in October was only narrowly averted by hastily
sending the black regiment overseas. The army in these situa¬
tions did nothing to protect its men against civilian attack; it
either disarmed the blacks or shipped them to Europe. The
War Department, however, did appoint Emmett J. Scott as a
special assistant to the Secretary of War on matters affecting
Negroes. Scott attempted to deal with Negro complaints, but it
seems that he functioned principally as a device that the War
Black Men in the Urban Age 239
Department used to divert dissatisfaction, at least temporarily,
from the responsible authorities. It was a symbolic role that
Emmett Scott, Booker T. Washington’s former private secre-
tarv, must have understood verv well.
Despite discrimination at home and attempts by American
troops—even high army authorities—to inculcate race prejudice
among the French abroad, black soldiers performed honorably
and courageouslv in battle. Most black newspapers supported
the war effort, and even the militant Du Bois wrote a famous
editorial in the Crisis urging blacks to “close ranks’’ with white
Americans in defeating the nation’s enemies. “If this is our
countrv, then this is our war,” he declared. He hoped that, by
proving their patriotism, Negroes would receive greater recogni¬
tion of their manhood and their citizenship rights in the post¬
war era. Some black editors, however, were critical of Du Bois’s
stand, believing that he had conceded too much in asking Ne¬
groes “to forget our present grievances” until war’s end.
Du Bois’s hopes for the postwar reconstruction were com¬
pleted frustrated. Returning soldiers in 1919 found themselves
in a situation that if anything was worse than the one before
they left: a revived Ku Klux Klan, loss of job opportunities due
to demobilization, and an extraordinary outbreak of race riots—
over twenty in that “Red Summer” of 1919. They ranged from
Washington, D.C., to Elaine, Arkansas, from Longview, Texas,
to Chicago. The basic cause of most of these riots lay in white
fears of economic competition and voting power of urban black
migrants. The mobs harassed and murdered black victims with¬
out hindrance because of police prejudice and ineptitude. In
some communities state militia reinforcements were called in
too late, and even when deployed they often proved no better
than the police. Generally all that blacks could do was attempt
to flee.
Yet there was unmistakable evidence of increasing black mili¬
tancy, and it is likely that the riots reflected to some degree
white fear of this militancy. In 1919 the NAACP was disturbed
by carefullv verified reports from many places, even in Missis¬
sippi—where one would have thought that the oppressive race
240 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

system had snuffed out all significant protest—of Negroes plan¬

ning to meet fire with fire, to fight back. Moreover, acts of
retaliatory violence on the part of Negroes actually triggered
some of the major race riots of the war and postwar years.
In these cases blacks, goaded and angered by increasing num¬
bers of white assaults during the months of rising racial tension
that always precede a riot, struck back. The East St. Louis race
riot of 19*17 was precipitated when blacks, having been beaten
repeatedly by white gangs, shot into a police car. In the dusk
they mistook it for another Ford automobile containing white
joyriders who had shot up black homes earlier in the evening.
Two detectives were killed and white reaction led to the bloodi¬
est race riot of the twentieth century. A similar sequence of
events occurred at the Houston riot a few weeks later and in
Chicago in 1919. In the same year the Longview, Texas, riot
occurred after blacks shot whites who entered the ghetto seek¬
ing a teacher who had reported a recent lynching to the Chi¬
cago Defender. The event that triggered the Elaine, Arkansas,
riot of 1919 was the shooting into a black church by two white
law-enforcement officers. The Negroes returned the fire, causing
one death. The white planters in the area, already angered be¬
cause black cotton pickers had banded together to compel fairer
treatment from the landlords, embarked upon a massive Negro
hunt to put the black men "in their place.” Two years later, in
1921, a riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, originated when a crowd of
armed Negroes assembled before the courthouse to prevent the
possibility of a lynching of a Negro arrested for allegedly attack¬
ing a white girl. The blacks shot at the white police and civil¬
ians who attempted to disperse them.
In each of these conflagrations, the typical pattern was black
retaliation to white acts of persecution and violence, and white
perception of this resistance as an organized, premeditated con¬
spiracy to "take over,” which unleashed the armed power of
white mobs and police. In the face of overwhelming white
numerical superiority, black resistance ordinarily collapsed fairly
early during the riots, especially in the South. Generally, white
mobs would attack individual Negroes who happened to be
Black Men in the Urban Age 241
passing through white areas and those whose homes were on
the borders of white neighborhoods or in small enclaves sur¬
rounded by white residences or businesses. Often armed, but
terrified, Negroes fled their homes, leaving guns and ammuni¬
tion behind. Occasionally, however, black retaliation occurred
toward the close rather than at the start of a riot. This hap¬
pened in the unusual, if not unique, Washington riot of 1919,
when blacks attacked white passengers on trolley cars passing
through black areas.* Nevertheless, Negroes were generally de¬
fenseless in the face of superior numbers and force and police
support for the rioters. While some whites were killed in the
riots bv blacks who did retaliate, by far the greater number of
victims were black men, unable to do anything effective to pro¬
tect themselves or their families.
The idea of retaliatory violence was occasionally reflected in
the utterances of leading intellectuals during the war and post¬
war years. In 1916, inspired by the Irish rebellion, Du Bois had
admonished black youth to stop spouting platitudes of accom¬
modation and remember that no people ever achieved their
liberation without armed struggle. In 1920, embittered at the
wave of racial proscription that followed the war and reiterating
a thought he had expressed as early as 1905, the year in which
he founded the Niagara Movement, Du Bois predicted a race
war in which Negroes, allied with Asians, would overwhelm the
white race. In 1919, A. Philip Randolph, editor of the militant
Socialist monthly, the Messenger, advocated physical resistance
to white mobs. He observed that Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence
recognized the law of self-defense and that Negroes should use
armed force against their attackers. Half a dozen years later, in
the noted Sweet case of 192 5, t the NAACP also epoused the
idea of the legality of retaliatory violence in self-defense and
won. The open expression of such doctrines was thus a signifi-

* The Atlanta riot of 1906 was another example where black retaliatory
violence occurred toward the end of the riot. There white mobs and police
were shot at when they invaded the heart of a Negro ghetto, rather than
remaining on the periphery.
t For the Sweet case, see p. 243.
242 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

cant, though rare, theme in the statements of black leaders and

intellectuals.

3
What programs did the established black leadership organi¬
zations have to offer in the face of these trying conditions?
Actually, they could do little for the masses of people; middle
class in tffeir orientation, they had little to offer the urban slum
dweller. The National Urban League, founded in 1911 by a
group of conservative blacks and white philanthropists and so¬
cial workers, all allied with Booker Washington, took as its
special province improving the employment opportunities of
urban Negroes. Basically, the Urban League approach was a
gradualist and conciliatory one of attempting to convince em¬
ployers of the moral righteousness and economic value of hiring
Negroes—to persuade them that black men were efficient
workers. Attempts at negotiation with the discriminatory AFL
unions got nowhere, and, indeed, if concessions were to be
gained, they were certainly to come from philanthropic, if
paternalistic, businessmen rather than from workers who re¬
garded Negroes as economic rivals. The unionization of indus¬
trial plants often led to the expulsion of black employees. On
the other hand, many employers wanted to use blacks to destroy
or suppress union activity, which of course only antagonized
white workers even more.
In the wave of labor difficulties and mass unemployment
after World War I, the Urban League wrestled with this pre¬
dicament. At a Detroit conference of Urban League officials in
1919, a resolution was passed that declared that directors of
local leagues should be guided by their particular situations. If
the opportunity existed, black workers should be urged to join
labor unions, but where there were barriers, it might be appro¬
priate to supply strikebreakers to employers during labor dis¬
putes. Some local leagues did indeed send black strikebreakers,
but the results seldom if ever led to any permanent rise in black
employment. Jobs or promotions obtained during strikes usually
proved only temporary; once the labor disputes ended, no mat-
Black Men in the Urban Age 243
ter which side won, white workers generally took the jobs. The
antiunion attitudes of many Urban League officials have been
attributed to their middle-class background and outlook, and
this is in part undoubtedly the case. In the context of trade-
union discrimination, however, it is hard to see how Urban
League executives could have acted much differently. Yet even
their appeal to businessmen in economic and moral terms
gained little. League reports magnified minor accomplishments
into major achievements. The Atlanta league even boasted
about training blacks to be better janitors. Whatever gains the
Urban League did make during the prosperous 1920’s were
wiped out bv the Depression. It was honestly trying to improve
black employment opportunities, and in view of trade-union
attitudes it is difficult to see that any approach would have been
more successful. It is only a sign of the bitter context in which
it operated that the Urban League’s efforts were futile.
The NAACP concerned itself only slightly with discrimina¬
tion in employment, leaving the job situation chiefly with the
Urban League in a division of function that was not really
disturbed until the rise of the NAACP’s labor department
around the middle of the century. It did extraordinary service,
however, in legal defense of victims of race riots and unjust
judicial proceedings. It secured the release of the imprisoned
Houston soldiers; it successfully defended the Negroes charged
with insurrection in the Elaine riot; and in numerous cases it
worked to prevent miscarriages of justice against innocent black
people. One of the most celebrated cases was its defense of Dr.
Ossian Sweet and his family. The Sweets had moved into a
white neighborhood in Detroit, and in self-defense shot at a
mob that came to attack the home, killing one man. The
NAACP employed Clarence Darrow to defend the Sweets, who
were eventually acquitted. A major effort of the NAACP during
the 1920’s was to secure passage of an antilynching bill. Though
the law was not enacted, the NAACP rallied a great deal of
public support, and the number of lvnchings gradually declined
in the nation.
In the long run the most important of the NAACP’s activ-
244 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

ities was the litigation designed to secure the enforcement of

the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In two landmark
cases almost at the outset of its career, the NAACP began the
long uphill fight against disfranchisement and segregation. In
1915 the Supreme Court declared grandfather clauses unconsti¬
tutional limitations on the right to vote. Two years later it
outlawed municipal residential segregation ordinances. White
property ^owners and realtors then retreated behind other sub¬
terfuges, particularly restrictive covenants, and the decade of
the 1920’s saw the beginning of the lengthy legal battle against
this form of Jim Crow. At the same time the NAACP em¬
barked upon the almost endless fight against the white pri¬
maries. The Association, despite its immediatist philosophy, was
compelled to use an essentially gradualist approach, attacking
one small aspect of discrimination at a time, hacking away piece
by piece at the structure of discrimination. Though recognition
of the Negroes’ constitutional rights was still a long way off, the
NAACP could at least point to a corpus of definite accomplish¬
ment. Less successful, however, were the attempts to prevent
the development of school segregation in Northern cities.
Gerrymanders of school boundaries and other devices initiated
by boards of education were fought with written petitions,
verbal protests to school officials, legal suits, and in several cities
school boycotts, but in the end all proved to be of no avail.
The NAACP appealed to the “New Negro,” to the business
and professional people of the ghettos—North and even South.
The Association in part depended on the new militance of the
war and postwar years and in part was responsible for it. Origi¬
nally a small interracial body, the Association’s first real growth
came during the war when, having employed the noted black
writer James Weldon Johnson as field secretary, it consciously
built its membership base in the black community. Johnson’s
work gave the organization a foothold in the South, and, as he
crisscrossed the country organizing branches, he also cemented
close relations between the Association and the black churches
and fraternal orders. When, in 1920, he became the first Negro
to occupy the top executive post of Secretary, the NAACP’s ties
Black Men in the Urban Age 245
to the black community were strengthened even more. Over the
following vears, as a result of the effective teamwork of Johnson
and Assistant Secretarv Walter F. White, control of the Asso¬
ciation and its policies gradually passed from the prominent
white liberals on its board of directors into the hands of the
organization’s black secretariat. Meanwhile, for the black upper
and middle classes, Du Bois, as editor of the Crisis, svmbolized
that militance and exerted an enormous influence on their
thinking. When R. R. Moton, principal of Tuskegee Institute,
though still a conciliator and gradualist, spoke out in unmistak¬
able terms against racial injustice in What the Negro Thinks
(1929), it was clear that the protest ideology represented by the
NAACP was generallv accepted.
The Association, considering itself heir to the abolitionist
tradition, and regarded as radical during the ascendancy of
Booker T. Washington, now found itself in the curious position
of being lumped together with Tuskegee, Hampton, and the
Urban League as a conservative institution. Or so it was re¬
garded bv that economic and social radical, the enfant terrible
of Negro journalism, A. Philip Randolph. His editorials in the
Messenger even roasted and satirized Du Bois as a renegade
Socialist, a political opportunist, and a “handkerchief head . . .
hat-in-hand” Negro. The Messenger s point of view was that
the NAACP was basically a middle-class organization uncon¬
cerned about the pressing economic problems of the masses.
The Messenger took an outright Marxist position regarding the
causes of prejudice and discrimination. It attributed these to
capitalism, which kept white and black workers apart and ex¬
ploited both by an appeal to race hatred. To Randolph and his
colleagues the postwar era called for a New Negro, a radical
black demanding the Negro’s rights, concerned with the prob¬
lems of the working class, and dedicated to the theory that only
by united action of white and black workers against the capitalist
class would social justice be achieved. Randolph appealed to
Negroes to join trade unions, and he called upon trade unions
to admit them. In practice his theory worked no better than the
strategy of the Urban League in solving the economic problems
246 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

of the race. Randolph did chalk up one accomplishment: the

organization of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the
mid-1920’s. This was achieved against the determined opposi¬
tion not only of the Pullman Company but also of much of the
black leadership class—ranging from the conservative Chicago
Urban League to the militant Chicago Defender. In 1937, after
years of struggle, the brotherhood benefited from the changes in
labor-management relations that accompanied the New Deal
and finally achieved recognition as the porters’ bargaining
agent.
Although Randolph addressed himself to the urban working
masses, few of them knew or understood the intellectual the¬
ories of the Messenger. The magazine circulated chiefly among
elite black people. Its scintillating wit and mordant satire made
it a conversation piece in middle-class homes, and for several
years in the early 1920’s its pages were devoted very largely to
singing the praises of black business enterprise. The one man
who really reached the frustrated and disillusioned masses in
the ghettos was a Jamaican citizen, Marcus Garvey.
Garvey, founder in 1914 of the Universal Negro Improve¬
ment Association (UNIA), which after the war had branches
in many cities in the United States and in several foreign coun¬
tries, aimed to liberate both Africans and American blacks from
their oppressors. His utopian means of accomplishing both
goals was the wholesale migration of American Negroes to
Africa. He contended that whites would always be racist and
insisted that the Negro must develop “a distinct racial type of
civilization of his own and . . . work out his salvation in his
motherland, all to be accomplished under the stimulus and
influence of the slogan, 'Africa for the Africans, at home and
abroad.’ ” On a more practical level he urged Negroes to sup¬
port black businesses, and the UNIA itself organized a chain of
groceries, restaurants, laundries, a hotel, a doll factory, and a
printing plant. Thousands bought stock in the UNIA’s Black
Star Steamship Line, which proposed to establish a commercial
link between the United States, the West Indies, and Africa.
Tens of thousands of Negroes swelled with pride at the parades
Black Men in the Urban Age 247
of massed units of the African Legion in blue-and-red uniforms
and the white-attired contingents of the Black Cross Nurses.
Garvey’s followers proudly waved the Association’s flag (black
for Negro skin, green for Negro hopes, and red for Negro
blood) and sang the UNIA anthem, “Ethiopia, Thou Land of
Our Fathers.” Stressing race pride, Garvey gloried in the Afri¬
can past and taught that God and Christ were black.
He denounced the light-skinned, integrationist, upper-class
Negroes active in the NAACP for being ashamed of their black
ancestry and desiring to amalgamate with the white race.
Garvey insisted that the UNIA was the only agency able to
protect the darker-skinned black masses against the Du Bois-led
“caste aristocracy” of college graduates. Thus while the Mes¬
senger denounced Du Bois as a cowardly renegade Socialist,
Garvey charged him with preferring white men to black.* In
turn both the Messenger and the Crisis joined in condemning
Garvey. The established Negro leaders resented and feared the
“Provisional President of the African Republic” and several of
them called the attention of the United States government to
irregularities in the management of the Black Star Line. Once
Garvey had been jailed and then deported on charges of using

* Ironically, at this very time Du Bois was busily engaged in projecting

his own program for African and Afro-American unity—the anti-imperialist
Pan-African congresses of 1919-27. As early as the 1890’s Du Bois em¬
braced “Pan-Negroism” and hoped to create among Negroes everywhere
an emotional commitment to one another. He believed that regardless of
where Negroes lived, they owed a special attachment to Africa as the race’s
“greater fatherland.’’ Upon the initiative of a group of West Indian in¬
tellectuals, the first Pan-African Conference was held in London in 1900.
Du Bois wrote the “Address to the Nations of the World,” urging self-
government for Africans and West Indians and the creation in Africa of
“a great central Negro State of the world.” Although he envisioned no
back-to-Africa movement, Du Bois believed that the formation and growth
of such an African state would raise the status of blacks in all countries.
Between 1919 and 1927 Du Bois convened four Pan-African congresses in
Europe and the United States. Like the original London conference, these
conclaves were dominated by the personality of Du Bois and ceaselessly
condemned both beliefs in racial inequality and the imperialist exploitation
of Africa.
248 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

the mails to defraud, the movement collapsed. But Garvey

dramatized as no one before had done the bitterness and aliena¬
tion of the black masses.
Thus the Garvey movement provided a compensatory escape
for Negroes to whom the urban promised land had turned out
to be a hopeless ghetto. It is significant, however, that the
relationship between black migration and nationalist ideologies
was not a new one. The peaks of interest in African coloniza¬
tion among blacks in the half century after the Civil War coin¬
cided with the peaks of domestic migration—in the late 18707s,
around 1890, and again on the eve of the First World War. In
many cases, in fact, spokesmen for the migrants regarded Afri¬
can colonization as an alternative to seeking better opportu¬
nities elsewhere in the United States. Ordinarily, colonization
attempts had a strong nationalist emphasis, even though eco¬
nomic misery seems to have been the chief stimulus. Moreover,
some of the migration movements within the United States
were associated with strongly ethnocentric ideologies. Thus
there were a number of attempts to establish all-black towns,
especially within the South and in the Far West. The best
known of these was Mound Bayou, Mississippi, founded in
1887 by Isaiah Montgomery, whose father had been the leader
of the Davis Bend agricultural community during the Civil
War. Mound Bayou expressed a nationalistic ideology of Ne¬
groes working out their own destiny without white assistance.
More significant for our discussion at this point was the attempt
to erect an all-black state in Oklahoma, an effort initiated by
E. P. McCabe, formerly state auditor of Kansas. Disillusioned
when the Republicans failed to renominate him, McCabe urged
blacks to migrate to the Oklahoma Territory when it was
opened for settlement. He painted a vision of a black-governed
commonwealth, sending representatives and senators to the
United States Congress. Between 1891 and 1910 about twenty-
five towns were established. The migration aroused fears in the
whites and eventuated not in political power but in disfran¬
chisement. Then the economic dreams of the all-black towns in
Oklahoma completely collapsed during the cotton depression of
Black Men in the Urban Age 249
1913-14. As a result, many Negroes of Oklahoma and surround¬
ing states became intensely interested in the prospects of large-
scale African migration. Tremendous excitement was generated
in 1914-15 by an apparently fraudulent venture whose pro¬
moter, “Chief Sam,” an alleged Ashanti chieftain, claimed that
he had land in Africa on which American Negroes could settle.
A few hundred actually sailed on an ill-fated expedition for the
African homeland.
T hus, though it existed in a ghetto setting, the Garvey ideol-
ogv and movement were part of a larger pattern associated with
migration tendencies among Southern Negroes. Except for a
few prominent leaders like Bishop Henry M. Turner, who for
half a century after the close of Reconstruction denounced
American hvpocrisy and advocated migration to Africa, coloni¬
zation in the late nineteenth and earlv J
twentieth centuries was
almost entirely an ideologv of the lower classes. This fact is in
marked contrast to the antebellum period, when many promi¬
nent, articulate blacks were its advocates at one time or another.
That these colonization efforts manifested themselves as
nationalist movements does not contradict the thesis that their
motivation was largely economic. Mob rule and other forms of
oppression played their roles, but just as the highly nationalistic
Fascist organizations of Italy and Germany did not become
mass movements until a period of acute depression, so ideol¬
ogies of the sort represented by “Chief Sam” and Garvey
flowered at times of great economic discontent.

4
The patterns of adjustment of rural Southern blacks to the
urban environment and the institutional adaptations made by
the black community have not been seriously studied. The
paucity of data may make it difficult, if not impossible, ever to
analyze the process adequately. Yet a few observations can be
made.
In the black church the migrants carried with them an insti¬
tution that helped them adjust to the dismal realities of urban
life. The church, as it had in the South, remained the center of
250 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

black community life. Migrants sought to reconstruct the insti¬

tutions thev had known in their Southern homes. Indeed,
throughout the North and West one could identify church
congregations composed of people from specific locales in the
South. The traditional denominations—especially the Baptist
and the Methodist connections—expanded rapidly. To a con¬
siderable extent, moreover, the rural black Baptist Church be¬
came transformed in the cities into the storefront evangelical
churches and sects, and the religious frenzy of Sunday worship
allowed communicants to forget briefly the realities of daily life.
These numerous churches were forums for ambitious men of
humble origins wishing to develop their leadership talents.
They were also the root from which the larger-scale sects that
flowered during the 1930’s and 1940’s grew—those led by
Father Divine, Daddy Grace, and Elder Lightfoot Micheaux.
These organizations gave their members a sense of self-esteem.
Daddy Grace’s House of Prayer for All People, for example, by
its very title indicated that everyone was welcome and impor¬
tant. To the poor his sermons held out the possibility of self-
improvement, upward social mobility, and respectability. The
sect’s organizational structure created offices for about 25 per¬
cent of its followers, thus giving them a feeling of importance
and identity. Emotional release was provided through brass
bands, syncopated music, ecstatic dancing, seizures and swoon-
ings, and "speaking with tongues.” In Daddy Grace, members
perceived a charismatic figure who offered security—"sweet
Daddy Grace,” healer and miracle worker, and to many, even
God incarnate, the second Christ. The dollars which Grace
received from the poor who flocked to his services, and which
made him a wealthy man, were for the people themselves a
small price to pay for the void he filled in their lives.
These storefront churches and cult groups, creating a life
meaning out of meaninglessness, self-respect out of poverty,
functioned for the slum-shocked urban blacks in much the same
way that Garvey did. The promise of self-esteem, rather than
nationalism, was the significant ingredient of the Garvey move¬
ment. This is demonstrated by the fact that many followers of
Black Men in the Urban Age 251
the nationalist Garvey ended up in the ostentatiously interracial
cult of Father Divine, whose “Heavens” did not really multiply
until the economic depression of the 1930’s. Undoubtedly these
religious cults provided an alternative for what might otherwise
have been a highly explosive nationalist movement. The more
recent Black Muslims have combined nationalist and religious
escape ideologies.
In regard to another institution, the black family, there has
been considerable debate. Not only does recent scholarship
minimize the prevalence of matrifocal families under plantation
slavery, but there is also disagreement on what happened in the
cities. Theodore Hershberg’s researches in Philadelphia indicate
that the hostile urban environment of the antebellum years
produced not only, as indicated earlier, a loss in economic status
but a significant growth in female-headed households among
lower-class blacks as well. On the other hand, Herbert Gutman,
analyzing data from a number of cities, North and South, main¬
tains that the matrifocal family was essentially a twentieth-
century phenomenon.
Whatever the final conclusions that will emerge from this
scholarlv debate, it seems clear that the conditions of life in the
twentieth-century urban ghettos encouraged matrifocal family
patterns. When the migrants moved into the cities, they found
that women could obtain and hold jobs more easily than men;
women became domestic servants and their work was steadier
and commonly more remunerative than that of men. In a
society where the man is regarded as responsible for the support
of his family, black men often felt inadequate. The results were
frequent separations and many households where the mother or
grandmother was the central figure. While it is customary to
look upon the high incidence of such households as a sign of
social disorganization among lower-class Negroes, there is an¬
other way to view the matter. Hie matrifocal family pattern can
be regarded as a stabilizing influence in the lives of its members,
as a creative response to the circumstances under which black
people found themselves in the urban ghetto. Economic factors
are not wholly responsible for the matrifocal family, for once
252 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

established, such forms of institutional life tend to perpetuate

themselves. *
Along with the lower-class migrants from Southern towns
came a professional and business elite, whose numbers were
increased by aspiring members from the lower classes. Bred in
the ideology of self-help and racial solidarity and black support
of black business, which had become current during the age of
Booker T. Washington, this group, as the saying of the time
put it, clearly took “advantage of the disadvantages” inherent in
segregation and achieved economic success in the rapidly ex¬
panding urban ghettos. In some cities, as in Atlanta, the up¬
wardly mobile men of wealth merged with members of the
older pre-World War I upper class. In others, as in Chicago,
they largely displaced the “old settlers” as the top stratum in
black society.
Such men came to have a vested interest in the ghetto, for it
was the source of their wealth, power, and social prestige. In the
North this was also true of aspiring politicians. The “Dream of
Black Metropolis,” as St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton
termed it, was most forcefully advanced in Chicago, and there
more than anywhere else the political aspect of the dream
found fulfillment. In 1928 Chicago elected the first Negro to sit
in Congress since the turn of the century. Chicago also boasted
the biggest aggregation of black banks and insurance companies
north of the Mason-Dixon line. The Black Metropolis ideal also
had its development in the South, especially in Atlanta and
Durham, where the three largest Negro insurance companies
were located. In fact, E. Franklin Frazier in 1925 called Dur¬
ham the “capital of the Black Middle Class.”
To many, this vision of creating a business, professional, and
political elite on the basis of a concentrated Negro market and
on black votes was viewed as a temporary expedient, at best
only an indirect way of achieving full participation in American

* In view of current misconceptions about black family life, it should be

emphasized that matrifocal families, while common among lower-class
Negroes, are not in the majority.
Black Men in the Urban Age 253
life. To them it was clearly no solution to the problems of the
race because the political and economic dominance still re¬
mained in white hands. Yet to some black people the dream
was inspiring in and of itself, and they believed that a well-
organized community supporting black “captains of industry,”
professional people, financiers, and politicians was a satisfactory
alternative to the destruction of segregation. As Gunnar Mvrdal
was to observe, the black middle class was in a cruel and tragic
dilemma: earning their bread from at least an implicit appeal to
race loyalty and segregation, they were also the backbone of
organizations like the NAACP, dedicated to moving Negroes
into the mainstream of American life. Thus, in contrast to the
turn of the century, the Black Metropolis ideal was now usually
coupled, not with a philosophy of accommodation, but with
one of protest. Then the dream, however psychologically satisfy¬
ing, however materially advantageous to a few, collapsed in the
face of the Depression of the 1930’s, when the flimsy founda¬
tion of the black business world became evident. Nevertheless
black business and professional men still appealed for support
on the basis of race pride. They did so, however, not with the
vision of creating a self-sufficient black community, but as a
device to ensure their own economic survival.

5
The sense of community and racial solidarity characteristic of
the Garvey movement and the dream of a Black Metropolis had
its intellectual counterpart in the “Harlem Renaissance,” the
literary and artistic movement summed up by the term, the
“New Negro.” In 1925, when Survey Graphic published its
special Harlem issue edited by Alain Locke, a Harvard Ph.D.
and the first black Rhodes scholar, it suddenly became apparent
to the educated public that a cultural renaissance was under
way. The New Negro was militant and proud of his race, de¬
sired to perpetuate the group identity and yet participate fully
in American society. The New Negro protested and demanded
his rights of citizenship and insisted upon the value of a black
subculture. Intellectually and artistically, he believed that Ne-
254 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

groes should have pride in their past and their traditions; and by
using the themes from Negro life and Negro history as an inspi¬
ration for his literary work, the New Negro intended to enrich
the culture of America.
The ethnic dualism and cultural pluralism of the New Negro
movement or Harlem Renaissance had diverse origins. Interest
in the race’s past had been rapidly growing since the beginning
of the century. The first courses in black history were intro¬
duced in a few black colleges about the time of the First World
War. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History,
founded in 1915 by Carter G. Woodson, placed on scholarly
foundations the investigation of both the African and American
past.
At about the same time, many white authors were exploring
in their novels the rich regional diversity of American culture.
During the 1920’s DuBose Heyward enlarged this interest to
include Negro life. His novel Porgy, the inspiration for George
Gershwin’s famous musical Porgy and Bess, was set in the
coastal area of South Carolina, where African survivals were
strong. Many white literati, who during the heyday of Green¬
wich Village made a cult of primitivism, regarded the Negro
and Africa as possessing intriguing qualities of savagery, occult¬
ism, and uninhibited sexuality. Indeed, the 1920’s was the
period, as Langston Hughes has said, when “Harlem was in
vogue.” Whites, attracted by jazz and the alleged exotic way of
life among Harlem’s citizens, flocked to the Harlem speakeasies
and to such spots as the Cotton Club, where entertainment was
supplied by a chorus line of light-skinned Negroes. But blacks
themselves could enter only as performers and employees, not
as paying guests.
The result of these and other converging currents was a re¬
markable outpouring of literature, painting, and sculpture. It
was a movement with many mid wives, among whom were the
aesthete and scholar Alain Locke, Charles S. Johnson, editor of
the magazine Opportunity, W. E. B. Du Bois, and white spon¬
sors such as author Carl Van Vechten. The Crisis and Oppor¬
tunity, published by the National Urban League, printed much
Black Men in the Urban Age 255
of the new writing and awarded prizes for the most creative
work.
Some of the whites connected with the Urban League were
originally responsible for the publication of the Survey
Graphics Harlem number. The white reading public made it
profitable for book firms to publish volumes written by blacks.
Whites, ranging from the equalitarian Amy and Joel Spingarn
of the NAACP to the paternalistic Park Avenue matron who
subsidized Langston Hughes’s career for a time, encouraged the
young black writers. They provided money for prizes, grants,
and scholarships. Paradoxically, therefore, the race-proud
Harlem Renaissance was largely made possible by white inter¬
est. Paradoxically also, the race-proud New Negro writers and
artists, associating with white literati like Carl Van Vechten
and the Greenwich Village aesthetes and gathering at places
like A’Leila Walker’s Dark Towers on 136th Street, where
celebrities of both races jammed the fabulous parties, were al¬
most certainly the best-integrated group among American
blacks. Stvlistically they were strongly influenced by current
white literary vogues.
The white support and financing of the renaissance created
some serious problems. Themes that concerned the writers were
often seen differently by their white patrons and the white
reading public. Tensions arising over the color line within black
society and the problem of “passing” were genuine concerns for
the middle-class and upper-class Negroes. Yet they were also
subjects of incredible fascination for whites who thought in
terms of stock characters, such as the “tragic mulatto,” and
assumed that black people really wanted to be-white. So also
the unique aspects of the life of the folk Negro was a genuine
subject for artistic representation, but whites found the material
interesting mostly if it was exotic and played up lower-class
sexuality. Tbus the conflict between artistic integrity and com¬
mercial success assumed a particularly aggravated form among
the blacks of the renaissance. Langston Hughes, for example,
recounts the painful experience he had when the woman who
was financing his work, and whom he deeply admired, insisted
256 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

that his writing was not “primitive” enough. Hughes had the
integrity to break the tie, though it was economically difficult
and psychologically traumatic to do so.
The artistic outpouring of the 1920’s was, it should be
pointed out, rooted in the past. Since the 1890’s there had been
an incipient interest in folk materials, in the richness of life on
the Sea Islands, in the African background, in the mystique of
cultural nationalism, and in the insistence on the racial experi¬
ence as a source of artistic inspiration. Black theater had been
flourishing on Broadway since the 1890’s; the productions were
mostly stereotyped musicals and included the dialect comedy
team of Bert Williams and George Walker, who made the
cakewalk fashionable. During the prewar years there had also
been a rise in literary works by Negroes. Much of this literature
had tended either to be imitative of conventional Victorian
poetry and melodramatic novels or to be written in stereotyped
dialect, such as many of the poems and short stories of Paul
Laurence Dunbar. On the other hand, Charles Chesnutt in his
short stories had started to explore folk culture in a serious way,
while his novels were vigorous protests against American racism.
And in 1912 there appeared anonymously James Weldon John¬
son’s volume, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, the
first and most successful novel about passing, but more signifi¬
cant for its glorification of ragtime, a black folk-music idiom
then considered unrespectable, and for its portrayal of the
somewhat unconventional life among the theatrical and sport¬
ing elements in black society.
During the 1920’s blacks were allowed for the first time to
pursue serious careers in the theater and the concert hall. The
great nineteenth-century American Negro Shakespearean actor,
Ira Aldridge, had forged his remarkable career in England and
Europe, not in the United States. In the 1920’s dramatic roles
still tended to be somewhat stereotyped, it is true, but Paul
Robeson first achieved fame not in some forgotten musical but
in a serious play by one of the great writers for the American
stage, Eugene O’Neill. The concert stage remained closed to
Black Men in the Urban Age 257
black instrumentalists. But working against incredible odds, the
tenor Roland Haves became the first black to be accepted as a
concert artist.
The writers of the renaissance articulated the various ideol¬
ogies of the 1920’s. The interest in the race’s past was reflected
in such poems as Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of
Rivers”; in the rather ambivalent poem of Countee Cullen
“Heritage,” which appears to accept white stereotypes about
the sensuous, exotic, and primitive quality of African life and
the difficult of even educated Negroes assimilating Anglo-
Saxon culture; and in novels such as Arna Bontemps’s Black
Thunder, based on Gabriel’s Revolt. Overlapping this historical
concern was the exploration of traditions in the black subcul¬
ture. In Cane, a series of poems, short stories, and vignettes,
Jean Toomer, the most sophisticated literary genius of the
renaissance, recaptured the life of the black folk who worked in
the lumber camps of Georgia in the 1880’s. James Weldon
Johnson in God's Trombones, subtitled Some Negro Folk Ser¬
mons in Verse, employed the cadence and imagery of the black
rural preacher. Langston Hughes in numerous poems used the
rhythms and moods of jazz and the blues as an inspiration for
his poetry. Claude McKay in his novel Home to Harlem, Zora
Neale Hurston in her renditions of Negro folk materials, and
Sterling Brown in his poems about Slim Greer were among
those who found in the common folk a subject for literary
treatment. Thus, in “Memphis Blues,” using the dialect of the
black working class, Sterling Brown expresses the resignation of
the poor. Langston Hughes combined the themes of working-
class-black life with an underlying spirit of protest in such
poems as his “Brass Spittoons,” an evocation of a hotel bell¬
hop’s daily life, and “To the Negro Washerwoman,” whom he
idealized for her self-sacrifice in supporting and educating her
family.
Others portrayed black middle-class life, emphasizing its gen¬
tility and respectability, and often employed plots based on
passing and on the color line within the black community. Two
258 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

examples are Walter White’s Flight and the novels of Jessie

Fauset. White also wrote a protest novel, Fire in the Flint,
based upon his investigations of lynchings.
Protest was evident in some of the ironic poems of Countee
Cullen, such as “Yet Do I Marvel,” in which after pondering
on the ways of an inscrutable, omnipotent, but undoubtedly
just God, Cullen concludes, “Yet do I marvel at this curious
thing: / To make a poet black, and bid him sing!”; or in some
of Claude McKay’s poems like “The Lynching” and “If We
Must Die”: “If we must die—let it not be like hogs / Hunted
and penned in an inglorious spot ... If we must die—oh, let
us nobly die . . . dying, but fighting back!” After the renais¬
sance, during the 1930’s, protest replaced folk culture as the
dominant theme of black writing. In those years Langston
Hughes penned his “Let America Be America Again,” a protest
against oppression of all the subordinated groups and a vision of
an equalitarian society. The dominant literary figure of the
1930’s and 1940’s was Richard Wright, whose Uncle Tonis
Children and Native Son portrayed with bitter sociological and
psychological realism the plight of the oppressed working-class
Negroes. Wright treated the same subject even more searingly
in his autobiographical Black Boy. His achievement as one of
the major writers of the twentieth century in the United States
has been eclipsed among black authors only by the post-World
War II novelist Ralph Ellison, whose heavily symbolic Invisible
Man draws upon material from Negro life to pose the funda¬
mental problem of freedom in modern impersonal society.

6
In Native Son Wright described black people of the Depres¬
sion years, victimized and hardened by life in the urban ghetto.
Despite the misery, squalor, and limited opportunity in the
cities, the New Deal era witnessed a continued, though re¬
duced, migration to urban centers. In effect, New Deal pro¬
grams actually encouraged this population movement, both by
the policies of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration as
applied to the Southern plantations and by providing public aid
Black Men in the Urban Age 259
to unemployed Negroes in the cities, particularly in the North.
The New Deal, though in certain particulars regressive for
the status of black people, marked a real turning point in the
trends of American race relations. Despite the work of the
NAACP and the interest of philanthropic whites in the Urban
League and the Harlem Renaissance, it was only during the
1930’s that a clear-cut reversal in the attitudes of white Ameri¬
cans started to become evident. Of paramount importance was
the genuine interest of prominent New Dealers in the status of
American blacks. Their concern was part of the larger humani¬
tarian interest in the welfare of all the underprivileged in
American society. At the same time, the black vote had reached
sizable proportions in a number of Northern cities, creating an
additional motivation for the attention to Negro welfare among
New Deal politicians. Of top prominence among those promot¬
ing the Negro cause was the wife of the President, Eleanor
Roosevelt, who more than any other person during this era
symbolized genuine humanitarian concern in race relations. To
the dismay and consternation of Southern supporters of the
President, she was openly friendly with blacks. The most dra¬
matic incident illustrating her attitude came in 1939, when the
Daughters of the American Revolution refused to permit Con¬
stitution Hall, Washington’s only concert stage, to be used for a
recital by the contralto Marian Anderson. Mrs. Roosevelt there¬
upon resigned from the DAR. Harold Ickes, Secretary of the
Interior and a former president of the Chicago NAACP, ar¬
ranged for Miss Anderson to give a concert from the steps of
the Lincoln Memorial. On Easter Sunday, over 75,000 people
attended this memorable program.
Black leaders wanted more than symbolism. They protested
against the exclusion of Negroes from large, federally financed
construction projects. In 1933, under NAACP initiative, various
race-advancement organizations established the Joint Commit¬
tee on National Recovery to fight discriminatory policies in the
federal agencies. The JCNR was especially effective in exposing
the unequal wage rates provided in the National Industrial Re¬
covery Act codes. Meanwhile, the Roosevelt Administration
260 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

had decided to appoint race-relations advisers in the major fed¬

eral departments. At first Roosevelt appointed Southern whites,
only some of whom were genuinely concerned about improving
the Negro's status. Blacks protested, and soon the Administra¬
tion began using highly talented and well-educated black people
in these posts. Among the more noted of these were Mary
McLeod Bethune, director of the Division of Negro Affairs of
the National Youth Administration, Robert C. Weaver, adviser
to the Department of the Interior, and William H. Hastie,
judge of the district court in the Virgin Islands, the first black
federal judge in the nation’s history. These new positions were
the highest held by blacks in the federal government since
Taft’s Administration. Their importance, however, was chiefly
symbolic.
The New Deal’s real impact upon Negroes came not from
such well-publicized appointments but from more tangible
benefits. Negroes were the ones hardest hit by the Depression,
being the last hired and first fired. Compared with unemployed
whites, a smaller percentage of the unemployed Negroes bene¬
fited from relief and public-works programs. Despite this dis¬
crimination, a higher proportion of the black population than
of the white population received government unemployment
aid, since black unemployment was so much greater. Negroes
felt singularly indebted to the New Deal and the Roosevelt
Administration, and have felt so ever since (as testified to by
John F. Kennedy’s effective use of the Roosevelt mantle in
black newspaper advertisements during the 1960 campaign). By
1936 the black vote dramatically shifted from Republican to
Democratic. The New Deal welfare programs, which were ad¬
ministered with less discrimination in the North than in the
South, encouraged black migration to the North and, therefore,
also increased the number of Negroes who would vote Demo¬
cratic in subsequent elections.
Although the New Deal helped create a new climate of opin¬
ion and supplied material benefits to the unemployed, in cer¬
tain ways its policies were less helpful and even negative in their
impact. This was especially true in the fields of housing and
Black Men in the Urban Age 261
agriculture. The federal housing agencies definitely supported
and strengthened the trend toward residential segregation. In
agreements with banks and other lending institutions, the Fed¬
eral Housing Administration refused to guarantee mortgages on
homes purchased by blacks in white communities. The United
States Housing Authority, while providing public housing for
many black families, financed separate projects for the two
races. In addition, the policies of the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration were clearly discriminatory in their application.
Cotton agriculture had been experiencing competition from
synthetic fibers as far back as the 1920’s. The Depression inten¬
sified the decrease in the demand for cotton and prices
tumbled. The Southeastern states suffered the most, for they
were faced with the continued ravages of the boll weevil at the
same time that Texas and Oklahoma were recovering from the
worst effects of the boll-weevil infestation and, therefore, be¬
coming more effective competitors to the older cotton states. As
part of its general program for raising farm prices, the AAA paid
farmers to restrict their acreage. Supposedly, tenant farmers
were to receive a share of this money, but in practice they
usually did not. In fact, because of acreage reduction, plantation
owners had less need for workers. Many sharecroppers were
forced off the land and they moved to the urban ghettos. The
final collapse of the cotton tenant-farm system in most of the
Southeast occurred in the post-World War II years, due to the
mechanization of cotton agriculture, the erosion and depletion
of many older cotton lands, and the spread of cotton agriculture
to mechanized plantations in the West, especially California.
Patterns of race relations in the South remained essentially
unchanged during the Depression. When the predominantly
black but interracial Southern Tenant Farmers Union, formed
in Arkansas with Socialist assistance in 1934, attempted to orga¬
nize the sharecroppers, it met terrorism and violence; and a
cottonpickers’ strike that it organized in 1935 was defeated by
harassment and intimidation. More celebrated was the Scotts-
boro, Alabama, case, which was tried in the spring of 1931,
when nine black youthful hoboes, ranging in age from twelve to
262 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

nineteen, were convicted on false charges of having raped two

white girls riding on the same freight train. Scottsboro became a
cause celebre, one of the leading civil-liberties cases of the dec¬
ade, that twice reached the United States Supreme Court. Not
until 1950 were all of the defendants out of jail.
On the other hand, there were evidences of more progressive
forces in the white South, most notably in the work of two
interracial organizations—the Commission on Interracial Co¬
operation and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare.
The former, established in 1919 and most noted for antilynch¬
ing work, continued its educational activities. In 1944 it was
transformed into the Southern Regional Council. The Southern
Conference for Human Welfare, a coalition, established in
1938, of radicals and liberals in the region, was more outspoken
than the commission and concentrated its efforts largely on a
campaign against the poll tax. Later charged with Communist
infiltration, it disintegrated after the war. An offshoot, the
Southern Conference Educational Fund, still survives.
During the New Deal period, the rise of industrial unionism
and the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations,
which broke with the AFL, proved of immense value to the
urban black. Led by John L. Lewis of the racially integrated
United Mine Workers, the CIO’s policy not only reflected the
idealism of the period but also recognized that in a time of
labor surplus it was hardly possible to organize workers effec¬
tively by excluding Negroes and thereby forcing them into the
ranks of strikebreakers. Of course, perfect racial egalitarianism
did not ensue. In the South especially, the CIO felt it necessary
to permit separate locals and the relegation of Negroes to infe¬
rior jobs. Not until the 1960's did even the very liberal United
Automobile Workers elect a black to its international executive
board, and even that development occurred only after a well-
organized black caucus compelled it. Nevertheless, the CIO’s
contribution to the changing patterns of race relations has been
incalculable. It made interracial trade unionism truly respectable.
It gave black and white workers a sense of common interest,
of solidarity, that transcended racial lines. Although prejudice
Black Men in the Urban Age 263
was not eliminated, it was certainly lessened among laborers
who worked together in jobs of equal status and equal pay.
The interracial industrial trade unions had an important
impact on the Negro protest movement. Black labor leaders like
Willard Townsend of the Red Caps and A. Philip Randolph,
and some of the other young intellectuals like Ralph Bunche
went so far as to predict that the solution to the whole problem
of discrimination would be through an alliance of black and
white workers in industrial unions that would fight to bring
social justice for all. Many of the middle- and upper-class
leaders in the established race-advancement organizations were
initially skeptical, though the Urban League took concrete steps
to educate Negro workers on the value of joining labor unions.
NAACP leadership was divided for several years. The turning
point came in 1941 when the United Automobile Workers re¬
quested NAACP assistance in getting Negro scabs out of the
Ford automobile factories. After securing assurances that the
union would cease discriminatory policies against black mem¬
bers, the NAACP Secretary, Walter White, personally went to
Detroit and circled the strikebound River Rouge plant in a car
with a loudspeaker, urging black strikebreakers to leave. A large
number did so. Negro-labor union solidarity was a cornerstone
of NAACP policy for nearly twenty years thereafter, until dis¬
illusionment with the discrimination of many unions in the
reunited AFL-CIO led to renewed criticism of the racial prac¬
tices in organized labor.
Even before the CIO appeared, the economic catastrophe of
the 1930’s and the outlook and program of the New Deal had
stimulated changes in the orientation of black protest thinking.
Specific concern with economic problems became much more
the order of the day. During the early 1930's this took a na¬
tionalist turn. In an effort to obtain retail sales positions for
Negroes in white-owned stores, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t
Work” campaigns were conducted in a number of urban ghetto
business districts.
The employment situation and the general radicalization of
American thinking during the 1930’s led to intensified criticism
264 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

of the NAACP’s program. Du Bois resigned as editor of the

Crisis in 1934 largely because he was convinced that the
NAACP emphasis on attacking disfranchisement and segrega¬
tion without seriously pursuing an economic program proved its
identification only with the bourgeoisie. Du Bois, furthermore,
never had given up completely his belief in the value of collec¬
tive racial economic endeavor. His ardent advocacy of a separate
black cooperative economy as a solution to the problems posed
by the Depression led to a clash with White and others who
supported the NAACP’s traditional position of opposing any
form of segregation, and resulted, not only in his withdrawal
from his position with the NAACP, but also in his demise as a
black leader. Younger critics of the NAACP, like Ralph
Bunche, who was then a professor at Howard University, also
attacked the Association for what they conceived to be its
gradualist approach and its lack of attention to economic prob¬
lems. From the beginning of the Roosevelt Administration, the
NAACP as well as the Urban League protested against dis¬
crimination in the New Deal agencies, and as we have seen,
eventually the NAACP modified its platform and endorsed the
new interracial industrial unions.
The organization also broadened the scope of its legal work.
No longer largely depending on the voluntary work of presti¬
gious white attorneys, as it had once done, the NAACP in 1935
established the salaried post of special counsel. The first man to
fill this position was the brilliant black lawyer and dean of
Howard University Law School, Charles H. Houston, who as a
student at Harvard had been the first black to make the Har¬
vard Law Review. He was later succeeded at the NAACP by his
former law student Thurgood Marshall. Under the leadership
of these two men, the Association continued its attack on the
white primaries, and eventually, in 1944, the Supreme Court
handed down a decision ending Southern subterfuge on that
particular issue. The heart of NAACP litigation in the 1930’s
was the beginning of a long-range battle against segregation. For
tactical purposes, the main emphasis was placed on educational
discrimination. The NAACP adopted the strategy of attacking
Black Men in the Urban Age 265
the most obvious inequities in the Southern school systems: the
lack of professional and graduate schools and the low salaries
received by black teachers. The Association hoped that by this
indirect method segregation would become so expensive that it
would fall of its own weight. Not until about 1950 did the
organization make a direct assault against school segregation
on the legal grounds that separate facilities were inherently
unequal.

7
A significant aspect in the history of the black protest move¬
ment during the New Deal was the role of the Communist
Party. Because the great majority of Negroes belong to the
working class, and because blacks have been discriminated
against and oppressed, the Communists considered American
Negroes to be ideal material for a revolutionary movement.
During the 1920’s and early 1930’s, the Communists attempted
to appeal directly to the black masses and attacked the black
bourgeoisie, black advancement organizations, and black intel¬
lectuals. Though the Communists did much to publicize the
injustices against blacks and did significant organization work
among Southern sharecroppers, black people at no time consti¬
tuted more than about 10 percent of Communist Party mem¬
bership. In other words, blacks did not join the party any more
readilvJ than did whites.
Around 1935, with the rise of Hitler in Germanv and the
Nazi threat to Soviet Russia, Communist international policy
shifted to courting Socialists, liberals, and middle-class groups in
Europe and America and to forming so-called popular fronts
with them. A number of these groups eventually found them¬
selves taken over and dominated bvJ their Communist members.
In the case of American Negroes, too, the Communists did an
about-face and now wooed the NAACP, the Urban League,
and the black middle class in general. Walter White was no
longer a lickspittle of the capitalists; Lester Granger of the
Urban League was no longer a Judas of the race. Neither the
League nor the NAACP, however, favored close cooperation
266 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

with Communists, and generally the latter were obliged to look

elsewhere to make significant gains among black Americans.
Representative of the nature of Communist activity in the
late 1930’s was the career of the National Negro Congress. It
was organized in 1936 under the auspices of a group of Negroes,
chiefly younger intellectuals, who were critical of the conserva¬
tism of the NAACP and the Urban League and especially of
the reluctance of these two organizations to engage in a pro¬
gram that would be meaningful to the economically depressed
black masses. Taking active parts were men like Ralph Bunche
and A. Philip Randolph, the National Negro Congress’s first
president. A few Communists were also active; the executive
secretary was sympathetic with the Communist point of view;
and Communist cooperation seemed natural in the days of the
popular front. The congress was actually an organization of
organizations; as such, its work was largely in the area of propa¬
ganda and publicity. Its program was similar to that of civil-
rights groups in that period, except for its strong pro-union
orientation. It received a great deal of publicity, and at the
second conference in 1937 the National Negro Congress was
addressed by a brilliant galaxy of Negro leaders, practically a
Who’s Who of the leadership elite among the black bour¬
geoisie.
Then in 1939, as a result of the Soviet-Nazi nonaggression
pact, there was a reversal of Communist tactics. The popular-
front strategy was shelved. Erstwhile friends now became
enemies, tools of imperialist warmongers. Even A. Philip Ran¬
dolph came under attack. The party packed the congress’s third
convention in 1940. Speakers who did not agree with Commu¬
nist-inspired resolutions were booed and hooted. Fully one
fourth of the delegates were white representatives from pro-
Communist trade unions, and when Randolph was delivering
his speech, these delegates and a number of their sympathizers
walked out. Disillusioned, Randolph, Bunche, and other promi¬
nent leaders withdrew their support from the organization,
which declined rapidly into a small and impotent group consist¬
ing principally of Communists and their “fellow travelers.”
Black Men in the Urban Age 267
When Hitler attacked Russia, the Communists again re¬
versed themselves. Now even thing was to be sacrificed to win¬
ning the war and aiding Russia. The attack on discrimination in
the armed forces and in the war industries was to be soft-
pedaled because, the Communists held, such protests interfered
with the effectiveness of the war effort. Randolph, the NAACP,
and the Urban League replied that the full and unsegregated
use of black manpower would actually bring victory closer.

8
The ambivalent legacy of the New Deal to the cause of black
people was very evident in the role that Negroes played during
the war. On the one hand, conditions were markedly better
than they had been in the First World War; on the other hand,
the New Deal administration temporized, compromised, and
moved onlv under pressure. As in the First World War, the
major problems for blacks were employment, racial tensions in
the cities and at army camps, and the treatment of black sol¬
diers. Although Negroes were sent to integrated army officers’
training camps, in other respects they were segregated in the
armed forces. There was segregation also in the blood banks,
although, ironically, the process of storing blood plasma had
been invented by a black physician, Dr. Charles Drew of
Howard University Medical School. Precedents were shattered
by the admission of Negroes into the Army Air Corps and the
Marines, and for the first time since early in the century Ne¬
groes were accepted in naval grades above messmen. The first
black naval officers and the first black brigadier general were
commissioned. Yet at army posts Negroes were segregated in
inadequate recreational facilities; there were reports from Italv
of low morale because of prejudiced treatment by white army
officers; in the South black soldiers were often insulted by white
citizens; and William H. Ilastie, supported by the NAACP,
angrily resigned as civilian aide to the Secretary of War when,
over his opposition, a segregated training base for Negro pilots
was established at Tuskegee Institute. The fact that it was con¬
servative Tuskegee which encouraged this offer, while the
268 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

NAACP opposed it, is symbolic of the degree of improvement

that had taken place since World War I, when the Associa¬
tion’s leaders had welcomed a segregated officers’ training camp.
So also was the greater degree of freedom with which black
leaders and editors criticized discriminatory policies on the part
of industry and public officials.
As industry retooled for war production in 1940 and 1941 and
absorbed many of the unemployed, Negroes at first were ig¬
nored or used only for menial employment. They protested
vigorously, and after A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on
Washington of 50,000 to 100,000 black men, President Roose¬
velt issued his famous Executive Order 8802 establishing a Fair
Employment Practices Committee. Although the committee
lacked enforcement powers and was stripped of any real influ¬
ence when it became too controversial, it did perform some
useful work in advancing the employment of blacks in war
industries; and the federal employment service in many com¬
munities encouraged the hiring of Negroes. In most cases they
entered factories organized by CIO affiliates. The beneficial re¬
sults of the racial policies of the industrial unions were thus
further enhanced and carried over into the postwar era. Never¬
theless, discrimination was still flagrant. Tensions among
workers erupted into a series of race riots, most notably at De¬
troit, where in June 1943 the most serious racial outbreak oc¬
curred. In contrast to the Red Summer of 1919, however, there
was no postwar racial violence when the soldiers were de¬
mobilized.
Indeed, the Truman Administration in some ways opened a
new era in the history of American race relations. The political
impact of the heavy black migration to Northern and Western
cities and the shift in allegiance from the Republicans to the
Democrats now became evident. As the number of migrants
rose to new heights during the war, the West Coast for the first
time attracting a substantial segment of them, the expansion of
the urban ghettos accelerated. Representing these enlarged
black ghettos, new and more black politicians came to power.
With the election of Adam Clayton Powell in 1944, New York
Black Men in the Urban Age 269
became the second Northern city to send a Negro to Congress.
Two decades later there were six blacks in the House of Repre¬
sentatives, two from Detroit, and one each from Philadelphia,
New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
In early 1948 the NAACP’s public-relations director, Henry
Lee Moon, published the book Balance of Power, in which he
held that the black vote in certain pivotal states was enough to
swing close national elections. The Presidential election of 1948
vindicated his thesis. President Truman, regarded as a certain
loser by practically all observers, realized that to keep his office
he would need the black vote. It was the first election since
Reconstruction in which the Negro’s status was a major issue
and in which his political power was a critical factor in the
outcome. Because the Democratic National Convention
adopted a strong civil-rights plank, Southern elements walked
out and backed their own “Dixiecrat” candidate, who captured
four of the traditionally Democratic states in the election. The
left-wing Progressive Party took a vigorous stand on Negro
rights and siphoned off enough voters from the Democrats to
throw New York into the Republican column. Nevertheless,
Truman, with the overwhelming support of the black elec¬
torate, squeaked through to victory.
Though the Democratic Congress failed to enact a civil-rights
act as the party’s platform had promised, the Truman Adminis¬
tration was marked by some advances. The President appointed
William II. Hastie to the Third U.S. Circuit Court, making
him the highest black judicial appointee up to then in Ameri¬
can history-. Truman issued the directive that ended segregation
in the armed services, settling an issue about which blacks had
agitated constantly since Randolph listed it among his original
demands when he proposed the march on Washington in 1941.
This change of policy had an incalculable effect in shifting
white attitudes, for as a result of it millions of young men of
both races lived and worked together, and fought together in
Korea, and white men often served under black officers, espe¬
cially noncommissioned ones. The President also ordered that
firms doing business with the federal government pursue a non-
270 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

discriminatory employment policy. The committee appointed

by Truman and his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was in¬
effectual in enforcing this directive, however. Truman also
appointed a commission to study race relations in the United
States. Its report, To Secure These Rights, called for the full
integration of Negroes in all aspects of the society. The princi¬
pal value; of both these commissions, largely symbolic and edu¬
cational, was propagandistic, for they helped pave the way for
new norms in American race relations. The shift in public opin¬
ion, abetted by the new power of black voters, was reflected in a
trend toward enacting fair-employment-practice and public-
accommodations laws in Northern and Far Western states and
municipalities.
Thus, at midcentury the Great Migration to the industrial
centers since the First World War was about to usher in the
most momentous changes in black-white relationships since the
Civil War. The context and texture of Negro life had changed,
and the process of future racial adjustment would take place in
a chiefly urban environment. The urban ghetto was at one and
the same time the force that constricted Negro life and aspira¬
tions and yet formed the base for black political power and the
activities of civil-rights organizations. Because the black vote
was often closely tied to Democratic city machines, it was not as
effective a voice of protest as some believe it could have been;
nevertheless, by 1950 it had already determined a Presidential
election, elicited several important actions on the part of the
Chief Executive, and secured the passage of some state and
municipal antidiscrimination laws. Without the urban base, the
Negro protest movement would have remained small, and with¬
out the political leverage the urban masses provided, it would
have remained impotent. Though no one realized it at the time,
and though other factors were also essential in bringing about
the events that were to follow, by midcentury the vote of the
black ghetto in the North had reached the proportions that
made possible the civil-rights revolution.
 VII
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s

“The Negro schools of thought,” A. Philip Ran¬

dolph, patriarch of the black protest movement said, “are torn
with dissension, giving birth to many insurgent factions. . . .
All are engaged in a war of bitter recriminations . . . while
the long-suffering masses . . . [are] victims of the vanities,
foibles, indiscretions and vaulting ambitions ... of various
leaderships.” This was written in about 1920, when there was a
conservative group best represented by Tuskegee Institute and
the National Urban League, a radical left wing of Marxists
connected with the Messenger, a radical nationalist back-to-
Africa movement, and, in the middle of the road, the NAACP.
Randolph’s words so aptly describe the situation throughout the
twentieth century that they might just as easily have applied to
the period a dozen years earlier when the conflict between the

271
272 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

“conservative” Booker T. Washington and the “radical”

NAACP was raging, or to the 1960’s, when the “conservative”
NAACP was criticized first by the more “radical” activist civil-
rights organizations, and then by the Black Nationalists.

1
What happened to the civil-rights movement to produce a
situation’where a platform, that early in the century was cen¬
sured for its militancy, sixty years later was being con¬
demned for its gradualism? Externally there was a significant
shift in white public opinion in the direction of racial equali-
tarianism. Internally, what was once a liberal white and Negro
upper-class movement became a completely black-led and al¬
most entirely black, largely working-class movement. There was
a shift in strategy from agitation, legislation, and court litigation
aimed at securing the black person’s constitutional rights to
emphasis on direct-action techniques, and finally to mobilizing
the potential power of the masses in the ghettos along political
and economic lines. When, in the 1960’s, the nation moved
closer toward protecting the rights guaranteed by the Constitu¬
tion, goals were redefined, and the Negro protest organizations
went beyond constitutional rights to demand special efforts to
overcome the poverty of the black masses. In some cases, thev
rejected the platform of integration for one of militant ethnic
separatism.
The goals, tactics, and strategy of the mid-twentieth-century
civil-rights movement were clearly foreshadowed during the
Second World War by Randolph’s March on Washington
Movement and the founding of the Congress of Racial Equalitv
(CORE). Though its career was brief, the former organization
prefigured things to come in three ways: (1) it was an avowedly
all-Negro movement; (2) it was deliberately based upon action
on the part of the black masses; and (3) it concerned itself with
the economic problems of the urban slum dwellers. Moreover,
the wartime Fair Employment Practices Committee that Presi¬
dent Roosevelt created in response to Randolph’s threat was
itself important, for it established a precedent suggesting that
The Black Revolt of the 196CTs 273
the right to fair employment might be regarded as a civil right.
Randolph’s March on Washington Movement was greatly
influenced by the tactics of Gandhi’s movement of nonviolent
resistance in India, but it was the Congress of Racial Equality
that was chiefly responsible for projecting the use of nonviolent
direct action as a civil-rights strategv. CORE’S origins lay in the
activities of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a Christian paci¬
fist organization founded during the First World War. Certain
leaders of the FOR, interested in the use of nonviolent direct
action to fight racial discrimination, founded CORE in 1942
with the hope of enlisting persons whose major concern was in
race relations instead of pacifism. CORE combined Gandhi’s
techniques with the sit-in, derived from the sit-down strikes of
the 1930’s. Until about 1959, CORE’S main activity was attack¬
ing discrimination in places of public accommodation in the
cities of the Northern and Border states. A cornerstone of its
philosophv w;as that American racism could be destroved onlv
through an interracial movement. It was thoroughly inter¬
racial—even ‘'color-blind” in its internal operations; as late as
1961, two thirds of its membership and the majority of its
national officers wrere white.
The drift in public opinion toward a more liberal racial atti¬
tude, w'hich had begun during the New Deal, accelerated dur¬
ing the war and the postwar years. Thoughtful whites became
painfully aware of the contradiction in fighting the Nazis with
their racist philosophy while permitting race discrimination at
home. After the war the revolution against Western imperial¬
ism, first in Asia and then in Africa, engendered a new respect
for the nonwhite peoples of the world and a new importance
for them in international councils. Ironically, nothing was more
helpful to the Negroes’ cause than the Cold War, with the
Communist powers holding American democratic pretensions
up to ridicule before the uncommitted peoples of the world.
In this context of changing international trends and shifting
American opinion, the campaign for black rights broadened.
The growing size of the Northern black vote had already made
civil rights a major issue in national elections, and eventually, in
274 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

1957, led to the establishment of a federal Civil Rights Com¬

mission with the power to investigate discriminatory conditions
throughout the country and to recommend corrective measures
to the President. Under pressure from the NAACP and other
organizations, both black and white, more and more Northern
and Western states outlawed discrimination in employment,
housing, und public accommodations. The NAACP, piling up
victory upon victory in the courts, successfully attacked racially
restrictive covenants in housing, segregation in interstate trans¬
portation, and discrimination in publicly owned recreational
facilities. Finally, with the Supreme Court ruling of 1954 it
brought its legal campaign against educational segregation in
the South to a triumphant climax.
Over the years Negroes had gradually taken over most of the
offices in the NAACP. In 1920 James Weldon Johnson had
become the Association’s first black executive secretary. In 1935
the NAACP legal work had come under black direction when
Charles Houston was hired as special counsel. In 1965 only two
white people were on its national staff, and less than one fourth
of the national board was white. During and after the Second
World War the backbone of the NAACP’s expanding mem¬
bership came to rest among the working-class urban blacks. In
the postwar era, it continued to conduct voter-registration
drives and established housing and labor departments to im¬
prove its program in these two areas. Thus, in the 1950’s, the
NAACP was strengthening its work along the legal-legislative
lines it had employed in earlier years.
CORE by midcentury was embarking upon demonstrations
in the Border states. Public accommodations were still its major
focus, but it also began experimenting with direct-action tech¬
niques to open employment opportunities. In 1947 CORE, in
cooperation with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, conducted a
"Journey of Reconciliation”—or what would later be called a
"Freedom Ride”—in the states of the upper South. Their pur¬
pose was to test compliance with the Morgan v. Virginia deci¬
sion of the preceding year, in which the Supreme Court had
declared that for states to require segregation on interstate
The Black Revolt of the 1960's 275
buses was an undue burden on interstate commerce. The riders
met resistance in some areas, and the pacifist Bayard llustin,
who was to become one of the prominent civil-rights leaders of
the 1960’s, was one of those who was sentenced to a thirty-day
jail term on a North Carolina road gang.
It was not CORE, however, but the Montgomery, Alabama,
bus boycott of 1955-6 that captured the imagination of the
nation and of the Negro community in particular and was
chiefly responsible for the rising use of direct action in the late
1950’s. In large measure this happened because the boycott, a
local action, catapulted into national prominence the one per¬
son in the civil-rights movement who most nearly achieved
charismatic leadership, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Like
the founders of CORE—but unlike the great majority of the
civil-rights activists, who regarded nonviolence as a convenient
tactic—King professed a Gandhian belief in the principles of
pacifism. In King’s view, the civil-rights demonstrators who
were beaten and jailed by hostile whites educated and trans¬
formed their oppressors through the redemptive character of
their unmerited suffering.
Even before a court decision obtained by NAACP attorneys
in November 1956 desegregated the Montgomery buses and
gave victor}- to the Montgomery Improvement Association, a
similar movement had started in Tallahassee, Florida, and
afterward one developed in Birmingham, Alabama. In June
1957, the Tuskegee Civic Association undertook a three-year
boycott of local merchants after the state legislature gerry¬
mandered nearly all the black voters outside of the town’s
boundaries. This campaign was crowned with success when, in
response to a suit filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the
Supreme Court ruled the gerrymander illegal. Today blacks
control the public offices in the community where Booker T.
Washington used to preach that Negroes had erred by starting
in politics instead of at the plow. Events in Montgomery, Talla¬
hassee, Birmingham, and Tuskegee were widely heralded as
indicating the emergence of the “New Negro” in the South-
militant, no longer fearful of white hoodlums, police, or jails,
276 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

and ready to use his collective weight to achieve his ends. Seiz¬
ing upon this new mood, King in 1957 established the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), designed to coordi¬
nate direct-action activities in Southern cities. Black protest
now moved in a vigorous fashion into the South; like the
Northern protest activities, it was concentrated in the urban
ghetto. ,

2
The effectiveness of King’s leadership was not the only reason
for the popularity of nonviolent direct action. The fact was that
the older techniques of legal and legislative action had proved
themselves limited instruments. Impressive as it was to cite the
advances in the fifteen years after the end of World War II,
particularly the new state laws and Supreme Court decisions,
something was clearly wrong. Though in the dozen years follow¬
ing the outlawing of the white primary in 1944 the NAACP
and other groups had raised the total number of Negroes regis¬
tered in Southern states from about 250,000 to nearly a million
and a quarter, Negroes were still disfranchised in most of the
South. Supreme Court decisions desegregating transportation
facilities were still largely ignored there. Discrimination in em¬
ployment and housing abounded, even in Northern states with
model civil-rights laws. Beginning in 1954, the black unemploy¬
ment rate steadily moved upward. There was the Southern die¬
hard reaction following the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision on
school desegregation with attempts to outlaw the NAACP,
intimidation of civil-rights leaders, "the massive resistance” to
the Court’s decision, the forcible curtailment of black voter
registration, and the rise of the White Citizens’ Councils.
At the very time that legalism was thus proving to be of
limited usefulness, other events were bringing about a change in
black attitudes. Negroes were gaining a new self-image as a
result of the rise of the new African nations; King and others
were demonstrating that nonviolent direct action could succeed
in the South; and the new laws and court decisions, the interna¬
tional situation, and the evident drift of white public opinion
 The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 277
developed in American blacks a new confidence in the future.
In short, there occurred what has appropriately been described
as a “revolution in expectations/’ Negroes no longer felt that
thev had to accept the humiliations of second-class citizenship,
and consequently these humiliations—somewhat fewer though
they now were—appeared to be more intolerable than ever.
Ironicallv, it was the NAACP’s very successes in the legislatures
and the courts that more than any other single factor led to this
revolution in expectations and the resultant dissatisfaction with
the limitations of the NAACP’s program. This increasing impa¬
tience accounted for the rising tempo of nonviolent direct
action in the late 1950’s, culminating in the student sit-ins of
1960 and the inauguration of what is popularly known as the
“civil rights revolution,’’ or the “Negro revolt.’’
Many believe that the Montgomery boycott ushered in this
Negro revolt, and the importance of that event in projecting
the images of both King and nonviolent direct action cannot be
overestimated. But the really decisive break with the preemi¬
nence of legalistic techniques came with the college student sit-
ins that swept the South in the spring of 1960. In scores of
communities in the upper South, the Atlantic coastal states,
and Texas, student demonstrations secured the desegregation of
lunch counters in drug and variety stores. Arrests were num¬
bered in the thousands, and police brutality was only too evi¬
dent in scores of communities. In the Deep South the
campaign ended in failure, even in instances where hundreds
were arrested, as at Montgomery, Alabama, Orangeburg, South
r Carolina, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But the youths captured
the imagination of the black community and, to a considerable
extent, of whites as well.
The civil rights movement would never be the same again.
The Southern college-student sit-ins set in motion waves of
events that shook the power structure of the black community.
They made direct action temporarily preeminent as a civil-rights
technique, ended NAACP hegemony in the civil-rights move¬
ment, speeded up incalculably the whole process of social
change in race relations, all but destroyed the barriers standing
278 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

against the recognition of the Negro’s constitutional rights, and

ultimately turned the black protest organizations toward a deep
concern with the economic and social problems of the masses.
Involved was a steady radicalization of tactics and goals: from
legalism to direct action and ultimately to Black Power; from
participation by the middle and upper classes to mass action by
all classes; from guaranteeing the protection of the Negro’s con¬
stitutional rights to securing economic policies that would en¬
sure the welfare of the culturally deprived in a technologically
changing society; from appeal to the white American’s sense of
fair play to demands based upon the power in the black ghetto.
Most of these things had been adumbrated by the March on
Washington Movement of the early 1940’s; but it was the train
of events set in motion by the college generation of 1960 that
made Randolph’s vision of civil-rights tactics and objectives a
reality.
The election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 symbolized another
set of factors that were to have importance for the course of the
black revolution. Kennedy campaigned vigorously for the black
vote, and his narrow victory would not have been possible with¬
out it. At the same time he was heavily indebted to some segre¬
gationists who kept their states in the Democratic column, and
he did not wish to jeopardize other parts of his legislative pro¬
gram by pushing for a civil-rights bill to strengthen those passed
in 1957 and 1960, which had provided mainly for a fact-finding
but powerless Civil Rights Commission. He attempted there¬
fore to placate Southern states by following their recommenda¬
tions in making appointments to the federal district courts.
This policy led to the selection of certain extremely segrega¬
tionist judges and thus removed effective judicial assistance for
blacks in the Deep South to the more distant circuit and
supreme courts. On the other hand, Kennedy privately encour¬
aged the Taconic and Field Foundations to finance a voter-
registration campaign among Southern blacks being conducted
by the various civil-rights organizations. Despite resistance in
many areas, particularly in the Deep South, black registration in
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 279
the South as a whole roughly doubled to a total of about two
million between 1962 and 1964.
Basically Kennedy hoped to satisfy blacks by strategic use of
executive authority. After much delay Kennedy in late 1962
ordered the federal housing authorities to cease discrimination
connected with the financing of private homes. For the first
time the Presidential committee charged with securing fair-
employment policies from firms with government contracts seri¬
ously attempted to put some pressure on the offending corpora¬
tions. But the most effective response Kennedy gave to his black
supporters was in his appointments policy. For the first time
Negroes received a significant number of positions at the
middle and higher levels in the government departments, the
most notable being the appointment in 1961 of Robert C.
Weaver to head the Housing and Home Finance Agency. Al¬
though in retrospect Kennedy’s program seems mild, one thing
is clear: where President Eisenhower had proved vulnerable
only to international pressures (as when he finally sent troops to
Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision
integrating the white high school there), Kennedy was suscep¬
tible to pressures from Negro public opinion as well. He needed
the vote and, as subsequent events showed, both he and his
successor could be pushed into progressively stronger action on
behalf of the race.

3
The successes of the student movement brought a decisive
break with the preeminence of legalistic techniques and threat¬
ened the existing leadership arrangements in the black commu¬
nity far more profoundly than had the Montgomery boycott
and the rise of King and SCLC. What ensued was a spirited
rivalry among all civil-rights organizations. Both the NAACP
and SCLC attempted to identify themselves with the student
movement. The organizing meeting of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Raleigh, North Carolina,
in April 1960 was called by Martin Luther King. The SNCC
280 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

platform expressed the same ideas of religious pacifism as did

King himself. But within a year the youth had come to consider
King as too cautious, not dedicated enough to the cause, and
had broken with him and SCLC. The NAACP, which had
previously engaged in demonstrations only in a peripheral way,
now decided to make direct action a major part of its strategy.
Its youth secretary organized and reactivated college and youth
chapters in the Southern and Border states with the specific
intention of promoting direct-action campaigns. Other staff
members at regional conferences that spring urged the adult
branches to support this kind of activity. In many cases eager
youths pushed reluctant adults into backing direct action.
Much as the latter might have initially opposed a demonstra¬
tion, once dozens or hundreds of young people had been ar¬
rested, their elders could do nothing but rally to them. The
young people, especially in NAACP branches, depended heavily
on the legal and financial aid that adult citizens supplied. Yet
the dynamics, if not the full reality, of the situation were
summed up by a college student at the 1961 NAACP conven¬
tion who remarked, "We don’t need the adults, but they need
us.” CORE, which was still unknown to the general public,
installed fames Farmer as national director in January 1961 and
moved to the front rank of civil-rights organizations with the
famous Freedom Ride to Alabama and Mississippi that spring.
Designed to dramatize the lack of transportation desegregation
in those states, the Freedom Ride eventuated in a bus burning
in Alabama, hundreds spending a month or more in Mississippi
prisons, and partial compliance with a new order from the
Interstate Commerce Commission desegregating all facilities
used in interstate transportation.
Disagreements over strategy and tactics inevitably became
intertwined with rivalries between personalities and organiza¬
tions. Each civil-rights agency felt the need for proper credit if
it was to obtain the prestige and financial contributions neces¬
sary to maintain and expand its own program. The clashes be¬
tween individuals and organizations, both nationally and
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 281
locally, were often very severe, and the lack of unity was often
deplored. Actually, down to 1964, the overall effect of the com¬
petition was to stimulate more and more activity as organiza¬
tions attempted to outdo each other, and thus to accelerate the
pace of social change in city after city. On the other hand, even
among the strictly direct-action organizations, there developed
differences in stvle. SCLC appeared to be the most deliberate
and to engage chiefly in a few major projects. From the begin¬
ning SNCC staff workers lived on subsistence allowances and
almost made going to jail a way of life. More than any of the
other groups, SNCC workers were “true believers.”
Direct actionists often criticized the NAACP for being domi¬
nated by a conservative black bourgeoisie wedded to a program
of legal action and gradualism. Actually, in the 1960’s the
NAACP’s program became the most highly varied of all the
civil-rights organizations. It retained a strong emphasis on court
litigation. Acting in part through the Civil Rights Leadership
Conference, consisting of many Negro and interracial organiza¬
tions interested in promoting civil-rights legislation, it main¬
tained an effective lobby at the national capital. And it also
engaged in many direct-action campaigns. Some branches dis¬
dained direct action, but others enthusiastically adopted the
tactic. In a few cases NAACP branch presidents even served as
heads of SCLC affiliates.
In the absence of carefully collected empirical data, it is im¬
possible to speak with precision about the sources of member¬
ship and leadership in either the NAACP or the other groups.
Individuals of middle- and upper-class background or attain¬
ments predominated in the leadership of all organizations, for
they alone were likely to possess the necessary skills of adminis¬
tration and communication. This was true even though SNCC
and CORK consciously worked to create indigenous grass-roots
leadership, and many purely local groups that arose in the late
1960’s also developed leaders from among the poor themselves.
The college students who founded SNCC and formed the
backbone of the demonstrations in 1960-1 tended to be mainly
282 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

from an upwardly mobile lower-middle-class background, or

what they themselves often described as “striving lower class.”
By 1962, however, SNCC had ceased to be a coordinator of
college groups but had become a staff of activists whose field-
workers stimulated direct action in Southern communities.
Both SNCC community projects and SCLC affiliates appealed
mostly to working-class people rather than to the bourgeoisie.
The NAACP since the 1940rs had also drawn most of its mem¬
bers from the working class, although certain branches with a
mass-membership base, like the one in Chicago, were closely
allied with urban political machines, which had used the orga¬
nization to siphon off protest rather than to articulate it.
CORE, by 1962 and 1963, when it was turning its attention to
employment problems in the Northern cities, attracted a num¬
ber of blue-collar workers and even some people from the chroni¬
cally unemployed lower class. During 1963-5 its Southern staff
created and closely cooperated with working-class community
organizations. But frequently CORE chapters, most of which
were located in the North and West, had leaders and members
who were mainly middle class. In fact, in many localities the
range of membership and leaders in the NAACP, in CORE,
and even in the SCLC affiliates made it hard to distinguish
among them on the basis of social class. Rather, the NAACP
and the more activist groups often seemed to attract different
personality types from roughly the same social classes.

4
Meanwhile the role of whites in the movement was changing.
Instead of occupying positions of leadership, they found them¬
selves relegated to the role of foot soldiers and followers, al¬
though white contributors and foundations continued to supply
the principal financial support for the Urban League and the
three direct-action organizations. Blacks in the movement came
to feel less dependent on whites, more confident of their own
power, and demanded that their leaders be black. The NAACP
had acquired black leadership some years before; and both
SCLC and SNCC were from the start Negro-led and Negro-
The Black Revolt of the 1960 s 283
dominated. CORE, having acquired a new image in 1961 after
the Freedom Ride, became predominantly black as it expanded
in 1962-4. Its 1965 convention adopted a constitutional amend¬
ment that officiallv limited white leadership in the chapters; by
1967 all of its national executives were blacks, and a year later
whites were totally excluded from active membership in the
organization.
White liberals, Socialists, and pacifists found themselves in¬
creasingly under suspicion in the activist organizations, espe¬
cially if they did not endorse the most militant steps. Many of
them must have felt rather like the Girondists did when over¬
taken bv the Jacobins. In the labor movement, black workers
grew restive over the failure of even the most liberal unions to
place Negroes on their international boards or to eliminate dis¬
crimination in Southern locals. Consequently, the Negro-labor
alliance forged during the 1930's disintegrated. “Farewell to
Liberals,” an article in The Nation by an NAACP vice-presi¬
dent, expressed the idea well enough.
Thus, by 1962, “white liberal” joined “black bourgeoisie” and
“Uncle Tom” as an epithet of opprobrium in the vocabulary of
many black militants. The phrase “white liberal” was also em¬
ployed by white revolutionary Marxists who had jumped on the
direct-action bandwagon. But beginning about 1963 they, too,
found themselves in the ranks of those being “race-baited” by
their Negro colleagues in the movement.
Nevertheless, whites continued to play an essential support¬
ing role. Involved were many individuals, hitherto not sensitive
to the civil-rights issue, whom we can call the “white moder¬
ates.” Such whites, most notably leaders of the three major
religious faiths, were of critical importance in the coalition of
forces that were represented in the March on Washington in
1963, and it was this coalition that made possible the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Subse¬
quently, in the wake of the waves of summer rioting that began
in 1964 and the emergence of the black-power movement in
1966, some elements in the white business community came to
play an increasingly important supportive role.
284 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

5
The white radicals were attracted to the activist cause because
they regarded it as the key to a socialized America. Yet the
precise role of the white—and black—revolutionary leftists is
difficult to ascertain. Actually, purely as a result of its own
dynamics, the Negro protest movement of the 1960's under¬
went a continuous radicalization in tactics and ideology. As
already noted, it was disappointment with the results of the
NAACP’s legal-legislative strategy that led to the triumph of
direct action as a technique. Then, as lunch counters were de¬
segregated, sit-ins and boycotts were used to attack exclusion
from other places of public accommodation in the South, racist
housing developments in the North, and, most important of all,
discrimination in employment. The rivalries among the various
groups accelerated the process. As progress was made in one
area, organizations looked for other forms of discrimination to
attack—in part to further the battle against racism and in part
to justify their own continued existence.
Large sections of the NAACP enthusiastically embraced di¬
rect action. The National Urban League, under the leadership
of Whitney M. Young, Jr., appointed executive director in
1961, became outspoken and militant. The League began to talk
much more firmly to businessmen whom it had previously
treated with the utmost tact and caution. It was principally the
new climate provided by the activists that made this change in
Urban League strategy possible. As businessmen came to fear
demonstrations at their doorsteps or factory gates, they listened
more carefully to requests and suggestions from the Urban
League.
Meanwhile, as the excitement created by the earlier demon¬
strations dissipated, and as it became evident that many places
of public accommodation remained firmly segregated, more
dramatic forms of direct action became essential. A few arrests
were no longer newsworthy. To desegregate the more intransi¬
gent Southern communities, it was necessary to persuade dozens
and even hundreds of people to go to jail and stay there. It
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 285
became quite obvious that the unmerited suffering of the direct
actionists did not bring a change in the hearts of the oppressors.
Rather it was the economic pinch created bv sit-ins and boy¬
cotts, the publicity obtained through mass arrests, and the
national and international pressure generated by the violence of
white hoodlums and police that forced political and social
change. There followed a secularization of those Southern
Negro activists who remained in the movement for any length
of time. Few of them had ever been pacifists in the first place,
but an important reason for the initial attraction of nonviolent
direct action had been its consonance with their Christian faith.
Now, instead of speaking of love and Christianity, activists be¬
gan to talk of power. They thought less of convincing the white
man of the moral righteousness of their aspirations and more of
forcing him to change his policies through the power of black
bodies to create social dislocation.
A major factor leading to the radicalization of the civil-rights
movement was unemployment and poverty—and an important
force awakening the civil-rights organizations to this problem
was the meteoric rise of the Black Muslims to national promi¬
nence. Paradoxically, this nationalist sect, established around
1930, reached the peak of its influence at a time when more
progress toward equal rights was being made than ever before in
American history. But this was also a time of deteriorating eco¬
nomic opportunity for the lower classes in the urban ghettos. In
1952 the median black-family income was 57 percent of white-
family income; ten years later, despite the highly publicized
occupational breakthroughs of a minority of blacks, the average
income of black families had fallen to 53 percent of that of
whites. The first real spurt in the membership rolls of the Black
Muslims seems to have occurred during the recession of 1953-4.
Due to automation and other forms of technological change,
black unemployment rose steadily after 1958. By 1962 it was
two and a half times that of whites, and in some industrial cities
the differential was even greater.
More than anything else this increasing unemployment, com¬
bined with the revolution in expectations, created a climate in
286 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

which the Black Muslims thrived. They preached an eschato¬

logical vision of the doom of the white “devils” and the coming
dominance of the black person, promised a utopian paradise of
a separate territory within the United States in which black
people would establish their own state, and offered a more im¬
mediate practical program of building up black business
through hard work, thrift, and racial unity. To those willing to
submit to the rigid personal discipline of the movement, the
Black Muslim organization gave a sense of purpose and destiny.
Its program offered them four things: an explanation of their
plight (white devils); a sense of pride and self-esteem (black
superiority); a vision of a glorious future (black ascendancy);
and a practical, immediate program of uplift (working hard and
uniting to create black enterprise and prosperity). With this
Puritan ethic the Muslims appealed chiefly to an upwardly
mobile group of the lowest social class of Negroes. Basically, like
the integrationist Negro revolt, the Black Muslims were a mani¬
festation of the Negroes’ quest for recognition of their human
dignity and their rejection of the philosophy of gradualism. In
the same way that the Garvey movement was a lower-class
counterpart of the New Negro of the 1920’s, so the Black Mus¬
lims were a counterpart of the new “New Negro” of the early
1960's. Ironically, until split by internal dissension, the Black
Muslims distinctly assisted the civil-rights organizations, for
their talk of violence and their hatred of blue-eyed devils fright¬
ened white people into becoming more amenable to the de¬
mands of the integrationists. The Black Muslims sounded so
extreme to many whites that integration appeared to be a con¬
servative program; the same thing was to happen later with
respect to the black-power movement.
Paradoxically, the trials and successes of the integrationist
protest movement after 1960, by producing heightened self¬
esteem among black people, also encouraged nationalist ten¬
dencies. For one thing, as blacks grew in racial pride, they dis¬
played a sharply rising interest in black history. Another
manifestation of black consciousness was the call for black
leadership within the civil-rights movement, based upon the
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 287
growing belief that Negroes, through their own power, could
bring about dramatic changes in American society. As early as
1963 there were proposals for the formation of an all-black
political party. At the same time other proposals along the lines
of self-help and racial cooperation were suggested to attack the
economic needs of the rural and urban poor. Finally, a group of
writers expressed their alienation by questioning the values of
middle-class white America and militantly calling for preserva¬
tion of the unique aspects of the black subculture. After 1965,
this cultural pluralism became a widely held ideology, described
bv the phrase “black consciousness.”
As the direct-action tactics took more dramatic form, as the
civil-rights groups began to articulate the needs of the masses
and draw some of them to their demonstrations, the protest
movement in 1963 assumed a new note of urgency and immedi-
atism, a demand for complete “Freedom Now!” Moreover,
direct action returned to the Northern cities, taking the form of
massive protests against economic, housing, and educational in¬
equities. The new mood of militance suffused the events of
1963: the fresh wave of demonstrations that swept the South
from Cambridge, Maryland, to Birmingham, Alabama, and
Jackson, Mississippi; the NAACP national convention, which
passed a resolution calling for more direct action; the fruitless
Northern street demonstrations against the discriminatory
building-trades unions; and, the following winter, the equally
fruitless school boycotts against de facto segregation. The frus¬
tration of the expectations of 1963 largely accounted for the
further radicalization of the most militant activists beginning in
1964.
At first the new militance of the early 1960’s tended to propel
the more “conservative” black community leaders, whether
prominent in the NAACP or not, into a more radical tactical
position. It was notable that in crisis situations engendered by
mass arrests, especially if these were accompanied by obvious
police brutality, temporary unity was achieved between organi¬
zations and classes—generally on the militants’ terms. On such
occasions only rarely did even a conservative NAACP chapter
288 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

refuse aid and support. The most prominent citizens were likely
to mortgage their property for bail money and, in a few cases,
went to jail themselves. For example, before the Birmingham
demonstration conducted by SCLC in the spring of 1963, the
wealthy upper-class black citizens had opposed King’s decision
to use that citadel of segregation as the site of a major direct-
action campaign aimed at securing equal job opportunities and
the desegregation of lunch counters in downtown stores. For a
month following the opening demonstrations in April, King
found no appreciable support locally or nationally. Conditions
changed after King’s lieutenants began using hundreds of black
schoolchildren as demonstrators, some as young as six or seven.
Their arrests caused the jails to overflow. Before the campaign
ended more than two thousand persons were arrested. In the
presence of newspaper and TV cameras, police used high-pres¬
sure firehoses and snarling dogs, arousing millions of Americans
who witnessed such brutal scenes as a black woman pinned to
the ground by burly policemen, one of whom dug his knee into
her throat. Tensions mounted even more a few days later when
bombs exploded at the motel that served as King’s headquarters
and at his brother’s home. The blasts infuriated angry blacks
who rioted with rocks and bottles. By this time even the early
opponents of direct action had rushed to SCLC’s support.
Though a superb example of how to run a direct-action
demonstration, the Birmingham project resulted in a compro¬
mise that brought the city’s Negroes not "Freedom Now” but
token concessions that later were not carried out. Nevertheless,
the demonstration was enormously important because it com¬
pelled the United States to face the problem of Southern dis¬
crimination in a way it had never done before. For the first time
in American history the President appeared before the nation
and declared that race discrimination was a moral issue. More¬
over, the Birmingham campaign forced President Kennedy to
cease depending on mild executive manipulations as a way of
advancing Negro welfare and to ask Congress for a major civil-
rights bill that would not only solve the public accommodations
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 289
problem but would attempt to protect the Southern blacks’
political rights and provide national legislative sanction for fair-
employment practices. The bill was stalled, and after Kennedy’s
death, President Lyndon B. Johnson proved even more vigorous
in pressing Congress to enact a meaningful civil-rights bill. The
Civil Rights Act of 1964, in contrast to the token and symbolic
civil-rights acts of 1957 and 1960, clearly declared discrimination
in places of public accommodation to be illegal, instituted a
modest program for protecting Southern Negroes’ right to vote,
created a federal fair-emplovment-practices agency with mild
enforcement powers, and gave the national Executive the power
to withdraw federal funds from state and local agencies that
discriminated against Negroes.

6
Although the demonstrations in Birmingham and other
numerous cities during that spring of 1963 precipitated the shift
in Presidential strategy, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not
have been passed were it not for a series of developments that
converged at the March on Washington in August 1963. Early
in the year, at the suggestion of Bayard Rustin, the long-time
civil-rights activist, pacifist, and Socialist, A. Philip Randolph
issued a call for a March on Washington in the fall in order to
dramatize the need for jobs and to press for federal action. At
about the same time, the Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic
churches held a conference on religion and race. Though indi¬
vidual Jewish and Protestant clergymen had been jailed in
Southern demonstrations in 1961-2, not until 1963 did the
churches officially encourage such activity. After the Birming¬
ham demonstration, at the request of SCLC, the date for the
march was advanced to the summer, and the emphasis was
shifted to passage of the civil-rights bill. Then the churches
sought and obtained representation on the march committee.
Finally, though the AFL-CIO national council refused to en¬
dorse the march, thus adding to the estrangement that had
been growing between the civil-rights groups and organized
290 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

labor, a few labor leaders and international unions did partici¬

pate, and Walter Reuther of the UAW was given a place on
the march committee.
With this impressive support, the march became fashionable.
The President, reversing an earlier stand, welcomed the march,
though he refused to appear on the platform. A quarter of a
million people, about 20 percent of them white, participated.
From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where slightly less
than a quarter-century earlier Marian Anderson had sung on
Easter morning, the leaders of the civil-rights organizations ad¬
dressed the throng. For Randolph the occasion was the culmi¬
nation of a vision he had held for over two decades. Roy Wil¬
kins, executive secretary of the NAACP, recalled the contribu¬
tion of W. E. B. Du Bois. The night before, at the age of
ninety-five, Du Bois had died in Ghana, a Communist, com¬
pletely alienated from his native land, whose citizenship he had
renounced. Martin Luther King articulated in the cadences of
the old-fashioned Baptist preacher the dream of inclusion in
American society that Negroes had held for centuries. It was
the dream that Du Bois had had for most of his life; and before
that it had been the dream of Booker T. Washington and
Frederick Douglass, of Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman, of the
runaway slaves and contrabands, of the bondsmen who had
worked to buy their freedom, and the black peasants who had
sought land and education after their emancipation. After King’s
address, an old-line civil-rights leader commented with some
acerbity: "Martin had no right to say 7 have a dream’; why,
we have all had that dream for generations.”
The march was more than a summation of the past years of
struggle and aspiration. It also symbolized certain new direc¬
tions: a deeper concern for the economic problems of the
masses; more involvement of white moderates; and a new radi¬
calism among the most militant, as suggested by the address of
the SNCC chairman, John Lewis, who implied that only a
revolutionary change in American institutions would permit
blacks to achieve the dignity of human beings and citizens.
I he Black Revolt of the 1960’s 291

7
The black revolt produced an acrid controversy over the rela¬
tive merits of legal action and direct action. Historical analysis
reveals that in actual fact the two approaches complemented
and reinforced each other. Legal action may be said to include
not only litigation in the courts but also propagandizing and
lobbying for new laws. Subsidiary to the legal-legislative ap¬
proach were nonpartisan voter-registration campaigns designed
to impress politicians with the potential power of the black
vote. Nonviolent direct-action techniques included picketing,
boycotts, sit-ins, courting arrest by disobeying unjust laws and
police regulations, and filling the jails.
In the North and Far West, the post-World War II nonvio¬
lent demonstrations were one of several factors leading to the
enactment of antidiscrimination legislation. Although certain of
these laws—those dealing with employment and housing—to a
considerable extent were disobeyed, in general the new legisla¬
tion not onlv broke down discrimination in places of public
accommodation but also helped establish new patterns of so¬
cially accepted behavior. So also did the court victories being
obtained by the NAACP at the same time. These new norms of
behavior reduced Northern white resistance to further black
demands, while among Negroes they created higher expecta¬
tions and thereby encouraged further direct action. Neither the
Northern fair-employment-practice laws nor the Presidential
fair-employment committees accomplished anything very strik¬
ing, even among those businessmen who claimed that they fol¬
lowed a technically nondiscriminatory policy. Later, however, in
1963 and 1964, when direct actionists staged major demonstra¬
tions to break down employment barriers, their successes were
greatly facilitated by the degree to which employers, especially
those who had signed President Kennedy’s “Plans for Progress,”
felt morally vulnerable because they had accepted the idea of
equal employment practices. Black buying power, which had
been demonstrated by boycotts, was another potent influence in
292 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

these campaigns, but even firms that did not manufacture or

sell consumer goods began to hire blacks, suggesting that a
change in racial attitudes had been taking place.
In regard to the South we have already noted the role of
litigation^ in securing victory for the direct-action work in
Montgomery and Tuskegee. As a result of the Supreme Court
ruling in the Montgomery case, several other cities quietly de¬
segregated their buses. The public, both white and black, re¬
membered not the abstruse language of the courts but the vivid
language of a Negro mass movement; and, as one might have
expected, direct action, not legalism, received the credit. In
1961 the Freedom Rides tested compliance with the High
Court’s opinions in other transportation cases. Though the
Court’s views were largely respected on the main roads in the
Atlantic coastal states, Alabama and Mississippi had had no
intention of complying until the Freedom Riders brought the
glare of national publicity and an ICC order that did much to
diminish segregation in interstate bus travel. Lawyers and judges
had paved the way and effected some progress; the Freedom
Riders built on the foundation they had laid.
The growing number of black voters, an important factor in
the enactment of national and state civil-rights laws, was also of
distinct value to the direct-action campaigns. Where blacks
voted in substantial numbers, public authorities were likely to
urge compliance with black demands. This was true not only in
the North but in the South as well. The sit-in demonstrations
of the early 1960’s were successful principally in places like
Atlanta, Nashville, Durham, Winston-Salem, Louisville, Savan¬
nah, New Orleans, Charleston, and Dallas—cities where Ne¬
groes voted and could swing elections. Ironically, the great
majority of these voters had been placed on the rolls in registra¬
tion campaigns sparked by the NAACP and local affiliated
groups after the white-primary decision secured by the Associa¬
tion’s legal department in 1944.
In the mid-1960’s, major demonstrations in the South were
successful where employed to compel Presidential action, now
that the Chief Executives had become sensitive both to the
The Black Revolt of the 1960 s 293
aroused conscience of many white people and to the justice of
the blacks’ claims and their vote. The relationship between
Birmingham and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a case in point,
l he moral indignation aroused across the nation by police bru¬
tality during that momentous week rallied white moderates as
well as Negroes behind meaningful civil-rights legislation—a
fact dramatized by the March on Washington. But it was the
tireless lobbying of that unofficial arm of the NAACP, the
interracial Civil Rights Leadership Conference—along with the
efforts of President Johnson—which finally led to enactment of
the bill.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 settled the public accommoda¬
tions issue in the South’s major cities. Its voting section, how¬
ever, promised more than it accomplished. Again Martin
Luther King and SCLC dramatized the issue, this time at
Selma, Alabama, in the spring of 1965. Again the national gov¬
ernment was forced to intervene, and a new and more effective
voting law was passed. On this occasion even the President
wrapped himself in the mantle of the civil-rights movement by
quoting its anthem: “We shall overcome” he promised, ad¬
dressing Congress and a nationwide TV audience. Yet as Lyn¬
don Johnson himself pointed out in that speech, beyond the
protection of constitutional rights (for which Congress was now
providing, a century after emancipation) lay the as yet unsolved
problems of the poor.

8
Where Birmingham had made direct action respectable, the
Selma demonstration, drawing thousands of white moderates
from the North, made direct action fashionable. Nevertheless,
as early as 1964 it was becoming evident that like legalism,
direct action was but a limited instrument. This was the result
of two converging developments.
One of these was the failure of the sit-ins of 1960-1 to de¬
segregate public accommodations in Deep South states like
Mississippi and Alabama, and the realization, first grasped by
Robert Moses of SNCC, that, without the leverage of the vote,
294 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

demonstrations there would be failures. Beginning in 1961,

Moses established SNCC projects in the cities and county seats
of Mississippi. He succeeded in registering only a handful, but
by 1964 had generated enough support throughout the country
to enable the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which he
had created, to challenge dramatically the seating of the official
white delegates from the state at the Democratic National
Convention.
Direct action had also failed when applied to the difficult
economic and social problems facing the Negroes in the ghettos
of the North. Separate and inferior schools, rat-infested slum
housing, and police brutality did not prove vulnerable to an
attack of this kind. Street demonstrations did compel em¬
ployers, ranging from banks to supermarkets, to add many Ne¬
groes to their work force in Northern and Western cities, and
even in some Southern towns where conditions were propitious
and the blacks had considerable buying power. By these success¬
ful demonstrations, and by other fruitless ones against the
building-trades unions, the black protest movement probably
did more than anything else to make the nation aware of its
poor. (Indeed, the civil-rights organizations deserve much of
the credit for the inauguration of the federal antipoverty pro¬
gram.) But technological innovation was leading to a steady
decline in the number of unskilled jobs available, and the black
masses, half of whom had not gone beyond the eighth grade,
were unable to qualify for positions requiring higher skill and
education. As a result, while the black “job mix” changed be¬
cause of new hiring policies on the part of business, the basic
pattern of mass unemployment remained.
Faced with the intransigence of the Deep South and the
inadequacy of direct action to solve the problems of the slum
dwellers, the programs of the civil-rights organizations diverged.
The tendency toward a unity of strategy, if not between person¬
alities, that was emerging during 1963 was dissipated by the
middle of 1964. At the very time that white support for the
movement was actually rising, its most militant members felt
increasingly isolated from the American scene. People in the
The Black Revolt of the 196CTs 295
radical left wing of the movement were growing disdainful of
American society and the middle-class way of life and cynical
about liberals and the leaders of organized labor. Any compro¬
mise, even if a temporary tactical device, had become anathema
to them. They talked more and more of the necessity for “revo-
lutionary” changes in the social structure, even of violence.
They became increasingly skeptical of the value of white par¬
ticipation in the movement and insisted that black power alone
could compel concessions from the “power structure” of capi¬
talists, politicians, and bureaucratic labor leaders. The black
nationalist, Malcolm X, after his assassination in 1965, became
the symbolic hero for the militants. At the extreme left wing of
the movement Marxism and nationalism coalesced into a truly
revolutionary ideology.
In contrast, the “conservative” wing, mostly an older group
of individuals, appreciated the legislation of 1964 and 1965, the
public stands taken by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and
other signs of racial progress. They were keenly aware of the
new opportunities in business, in government, and in the aca¬
demic world for those with training to fill them. Civil-rights
activity in general, and the NAACP in particular, had become
so respectable that even famous protest leaders achieved high
public office. The most notable example was Lyndon Johnson’s
elevation of the brilliant NAACP chief counsel, Thurgood
Marshall, to the Supreme Court. Those NAACP leaders who
could be described as “conservative” did not believe that the
millennium had arrived, but changed conditions prompted a
reorientation of their strategy. Impressed by the degree of social
change, many of them came to view their role as exercising
influence within established institutions rather than fighting
such institutions from the outside. Overt protest was not, it
should be emphasized, ruled out in the views of these moder¬
ates. In fact, effective publicity of Negro grievances was often
the best means of compelling reluctant public officials to take
action. But the typical conservative now thought of direct
action as a tactic of last resort only.
J

Between the two poles of thought there existed a group who

296 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

recognized the new willingness of the nation's decision makers

to move toward greater racial justice but perceived also that
powerful pressure would be needed to push them in that direc¬
tion. This group held that blacks, as a dispossessed minority,
could not hope to achieve their goals purely through their own
actions. They based their strategy on a coalition of blacks with
white liberals, organized labor, and white clergy, such as the one
that had developed during the plans for the March on Wash¬
ington. Though this theory was not officially a part of the
NAACP platform, the Association, through the Civil Rights
Leadership Conference, actually based part of its strategy upon
it. Ultimately, the centrists hoped that a Negro-liberal-church-
labor alliance, acting as a political force, would compel the
national government to eliminate poverty in America for whites
and blacks alike. But they still favored direct action—even mass
civil disobedience—where it was needed to create the kind of
social dislocation that would bring remedial action from politi¬
cal authorities. Birmingham and Selma were prototypes of this
kind of strategy.
While it would be a gross oversimplification to pigeonhole
black protest leaders and organizations, broadly speaking it can
be said that the militant left wing was composed of SNCC and
many people in CORE. The conservative right wing included
Urban League officials and a substantial group in the NAACP.
Varieties of the centrist position were held by many in CORE
and the NAACP, best articulated by Bayard Rustin, A. Philip
Randolph, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Although by the middle of 1965. all segments of the move¬
ment were agreed that future protest activity would focus on
the problems of the ghettos, and that rather than direct action
the major weapon would be the political potential of the black
masses, there were wide differences in programs. The centrist
group had developed its theory of "coalition politics." With the
black vote looming so large in many cities and playing such a
strategic role in Presidential elections, it appeared logical for the
right wing to believe that the greatest progress could be
achieved by pushing from within the Democratic Party on both
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 297
national and local issues. In contrast, the most radical bloc
advocated the creation of Negro political organizations like the
Black Panther Party of Lowndes County, Alabama. It was evi¬
dent, however, that the future of collective political action
would he with the urban ghettos. There the main emphasis was
on organizing the masses to challenge the Democratic machines
from within the party and elect officials who really represented
the interests of the poor.
The success of the coalition strategy from 1963 to 1965 was
due in no small part to the role of Martin Luther King, Jr. At
least on specific issues he was able to piece together an effective
coalition. To critics on the left King appeared cautious, hesitant
to go to jail or lead a demonstration in the streets, altogether
too willing to listen to the pleas of Presidents and their emis¬
saries. Yet to others, both black and white, he seemed a mili¬
tant, though responsible, agitator. In his very willingness to
make tactical compromises with the political establishment, in
his very combination of militance with conservatism and
caution, of righteousness with respectability, lay the secret of his
success.
King articulated the dreams and aspirations of American
blacks as no other leader did. At the same time he was by far
the most effective interpreter of these aspirations to white
America. Ilis use of religious phraseology and the Judeo-Chris-
tian symbols of love and nonresistance were partly responsible
for this, because they were reassuring to the mind and emotions
of white America. But his appeal to whites went deeper. For
one thing, he unerringly knew how to exploit to maximum
effectiveness the white people’s growing feelings of guilt. In this
he was not unique. The novelist and essayist James Baldwin is
the most conspicuous example of a man who achieved success
with this formula—but unlike Baldwin and other angry young
writers, King explicitly believed in the white man’s salvation.
Not only would the nonviolent crusade fulfill the blacks’ dream,
it would help whites live up to their Judeo-Christian and demo¬
cratic values. If King’s approach was reminiscent of Booker T.
Washington, it was because, like the Tuskegeean, he had faith
298 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

in the white man and believed that it was for the good of the
white man as well as the Negro that justice be done to the black
man. But Washington’s career did little to influence the main¬
stream of historical events, whereas King’s contribution was in¬
calculable^ His occupation as a minister, his manner of speak¬
ing, and his style of operation made him a sort of "conservative
militant” able to attract an enormous range of people among
both races. Without King as its symbolic leader, it is difficult to
perceive how the civil-rights movement would have achieved
half as much as it did. It is doubtful, for example, that there
would now be on the books the major civil-rights legislation
that nonviolent direct action brought about in 1964 and 1965.
King also occupied a position of strategic importance as "the
vital center” within the civil-rights movement. Identified as
militant and activist, his SCLC was the most deliberate of the
direct-action groups. This not only gave King respectability in
the eyes of whites but also enabled him to serve as a bridge
between the militant and conservative wings of the movement.
For example, it appears unlikely that the Urban League and the
NAACP would have joined the 1963 March on Washington if
King had not done so. Because King participated, the march
drew not only enormous support from white ministers and
other middle-class white moderates but also the numbers and
money that the NAACP could bring and the respectability that
accompanied Urban League endorsement.
Yet between 1964 and 1966 the black protest movement be¬
came increasingly fragmented and ineffective. King found it
more difficult, and finally impossible, to continue his unifying
role. Fundamentally the growing disunity in the protest move¬
ment was rooted in the frustration of radically heightened ex¬
pectations and in the extraordinary problems involved in achiev¬
ing genuine equality for the black poor. In these circumstances,
the various segments of the movement became increasingly
divided on how to tackle the situation.
The 1964 Democratic Party Convention foreshadowed this
trend. Events there, in the eyes of the militants, thoroughly
discredited both the Democratic Party establishment and the
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 299
white liberal* elements in the interracial coalition backing the
national civil-rights legislative program. As an outgrowth of the
voter-registration campaign in Mississippi, begun in 1961 and
conducted under the sponsorship of a joint CORE-SNCC-
NAACP coalition known as COFO, or the Council of Feder¬
ated Organizations, the Freedom Democratic Party was created.
This organization came to the 1964 Democratic Convention
challenging the seating of the regular Mississippi delegation on
the grounds that blacks were unconstitutionally disfranchised in
Mississippi. The black militants not only rejected the party’s
compromise offer of two delegates-at-large but their growing
distrust of the white liberals became complete when many of
the latter, having originally supported the challenge, in the end
advocated accepting the compromise. Finally, the Negroes
themselves were deeply divided, with SNCC and CORE refus¬
ing to approve the compromise, while NAACP elements in the
Freedom Democratic Part}7 and men like Rustin and King
argued for its acceptance.
The war in Vietnam exacerbated the growing cleavages.
Some believed that the war diverted attention and funds from
solving the country’s leading domestic problem. Others went
further and regarded the war as cut of the same cloth as domes¬
tic racism, charging that both involved the attempt of the
American “white power structure” to keep a colored race in a
colonial status. A number of people, heretofore devoting their
full energies to fighting racial discrimination, were diverted to
working against the war in Vietnam. At the opposite pole were
those who held that the Vietnam issue was irrelevant as far as
the black protest was concerned, and that to mix the two issues
was tactically dangerous, since it would lose some support for
the blacks’ cause. The Urban League and the NAACP refused
to identify themselves with the Vietnam issue. King, previously
a key figure in the coalition strategy, openly attacked United
States policy in Vietnam, as did SNCC and CORF. The white
supporters of the coalition were similarly split, with organized
labor particularly endorsing the war program.
Meanwhile, by 1965, white funding of the direct-action orga-
300 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

nizations was drying up. All along, the NAACP had been
financed primarily by blacks, and the Urban League continued
to receive money from white businessmen. Various factors ac¬
counted for the financial problems of CORE, SCLC, and
SNCC—the riots, annoyance with the refusal of SNCC and
CORE to accept the compromise offered at the 1964 Demo¬
cratic Convention, and the position of all three organizations
on the Vietnam War. Even King, who had urged the Missis¬
sippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to accept the com¬
promise at the 1964 Democratic Convention, found that his
opposition to the war produced a sharp drop in SCLC’s income.
The financial situation exacerbated the distrust for the white
liberals and moderates and accelerated the decline in the activ¬
ities of CORE and SNCC. Then, too, many civil-rights workers
turned to peace activities; equally important, others, including
many among the most effective local leaders, were siphoned
off into well-paying administrative positions in the War on
Poverty.
The antipoverty act, passed in 1964, had several effects on the
protest movement. It accelerated the shift, already evident,
from an emphasis on a national legislative program to local
community action led by grass-roots people from among the
poor themselves. The struggle within the black community over
who would administer the community-action programs exacer¬
bated the polarization between the more moderate middle-class
leaders, often identified with the NAACP and Urban League,
and the more radical types. Finally, the antipoverty program
unintentionally served to increase the frustration and discontent
among the black poor by further escalating their expectations
but failing to deliver anything substantial. Yet one legacy of the
War on Poverty was the feeling that the government should
allocate resources to the ghetto, to be spent for programs initi¬
ated and administered by the ghetto dwellers themselves. Thus,
paradoxically, the Office of Economic Opportunity projects,
while not solving the problems of the poor, led to a heightened
militance among them.
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 301

9
Lower-income Negroes were on a dreary treadmill. Without
much education, they found it difficult to obtain decent jobs;
without adequate work and something for their children to
aspire to, it was not likely that they would have the motivation
to seek an adequate education even if it were available. The
feeling of frustration, of hopelessness, was reflected in the riots
at Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit, and in the more than four
hundred disorders of varving degrees of seriousness between
1964 and 1969. Paradoxically, these outbreaks were born of a
sense of powerlessness and at the same time a sense of power
derived from the knowledge that “whitey” now felt afraid or
guilty and was unlikely to fight back.
The riots of the 1960’s were clearly different from those of
the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries.
What we may call the “new-style” riot first appeared in Harlem
in 1935 and in 1943, where Negro attacks were mainly directed
against white property rather than white people. The Detroit
race riot of 1943, one of the more serious racial conflicts in
American historv, which brought death to nine whites and
twenty-five blacks, had affinities with both the older and more
recent varieties of race warfare. As in the Chicago and certain
other conflagrations of the World War I period, the 1943 De¬
troit riot was precipitated by black retaliation against mounting
white hostility. White mobs kicked, beat, and shot Negroes to
death, and though members of both races lost their lives, the
majority of the dead and injured were Negroes. On the other
hand, because the black mobs’ major attention was directed
toward destroying and looting white-owned businesses in the
black ghetto, and because most of the Negroes who were killed
were shot by white policemen, this riot bore certain striking
similarities to the riots in Detroit and other cities in the period
since 1964. This symbolic destruction of “whitey” through his
property, characterizing the new-style riot, did not truly fulfill
James Baldwin’s prediction of '‘the fire next time,” since it did
302 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

not mark a direct reversal of those conflagrations nearly half a

century ago when white mobs literally hunted and killed dozens
of blacks. The modern riot involved hardly any white civilians
at all, and policemen or National Guardsmen constituted the
relatively small number of white casualties.
One can identify perhaps two major factors responsible for
this contrast between the old-style and the new-style riot. In the
first place, there was the relatively marked shift in the climate
of race relations in this country over the preceding generation.
On the one hand, whites had become, on the whole, more
sensitive to the blacks’ plight, more receptive to black demands,
and less punitive in their response to Negro aggression. The
black masses, on the other hand, had raised their expectations
markedly and, disillusioned by the relatively slow pace of social
change that had left the underprivileged urban Negroes of the
North scarcely, if at all, better off than they were ten or fifteen
years before, had become more restless and militant.
In the second place, there was an ecological factor. From
South to North, the migration of the World War I period was
a mere trickle compared to what it became later. The migration
to the North in each decade since 1940 has been equal to or
greater than the migration of the whole thirty-year period, 1910
to 1940. At the same time, owing to the Supreme Court’s out¬
lawing of the restrictive-housing covenant in 1948 and the tear¬
ing down of the older slums through urban renewal, the black
population has been dispersed over a wider area, thus accentuat¬
ing the trend toward the development of vast ghettos. Indeed,
compared to the enormous ghettos of today, the black residen¬
tial areas of the World War I period were mere enclaves. By
the 1960’s Negroes were close to becoming a majority in several
of the major American cities.
The character of American race riots was markedly affected
by these demographic changes. Even if white mobs had formed,
they would have been unable to attack and burn down the
black residential areas; even in the nineteenth- and early-twen-
tieth-century riots, white mobs did not usually dare invade the
The Black Revolt of the 1960's 303
larger black sections, and they destroyed only the smaller areas
of Negro concentration. Since black people were now such a
large share of the population of the central-city areas, white
mobs were no longer in a position to chase, beat, and kill iso¬
lated blacks on downtown streets. More important, from the
Negroes’ point of view, the large-scale ghettos provided a rela-
tivelv safe place for the destruction and looting of white-owned
propertv. It was impossible for local police forces to guard busi¬
ness property in the far-flung ghettos; even state police and
federal troops found themselves in hostile territory where it was
difficult to chase down rioters beyond the principal thorough¬
fares.
Beyond the seething discontent among the masses in the
urban ghettos which during the long, hot summers, tended to
erupt into overt racial warfare, the theme of retaliatory violence
was evident in various forms in the thinking of the most mili¬
tant elements in the black protest movement of recent years.
T he Black Muslims suggested that blacks should fight back
against the vicious “slavemasters,” and their eschatology in¬
cluded a violent end to white domination. A small number of
Marxist-nationalists appeared at the fringes of the black protest
movement in the early 1960’s, the most vocal of whom was
Robert F. Williams, dismissed as president of the Monroe,
North Carolina, branch of the NAACP in 1959 for his open
advocacy of violence against the oppressive white community.
From his place of exile in Havana, Cuba, and later in China,
Williams issued a monthly bulletin not only advocating violent
revolution but specifically urging blacks “to wage an urban
guerrilla war of self-defense” by throwing from rooftops Molo¬
tov cocktails and lye or acid bombs (made by injecting Re or
acid in the metal end of light bulbs). Subsequently, Williams
was named chairman in exile of an organization known as the
Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a tiny group of col¬
lege-educated people in a few major Northern cities, two of
whose members were sentenced to prison in 1968 for conspiring
to murder Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young. Later, Williams
304 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

was named chairman of another revolutionary nationalist group,

the Republic of New Africa.*
Williams, RAM, and the better-known Black Muslims were
on the fringes of the Negro protest movement of the early
1960's. Subsequently, violence and the propaganda for violence
moved clbser to the center of the race-relations stage. There was
an increasing use of revolutionary vocabulary and a rising skep¬
ticism about the value of nonviolence among many of the more
militant people in the nonviolent direct-action organizations. By
1964 and 1965 at least some of them, especially in SNCC and
to a lesser extent in CORE, were toying with the idea that
revolutionary violence might be necessary. The view that “no
people ever gained its freedom without some bloodshed” be¬
came widely voiced. In 1964 and 1965 there was considerable
publicity about the Deacons for Defense, organized in Louisi¬
ana to protect blacks and civil-rights demonstrators from white
attackers. In that period, CORE, without departing from its
advocacy of nonviolent direct-action methods, welcomed the
protection offered by the Deacons, who did not engage in talk
of general revolutionary violence but asserted the necessity of
defending black people and white civil-rights workers if they
were attacked.
Beyond the wave of race riots following the summer of 1964,
the incendiary statements of the militant SNCC spokesmen,
Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, became familiar TV and
newspaper fare. The Black Panther Party, founded by a group
of young California militants and espousing a nationalist and
revolutionary rhetoric, thrived and received national publicity.
As has often been pointed out, there is no evidence that the
race riots of the 196CTs had any direct relation to the teachings
of Williams, of these various groups, even of the SNCC advo¬
cates of armed rebellion and guerrilla warfare. But the state¬
ments of these ideologists and the spontaneous actions of the
masses had much in common. For both were the product of the
frustrations resulting from the growing disparity between the

* He returned to the United States in 1969.

The Black Revolt of the 1960 s 305
Negroes’ status in American society and the rapidly rising ex¬
pectations induced bv the civil-rights revolution and its earlier
successes.
It should be stressed that the theme of retaliatory violence
J

has never been entirely absent from black thinking. This senti¬
ment has taken various forms. Some have advocated self-
defense against a specific attack—a type of action legal under
the Anglo-American system of jurisprudence. Some have called
for revolutionary violence. Others have predicted an apocalyptic
race war from which blacks would emerge victorious. Though
seldom articulated for white ears, and only rarely appearing in
print, such thoughts have been quite common. Ralph Bunche,
in preparing a memorandum for Gunnar Myrdal’s An American
Dilemma in 1940, noted, “There are Negroes, too, who, fed up
with frustration of their life here, see no hope and express an
angry desire ‘to shoot their way out of it.’ I have on many
occasions heard Negroes exclaim: ‘Just give us machine guns
and we’ll blow the lid off the whole damn business.’ ” Thus, it
would appear that the idea of violence has been a continuing,
if unpublicized, undercurrent accompanying other forms of
protest.
While in no period has retaliatory violence been a central
thrust in black protest, advocacy of violence has often been
expressed more explicitly in periods of intense black protest
activity. David Walker’s and Henry Highland Garnet’s calls for
slave rebellions coincided with marked revivals of other kinds of
militant Negro protest. A thorough study of race violence dur¬
ing Reconstruction remains to be made, but it is clear that in
some cases, blacks employed physical resistance in that period.
As already noted, a major twentieth-century protest leader like
Du Bois did not foreclose the possibility of revolutionary vio¬
lence if and when conditions made it practicable. It is notable
that in the twentieth century overt discussion about the advis¬
ability of violent retaliation and actual incidents of this type of
violence were most prominent during the periods of heightened
militancy just after World War I and again during the 1960’s.
In both eras a major factor leading Negroes to advocate or to
306 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

adopt such a tactic was the discrepancy between the blacks’

expectations and their objective status. We have already alluded
to the rapid escalation of the expectations of the black masses
who shared Martin Luther King’s dream and identified vicari¬
ously with the successes of the civil-rights revolution, while their
own opportunities and economic situation did not improve. A
comparable situation existed during and after the First World
War. The agitation of the recently founded NAACP, which
more than doubled its membership between 1918 and 1919; the
propaganda of fighting a war to make the world safe for democ¬
racy; and especially the Great Migration to the Northern cities,
which were viewed by those who moved out of the South as a
promised land—all created new hopes for the fulfillment of age-
old dreams. But the blacks’ new hopes collided with increasing
white hostility, with overcrowded ghettos and unfriendly white
workers who feared black competition for their jobs, with the
disastrous drop in job openings following the return of peace,
and with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan.
One period of marked and rising Negro militance, however,
was not accompanied by a significant increase in manifestations
of black retaliatory violence. This was the one following the
Second World War. Indeed, the Second World War itself
witnessed far less black violence than did the First World War.
The reason for this would appear to be that the 1940’s and early
1950’s were years of gradually improving Negro status and a
period in which the expectations of the masses did not greatly
outrun the actual improvements being made. In fact, from 1941
until the mid-1950’s, the relative position of the black workers,
as compared to the white wage earners, was generally improv¬
ing, and as already noted, it was not until the recession of
1954-5 that the Black Muslims, with their rhetoric of race
hatred and retaliatory violence, began to expand rapidly.
It would appear that throughout the history of black Ameri¬
cans there has been a strong element of fantasy in discussion
and efforts concerning violent retaliation. Robert Williams
talked of Molotov cocktails and snarling up traffic as devices for
a largely poverty-stricken ethnic minority to engineer a revolu-
The Black Revolt of the 1960’s 307
tion. The Black Muslims spoke of retaliatory violence, but the
talk seemed to function as a psychological safety valve; by
preaching separation, they in effect accommodated to the
American social order and placed racial warfare off in the future
when Allah in his time would destroy the whites and usher in
an era of black domination. Similarly, in view of population
statistics and power distribution in American society, Du Bois
and others who have spoken of the inevitability of racial warfare
and Negro victory in such a struggle were engaging in wishful
prophesies. And blacks have been nothing if not realistic. The
patterns of black behavior in riots demonstrate this. In earlier
times, as already indicated, those who bought guns in anticipa¬
tion of the day when self-defense would be necessary usually did
not retaliate. And black attacks on whites occurred mainly in
the early stages of the riots before the full extent of the anger
and power and sadism of the white mobs became evident.
Blacks of the World War I era resisted white insults and
attacks only as long as they had hopes of being successful in the
resistance. It should be emphasized that one of the remarkable
things about the riots after 1964, in spite of their having been
marked by particular resentment at police brutality, is the fact
that Negro destruction was aimed at white-owned property, not
white lives, even after National Guardsmen and policemen killed
scores of blacks. And in those cases where retaliatory violence
was attempted, Negroes retreated in the face of massive white
armed force. Economically impoverished Negroes press as far as
they realistically can; and one reason for the explosions of the
1960’s was the awareness that whites were to some degree in
retreat, that white mobs in the North no longer organized to
attack, and that to an extent the frustrated Negroes in slums
like Watts, Detroit, Washington, or Newark could get away
with acts of destruction.
When it became evident that the destruction in black neigh¬
borhoods hurt blacks as well as whites, that mostly blacks rather
than whites were killed, and that violence did not bring appre¬
ciable improvement in the life of the urban slum dwellers, the
civil disorders of the late 1960’s ceased. Despite all the rhetoric
308 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

of engineering a social revolution through armed rebellion and

guerrilla warfare, of planned invasions of downtown business
districts and white suburbs, after 1968 the number and serious¬
ness of the riots fell off sharply. While both black spokesmen
and certain elements among white elites perceived the civil dis¬
orders as evidence for the necessity of taking serious steps to
solve the problems of the black poor, the advocacy and use of
violence as a deliberate program for attacking these problems
remained in the realm of fantasy.

10
The disillusionment with the Johnson Administration and
the white liberals, the fragmentation of the black protest move¬
ment, the enormous difficulties that stood in the way of over¬
coming the problems of the black masses, and the riots that
erupted spontaneously in 1964 and 1965 as a consequence of
the anger and frustration of the urban slum dweller all set the
stage for the dramatic appearance of the black-power slogan in
the summer of 1966.
Black power first articulated a mood rather than a program—
disillusionment and alienation from white America, race pride,
and self-respect or "black consciousness.” The precipitating oc¬
casion was the June 1966 freedom march of James Meredith,
whose enrollment at the University of Mississippi in 1962 had
triggered a riot that brought two deaths, hundreds of injuries,
federal intervention, and the presence of thousands of troops.
Four years later Meredith decided that a dramatic way to inter¬
est more Mississippi Negroes in voter registration was to
demonstrate that it would be possible for him to walk un¬
harmed through Mississippi to Jackson during primary election
week. Hardly had he begun when a would-be assassin’s bullet
wounded him. National civil-rights leaders rushed to Memphis,
and Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael, chairman of
SNCC, resumed the march amid harassments and taunts from
jeering whites. The two men soon revealed to the world a
leadership schism of major proportions. While King continued
to preach nonviolence and racial integration to Mississippi
The Black Revolt of the 1960's 309
blacks, Carmichael electrified the crowds with cries of “Black
Power”: “The only way we gonna stop them white men from
whuppin’ us is to take over. We been saying freedom for six
years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start saying now
is black power. . . . Ain’t nothin’ wrong with anything all
black ’cause I’m all black and I’m all good. Now don’t you be
afraid. And from now on when they ask you what you want,
you know what to tell them.” The crowd replied in unison,
“Black power! Black power! Black power!”
The slogan expressed tendencies that had been present for
some time and had been gaining strength in the black commu¬
nity. Having become a household phrase, the term generated
intense discussion of its real meaning, and a broad spectrum of
ideologies and programmatic proposals emerged. In politics,
black power meant independent action—Negro control of the
political power of the rural Southern Black Belt counties and of
the black ghettos and the use of this control to improve the
conditions of the farm laborers and the slum dwellers. It could
take the form of organizing a black political party or controlling
the political machinery inside the ghetto without the guidance
or support of white politicians. Where predominantly black
areas lacked Negroes in elective office, whether in the rural
Black Belt of the South or in the urban centers, black-power
advocates sought the election of blacks by voter-registration
campaigns and by working for the redrawing of electoral dis¬
tricts. The basic belief was that only a well-organized and cohe¬
sive bloc of black voters could provide for the needs of the black
masses. Even some black politicians allied to the major political
parties adopted the term “black power” to describe their inter¬
est in the Negro vote. In economic terms, black power meant
creating independent, self-sufficient black business enterprise,
not only by encouraging black entrepreneurs, but also bv form¬
ing Negro cooperatives in the ghettos and in the predominantly
black rural counties of the South. In the area of education,
black power called for local community control of the public
schools in the black ghettos. Throughout, the emphasis was on
self-help, racial unity, and, among the most militant, retaliatory
310 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

violence, the latter ranging from the legal right of self-defense

to attempts to justify looting and arson in ghetto riots to guer¬
rilla warfare and armed rebellion.
Phrases like "black power,” "black consciousness,” and
"black is beautiful” enjoyed an extensive currency in the Negro
community, even within the NAACP and among relatively con¬
servative politicians. Expressed in its most extreme form by
small, often local, fringe groups, among the national organiza¬
tions the black-power ideology became most closely associated
with SNCC and CORE.
Generally regarded as the most militant among the leading
black protest organizations, CORE and SNCC had different
interpretations of the black-power doctrine. Though neither
group was monolithic in its viewpoint, broadly speaking it can
be said that SNCC called for totally independent political
action outside the established political parties, as with the Black
Panther Party in Lowndes County, Alabama; questioned the
value of political alliance with other groups until Negroes them¬
selves built a substantial base of independent political power;
applauded the idea of guerrilla warfare; and regarded riots as
rebellions. CORE, while not disapproving of the SNCC strat¬
egy, advocated working within the Democratic Party to over¬
throw the established machine leadership and forming alliances
with other groups. It sought to justify riots as the natural explo¬
sion of an oppressed people against intolerable conditions, but
it sanctioned violence only in self-defense. While favorable
toward cooperatives, it was more inclined toward job-training
programs and developing a black entrepreneurial class based
upon the market within the black ghetto.
Paradoxically, the popularity of the term "black power” rep¬
resented both a sense of power produced by the earlier successes
of the movement and an escape into the rhetoric of power
caused by the powerlessness of the masses to achieve more rapid
progress toward full equality. The slogan emerged when the
black-protest movement was slowing down, when it was finding
increased resistance to changing goals, when it discovered that
nonviolent direct action was no more a panacea than legal
The Black Revolt of the 1960's 311
action, when CORE and SNCC were declining in activity,
membership, and financial support. Unable to make funda¬
mental changes in the life of the masses, the advocates of black
power substituted a separatist program for the platform of inte¬
gration. Ironically, although the goal of equality was still far off,
this occurred at the very time that Negroes were closer to the
goal of integration than ever before. Whereas sixty years earlier
the themes of racial unity and separatism had functioned pri-
marily as part of an ideologv of accommodation and the black
radicals had demanded immediate integration, now the latest
generation of black radicals rejected integration as a white
man’s strategy of tokenism aimed at holding Negroes in a sub¬
ordinate position. Racial separatism became part of a platform
of radicalism and militance, while the old radical program of
integration was denounced as conservative and sometimes as
downright racist.
With CORE and particularly SNCC greatly weakened, the
banner of black power and black nationalism passed to other
groups, mostly locally based. Black caucuses appeared in the
predominantly white professional and church organizations.
There was a general surge of community organization—of a spirit
of self-help and racial solidarity, of uniting ghetto residents
for concerted action, culturally, economically, and politically.
Better known—because far more dramatic and extreme—were
such Marxist-oriented revolutionary movements as the Black Pan-
thers, founded in Oakland, California, in 1966, and the Republic
of New Africa, founded in Detroit the following year. Both ad¬
vocated forms of territorial separatism. The Black Panthers, who
took their name from the abortive SNCC-sponsored Lowndes
County, Alabama, Black Panther Party of 1965-6, espoused
black control of the central cities. The Republic of New Africa
proposed a separate all-black sovereign state in the Deep South.
More significant was the rapid proliferation of Afro-American
societies and black student unions on the predominantly white
college and university campuses, with their demands for greater
black representation in the student body, in the faculty, and
in the curriculum on the one hand, and for separate dormi-
312 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

tories, recreational centers, courses, and even separate colleges

within the universities on the other. These groups, which often
espoused revolutionary violence, were frequently led by middle-
class student intellectuals. But they flourished largely because
the black students from the ghettos, who were entering the
major eolleges and universities under liberalized and compensa¬
tory admissions policies, faced serious problems in adjusting to
the academic and social norms of a middle-class or upper-
middle-class environment, for which neither their background
nor their schooling had prepared them. Most pervasive was the
widespread revival of cultural nationalism, which enjoyed an
enormous popularity among all social classes. There was more
interest in black history than ever before; countless local groups
devoted to black art, literature, and drama sprang up; and a
national magazine like Ebony, heretofore devoted largely to
chronicling the achievements and social life of the black bour¬
geoisie, became a leading popularizer of "black consciousness/'
And at the same time an unprecedented renaissance in art, litera¬
ture, and the theater occurred.
Black nationalism, black separatism, and black revolutionary
rhetoric seized the headlines at the end of the 1960's. Yet,
though nationalist sentiment was growing, the thrust for inte¬
gration was far from dead. Neither SCLC nor the NAACP
adopted a nationalist program or ideology. Martin Luther
King's last months before his assassination in 1968 were spent
in developing a major project intended to show the continuing
viability of the nonviolent direct-action strategv—the Poor
People's Campaign that brought thousands to Washington dur¬
ing the summer of 1968 to demonstrate for greater justice to the
economically deprived—and, in what was probably his last pub¬
lished article, Dr. King still articulated the dream of "black and
white together." The NAACP counterattacked against the sepa¬
ratists, especially those in universities, denouncing them as
segregationists who undermined the very things the black-
protest movement had sought for so many years to accomplish.
Important as the enthusiasm for various forms of black na¬
tionalism became after 1966, however much people in all sectors
The Black Revolt of the 1960's 313
of the black community resonated to Stokely Carmichael’s call
for black pride, it must nevertheless be stressed that, as the
public-opinion polls demonstrated, full participation in Ameri¬
can society on an integrated basis remained the goal of the great
majority of black Americans.
 VIII
The Legacy of the Black Revolt

What have been the fruits of the black revolt of

the 1960's? What is the status of blacks today in American
society as a result of the surge of Negro protest? And what has
happened to this black activism in the 1970's?
Afro-Americans have not yet achieved equality, and the
dream of which Martin Luther King spoke so eloquently is far
from realized. As Vernon Jordan, National Urban League ex¬
ecutive director, has said, "Far-reaching changes have come to
this nation ... as a direct result of the civil rights movement”
of the 1960's. But, as he went on to emphasize, much remained
to be done: "From securing the tools of change in the form of
laws, court orders and executive orders, we have moved to try¬
ing to use those tools to bring real changes in the daily lives of
millions of citizens.” Most notably, the Voting Rights Act of

314
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 315
1965 and the equal-economic-opportunity section of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 have proved to be useful levers for promot¬
ing improvements in the status of blacks.
The momentum behind these social changes has been fueled
bv two phenomena, themselves the legacy of the black revolt of
the 1960’s. In the first place, that revolt legitimized for many
whites the black man’s insistence on his constitutional rights
and his quest for equalitv in American society. This legitimiza¬
tion has been especially evident among key sectors of white
elites in business, politics, the courts, the mass media, and the
academic community. Second, black activism, though trans¬
formed, has continued to be a vital force. Direct action, it is
true, has practically disappeared, and the militant nationalist
and often revolutionarv mood that became so prominent at the
end of the 1960’s has also waned. The scene of action has
shifted back to the courts and, more importantly, to the politi¬
cal arena. This political activism has achieved results partly be¬
cause of the greater legitimacy that black demands now have
among many white Americans and partly because of the grow¬
ing power of the highly cohesive black vote, newly enfranchised
in the South and concentrated primarily in the urban ghettos
around the countrv. J

i
Black Americans continued to move out of the South and
into the cities. During the 1960’s the high level of migration to
the North and West had been sustained as another one and a
half million left the South. Yet, because of the high growth rate
among the black population, slightly over half the American
Negroes were still residing in the South in 1970. Moreover,
Census Bureau samplings suggest that during the early 1970’s
the northward movement was slowing down and that the new
climate of race relations, produced by the Southern activism of
the 1960’s combined with the improving economic opportu¬
nities associated with growing industrialization, had even stimu¬
lated a small reverse flow of blacks going back South.
More striking than ever has been the continuing concentra-
316 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

tion of blacks in the nation’s largest cities. During the 1960's,

New York’s black population increased by 580,000, Chicago’s
by 290,000, Detroit’s by 178,000, Washington’s by 126,000,
Houston’s by 102,000, and Atlanta’s by 69,000. By 1970 less
than half the whites but about two thirds of the blacks lived in
the sixty-seven largest metropolitan areas. And within these
metropolitan areas the black population has been concentrated
in the central cities, while whites have been fleeing to the sub¬
urbs. Thus these central cities during the 1960’s lost 2.5 million
whites and gained 3.4 million blacks. By 1970, only 42 percent
of the whites but fully 84 percent of the blacks in these major
metropolitan areas lived in the central cities. As a result there
was a striking tendency for a number of major cities to become
predominantly black in population. By 1970, cities with black
majorities or approaching black majorities included Washing¬
ton, Newark, Baltimore, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Detroit.
The dramatic changes that had occurred can be seen, for ex¬
ample, in Baltimore, whose population was 24 percent black in
1950 and 46 percent black in 1970; in Detroit, whose popula¬
tion shifted from 16 percent black to 44 percent black, and in
Newark, where Negroes rose from 17 percent to 54 percent of
the city’s residents in the same twenty-year period; and in
Atlanta, whose population in the single decade of the 1960's
shifted from 38 percent to 51 percent black. There was, it is
true, an increase in the black population of suburban areas,
most notably around Los Angeles, Washington, and New York.
Yet because of the enormous dimensions of the white flight
from the deterioriating central cities and the economic and so¬
cial impediments on black movement to the suburbs, Negroes
still constituted only a tiny proportion of this suburban popula¬
tion-rising very slightly from 4.2 percent to 4.5 percent be¬
tween 1960 and 1970.
While preliminary analyses of 1970 census data suggest that
there was a slight increase in the proportion of people living in
mixed neighborhoods, in absolute numbers more and more
blacks were living in overwhelmingly black areas of the central
cities, and stabilized mixed neighborhoods remained rare. Nor
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 317
did the movement to the suburbs produce much residential
integration. Typically this growth consisted of an extension of
the inner-city ghetto, with upper- and middle-class blacks—in a
pattern that paralleled the earlier history of urban ghetto expan¬
sion—forming the vanguard of the outward movement. In
Cleveland, as the ghetto continued its movement eastward,
working-class blacks spilled over the city line into the formerly
white working-class town of East Cleveland, where during the
1960’s the population changed from 2 percent black to nearly
60 percent black. Simultaneously, well-to-do Cleveland Negroes
moved farther out to wealthy suburbs like Shaker Heights.
This phenomenon of continued residential segregation per¬
sisted despite efforts of private groups to foster mixed neighbor¬
hoods and despite some changes in the policies of the federal
government. By act of Congress in 1968, racial discrimination is
now forbidden in the sale of most of the nation’s housing.
Although the federal courts have handed down some rulings
enforcing this act, and although there has been some effort on
the part of federal agencies to develop low-income scatter-site
housing that would move poorer blacks into white suburbs, the
substantial white opposition to more than a token movement of
blacks into white neighborhoods, the tactics of realtors, the
Nixon Administration’s moratorium on publicly assisted hous¬
ing, and the federal bureaucracy’s reluctance to cut off financial
grants to discriminatory localities have all discouraged the de¬
velopment of mixed neighborhoods. While the hostility is now
less severe than in previous decades, most white Americans
nonetheless accord less legitimacy to fair housing than to voting
rights or equal-employment opportunity. At the same time most
blacks, while seeking better housing and insisting on the right
to buy any home they can afford, are not particularly interested
in promoting integrated housing per se. Not only fears of un¬
friendliness in white neighborhoods, but the attraction of the
black churches and other Negro community institutions, ties
with old friends and social clubs, the black clientele of most
Negro professionals and businessmen, and the political base
that black politicians built in the ghettos, have also served to
318 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO
encourage the maintenance of residential separation. The result
of all these factors is that, despite a growing sprinkling of pros¬
perous blacks in affluent white suburbs, the phenomenon of the
black ghetto is likely to be a durable feature of American so¬
ciety.

2”

This persistent pattern of residential segregation has served to

inhibit the desegregation of the public schools. Moreover,
where urban education facilities have been integrated, the trend
toward residential segregation and toward black majorities in
the central cities has been accentuated as whites moved to the
suburbs to escape the newly mixed schools. As a result, the
recent history of the school desegregation issue has been charac¬
terized by certain ironies. In 1954, the Supreme Court handed
the NAACP a stunning victory. Brown v. Board of Education
declared that any enforced, educational separation was uncon¬
stitutional and explicitly overturned the separate-but-equal doc¬
trine embodied in Plessy v. Ferguson. Ten years later, the wave
of direct action that began at Montgomery in 1955 and culmi¬
nated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had virtually eliminated
Jim Crow from transportation, public accommodations, and
publicly owned recreational facilities. But in that momentous
decade efforts to desegregate Southern schools had only token
success. On the other hand, significant progress was made in the
following decade. Then, when the South reached the point
where most of its children were in mixed schools, Northern
city schools were found to have remained as segregated as they
were before. Changes have come about chiefly through pressure
from the federal courts. As these have turned to ordering cross¬
city busing and, most recently, have begun to order the desegre¬
gation of Northern city school systems, the distinction previ¬
ously made between de jure and de facto segregation has tended
to disappear.
In the years following the Brown decision, Southern boards
of education, acting with deliberateness rather than speed, used
whatever delaying tactics they could. They clearly were moving
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 319
at a snail’s pace. In 1964, only 1.2 percent of all the black pupils
in the eleven Southern states attended mixed schools: in Ala¬
bama, only twenty-one children; in South Carolina, only ten;
and in Mississippi, absolutely no black pupils were in schools
with whites. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 strength¬
ened the hand of the federal government by giving HEW
power to withhold funds from school districts that flouted the
Brown decision, that department still sought to secure “volun¬
tary compliance” and encouraged “freedom of choice” plans
under which black students upon request were allowed to trans¬
fer into white schools. Hostility', even violence, directed toward
these youngsters, and economic reprisals against their parents,
inhibited use of these plans. As late as 1968, only about one
fifth of the black pupils were in predominantly white schools,
the overwhelming majority still being in all-black schools.
In that year, impatient with the evident effort of Southern
boards of education to maintain dual school systems, the
Supreme Court ruled that if “freedom of choice” plans did not
achieve desegregation, other devices must be employed. HEW,
finally threatening to withdraw federal funds from recalcitrant
schools, set the school year 1969-70 as the deadline for com¬
plete desegregation. Although under the Nixon Administration
HEW retreated from this vigorous position, in a small percent¬
age of districts funds were actually withheld, the pressure of the
courts was sustained, and as a result desegregation actually pro¬
ceeded more rapidly. Meanwhile the federal judiciary was also
taking up the controversial issue of using busing to destroy dual
school systems. In 1971 the Supreme Court unanimously up¬
held a lower-court decision requiring the Charlotte-Mecklen-
burg County, North Carolina, school district to achieve racial
balance throughout the system by busing both black and white
children. By then, in the eleven Southern states, nearly one half
of the black pupils were attending majority-white schools. Only
9 percent still went to all-black ones.
In the North, meanwhile, a few medium-sized cities, like
Berkeley, Evanston, and Harrisburg, had completely desegre¬
gated their schools; but overall only about one quarter of the
320 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

black pupils were in majority-white schools and more than half

were attending schools that were over 80 percent black. This de
facto segregation, rooted primarily in residential segregation,
had been exacerbated by deliberate practices of school officials
in such matters as selecting sites for new schools, assigning
teachers, setting student transfer policies, and gerrymandering
attendance zones. Because during the 1960’s the federal courts
refused to rule de facto segregation in Northern schools uncon¬
stitutional under the Brown decision, NAACP attorneys de¬
cided to argue that since this racial segregation resulted partly
from official policy it was accordingly de jure in character and
thus unconstitutional. In 1973 the Supreme Court accepted this
argument in a Denver case, thus compelling the board of educa¬
tion to establish racially balanced schools through the city. Such
court-decreed desegregation and busing were not popular with
most whites, and in certain cities, like Pontiac, Michigan, and
Boston, determined opposition and even mob violence erupted.
The continuing white exodus into the suburbs intensified the
prevalence of de facto school segregation throughout the coun¬
try and actually led to the resegregation of schools in a number
of border and Southern cities. This produced a situation where,
in places like Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans,
Atlanta, Richmond, and Newark, more than two thirds of the
public-school population became black. In such cases, it became
evident that meaningful desegregation could be achieved only
by combining the urban school districts with those in the sub¬
urbs and busing pupils across municipal boundaries. Accord¬
ingly, civil-rights attorneys urged the courts to promote such
consolidation. In 1971, in litigation involving Richmond and
Detroit, federal district courts ruled that the Brown decision
required combining city and suburban districts with appropriate
busing to secure desegregation. The Supreme Court did not
sustain these district-court decisions, since the lawyers for the
blacks had not demonstrated that deliberate action on the part
of the suburbs was responsible for the de facto segregation. Yet
the high tribunal clearly left the door open for further litigation
on the matter.
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 321
Black opinion has not been unified on the value of school
desegregation. For one thing, the desegregation of Southern
schools had its negative aspects. Large numbers of Southern
black principals were demoted, as whites were selected to run
the newly mixed schools and thousands of black teachers were
dismissed, allegedly on the grounds of inadequate training at
marginal Jim Crow colleges (something white school authorities
had not cared about when these teachers were instructing only
black children). Black schoolchildren who transferred to white
schools frequently found themselves in an unfriendly milieu,
excluded from many activities and penalized for deficiencies in
the training they had received in inferior Jim Crow schools. As
schools were desegregated, blacks lost positions on student
councils and in other school offices.
Some Southern blacks felt that desegregation, or at least the
way it was carried out, degraded them and robbed them of their
identity. Although many black parents continued to believe
that desegregation meant more responsive school boards and
better instruction, some came to sharply question its value,
especially if it meant closing neighborhood schools and busing
their children to outlying white areas. Ironically, in 1974, when
school officials in Topeka, Kansas—the city where the Brown
case originated—were under court order to further improve
racial balance by busing, Linda Brown Smith, the plaintiff of
twenty years before and now the mother of two grade-school
children, said, “I would accept busing only if they forced me to.
There has to be a better solution.”
Another source of black opposition to school desegregation
came from people who were ideologically committed to sepa¬
ratism. During the late 19607s the widespread demand that
blacks be accorded autonomy in running their own local com¬
munities spawned proposals for decentralization of large urban
school systems. The advocates of such “community control”
J J

included disillusioned activists who had organized the boycotts

for integrated schools in 1963-4. CORE even proposed creating
a dual system of independent black and white school districts
within major cities as a way of getting around the Brown deci-
322 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

sion. Such proposals did not get very far; even in the highly
publicized case of New York City, the controversial experiment
in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn with its
numerous problems led not to neighborhood control but to a
compromise enacted by the state legislature providing for only a
limited degree of decentralization. Yet this separatist sentiment
among blacks was fairly widespread. At the 1972 Black Political
Convention in Gary, Indiana, nationalist forces pushed through
a resolution condemning busing for school integration.
Thus, in the more than twenty years since Brown, the chal¬
lenge of securing desegregation of schools has moved from the
South to the North. At the same time, the struggle has shifted
from attacking segregation imposed by law to assaulting separa¬
tion arising from residential patterns and informal community
pressures on school authorities. In short, whereas in 1954 school
authorities were directed to cease overt acts of segregation, two
decades later they were being directed to take affirmative action
to counteract all the forces in American society that fostered
the creation of separate schools. The country is now at a cross¬
roads on this issue. While organized black opposition to school
desegregation has waned, many whites are overtly resistant, and
it is scarcely certain that the Supreme Court will order far-
reaching metropolitan desegregation requiring the cross busing
of blacks into white suburbs and of whites to the inner-city
schools. Accordingly, how much further desegregation of the
schools is likely to go is not clear.
Change has come not only to the elementary and secondary
schools but to the colleges and universities as well. The propor¬
tion of blacks in the country's college-student population in¬
creased from around 4 percent in the early 1960's to about 8
percent in the early 1970’s. Well over half these black students
are now in predominantly white institutions. Propelled by the
black-student revolts of the late 1960's and the increasing sensi¬
tivity in academic circles to the aspirations of black Americans,
predominantly white colleges and universities enrolled increas¬
ing numbers of blacks, often with special financial aid. Simi¬
larly, the professional schools have significantly increased their
 The Legacy of the Black Revolt 323
admissions of black students. For example, the number of blacks
enrolled in law schools has risen from about seven hundred
in the mid-1960’s to five thousand by 1974. In implementing
their policy of affirmative action, many institutions, especially
professional schools, made racial background a consideration
for admission, treating applications of blacks separately from
whites. Many white students came to resent this policy and
charged “reverse discrimination.’’ In 1974 the Supreme Court
heard a case involving a white man who was denied entrance to
the University of Washington law school while minority stu¬
dents with lower grades and test scores were accepted. On
a technicality the Court refused to make a ruling and the
issue remains to be resolved. In any event, the increasing
number of black college and professional-school graduates has
been an important factor in black economic advancement, since
they have been the ones best situated to take advantage of
opportunities opening in government and industry.

3
The momentum generated by the employment campaigns of
the 1960’s, the changing climate of American race relations, and
the affirmative action policies of the federal bureaucracy have
produced improvements in the economic status of black Ameri¬
cans. Nonetheless, Negroes are still overrepresented in the low-
income group, among the unemployed, and in the unskilled
sectors of the population; black entrepreneurs are very few in
number; and economic equality remains a distant goal. The
economic progress that has been achieved was facilitated by the
prosperity that characterized most of the period after 1960. Al¬
though black unemployment rose substantially in the steep re¬
cession of the mid-1970’s, it is likely that permanent improve¬
ments have resulted.
There were clear-cut gains during the decade of 1963-73,
although the unemployment rate among blacks remained
double that for whites, and Negroes were still disproportion¬
ately concentrated in lower-skilled, lower-paying jobs. The pro¬
portion of black males who were employed in white-collar jobs
324 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

rose from 15 to 23 percent, and the proportion employed as

craftworkers rose from 11 to 15 percent. For example, during
the 1960's, the number of nonwhite elementary- and high-school
teachers increased from 143,000 to 223,000; social workers rose
from 16,000 to 41,000; plumbers and pipe fitters from 12,600 to
18,000; machinists from 15,000 to 23,000; welders from 24,700
to 44,200. Between 1958 and 1973 the number of blacks classi¬
fied as managers and administrators, professional and technical
workers, and craftsmen—the three highest-paying among the
job categories listed in the census—nearly doubled. And in the
same fifteen-year period the number of blacks in the three
lowest-paying occupations—service workers, farm workers, and
nonfarm laborers—fell bv one third.
j

Viewed from another perspective, blacks were still far be¬

hind. Forming about 10 percent of the labor force in 1973, they
made up 22 percent of those in domestic service and the per¬
sonal-service fields and 14 percent of those in health services
(chiefly as low-skilled hospital workers). At the same time
blacks represented only about 3 percent of the managers and
administrators and about 6 percent of the professional and
technical workers and the craftsmen. Moreover, within these
categories, blacks were seriously underrepresented in the elite
occupations. Thus, in the professional and technical category, a
majority of the Negroes were either elementary and secondary
teachers, nurses, medical technicians, or engaged in social, per¬
sonnel, or labor-relations work. Blacks constituted less than 3
percent of the accountants, architects, physicians, and news¬
paper editors and less than 2 percent of the lawyers, authors,
and engineers. In the managerial ranks of major corporate
enterprises blacks were likely to find themselves in personnel
and public-relations jobs rather than in positions of real author¬
ity. Moreover, there are few blacks on the boards of major
corporations. Although in recent years companies like General
Motors, Standard Oil, and IBM have appointed an occasional
black to their boards, in 1973, only seventy-two of the fourteen
thousand directors in the major corporations were black.
In the public sector, the situation was similar. Between 1960
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 325
and 1970 the number of blacks employed by local, state, and
federal government agencies nearly doubled to a total of 1.6
million. In the federal government, Negroes, not surprisingly,
were overrepresented in agencies responsible for delivering wel¬
fare and other services to the black community. Moreover, in
1972, although 15 percent of all employees in the federal bu¬
reaucracy were blacks, Negroes held only 3 percent of the
higher-status, higher-paying positions at the GS-12 level and
above. But at the bottom of the scale, grades GS-5 and below,
blacks represented 19 percent of federal workers.
A comparable situation existed in another sector of the fed¬
eral government, the armed services, which many blacks re¬
garded as a place that offered economic opportunity. Here the
percentage of Negroes steadily increased for about fifteen years,
though disproportionately at the lower ranks. Blacks still com¬
plain of continued inequalities in the armed services, and there
was considerable overt racial friction between black and white
enlisted men in the late 1960’s and early 1970's. Nevertheless, in
the view of many lower-income black males, the services, par¬
ticularly the army and the marines, provided a better living than
did civilian life.
In all the branches combined, blacks rose from about 9 per¬
cent in 1960 to 11 percent in 1970 and to 16 percent in 1974.
During the 1960’s this resulted partly from the fact that a dis¬
proportionate number of blacks were drafted, since more whites
were able to qualify for deferments. Yet the advantages of a
career in the armed services were such that the black reenlist¬
ment rate was at least twice as high as that of whites. This black
reenlistment rate remained high in the 1970’s, and beginning in
1973, with the scrapping of the draft, the proportion of blacks
among those volunteering rose sharply. This was most vividly
evident in the marines, where blacks constituted 18 percent of
the enlisted men bv the end of 1974, and in the armv, where
the proportion of enlisted men who were black had jumped
from 14 percent in 1970 to about 22 percent four years later.
Thus the armed forces were becoming increasingly black, espe¬
cially in the combat units. By 1975, in fact, a new controversy
326 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

had arisen over what some called “overrepresentation” of blacks

in the military services.
In contrast, the ranks of the commissioned officers, especially
at the higher levels, have remained overwhelmingly white. In
1962 the proportion of commissioned officers who were black in
all the services combined was only 1.7 percent. These were
almost entirely at the lower levels. At the time there was only
one black general in all the services, Lieutenant General Benja¬
min O. Davis, Jr., of the air force; there were only twelve black
colonels in the entire army and air force; and there was not one
of equivalent rank in the marines or the navy. The proportion
rose gradually over the next decade, so that by early 1974, blacks
constituted 2.5 percent of the commissioned officers. Yet, as
late as 1970, only one additional black general had been ap¬
pointed. Promotion of blacks to the top ranks came only in the
1970’s. The first admiral was appointed in 1971 and by 1975
there were twelve army generals, two air force generals, and two
admirals. The marines appointed their first black colonel in
1974. These breakthroughs symbolized both the progress blacks
had achieved and the distance yet to be covered before the
legacy of past discrimination would be overcome.
Also indicative of both the gains blacks made and of the
limited nature of those gains has been the growth in black
business enterprise. The overwhelming majority of these busi¬
nesses (totaling 163,000 in 1969 and 195,000 in 1972) are still
tiny “Mom and Pop” operations—retail and service establish¬
ments such as grocery stores, barbershops, beauty parlors, dry
cleaners, and owner-operated trucking and taxi outfits. The
small number of real success stories included a few older firms
like the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and
the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, the H. G. Park Sausage
Company of Baltimore, Johnson Publications (Ebony and
other magazines), and the cosmetic manufacturer, Johnson
Products. But most were newer enterprises. Of the one hundred
largest black-owned firms in 1973, seventy had been founded in
the preceding decade. The largest black enterprise in the coun¬
try—Motown Records—had started on a shoestring in Detroit
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 327
just fourteen years earlier. The number of black-owned banks
nearly tripled from thirteen in 1963 to thirty-seven ten years
later. One company, Daniels and Bell, became the first black-
owned firm to have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
To some extent, black business enterprise has benefited from
the federal government’s encouragement. Nixon in his 1968
Presidential campaign called for the development of “black
capitalism” to attack the economic problems of the black com¬
munity. As President he established an Office of Minority Busi¬
ness Enterprise to stimulate blacks and other minorities to start
their own businesses; his Administration also increased govern¬
ment purchases from black-owned firms; working with the gov¬
ernment, a Manhattan group called Capital Formation
persuaded major corporations to deposit over $200 million in
nonwhite banks; and the Small Business Administration ex¬
panded its loans to Negro businesses. Among the most cele¬
brated results of these efforts was the Watts Industrial Park in
Los Angeles, which owed its existence to government loans,
housed twenty-two black-owned firms, and provided employ¬
ment for 1,200 workers. Actually, the impact of these govern¬
ment programs has been slight. Most of the hundred largest
black businesses, half of which were established after Nixon’s
election, received no government aid, but developed through
the determination and shrewdness of their owners.
Compared with all American businesses, the advance in black
enterprise does not appear very consequential. The proportion
of American businesses that are black-owned has not changed
significantly, still remaining around 2 percent and taking in
about one half of one percent of all gross receipts. Of the
hundred top black corporations in 1973, only twenty-six had
annual sales of over $5 million, and the income of all hundred
firms combined would have ranked 284 on Fortune's list of the
five hundred largest American businesses. The Small Business
Administration’s loans to whites increased even faster than
those made to blacks; moreover, the average loan to blacks was
less than half the size of the average loan made to whites. In
addition, most black businesses continued to operate under
328 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

many of the disadvantages historically confronting Negro entre¬

preneurs. Small businesses—in which blacks are concentrated-
have always had a high rate of failure. For black enterprises,
typically located in ghetto neighborhoods where theft and fire
insurance are costly and where the market is constricted by the
poverty of the people, the failure rate is even higher. For ex¬
ample, ,80 percent of the black-owned businesses founded in
Chicago during the prosperity of 1972 had failed within a year.
Such problems have been intensified by the severe recession of
1974-5. Though there was significant progress in the expanding
economy of the early 1970’s, success stories like Park Sausage,
Johnson Publications, and Motown are still notable exceptions.
Thus the future of black capitalism remains marginal.
Whatever the future of black capitalism, employment oppor¬
tunities for the masses of Afro-Americans lie with government
and with white-owned industry. And in pressing for occupa¬
tional advances in the private economic sector, Negroes must
deal not only with the policies of employers but with those of
organized labor as well. Basing their strategy for job equality in
American industry on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, blacks
utilized the leverage of the courts and the federal bureaucracy
and agitated within the trade-union movement. Therefore, the
changing role of blacks in private industry is directly related to
the practices of both unions and employers, the tactics of black
trade unionists and black protest organizations, and the role of
the federal government.
Trade unions varied widely—from the old-line AFL craft
unions, which had long sought to exclude blacks, to a handful
of militantly egalitarian unions, which have consciously tried to
organize occupations in which unskilled black workers pre¬
dominate.
Not surprisingly, the least amount of progress had been made
in the skilled building trades, which have remained overwhelm¬
ingly white in the face of a degree of pressure from federal
government agencies, litigation mounted by the NAACP, and
the friendly persuasion of both the AFL^CIO Civil Rights De¬
partment and the A. Philip Randolph Institute headed by
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 329
Bayard Rustin. It is true that growing numbers of blacks are
entering these unions through apprenticeship-training pro¬
grams. But all this effort notwithstanding, and despite the opti¬
mistic estimates offered by spokesmen for organized labor, the
actual proportion of blacks in the skilled building-trades unions
remains very small.
During the 1930’s the emergence of industrial unionism had
seemed, to many black intellectuals and black workers alike, to
inaugurate a new era in the relations between blacks and orga¬
nized labor. Black workers who joined the CIO unions did
indeed benefit substantially. Not only were their wages and
working conditions improved along with those of all union
members, but racial differentials in wages paid for identical
work, prevalent in the South, were wiped out, and black union
officers, previously a rarity, became fairly common. Even in the
South, where some unions began to hold integrated meetings in
defiance of local custom, by the early 1940 s blacks were appear¬
ing on state executive boards. Mixed Southern locals in unions
like the United Steelworkers of America adopted a formula
developed earlier by the United Mine Workers under which
whites served as president, secretary, and treasurer, and blacks
occupied the office of vice-president and other minor positions.
On the other hand, leadership in these CIO unions, faced with
the prejudices and the vested interests of white workers, was
either unable or unwilling to completely eliminate inequities,
nor did it in most cases seek to undo discriminatory patterns
stemming from the policies of white employers.
By the late 1950’s and 1960’s there were two major issues to
which blacks were increasingly objecting: their virtual absence
from the top offices in the unions, and the promotion policies
that excluded them from the most highly paid skilled jobs in
the plants. The question of black representation stemmed from
the fact that Negroes were everywhere a minority of a union’s
total membership, with whites generally unwilling to elect
blacks to high office. The concentration of blacks in the lower-
paving, lower-skilled, and hottest, heaviest, and dirtiest jobs re¬
flected both the hiring policies of employers and often also
330 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

union-backed seniority systems. Typically such seniority systems

provided for “separate lines of progression” under which pro¬
motions were made on the basis of seniority within a depart¬
ment rather than years of service in a plant. Thus if someone
transferred to a different department, that person would lose
any seniority already accumulated. With blacks relegated to the
lowest-paying departments, the maximum wages they could
achieve, even with promotions, were limited. And when, in the
1960's, opportunities for blacks in the lucrative skilled depart¬
ments expanded, they were discouraged from transferring be¬
cause they would forfeit seniority, a fact that effectively
inhibited the breakdown of the historic legacy of job discrimi¬
nation. In the South, job separation was so complete that cer¬
tain unions, like the tobacco workers, established separate locals
for whites and blacks, and in many cases labor leaders, fearful of
antagonizing white workers, accepted segregated lunchrooms
and lavatories. The merger in 1955 of the CIO and the AFL,
dominated as the latter was by the exclusionary craft unions,
further weakened the racially egalitarian tendencies in the
CIO—a development that came at a time when the militance
of black workers was on the rise.
The shifting status of blacks in major industry and the com¬
plex relations with the former CIO industrial unions are illus¬
trated by the developments in steel and auto manufacturing,
two of the largest industries. In steel, where blacks in the mid-
1960’s formed about one sixth of the work force, they held few
paid staff positions in the national union, the United Steel¬
workers, and none at all on its executive board. At the same
time, blacks in the plants were disproportionately among the
unskilled laborers—comprising 28 percent of all unskilled steel¬
workers but only 6 percent of the skilled workers. Thus, at the
huge Baltimore Sparrows Point Plant of Bethlehem Steel, most
of the blacks were employed in all-black or overwhelmingly
black departments. Construction, refuse disposal, and mainte¬
nance workers ranged between 94 percent and 100 percent
black; employees in the unpleasant blast-furnace department
were 81 percent black. But skilled job categories, such as lubri-
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 331
cation, pattern shop, machine shop, and the tin and strip mills,
were between 99 percent and 100 percent white. Conditions at
this plant were so discriminatory that as late as 1967 the U.S.
government ordered the integration of locker rooms and rest¬
rooms there.
In 1964 a committee of dissatisfied black unionists demanded
more employment of blacks at all levels in the steel union’s
district and national offices, the election of a black to the execu¬
tive board, and, subsequently, a Negro vice-president. By sup¬
porting I. W. Abel in his successful bid for the union presi¬
dency in 1965, they secured the appointment of a Negro to
head the union’s civil-rights department and the addition of
several others to important staff positions. But despite their
pressure, there is as yet no Negro on the executive board and no
black vice-president. Seeking to satisfy Negro demands without
alienating much of the white membership, President Abel at¬
tempted to secure black representation at the top policy levels
by backing Leander Sims in his bid to become director of the
Baltimore district when the post became vacant. Unfortunately,
black steelworkers failed to turn out in large numbers and Sims
lost the election, though he was subsequently appointed assis¬
tant director. Black pressures had thus brought some gains
within the union during the 1960's; but it was the leverage
afforded by the federal government rather than the union that
resolved the seniority problem. In 1971 the NAACP secured in
the federal courts modification of the separate lines of progres¬
sion at Bethlehem Steel’s Lackawanna, New York, plant; three
years later, in a sweeping agreement arranged by federal agen¬
cies, the industry and the union acceded to the dismantling of
the discriminatory provision of the seniority system. Although
black protest leaders in and out of the union have asserted that
the agreement did not go far enough toward redressing ineq¬
uities and that its provisions have not been fully implemented,
it nevertheless marked an important precedent.
In the automobile industry, the situation, in many wavs simi-
lar to the steel industry,7 was less severe. The black workers
J

tended to exhibit more militancy and were able to secure more

332 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

concessions than their counterparts in steel. Moreover, the

changes that came about were not only more substantial but
were secured without government intervention. As in steel,
black workers were found in the least desirable jobs. In the late
1950’s, 40 percent of the foundry workers were blacks, but less
than 3 percent of the tooband-die division was black. Blacks
were welLrepresented as officers in a number of auto locals, but
there was none on the United Auto Workers national executive
board. The leadership was explicitly committed to racial egali¬
tarianism. No union leader was more identified with the civil-
rights movement than was UAW president Walter Reuther—
board member of the NAACP, supporter of CORE, and friend
of Martin Luther King and the SCLC. Yet he was also faced
with the prejudices of many white workers, not all of whom
were from the South. The UAW had stood firm in the face of
wildcat strikes against the employment or upgrading of blacks,
but it had failed to combat the discriminatory practices of both
employers and the skilled workers who resisted the entry of
blacks into the trades. Given the periodic threats from skilled
workers to secede from the union, Reuther feared to discipline
them on this issue.
As far back as 1957, black officials in the UAW had formed
the Trade Union Leadership Conference (TULC) to press for
greater union recognition of the needs of the black workers.
Five years later their pressure resulted in a black vice-president
—the first Negro to serve on the UAW executive board. But
further progress was slow. As late as 1968, at a time when blacks
formed about one fourth the union’s membership, protesting
black auto workers complained that out of one thousand UAW
international representatives only seventy-five were black, and
only seven of the hundred key staff jobs in the union were held
by Negroes. Meanwhile, during the middle 1960’s, several fac¬
tors combined to produce heightened demands from black
trade unionists: a sharp increase in the number of blacks em¬
ployed in Detroit’s automobile factories (actuallv giving the
labor force in certain plants a black majority); the upsurge in
black militance that came to a climax with the call for black
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 333
power and the Detroit riot of 1967; and the fact that Detroit
was a leading center of black radicalism and nationalism. At the
1968 UAW convention, a group of militant black unionists
asked for a “fair share” of the top leadership positions in the
union, including a second black vice-president, directorships of
the UAW’s Ford and Chrysler departments, and two regional
directorships.
In the course of the following months two distinct groups
emerged as spokesmen for blacks—the Ad Hoc Committee of
Concerned Negro Auto Workers, a moderate group represent¬
ing the middle-aged workers headed by TULC’s president
Robert Battle, and the Marxist-nationalist League of Revolu¬
tionary' Black Workers, composed of young radical workers.
The latter group, using revolutionary’ rhetoric, engaged in yvild-
cat yy’ork stoppages in the plants to dramatize their demands for
upgrading blacks and for an international union staff that
yvould be half black, headed by a black union president yvho
would replace Walter Reuther. The pressures from both these
groups, combined with the growing proportion of blacks in the
Detroit auto factories, produced some significant changes. A
second black yvas soon added to the international executive
board, and groyving numbers of blacks joined the ranks of local
union officeholders, yvith a substantial increase, for example, in
the number of shop stewards. By 1972, there were eleven black
presidents of locals in the Detroit area. At the same time, the
auto companies promoted increasing numbers of blacks to fore¬
men, a job category from which blacks had been virtually ab¬
sent. By then the League of Revolutionary’ Black Workers was
virtually dead, the victim of several phenomena: intense inter¬
nal factionalism; its shrill attack on the UAW’s leadership,
which had made the union look like a greater enemy than the
employers; and, not least, the gains that the pressures generated
by both the league and the ad hoc committee had secured.
Among the older unions, the United Packinghouse Workers
had long been known for its commitment to egalitarian prac¬
tices. Recently’, the organizing drives of the American Federa¬
tion of State, County and Municipal Employees as well as the
334 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Drug and Hospital Employees Local 1199 of the Retail,

Wholesale, and Department Store Clerks Union exhibited a
concern reminiscent of the early days of the CIO for the un¬
skilled, poorly paid, and unorganized mass of black workers.
During the late 1960’s, in fact, these two unions became closely
tied to the black protest movement, as was vividly demon¬
strated in a garbage-workers strike in Memphis in 1968 and a
hospital-workers strike in Charleston the following year. The
AFSCME, in attempting to organize the overwhelmingly black
Memphis garbage collectors, obtained the assistance of Martin
Luther King. King was killed while leading mass protest
demonstrations on behalf of the strikers, and in the wake of his
tragic death the garbage workers won recognition of their
union, a pay raise, and an agreement that promised to end racial
discrimination against them. Soon afterward SCLC joined
hands with Local 1199—a union which over the preceding dec¬
ade had successfully organized black and Puerto Rican hospital
workers in the Northeast—in a bitterly fought strike against a
major Charleston hospital. Again the combined forces of the
civil-rights activists and organized labor secured a dramatic vic¬
tory in an area notoriously hostile to labor unions as well as
blacks.
The stance of the skilled building-trades unions on the one
hand, and of the AFSCME and Local 1199 on the other, illus¬
trate the variety and complexity involved in any analysis of the
relationship of blacks and organized labor. Nevertheless, it is
clear that organized labor has become more responsive to the
problems of the black workers. This has been largely due to
direct pressures from blacks themselves: from the NAACP’s
labor department, utilizing the leverage of publicity and legal
action, pressing from outside the trade-union movement, and
from the increasingly militant black workers acting within the
ranks of organized labor.
The role of these black unionists in securing these changes
cannot be overestimated. During the early 1960’s the Negro
American Labor Council (NALC), a federation of black union
leaders and caucuses headed by A. Philip Randolph, maintained
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 335
a constant pressure on the leadership of the AFL-CIO unions.
By 1965, Randolph, impressed with the steps that the top
leaders in the AFL-CIO were starting to take, came to a rap¬
prochement with President George Meany. Meany, who was
himself a member of a building-trades union, and who, unlike
Reuther, had opposed labor support for the 1963 March on
Washington, now secured trade-union funding for the new
A. Philip Randolph Institute, dedicated to advancing the cause
of black workers through close cooperation with organized labor.
The institute has, for example, recruited and trained Negroes
for admission to building-trades apprenticeship programs.
While the aging Randolph no longer continued to agitate
against discrimination within organized labor, the NALC kept
up the attack under its new president, Cleveland Robinson,
head of the predominantly black District 65 of the Retail,
Wholesale, and Department Store Clerks Union. Further pres¬
sure has more recently come from the Coalition of Black Trade
Unionists formed in 1972 under the leadership of men like
Robinson and William Lucy, secretary-treasurer of AFSCME.
At least as important as the direct pressures from black
protest organizations and trade unionists in promoting changes
in the policies of both employers and trade unions have been
the actions of the federal government. Uneven, frequently in¬
consistent, and often reluctantly undertaken, these actions, rep¬
resenting both a response to black pressures and the growing
power of the black vote and the increasing legitimacy that black
aspirations now possess for many white Americans, have had an
important cumulative impact. With the Civil Rights Act of
1964, Congress for the first time gave legislative sanction to the
principle of fair-employment practices. In the decade that fol¬
lowed, the federal government has intervened with increasing
vigor to secure equal-employment opportunity. At the same time,
flowing from demands for compensatory employment, which
were first articulated by the civil-rights movement as early as
1962, the concept of fair-employment practices came to include
the doctrine of affirmative action, under which employers were
required to move beyond a “color-blind” hiring and promotion
336 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

policy. In order to produce "equality of results/' they must take

positive steps to correct the effects of past discrimination.
The 1964 act established an Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC). Lacking effective enforcement powers
at first, the EEOC during its early years resolved complaints of
discrimination through the procedures of conciliation that
earlier’State and federal equal-employment agencies had utilized
since the 1940's. The results of EEOC's work during the 1960's
were, therefore, relatively meager. More effective, because it
had specific enforcement powers, was the Office of Federal
Contract Compliance (OFCC) in the Department of Labor,
created by executive order of President Lyndon Johnson in
1965. While the 1964 Civil Rights Act simply obliged em¬
ployers to refrain from overt acts of discrimination, Johnson's
order directed that holders of government contracts take
"affirmative action" to ensure that minorities were employed.
During the next few years this concept was developed to require
employers to establish job goals, and timetables for their fulfill¬
ment, so that the number of minority workers hired in various
job categories would be substantially increased. In 1969, a
precedent-setting directive known as the Philadelphia Plan re¬
quired federal construction contractors in that city to make a
real effort to increase their minoritv craftsmen from the current
J

2 percent to about 20 percent in four years. The following year

the federal government in another important action ordered a
major defense contractor, the McDonnell Douglas Corporation
of St. Louis, to implement a five-year affirmative-action pro¬
gram. The firm agreed to establish a million-dollar training pro¬
gram for upgrading black employees and to set numerical goals
for hiring and promotion in order to assure that the percentage
of black employees would approximate the proportion of blacks
in the local labor pool.
Although OFCC rarely used its power to actually cancel con¬
tracts, and although the enforcement and implementation of
the Philadelphia Plan and similar programs in other cities left
much to be desired, important precedents had been established.
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 337
And the principle of affirmative action became an integral part
of civil-rights law when the Supreme Court in 1971 allowed a
lower court decision sustaining the Philadelphia Plan to stand.
In the same year, the Supreme Court also advanced the cause of
equal employment and affirmative action by outlawing the use
of educational requirements and achievement tests that were
not relevant to the duties to be performed on the job.
In 1972 Congress amended the Civil Rights Act, giving the
EEOC the authority to file lawsuits against violators in the
federal courts. With its powers thus substantially enhanced,
and with a series of court decisions quite clearly upholding
affirmative action, EEOC mounted court cases against large
corporations and labor unions. In this context of enforcement,
an increasing number of firms entered into agreements with
EEOC that set specific goals and timetables.* AT&T, under
threat of an EEOC effort to block its application for a tele¬
phone-rate increase, reached a court-supervised agreement in
1973 with that agency and the Department of Labor providing
goals and timetables for hiring more blacks and promoting sub¬
stantial numbers into technical and managerial jobs.
Especially important was the steel settlement that the EEOC
and other federal agencies secured in 1974. For half a dozen
years the EEOC, the Labor Department’s OFCC, and the De¬
partment of Justice had been involved in the issue of discrimi¬
nation in the steel industry. There had been investigations and
drawn-out negotiations, a Justice Department lawsuit against
United States Steel and the United Steelworkers in Alabama,
and an order handed down—and then suspended—by the Sec-
retarv of Labor against Bethlehem Steel in Maryland. Progress
seemed token at best. But then in 1974, by threatening federal
court proceedings, the EEOC, the Department of Justice, and
the Labor Department jointly secured an agreement from nine
steel companies and the union to change the seniority and pro¬
motion system throughout the country. The agreement called
* Typically these agreements involved other racial minorities and women
as well as blacks.
338 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

for specific goals and timetables. For example, during the first
year half the openings in craft jobs were to be filled by minority
workers; promotions and layoffs would be determined by length
of service in each plant rather than in a specific department;
and minority workers would be permitted to transfer into de¬
partments previously reserved for whites without losing senior¬
ity or pay. The agreement also provided a token amount of
compensatory back pay for the victims of the discriminatory
policies.
Meanwhile, a series of court decisions, requiring state and
city police forces to hire blacks in proportion to their numbers
in the local population, was beginning to raise black representa¬
tion in a job category that was, given the nature of police-black
community relations, a highly sensitive one. Moreover, HEW,
beginning in the late 1960’s, was pressing colleges and univer¬
sities to set and implement affirmative-action goals, under threat
of cancellation of federal contracts. Finally, the continuing role
of the federal judiciary can be seen in two 1975 circuit court
decisions ruling that labor unions are obligated to work against
discriminatory policies on the part of management and that, in
fact, the National Labor Relations Board may not certify a
union that discriminates as a collective bargaining agent.
Cumulatively, the persistent protests by black workers and
advancement organizations, the growing scope of court deci¬
sions, and the' more vigorous implementation of the law by the
federal bureaucracy had wrought significant changes in the dec¬
ade following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet the
thrust for affirmative action has met with considerable resis¬
tance. Critics maintain that in meeting numerical goals and
timetables, whites with greater qualifications are frequently
passed over and thus experience what they call "reverse dis¬
crimination.” How much closer blacks will be able to move
toward a fair share in employment remains to be seen. Much
will depend on the state of the economy, on how effectively the
agreements reached are actually carried out and policed, and on
the extent to which the recent developments, having secured a
degree of legitimacy, will go forward on their own momentum.
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 339
The improvements in employment that occurred during the
1960’s were reflected in changes in income. In 1959 the median
black family income had been 52 percent of white family in¬
come. Ten years later it was 61 percent. Black families with
earnings of $10,000 or more (in terms of 1971 dollars) rose
from 3 percent in 1951, to 13 percent a decade later, and to 30
percent in 1971. Meanwhile, the proportion of black families
who were below the official poverty line decreased from slightly
over half in 1959 to about one third in 1973. Particularly strik¬
ing, the income of young married couples, where both spouses
were working, reached equality with their white counterparts in
the North and West. However, in the early 1970’s, black in¬
come gains slowed down. Indeed, with white earnings now
growing faster than those of blacks, the median black family
income by 1973 was only 58 percent of white family income.
Blacks were more severelv affected by the recession at the open¬
ing of the decade than were whites. The percentage of black
families headed by females on welfare increased, and although
the growing number of college-educated blacks still found eco¬
nomic opportunity, clearly the gap between them and the un¬
skilled and poorly educated was widening. Even the newly
successful blacks have felt vulnerable, realizing that the eco¬
nomic gains, while fueled by black activism and affirmative-
action policies, would not have occurred without an extraordi¬
nary period of national prosperity. As a matter of fact, the
proportion of black families with incomes over $10,000 a year
increased very slightly in the 1970’s. While the impact of the
serious economic downturn of 1974 and 1975 cannot yet be
fully evaluated, it is clear that the crisis of the mid-1970’s poses
a severe threat to the gains made in the 1960's.

4
Comparable to the changes in the economic sphere have
been those in the political realm. rHie 1965 Voting Rights Act,
the continued expansion of large-scale black urban ghettos, and
the reapportionment of congressional and legislative districts in
accordance with the requirements laid down by the Supreme
340 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

Court have together brought greater political recognition for

black Americans.
In the South the long-range results of the civil-rights activism
of the 1960’s have become increasingly evident. The percentage
of the black voting-age population that was registered rose from
20 in 1960 to 38 in 1964, and, in the aftermath of the Voting
Rights Act, jumped to 62 by 1971. During the ten years after
Martin Luther King highlighted the problem of disfranchise¬
ment in the demonstrations at Selma, Alabama, in 1965, the
proportion of eligible Negroes registered in that town rose dra¬
matically from 2 percent to 60 percent. During the same period
in Mississippi, the number of registered blacks, out of a voting-
age population of about 450,000, changed from 22,000 to
300,000.
Moreover, in the decade following passage of the Voting
Rights Act, black officeholding in the South reached propor¬
tions higher than at any time since Reconstruction. In 1965
there were just seventy-two black elected officials in the states of
the old Confederacy; ten years later there were nearly sixteen
hundred. As late as 1962 there had been no blacks in the legisla¬
tures of any of these states; by 1975 there were ninety-five. Each
of these eleven states had at least one representative, and seven
had at least one state senator. The first two blacks from the
South to sit in Congress since 1901 were elected from Atlanta
and Houston in 1972; a third was elected from Memphis two
years later. By 1975 there were eighty-two black mayors scat¬
tered across the South, chiefly in small towns like Fayette,
Mississippi, and Tallulah, Louisiana, but also including a
medium-sized citv like Raleigh and the major metropolis of
Atlanta. There were several police chiefs and sheriffs, a sprin¬
kling of members on county governing boards, and, most
numerous, citv councilmen and members of boards of educa-
tion. In a few Black Belt counties—four in Alabama alone-
black control of electoral offices was virtually complete.
On the other hand, Southern Negroes had not achieved elec¬
tive office even remotely commensurate with their share of the
population. Technicalities in registration procedures, threats of
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 341
economic intimidation, and the low degree of voter turnout
often characteristic of poorer people all served to inhibit black
political advancement. In 1974 in the seven Deep South states
—those with the largest proportions of blacks in their popula¬
tions—only 36 of the 1,174 legislators were Negros. Most of the
Black Belt counties where Afro-Americans were in a majority-
some where Negroes are as much as two thirds or more of the
population—have no black elected officials whatsoever. Race
advancement organizations, fearful of actual retrogression if the
federal government should withdraw from active support of
Southern black voting rights and alarmed at efforts to circum¬
vent the Voting Rights Act in places like Mississippi, pressed
successfully in 1970, and again in 1975, for a renewal of the law,
with its guarantees of Justice Department intervention in areas
where black voting had previously been particularly low.
The number of black elected officials in the North also rose
substantially. Nationally the total climbed from a paltry 480 in
1967 to 3,503 by May 1975. About half of these were in the
North and West. Although blacks formed only .7 percent of all
elected officials in the country, some were holding significant
offices. There were seventeen congressmen in the House of
Representatives, up from six in 1967; the first two lieutenant
governors since Reconstruction (California and Colorado); one
state treasurer (Connecticut); two secretaries of state (Michi¬
gan and Pennsylvania); and a state superintendent of education
(California). The number of black mayors in the country grew
from 29 in 1968 to 135 bv 1975, about two fifths of them in the
North and West. Although most were in very small commu¬
nities, the list included ten major cities. The first large cities to
elect black mayors were Cleveland and Gary in 1967. Newark
followed in 1970, and three years later Los Angeles, Atlanta,
and Detroit joined the list. Today three of the ten biggest
communities in the country have Negro mayors—Washing¬
ton, * Detroit, and Los Angeles.

* Walter Washington, Washington’s black mayor, was originally ap¬

pointed to that office by President Johnson; the post became elective in
1974.
342 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

This record is essentially the fruit of black political activism,

although many of the major officeholders are from biracial con¬
stituencies. Almost 70 percent of the black mayors serve com¬
munities that are more than half black. These predominantly
black towns are typically small and Southern. On the other
hand, most of the medium and large-sized cities that elected
black mayors are Northern and have voting populations that are
majority white or very closely divided between the races. Black
mayors in these cities generally would not have been elected
without white support. In Detroit, Gary, Cleveland, Atlanta,
and Newark, a small minority of the white voters provided the
margin of victory for the black candidates. And in Los Angeles,
Thomas Bradley, who for years had represented a predomi¬
nantly white district in the city council, was elected mayor of a
community where blacks constituted less than one fifth of the
population. Similarly, most if not all of the new black congress¬
men elected in the 1970's came from constituencies where
blacks were about 40 percent of the voters. Massachusetts's
Senator Brooke had only a tiny minority of black voters in his
state. People like Senator Brooke, Mayor Bradley, the two lieu¬
tenant governors, and California State Superintendent of Edu¬
cation Wilson Riles, elected by overwhelming white majorities,
are of course atypical. The bulk of the voters for most of the
black mayors and for all of the black congressmen are black.
Clearly, on the whole, black officeholding has been possible
only on the basis of a substantial and unified black vote. Yet, at
the same time, the access of Negroes to high political office has
been accentuated by the willingness of a minority of the white
electorate to vote for black candidates.
The number of officeholders is one thing; the actual wielding
of decisive political influence another. With black elected offi¬
cials well under 1 percent of the total, Negroes do not yet have
an impact proportionate to their numbers in the electorate. Yet
in certain Northern and Western states, particularly Michigan
and California, blacks have moved into positions where, as
holders of cabinet-level posts and as chairmen of legislative
 The Legacy of the Black Revolt 343
committees, they possess real levers of power. Thus in Cali¬
fornia, Mervyn Dymally, now the lieutenant governor, previ¬
ously served as chairman of the Democratic caucus in the
Senate. More significantly, for four years Representative Willie
Brown, Jr., as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means,
held the third most influential political office in California, with
power over nearly all aspects of the state’s multibillion-dollar
budget. Although Brown was very narrowly defeated in his bid
to become Speaker of the House and lost his important chair¬
manship in 1974, blacks broadened their political power when
the new Speaker appointed four of them to head other key
committees.
In the South, although black politicians have nowhere
achieved such positions of influence, the black vote has not
been without effect. The election of blacks in every Southern
state was a dramatic break with past tradition, and across the
South race is no longer such an explosive issue among white
voters. Racist rhetoric has sharply declined. Southern white
moderates, openly bidding for black support, have won elec¬
tions, including gubernatorial contests, in such states as South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Arkansas. Even leading politi¬
cians formerly identified with virulent racism have been forced
to moderate their stance. Republican Senator Strom Thurmond
of South Carolina, the Dixiecrat candidate for President in 1948
and a key architect of Nixon’s Southern strategy, having pro¬
moted the unsuccessful candidacy of a racist in the guberna¬
torial campaign of 1970, found it essential to refurbish his own
image prior to his campaign for reelection to the Senate in
1972. Accordingly, Thurmond appointed a black man to his
staff and used his influence to channel federal money into black
community projects. Similarly, Governor George Wallace of
Alabama, the most infamous of Southern governors in the view
of Afro-Americans, sought to improve his standing among
blacks by appointing a Negro to a cabinet-level position and
funneling millions of dollars into predominantly black com¬
munities.
344 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

High expectations have accompanied the election of black

mayors in predominantly black towns and cities. However, the
economic problems of these cities and the realities inherent in
the structure of American politics place serious constraints upon
the mayors and limit what they can deliver. In addition to
providing a psychological lift for the black community, Negro
mayors are able to arrange some contracts for black entrepre¬
neurs, provide jobs in municipal posts not restricted by civil-
service regulations, and make very visible appointments to key
positions at the top levels of the city administration and on
public bodies like boards of education. However, black mayors
of big cities have typically inherited a decaying metropolis with
a predominantly poor population much in need of social ser¬
vices. Faced with a declining tax base, the continued movement
of middle-class whites and blacks to the suburbs, an entrenched
white civil-service bureaucracy, and often a hostile, white-
dominated city council, black mayors find it extremely difficult
significantly to alleviate the problems of the poor. The neces¬
sary resources have to come from the state and federal gov¬
ernments.
Under these circumstances the black mayors find it necessary
to take a moderate stance as they seek to coax tax funds from
officials and to cajole white homeowners and businessmen to
remain in the cities. In Los Angeles, Thomas Bradley was
elected without the support of important militant black activ¬
ists. In Newark, Mayor Kenneth Gibson, who originally ran for
office with the active help of the black-nationalist Imamu Amiri
Baraka (LeRoi Jones), eventually broke with Baraka. And in
Alabama, black mayors acting in pragmatic fashion have se¬
cured cooperation from Governor Wallace in their quest for
state funds. In short, black mayors have pursued not a ''politics
of confrontation,” but a "politics of delivery” as they have tried
to alleviate the problems of the black masses. Within these
circumscribed limits, many have been able to bring about some
improvement. For example, during Richard Hatcher’s first two
terms in office in Gary, Indiana, he obtained $200 million in
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 345
federal funds for programs that included constructing 2,200
units of low- and middle-income housing; and in Tuskegee,
Alabama, through the judicious cultivation of Governor Wal¬
lace and President Nixon, Mayor Johnny Ford obtained a $5.3
million federal grant for a new sewage system and $9 million in
state funds to bring new industry into the area. Generally, how¬
ever, black mayors have had only a very limited impact on the
housing and economic problems of the slum dwellers. This is
true not only of the large decaying metropolises in the North
but also of the small, predominantly black towns of the South
that are often so poor they cannot even raise the matching
funds necessary to obtain federal grants.
With few exceptions—Senator Brooke being the most con¬
spicuous-black political activism has taken place within the
Democratic Party. This is scarcely surprising, given the fact that
the black vote has been heavily Democratic since the 1930’s.
Only occasionallv have Republican politicians really courted the
Negro electorate. President Nixon fashioned his electoral vic¬
tory in 1968 by appealing to white suburban and Southern
voters, and he repeated this strategy in 1972. In both elections
blacks, perceiving Nixon as neglectful of their concerns, gave
him only one tenth of their vote. Once in the White House,
Nixon, who publicly opposed busing for school integration,
faced a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that reversed
his directive that the Justice Department delay desegregation in
Mississippi. The President also tried unsuccessfully to water
down the Voting Rights Act when it came up for renewal.
Nixon dismantled the antipoverty program and suspended fed¬
eral funds for low-cost public housing. He appointed no black
to a cabinet post, although he did name Benjamin Plooks to the
Federal Communications Commission. Plooks was the second
Negro to be named to a federal regulatory agency. The first,
Andrew Brimmer, had been appointed to the Federal Reserve
Board by President Johnson. On the other hand, Nixon named
five blacks to the federal district courts, thus building on the
record of Lyndon Johnson, who had added eight blacks as fed-
346 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

eral district and circuit court judges in addition to elevating

Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. *
It is still too early to evaluate the policies of Gerald Ford’s
Administration, but unlike Nixon he did not fear dialogue with
black congressmen, he endorsed extension of the Voting Rights
Act, and he appointed the second black cabinet member in
history, \yilliam T. Coleman, Jr., Secretary of Transportation.
Through both Republican Administrations, the momentum of
social change inaugurated during the Johnson years was sus¬
tained by segments of the federal bureaucracy, most notably in
the encouragement of affirmative action in employment on the
part of the Department of Labor and HEW. Yet it is evident
that the principal federal agency for promoting change during
the years of Republican occupancy of the White House has
been the judiciary. Most of the positive actions taken by the
federal bureaucracy to further economic opportunity and school
desegregation were undoubtedly a reflection of what was hap¬
pening in the federal courts.
The Democratic Party affords a contrast to the Republicans.
Nearly all elected black officeholders are Democrats, including
all Negroes in the House of Representatives. And with blacks
supplying about 20 percent of the Democratic votes in national
elections, they have, not surprisingly, been able to exercise
greater influence in that party. The nature of this influence and
the way in which blacks have increasingly sought to wield power
within Democratic Party councils can be seen by examining the
issue of black representation at the Democratic National Con¬
ventions. This matter was first raised by the Freedom Demo¬
cratic Party in its challenge at the 1964 Convention. Although
the FDP distrusted the Democratic Party pledges to prevent
racial discrimination in the selection of future delegations, the

* The recent rise in the number of black judges is noticeable because

twelve years elapsed between Truman’s appointment of Judge Hastie in
1949 and Kennedy’s selection of three blacks as federal district judges in
1961. In 1975, the total number of Negroes on the federal bench in the
continental United States was eighteen, including the one judge appointed
by Ford.
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 347
Democrats, under black pressures, have gone further than any¬
thing that FDP in 1964 had demanded. Not only does the
interracial “loyalist’’ Democratic faction now represent Missis¬
sippi at national conventions instead of the “regulars,” but the
proportion of convention delegates who are black has risen from
about 2 percent in 1964 to 5 percent in 1968 to about 15 per¬
cent in 1972. Since blacks supplied the party with an important
bloc of votes, by the 1970’s there developed a thrust to guaran¬
tee them a proportional share of the delegates to the qua¬
drennial conventions. The reforms associated with Senator
McGovern’s campaign for the party’s nomination during 1971
and 1972 provided that state delegations must demonstrate that
they had taken affirmative action to secure adequate representa¬
tion of blacks as well as other minorities, the young, and
women. Acrimonious debates followed. In 1974 blacks, appre¬
hensive that the affirmative-action program was being emascu¬
lated, threatened a walkout from the national meeting called to
draft new rules for the Democratic Party. In the resultant com¬
promise, the blacks essentially won their point. Their impor¬
tance in part}- affairs was also symbolized by the selection of
Basil Paterson as the Democrats’ national vice-chairman in 1972
and by the fact that blacks now form 12 percent of the Demo¬
cratic National Committee.
Clearly blacks are a long way from achieving a proportional
share of political offices and from wielding a proportional share
of influence within the party for which most of them vote. Nor
has the enhanced black political activity succeeded where legal¬
ism and direct action failed in bringing about full equality in
American society. Yet it is evident that blacks are likely to
achieve more access to positions of real political power and that
they will use their increasing leverage to claim a greater share of
the nation’s resources and to secure a more influential role in
the mainstream of American life.

5
The organizations identified with nonviolent direct action in
the 1960’s have declined, but as the heightened political activity
348 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

suggests, black activism has by no means disappeared. It has

taken new forms instead. Not only are the kinds of energies
that were once channeled into street demonstrations and voter-
registration campaigns now evident in political involvement,
but a significant minority of the protest leaders of the 1960’s
have become officeholders. It is true that former SNCC and
CORE activists, with their dislike of anything smacking of
compromise, have mostly avoided partisan politics, and that the
national NAACP is unhappy about those who, having achieved
civic prominence through the Association’s branches, want to
use the local branch members as a continuing political base.
Yet, while aspirants and officeholders of the 1970’s are mainly
new faces, a number of former civil-rights leaders are now active
in politics. Congressman William Clay had once been promi¬
nent in the NAACP and CORE in St. Louis. Congressman
Andrew Young had been executive vice-president of SCLC.
Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman had a long
record of civil-rights litigation in the courts and had been presi¬
dent of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Georgia Senator Julian Bond had been public-relations director
of SNCC. Charles Evers, mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, was an
NAACP field secretary. Aaron Henry, president of COFO and
longtime state president of the Mississippi NAACP, heads the
"loyalist” faction of the state’s Democratic Party and is a mem¬
ber of the Democratic National Committee. Individuals
formerly active in SNCC and SCLC campaigns are prominent
among the black leaders who have taken control of Lowndes
and Greene Counties, Alabama. Elsewhere a number of state
and local officials, North as well as South, were similarly re¬
cruited to political activism as a result of their participation in
the civil-rights movement of the 1960’s.
Of the major protest organizations of the 1960’s, SNCC has
disappeared while CORE and SCLC have suffered sharp de¬
cline. Despite the black-nationalist surge of the late 1960’s and
early 1970’s, both SNCC and the Black Panthers, with their
revolutionary stance, proved unable to formulate viable pro¬
grams. Although the Panthers briefly obtained enormous pub-
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 349
licit}’ in the mass media and, like Malcolm X earlier, symbolized
for many blacks courageous resistance to white domination,
their membership always remained small. By the early 1970’s,
widespread police repression had all but destroyed the move¬
ment. Nor was CORE with its reformist black-capitalist orien¬
tation able to maintain itself as a major black-protest organiza¬
tion. Actually, the latter’s greatest continuing influence was to
be found in the new organizations established by former CORE
leaders who did not espouse its separatist ideology. Particularly
important was the work of George Wiley’s National Welfare
Rights Organization. An aggressive group of welfare mothers
which included whites among its black majority, this organiza¬
tion used both direct action and litigation to increase the
number of people on welfare rolls and secure improvements in
benefits being paid.
SCLC, following King’s death, foundered, partly because of
the waning of direct action and partly because of internal
leadership problems. The most successful aspect of its work
consisted of the direct-action campaign for better economic
opportunities known as “Operation Breadbasket.” In Chicago
this campaign came under the direction of the most charismatic
of King’s aides, Jesse Jackson. Pressing against consumer-goods
manufacturers and retail chains, Jackson secured agreements
with firms ranging from Avon cosmetic products to the A&P,
providing both jobs for Negro workers and market outlets for
black manufacturers. Jackson left SCLC in 1971 as a result of
clashes with other SCLC leaders and established People United
to Save Humanity (PUSH). The new organization not only
continued Breadbasket activities but also served as a base from
which Jackson propelled himself into a position of national
prominence.
In contrast, both the NAACP and the Urban League have
remained very active. The NAACP, though down from its peak
membership of half a million at the height of the “Freedom
Now” fervor of 1963, has stabilized at over 400,000. At a time
when the federal courts are proving to be, in all likelihood, the
most important single mechanism for obtaining continued so-
350 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

cial change, the NAACP’s tactic of legalism has experienced a

resurgence. The Association has pressed particularly hard for
school desegregation and affirmative action in employment. For
example, the steel-industry agreement was in large part due to
NAACP pressures, and the struggle over desegregation of the
big-city school systems has been spearheaded by the NAACP.
The Urban League, with a multimillion-dollar budget, obtained
through federal grants and contributions from major business
corporations, has funded a wide range of programs from health
care through low-income housing to apprenticeship job training
aimed at increasing the number of blacks in these building
trades. As earlier, its central mission is to increase employment
opportunities. Both from the public platform and in his inti¬
mate contacts with the nation’s biggest business leaders, the
league’s new executive director, Vernon Jordan, has warmly
supported affirmative action.
Both the NAACP and the Urban League have maintained
undiminished their belief in an open, integrated, pluralistic so¬
ciety where the same opportunities are available to every person
regardless of race. In pursuit of this goal, the race-advancement
organizations have moved in the past fifteen years from simply
seeking equality of opportunity to seeking compensatory action
that would bring equality of results. In short, the drive for the
greater inclusion of blacks in the mainstream of American life is
now characterized by a quest for parity, under which blacks
would achieve an economic and political status that would be
commensurate with their proportion in the total population.
The intense nationalist and separatist impulses expressed by
the "black power” slogan of the late 1960’s did not become the
dominant thrust of black thought. Black separatism probably
reached its climax at the Black Political Convention held in
Gary in 1972; subsequently it declined. As earlier discussions of
black ideologies have suggested, the ethnic identity of black
Americans has been too ambiguous and too complex for an
unalloyed separatist or nationalist ideology to become firmly
rooted in the thinking of American blacks'. There is an increas¬
ing pride of race, but this is combined with a drive to take
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 351
advantage of the new opportunities to participate in the main¬
stream of American society. Black caucuses in unions and pro¬
fessional associations and black student organizations at pre¬
dominantly white universities and colleges often employed a
highly nationalist stvle; yet their activities proved paradoxical.
They stressed not only black unity, separate black curricular and
extracurricular programs at the colleges, and black consciousness
but were also concerned with obtaining for blacks “a bigger
piece of the action”—with achieving greater recognition for
blacks and giving them more status and influence within the
institutions under attack. Many blacks, in fact, interpreted
“black power” to mean what blacks, by their united action, had
been doing all along to advance themselves within American
societv. Thus the ethnic dualism that has characterized the
thinking of most Afro-Americans throughout their history is
still a basic element in their sense of identity and plays a vital
role in shaping the strategies they select to solve their problems.
The complexities and ambiguities of black ethnic identity
and the persisting variety of black strategies for survival and
advancement in American society were evident at the Black
Political Convention. Officially called by the Congressional
Black Caucus, it was the result of two parallel developments.
On the one hand, the congressmen sought to put pressure on
the Republicans and, especially, the Democrats to make both of
them more sensitive to the needs of black Americans. The pur¬
pose of the convention, declared the congressmen in their call
issued late in 1971, would be to develop “a national black
agency and the crystallization of a national black strategy for
the 1972 elections and beyond.” On the other hand, ideological
nationalists outside the ranks of the two major parties, unhappy
with the fruits of black political activism thus far and critical of
elected officials for having played the game of political compro¬
mise and done nothing fundamental to alleviate the glaring
problems of the black masses, had been considering the idea of
independent black political action—possibly creating a black
political party. For the congressmen and the nationalists alike,
it seemed clear that a show of black unity would be a useful
J
352 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

form of pressure. To some extent, the congressmen felt the heat

of nationalist criticism, but in addition they sought to use the
pressures generated by the nationalists to further their own pro¬
grams. What developed was a joint movement of both elected
officeholders and ideological nationalists. The conveners of the
conclave were Congressman Charles Diggs of Michigan, Mayor
Richard Catcher of Gary, and the noted black nationalist
author, Imamu Amiri Baraka. The invitation went out to all
black elected officials, community organizations, and nationalist
movements.
The Congressional Black Caucus, formed in 1969 in order to
provide a unified and therefore more effective voice for Negro
congressmen, was composed of a broad spectrum of individuals,
ranging from old-style, low-keyed politicians to outspoken mili¬
tants. And so it was not surprising that a division of opinion
developed among them as to the wisdom of cosponsoring the
convention. In the end the caucus decided not to participate as
a body, though it encouraged its members to attend the con¬
vention as individuals. About half the congressmen were among
the six thousand who converged on Gary. These participants
ranged from integrationists to revolutionary nationalists. Fig¬
ures as diverse as Mrs. Martin Luther King and Black Panther
leader Bobby Seale sat on the same platform. Coming together
at the cresting of the tide of black-nationalist sentiment, the
conferees sought to weld blacks into a cohesive bloc under the
banner of "unity without uniformity.” At one dramatic high
point almost the entire audience rose to its feet, clenched fists
aloft, chanting "Nationtime! Nationtime! Nationtime!”
Yet the gathering was marked by serious cleavages. Though
there was substantial representation- from separatist groups like
the Black Muslims and Baraka’s organization, and although the
nationalists dominated the proceedings, a large number of vet¬
eran NAACP members were also present, as well as emerging
local leaders from the rural South who were uncomfortable with
the rhetoric about an independent black nation. The NAACP
national office, alarmed by the separatist tone of the conference
and the nationalist and revolutionary spirit of the preamble that
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 353
had been drafted for the convention’s platform, seeming to call
as it did for the withdrawal of blacks from the American politi¬
cal process, firmly reaffirmed the Association’s integrationist
goals. Rejecting the concept of “separate nationhood for black
Americans,’’ the NAACP defended its commitment “to a prac¬
tical policy of accomplishment, utilizing the system as we find it
in the conviction that its own processes provide the mechanism
for needed changes’’ to “achieve equality and to make a reality
of the doctrine of ‘all men are created equal’ enunciated in the
Declaration of Independence.”
More significantly, there was a sharp difference of opinion
between the nationalist-minded groups who were pushing for
an independent black political party and the elected office¬
holders, chiefly Democratic, who saw the convention as part of
a strategy for pressing black demands through the existing
political system. Although black nationalist delegates were in a
minority at the convention, in the enthusiasm of the moment
the conferees adopted a Black Political Agenda whose language
expressed extreme alienation and a separatist rhetoric. Its pre¬
amble called upon the “Brothers and Sisters of our developing
Black nation,” to turn their backs “on the dying weight of a
bloated inwardly decaying white civilization. . . . White poli¬
tics has not and cannot bring the changes we need. . . . We
lift up a Black Agenda recognizing that white America moves
toward the abyss created by its own racial arrogance, misplaced
priorities, rampant materialism, and ethical bankruptcy.” The
document demanded “radical fundamental change” in Ameri¬
can society as the only way to provide justice for black Ameri¬
cans. Yet specific resolutions called for representation in
Congress proportionate to the numbers of blacks in the total
population and asked for billions in reparations, with the black
community having complete control over how this money
would be spent. Thus the demands made were for a greater
black share in the economic and political life of the country,
rather than a fundamental restructuring of the basic nature of
society. The convention created a permanent Black Political
Assembly that would endorse candidates, conduct voter-registra-
354 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

tion drives, and, in the words of one black leader, serve ''as the
chief brokerage operation for dealing with the white-power
political institutions.” On the other hand, the push for a sepa¬
rate black political party was thwarted, though Mayor Hatcher
seemed to threaten this as a distinct possibility when he
warned, "We say to the two American political parties, this is
their last chance.”
Subsequently, it became clear that the Democratic politi¬
cians, while employing this demonstration of black unity and
the threat of the Negro vote to gain further concessions, were
unwilling to endorse a truly separatist program. Many openly
rejected sections of the agenda, claiming that the Gary conven¬
tion did not accurately represent the black community. Mem¬
bers of the Congressional Black Caucus produced their own
"Black Bill of Rights” and repudiated the CORE-sponsored
resolution that had termed busing for school integration "bank¬
rupt” and "suicidal.” Instead, the Caucus endorsed busing as
"one of the many ways to implement the Constitutional re¬
quirement of equal educational opportunities.” Democratic
politicians, threatening a defection of the black vote, presented
a united front in their campaign for greater black representation
in the party’s councils. Yet they became resentful of the way in
which Baraka, who controlled the machinery of the Black
Political Assembly, dominated things, and most of them with¬
drew. Consequently, the assembly failed to develop into a sig¬
nificant political voice. In fact, the whole movement toward
black separatism that the Gary convention seemed to portend
waned. And at the second meeting of the Black Political Con¬
vention, held in 1974, few elected officials chose to attend.
Hatcher, who was present, bitterly called the roll of prominent
absent politicians who had decided that black-nationalist
leaders like Baraka had few grass-roots votes to deliver at elec¬
tion time and that the brand of separatism represented by the
Black Political Convention was not a powerful force.
Separatist and Pan-Africanist sentiment remained a signifi¬
cant element in black thought, but a drift away from nationalist
ideology was evident among some of those who had been its
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 355
warmest advocates. The nationalism of the late 1960’s and early
1970’s had enjoyed its greatest vogue among young college-
educated people; and in fact the black intellectuals who were its
spokesmen had, unlike Garvey, proved unable to establish a
base among the black masses. Even among college youths, dur¬
ing the years after the peak of nationalist sentiment marked by
the Gan- convention, the wearing of dashikis, the raising of the
clenched fist, and the prevalence of other similar symbolic acts
declined. While the interest in black consciousness and black
culture retained considerable salience, students turned more
toward career concerns. Change also became evident in a very
different social stratum—among the Black Muslims. By the
time Elijah Muhammad died early in 1975, the organization
had been moderating its stance toward whites, who were no
longer being denounced as "devils” and "beasts.” In fact,
Muhammad’s son, who succeeded him as head of the sect,
announced: "We have caught hell from the white man for four
hundred years, but we have grown to where if the white man
respects us, we will respect him.” And the Nation of Islam
dropped its long-standing demand for a separate black state in
the United States.
Moreover, some of the most radical nationalists embraced a
Marxist position and concluded that justice could only be
achieved by united and revolutionary action on the part of
lower-income black and white workers. As early as 1968, the
Black Panthers had soft-pedaled their nationalist ideology and
formed an alliance with Communist and New Left radicals. As
we have seen, in Detroit, the League of Revolutionary Black
Workers broke apart in the early 1970's, partly because of inter¬
nal disagreements over whether it should remain a strictly black-
nationalist movement or, since capitalism was the enemy, it
should ally itself with white revolutionary Marxist groups.
By 1974 there was a serious debate among black-nationalist
intellectuals—many of whom were also revolutionary Marxists—
over whether race or class was the most important factor in the
oppression of blacks. Black revolutionary nationalists had
espoused both cultural nationalism and economic revolution, a
356 FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO

black socialism that distrusted all whites and envisioned a black

nation within America composed of a network of “many New-
arks” running their own affairs without the interference of large
white corporations. By the end of the year, Baraka had left the
nationalist fold. As head of the Congress of African People he
had insisted that the primary aim should be to unify the black
community through a cultural revolution emphasizing tradi¬
tional black values and customs and the black American's Afri¬
can heritage. Now, however, he denounced black nationalism as
essentially racist and maintained that the black liberation move¬
ment was in essence a struggle for socialism. Advocating alliance
with poor whites in a common fight against capitalist oppres¬
sion, he now declared that “nationalism, when it says all non¬
blacks are our enemies, is sickness or criminality . . . national¬
ism is reactionary when it becomes simply reverse racism . . .
it is a narrow nationalism that says the white man is the
enemy.” Thus, while black separatism is certainly not passe as
an ideology, it is clear that it does not enjoy as much support as
it had at the opening of the decade.

6
The number of middle-class blacks has been growing as eco¬
nomic opportunities in business and government open up for
those fortunate enough to have obtained an adequate educa¬
tion. On the other hand, nearly one third of black families still
have incomes below the official poverty line. There has been in
very recent years some token residential dispersal of middle- and
upper-class blacks into white neighborhoods and suburbs. Yet
demographic studies indicate that residential separation of
whites and blacks is still the rule. The largest ghettos exist in
the nation's major cities, a rising number of which are becom¬
ing predominantly black, and ghettos are also growing in many
suburbs. Thus the future of Negroes and of American race
relations will revolve around the question of what happens in
and to the ghetto. The plantation system has all but disap¬
peared; with the continued mechanization of both tobacco and
cotton agriculture, it will vanish completely in the next few
The Legacy of the Black Revolt 357
years. In cities, both North and South, the political strength of
the black ghetto is growing, as is evident in the rising number of
Negro officeholders. Will the black protest organizations and
the black Democratic politicians be able to harness this political
potential and thus help the masses in the ghetto to secure for
themselves the power that would compel society to provide
them with adequate employment, education, and housing? If
this should be achieved will the ghetto, like the plantation,
disappear as the focus of Negro life? Or will it remain as a
cohesive community, at the core of the nation’s largest cities,
helping shape the texture and spirit of American life?
"..
Selected Bibliography

This bibliographical essay lists significant works,

chiefly secondary sources, that are readily available to the gen¬
eral reader and the college student. No attempt is made to in¬
clude most of the materials on which this book is based.

General Works
The leading and most detailed general historical survey is
John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 4th ed. (New
York, 1974), and it includes excellent and comprehensive bibli¬
ographical notes. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making
of America (New York, 1964) is an admirable shorter survey.
The two major sociological works devoted entirely to the study
of black Americans are Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma,
2 vols. (New York, 1944), and E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro
in the United States (New York, 1957). Two important the¬
oretical sociological studies are Hubert M. Blalock, Jr., Toward
a Theory of Minority Group Relations (New York, 1967) and
William J. Wilson, Power, Racism and Privilege: Race Rela¬
tions in theoretical and Socio-Ilistorical Perspectives (New
York, 1973).
There is a growing literature on the history of American rac¬
ism. Among the more significant works are: William R. Stanton,
the Leopard's Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in
America, 1815-59 (Chicago, 1960); Eugene H. Berwanger, The
Frontier against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the
Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana, 1967); David Reimers,

359
360 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

White Protestantism and the Negro (New York, 1965); Jacque

Voegeli, Free but Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro dur¬
ing the Civil War (Chicago, 1967); Idus A. Newby, Jim Crow’s
Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in American Literature, 1900-
1930 (Baton Rouge, 1965); Winthrop Jordan, White over
Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1530-1812
(Chapel Hill, 1968); Mary F. Berry, Black Resistance/White
Law (New York, 1971); and George M. Fredrickson, The Black
Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Char¬
acter and Destiny, 1817-1914 (New York, 1971).
Useful documentaries include Herbert Aptheker, ed., A
Documentary History of the Negro People (New York, 1951);
Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., and Benjamin Quarles, ed., The Black
American: A Documentary History, 2d ed. (Glenview, Ill.,
1970); Gilbert Osofsky, ed., The Burden of Race: A Docu¬
mentary History of Negro-White Relations in America (New
York, 1967); John H. Bracey, Jr., August Meier, and Elliott
Rudwick, eds., Black Nationalism in America (Indianapolis,
1970); Albert B. Blaustein and Robert L. Zangrando, eds., Civil
Rights and the American Negro: A Documentary History (New
York, 1968); and Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White
America (New York, 1972).
The leading learned journals devoted to black studies are
Journal of Negro History (Washington, 1916-); Journal of
Negro Education (Washington, 1932-), whose scope of articles
is far broader than its title implies; and Phylon (Atlanta, 1940-).
In recent years an increasing number of important articles have
been appearing in the standard journals of the various disci¬
plines.

Chapter I
There is as yet no satisfactory history of the attitudes of
black Americans toward Africa. Suggestive treatments can be
found in George Shepperson, “Notes on Negro American In¬
fluence on the Emergence of African Nationality/’ Journal of
African History 1, no. 2 (1960); John A. Davis, ed., Africa from
Selected Bibliography 361
the Point of View of American Negro Scholars (Paris, 1958, a
special issue of the magazine Presence Africaine); and Harold R.
Isaacs, The New World of Negro Americans (New York, 1963).
W. E. B. Du Bois’s major work dealing with African history
and culture is Black Folk: Then and Now (New York, 1939).
Carter G. Woodson’s views are found in his African Back¬
ground Outlined (Washington, 1936). Also pertinent is Louis R.
Harlan, “Booker T. Washington and the White Man’s Burden,”
American Historical Review 71 (January 1966).
George Peter Murdock’s controversial reconstruction of early
West African cultural development is in his Africa: Its Peoples
and Their Cultural History (New York, 1959). It should be
supplemented with the critical articles “The Spread of Food
Production in Sub-Saharan Africa,” by J. Desmond Clark and
“Comments on the Thesis That There Was a Major Centre
of Plant Domestication Near the Headwaters of the River
Niger” by H. G. Baker, both in the Journal of African History
3, no. 2 (1962). A general history of West Africa south of the
Sahara is J. D. Fage, A History of West Africa (London, 1969).
Edward W. Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (London,
1958) is a brilliant history of the western Sudan. An analysis of
the characteristics of Sudanese kingship is in Joseph Greenberg,
“The Negro Kingdoms of the Sudan,” Transactions of the New
York Academy of Sciences, 2d ser. 2, no. 4 (1949). Thomas
Hodgkin, ed., Nigerian Perspectives: An Historical Anthology
(London, 1960) sheds valuable light on the history of an im¬
portant section of the slaving area.
Useful studies of the people who were the sources of the New
World Negro population include three books by Robert S.
Rattray, The Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), Religion and Art in
Ashanti (Oxford, 1927), and Ashanti Law and Constitution
(Oxford, 1929); K. A. Busia, The Position of the Chief in the
Modern Political System of Ashanti (London, 1951); Ivor
Wilks’s exceedingly important multi-disciplinary analysis of the
political order among the Ashanti prior to 1900, Asante in the
Nineteenth Century: Yhe Structure and Evolution of a Political
Order (Cambridge, England, 1975); Melville J. Ilcrskovits,
362 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dahomey, 2 vols. (New York, 1938); J. A. Akinjogbin, Da¬

homey and Its Neighbors, 1708-1818 (Cambridge, England,
1967); Elliott P. Skinner, The Mossi of the Upper Volta
(Stanford, 1964). C. Daryll Forde and P. M. Kaberry, eds.,
West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford,
1967); Jacob Egharevba, A Short History of Benin, 3d ed.
(Ibadan, 1960); C. Daryll Forde, The Y oruba-Speaking Peoples
of South-Western Nigeria (London, 1951); Samuel Johnson,
The History of the Yorubas (Evanston, 1964); and C. Daryll
Forde and G. I. Jones, The Ibo and Ibibio-Speaking Peoples of
South-Eastern Nigeria (London, 1950). A discussion of West
African sculpture can be found in William Fagg and Eliot
Elisofon, The Sculpture of Africa (London, 1958).
The standard reference on African survivals in black-American
culture is Melville J. Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past (New
York, 1941). Much of the basis for the conclusions reached in
that study are in the published accounts of his own field re¬
search, but these should be supplemented with James G.
Leyburn’s extraordinary volume, The Haitian People (New
Haven, 1941) and Lorenzo D. Turner’s pioneering Africanisms
in the Gullah Dialect (Chicago, 1949). In somewhat popular
fashion, Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (Philadelphia,
1935) deals with "hoodoo” cults in the United States.
Herskovits’s most articulate critic was E. Franklin Frazier,
whose views on the subject are summed up in the opening
chapter of his The Negro in the United States (New York,
1957). For Frazier’s influential thesis about black-American
family structure see his sociological classic The Negro Family
in the United States (Chicago, 1939). More recent studies of
the influence of matrifocal tendencies on the Afro-American
subculture are Lee Rainwater, "Crucible of Identity: The Negro
Lower-Class Family,” in Talcott Parsons and Kenneth B. Clark,
eds., The Negro American (New York, 1966), and Elliot
Liebow, Tally s Corner (Boston, 1967). On the controversy
stirred up by Daniel P. Moynihan’s famous report on the black
family, see Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moyni-
han Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cambridge, Mass.,
Selected Bibliography 363
1967). For a discussion emphasizing family stability and patri-
focal patterns, especially among middle- and upper-class Negroes,
see Andrew Billingsley, Black Families in White America
(Englewood Cliffs, 1968).

Chapter II
Though written for a popular audience, Basil Davidson, Black
Mother: The Years of the African Slave Trade (Boston, 1961)
is the best general account available of the slave trade and its
influence on African societies. Contrasting views on the extent
of slavery among the coastal peoples with whom the Europeans
traded can be found in Walter Rodney, “African Slavery and
Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast
in the Context of the African Slave-Trade,” Journal of African
History 7, no. 3 (1966) and J. D. Fage, “Slavery and the Slave
Trade in the Context of West African History,” Ibid. 10, no. 3
(1969). The role of the Western powers can best be studied in
John W. Blake, European Beginnings in West Africa, 1454-
1578 (London, 1937) and in the introductions of the four
volumes of Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of
the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington,
1930-5). A most illuminating and pioneering description of the
workings of the slave trade from the African end is the second
chapter of K. O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta,
1830-1885 (London, 1956). Eric Williams, Capitalism and
Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944) is a provocative interpretation of
the impact of the slave trade on the British imperial economy.
The activities of British merchants are described in K. G. Davies,
The Royal African Company (London, 1957), and Gomer
Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of
Marque, with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (Lon¬
don, 1897). The best eyewitness accounts written by Europeans
who participated in the traffic arc William Bosnian, A New
arid Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, trans. from
the Dutch (London, 1705); J. Barbot, A Description of the
Coasts of North and South Guinea, trans. from the French
(London, 1746); William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some
364 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Parts of Guinea and the Slave-Trade (London, 1754); and

Alexander Falconbridge, Account of the Slave Trade on the
Coast of Africa (London, 1788). For a scholarly analysis of the
extent of the slave trade, see Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave
Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969). On Negro participation in
the exploration of the New World, see especially Richard R.
Wright, "Negro Companions of the Spanish Explorers,” Ameri¬
can Anthropologist 4, no. 2 (1902).
For varying views on the nineteenth-century illicit slave trade,
see W. E. B. Du Bois, Suppression of the African Slave Trade
to the United States, 1638-1870 (Cambridge, Mass., 1896);
Harvey Wish, "The Revival of the African Slave Trade in the
United States, 1856-1860,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review
27 (April 1941); Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the
Federal Law, 1837-1862 (Berkeley, 1963); and Ronald T.
Takaki, A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the
African Slave Trade (New York, 1971).
Most of the older volumes dealing with slavery in the English
mainland colonies are hopelessly outdated. The principal ex¬
ception is Lorenzo J. Greene, The Negro in Colonial New
England (New York, 1942). The most satisfactory analyses of
the evolution of slavery out of indentured servitude are found in
Carl N. Degler, "Slavery and the Genesis of American Race
Prejudice,” Comparative Studies in History and Society 2
(October 1959), and Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black
(Chapel Hill, 1968). Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes
in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Re¬
bellion (New York, 1974) is a path-breaking analysis. Edgar J.
McManus, Black Bondage in the North (Syracuse, 1973) sum¬
marizes scholarly knowledge of the subject. On Pennsylvania,
see in addition three important recent articles: Allan Tully,
"Patterns of Slaveholding in Colonial Pennsylvania: Chester
and Lancaster Counties, 1729-1758,” Journal of Social History
6 (Spring 1973); Jerome H. Wood, Jr., "The Negro in Early
Pennsylvania: The Lancaster Experience, 1730-1790,” in
Elinor Miller and Eugene D. Genovese, eds., Plantation, Town,
and Country (Urbana, 1974); and Gary B. Nash, "Slaves and
Selected Bibliography 365
Slaveowners in Colonial Philadelphia,” William and Mary
Quarterly 30 (April 1973).
The role of blacks in the American Revolution is best de¬
scribed in Benjamin Quarles’s scholarly The Negro in the
American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1961). The rise of the
European and American antislaver}' movement and the prob¬
lems it met and overcame in securing the abolition of the slave
trade and slavery are analyzed in sophisticated detail in two
volumes by David Brion Davis: The Problem of Slavery in
Western Culture (Ithaca, 1966), and The Problem of Slavery
in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, 1975). On the
attitudes of the founding fathers and the early United States
antislavery movement, see also Jordan, White over Black;
Hiomas C. Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (New
Haven, 1950); Walter H. Mazyck, George Washington and the
Negro (Washington, 1932); and William W. Freehling, “The
Founding Fathers and Slavery,” American Historical Review
77 (February7 1972). Donald G. Matthews, Slavery and Meth¬
odism (Princeton, 1965), contains a penetrating analysis of how
one of the leading antislavery churches came to forsake its
original position on the issue. Robert McColley, Slavery and
Jeffersonian Virginia (Urbana, 1964) argues that plantation
slavery remained highly profitable during the late eighteenth
century and that there was little sentiment for emancipation
among Virginia slaveowners. Arthur Zilversmit, The First
Emancipation (Chicago, 1967) describes the abolition of slav¬
ery in the Northern states during the Revolutionary and post-
Revolutionary years.
The best general description of the institution of slavery in
nineteenth-century America is Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar
Institution (New York, 1956). This should be supplemented
by Lewis Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United
States to 1860, 2 vols. (Washington, 1933); the description of
the technology of Southern agriculture in Ulrich B. Phillips,
Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, 1929); John Plebron
Moore, Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi (New York,
1958); Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in the Old South (Balti-
366 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

more, 1931); and Carter G. Woodson, Free Negro Owners of

Slaves in the United States in 1830 (Washington, 1925). For a
description of Southern slavery in all its variety by a contempo¬
rary observer, see Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom,
2 vols. (New York, 1861). Recently the use of slaves in industrial
occupations has become a matter of considerable scholarly inter¬
est; see especially Robert Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old
South (New York, 1970).
For varied views on the character of American slavery, the
nature of slave life and culture, and the question of slave ac¬
commodation and resistance, see, in addition to the Stampp
and Wood books cited above: Ulrich B. Phillips, American
Negro Slavery (New York, 1918); Harvey Wish, "American
Slave Insurrections before 1861," Journal of Negro History 22
(July 1937); Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts
(New York, 1943); Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in
American Institutional Life (Chicago, 1959); Eugene D.
Genovese, The Political Economy of Slavery (New York, 1965),
and Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
(New York, 1974); Vincent Harding, "Religion and Resistance
among Antebellum Negroes, 1800-1860," in August Meier and
Elliott Rudwick, eds., The Making of Black America, vol. 1
(New York, 1969); Sterling Stuckey, "Through the Prism of
Folklore," Massachusetts Review 9 (Summer 1968); John W.
Blassingame, The Slave Community (New York, 1972);
Lawrence Levine, "Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness," in
Tamara K. Hareven, ed., Anonymous Americans (Englewood
Cliffs, 1971); Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave
Resistance in Eighteenth Century Virginia (New York, 1972);
George P. Rawick, The American Slave: A Composite Auto¬
biography (Westport, Conn., 1972); Charles B. Dew, "Disci¬
plining Slave Ironworkers in the Antebellum South," American
Historical Review, 79 (April 1974); Robert William Fogel and
Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross, 2 vols. (Boston,
1974); Hebert G. Gutman, Slavery and the Numbers Game, A
Critique of Time on the Cross (Urbana, 1975); and Gutman,
Selected Bibliography 367
Many Children: Afro-Americans and Their Families before and
after Emancipation (forthcoming).
The literature relevant to comparative New World slavery
and race relations is rapidly growing. Among the significant
titles: Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen (New York, 1947);
Elkins, Slavery; Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Cul¬
ture; Sidney Mintz’s review of Elkins’s Slavery in American
Anthropologist 66 (June 1961); Laura Foner and Eugene D.
Genovese, eds., Slavery in the New World: A Reader in Com¬
parative Slavery (Englewood Cliffs, 1969); Carl N. Degler,
Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil
and the United States (New York, 1971); Winthrop Jordan,
“American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulat-
toes in the British Colonies,” William and Mary Quarterly 19
(April 1962); Charles R. Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil
(Berkeley, 1962); Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras (Cambridge, Mass.,
1957); Franklin W. Knight, Slave Society in Cuba during the
Nineteenth Century (Madison, 1970); Frederick P. Bowser,
The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1542-1650 (Stanford,
1974); Elsa Goveia, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands
at the End of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, 1965);
Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter
Class in the British West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, 1972);
Jerome S. Handler, The Unappropriated People: Freedom in
the Slave Society of Barbados (Baltimore, 1974); David W.
Cohen and Jack P. Greene, eds., Neither Slave nor Free: The
Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New
World (Baltimore, 1972); Stanley L. Engerman and Eugene D.
Genovese, eds., Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere:
Quantitative Studies (Princeton, 1975); and H. Floetink, The
Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations (New York, 1967).

Chapter III
For the antebellum free blacks there is no overall survey, but
Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States,
1790-1860 (Chicago, 1961), Ira Berlin, Slaves without Masters:
368 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York, 1974),

and Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities (New York, 1964)
are pioneering treatments of their respective topics. Among the
more specialized studies of value are John Hope Franklin, The
Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 (Chapel Hill, 1943);
Luther P. Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in
Virginia, 1830-1860 (New York, 1942) and Jackson, “Religious
Development of the Negro in Virginia from 1760-1860/’ Journal
of Negro History, 16 (April 1931); William R. Hogan and
Elmer A. Davis, The Barber of Natchez (Baton Rouge, 1951);
E. Horace Fitchett, “The Origin and Growth of the Free Negro
Population of Charleston, South Carolina,” Journal of Negro
History 26 (October 1941), and Fitchett, “The Traditions of
the Free Negro in Charleston, South Carolina,” Journal of
Negro History 25 (April 1940); Marina Wikramanayake, A
World in'Shadow: The Free Black in Antebellum South Caro¬
lina (Columbia, 1973); Donald E. Everett, “Free Persons of
Color in Colonial Louisiana,” Louisiana History 7 (Winter
1966); Loren Schweninger, “John H. Rapier, Sr.: A Slave and
Freedman in the Ante-Bellum South,” Civil War History 20
(March 1974), and Schweninger’s illuminating essay on urban
slavery, “A Slave Family in the Ante-Bellum South,” Journal
of Negro History 60 (January 1975); Rudolph M. Lapp, “The
Negro in Gold Rush California,” Ibid. 49 (April 1964);
Richard C. Wade, “The Negro in Cincinnati, 1800-1830,” Ibid.
39 (January 1954); Leo H. Hirsch, Jr., “New York and the Ne¬
gro from 1783-1865,” Ibid. 16 (October 1931); Emma Lou
Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana (Indianapolis, 1957); and
two articles by Theodore Hershberg, “Free Blacks in Antebellum
Philadelphia: A Study of Ex-Slaves, Freeborn, and Socioeco¬
nomic Decline,” Journal of Social History 5 (Winter 1971—
1972), and “The Origins of the Female-Headed Black Family:
The Destructive Impact of the Urban Experience,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History (forthcoming).
An older but stimulating article is Dixon Ryan Fox, “The
Negro Vote in Old New York,” Political Science Quarterly 32
(June 1917). Two surveys by Carter G. Woodson, The Educa-
Selected Bibliography 369
tiovi of the Negro Prior to 1861 (New York, 1915) and The His¬
tory of the Negro Church (Washington, 1921) contain much
useful material, as do the opening chapters of Charles H.
Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, 1850-1925 (New
York, 1927) and Abram L. Harris, The Negro as Capitalist
(Philadelphia, 1936). Specialized articles of value are Edward N.
Palmer, “Negro Secret Societies,” Social Forces 23 (October
1944) and Dorothy B. Porter, “The Organized Educational Ac¬
tivities of Negro Literary Societies, 1828-1846,” Journal of
Negro Education 5 (October 1936). Descriptions of certain ante¬
bellum race riots will be found in Leonard L. Richards, “Gentle¬
men of Property and Standing': Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jack¬
sonian America (New York, 1970).
Carter G. Woodson, ed., The Mind of the Negro as Reflected
in Letters Written during the Crisis, 1800-1860 (Washington,
1926) and the first half of Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary
History of the Negro People in the United States (New York,
1951) both contain many documents that illustrate the history
and thinking of antebellum free Negroes. Useful biographies of
black leaders are Carol V. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard
Allen and the Rise of the Independent Black Churches (New
York, 1973); Silvio A. Bedini, The Life of Benjamin Banneker
(New York, 1972); the essays on Samuel Cornish and Henry
Highland Garnet in Jane H. and William H. Pease, Bound
with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Anti¬
slavery Movement (Westport, Conn., 1972); Arthur Huff
Fauset, Sojourner Truth: God's Faithful Pilgrim (Chapel Hill,
1938); William F. Cheek, “John Mercer Langston: Black Pro¬
test Leader and Abolitionist,” Civil War History 16 (June
1970); and the books on Frederick Douglass cited below. The
antebellum convention movement is treated in Howard H. Bell,
A Survey of the Negro Convention Movement, 1830-1861 (New
York, 1969) and in the thoughtful analysis of PYederick Cooper,
“Elevating the Race: The Social Thought of Black Leaders,
1827—1850,"American Quarterly 24 (December 1972).
In recent years there have appeared the first satisfactory ac¬
counts of the role of the black abolitionists in the antislavery
370 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

movement: Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (New York,

1969), and Jane H. and William H. Pease, They Who Would
Be Free (New York, 1974). The latter also analyzes other pro¬
test and racial-advancement activities during the generation be¬
fore the Civil War. Two contrasting evaluations of the racial
attitudes of the white abolitionists are found in Pease and Pease,
“Antislavery Ambivalence: Immediatism, Expediency, Race,”
American Quarterly 17 (Winter 1965) and James M. McPher¬
son, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in
the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, 1964). A dis¬
cussion of the racial views of the founders of the Republican
Party will be found in Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free
Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil
War (New York, 1970). Charles H. Wesley has written two
helpful articles: “The Negroes of New York in the Emancipa¬
tion Movement,” Journal of Negro History 24 (January 1939),
and “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political
Parties,” Journal of Negro History 29 (January 1944). Frederick
Douglass may be studied through Benjamin Quarles's biography,
Frederick Douglass (Washington, 1948); Douglass’s own recol¬
lections, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, rev. ed.
(1893; reprinted several times since); and Philip S. Foner, ed.,
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 4 vols. (New
York, 1950-5). For two perceptive but divergent discussions of
John Brown’s relationships to blacks, see David Potter, “John
Brown and the Paradox of Leadership among American Ne¬
groes,” in Potter, The South and the Sectional Conflict (Baton
Rouge, 1968) and Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom (New
York, 1974).
A brief summary of antebellum colonization thinking is
Hollis R. Lynch, “Pan-Negro Nationalism in the New World
before 1862,” Boston University Papers on Africa, vol. 2 (Bos¬
ton, 1966); the only comprehensive survey of the subject is
Floyd John Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black
Colonization and Emigration, 1787-1863 (Urbana, 1975).
On the Underground Railroad, see especially Larry Gara, The
Liberty Line (Lexington, Ky., 1961). It should be supplemented
Selected Bibliography 371
with Dorothy B. Porter, “David M. Ruggles, An Apostle of
Human Rights,” Journal of Negro History 28 (January 1943);
the recollections of William Still, entitled The Underground
Railroad (Philadelphia, 1879); and the best of the fugitive-slave
memoirs: Lunsford Lane, The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, 2d
ed. (Boston, 1842); Henry Bibb, The Narrative of the Life and
Adventures of Henry Bibb (New York, 1849); William Wells
Brown, Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave
(Boston, 1847); Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a
Fugitive Slave (London, 1855); Solomon Northup, Twelve
Years a Slave (Buffalo, 1853); as well as Douglass’s autobiog¬
raphy cited above. T hese have all been recently reprinted.

Chapter IV
Leading monographs on black participation in the Civil War
are Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (Boston,
1953) and Dudley T. Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops
in the Union Army (New York, 1956). T hey should be supple¬
mented with T homas W. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regi¬
ment (Boston, 1869; also available in several reprints); James M.
McPherson, The Negro's Civil War (New York, 1965), and
McPherson, The Struggle for Equality (Princeton, 1964) and
Bell Irwin Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865, rev. ed. (New
York, 1953). For the New York City draft riots, see Adrian
Cook, The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft
Riots of 1863 (Lexington, Ky., 1974).
Two useful general surveys of the Reconstruction period are
Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (New
York, 1965) and John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction after the
Civil War (Chicago, 1961). The only general account of the
Negro during Reconstruction is W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Re¬
construction in America (New York, 1935), which gathered
together all the data available on the subject and attempted a
Marxist analysis of the period. The best monographs on the
Negro in individual states are Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for
Reconstruction (Indianapolis, 1964), a superb account of the
Sea Island Negroes of South Carolina during the Civil War;
372 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina

during Reconstruction, 1861-1877 (Chapel Hill, 1965); A. A.
Taylor, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia (Wash¬
ington, 1926); Vernon Lane Wharton, The Negro in Missis¬
sippi, 1867-1890 (Chapel Hill, 1947); and Peter Kolchin, First
Freedom: The Responses of Alabama s Blacks to Emancipation
and Reconstruction (Westport, Conn., 1972). Significant spe¬
cialized studies on Louisiana are John W. Blassingame, Black
New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973); Roger A. Fischer,
The Segregation Struggle in Louisiana, 1862-77 (Urbana, 1974);
and David Rankin’s illuminating investigation, ''The Origins
of Black Leadership in New Orleans during Reconstruction,”
Journal of Southern History 40 (August 1974).
The work of the Freedmen’s Bureau is viewed critically in
William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O.O. Howard
and the Freedmen (New Haven, 1968). A related institution is
treated in Carl R. Osthaus, The Freedmen s Savings and Trust
Company: The Tragedy of a Black Bank in Reconstruction
(Urbana, 1976). Histories of educational institutions that be¬
gan during Reconstruction include Rayford W. Logan, Howard
University: The First Hundred Years (New York, 1969) and
Clarence A. Bacote, The Story of Atlanta University: A Century
of Service (Atlanta, 1969). For a synthesis of materials on blacks
and public education during Reconstruction, see William Preston
Vaughn, Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in
the South 1867-1877 (Lexington, Ky., 1974).
Significant articles include: La Wanda Cox, “The Promise of
Land for the Freedmen,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review
45 (December 1958); Louis R. Harlan, “Segregation in New
Orleans Public Schools during Reconstruction,” American His¬
torical Review 67 (April 1962); Leslie H. Fishel, Jr., “Northern
Prejudice and Negro Suffrage, 1865-1870,” Journal of Negro
History 39 (January 1954); James M. McPherson, “Abolitionists
and the Civil Rights Act of 1875,” Journal of American History
52 (December 1965); Bettye C. Thomas, “A Nineteenth Cen¬
tury Black Operated Shipyard, 1866-1884; Reflections upon Its
Inception and Ownership,” Journal of Negro History 59 (Janu-
Selected Bibliography 373
ary 1974); and C. Vann Woodward, “Seeds of Failure in Radi¬
cal Race Policy/’ in Woodward, American Counterpoint
(Boston, 1971).

Chapter V
General works dealing with the Negro in the period between
Reconstruction and the First World War include C. Vann
Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton
Rouge, 1951) and Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow,
3d ed. (New York, 1966); Rayford W. Logan, The Negro in
American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901 (New York,
1954); August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880-19IS
(Ann Arbor, 1963); Willard B. Gatewood, Black Americans and
the White Mans Burden, 1898-1903 (Urbana, 1975); and
Gilbert T. Stephenson, Race Distinctions in American Law
(New York, 1910). Otto H. Olsen, ed., The Thin Disguise:
Plessy v. Ferguson, A Documentary Presentation (New York,
1967) prints the relevant documents concerning the famous
Plessy v. Ferguson case, with commentary. C. Vann Woodward
has reviewed the literature on the controversy surrounding the
history of Southern segregation in “The Strange Career of a
Historical Controversy,” in Woodward, American Counterpoint.
Research in this topic continues (Boston, 1971); additional light
on it is shed by Dale A. Somers’s article, cited below, and
Howard N. Rabinowitz, “From Exclusion to Segregation: South¬
ern Race Relations, 1865-1890,” Journal of American History
(forthcoming). An important contribution to the history of
black farm labor is Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage
in the South, 1901-1969 (Urbana, 1972). A recent study of the
disfranchisement movement is J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping
of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment
of the One-Party South (New Haven, 1974).
State and local studies of value include Charles E. Wynes,
Race Relations in Virginia, 1870-1902 (Charlottesville, 1961);
Clarence A. Bacote, “Negro Proscriptions, Protests, and Pro¬
posed Solutions in Georgia, 1880-1908,” Journal of Southern
History 25 (November 1959); Margaret Law Callcott, The
374 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Negro in Maryland Politics, 1870-1912 (Baltimore, 1969);

George B. Tindall, South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900 (Colum¬
bia, S.C., 1952); Frenise Logan, The Negro in North Carolina,
1876-1894 (Chapel Hill, 1964); Henry C. Dethloff and
Robert P. Jones, “Race Relations in Louisiana, 1877-1898/’
Louisiana History 9 (Fall 1968); Dale A. Somers, “Black and
White in New Orleans: A Study in Urban Race Relations,”
Journal of Southern History 40 (February 1974); Sheldon Hack¬
ney, Populism to Progressivism in Alabama (Princeton, 1967);
John Daniels, In Freedom s Birthplace (Boston, 1914), on Bos¬
ton Negroes; Mary White Ovington, Half a Man: The Status of
the Negro in New York (New York, 1911); and David Gerber,
Ohio and the Color Line, 1860-1915 (Urbana, 1976).
A model study of a major black enterprise begun in this period
is Walter B. Weare, Black Business in the New South: A Social
History of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company
(Urbana, 1973). The problems of black labor are treated in
Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker
(New York, 1931); Bernard Mandel, “Samuel Gompers and
Negro Workers,” journal of Negro History 40 (January 1955);
Paul B. Worthman, “Black Workers and Labor Unions in
Birmingham, Alabama, 1897-1904,” Labor History 10 (Summer
1969); Kenneth Porter, “Negro Labor in the Western Cattle
Industry, 1866-1900,” Ibid. 10 (Summer 1969); and Herbert
Gutman, “The Negro and the United Mine Workers of
America: The Career and Letters of Richard L. Davis and Some¬
thing of Their Meaning: 1890-1900,” in Julius Jacobson, ed.,
The Negro and the American Labor Movement (New York,
1968). Aspects of Negro education in the South are illuminated
by Louis R. Harlan, Separate and Unequal: Public School Cam¬
paigns and Racism in the Southern Seaboard States, 1901-1915
(Chapel Hill, 1958); Horace Mann Bond, Negro Education in
Alabama (Washington, 1939); Kelly Miller, “Education of the
Negro,” Report of Commissioner of Education for 1900-1901,
chap. 16 (Washington, 1902); and James M. McPherson,
“White Liberals and Black Power in Negro Education, 1865-
1915,” American Historical Review 75 (June 1970). For vary-
Selected Bibliography 375
ing views on the Negro and the agrarian revolt, see the works by
Woodward cited above; Jack Abramowitz, ‘'The Negro in the
Populist Movement,” Journal of Negro History 38 (July 1953);
Helen G. Edmonds, The Negro and Fusion Politics in North
Carolina, 1894-1901 (Chapel Hill, 1951); V. O. Key, Southern
Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1949), pp. 530-40;
Herbert Shapiro, “The Populists and the Negro: A Reconsidera¬
tion,’’ Meier and Rudwick, eds., The Making of Black America,
vol. 2 (New York, 1969), pp. 27-36; William H. Chafe, “The
Negro and Populism: A Kansas Case Study,” Journal of South¬
ern History 34 (August 1968); Lawrence J. Goodwyn, “Populist
Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study,” Ameri¬
can Historical Review 76 (December 1971); and William F.
Holmes, “The Demise of the Colored Farmers’ Alliance,”
Journal of Southern History 41 (May 1975).
A valuable mine of information on the black community
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is
found in W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., Atlanta University Publications
(1898-1914). An illuminating picture of the Negro in Southern
politics is contained in the dissertation by Clarence Bacote, “The
Negro in Georgia Politics, 1880-1908” (University of Chicago,
1955). An analysis of the development of the all-black towns is
found in Harold M. Rose, “The All-Negro Town: Its Evolution
and Function,” The Geographical Review 4 (July 1965). Late
nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century colonization movements
are treated in Edwin S. Redkey, Black Exodus: Black Nationalist
and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890-1910 (New Haven, 1969)
and William Bittle and Gilbert Geis, The Longest Way Home:
Chief Alfred Sam's Back to Africa Movement (Detroit, 1964).
A fine urban study is David Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black
Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana, 1973).
Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a
Black Leader, 1856-1901 (New York, 1972), the first volume of
a projected two-volume biography, is a major contribution. See
also his “The Secret Life of Booker T. Washington,” Journal of
Southern History 37 (August 1971) and “Booker T. Washington
in Historical Perspective,” American Historical Review 75 (Oc-
376 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

tober 1970). The interested student should consult Washing¬

ton’s own books: The Future of the American Negro (Boston,
1899) and the autobiography, Up from Slavery (New York,
1901). For Du Bois, see his volume of essays, The Souls of Black
Folk (Chicago, 1903), his two autobiographies, Dusk of Dawn
(New York, 1940) and Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois
(New XorK 1968), and two biographies: Francis L. Broderick,
W. E. B. Du Bois: Negro Leader in Time of Crisis (Stanford,
1959), and Elliott Rudwick, W. E. B. Du Bois: Propagandist of
the Negro Protest, rev. ed. (New York, 1968 and Philadelphia,
1969) . Four biographies of other contemporaries of Washington
are Alfreda M. Duster, ed., Crusade for Justice: The Autobiog¬
raphy of Ida B. Wells (Chicago, 1970); Eugene Levy, James
Weldon Johnson (Chicago, 1973); Emma Lou Thornbrough,
T. Thomas Fortune (Chicago, 1972); and Stephen R. Fox, The
Guardian of Boston: William Monroe Trotter (New York,
1970) . The best representative of the middle-of-the road point of
view is Kelly Miller, Race Adjustment, 3d ed. (New York, 1910).
The transition from a black to an interracial protest and race-
advancement movement in the early years of the twentieth cen¬
tury is treated perceptively in Nancy J. Weiss, "From Black
Separatism to Interracial Cooperation: The Origins of Efforts
for Racial Advancement, 1890-1920,” in Barton J. Bernstein and
Allen Matusow, eds., Twentieth Century America (New York,
1969). The founding and early years of the NAACP are de¬
scribed in Charles Flint Kellogg, NAACP: A History of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
Volume I, 1909-1920 (Baltimore, 1967).

Chapter VI
For a general survey of black migration to the North, see Arna
Bontemps and Jack Conroy, Anyplace but Here (New York,
1966) and Reynolds Farley, "The Urbanization of Negroes in
the United States,” Journal of Social History, 1 (Spring 1968).
For the World War I and postwar migration, the best works
are those written by contemporaries: Thomas J. Woofter, Negro
Migration (New York, 1920); Emmett J. Scott, Negro Migra-
Selected Bibliography 377
tion during the War (New York, 1920); Clyde Vernon Kiser,
Sea Island to City: A Study of St. Helena Islanders in Harlem
and Other Urban Centers (New York, 1932); and Charles S.
Johnson, “How Much Is Migration a Flight from Persecution?”
Opportunity 1 (September 1923). Two of the riots that followed
upon the World War I migration are given extended analysis in
Elliott Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917
(Carbondale, Ill., 1964) and William M. Tuttle, Jr., Race Riot:
Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 (New York, 1970).
On the development of the urban ghetto and its subculture,
see Robert C. Weaver, The Negro Ghetto (New York, 1948);
Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New York, 1940);
Roi Ottley, “New World A-Comin yy (Boston, 1943); Gilbert
Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto (New York, 1966);
Emma Lou Thornbrough, “Segregation in Indiana during the
Klan Era of the 1920’s,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47
(March 1961); Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a
Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920 (Chicago, 1967); that classic study of
the black community in Chicago, St. Clair Drake and Horace
Cay ton, Black VIetropolis (New York, 1943); Thomas Philpott,
“The House and the NeighborhoodHousing Reform and
Neighborhood Work in Chicago, 1880-1930 (forthcoming);
Kenneth Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland,
1870-1930 (Urbana, 1975); Claude Brown, Manchild in the
Promised Land (New York, 1965); Roger D. Abrahams, Deep
Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets
of Philadelphia (Hatboro, Pa., 1964); Kenneth Clark, Dark
Ghetto (New York, 1965); and Elliot Liebow’s extraordinary
study, Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men
(Boston, 1967).
The extent of residential segregation is analyzed in Karl E.
and Alma F. Taeuber, Negroes in Cities: Residential Segregation
and Residential Change (Chicago, 1965) and in Nathan Kantro-
witz, Ethnic and Racial Segregation in the New York Metropolis
(New York, 1973). On the economic aspects of life in the
ghetto, see Abram L. Harris, The Negro as Capitalist (Phila¬
delphia, 1936); Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The
378 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Black Worker (New York, 1931); Horace Cayton and George S.

Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions (Chapel Hill,
1939); F. Ray Marshall, The Negro and Organized Labor (New
York, 1965); and Brailsford R. Brazeal, The Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters: Its Origin and Development (New York,
1946). On the impact of urbanization on the black family, see
Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States. On the political
role of Negroes in Northern cities, see Harold F. Gosnell, Negro
Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (Chicago,
1935) and James Q. Wilson, Negro Politics: The Search for
Leadership (Glencoe, Ill., 1960). For a broad analysis of the
Negro in politics in the period between the two world wars, both
in the North and in the South, see Ralph J. Bunche, “The Politi¬
cal Status of the Negro/’ 7 vols. (unpublished memorandum for
the Carnegie-Myrdal Study, 1940, available on microfilm from
the New York Public Library). A revealing biography of a major
figure in black politics and journalism is Andrew Buni, Robert L.
Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier (Pittsburgh, 1974). Aspects of
religious life are treated in Arthur Huff Fauset, Black Gods of
the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North
(Philadelphia, 1944) and Benjamin E. Mays and Joseph W.
Nicholson, The Negro’s Church (New York, 1933).
All these matters are also dealt with most perceptively in
Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, as is the subject of social
stratification. For a controversial essay on the Negro class struc¬
ture, see E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (Glencoe, Ill.,
1957). This discussion should be supplemented by two studies
of Southern communities: Hortense Powdermaker, After Free¬
dom (New York, 1939) and Allison Davis and Burleigh and
Mary Gardner, Deep South (Chicago, 1941). Also of consider¬
able interest is a more recent study of Negro life in a Piedmont
town, Hylan G. Lewis, Blackways of Kent (Chapel Hill, 1955).
The best introductions to the Harlem Renaissance are Alain
Locke, ed., The New Negro (New York, 1925) and Langston
Hughes’s autobiography, The Big Sea (New York, 1940). In¬
cisive analyses of black literature are found in Sterling Brown,
Selected Bibliography 379
The Negro in American Fiction (Washington, 1937) and
Brown, Negro Poetry and Drama (Washington, 1937);
Benjamin E. Mays, The Negro's God as Reflected in His Litera¬
ture (Boston, 1938); and Robert Bone’s controversial The Negro
Novel in America, rev. ed. (New Haven, 1965). For a critique
of the Bone volume, see Darwin T. Turner, “The Negro Novel
in America: In Rebuttal,’’ College Language Association Journal
10 (December 1966). The best historical survey of the Negro in
artistic and theatrical life is to be found in James Weldon
Johnson, Black Manhattan (New York, 1930). The outstanding
biography of Ira Aldridge is Herbert Marshall and Mildred
Stock, Ira Aldridge: The Negro Tragedian (New York, 1958).
The finest anthology of Negro literature is Sterling Brown,
Arthur P. Davis, and Ulysses Lee, eds., The Negro Caravan
(New York, 1941). Also useful are James Weldon Johnson,
ed., Book of American Negro Poetry (New York, 1922); James
Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, eds., Books of
American Negro Spirituals (New York, 1925, 1926); Arna
Bontemps and Langston Hughes, eds., Poetry of the Negro,
1746-1949 (New York, 1949); Alain Locke, Negro Art: Past and
Present (Washington, 1936); and James A. Porter, Modern
Negro Art (New York, 1943). Important articles on two major
writers of the last generation are Nathan A. Scott, “The Dark
and Haunted Power of Richard Wright,” in Addison Gayle, Jr.,
ed., Black Expression: Essays by and about Black Americans in
the Creative Arts (New York, 1969) and Robert Bone, “Ralph
Ellison and the Uses of Imagination,” Tri-Quarterly, no. 6
(Spring 1966).
Hie Negro and the New I9eal is a subject that still remains
to be adequately explored by historians. An anthology of avail¬
able journal literature is Bernard Sternsher, ed., The Negro in
Depression and War: Prelude to Revolution, 1930-1948 (Chi¬
cago, 1969). Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great De¬
pression (Westport, Conn., 1970) examines the policies of
certain New Deal agencies. Two valuable recent articles, sug¬
gesting important areas for future research, are Christopher G.
380 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wye, “The New Deal and the Negro Community: Toward a

Broader Conceptualization,” Journal of American History 59
(December 1972) and B. Joyce Ross, “Mary McLeod Bethune
and the National Youth Administration: A Case Study of Power
Relationships in the Black Cabinet of Franklin D. Roosevelt,”
Journal of Negro History 60 (January 1975). The most sub¬
stantial literature deals with farm tenancy and sharecropper pro¬
tests. See especially Charles S. Johnson, Will Alexander, and
Edwin R. Embree, The Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (Chapel
Hill, 1935); Charles S. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation
(Chicago, 1935); Arthur F. Raper and Ira DeA. Reid, Share¬
croppers All (Chapel Hill, 1941); David Eugene Conrad, The
Forgotten Farmers: The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal
(Urbana, 1965); Donald H. Grubbs, Cry from the Cotton: The
Southern Tenant Farmers Union and the New Deal (Chapel
Hill, 1971); and Louis Cantor, A Prologue to the Protest Move¬
ment (Durham, 1969). Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy
of the American South (Baton Rouge, 1969) is a superb account
of the Scottsboro case. For a good description of the South dur¬
ing the 1920’s and 1930’s, with considerable discussion of blacks
and race relations, see George B. Tindall, The Emergence of the
New South, 1913-1945 (Baton Rouge, 1967).
On the World War II period, Ulysses Lee, The Employment
of Negro Troops (Washington, 1966) is an authoritative study
of blacks in the army. Richard M. Dalfiume, Desegregation of
the U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939-1953
(Columbia, Mo., 1969) traces the history of desegregation in
the military services through the Truman era. For varied assess¬
ments of the Truman Administration, see Barton J. Bernstein,
“The Ambiguous Legacy: The Truman Administration and
Civil Rights,” in Bernstein, ed., Politics and Policies of the Tru¬
man Administration (Chicago, 1970); William C. Berman, The
Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Colum¬
bus, Ohio, 1970); Harvard Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the
Election of 1948: The Coming of Age of Civil Rights in Amer¬
ican Politics,” Journal of Southern History 37 (November
Selected Bibliography 381
1971); and Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, Quest
and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration
(Lawrence, Kansas, 1973).
The historical research on twentieth-century Negro protest
movements and organizations is still thin, but scholars are work-
king to fill the lacunae. The useful titles are Edmund D. Cronon,
Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal
Negro Improvement Association (Madison, 1955), which should
be supplemented with the relevant chapters in the books by
McKay and Ottley, cited above; B. Joyce Ross, J. E. Spingarn
and the Rise of the N.A.A.C.P. (New York, 1972); Clement E.
Vose, Caucasians Only: The Supreme Court, the NAACP and
the Restrictive Covenant Cases (Berkeley, 1959); Nancy J.
Weiss, The National Urban League, 1910-1940 (New York,
1974); Arvarh E. Strickland, History of the Chicago Urban
League (Urbana, 1966); Wilson Record, The Negro and the
Communist Party (Chapel Hill, 1951); Herbert Garfinkel,
When Negroes March: The March on Washington Movement
in the Organizational Politics for FEPC (Glencoe, Ill., 1959);
Richard M. Dalfiume, “The ‘Forgotten Years’ of the Negro
Revolution,” Journal of American History 55 (June 1968); Har¬
vard Sitkoff, “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the
Second World War,” Ibid. 58 (December 1971). For a South¬
ern interracial protest organization, the Southern Conference for
Human Welfare, see Thomas A. Krueger, And Promises to Keep
(Nashville, 1967). For a critical analysis of the programs of
Negro organizations during the 1930’s, see Ralph J. Bunche,
“T he Programs, Ideologies, Tactics and Achievements of Ne¬
gro Betterment and Interracial Organizations,” 4 vols. (un¬
published memorandum for the Carnegie-Myrdal Study, 1940,
available on microfilm from the New York Public Library). A
summary of his conclusions is available in Bunche, “A Critical
Analysis of the Tactics and Programs of Minority Groups,”
Journal of Negro Education 4 (July 1935). For illustrative docu¬
ments, see August Meier, Elliott Rudwick, and Francis L.
Broderick, eds., Black Protest 't hought in the Twentieth Century
382 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Indianapolis, 1971). A commentary on black participation in

radical movements in the twentieth century is found in Harold
Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (New York, 1967).

Chapter VII
August Meier, Elliott Rudwick, and Francis L. Broderick, eds.,
Black Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (Indianapolis,
1971), deals with the changes in the character of the civil-rights
movement from the turn of the century until the end of the
1960's. Relevant theoretical discussions of the black protest
movement in the 1960's are to be found in Joseph S. Himes,
'The Functions of Racial Conflict," Social Forces 45 (Septem¬
ber 1966); Gary T. Marx, ed., Racial Conflict: Tension and
Change in American Society (Boston, 1971); and in the incisive
and provocative Lewis M. Killian and Charles Grigg, Racial
Crisis in America: Leadership in Conflict (Englewood Cliffs,
1964). Changing attitudes of whites and blacks during the 1950’s
and 1960's are treated in Leonard Broom and Norval Glenn,
Transformation of the Negro American (New York, 1965);
Thomas F. Pettigrew, A Profile of the Negro American (Prince¬
ton, 1964), and Pettigrew, Racially Separate or Together? (New
York, 1971); Ulf Hannerz, Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Cul¬
ture and Community (New York, 1967); and Gary T. Marx,
Protest and Prejudice: A Study of Belief in the Black Commu¬
nity, rev. ed. (New York, 1969).
The best biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., is David Lewis,
King: A Critical Biography (New York, 1970). King's point of
view can be studied in his Stride toward Freedom (New York,
1958), Why We Cant Wait (New York, 1964), and Where
Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (New York,
1967). A discussion of the way in which King functioned in the
civil-rights movement is August Meier, “On the Role of Martin
Luther King," New Politics, 4 (Winter 1965). Howard Zinn has
sketched the early history of SNCC in SNCC: The New Aboli¬
tionists (Boston, 1964). The history of CORE can be studied in
an account by a long-time member, James Peck, Freedom Ride
(New York, 1962) and in August Meier and Elliott Rudwick,
Selected Bibliography 383
CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968
(New York, 1973). Among the most perceptive analyses of the
trends in the civil-rights movement during its direct-action
phase are two articles by Bayard Rustin: “The Meaning of
Birmingham,” Liberation 8 (June 1963), and “The Meaning of
the March on Washington,” Ibid. 8 (October 1963). James
Farmer, Freedom-When? (New York, 1965); Pettigrew, A Pro¬
file of the Negro American; Inge Powell Bell, CORE and the
Strategy of Nonviolence (New York, 1968); and Julius Lester,
Look Out Whiteyl Black Power s Gon Get Your Mamal (New
York, 1968), are essential for studying the changes among civil-
rights activists during the 1960’s. The changing viewpoint of the
Urban League is cogently expressed in Whitney M. Young, Jr.,
To Be Equal (New York, 1964) and Young, Beyond Racism
(New York, 1969). An extremely important article is Gary T.
Marx, “Religion: Opiate or Inspiration of Civil Rights Militancy
among Negroes?” American Sociological Review 32 (February
1967).
Important case studies are Bell, CORE and the Strategy of
Nonviolence, a careful analysis of developments in a selected
group of CORE chapters, 1961—4; Charles V. Hamilton’s dis¬
cussion of the Tuskegee Civic Association, Minority Politics in
Black Belt Alabama (New Brunswick, 1960); Jack L. Walker,
Sit-Ins in Atlanta: A Study in the Negro Revolt (New Bruns¬
wick, 1964); and William W. Ellis’s description of a Chicago
group, White Ethics and Black Power: The Emergence of the
West Side Organization (Chicago, 1969). Pat Watters and
Reese Cleghorn, Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Arrival of Ne¬
groes in Southern Politics (New York, 1967) describes the
Southern voter-registration campaign of 1962-4 and its impact.
The changing role of whites is discussed in the books by Bell,
Farmer, and Lester, cited above; Charles J. Levy, Voluntary
Servitude: Whites in the Negro Movement (New York, 1968);
Alphonso Pinkney, The Committed: White Activists in the
Civil Rights Movement (New Haven, 1968); N. J. Demerath,
III, Gerald Marwcll, and Michael T. Aiken, Dynamics of
Idealism: White Activists in a Black Movement (San Francisco,
384 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1971); and Gary T. Marx and Michael Useem, "Majority In¬

volvement in Minority Movements: Civil Rights, Abolition, Un-
touchability,” Journal of Social Issues 27 (1971).
Changes in the leadership structure of the black community
that resulted from the civil-rights revolution are discussed in
Lewis M. Killian and Charles U. Smith, "Negro Protest Leaders
in a Southern Community,” Social Forces 38 (March 1960);
Jack L. Walker, "The Functions of Disunity: Negro Leadership
in a Southern City,” Journal of Negro Education 32 (Summer
1963); R. H. Hines and James E. Pierce, "Negro Leadership
after the Social Crisis: An Analysis of Leadership Changes in
Montgomery, Alabama,” Phylon 26 (Summer 1965); and Gerald
McWorter and Robert L. Crain, "Subcommunity Gladiatorial
Competition: Civil Rights Leadership as a Competitive Proc¬
ess,” Social Forces 46 (September 1967).
The economic problems of the black masses and their mean¬
ing for the black protest movement are discussed in Arthur Ross
and Herbert Hill, eds., Employment, Race and Poverty (New
York, 1965) and in the books by Whitney Young mentioned
above. Among the significant studies dealing with school
segregation and desegregation, especially in the North, are
United States Commission on Civil Rights, Racial Isolation in
the Public Schools (Washington, 1967); Raymond W. Mack,
ed.. Our Childrens Burden: Studies of Desegregation in Nine
American Communities (New York, 1968); and Robert L.
Crain, The Politics of School Desegregation (Chicago, 1968).
Fair-housing law campaigns are described in Lynn W. Eley and
Thomas W. Casstevens, eds., The Politics of Fair-Housing
Eegislation (San Francisco, 1968); and Juliet Z. Saltman, Open
Housing as a Social Movement (Lexington, Mass., 1971). On
housing problems of middle-class blacks and their attitudes
toward moving to the white suburbs, see L. G. Watts, H. E.
Freeman, Helen Hughes, Robert Morris, and Thomas F. Petti¬
grew, The Middle-Income Negro Family Faces Urban Renewal
(Boston, 1965).
For varied discussions of Negroes in politics, see John H.
Fenton and Kenneth N. Vines, "Negro Registration in Lou-
Selected Bibliography 385
isiana,” American Political Science Review 51 (September
1957); M. Elaine Burgess, Negro Leadership in a Southern City
(Chapel Hill, 1960); Hugh D. Price, The Negro and Southern
Politics: A Chapter of Florida History (New York, 1957); Harry
Holloway, “The Negro and the Vote: The Case of Texas,”
Journal of Politics 23 (August 1961); James Q. Wilson, “Two
Negro Politicians: An Interpretation,” Midwest Journal of Poli¬
tics 4 (November 1960); Everett C. Ladd, Jr., Negro Political
Leadership in the South (Ithaca, 1966); Donald R. Matthews
and James W. Prothro, Negroes and the New Southern Politics
(New York, 1966); Samuel D. Cook, “Political Movements and
Organization,” Journal of Politics 26 (February 1964); Bayard
Rustin, “From Protest to Politics,” Commentary 39 (February
1965); and Chandler Davison’s study of Houston, Biracial
Politics: Conflict and Coalition in the Metropolitan South
(Baton Rouge, 1972).
The literature on the riots of the 1960's is enormous. The
following are among the most significant items: Report of the
National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders (Washington,
1968); Robert M. Fogelson and Robert B. Hill, “Who Riots? A
Study of Participation in the 1967 Riots,” in Supplemental
Studies for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Dis¬
orders (Washington, 1968); Robert M. Fogelson, “From Re¬
sentment to Confrontation: The Police, the Negroes, and the
Outbreak of the Nineteen-Sixties Riots,” Political Science
Quarterly 83 (June 1968); Robert Blauner, “Internal Colonial¬
ism and Ghetto Revolt,” Social Problems 16 (Spring 1969).
Among the best materials on black nationalism and the vary¬
ing manifestations of black power and black consciousness are
two studies of the Black Muslims: C. Eric Lincoln, The Black
Muslims in America (Boston, 1961) and E. U. Essien-Udom,
Black Nationalism: The Search for an Identity in America
(Chicago,- 1962), and two major books by and about Malcolm
X: The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York, 1964) and
Peter L. Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (New
York, 1973). Other titles include Robert Williams, Negroes
with Guns (New York, 1962); Stokely Carmichael and
386 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in

America (New York, 1967); Charles V. Hamilton, "An Ad¬
vocate of Black Power Defines It,” The New York Times Maga¬
zine (April 14, 1968); Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York,
1968); John O. Killens, "Explanation of the 'Black Psyche,’”
The New York Times Magazine (June 7, 1964); Joyce Ladner,
"What 'Black Power’ Means to Negroes in Mississippi,” Trans-
Action 7 (November 1967); Lewis Killian, The Impossible Rev¬
olution? (New York, 1968); Martin Duberman, "Black Power in
America,” Partisan Review 35 (Winter 1968); and Joel D.
Aberbach and Jack L. Walker, "The Meanings of Black Power:
A Comparison of White and Black Interpretations of a Political
Slogan,” American Political Science Review 64 (June 1970).
Anthologies illustrative of the literary renaissance of the 1960’s
are Addison Gayle, ed., Black Expression (New York, 1969);
LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal, eds., Black Fire: An Anthology of
Afro-American Writing (New York, 1968); and William Couch,
Jr., ed., New Black Playwrights (New Orleans, 1968). See also
Mercer Cook and Stephen E. Henderson, The Militant Black
Writer (Madison, 1969).

Chapter VIII
As in the case of the preceding chapter, much of our analysis
of recent events is based upon a reading of the black and white
press.
The most comprehensive discussion of the relative progress of
blacks in American society is Sar A. Levitan, William B.
Johnston, and Robert Taggart, Still a Dream: The Changing
Status of Blacks since 1960 (Cambridge, Mass., 1975). Also
valuable are reports issued by the United States Civil Rights
Commission and an annual publication of the United States
Bureau of the Census entitled The Social and Economic Status
of the Black Population in the United States, 1969- (title varies).
Material on Negro business is to be found in the magazine
Black Enterprise (1970-). For an analysis of the black com¬
munity today, see also James E. Blackwell, The Black Commu¬
nity: Diversity and Unity (New York, 1975).
Selected Bibliography 387
There is little serious scholarship as yet on the black protest
movement and black politics during the 1970’s. Exceedingly use¬
ful on both subjects are Alex Poinsett’s numerous articles in
Ebony. Barbara A. Reynolds, Jesse Jackson: The Man, the
Movement, the Myth (Chicago, 1975) is an illuminating bi¬
ography. Ideological developments among black intellectuals
can in part be studied in two journals, The Black Scholar and
Black World. Also pertinent in this connection is Lewis M.
Killian, The Impossible Revolution, Phase II: Black Power and
the American Dream (New York, 1975).
Focus, a monthly newsletter issued by the Joint Center for
Political Studies in Washington, D.C. (1972-), offers a great
deal of valuable information regarding black elected officials.
Our analysis of the problems of black mayors draws heavily from
Robert Curvin’s unpublished doctoral dissertation, “The Per¬
sistent Minority: The Black Political Experience in Newark”
(Princeton University, 1975).
 *

.
Index
A & P, and blacks, 349 Afro-American Industrial Insurance
Abel, I. W., 331 Society, 215
abolitionists, 94, 97, 109, 113-14, Afro-Americans, see Negroes
121, 127-48, 154, 156-7, 159, agrarians, 198-201
162-4, 167-8, 181, 228 Agricultural Adjustment Adminis¬
Abyssinian Baptist Church, 103 tration, 258, 261
accommodation, 83, 85, 86, 118, agriculture, 7-8, 12, 13, 261; see
205, 212, 213, 220-2, 224, 229, also farming and plantations
253, 307, 311 Alabama, 55-7, 65, 73, 85, 91, 103,
Adams, Abigail, and slavery, 49 195, 199, 201, 209, 233, 235,
Adams, Doc, 190-1 280, 292-3, 319, 340, 344
Addams, Jane, 228 Aldridge, Ira, 256
“Address to the Nations of the Allen, Richard, 100-1, 106, 108,
World,” 247n 123, 124
“Address ... to the People of the Allen University, 179
United States,” 165 Almoravides, 10
“Address to the Slaves of the United ambivalence, ethnic. 118-21, 127,
States of America, An,” 148 1 51, 223, 253-4, 351
AFl^CIO, 263, 289, 328, 335 American Anti-Slavery Society, 104,
Africa, 4-6, 12, 18, 20, 27, 29-36, 127, 129, 131-4,'136, 139-40,
38-41, 54, 79-80, 121-3, 151, 142, 144-5, 164
213, 246, 247n, 248-9, 271, 276 American Colonization Society,
African Baptist Church, 104 122-6, 1 30, 151
African Benevolent Society, 99, 110 American Dilemma, An, 305
African Civilization Society, 152, American Federation of Labor
174 (AFL), 208-9, 242, 262, 328
African Free School, 110, 115 American Federation of State,
African Legion, 247 County and Municipal Em¬
African Meeting House, 110 ployees, 333-5
African Methodist Episcopal American and Foreign Anti-Slaverv
Church, 100-3, 114, 174, 179- Society, 129, 132, 134, 1 35, 140
80 American Missionary Association,
African Methodist Episcopal Zion 174-5, 180
Church, 102-3, 107, 179 American Moral Reform Society,
African Union Society, 99 etc., 128
Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect, American Society for African Cul¬
21 ture (AMSAC), 25
Afro-American Council, 21 2, 223-4 Amherst College, and blacks, 114

389
390 INDEX
Anderson, Charles W., 223 Banks, Nathaniel P., 168-9
Anderson, Marian, 259, 290 Banneker, Benjamin, 51-2
Angola, 7, 12, 30, 32, 39 Bantus, 12
antrslavery movement, 46, 49-51, Baptist Church, 23, 24, 78, 100,
53, 89, 93, 106, 122, 125, 128- 102-4, 178-80, 218, 250
141 passim Baraka, Imamu Amiri, 344, 352,
antislavery societies, 50, 53, 109-10, 354, 356
134, 147 Barbadoes, James G., 131
Aptheker, Herbert, 81, 83 Baton Rouge, La., 56, 277
Arkansas, 55-7, 186, 196, 198-9, Battle, Robert, 333
233, 343 Benezet, Anthony, 50
armed forces, blacks and, 52, 139, Benin, 30, 34
154-63, 238-9, 267, 269, 325-6 Berbers, 10
Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 219- Berean Presbyterian Church, 217
20 Berkeley, Cal., 319
Army Life in a Black Regiment, 158 Bethel AME Church, 101, 110, 123
Aro Chukwu, and slaves, 35 Bethlehem Steel, 330-1, 337
Arthur, Chester A., 97, 209 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 260
arts, blacks and, 254-8, 312 Bibb, Henry, 145-6
Ashanti, 12-14, 16, 18, 29-30, 39 Birmingham, Ala., 234, 275, 287-9,
Ashmun Institute, 114 293, 296
Askia, Muhammad I, 11 Birney, James G., 137, 143-4
assimilation, see integration Birth of a Nation, 211
Association for the Study of Negro Black Belt, 56, 57, 65, 84, 201, 309,
Life and History, 69, 254 340-1
AT&T, and blacks, 337 Black Boy, 258
Atlanta, Ga., 178, 180, 189, 196, Black Codes, 165, 170-1
203-4, 234-5, 241n, 234, 252, Black Cross Nurses, 247
292, 316, 320, 340-2 Black Laws, 92, 94, 124, 181
Atlanta Baptist College, 179 Black Metropolis, 252-3
Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Black Panther Party, 297, 304, 310,
178 311
Atlanta Life Insurance Company, Black Panthers, 311, 348-9, 355
216, 326 Black Political Assembly, 353-4
Atlanta University, 176, 180 Black Political Convention, 322,
Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured 350-5
Man, The, 256 black power, 278, 283, 285, 286,
Avery Institute, 175, 180 295, 308-11, 350-1
Avon Cosmetics, and blacks, 349 Black Star Steamship Line, 246-7
Black Thunder, 257
Baker, Ray Stannard, 227 blacks, see Negroes
Balance of Power, 269 Blassingame, John W., 83
Baldwin, James, 297, 301 Boas, Franz, 211
Baltimore, Md., 88-9, 96, 98, 101, Body of Liberties, 47
107-9, 111, 115, 123, 203, 214- Bolton, Dickens & Company, 59
15, 234, 316, 320 Bond, James, 58
Bancroft, Frederic, 59 Bond, Julian, 348
banks, 214, 216, 252, .327 Bonny, 35-6
Index 391
Bontemps, Arna, 257 Canada, 31,92, 124-5, 142-5
Boston, Mass., 33, 89, 96, 98, 102, Cane, 257
106, 110, 113-14, 128-30, 144- Cape Palmas, 31
5, 206, 207, 237 Capital Formation, 327
Boston Guardian, 224 Capital Savings Bank, 216
“Boston Riot,” 224 Cardozo, Francis L., 175, 186
Bowdoin College, 114 Caribbean, 20, 31, 32, 39, 72-4,
boycotts, 205, 224, 244, 275, 279, 79, 84, 151; see also West Indies
284-5, 287, 291, 321 Carmichael, Stokely, 304, 308, 309,
Bradley, Thomas, 342, 344 313
“Brass Spittoons,” 257 Carnegie, Andrew, 220, 223, 229
Brazil, 20, 31, 35, 39-41, 71-4, 84 Carroll, Charles, 44
Brimmer, Andrew, 345 Catholic Church, 70, 79, 111, 289
Brooke, Edward W., 342, 345 Cayton, Horace, 252
Brooklyn, N.Y., 176 Charleston, S.C., 44-5, 89-90, 96,
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Por¬ 103, 107, 111, 115-16, 118, 175,
ters, 246 180, 183, 191-2, 210, 234, 292,
Brown Fellowship Society, 107, 111 334
Brown, Henry “Box,” 145-6 Chase, Mary, 174
Brown, John, 141 Chattanooga, Tenn., 205
Brown, Morris, 103 Chavis, John, 99
Brown, Rap, 304 Chesapeake and Marine Railroad
Brown, Sterling, 257 and Dry Dock Company, 214
Brown, William Wells, 133, 142, Chesnutt, Charles, 256
145-6 Chester, Pa., race riots in, 236
Brown, Willie, Jr., 343 Chicago, Ill., and segregation, 226,
Brown v Board of Education, 318- 234-5, 237, 240, 252, 269, 301,
22 316, 328, 349
Brownsville, Tex., 210 Chicago Defender, 235, 240, 246
Bruce, Blanche K., 185 Chicago Urban League, 246
Buffalo, N.Y., conference in, 147 “Chief Sam,” 249
building-and-loan associations, 214 Chiriqui Province, 1 59
Bunche, Ralph, 263-4, 266, 305 Christian Socialists, 227
Bushmen, 12 Christiana, Pa., trial in, 144
businesses and professions, black- Christianity, 29, 69, 78-81
owned, 115-16, 120, 127, 150, Church of the Crucifixion, 104
170, 180, 213-18, 221-2, 225, Church, R. R., 217
229-30, 246, 252-3, 264, 286, churches, black, 5, 88, 99-105, 110-
309, 310, 323, 326-8, 349 11, 114, 119-20, 130, 135, 178-
busing, 318-22, 345, 354 9, 216-17, 244, 249-51, 31 1, 317
Butler, Benjamin, 154, 157 Cincinnati, O., 89, 92, 95, 98, 124,
Butler, Pierce, 58 160
Cincinnati Colonization Society,
Cain, R. II., 188, 191 124
Calabar, 34-6, 39 cities, migration to, 3, 217, 222,
California, 92, 108, 181, 206, 341-3 232-7, 239, 248, 258, 260-1,
Cambridge, Md., 287 268, 270, 302, 306, 315; slaves
Cambridge, Mass., 11 3 and, 87-9, 95; “free” Negroes
392 INDEX

and, 88-152 passim; blacks in, Commission on Interracial Cooper¬

207, 214, 356; conditions in, for ation, 262
migrants, 2 36—7; rural blacks’ Communists, 265-7, 273, 355; see
adjustment to, 249-53; white also Marxists
exodus from, 316, 318, 320, 344 communities, all-black, 119, 213,
Civil Rights Commission, 274, 278 248; see also ghettos and cities
civil rights laws, 181, 183, 205-7, Compromise of 1850, 57
210, 269, 270, 274, 278, 283, Compromise of 1877, 192, 194, 209
289, 291-3, 298, 317-19, 328, Concerned Negro Auto Workers,
335-8; see also U.S. Supreme 333
Court Confiscation Acts, 154, 157, 159
Civil Rights Leadership Conference, Congo River basin, 6, 7, 12
281, 293, 296 Congregationalist Church, 48, 174,
civil-rights revolution, 26, 270, 272— 175, 180, 218
357 passim Congregationalist Straight Univer¬
Civil War, 57,71, 133, 152-63 sity, 178
Claflin University, 178, 180 Congress of African People, 356
Clark College, 178 Congress of Industrial Organizations
class structure, 12-19, 90, 117-18, (CIO), 262, 268, 329, 330, 334
213-14, 217-19, 281-3, 312 Congress of Racial Equality
Clay, Henry, 122 (CORE), 272-5, 280-3, 296,
Clay, William, 348 299-300, 304, 310-11, 321-2,
Cleveland, O., 207, 235, 317, 341-2 348-9, 354
Clotel; or the President's Daughter, Congressional Black Caucus, 351,
142 352, 354
Coachmen’s Benevolent Society, Connecticut, 46, 47, 53, 92-3, 341
107 Constitutional Convention, 53-4,
Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, 58
335 Continental Congress, 52
CofEn, Levi, and fugitives, 141 Contraband Relief Association, 174
Coker, Daniel, 101, 111, 122 contrabands, 154-7, 174, 290
Cold War, Negroes and, 273 Convention of the Anti-Slavery
Coleman, William T., Jr., 346, 348 Women of the U.S., 134
colleges, 114, 175-80, 218-20, 322- convict-lease system, 199n, 203-4
3, 338, 351; see also names of Cornish, Dudley, 161
Cornish, Samuel, 123-4, 128, 132,
colonization, advocates of, 4, 5, 51,
137-8
53, 121-3, 125, 147, 151-2, 164,
cotton, 54-8, 64, 72, 156-7, 166,
211, 213, 246-9, 271; opponents
197, 208, 235, 261, 356
of, 123-6, 129, 131, 159
Cotton Club, 254
Colorado, 320, 341
cotton gin, 54-5
Colored Farmers’ Alliance and Co¬ Cotton States and International
operative Union, 196-8 Exposition, 220
Colored Methodist Episcopal Council of Federated Organizations,
Church, 179 299
Colored Orphan Asylum, 160 Councill, W. H., 202, 205
Columbia, S.C., 179 Crisis, 229, 239, 245, 247, 254, 264
commercial revolution, 27, 29 crop-lien systems, 166, 173
Index 393
Cross River, slaves and, 35 and wages, 95, 114-17, 135-6,
Crummell, Alexander, 105, 151-2 259, 269-70, 274-6, 279, 284,
Cuba, and slavery, 41, 72 287-9, 291, 294, 317, 323-5,
Cuffe, Paul, 122 328-38; laws against, 182-4,
Cullen, Countee, 257-8 274-6, 291, 317-18; trade unions
culture, 3-26 passim, 75-81, 83-4, and, 207-9, 242, 262, 283, 287,
254-6, 287, 355 294, 328, 330; and World War I,
Curtin, Philip, 38 237-9; in housing, 261, 274-6,
279, 284, 287, 291, 294, 303;
Dahomey, 12-19, 29-31, 35-6, 39 see also segregation, residential;
Dallas, Tex., 292 reverse, 323, 338; seniority sys¬
Daniels and Bell, 327 tems and, 329-31, 337-8
Dark Towers, 255 disfranchisement, 90-4, 195-201,
Darrow, Clarence, 228, 243 204, 210, 212, 220, 222-3, 225,
Daughters of the American Revolu¬ 227, 235, 244, 248, 264, 276,
tion, 259 299, 340
Davis Bend, Miss., 248 Divine, Father, 250-1
Davis, Benjamin O., Jr., 326 Dixiecrats, 269, 343
Davis, Jefferson, 168 Donatto, Martin, 64
Deacons for Defense, 304 Douglass, Frederick, 88, 96-7, 105,
Declaration of Sentiments, 131, 1 1 3, 115, 1 16, 133-5, 138-43,
134, 140 145-50, 152, 163-4, 168, 213,
Decuire, Antoine, 64 290
Delany, Martin R, 151-2, 162, 188 Douglass, Sarah, 105
democracy, Negroes and, 4, 118-19 Downing, George Thomas, 116, 182
Democratic National Convention, Drake, St. Clair, 252
challenge at, 294, 298-300, Dred Scott decision, 57
346-7 Drew, Dr. Charles, 267
Democratic Party, 93, 187, 189, Du Bois, W. E. B., 5-6, 19, 83,
192, 195-6, 199, 201, 269, 296- 119, 234, 239, 241, 245, 247,
7, 310; blacks and, 195, 199-201, 247n, 254, 264, 290, 305, 307
212, 260, 268, 345-7, 353-4, 357 Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 256
Democratic Republican Party, 93 Dunmore, Lord, and slaves, 52
depression, 253, 258, 260-1 Dunn, Oscar J., 188
Des Moines, Iowa, 238 Durham, N.C., 252, 292
Detroit, Mich., 235, 268-9, 301, Dutch, see Holland
307, 316, 320, 332-3, 341-2 Dutch Guiana, 30
Diggs, Charles, 352 Dutch West India Company, 45
Dillard University, 178 Dymally, Mervyn, 343
direct action, 97, 105, 182-3, 291,
296, 298-300, 304, 310, 312, East Cleveland, O., 317
315, 318, 340, 342, 347, 349 East India Company, 34
discrimination, 4, 51-2, 1 35, 194, F,ast St. Louis, Ill., 236, 240
202, 205, 207, 213, 217, 221, Ebony, 312, 326
244-5, 263—4, 274; Latin Amer¬ £cole des Orphelins Indigents, 111
ica, West Indies and, 70-1, 74; economy, 12-14, 31, 43-7, 50, 55-
before and during Civil War, 92, 6, 58-9, 70, 117, 160, 233-5,
128, 132, 162-3; in employment 248-9, 251-2, 285, 306, 309
394 INDEX
education, 48, 63, 99, 105, 109-14, 2; black, changes in income of,
118, 163, 165-6, 173-81, 202, 339
206, 210, 218-21, 225-6, 229, “Farewell to Liberals,” 283
309; see also schools Farmer, James, 280
Egypt, 5, 8 farming (ers), 3, 13-14, 47, 55,
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 270, 279 65-6, 72, 196, 203, 208, 233,
Elaine, Ark., 240, 243 261, 309; see also agrarians, agri¬
Elkins, Stanley, 70-1, 83-5 culture, and plantations
Elliott, Robert Brown, 186 Fauset, Jessie, 258
Ellison, Ralph, 258 Fayette, Miss., 340
Elmina, fort at, 30 Federal Housing Administration,
emancipation, 50-3, 71, 89, 90, 261
122, 152-60, 163 Federalist Party, 93, 105
Emancipation Proclamation, 139, Fellowship of Reconciliation, 273-4
158-60 Field Foundation, 278
Emancipator, 130 Finney, Charles Grandison, 129
Engerman, Stanley, 74, 83 Fire in the Flint, 258
England, 27, 29, 31-2, 40-1, 45, 52 First Baptist Church (Mobile), 104
Enlightenment, European, 50 First Baptist Church (Richmond),
Episcopal Church, 78, 101, 103-5, 102
178 First South Carolina Volunteers,
Episcopal Society for the Propaga¬ 156-8
tion of the Gospel, 109 Fisk University, 176, 180, 220
Equal Employment Opportunity Flight, 258
Commission (EEOC), 336-7 Flint, Mich., 179
equality (unequality), racial, 50-1, Florida, 57, 91, 171, 186, 188, 196,
94, 109-12, 119, 121, 127-30, 233, 343
132-3, 135-9, 146-7, 150-2, Fogel, Robert, 74, 83
156, 159, 181, 189, 192, 201, Ford, Gerald R., 346, 346n
204, 209, 220, 262, 272, 285, Ford, Johnny, 345
310-11, 314-15, 347, 350, 353 Fort Pickering, 190
Estevanico, 31 Fort Pillow, battle of, 161, 190
ethnocentrism, 4, 248 Fort Sumter, attack on, 152
Europe, 29-32, 40, 54 Fort Wagner, battle of, 162
Evanston, Ill., schools in, 319 Forten, Charlotte, 175
Evers, Charles, 348
Forten, James, 108, 115, 123, 125,
132, 145
Fair Employment Practices Com¬
Forten, Margaretta, 133
mittee, 268, 272
Fairfield, John, 141 Fortress Monroe, 154, 174
Falconbridge, Alexander, 37-8 Fortune, 327
Fall River Female Anti-Slavery So¬ France, 27, 29, 31, 56, 111
ciety, 134 franchise, see voting
family, in West Africa, 16, see also Franklin & Armfield, 59
kinship system; black American, Franklin, Benjamin, 50, 53
Africanisms and, 21-3; slave, 48, Franklin, John Hope, 69, 82, 90
59, 61, 68, 76-8; matrifocal, 77, fraternal organizations, 99, 108-9,
78, 251-2; black, and cities, 251- 120, 215-16, 244
Index 395
Frazier, E. Franklin, 21, 23-5, 75, 185, 187-8, 195, 197, 199, 203,
82, 252 204, 233, 343
Free African Societies, 101, 106, Germany, concentration camp in, 83
108, 121 Gershwin, George, 254
Free Dark Men of Color, 107 Ghana, ancient, 10-11; modern,
free Negroes, see under Negroes 30-1; see also Gold Coast
Free Soil Party, 149 ghettos, 3, 26, 98, 124, 214, 234-
freedmen, 164-71, 173-5, 192 7, 246, 248-9, 252-3, 261, 268,
Freedmen’s Bank, 216 270, 272, 276, 278, 285, 294,
Freedmen’s Bureau, 77, 166, 169, 296-7, 300-3, 306-12, 315, 317-
171-2, 175-6, 181 18, 328, 339, 356-7; see also
Freedmen’s Friend Society, 174 communities, all-black
Freedom Democratic Party, 294, Gibbs, Jonathan C., 186
299, 300, 346-7 Gibson, Kenneth, 344
Freedom Rides, 274, 280, 283, 292 God’s Trombones, 257
Freedom’s Journal, 123-4 gold, 8, 10, 14, 30-2
Fremont, John C., 156 Gold Coast, 30-4, 39; see also
French and Indian Wars, 52 Ghana
French Revolution of 1789, 56 Goldsboro, N.C., 176
fugitive slave laws, 54, 143-4, 147-9 Grace, Daddy, 23, 250
fugitive slaves, 54, 89, 141—9, 154— Grain Coast, 31,33
7, 160, 290 Grand Fountain of the United
Fundamental Constitutions of 1669 Order of True Reformers, 21 5
(Carolina), 43 "grandfather” clause, 196, 228, 244
Granger, Lester, 265
Gabriel’s Revolt, 81, 84, 86, 257 Great Bend, 11
Galilean Fishermen, 109, 215-16 Great Revival, 23
Galveston, Tex., 208 Greeley, Horace, 158
Gambia River, 7, 30 Greenbackers, 195
Gandhi, Mahatma, 273 Greene Co., Ala., 348
Gardner, Caleb, 48 Greenwich Village, N.Y., 254-5
Gardner, Newport, 48 Greenwood County, S.C., 189
Garnet, Henry Highland, 148, 152, Guinea Coast, 6, 7, 12, 30—1
164, 305 Gutman, Herbert, 77
Garrison, William Lloyd, 96, 125-6,
129-31, 133-4, 137-9, 1 52 Haiti, 20, 22, 23, 123, 151, 1 59
Garvey, Marcus, 120, 246-51, 253, Haitian Revolution, 56, 84, 89
286, 355 Hall, Prince, 108, 110
Gary, Ind., 322, 341-2, 344-5, 350, Hamburg, S.C., 190-1
352-5 Hamilton, Alexander, 93
General Education Board, 220 Hampton, Wade, 188—9
General Motors, 324 Hampton Institute, 176-7, 180,
General Theological Seminary, 104 218-20, 245
Genius of Universal Emancipation, Harlem, N.Y., 254-5, 301
125 Harlem Renaissance, 253-5, 257,
Genovese, Eugene, 74, 83 259
Georgia, 21, 25, 43-4, 49, 52, 55- Harris, Joel Chandler, 21
8, 65, 91, 102, 104, 116, 176, Harrisburg, Pa., 319
396 INDEX
Hartford, Conn., 112-13 Independent Order of St. Luke,
Hastie, William H., 260, 267, 269, 215-16
346n India, 8, 54, 273
Hatcher, Richard, 344-5, 352, 354 Indiana, 92, 112, 181
Hausa states, 11, 30, 84 Indianola, Miss., 210
Hayes, Roland, 257 Indians, American, 23, 31, 40
Hayes, Rutherford B., 192 indigo, 44, 55
Haynes, George Edmund, 234 Indus River valley, 7
Hemings, Sally, 51 Industrial Revolution, 54
Henry, Aaron, 348 Industrial Workers of the World,
Henson, Josiah, 142, 146 209
“Heritage/' 257 insurance companies, 214-16, 252
Herndon, Alonzo, 216-17 insurrections, see slaves, resistance
Hershberg, Theodore, 251 by
Herskovits, Melville J., 6, 19-26, 78, integration, 25, 79, 84, 86, 119,
82, 84 120, 128, 152, 270, 272, 286,
Heyward, DuBose, 254 308, 31 1-13, 317, 350, 352-3
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, International Association of Ma¬
158 chinists, 208
history, black, 254, 286, 312 International Brotherhood of Black¬
Hitler, Adolf, 265, 267 smiths, 208
Holland, 27, 29, 31-2,45 International Business Machines
Holmes, John Haynes, 228 (IBM), 325
Holy Rollers, 23 Interstate Commerce Commission,
Home to Harlem, 257 202, 280, 292
Hood, J. W., 179 Invisible Man, 258
Hooks, Benjamin, 345 Iowa, 92, 112
House of Prayer for All People, 23, Ireland, immigrants from, 116-17
250 Italy, 29, 267
housing, 236, 261, 279, 294, 317, Ivory Coast, 31,33
345; see also under discrimination
Houston, Charles H., 264, 274 Jackson, Andrew, 155
Houston, Tex., 205, 238, 240, 243, Jackson, Jesse, 349
316, 340 Jackson, Tenn., 179
Howard, O. O., 175 Jacksonville, Fla., 205
Howard University, 175, 180 Jamaica, 84
Hughes, Langston, 254-8 Jamestown, Va., 41
Humane Mechanics Society, 107 Jay, John, 49, 53,93
Hunter, David, 156-7
Jay, William, 105
Hurston, Zora Neale, 257
Jeanes (Anna T.) Fund, 220
Ibo, and slaves, 30, 35 Jefferson, Thomas, 49-53, 159
Ickes, Harold, 259 Jews, and demonstrations, 289
“If We Must Die,” 258 Jim Crow, see segregation
Illinois, 92, 103, 112-13, 181, 206 Johnson, Andrew, 167, 171, 183
immigrants, 116-17, 150, 235 Johnson, Anthony, 42-3
indentured servitude, 41-3, 46-7, Johnson, Charles S., 20, 24-5, 82,
92 233, 254
Index 397
Johnson, James Weldon, 224, 231, Latino, Juan, 31
244-5,256-7, 274 League of Revolutionary Black
Johnson, Lyndon B., 289, 295, 308, Workers, 333, 355
336, 34In, 345-6 Legal Rights Association, 97
Johnson, Richard, 43 legalism, 97, 114, 202-3, 206-7,
Johnson Products, 326 222-3, 243-4, 274-6, 284, 291-
Johnson Publications, 326, 328 3, 300, 310, 314, 328, 334, 337-
Joint Committee on National Re¬ 8, 347-9
covery, 259 Leonard Medical School, 179
Jones, Absolom, 100-1, 106, 108, “Let America Be America Again,”
123 258
Jones, Jehu, 116 Lewhs, John, 290
Jones, John, 181 Lewus, John L., 262
Jones, LeRoi, see Baraka Lewis, William IL, 206, 223
Jordan, Vernon, 314, 350 Liberator, 130, 138
Journal of Negro History, 6 Liberia, 151, 159
Liberty Party, 137, 148-9
Kansas, 157, 200, 206 Lincoln, Abraham, 152, 1 54, 156—
Kansas Alliance Party, 198 9, 161, 184
Kansas Exodus, 233 Lincoln University, 114, 180, 218
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 57 Lisbon, gold and slaves to, 30
Kennedy, John F., 260, 278-9, 288- literature, 48, 139, 146, 253-8, 287,
9, 295, 346n 312; see also names of books and
Kentucky, and slaves, 58, 164 writers
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 275-7, Little Rock, Ark., 279
279-80, 288, 293, 296-300, 306, Livingstone College, 179
308, 340; and “I have a dream,” Locke, Alain, 253-4
193, 290, 312, 314; death of, 334, Locke, John, 50
349 Lodge Federal Elections Bill, 197-8,
King, Mrs. Martin Luther, 352 210, 225
kinship system, in Africa, 13-17 Loguen, J. W., 143
Knights of Labor, 206-8 Longview, Tex., 240
Knights of Pythias, 215 Los Angeles, Cal., 269, 301, 316,
Korea, war in, 269 341-2, 344
Ku Klux Klan, 239, 306 Louisiana, 25, 55-7, 64-5, 73, 85,
Kumbi-Kumbi, 10-11 157, 168-9, 175-7, 185-8, 195,
199, 203, 208
labor, see trade unions Louisiana Baptist Association, 100
Lafon, Thorny, 116 Louisiana Native Guards, 157, 162
Lake Erie, battle of, 1 55n Louisiana Purchase, 90
land, 14-16, 57-8, 165-72, 233, Louisville, Ky., 108, 183, 203, 234-
261 5, 292
“Land of the Blacks,” 6 L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 56, 84
Lane, James H., 157 Lowell, Mass., schools in, 113
Lane, Lunsford, 145 Lower California, 151
Lane College, 179 Low'ndes Co., Ala., 297, 310-11,
Langston, J. Mercer, 140, 152, 164 348
Latin America, 70-1, 74 Lucy, William, 335
398 INDEX
Lundy, Benjamin, 125 Methodist Church, 23-4, 68, 78,
Lynch, John R., 186 100, 101, 103, 114, 178-80, 218,
lynching, 199, 204, 210, 240, 243, 250
258 Mexico, 8, 56-7
"Lynching, The,” 258 Meytoier family, 64
Micheaux, Elder Lightfoot, 23, 250
McCabe, E. P., 248 Michigan, 111, 341-2
McCrummell, James, 131, 140 middle-class values, 4, 25, 106, 120,
McDonnell Douglas Corporation, 126-7, 166, 213, 220
336 Middle East, 54
McGovern, George, 347 "Middle Passage,” 36-8, 40
McKay, Claude, 257-8 migration, 3, 57-8, 91-2, 102, 124—
McKim, J. Miller, 130, 139 5, 142-5, 156, 248; see also cities
Malcolm X, 295, 349 and colonization
Mali, 10-11 Minor Society, 111
Mani-Congo, 12, 39 Milliken's Bend, battle of, 162
Mann, Horace, 112 missionaries, 166-7, 169, 173-9
Mansa Musa, 11 Mississippi, 195, 215, 233, 235,
manumission, 51, 53, 61, 71, 73, 75, 294, 299, 319; slaves and, 55-7,
89, 90; see also emancipation 64-5, 73, 84-5; and blacks, 111,
marriage, forms of, in West Africa, 167-8, 170-1, 185-8, 197, 239-
15, 16, 22; and slaves, 48, 60, 40, 293, 308, 340-1, 345; and
69, 71, 76-8, 86 Freedom Rides, 280, 292; con¬
Marshall, Thurgood, 264, 295, 346 vention delegates of, 294, 299-
Marxists, 271, 283, 295, 303, 311, 300, 347
333, 355; see also Communists Mississippi River, 56
Maryland, 43-4, 47, 50, 58, 72, 88- Mississippi valley, 159, 161, 168-9
91, 104, 122-3 Missouri, 58
Masons, 108, 215-16 Missouri Compromise, 57
Massachusetts, 33, 46-7, 49, 52-3, Mobile, Ala., 89,90, 104
92,97, 113-14, 160, 182, 206 Montgomery, Ala., 275, 277, 279,
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 292, 318'
138 Montgomery, Benjamin, 168
Massachusetts General Colored As¬ Montgomery, Isaiah, 212, 248
sociation, 131 Moon, Henry Lee, 269
Massachusetts Regiments, 163 Morehouse College, 179
Meany, George, 335 Morgan v Virginia, 274
Mechanics Savings Bank, 216 Morocco, 8, 10, 39
Mediterranean, 8, 29 Morris, Robert, 114
Meharry Medical College, 179-80 Morris Brown College, 180
Memphis, Tenn., 169, 189-90, 334, Moses, Robert, 293-4
340 Mossi, 13
"Memphis Blues,” 257 Moton, R. R., 228, 245
Meredith, James, 308 Motown Records, 326—8
Meridian, Miss., 190 Mott, Lucretia, 139
Merrick, John, 215-17 Mound Bayou, Miss., 248
Mesoamerica, 7, 8 Muhammad, Elijah, 355
Messenger, 241, 245-7, 271 Murdock, George Peter, 7-8
Index 399
music, blacks and, 256-7 251, 256, 263, 271-2, 285-6,
Muslims, 6, 10, 11, 29, 30, 84; 295, 304, 307, 311-12, 315, 317-
Black, 120, 251, 285-6, 303-4, 18, 321-2, 333, 348-56
306-7, 352, 355 Native Son, 258
mutual-aid societies, 14, 21, 99, Nazarites, 109
101, 105-7, 109-11, 117, 119, Near East, 7, 8, 23
130, 215-16 Negro American Labor Council
My Bondage and My Freedom, 146 (NALC), 334-5
Myrdal, Gunnar, 120-1, 253, 305 Negro a Beast, The, 211
Myth of the Negro Past, 6 Negro Family in the United States,
21
Nancy, revolt on, 36 Negro: A Menace to Civilization,
Narborough, mutiny on, 36 The, 211
Nashville, Tenn., 179—80, 205, 209, “Negro Speaks of Rivers, The,” 257
292 Negroes, exploration by, 31; free,
Natchez, Miss., 55, 169 52, 71, 74-5, 88-152 passim,
Nation, The, 283 154-5, 157, 159; upper and mid¬
National Association for the Ad¬ dle class, 105, 217, 242-3, 245-
vancement of Colored People 7, 252-3, 257, 265, 273, 312,
(NAACP), 224, 227-8, 230-1, 317, 356; and self-help, 109-13,
238-9, 241, 243-5, 247, 253, 119, 126-8, 143-5, 147, 150,
259, 263-8, 271-300 passim, 306, 212-13, 220-1, 229-30, 252-3,
310, 312, 318, 320, 328, 331, 287; economic status of, 110,
334, 348-50, 352-3 114-17, 127, 163, 167, 170-1,
National Colored Alliance, 196-8 180, 207, 213-14, 242-3, 245-6,
National Convention of Colored 251-2, 256-7, 263, 265, 274,
Men, 164-5 278, 285, 292, 323-39 passim,
National Guardsmen, 302, 307 346, 349, 356; Creole, 155; future
National Industrial Recovery Act, of, 163-4, 356; as public officials,
codes of, 259 185-9, 195, 198-200, 206, 210,
National Labor Relations Board, 212, 222-3, 252, 260, 268-9,
338 340-6, 348, 352; alleged inferior¬
National Labor Union, 207 ity of, 21 1, 225; “Radical,” 224,
National Negro Business League, 227-30; as strikebreakers, 242-3,
229 262-3; differing viewpoints of,
National Negro Conference, 227 271-2; New, see New Negroes
National Negro Congress, 266 Neolithic period, 7
National Negro Convention Move¬ New Bedford, Mass., 113, 115
ment, 109, 121, 124-8, 130-2, New Deal, 246, 258-65, 267
147-50, 183-4 New England, 40, 46-8, 50, 85, 129
National Equal Rights League, 164 New England Anti-Slavery Society,
National Republicans, 93 130-1
National Urban League, 233, 242— “New Guinea,” 98
3, 245, 254-5, 259, 263-6, 271, New Hampshire, slavery in, 46
282, 284, 296, 298-300, 349-50 New IIaven, Conn., 98, 112, 127
National Welfare Rights Organiza¬ New Jersey, 45, 53, 92
tion, 349 New Left, 355
nationalism, 119-20, 150-1, 248, New Negro, 244-5, 253-5, 275, 286
400 INDEX
New Netherlands, 45 North Carolina Mutual Life In¬
New Orleans, La., 177, 179, 184— surance Company, 326
5, 208, 292; blacks in, 89, 90, North Carolina Mutual and Provi¬
108, 111, 116, 118, 189, 234, dent Association, 215-16
316, 320; segregation in, 95-6, North Star, 139
182-3, 203; battle of, 155 Northern Farmers’ Alliance, 196,
New Orleans Native Guards, 155 198
New Orleans Tribune, 168-9 Northwest, Old, 129
New Orleans JJniversity, 178 Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 53,
New York, 89, 92-4, 98, 102-5, 91-2
112-13, 117, 123, 160, 214, 227,
234, 268-9, 316, 322; and slavery, Ocean Hill-Brownsville, N.Y., 322
45-6, 48, 53; race riots in, 96, Odd Fellows, 108-9, 215-16
160, 207; and segregation, 96-7, Office of Economic Opportunity, 300
206; and antislavery movement, Office of Federal Contract Com¬
127, 129-30, 134-5, 139 pliance (OFCC), 336-7
New York Anti-Slavery Society, 135 Office of Minority Business Enter¬
New York Colored American, 105, prise, 327
128, 132, 135, 138 Ogden, Peter, 108
New York Evening Post, 227 Ohio, 92, 94, 103, 112-14, 124,
New York Manumission Society, 140, 207
110, 115 Oklahoma, 195, 248-9, 261
New York Society of Free People of Omaha, convention in, 198
Color, 110 Onderdonk, Benjamin T., 104-5,
New York Society for Promoting 131
the Manumission of Slaves, 53 O’Neill, Eugene, 256
New York State Suffrage Associa¬ Operation Breadbasket, 349
tion, 150 Opportunity, 254
New York State Vigilance Com¬ Orangeburg, S.C., 178, 277
mittee, 142-4 Order No. 15, 167
New York Stock Exchange, 327 Oregon, and free blacks, 92
New York Times, The, 160 Oyo, 18
New York Tribune, 112, 158
Newark, N.J., 301, 307, 316, 320, Page, Thomas Nelson, 211
341-2, 344, 356 Pan-Africanism, 5, 247n, 354
Newport, R.I., 33, 99, 106, 110 Park (H. G.) Sausage Company,
Niagara Movement, 226-8, 230, 326, 328
241 ‘'passing,” 255-7
Niger Delta, 31, 35, 39 Paterson, Basil, 347
Niger River, 7, 8, 10-12, 34-5 patrol system, 62
Nigeria, 31 Paul, Thomas, 102-3
Nixon, Richard M., 317, 319, 327, Payne, Daniel Alexander, 111
343, 345-6 Payne Institute, 180
Norfolk, Va, 102, 165 Peake, Mary, 174
North Carolina, 44, 50, 53, 55-6, Pennington, J. W. C., 132
58, 61, 90, 168, 179, 200, 201; Pennsylvania, 46, 48-50, 53, 92-4,
blacks in, 89, 91, 103, 195, 198, 104, 105, 112, 114, 184, 207,
203, 204 341
Index 401
Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, urban, 64, 88, 124, 161, 232-4,
135 302, 320
Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting of Populist Party, 195-201
Friends, 50 Porgy and Bess, 254
People United to Save Humanity Port Hudson, battle of, 162
(PUSH), 349 Port Royal, S.C., 175-6
Peru, 8 Portugal, 27, 29-32, 40, 70
Petersburg, Ya., 102 Powell, Adam Clayton, 268
Philadelphia, Pa., 110, 116, 123, Presbyterians, 79, 104, 114, 178
143, 174, 214, 216-17, 236; Price, J C , 179
blacks in, 46, 89, 93, 95, 101-2, pride, racial, 109, 120, 128, 150,
106-8, 112, 115, 118, 128, 234, 213, 222, 247, 253, 286, 308,
251, 269; and segregation, 96, 98, 313, 350
182, 226; and Negro Convention primaries, white, 196, 244, 264,
Movement, 124-7, 129, 131, 134 276, 292
Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Progressive Party, 210-11, 227-8,
Society, 133 269
Philadelphia Library Company of Protestant church, 79, 289
Colored Persons, 107 protests, 118, 245, 253, 258, 260,
Philadelphia Library Company and 263, 265, 268, 270, 276, 278,
Debating Society, 108 294-7, 299, 300, 328, 341;
Philadelphia Plan, 336-7 against discrimination and dis¬
Philbrick, Edward, 167 franchisement, 94, 97, 105, 121—
Phillips, U. B., 69, 74, 82-3 2, 127, 181-3, 196, 206, 223-4,
Philomathean Institute of New 226, 230, 233, 268, 284, 287;
York, 108 concerning schools, 112-14;
Phoenix Society of New York, 107 against racism, 120; against col¬
Pinchback, P. B. S., 186-7 onization, 123; militant, 224,
Pittsburgh, Pa., race riots in, 95 239-40, 272, 275-6, 284, 286-7,
plantations, 3, 26, 29, 40, 42-4, 46, 305, see also direct action; frag¬
50, 54-5, 57, 64-9, 72-5, 77, 85, mentation, failure, and decline of,
155-7, 159, 165-9, 208, 251 228, 298, 308, 310-11, 348-9;
Planter, The, 1 56 by black unionists, 331-5, 338;
Plessy v Ferguson, 203, 318 non-violent, see direct action
Plymouth, Mass., and slavery, 47 Providence, R.I., 33, 95, 98, 108
Providence Baptist Ass’n, 103
politics, 12-13, 15, 17-18/50, 192;
Pulaski County, Ark., 208
blacks and, 147-50, 184-9, 194—
Purvis, Robert, 1 13, 125, 127, 1 31,
201, 204-6, 210-12, 221-3, 225,
133, 140, 143, 145
227-30, 248, 252, 259-60, 268-
70, 273, 276, 278, 287, 291, 296- Quakers, 46, 50, 101, 105, 109
7, 309-10, 315, 317, 335, 339-
48, 350-4, 357 race riots, 92-3, 95, 117, 124, 160,
poll tax, 94, 195-6, 205, 262 189-91, 195-6, 200, 204, 207,
Poor People’s Campaign, 312 236, 238-41, 243, 268, 283, 300,
population, and social institutions, 333; new style, 301-4, 307-8, 310
7, 12; slave, 33, 43-6, 56-7, 63- Radical Abolitionist Party, 149
5, 73, 84; of blacks, rural and Raleigh, N.C., 178-9, 340
404 INDEX
343; Africanisms in, 21, 25, 254; Taconic Foundation, 278
and slavery, 43-5, 49, 57—8, 64-5, Taft, William Howard, 210, 222,
72, 84-5; constitutional conven¬ 230
tion in, 169, 185, 212; and "Talented Tenth,” 225
schools, 176-7, 180, 319 Talladega College, 176
Southern Christian Leadership Con¬ Tallahassee, Fla., 275
ference (SCLC), 276, 279— Tallulah, La., 340
83, 288-9, 293, 298, 300, 312, Tannenbaum, Frank, 70-1
334, 348-9 Tappan, Lewis and Arthur, 125,
Southern Conference Educational 129, 134-5, 137, 144
Fund, 262 Taylor, Benjamin O., 64
Southern Conference for Human Tennessee, 55-8, 61, 64, 91, 196,
Welfare, 262 202
Southern Farmers’ Alliance, 196-8 Terrell, Robert H., 223
Southern Regional Council, 262 Texas, 56-7, 64, 171, 196, 199, 233,
Southern Tenant Farmers Union, 261, 277
261 theater, blacks and, 256, 312
Soviet Russia, Nazis and, 265-7 Thomas, Lorenzo, 161
Spain, 27, 29,31,40,55-6, 70 Thoughts on African Colonization,
Spartanburg, S.C., 238 126
Spelman College, 178, 219-20 Thurmond, Strom, 343
Spingarn, Amy and Joel, 255 Tilden, Samuel ]., 192
spirituals, Negro, 80 Tillman, Benjamin, 198
Springfield, Ill., 207 Timbuktu, 10, 11, 30
Stampp, Kenneth, 69, 82-3 "To the Negro Washerwoman,”
Standard Oil, 324 257
Stanton, Edwin M., 157-8 To Secure These Rights, 270
Still, William, 115, 143, 182 tobacco, 44, 50, 55, 57-8, 65, 72,
Stono Revolt, 85 356
Storey, Moorfield, 228 Togo, 31
student movement, 277-9, 281, Toomer, Jean, 257
311-12, 322, 351, 355; see also Tougaloo College, 176, 178, 219
SNCC Townsend, Willard, 263
Student Nonviolent Coordinating trade routes, 8, 10
Committee (SNCC), 279-83, Trade Union Leadership Confer¬
294, 296, 299-300, 304, 310-11, ence (TULC), 332-3
348 trade unions, and blacks, 205-9,
suburbs, 316-17, 320, 344, 356 242-3, 245-6, 283, 287, 294,
Sudan, 6-12; see also West Africa 328-35, 337—8, 351; integration
suffrage, see voting in, 262-3, 268; and civil rights
sugar, 29, 31,55-7,65,72 groups, 289-90; cynicism about
Sumner, Charles F., 114, 165, 182, leaders of, 295; and Vietnam,
183 299; federal government and,
Supplementary Civil Rights Bill, 331, 335, 337-8
165, 183-4 Trotter, William Monroe, 224, 226
Survey Graphic, 253, 255 True Reformers’ Bank, 216
Sweet case, 241, 243 Truman, Harry S., 268-70, 346n
Syracuse, N.Y., and runaways, 143 Truth, Sojourner, 139, 145, 182
Index 405
Tubman, Harriet, 141-2, 145-6, U.S. War Department, 166-7, 175,
290 238-9
Tulsa, Okla., race riot in, 240 United Steelworkers of America,
Turner, Henry M., 185, 249 329-30, 337
Turner, Lorenzo, 21 Universal Negro Improvement As¬
Turner, Nat, 81-2, 86, 103, 290 sociation (UNIA), 246-7
Tuskegee, Ala., 275, 292, 345 universities, see colleges
Tuskegee Civic Association, 275 Up from Slavery, 223
Tuskegee Institute, 219-20, 228, Urban League, see National Urban
245, 267, 271 League

Uncle Remus tales, 21 Van Vechten, Carl, 254-5

Uncle Tom's Children, 258 Yardaman, J. K., 202, 211
Underground Railroad, 97, 115, Vesey, Denmark, 81, 103
130, 132, 141-4 Vicksburg, Miss., 169
Union Relief Association of Israel Vietnam War, 299-300
Bethel Church, 174 vigilance committees, 141-4
United Automobile Workers, 262— Yillard, Oswald Garrison, 227-8
3, 290, 332-3 violence, 194-5, 209-10, 227, 235,
United Mine Workers, 209, 262, 295; advocacy of, 147-9, 303-8,
329 310, 312; and schools, 181, 320;
United Packinghouse Workers, 333 retaliatory, 190-1, 239-41, 301—
United States, 40-1, 55-6 7, 309-10; effect of, on social
U.S. Constitution, and slavery, 53- change, 285; Black Muslims and,
4, 129; Amendments to: Thir¬ 286; see also race riots
teenth, 159; Fourteenth, 165, Virginia, 44, 50, 52, 55, 89, 102—
183, 205, 206, 244; Fifteenth, 4, 168, 180, 195; and slavery, 33,
185, 205, 244 43-5, 47, 53, 58, 61, 64, 81-2,
U.S. Department of Health, Educa¬ 84-5, 90; black and white rela¬
tion and Welfare, 319, 338, 346 tions in, 41-3; and segregation,
U.S. Department of Justice, 337-8, 176-7, 203
341, 345 Virginia House of Burgesses, 42-3, 51
U.S. Department of Labor, 336-8, Virginia Readjusters, 195
346 Virginia Union University, 179-80
U.S. Housing Authority, 261 Volta River, 7, 31
United States Steel, 337 voodoo, 20, 25
U.S. Supreme Court, and civil voting, slaves and, 48; blacks and,
rights, 196, 203, 205, 210, 223, 91-5, 149, 164-5, 184-5, 194-6,
237, 244, 302; and grandfather 222, 226-8, 276, 289, 292-4,
clause, 228, 244; and Scottsboro 317, 340-3, 345-7; universal
case, 262; and segregation on white male, 93, 185; qualifications
public transportation, 274, 276; for, 195-6, 205, 210, 212, 222,
and educational segregation, 274, see also grandfather clause; regis¬
276, 279, 318-20, 322-3, 345; tration campaigns for, 278-9,
and reapportionment, 275, 3 39— 291-2, 294, 299, 308-9, 347,
40; and Montgomery, 292; and 353-4
employment practices, 337 Voting Rights Acts, 31 5 339-41,
U.S. Treasury Department, 166-7 345-6
406 INDEX
Wade, Richard C., 81n White Citizens’ Councils, 276
Wald, Lillian, 228 whites, support of blacks by, 111-
Walker, A’Leila, 255 12, 125-7, 144, 146-7, 220, 254-
Walker, Madam C. J., 217-18 6, 259, 342; role of, in civil rights
Walker, David, 124-5, 305 movement, 227-8, 242, 245, 264,
Walker, George, 256 272-4, 282-4, 290, 293-6, 298-
Walker, Quok, 49 300
Walker’s Appeal, 124-5, 148 Whitney, Eli, 54-5
Wallace, George, 343-5 Whydah, and slave trade, 34-5
Wangara, goldfields of, 8, 10, 30 Wilberforce University, 114
War of 1812, 56, 155, 162 Wiley, George, 349
War on Poverty, 300 Wilkins, Roy, 290, 303
Ward, Samuel R., 1 35, 145, 152 Williams, Bert, 256
Washington, Booker T., 179, 205, Williams, Peter, 104, 131
210, 220-31, 242, 245, 252, 275, Williams, Robert F., 303-4, 306
290, 297-8 Williams, Roger, 47
Washington, D.C., 158, 174, 183, Williamsburg, Va., 102
312; and blacks, 89, 104, 107-8, Wilmington, N.C., 189, 196, 200,
111-12, 174, 182, 205-6, 216, 204
234, 316, 320, 341; race riots in, Wilson, Woodrow, 210-11, 227,
241, 307; threatened march on, 230
268-9, 272-3, 278; March on Winston-Salem, N.C., 292
(1963), 283, 289-90, 293, 296, Wisconsin, 112
298, 335 women, 13-14, 17, 21-2, 58, 77-8,
Washington, George, 49, 52 117, 129, 133-4, 139, 220, 251,
Washington, Walter, 341n 337
Watkins, William, 125, 132 Wood River Baptist Association,
Watson, Tom, 199, 201 103
Watts, riots in, 307 Woodson, Carter G., 6, 19, 69, 254
Watts Industrial Park, 327 Woolman, John, 50
Weaver, Robert C., 260, 279 Worcester, Mass., 113
Weld, Theodore Dwight, 129, 134, World War I, 232-9, 242, 248,
136-7, 144 301-2, 305-7
Welles, Gideon, 154 World War II, 267-8, 306
Wells-Barnett, Ida, 224, 227 Wright, J. J, 186
West Africa, 5,8, 9, 12-19, 39
Wright, Richard, 258
West Indies, 20, 22-3, 54; and
Wright, Theodore S., 132-3, 135,
slaves and slave trade, 32, 40-2,
74, 79; see also Caribbean 137, 144-5
Western Colored Baptist Conven¬
tion, 103 Yellow River valley, 7
What the Negro Thinks, 245 “Yet Do I Marvel,” 258
Wheatley, Phillis, 48 Yoruba, 12-14, 16, 18, 30, 152
Whigs, 93, 149 Young, Andrew, 348
Whipper, William, 127-8 Young, Charles, 238
White, George H., 200 Young, Whitney M., Jr., 284, 303
White, Walter F., 245, 258, 263, Young Men’s Christian Association
265 (YMCA), 238
 (continued from front flap)

retaliatory violence in the sixties and sug¬

gests the direction the civil-rights move¬
ment is taking in the very different politi¬
cal and economic climate of the seventies.
Reviewers of the original edition of
From Plantation to Ghetto praised it for
its combination of thorough scholarship,
original interpretation, and forceful state¬
ment. In the ten years since it was first
published, it has become a standard work.
Major revisions now bring this distin¬
guished book up to date.

August Meier is University Professor of

History and Senior Research Fellow in the
Center for Urban Regionalism at Kent
State University. He is the author of
Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915.
Elliott Rudwick is Professor of History
and Sociology and Senior Research Fellow
in the Center for Urban Regionalism at
Kent State University and the author of
W. E. B. Du Bois, Propagandist of the
Negro Protest and Race Riot at East St.
Louis, July 2, 1917. Professors Meier and
Rudwick have jointly edited several docu¬
mentaries and anthologies, and most re¬
cently have written CORE: A Study in
the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968.

Aida DiPace Donald, Consulting Editor

Hill and Wang

19 Union Square West
New York 10003

ISBN 0-8090-4792-6
From the reviews of the original edition

"The book is done with such thoroughness and subtlety that

it must stand as a classic indication of how the multidisciplinary
approach can enrich historical understanding/7
The American Historical Review

"For the student of Negro history, this is an excellent intro¬

duction . . . The scholarship, as one would expect, is almost
impeccable/7
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"In this rich synthesis the historical role of the Negro Ameri
can takes on new meaning, as his contemporary role takes q
new urgency.77
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mended.77
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