initiative, but they did little more than set the stage for more insistent demands by a minority group which had been called upon for equal sacrifice, but had continued to receive unequal rewards. Another major factor in the reawakening of Americans to an interest in civil rights has been the Nation's profound involvement in international affairs and the realization that America's prestige in a world torn between ideologies often rests heavily on its performance in living up to its avowed principles of democracy. This new external pressure has brought about a searching reconsideration of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. America's new position of world leadership has encouraged action by private groups and government at all levels. It has similarly heightened the interest of the American business community in the condition of the Negro. The interest has been expressed in several divergent ways. One involves the potential of the Negro as buyer to generate a substantial increase in consumption of goods and services. The business community is also conscious of the studies which show that slum sections of the city yield only about six percent of its total tax receipts but absorb about 45 percent of the total cost of municipal services. And the businessman is growing increasingly aware that refusal to hire qualified Negroes for positions of responsibility is a waste of manpower resources and talent. As the century following emancipation draws to a close, more forces are working for the realization of civil rights for all Americans than ever before in history. Government is active in every branch and at every level, if not in every region. Voluntary associations in the field have multiplied at such a rate that it is difficult to catalog them. In this swirl of social change, a new pattern is emerging. While it does not reveal solutions to the problems it poses, it offers an increasingly clear portrait of the differing character of civil rights problems which must be met in different regions of the country. In the South, the problem may be characterized generally as resistance to the established law of the land and to social change. The irresistible force is moving the object which was thought to be immovable; progress is slow and often painful, but it is steady and it appears to be inevitable. In the North, the issue is not one of resistance to law. It is here that segregation and discrimination are usually de facto rather than de jure, and it is here that the last battle for equal rights may be fought in America. The "gentlemen's agreement" that bars the minority citizen from housing outside the ghetto; the employment practices that often hold him in a menial status, regardless of his capabilities; and the overburdened neighborhood schools, which deprive him of an adequate education, despite his ambitions-these are the subtler forms of denial and the more difficult to eliminate. Beyond these factors, which are largely ones of public attitude, there is the increasing problem of physical change. The minority person has been anxious to flee the confines of rural life for the promise of the city. In the rural areas, change often comes slowly and customs may linger beyond their validity. The city, by contrast, provides a climate for the generation and acceptance of new ideas. Yet contemporary history has demonstrated that the growing city becomes a significant menace to minority rights when its physical facilities, public services, and private opportunities fall behind the demands generated by the population. As a city dweller, the Negro seemingly should gain from efforts to replace dilapidated housing and neighborhoods, to achieve efficient transportation systems, and to make the city a center of community and culture. Instead such projects have often exacerbated the problems of minority residents. The fixing of highway routes and selection of sites for large-scale housing projects, parks, and civic centers historically follow the path of least resistance. This path frequently leads across the depressed neighborhood of the minority person. When old housing is eliminated without providing adequate replacement units for its residents, the result is more overcrowding of the remaining minority neighborhoods. And there, because of the custom of assigning pupils to the schools in the neighborhoods in which they live, the minority child receives an inferior education in a crowded and segregated school. Thus one paradox gives rise to another. The Negro suffers from the denial of his rights in the rural area because it refuses to change. He suffers from denials in the city because it must change. In the South, he has struggled to get into the neighborhood school. In the North, he is fighting to get out of it. While he seeks and has largely found identification with the mainstream of American life, he has suffered more than others from its occupational and technological dislocations. As a Nation, we have solved Tocqueville's paradox of a free society's dependence upon a system of slavery. In doing so, we have been presented with new paradoxes for which we have not yet evolved solutions. We have come a far journey from a distant era in the 100 years since the Emancipation Proclamation. At the beginning of it, there was slavery. At the end, there is citizenship. Citizenship, however, is a fragile word with an ambivalent meaning. The condition of citizenship is not yet full-blown or fully realized for the American Negro. There is still more ground to cover. The final chapter in the struggle for equality has yet to be written. Bibliography Works Cited in This Report ALEXANDER, William T., History of the Colored Race in America, 2d ed., Kansas City, Mo. (1887). AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS, News Letter, August 11, 1960. AMERICAN NEGRO ACADEMY, Washington, D.C., The Negro and the Elective Franchise, Washington, D.C. (1905). APTHEKER, Herbert: A Documentary History of the Negro People in the The Negro in the Abolitionist Movement, New York ARNOLD, Isaac N., The History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery, Chicago, Ill. (1866). BAILER, Lloyd H., "The Automobile Unions and Negro Labor," 59 Pol. Sci. Q., 548 (1944). BAKER, Ray Stannard, and DODD, William Edward, eds., The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: War and Peace, New York (3 vols., 1927). BASLER, Roy P., ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, New Brunswick, N.J. (8 vols., 1953). BENTLEY, George R., A History of the Freedmen's Bureau, Philadelphia, Pa. (1955). BERGER, Morroe, Equality by Statute; Legal Controls Over Group Discrimination, New York (1952). BOOTH, Charles, Zachary Macaulay: His Part in the Movement for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and of Slavery, London, Eng. (1934). |