Race Harmony and Black Progress

Mark Ellis

Description

White southern intellectuals and the "Negro Problem"

Founded by white males, the interracial cooperation movement flourished in the American South in the years before the New Deal. The movement sought local dialogue between the races, improvement of education, and reduction of interracial violence, tending the flame of white liberalism until the emergence of white activists in the 1930s and after. Thomas Jackson (Jack) Woofter Jr., a Georgia sociologist and an authority on American race relations, migration, rural development, population change, and social security, maintained an unshakable faith in the "effectiveness of cooperation rather than agitation." Race Harmony and Black Progress examines the movement and the tenacity of a man who epitomized its spirit and shortcomings. It probes the movement's connections with late 19th-century racial thought, Northern philanthropy, black education, state politics, the Du Bois-Washington controversy, the decline of lynching, the growth of the social sciences, and New Deal campaigns for social justice.

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Jack Woofter–The Education of a Southern Liberal
2. Thomas Jesse Jones and Negro Education
3. Migration and War
4. Will Alexander and the Commission on Interracial Cooperation
5. Dorsey, Dyer, and Lynching
6. The Limits of Interracial Cooperation
7. Northern Money and Race Studies
8. Howard Odum and the Institute for Research in Social Science
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Ethnic Studies
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• América
• State
• South
• History of the Americas
• American
• United States
• FL
• Local
• KY
• LA
• TN
• MS
• SC
• NC
• AR
• VA
• GA

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 16 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253010667
• Langue: English

Extrait

RACE HARMONY AND BLACK PROGRESS
Race Harmony and Black Progress
Jack Woofter and the Interracial Cooperation Movement
Mark Ellis
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
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2013 by Mark Ellis
All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellis, Mark, [date]-
Race harmony and black progress : Jack Woofter and the interracial cooperation movement / Mark Ellis.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01059-9 (cl : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01066-7 (eb) 1. Woofter, Thomas Jackson, 1893-1972. 2. Alexander, Will Winton, 1884-1956. 3. Jones, Thomas Jesse, 1873-1950. 4. Odum, Howard Washington, 1884-1954. 5. Commission on Interracial Cooperation. 6. Southern States-Race relations-History-20th century. 7. African Americans-Southern States-Social conditions-20th century. 8. Sociologists-United States-Biography. I. Title.
E185.98.W66E55 2013
301.092-dc23
[B]
2013019196
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13
In Memory of
Josephine Ellis
and
Kathleen Ellis
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Jack Woofter : The Education of a Southern Liberal
2 Thomas Jesse Jones and Negro Education
3 Migration and War
4 Will Alexander and the Commission on Interracial Cooperation
5 Dorsey, Dyer, and Lynching
6 The Limits of Interracial Cooperation
7 Northern Money and Race Studies
8 Howard Odum and the Institute for Research in Social Science
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
My interest in T. J. Woofter Jr. began when I came across his defense of the record of African American soldiers in World War I. He served as an officer in the AEF HQ under Pershing and was certain that derogatory comments made about the Ninety-second Division during and after the war were false. All I knew then was that he was a white southern sociologist whose work was widely referenced, especially in relation to black migration and farm problems during the Great Depression. I was unaware of his work for the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, or the Institute for Research in Social Science, or his association with key figures in the wider interracial cooperation movement and the antilynching campaign. As I examined the range of his activities and publications, it became clear that his work between 1910 and 1930 combined key elements of the Social Gospel, southern liberalism, and the engagement of the social sciences with the race problem. In his energetic yet diffident manner, Jack Woofter advanced all three phenomena.
Woofter left no collection of papers, so his career before the New Deal has to be constructed largely from the records of organizations that employed him or individuals with whom he worked or corresponded. I am grateful for the essential advice I received from archivists and librarians in many repositories, including the Strathclyde University Library, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, the Joyner Library at East Carolina University, the Rockefeller Archive Center at Sleepy Hollow, New York, the Southern Historical Collection of the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina, the Tuskegee University Archives, the Center for Oral History at Columbia University, the Danville, Virginia, Public Library, the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the National Personnel Records Center.
I would also like to thank the British Academy for a research grant that has enabled me to pursue aspects of this work further, and the School of Humanities at the University of Strathclyde for assistance toward the cost of reproducing photographs.
Many people helped me with various questions, including Julie O. Kerlin, Clarence T. Maxey, Sally Guy Brown, Lesley Leduc, and Alfred Perkins. For their kindness and hospitality, I am especially grateful to John and Sharon Mackintosh. For their support and advice, I am indebted to my colleagues David Brown and Allan Macinnes, and especially to Richard Finlay, for ensuring that I had the time to begin this project; and also to Tricia Barton and Ann Bartlett for countless favors.
I owe the biggest thanks of all, for their support and inspiration, to my father and to my wife, Sue, and to Tom and Sam.
Abbreviations
AEF HQ
American Expeditionary Force, Headquarters
AGO
Adjutant General s Office
AMEZ
African Methodist Episcopal Zion
ANISS
Association of Negro Industrial Secondary Schools
ASNLH
Association for the Study of Negro Life and History
AUC
Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, Atlanta, Ga.
CCRR
Commission on the Church and Race Relations
CIC
Commission on Interracial Cooperation.
CND
Council of National Defense
CUCOHC
Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection, New York
DNE
Division of Negro Economics
GEB
General Education Board
GFWC
Georgia Federation of Women s Clubs
GSCRR
Georgia State Committee on Race Relations.
GSIC
Georgia School Improvement Club
HRBML
Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens
IRSS
Institute for Research in Social Science
ISRR
Institute of Social and Religious Research
LC
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.
LSRM
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.
MWL
Mississippi Welfare League
MUGAB
Minutes of University of Georgia Board of Trustees, Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens
NA
National Archives, College Park, Md.
NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
NACW
National Association of Colored Women
NGA
National Governors Association
NPRC
National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Mo.
NRC
National Research Council
NUL
National Urban League
OPF
Official Personnel Folder.
PAA
Population Association of America
PSF
Phelps-Stokes Fund Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
RAC
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.
RRBML
David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, Durham, N.C.
RG
Record Group SC Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
SHC
Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
SFCWC
Southeastern Federation of Colored Women s Clubs
SPC
Southern Publicity Committee
SSC
Southern Sociological Congress
SSRC
Social Science Research Council
TUA
Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee, Ala.
UCSRQ
University Commission on Southern Race Questions
UGA
University of Georgia UMAL Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
UNC
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
UNIA
Universal Negro Improvement Association
YMCA
Young Men s Christian Association
YWCA
Young Women s Christian Association
RACE HARMONY AND BLACK PROGRESS
Introduction
Jack Woofter and Southern Research
This book assesses the interracial cooperation movement in the South before the New Deal and focuses on the work of its most important young white activist, the Georgian sociologist Thomas Jackson (Jack) Woofter Jr. (1893-1972). As a field worker, researcher, and organizer, he maintained an unshakable faith in the effectiveness of cooperation rather than agitation when real results are desired. 1 The extent to which this approach led the interracial cooperation movement to achievements of lasting note has divided both contemporary critics of the Jim Crow system and subsequent analysts.
The three main goals of the interracial cooperation movement-local dialogue between the races, improvements in education, and the reduction of lynching- were most clearly expressed by the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC), founded by white reformers in Atlanta in 1919 with the support of conservativ