The Negro in American Society; 4; Adelaide Hill: Early Urbanization of the Negro

[announcer]: The Negro in American society. [music]: Get your days work done [repeat twice] or you’ll be racing with the sun The average person somehow feels, is convinced rather, that the coming of the black man and woman to the big urban centers in some way accounts for the decline of the cities, and the creation of the dirt and dangerous situation in which the are. And the premise of this feeling is I think that the black people do not belong in cities, are new to city life and are indeed unready if not incapable of functioning in it. And because these unready and unfit negroes insist on coming into the cities, the good, white and believing people have left the cities to them for the towns and the suburbs, where they can live among people like themselves; happily and removed from it all.

[music] The urban slave became a different person, more worldly, more independent. And control on him no longer came in a personal away from his master. This is not to say that he was free, but certain circumstances were changing. [Music] [Speaker]: Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, St. Louis, Akron, Cincinnati were among the thriving urban Negro communities before the Civil War. [music, singing] [music, singing]

[Speaker]: People managed to live full and fruitful lives within them. The negro church, the negro press, the Masonic and other fraternal orders, literary and cultural societies, as well as opportunities, platforms for coordinating protest all arose withIn the free negro communities in the North. They had a style of life and sophistication that clearly marked them off as urban. [Music] [Speaker]: Many of the teachers who told Johnny to be a waiter or Suzy to be a nice house girl had never in their lives, never seen a negro doing anything else but that. And some may have been insidious about it but I think just as many were not. So this was a product of the northern situation. In the south

people did see, people did know, there’s old Dr. So-and-so, ya know, even if he get to come around the side door in a white setting. He was known as a functioning member of the There was a negro hospital. Maybe you died there earlier but nevertheless existed, and people knew that. And this had I think an effect on the image and the aspirations. [music, vocals] And I've said it, and written, and commented on it, I mean I'm finding myself saying that because it’s all negro somehow it’s wrong. I don't believe that at all. Six studies by eminent Negro scholars of the American Negro from the time

period to the present. Tonight, part four. Dr. Adelaide Hill examines the early urbanization of the Negro, recorded at the Patrick T. Campbell Junior High School in Roxbury. The fourth meeting of the community lecture series is opened by Chairman Hubert E. Jones. Welcome to the fourth lecture of the community lecture series on the Negro in American society. The community lecture series as you know is a cooperative educational program sponsored by 24 organizations in Roxbury and Newton. The purpose of the community lecture series is to present the true history of the Negro in America, as a framework for understanding contemporary events and to expose persons from the Roxbury and Newton communities to Negro intellectuals who have made a substantial contribution to American society. Our speaker tonight, Dr. Adelaide Hill, will certainly bring alive our purpose.

She has made substantial contributions to this nation and particularly to the Greater Boston community. Dr. Hill was born in Washington D.C. in 1919 and was educated in the public schools. She is one of the many illustrious graduates of Dunbar High School which also claims as alumni Dr. Charles Penderhills [?] and Sen. Edward Brooke, of this community. I hasten to add that until 1954, I believe was 1953 Dunbar High School was a legally segregated institution with an all-Negro faculty and student body. At that time it was one of the most outstanding public high schools in this country and educated some of the most fabulous people who have made tremendous contributions to this country. Dr. Hill attended Smith College where she earned a B.A. degree, graduating in

1940 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1944 she earned a degree in social work from Bryn Mawr College and worked as a social worker for a number of years including a tenure as executive secretary of the Englewood New Jersey Urban League. From 1942 to the present she has been a teacher of sociology at a variety of colleges including Hunter College in New York City, Smith College, and Boston University. In 1952 she earned a doctorate degree from Radcliffe College. Her doctoral dissertation was on Boston's Negro community. Since 1953 she has devoted herself to African affairs in urban centers and African American Negro relations. In this regard she has been associated with Boston University's African Studies Program. Presently at Boston University, she is assistant professor of sociology and

reearch associate at the African Studies Program. For a number of years she has taught an excellent course on Negro history in Harvard University's extension program. The impact of that course has been fantastic. It is in part responsible for the initiation of this community lecture series. Many of her former students are here tonight. They have come back to dip into this fabulous well. Dr. Hill is co-author with Martin Kilson of a forthcoming anthology of Negro writings on Africa to be published in the spring by Frank Cass of London. She resides in Watertown with her husband and son. I waited a long time for this night. It is indeed a great pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Adelaide Hill who will speak on the early urbanization of the Negro. Dr. Hill. [unintelligible] He told me it was gonna be short; he must be a ministerial candidate, much too

long. Friends and former students and whatnot it's nice to have you come back to hear the same material again. It's from the problems of teaching when you like to have students take your course the second time when you look down the road and say oh all of those jokes, I can’t tell them this term, what am I going to do? I’ll not to be too repetitive, at least I hope not, but facts are facts, and then within the frame of reference of which I'm going to talk there will be some things, and I hope some new things. It being history there’s been not much new documentation on it since the last time I talked on the general question. As Mr. Jones said I'm going to get some observations on the early urbanization of the Negro. I think it's rather interesting to consider how we react when two words are put together in juxtaposition. When they seem to belong together or familiar to us we feel comfortable. We understand what's being said, as for example Greeks and culture.

Italians and art, or love, of French and cuisine, or Germans and science and so forth and so on. We need never to have known a Greek or to have had a French meal or to be able to name one German man of science. We just feel it’s all right. But when we put two words together that we don't feel belong together, we are uncomfortable. We're not exactly sure why but we are. And certain ideas have been regularly associated with the Negro. We all know those ideas: their good humor, their cotton pickin’ proclivities, their rhythm, their religiosity, their poverty, and their athletic prowess. By the same token, and those aren't necessarily incorrect ideas and it's not complete ideas, and certain ideas have been associated with cities and with urbanization. Cities are seats of culture where one finds civilized men.

The highest manifestation of the arts occur in the cities. The man who inhabits a city as an urbanite is a man of culture and sophistication. City living gives him and demands of him these qualities. Lewis Mumford has written creatively and imaginatively in this field and speaks of the city in history and the culture of cities. It's strange and even ironic that we only speak and think negatively of the city when we think of the Negro in the city. The Negro is the unwanted, unwelcome, recent, non-productive member of a way of life so long revered and admired. Of course we all know and admit that the automobile and high-rise buildings and poor lighting and factory dirt have played their part in destroying our cities. But the average person somehow feels, is convinced rather, that the coming of the black

man and woman to the big urban centers in some way accounts for the decline of the cities and the creation of the dirt and the dangerous situation in which they are. Now the premise for this feeling is I think that the black people do not belong in cities, are new to city life, and are indeed unready if not incapable of functioning in it. And because these unready and unfit Negroes insist on coming into the cities, the good, white, and believing people have left the cities to them for the towns and the suburbs, where they can live among people like themselves happily and removed from it all. Of course since Negroes are like other people because they are people, some of them also have left the city. Since 1920 the percentage of the American population living in the cities of over two hundred and fifty thousand has remained stationary. Only 10

percent of Americans today live in cities of over a million people. And according to a recent Gallup poll only 22 percent of the people want to live in cities. They are reluctant residers there. Now this negative connotation of Negroes in cities when put together in juxtaposition if you will is not new. Even in Africa, where Black men have lived for centuries, Africans were supposed to be incapable of building cities or running cities. This was because, I assume, that cities are supposed to be for civilized people, where the literati gather or where strong chiefs or political figures hold sway and maintain law over the surrounding countryside. Of course the competence to do this, the ability to do this in the past or today is not something whites think Negroes can do. I think the point is pretty clearly brought to mind when you think about the issue of home rule in Washington. They just could not have cities, Negroes, that is; they could not be functional part

of cities unless whites put them in them. Now this is ridiculous, but we all know negroes built cities, ruled cities in the past, and indeed have had a very long history of urbanization in those cities built by whites, with, I must add, not much to commend it. It is interesting that Africa provides examples of the extremes in the relation of Africans to city life. Because there Africans have created cities and they're also— Africans as a matter of explicit policy have been excluded from cities. With the relatively popular writings of Basil Davidson, which you all know, we know about the old cities like Loro [?] and Timbuktu in [unintelligible] in Ghana. True, many have thought that these cities were a response to exposure to Arabic influence, but be that as it may, they were an urban system with Black rulers, or shall we say not white rulers. Sometimes it’s just a residual category we represent. A bit more up to

date in most of our thinking would be the famous cities of West Africa, Largely among Europe our. Cities were found by people the first Europeans to visit them. People like Clapperton and Lander who saw city life in West Africa as early as 1825. And there are today among the Yoruba more than six cities or over hundred thousand. And Thomas Hoskins, a famous English political scientist and historian and just general knowledgeable person about Africa reminds us not only among the Yoruba but among the people in what is now Ghana city life was also important. He has a little quote in the front of one of his chapters that says [quote in French] “He who has not been to Kumasi will not go to paradise.” So Kumasi [unintelligible, presumably names of West African cities] all these are are seats of African kingdoms where Negroes had the only color power I can call it Black power. As a footnote to African documentation, let

us know that when Europeans came to Africa, to what was then northern Rhodesia, Kenya, southern Rhodesia into Tanganyika, not to mention South Africa, they built cities, but they made rules to ensure that Africans could not come to the cities permanently, that they would be sojourners, only, made to feel at home and comfortable only in the bush. Upon leaving Mother Africa the black man, other then as a great exception and curiosity, did not fare well in the cities of Europe and most certainly was not integrated into their been way of life. Quite the opposite. His fate was so precarious that plans to settle Sierra Leone in West Africa by the English in the 18th century were largely motivated by the desire to rid London of the menace of the black poor and a few white prostitutes. Most people remembering our antebellum days in this country recall the Negro primarily as a

slave. His presence off the plantation is hardly noted at all either in the South or in the North. He was, in his urban role truly Ellison’s invisible man. But was he? Now of course if there were time, we could discuss the plantation as a social system because it's against this that we must describe or project the life of Negro in the city. The plantation has been described as a heterosexual penetentiary where control was complete, incentives rare if not lacking, and life was isolated. Lonesome, you know you can remember [unintelligible] when the guest came when Punishment was given on the plantation; it was given by persons one knew, by the master, by the overseer. But all slaves did not live on plantations and of course all negroes were not slaves. But there’s a fascination I think in watching the scholar force himself to study the

negro in somewhat less familiar roles, as cowboy, as whaler, as legislator, and as townsman. Of course we shall see some scholars did really appreciate the fact that the Negro was an urbanite. Dubois in the Philadelphia Negro published in 1899 which I will discuss later on is a classic case of analysis of negroes in the urban system. Carter Woodson's A Century of Negro Migration published in 1918 also calls attention to the movement of Negroes off the land to the larger urban centers of the South, the North, and the Midwest before the First World War and later, in 1945, Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroe captured the mood and give the facts of this movement in a volume appropriately entitled They Seek a City, but it is not until 1964 that Richard C. Wade described the early urbanization

of the Negro which began when he was a slave In his book Slavery in the Cities, the South, 1820-1860, which as it’s cover reads, is quote, an attempt to find out what happened to slavery in an urban environment and to reconstruct the texture of the life of the Negroes who lived in bondage in the cities. In 1820, when slavery appeared to be a secure institution in the South, twenty percent of the population of the major cities in the South were slaves. In Mobile, in New Orleans, in Savannah, and Charleston, Richmond, Louisville, Baltimore and Washington. All these cities had a large percentage of the population which were slaves. And certainly, as with the story of the city mouse and the country mouse, there must be apparently a good deal of difference between the city slaves and the country slave. Most of the world us have heard over and over again about the difference between the field slave

and the house slave, and those who had not before heard eloquently described by Malcolm. But why is there so little known about the urban slave? Is it that the folklore needed the plantation in which to wrap the slave in order to explain the system? Up until 1840 the percentage of slave ownership was higher in the cities than in the countryside, and between 1835 and 1845, slavery was truly a part of urban life in the South. The urban slave was functional to the life of the South. He performed a wide variety of jobs in tobacco factories, iron smelting factories, railroad construction and in Savannah at least, in the fire department. By 1850 it was estimated that 400,000 slaves lived in towns. Now the effect of town life on the system and on the slave as a person should not be minimized. First of all there was the hiring-out

system, which also took place where slavery has occurred in other parts of the world but we aren't talking about it here, when the slave would hire out his labor to the highest bidder. Initially this was done by the master who brought his slaves into town, found somebody wanting services and got the best price for it. But as the system developed, the slave himself assumed the responsibility of hiring out to himself, his labor and he could pocket the difference if he could make a good price. The master only wanted to be given what he would consider a fair price for not having the service of the slave himself and this of course is true, because all slave masters weren’t living on big plantations with magnolia trees. They didn't have the opportunity you use these slaves and this was a kind of a way of investing, reinvesting their property if you will, but it gave as I think I point out and you ought to see even if I don't, the slave a kind of involvement in the economic system which is all too rarely remembered, if ever known.

And then in addition to this question of hiring out in the cities, there was the question of housing in the cities. Housing has been with us for generations as a problem. Initially, the urban pattern Was more or less similar to the one on the plantation. In other words, the slaves that came into the towns lived behind their masters homes. in small two story buildings with no windows. All this is in a compound. Usually they have to go through the master's house to get to their quarters and if you go to old houses you’ll still find maybe now hold in the new frontier and all the rest of the Service Corps. That's what they call them and George Washington's home anyhow. However, It was never legal to change this but custom permitted, recognized the difficulty of carrying this thing out. People got crowded, there were too many people in the compound and so gradually by just as I say wearing away, slaves were permitted to find housing on their own.

With their wives, in quotes, who often worked elsewhere and these ladies found accommodation wherever they could. Sometimes in the hallways or in rented rooms, and often they lived with free Negroes. The consequence of this freedom of choice in living arrangements naturally had its effect in turn because it gave, in the first place, the slave a kind of association with other slaves, not just on master’s plantation but on somebody else's plantation. as well as with free Negroes who didn't belong on anybody's plantation. And this kind of association, which affected the slaves estimate of himself, his aspirations, did not go unnoticed by whites. I have one quote which says “The city is no place for niggers. They get strange notions in their heads and grow discontented. They ought every one of them to be sent back to the plantation. In addition to this opening up of horizons that happened to the slaves, their relationships were broadened in other ways. They were now able to trade at

grocery stores, they could buy what they wanted to eat, what they wanted to wear, and they could sell that was they have produced. And those of you who have worked with me before who've just read this, you appreciate that on the plantation all these little things were deprived of slaves. They couldn't sell. They were penalized for showing a little enterprise rather than being rewarded, and all the decisions about what they want to eat and when they were going to get it all this was done for them. So this kind of stultifying experience was minimized if not eliminated it when the slave came into the town. Also, their social life broadened. They could drink in little bars and they could consort with women who were willing and women usually all take their money. It's interesting of course that these establishments for food and liquor and other entertainment were generally run by whites. This is interesting only because people assume that you just can't communicate but it's amazing what economics can bring together. What I'm trying to say is that the slave in the

city and only met more blacks in other roles, he met more whites in other roles. He met whites who were slave masters but who were not his employer. He met employers who were not his owners. He did business with whites outside the frame of reference of bondage. And apparently there was quite a lively business in law for those white lawyers who were preparedto assist these slaves in buying their own freedom. As, again, those of you who know this material generally, manumission was all well and good and we welcomed it, but there was a constant kind of of trying to get one's freedom in addition to running away. You couldn’t always run away if you had family and that sort of thing and there were always people prepared to sell, because slaves were only property; it was a vested interest, if it wasn't profitable and they could make money by selling it why not sell it? So slaves who came into town who made money naturally were looking for people to help them to buy themselves It made a good business.

In the towns also, slaves became a part of a Negro community. They were introduced to institutions developed by that community. The church, for example, which was a separate institution. On the plantation slaves worshiped with their quote family, and oftentimes in the balcony of the white church serving many families. In the south, in the cities the church and the schools and just literacy schools were apt to be at this stage the work of free Negroes and the church was viewed as a dangerous institution, as well white writer speaking of New Orleans in1839 said “We have been trying to induce our authorities to put down that greatest of all public nuisances and den for hatching plots against their masters, the church on Rovio [?] Street. What I’m trying to say then is that the urban slave became a different person, more worldly more independent, and control on him no longer came in a personal way from his master. This is not to say that he was free but certain circumstances were changing. Increasingly, for example, southern

cities passed ordinances specifically directed to the slaves in their midst; when the slaves violated these by loitering or vagrancy or not having identification, they were brought before the local justices and these justices would mete out punishment on the slaves often much more severe than a master would have given. Because after all to the master this is property. You don’t ram your car knowingly into a bridge. But as far as the judge is concerned this was a criminal, and so there was some conflict there. It is clear also that an important aspect of the slave in the urban context was his opportunity to know the free Negro. In the South, the free Negro performed a number of important tasks in society and often were people of considerable means. They made quite a model for the slaves. And accordingly, also, they were carefully watched. The history of this group as you know goes back to the earliest days because some Negroes

were always free. And I just said earlier others were constantly finding means to become free. And some of those chose to remain in the South, especially until things got so bad near the Civil War. Up until 1810, for example, the category of free Negroes increased rapidly, but then in another 10, 12 years you have the Denmark Vesey revolt by Denmark Vesey who was a free Negro in South Carolina and that sort of began to make people think well you see, we really can't trust these people, and then the situation began to accelerate with that term Nat Turner revolt, he was a slave. People associated with him were free, and from 1830 on things began to get very difficult for the free Negro. But nevertheless he did exist as a free man which was as I say a very important incentive to slaves and they did associate. The life of a free Negro of course was not the best as I’ve implied, restrictions were added to him. He couldn't own slaves after 1830, he could before, he couldn't

own firearms, he couldn’t own dogs, and so forth and so on, yet he had to pay taxes, and many of these people were relatively well-off as I've said, most of them however are operating as farmers, artisans, and mechanics. There was however sociability to the community these free Negroes created for themselves. However, outside of New Orleans I suspect the free Negro was in no better position than the white urbanites of his class in the city. Was the white that is [unintelligible]. The organization and acculturation of the Negro increased With the experience of the Civil War and the Reconstruction, providing for him educational, political, religious and economic opportunities for his own development and interracial experience. This is all far too well known to you to repeat. With the disappointment as the Hayes children tell us [?] and the end of Reconstruction and the emergence of the Clan, the aggressive Negro urbanite turned from the South. One group followed the tradition of the biblical Moses or that of the African kings of

the past were led to the West by two well-known personages, to the Middle West, as we call it now, Moses "Paps" Singleton and Henry Adams. These men beginning in 1879 urged Negroes from Mississippi and Louisiana to go to Kansas. Kansas then had a kind of euphoria about it because of the exploits of John Brown. Between 1879 and 1880 five or six important colonies were set up in Kansas by their activities back to the spring. Nicodemus, Morton City, and Singleton. Paps Singleton also started a community in Oklahoma, Bowling. Robinson, Illinois is another. These communities have a story of their own that's been too-little studied and it was interesting to me at the recent meeting that I looked for this in my files and couldn't find the man's name but one of the people who came to Adam Powell's Black Conference in Washington was the mayor of Bowling or one of the others of these towns and everybody said black power [unintelligible]. I think it's important to stress the southern picture, because it is almost

unknown and appreciation of it must do violence to certain stereotypes held of the Negro before the Civil War in the South. It also explains to me at least why there were in fact numbers of black men able to assume responsibility for government in the period the Reconstruction, as ready as any comparable selected group of whites would have been-- you know, I don't have to dwell on that too long but I think history sort of caught up with this but we used to feel that everybody who served in Congress who was a Negro was just a sort of a blubbering idiot with a morning coat. but now, given more serious attention to the background of these people it's amazing how they did in fact bring together people with a wide range of kinds of experiences going all the way from European education to Northern education but even with just the average man living in in Savannah could have had two things that I'm now trying to convey to you. Enough experience not only to

compete with the legislators of that day but to exceed the competencies of some of these today. More familiar perhaps in this type of Negro in urbanization that I've tried to describe is the Negro in the cities of the North. As I always say, most people didn't see him in the North; he was really Ellison's man. He was largely ignored; the community was a politically weak community and economically weak community. But even so he had a role to play, practice. Everybody now knows but nobody used to know at all, even one of the Northern cities according to history was founded by a Negro, Chicago, and they probably should have done a better job [?] But John Baptist Point Sable was a fur trader and had a very interesting life including marrying an Indian woman and all the rest of it. Built a log home at the mouth of the Chicago River in 1779 and sold his land in 1800 for 1200 dollars when Chicago grew, which is a better deal than the Indians got for Manhattan.

Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, St. Louis, Rochester, Akron and Cincinnati were among the thriving urban Negro communities before the Civil War. The fact that you found these communities in these particular towns perhaps not unrelated to the strength of abolition sentiment in these towns and also manifestations of the activities involved with the Underground Railroad which is the same thing said in another way. But as I say, they were weak communities. Nevertheless, I don't want to have you feel that these were sterile communities because many people managed to live full and fruitful lives within them. The Negro church, Negro press, the Masonic and other fraternal orders, literary and cultural societies, as well as opportunities, platforms for coordinating protest all arose within these free Negro communities in them all. They had a style of life and sophistication that clearly marked them all as urban. Lest many of my friends and students who may have heard

me speak before, I think that I speak only of Boston, which does make this a wonderful pathological case for most material. But, because of the really very excellent documentation provided by Dr. Boyce, let me make a few comments in terms of this community which Dr. Boyce underscored for us about the City of Brotherly Love are. Du Bois himself states the problem well. Quote, he said, speaking of the Negro community in Philadelphia before the turn of the century. Here is a large group of people, perhaps twenty five thousand, a city within a city who do not form an integral part of a larger social group. This in itself is not altogether unusual, he goes on to say. There are other unassimilated groups, Jews Italians, even Americans. I like that separation and yet in the case of Negroes the segregation is more conspicuous, more patent to the eye. The student must ask, what is the real condition of this group of human beings?

Of whom is it composed? What subgroups and classes exist within it? What of the physical environment of the city and what of the far mightier social environment? The surrounding world, customs, wishes, and whims. To the average Philadelphian, he says this time [?] the whole question to reduces itself to a study of certain slum districts. But the slum is not a simple fact. It is a symptom, and to note removable causes of Negro slums in Philadelphia requires a study that takes one far beyond the slum districts. One must know the history of the people, about the masses, about the rank and file, of the great middle class which he describes in those days as being composed of laborers, porters, and waiters and then those at the top the caterers, the clerks, the teachers, professional men, many of whom were well-to-do. Some are wealthy. All fairly well-educated and some are liberally trained. Then he says

Many are the misapprehensions and misstatements as to the social environment of the Negro in the Northern city. Sometimes it is said here they are free as they also said about Boston feel [?] birthright. They have the same joys, same chances as the Irishman, the Italian, and the Swede. At other times it is said that the environment is such that it's really more pressing than the situation in the Southern cities. Had he stated the case this way, Du Bois then sought to avoid the extremes and try to understand the atmosphere which surrounded the Negro, which differed from the atmosphere that surrounded most whites. A different both mental attitude and moral standard and economic judgement. So he goes along, for those of you may know the book or sometimes look at it, with a very complete study of demographic data on the Negro. Age, sex conjugal conditions, birth, education, occupation family and all the rest; he does a real rundown on them as well as house by house. As well as

their maladjustment, their crime, their poverty. Their alcoholism. of them. And then you come. To some conclusions and I think because it is true in my field. As I always say to students at this particular book, whether it had been done about Negroes or not stands as a monument as a technique of the first of the-- best, really, but first first really good social survey; the fact than did it on Negroes and not Chinese or Jews, that's his choice. But the technique is a thing that is important so therefore you go back to it and the same time the content. Even if the technique were not that good, the content; to consider that it was done over sixty five years ago. This isn't just come out and some ABCD document. It's old. And he says that several kinds of generalizations, and I've tried to brief you on them. After all, Mr. Marland [?] to the contrary notwithstanding, occupational roles are still rather crucial in terms of the adjustment of people in

our society. You can have several wives, you can have no wife at all, you can live where you want to but what is your job, at least if you're a man. That determines your position and you know it as well as I know; if you have the right job, have the right money, have the right power and how they live their own life. They may not be nice to their children they may not be able to find their husbands so the fact that Du Bois begins with the job situation I think makes more sense and he says as a result, as a consequence of having studied these people, he came to certain conclusions. First of all about getting work. He says no matter how well trained they were, the Negro could not in the ordinary course of competition hope to be more than a menial servant in Philadelphia. And as far as Negro concerned, they only had three careers: domestic service, sewing, or marrying. And some of them may not want the latter, the last. As far as keeping a job, he said the Negro is forced to

take lower wages for the same work as a white workman and a change in fashion can cause him to be placed, replaced by whites in the better paid positions of domestic service. When was the last time you saw a Negro waiter in a big hotel other than the Parker House? As far as entering new work is concerned, breaking through, this is with a little more data than some of the other generalizations but not not-- They did-- There's some things that have been projected as new. Men are used to seeing Negroes in inferior positions. So when one Negro gets a better position most people conclude he is not fit for it. Just think what would happen if and when we get our astronaut, not right now because it's sort of muddied up up but I mean in a few weeks, I want to get back to the same position again. Then he talks about his expenditures and no insofar as understanding community is concerned, we in this country have a news of the family budget [?] but not as much as has been done in Europe. But how, other than on relief roles, we don't really spend too much time understanding

how we spend money in general but I think that there is some growing sophistication that if people have enough money, if they knew how to spend it they would be in a better position. So he says the Negro. Must pay more house-rent for worse houses than most white people pay. And in terms of just making his way through the city, he says the Negro was sometimes liable to insult or reluctant service in some restaurants, hotels, and stores and public resorts, theaters, and places of recreation and nearly all barbershops. That's fine since children are concerned. The Negro child, the Negro children are discriminated against, often in the public schools. They are advised when seeking employment to become waiters and maids. As far as what he call social intercourse whites, even old friends, often ignore negroes on the streets. Whites feel it's possible for them to call on himut he isn't expected to reciprocate.

public indications are usually not meant for him, you know, public invited; that means all the black public. When he dies he cannot be buried beside white corpses. And in conclusion he says the result of this is, far as he's concerned, any one of these things happening now and then would not be remarkable or call for special comment. But when one group of people suffers all of these little difference, discrimination and insults continually, the result is either discouragement or bitterness or oversensitivity or recklessness. And the people feel that they cannot do their best (that is sort of a kind of a non-Stokeley [?] conclusion). Certainly they cannot contribute as they should, say I to the total society. Now all this definition of the problem took place before all the great migration, before the dislocations of the First not to mention the Second World War, before all this talk about what public relief did or did not do, or before the coining of the

cultural pride vocabulary. In a sense also really before the third of the three great waves of immigration came to our shores. This is the way the situation was at that time. Now, what is theis diagnosis having been made so long ago and the disease still left untreated leaves one I think to ponder why. There's no question that the Negro is used to the city, even in this country. That he's lived in it ass long as any other ethnic group. To say somehow that almost all of the sudden these people came and ruined the city is not the true diagnosis, nor will it, I feel, provide the true solution. I think Du Bois' stand on the general social climate, or as we would put it today, to look at the values the larger society, not of the Negro particularly, does provide the answer.

First of all for me the answer is a simple one. I love the fact That deprived other than the Negro have lived in the city and have passed on, and almost without exception, I think we have to appreciate the fact that most culturally endowed Americans, successful Americans are in fact More anti-Negro than they are pro-city. Prejudice against people of color is more firmly pervasive in this country there is our love of cities. Then the real conviction that cities are in fact he seat of culture, he civilising forces of a society. Few Americans care for their cities, as if the Romans were wrong. The Florentines even recently for Florence, the Parisians for Paris, How hard it is for me to understand the Londoners for London, or even could say I

have said to them Ich bin ein Berliner and have it mean something to them as residents of that particular area. There is no traditional love of cities in this country and this should not particularly surprise us. This country was settled and made strongly, largely with some exceptions by the peasants of Europe. Peasants in the usual sense are not of the city. Thank goodness there are exceptions. Jews have always been either urban dwellers o urban-oriented and I suspect that the facts, if all were put down, would show that much of the cultural heritage of all cities has been due to the labor and love of Jews. But most Americans have kept this lack of close affinity for the city. The peasant arrived in the city was forced to live in the ghettos. As soon as his resources permitted he moved from the city; living outside the city became a status symbol. Many poor peasants continued to come to the city but the black peasant and the black urbanites had the least to expect in way of help. Others

fled or planned to flee. It seems to me that if anyone wants an explanation of the juxtaposition of a Negro and the city, and the meaning this has had to the potential citizen, the irony, actually, one only has to look at our national capital. I think Washington is a beautiful city; I don't like where it's located in the swamp that's where [unintelligible] those bars, the layout of the city, the buildings of the city. Every time I go into Washington I am impressed, to my values at least, by the beauty of that city. And yet here's a city with all the money that's spent on it, abandoned by whites, Who would rather make the daily safari from the city to the safety of Southern Exposure Just enter into rows of mediocre homes built since the Second World War, falling apart at the seams sometimes, rather than stay in the lovely homes in Washington, well-built, close to their jobs in the capital that is beautiful because to do

so would risk the possibility of exposure to an affinity with the Negroes. I think this can be repeated over and over again I mean you may not think Pittsburgh is pretty; I don't either. But the issue is the same but in Washington it's not confused at all, it's very clear. Fortunately for society and for mankind, men change their values and today, faced with the questions of the city and the unwillingness of Negroes to disappear from the city, many people are slowly reevaluating their our assessment of black men and their assessment of the charm and civility of city life. If they learn fast enough and that's quickly enough, both the Negro and the city will become acceptable and revered aspects of American culture. Thank you. Thank you very much Dr. Hill. Before we bring you back to the podium so that

people can ask questions so we can have a discussion period, I'd like to make a couple of announcements. I'd like you to know that we have made a decision, those of us who are involved in planning the lecture series to go ahead next year and to establish this series on a permanent basis. [applause] I'd like to say a thank you to Mr. Hennessy of the Patton T. Campbell School, the principal who has been so cooperative in making possible these facilities for the lecture series. I don't think Mr. Hennessy is here tonight but I do want to thank him publicly anyway. At this time I'd like to bring Dr. Hill back to the podium, and let's have our first question. [unintelligible question from audience]

[continues] Oh, you mean the question is are there any examples where the Negro community has really flourished in the community. I, I don't know how, quite how to answer that; I think that in terms of having access to this world's goods, there are a number of communities where the Negro has flourished. I think Atlanta is one and Chicago's another and Detroit's another and Los Angeles is another. If you mean flourish to the extent of being close to the wheels of power and making fundamental decisions about the functioning of that society, I think I would be inclined to say no. I don't think, to my knowledge I don't think the Negro community as yet has been able to wield

the kind of progressive positive impact on the larger society that is, resources all to make it do [?] I think it is been weakened, probably by divisions, by survival in many cases. And itt has been-- I was going to make a comment and I guess it comes in at this point as well as any; I couldn't weave it into my subject so you'll have to hear it now. But I think the question is the relation of the Negro community to the Negro to the community in which he is. And I think in every city, as a chap by the name of Johnson pointed out in a study of Rochester I think, it doesn't make any difference where it is, that Negroes and I think other minority groups have a bifocality about their relationship. By that I mean this: that you have Negroes who live, quote, in the ghetto, who think

and act as though they don't. And you have Negroes who live outside the ghetto who think and act as though the live in the ghetto and you have the other two variables. And with the result of that kind of division, you don't get the bringing together of the community that would give the kind of impact that you would want. In other words it means nothing to study Harlem or Roxbry or any Negro ghetto as a simple counting of heads. It's a matter of values and same thing would be true of Newton. [Audience member]: I think you said Negroes could not own slaves after 1830? You know somebody who did, there's always somebody who does [laughter]. Is that what you want to tell me? You didn't know they belonged in the first place? Oh, now I'm back in harness again.

No actually the young lady behind you I'm sure could tell you and others the fact of the matter is insofar as the law is concerned the irony of it is at the first law, it was passed in Virginia, that really is considered the cornerstone of establishing the status of slavery was the result of a legal case by a black slave and his black master. In other words, as everybody knows this material knows, the coming of slavery was a slow thing and they had to be built into the law and that one had originally was not a permanent tenure. And this slave, whose name I've forgotten as well as a master but it's pretty well known and any book will point it out, wanted to be free after a period of indenture and his master wanted to hold him in servitude for life. This carried to the court and he was given the right to keep this man as a slave for life, which gave a legal basis to slavery you see. Well there were many-- I mean it's not something we generally talk about; we're not too proud about it,

proud of the moral impact. But but the fact of the matter is it's an economic system and of course you see this all over the world with slavery is, I mean, negroes are sinners too. And they were permitted to own them and they did own them. But after this change in the position came, and I when I said that laughingly though this is true with all the laws, it's not a federal law. And so there would be variations from state to state and perhaps even within states so that it wouldn't surprise me if you said Oh but I do know somebody who owned one, that's alright. [unintelligible question from audience]. That's right. Well you see, you did have slavery all over this country initially so you had slavery in you know--

I always say in my classes Mrs. Hicks knows of Crispus Attucks so you must know of him. Crispus Attucksd was a runaway slave in Massachusetts. So these people would be both free and slave people but gradually slavery was eliminated in the North; it wasn't workable, and by, oh I guess by the Civil War,I mean by the Revolutionary War it had minimized but survived and Negroes in New York was concerned it was a large group with a very combative group. They were involved in a number of riots in New York as you may have read but they were free but living as they were in Boston under as I tried to indicate under extremely precarious situation economically. There was no place in the economy for them because, say what you want to say about slavery, it provides a place in the economy for you. And the problem was where will you put these people in a free society? We haven't solved it yet. And then let me say you know the book... well, I think he gives some background, New World Coming by Roi Ottley.

As I was saying to him, talking to an old professor at BU today, we were having a discussion about something Near East, and he was telling me as if I understood and I was listening as I did and came to the agreement he and I, he's about seventy-some, older that you know we shouldn't be so, so taken up by new books, some of the best material is in the old books, that's why I went back to the Du Bois book. But the Ottley book could well stand reissuing, and I don't think it has been. He wrote two or three books, but this book New World Coming I would recommend you get ahold the library and it's about Harlem, you know, the New York Negro, and if I recall he has a pretty good background about the African school there, the African theater, but that it was an interesting community. It not, has been written about too much but in the end then he brings it up right up to the war, the Second World War. Yeah [unintelligible question from audience] Why don't I like Monaghan? Well...

Now the question is what, are there any other any other studies that were found noting, between Monaghan and between Du Bois and Monaghan. There are innumerable studies; depends on what you want to look at. I think they actually, the-- It is interesting that you would have interpreted what I said as, you know. it being two example, two poles because if there is one thing that Du Bois did, it was to establish a sound methodology. It's one thing that Ben Monaghan did not do with a thing. I think that the the books in between that I would note would be no more work of Franklin Frazier, which has to do with the Negro-- he began with the family

and he used the family as a jumping-off point for his analysis of the total Negro society, and in his later years he concerned himself with special institutions, the class pattern, the black bourgeoisie, anybody know anything else he did... did at Negro church. So even E. Franklin Frazier did I would, I would commend to your attention. I think The Davis and Gardner Deep South, which again is a study of the South within the framework of the anthropological technique using the same type of approach that was used in the study of the North, the whole Warner school. I would think that Black Metropolis by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton would be another book worth looking at. I think that any of the work done by Allison Davis would be another approach. There are loads of people who have concerned themselves

with the Negro community in a sociological way. Of course, if you're looking historically that's another whole group, but sociologically, to get the fabric but I don't think any of them has reached the heights of Du Bois because he just happened to be rather of a giant of a man. And he defined his problem rather specifically, went after it, and came up with the conclusions. I don't want you to think that I think it's the Bible, I don't think anything is the Bible. I mean I didn't give him flaws with it he was kind of a puritanical person as far as I was concerned; he had value judgement on certain ways of life. He definitely favored it in that book. The kind of way of life of the the elite of Philadelphia and looked down on in a way that would not please the black poor today of the problems. But allowing for the fact that these were his own values which he has a right to have, the method and the general approach I think stands you know above all the others. I don't know that I've forgotten any of those be the big ones I think of.

Yes. [unintelligible question from audience] This is one, the one that I referred to when I said Freedom's Birthplace. Daniels, Freedom's Birthplace. I don't know. I didn't want to say this but I shall. I actually when I did my thesis nobody gave a damn about the Negro community in Boston. It's amazing the fame I've gotten since then. [laughter] [indistinct speech, laughter] Yes. [unintelligible question from audience] Well I-- I comment on some of the positive aspects of ghetto living and why, too, some of us still prefer to live in the ghetto.

I don't see why Negroes have the burden of being so different from everybody else. I think that most people like to live where they are finding things familiar to them, where their institutions are, where their friends are; people who share the same aspirations or maybe the same deprivations. I think this is true and actually I'm glad you mentioned this point because while I was taking these peasants out of the city and putting them in the country I had sighed, this was a general statement but we have in closer scrutiny with certain groups have found the tendency to stay put. And everybody knows the, the hostility that came up in the city with renewal of the West End knows what I'm talking about, but the Italians as a group rather particularly liked to stay, liked to stay where they were. And in general do develop communities without the same degree of mobility. And so I just feel that for the Negro,

the connotation of the ghetto has been given only a one-sided approach. There's something wrong for any people to be isolated, probably, you could make a case for that, whether it's Pride's Crossing or South Boston. Because it isn't a true and real natural world, but all people like to have the privilege of deciding whether or not they want to be among their own and I think that it's been rather unfortunate that Negroes have committed themselves to be told to be among themselves somehow is bad, and I feel and I hope and I believe it to be true that they will assert the fact that they don't think it's all bad to be among their own but is it something that they say we know this is true but it isn't true just of Negroes as it's true of all groups. That Jews, sometimes they look around and nobody but Jews there, they wonder what's wrong. But they don't have the burden we have on it and I think there are a lot of positive things for the reasons that I said matter of identity and looking in the mirror and not being ashamed.

Hm? [unintelligible question] The question was I had said which I really didn't quite say it that way that the Negro living in the North found it more difficult than the Negro in the South and what effect did this have on the aspirations of the Negro in the schools. I didn't quite say that, I mean I'm prepared to say it. What I said was that Du Bois was trying to look at two sides of a case and one group said that we are free and don't talk about the South to us, we don't have any problems like they have down there you know. And the other group said I may not have the same problems but they are much more detrimental. And yes I have commented on this many times.

I don't happen to feel that people can aspire to change without models. I don't happen to feel that a boy will want to be a banker if he doesn't see some people like him who are bankers. If he doesn't have some familiarity with the bank as an institution which he understands. And I don't think that a boy wants to be a detective if he's never seen in his whole life a Negro detective or fireman, or grocery store owner. And so, this question of motivation, which can be reinforced by education, seems to me is stimulated by what one sees around oneself. And the question-- the plain brute fact of it is that in the South, for reasons that are not particularly admirable, the Negro did see a wider range of kinds of people functioning in positions requiring competence and education than he

saw in the North. And it's still true. You have to look a long way in New York, in Philadelphia, in Boston to find Negroes, visible Negroes in positions of real power. And visible Negroes in positions that children want to aspire to. Therefore I think there is true in the North that the children didn't think this would happen. Of course now, with communication and television and all the rest of that, maybe you don't have to see them in New York, you can see them in Chicago. You know that helps. And not only that, not only did the Negro get the model, but the white person didn't have the model. I think that this came out very well in Ken Clark's Dark Ghetto. That with all the comments that were made about the boys about the teachers not aspiring for the students to do things is true and we know it, but I think it's fair to say the many of the teachers who told Johnny

to be a waiter or Susie to be a nice house girl had never in their lives seen a Negro doing anything else but that, and some may have been invidious about it but I think just as many were not. So this was a product of the Northern situation. In the South, people did see, people did know, there's old Dr. So-And-So, you know, even if they get to come around the side door. [unintelligible] He was known as a functioning member of the community. There was a Negro hospital; maybe you died there earlier but nevertheless it existed and people knew that. And this had I think an effect on their image and their aspirations. [male audience member]: You're a product of Dunbar High School and a proud alumni (alumna), right, right. I had four years of Latin Four years of Latin.

What's your feelings about segregated education for Negroes and the whole problem of de facto segregation, so...? You think I'm going to comment on that... [joking] I really wrestled, such a long question you know and I, I don't like to be misquoted. I don't mind being misunderstood [laughter]. I would say and I have said it many many times that I do not see anything wrong with the school that happens to have all black from top to bottom. I think it would be nice if all of our schools, all of our institutions were like flower gardens. But since they're not, in general it has nothing to do with the color of the people. Now it just so happens and there's plenty of documentation on this, that the Negro

school has almost universally suffered more than just having been of one race. Dunbar, I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to talk about it, was a peculiar institution because it happened to come about in the peculiar situation. You had Washington, where the larger-- you had had slavery and a large number of Negroes were there. A large number of Negroes came after the Civil War to see Mr. Lincoln's birthplace or wherever he lived. It had appeal; a magnet. Most of the Negroes worked in some menial form of government service, so there was a regularity of income. At the same time there was a level on aspirations, on opportunities, and so people who today Harvard would line up and say please come and do something for so we can get more federal money or some other school would do the same thing in those days didn't pay

attention these people so they came to this high school. And as I have said to people on the platform here, I can't count the noses but I am sure that that school for a very long time had probably more Phi Beta Kappas [unintelligible phrase], and probably an equal amount of people who had traveled and had exposure because there was nowhere else for them to go in terms of a regular job. They even did better there than at Howard University and got the salaries more regularly and it was a different kind of milieu and so having that kind of peculiar situation with a particular town, those people wouldn't be caught teaching in the high school now, regrettably, I should add, as they were in those days and having a system which was true in many segregated communities rather like they tried here when you have different tracks. So that the youngster who came to bet-- the Negro youngster who came to their high school was already selected as being college-oriented.

The child who was going to trade school at another high school across the street, Negro of course, and the child who was going to technical school or business school was in another high school, so the teachers had something to work with. And if there's any flaws about the system, it's been well documented. It was the flaw that that segregated system was too preferential to the advantaged child. The problems were with with doing that and not paying enough attention to the child who might have made a good craftsman or a good business record because it's just as much opportunity in that too, but I am I feel that we could put ourselves in a box. And I've said it and written it and commented on it by merely finally finding ourselves saying that because it's all Negro somehow it's wrong. I don't believe it at all. In Washington, in the Washington system, and this is some time where they get to the crux of the problem is, I said, who makes the decisions? And then the Washington

system as I recall it as a child you had a you had an appointed board of education. I don't remember when it started but for a very long time there was at least one Negro on that; that person was not a radical that person was going to go along with the system, and this is unfortunate because you want to have somebody who's going to be critical about resources and whatnot so a weakness was at that level. Then you have an assistant superintendent of schools for the Negro schools. This was also unfortunate as far as I'm concerned. I think that the sharing of the problem and the responsibilities for making the decision for education if all children are in that system should be shared. But merely the fact that the school happens to be located here or happens to be over here and all the teachers are Irish (doesn't seem to bother this lot; what am I saying, of course it does) all these happen to be white, all these happen to be Spanish, all these happen to be Negro and the children think-- That, in and of itself, will be a most reactive statement to me;

I don't by that, because I think Negroes are just as good as whites [applause]. [announcer]: Early Urbanization of the Negro, part four, in the community nexus series on the Negro in American society. You heard this evening Dr. Adelaide Hill, assistant professor of sociology at Boston University. This fourth meeting in the Roxbury-Newton Community Lecture Series was recorded on February 8th 1967 at the Patrick T. Campbell Junior High School in Roxbury. Next Sunday evening at the same time, part five: Wyatt T. Walker looks at the role of the Negro church and social protest. [Gospel chorus singing Wade in the Water]

[various vocalists and percussionists performing African-American secular songs] Man. Mike how.

Did you. Become. Up and down this road I skip down and. Jack. Jack. Who wants you just one.

Night I got a letter from a hag in town. He says burning. Up and even then it doesn't. Give. Me. The night before I

want to. I call you before all of you answered that and you see that and you see I call you the fold. And you. Answered you. That you see that I use the I call you. The fall day. You would not answer. That's me that's me that's you. Goal.

Well it's gone who's gone out and who's gone I can see your dog who's gone and gone and. Oh Lordy me hears it or Lawdy who's gone I'll be

gone or she'll heart really mammals on a system gone or I won't be lead no I won't need new world order to restore law and I won't need new Bolo name here I won't need no let's recap worship to let your mama her of your blood ions list of all laws because I want to be you. Well though many years it well though many years it's all gone

I'm gone be you. Where. Do you want us. I am going to get it.

Hiding behind. [announcer]: This is the Eastern Educational Network.

This is the work.