Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was

by Stetson Kennedy 1959

 

Chapter VIII - Who May Work Where

 

"No Segregation in the Economy" is the title of an article in The American Negroes, published by the U.S. information Agency.


Don't be surprised, however, if you take the trouble to read that article and fail to find any facts or figures in substantiation of its title. For the truth is that the facts and figures (which the Information Agency does not publish) reveal a vast amount of segregation and discrimination in the economic life of the nation. Here they are.


If you are a native-born white Gentile you are not likely to be denied a job or promotion because of your race, religion, or national origin. But if you lack one or more of these qualifications you will find many jobs and professions closed to YOU, and in a much larger number will encounter discrimination and special hardships. No matter where you look, you will find such discrimination throughout the U.S.A., varying only in intensity, comprehensiveness and the sorts of people victimized.


No need to look to the U.S. Constitution for relief, for there is nothing in it to assure equality of opportunity regardless of race, creed or national origin. The assertion contained in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" does not say anything about pursuit of a job. Even if it did it wouldn't mean a thing, since the Declaration is but the statement of an ideal, and has no legal status whatever.
During World War II President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a Fair Employment Practices Commission (F.E.P.C.), but Congress killed it in 1945, and has refused ever since to reestablish anything of the sort. A fourth of the states, and a score of cities, have enacted such laws; but enforcement is lax, and most of the peoples victimized are not even aware that the laws exist.
In short, The American Way of free enterprise is notoriously inoperative in so far as competition between whites and nonwhites is concerned.

Wanted: White Gentiles
If you belong to some racial minority-and particularly if you are a Negro-you arc far more likely to be hit by job discrimination (and hit harder) than it you are white but belong to some religious minority.

As evidence of this, 80 per cent of the complaints made to the short lived F.E.P.C. maintained by President Roosevelt were registered by Negroes. Only 8 per cent of the total complaints charged religious discrimination, and of these 80 per cent were registered by persons of the Jewish faith.

After World War II discrimination increased.


A survey made by the National Community Relations Advisory Council in 1946, covering 134 private employment agencies in the ten non-Southern cities of Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Francisco revealed that 89 per cent of these agencies required jobseekers to state their religion. A companion survey of Help Wanted advertisements in eight major cities showed a 195 per cent increase in discriminatory ads. in 1946 as compared to 1945.


The manner in which nonwhites were squeezed out of certain jobs after World War 11 was brought out in testimony by members of the United Electrical Workers Union before the Senate Subcommittee on Labor in 1952:


"This Committee and Congress will be shocked to know that the economic position of nonwhite families has deteriorated since 1944", it was reported. "This startling fact is a complete refutation of those who argue that 'time' alone has brought a lessening of economic and other forms of discrimination against the Negro people and other minority groups. It was not 'time' but the pressures of World War 11, a Federal F.E.P.C. and other democratic efforts which brought about the temporary improvement in the conditions of Negroes and minority groups in World War H. The proportion of male jobs held by Negro men increased from 8-6 in 1940 to 9-8 per cent in 194.4, then fell to 8-3 per cent in 1950 Negro men held 2.8 per cent of all professional and semiprofessional men's jobs in 1940; by 1944 this percentage had risen to 3-3 per cent, but by 1950 it had fallen to 2-6, which was a lower percentage than in 1940."
One large private employment agency in Chicago reported that 83 per cent of all the calls it received for workers included discriminatory specifications as to race or religion. Sixty per cent of its calls for executives, 4 1 per cent of male clerical jobs, and 24 per cent of female clerical jobs were not open to Jews.


An investigator who applied for 100 jobs in New York City as stenographer, secretary, accountant, and auditor was told in 91 cases that Jews were not acceptable. The National City Bank of New York of whose 400,000 depositors are Jews?employs only six Jews. Of the 4,200 employees in the New York home office of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, 1 percent arc Jewish.


Similar conditions are to be found in the teaching profession. A recent survey of 179 American universities revealed that 36 employed no Jews on their faculties, 62 schools had faculties which were 1 ? 8 per cent Jewish, and 87 more schools had staffs averaging 2?2 per cent Jewish.


If you happen to be of Chinese ancestry, your chances of getting a job carrying a tray in a Chinese restaurant, or ironing shirts in a Chinese laundry, or selling herbs or souvenirs in Chinatown, are relatively good. On the other hand, not even a Ph.D. college degree or Phi Beta Kappa scholarship key will serve to lower the barriers against you in many other occupations and professions.


Back in 1920, according to the U.S. Census, more than 50 per cent of the working Chinese in the U.S.A. were employed in laundries and restaurants; and this situation has not changed much since. In a typical pre?World War II year the Oriental Division (sic) of the U.S. Employment Service in San Francisco reported that go percent of its job placements were for service workers, mostly in the culinary trades.


Mining was a chief occupation of the first Chinese to come to America, there being 34,933 thus engaged in California in 186o. But the squeeze was applied and within ten years half of the Chinese miners were separated from their jobs. By 1920 there were but 15 1 Chinese still engaged in mining throughout the U.S.A.


Even in the beginning Chinese miners were forced to work the played?out diggings" which had already been abandoned by other miners. Despite this, they paid more than 5,000,000 dollars in taxes to California counties, Linder a levy assessed against Chinese miners only.
Similarly, back in 1870 there were 30,000 Chinese farm laborers inoperative in so far as competition between whites and nonwhites is concerned.


Wanted: White Gentiles
If you belong to some racial minority-and particularly if you are a Negro-you arc far more likely to be hit by job discrimination (and hit harder) than it you are white but belong to some religious minority.


As evidence of this, 80 per cent of the complaints made to the short lived F.E.P.C. maintained by President Roosevelt were registered by Negroes. Only 8 per cent of the total complaints charged religious discrimination, and of these 80 per cent were registered by persons of the Jewish faith.


After World War II discrimination increased.
A survey made by the National Community Relations Advisory Council in 1946, covering 134 private employment agencies in the ten non-Southern cities of Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Francisco revealed that 89 per cent of these agencies required job seekers to state their religion. A companion survey of Help Wanted advertisements in eight major cities showed a 195 per cent increase in discriminatory ads. in 1946 as compared to 1945.


The manner in which nonwhites were squeezed out of certain jobs after World War 11 was brought out in testimony by members of the United Electrical Workers Union before the Senate Subcommittee on Labor in 1952:


"This Committee and Congress will be shocked to know that the economic position of nonwhite families has deteriorated since 1944", it was reported. "This startling fact is a complete refutation of those who argue that 'time' alone has brought a lessening of economic and other forms of discrimination against the Negro people and other minority groups. It was not 'time' but the pressures of World War 11, a Federal F.E.P.C. and other democratic efforts which brought about the temporary improvement in the conditions of Negroes and minority groups in World War H. The proportion of male jobs held by Negro men increased from 8-6 in 1940 to 9-8 per cent in 194.4, then fell to 8-3 per cent in 1950 Negro men held 2.8 per cent of all professional and semiprofessional men's jobs in 1940; by 1944 this percentage had risen to 3-3 per cent, but by 1950 it had fallen to 2-6, which was a lower percentage than in 1940."
One large private employment agency in Chicago reported that 83 per cent of all the calls it received for workers included discriminatory specifications as to race or religion. Sixty per cent of its calls for executives, 4 1 per cent of male clerical jobs, and 24 per cent of female clerical jobs were not open to Jews.


An investigator who applied for 100 jobs in New York City as stenographer, secretary, accountant, and auditor was told in 91 cases that Jews were not acceptable. The National City Bank of New York of whose 400,000 depositors are Jews?employs only six Jews. Of the 4,200 employees in the New York home office of the Equitable Life Insurance Company, 1 percent arc Jewish.


Similar conditions are to be found in the teaching profession. A recent survey of 179 American universities revealed that 36 employed no Jews on their faculties, 62 schools had faculties which were 1.8 per cent Jewish, and 87 more schools had staffs averaging 2.2 per cent Jewish.
If you happen to be of Chinese ancestry, your chances of getting a job carrying a tray in a Chinese restaurant, or ironing shirts in a Chinese laundry, or selling herbs or souvenirs in Chinatown, are relatively good. On the other hand, not even a PH.D. college degree or Phi Beta Kappa scholarship key will serve to lower the barriers against you in many other occupations and professions.


Back in 1920, according to the U.S. Census, more than 50 per cent of the working Chinese in the U.S.A. were employed in laundries and restaurants; and this situation has not changed much since. In a typical pre?World War II year the Oriental Division (sic) of the U.S. Employment Service in San Francisco reported that go percent of its job placements were for service workers, mostly in the culinary trades.


Mining was a chief occupation of the first Chinese to come to America, there being 34,933 thus engaged in California in 186o. But the squeeze was applied and within ten years half of the Chinese miners were separated from their jobs. By 1920 there were but 15 1 Chinese still engaged in mining throughout the U.S.A.


Even in the beginning Chinese miners were forced to work the played?out diggings" which had already been abandoned by other miners. Despite this, they paid more than 5,000,000 dollars in taxes to California counties, Linder a levy assessed against Chinese miners only.
Similarly, back in 1870 there were 30,000 Chinese farm laborers in California, but by 1920 this number had been reduced to 3,617. Now 80 per cent of all Chinese-Americans are city-dwellers.


There were 10,000 Chinese engaged in railroad work in 1870; less than 500 are thus employed today.
In 1870 there were 2,000 Chinese engaged in manufacturing, but by 1920 their number had already been reduced to 100.


Only by extreme brilliance and diligence can you hope to achieve success in many professions in the U.S.A. if you are of Chinese ancestry. Dr. Chien-Shiung Wo is one example, having become one of the leading physicists in America while still in her twenties. Two others are Professors Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, who won a 11957 Nobel Prize for their refutation of the "parity law" in nuclear physics.


The prevailing assumption that Chinese as well as other nonwhites are best fitted to serve whites has long been reflected in the policies of the U.S. Navy.


Up until World War I the Navy sometimes assigned some foreign born whites, such as the Irish, as stewards and mess boys; but after that this branch of service was reserved exclusively for Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese, and Negroes. Your duties in this capacity would include preparing and serving meals, cleaning staterooms, washing laundry, shining shoes, and otherwise attending to the needs of white naval officers. After many years of service you might be awarded the pay of a chief petty officer, but without the actual rank; general courts martial have held that such persons cannot exercise the prerogatives enjoyed by white chief petty officers.


The special handicaps you are under as a Chinese-American are further indicated by the fact that none of your kind has ever served as public officials in California, while groups which arrived after the Chinese, such as the Portuguese, Armenians, and Italians, are well integrated in the economic, political, and social life of the state.


No matter how thoroughly "Americanized" you may become, white America as a whole will not acknowledge you as an American; like all nonwhites, you will be regarded as a "perpetual alien" in the land of your birth.


"There is no likelihood of improvement for generations to come", gloomily concludes Leong Gor Yun in Chinatown Inside Out.


"Perhaps in the future our American born Chinese will have to look to China for their life work", says Ng Poon Chew, a leader of the Chinese community in California.

"To the young Chinese, a China in revolution, where almost anything may happen, offers excitement, opportunity, and possibilities for leadership", adds Albert W. Palmer in Our Racial and National Minorities.


Last Hired First Fired


If you are a Negro seeking a job in the U.S.A., you hardly need to be reminded that Negroes are generally the "last hired and first fired".


And if-like I I million of America's Negroes-you live below the Mason-Dixon Line, you will know there is much truth in the saying that "A Negro has just two chances in. the South-slim, and none at all".


In short, you know what it means to be "naturally born black in a white man's country".
The figures on all this do not lie.


During the depression of the early 1920's, 40 per cent of the Negro labor force was unemployed. In the "good" year 1940, 17 per cent of the Negro labor force remained unemployed, as compared to 7 per cent of the white force. Even in the "boom" year Of 1947, 6 per cent of the Negro labor force was unable to find jobs, as compared to 2 per cent of the white force. The depression Of 1958 found 16 per cent of Negro workers without jobs by February of that year, as compared to 7 per cent of the whites.


In time of depression, if you are nonwhite you may encounter such movements as the Blackshirts, which in the 1930s paraded the streets of Atlanta carrying placards reading "No Nigger on a Job Until Every White Man Has a Job!" Even Negro bootblacks were forcibly driven from their jobs by the Blackshirts.


If you are not white, not even a world war is likely to long improve your job opportunities. During World War 11, many American industries imported white workers from other cities, rather than give jobs to the Negroes living in their immediate vicinity. The textile industry-in which the manpower shortage resulted in a shortage of canvas which held tip America's Pacific campaign-steadfastly refused to take on Negro workers, though the number available was huge. Bus companies in Washington, D.C., advertised 200 miles away for white drivers and even hired white Government clerks on a part-time basis, rather than hire any Negroes (it was argued that Negro drivers might make "passes" at white female passengers).


Altogether, the War Manpower Commission estimated that at least a million Negro men and women remained unemployed because of prejudice. Neither the War Manpower Commission nor the U.S. Employment Service took effective action to remedy this situation, however.
In war as in peace, the U.S. Employment Service actually catered to discrimination in private employment. Prior to the war, it referred 60 per cent of its nonwhite applicants to servant jobs. During the war, this figure remained at 30 per cent, with only 3 per cent of Negro workers being referred to war industries. Immediately after the war the figure rose again with 45 per cent of Negro applicants being referred to jobs as menials, and continued to increase after control of the Employment Service was handed back to the individual states at the behest of Southern Congressmen intent upon making the agency even more discriminatory.


The record of the War Manpower Commission was scarcely better; some of its Southern branches collaborated with military draft boards and private employers to "freeze" Negroes on underpaid jobs. In one instance the Governor of Florida wired the War Manpower Commissioner, demanding the return Of 43 8 Negro farm workers whom the U.S.E.S. had recruited during the Florida citrus off-season to pick tomatoes for the armed forces at Camden, New Jersey. In a similar case, Georgia police were prevailed upon to stop a train and forcibly remove a group of Florida Negroes who had been offered jobs in the North.


The New York Post even published a report that the U.S. Attorney General had sent a confidential memorandum to the President, urging that steps be taken to prevent Negroes from emigrating from the South to take jobs in Detroit and other industrial centers; but the Attorney General denied the charge.


The State Department article "No Segregation in the Economy" ventures to suggest that "there does not exist any reason" why "in some years"' the "progress being made" should not bring about equality of opportunity.


In reality, while there has been progress in some spheres, there has been retrogression in others. In many respects it may be said that you, as a nonwhite worker, were born half a century too late. For in 1910 your chances of finding employment in such occupations as manufacturing, trade, transportation, mining, barbering, and white-collar work were better than they are today. Through the years certain occupations came to be regarded as more or less exclusively white jobs, while other (less desirable) jobs came to be regarded as Negro work. Something of this specialization of labor along racial lines is revealed by the U.S. Census. While the proportion of Negroes in the population is 10 per cent, the proportion of Negro employees in the following occupations is:

                              WHITE JOBS
                       
                       Aircraft
                       Petroleum and gas          0-5
                       Wool and worsted           0.6
                       Electrical machinery   0.6
                       Footwear                       0-7
                       Knit goods                     0.9
                       Silk and rayon
                       Radio and television   1-5
                       Printing and publishing        1-7
                       
                       
                                 NEGRO JOBS
                       
                       Servants                       45-8
                       Sawmills                       26-3
                       Forestry                       22.0
                       Hotel and lodging          20.2
                       Brickyards                     16-6
                       Farm Labor                     15.5
                       

Those tabulations should give you some idea where your opportunities as a nonwhite job seeker lie.


Official figures emphasize that Negro per capita earnings have risen considerably since World War 11. This is true-not only of the American Negro, but of many peoples around the world. But the fact remains that you would be considerably better off white than black in the U. S.A.
To begin with, per capita figures do not mean much in such a highly stratified society, since they fail to indicate the mass of poverty on the bottom which supports high incomes for a few on top.


Progress is being made, due in large measure to the militancy of the Negro; but discrimination remains.
The per capita income of the Negro American is still only half that of the white American.
Something like 15 per cent of all Negro families fall in the lowest income bracket, compared to 7 per cent of all white families.


Only about 1 out of every 15 Negro workers has a white-collar job, compared to 6 out of every 15 whites. Among women, only 6 per cent of the Negro workers are in white-collar jobs, compared to 3 2 - 6 per cent of the white women workers.


Nine per cent of all Negro workers, and 21 per cent of all white workers, are employed as skilled laborers; and the same proportions apply among technicians and professionals.
If you are a Negro you will find it exceptionally difficult to obtain vocational training in the U.S.A., as well as in putting such training to use should you manage to acquire it. According to the President's Advisory Committee on Education, your chances of getting a vocational education in the 17 Southern states and nation's capital would be two-thirds greater if your skin were white.


Lost: 40 Acres and a Mule
I
f you are a person who likes to live on the land and till it, it is only fair to warn you that if you are not white and do not have a lot of money, your chances of making good as a farmer-which have never been of the best have been rapidly worsening for the past two decades.
Ever since Emancipation, colored folks have had an especially difficult time getting hold of good farmland. The Civil War promise to give every Freedman "40 acres and a mule" was never kept. Moreover, the big white planters, though rendered bankrupt by the war, often refused to sell adequate plots to Negroes.
White farmers, while having plenty of troubles of their own, managed on the average to get hold of more land than Negroes. By the beginning of World War II, the number of acres being farmed by Southerners compared on the average as follows:

                         White                  Negro
Farm-owners             140                   60
Tenants              120                      40
Share-croppers       45                       20

Even those figures give an oversized impression, because many giant plantations are included in working out the average.
Getting land to farm is only part of the problem; the next question is tools. If you are an average nonwhite farmer, you will find that your white competitor has on the average four times more valuable tools and equipment than you.


The coming of mechanization to agriculture, far from being a boon to small farmers, has been the bane of many. With tractors, cultivators, and harvesters concentrated in the hands of big plantation owners and giant corporative farming enterprises, many a farm family has been literally "tractored" off the land as "uneconomic".


Those machines may be color-blind, but Negro farm families, having a generally more precarious tenure than the whites, have been hardest hit by them. During the two decades from 1935 to 1954, the number of Negro farm operators in the South dropped 42 per cent, as compared to a 29 per cent drop among white operators.


Tenant farmers and sharecroppers were, of course, the first to go. At first many of these were precipitated into the dismal ranks of farm "hired hands". But in time mechanization drove many of these off the land altogether, a 31 per cent drop in the number of farm laborers having taken place in the South from 1942 to 1957.


Sad, but that's how it is....
The average age of Southern farm operators being over 50, you can readily imagine the difficulties such folk encounter in searching for jobs in the towns and cities.


The South's Negroes have especially been on the move, and not alone for economic reasons. This will give you some idea as to the trend: at the beginning of the century, 85 per cent of all American Negroes were still in the South, and three-fourths of these lived in rural areas. Now only 63 per cent live in the South, and only half of these are rural residents. Of the six million living outside the South, one-half were born in the South.


But don't think that simply moving out of the South means leaving all job discrimination behind. For in the South, the proportion of Negro workers who get to be managers, officials, proprietors, craftsmen, and foremen is 8 - 5 per cent; in the North, 10 per cent.


Be Your Own Boss, but-
Official manuals like to harp upon individual Horatio Alger success stories of American Negroes who have "made good". Such people do exist, but their existence does not attest any lack of discrimination, but only that some few have managed to prosper in spite of it. The figures, which the official manuals do not harp upon, reveal that only 0.1 percent of 211 nonwhites have annual incomes of more than 10,000 dollars, as compared to 2 -2. percent of all whites (farmers excluded).


Certain fields have traditionally sought to exclude Negroes, such as architecture, chemistry, metallurgy, engineering, publishing, law, and social work. Even the fields of dentistry, medicine, and education have presented special barriers to nonwhites.


Should you be able to obtain professional training despite the fact that such training is not available to Negroes in many areas, you will stiff find yourself hemmed in by race prejudice.
As a Negro professional or businessman, you will generally find that, due to prejudice, your clientele will be limited to the Negro community.


If you are a Negro and wish to be a lawyer, you must face the fact that many Negro clients prefer to hire white lawyers, who by virtue of their color are able to obtain a greater degree of justice from the white judges and juries. (It is interesting to recall that the supreme court of Maryland once held constitutional a state law barring Negroes from the legal profession, basing its decision on a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that laws barring women as barristers were constitutional.)


If you are a Negro and aspire to be a doctor, surgeon, or nurse, you must face the fact that a great many hospitals will not permit you to treat patients in them.
Throughout the segregated territory and in certain other areas besides, local and state chapters of the American Medical Association will not admit you to membership if you are a Negro doctor.


If you are a Negro nurse practicing in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, South Carolina, or Virginia, the state and local units of the American Nurses' Association will not admit you to membership.


If you are a Negro and plan to become a barber, you must face the fact that, although Negro barbershops catering to white patrons were once commonplace, they have virtually disappeared since short hair became stylish for women. Some Southern states have laws prohibiting Negro barbers from cutting the hair of white women.


If you are a Negro and aspire to public office in the segregated territory-and in some other
places besides-you may also become a candidate for lynching (see "Who may Vote Where").
For example, Larkin Marshall had no sooner announced - his candidacy for Congressman from Georgia in 1948 than the 'KU Klux Klan sent him warnings and burned a fiery cross in front of his home.

The number of elected Negro office-holders in the South can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There is also widespread discrimination against the hiring of Negroes on municipal and state payrolls. The City of Richmond, Virginia, long boasted that it employed no Negroes in any capacity, skilled or unskilled.


City licensing and zoning boards may refuse to license you to practice certain trades if you are not a white Gentile. For example, San Francisco once sought to drive Chinese Americans out of the laundry business by refusing to license them; Chicago adopted a law against taxicab solicitation and sought to enforce it against Negroes only; Houston refused to license Negroes as electricians; and a Jacksonville, Florida, zoning board refused to permit a Syrian to establish a business in South Jacksonville.


Although the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that, "The right to work for a living in the common occupations of the community is the essence of the personal freedom and opportunity that it was the purpose of the 14th Amendment to secure", the truth is that if you are not a native-born white Gentile you will find your work opportunities in the U.S.A. are limited in a great many ways. The case of one out of many counties where Negroes are not permitted to work or live has been cited in the earlier chapter, "Who may Live Where".
Similarly, when Mrs. Kate Robbins opened up a small dry-goods store in Redbank, Tennessee, the Ku Klux Klan tied a bundle of switches to her door and left a note reading: "No Jews Wanted In Redbank". The note was turned over to the F.B.I., but it took no action. Then the KKK burned a cross in front of Mrs. Robbins' store one afternoon, marched in full regalia and told her, "We mean business-get out!" She got out.


You Can't Work Together
In most of the segregated territory, state and/or local laws require that industrial workers be separated according to race. A typical South Carolina statute reads as follows:


"It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation engaged in the business of cotton textile manufacturing in this state to allow or permit operatives, help and labor of the different races to labor and work together within the same room, or to use the same doors of entrance and exit at the same time, or to use and occupy the same pay ticket windows or doors for paying off its operatives and laborers at the same time, or to use die same stairway and windows at the same time, or to use at any time the same lavatories, toilets, drinking water buckets, pails, cups, dippers, or glasses."


This South Carolina law provides a noteworthy exception, however, as follows:
"This section shall not apply to employment of firemen as subordinates in boiler rooms, or to floor scrubbers and those persons employed in keeping in proper condition lavatories and toilets, and carpenters, mechanics, and others engaged in the repair or erection of buildings;"
The law empowers any citizen of the county to institute suit against an offending company for 100 dollars, the money to be turned over to the public school fund. In addition, the company may be fined 100 dollars for each offence and/or its responsible officials sentenced to 30 days "at hard labor".


In North Carolina, a state law requires all manufacturing plants located in cities of 1,000 or more population to provide separate toilets for white and nonwhite workers (separate toilets are mandatory throughout the segregated territory).


You can readily see how the laws prohibiting the races from working together tend to preclude the employment of nonwhites. Because of such laws, relatively few industrial plants in the segregated territory have gone to the trouble and expense of setting up dual production facilities. Several plants have worked whites on the day shift, nonwhites at night.
Both in and out of the segregated territory there is a more or less stringent taboo, which prevents the hiring of Negro supervisors over white workers. In one Kentucky case, the Axton Fisher Tobacco Company was awarded damages from the Evening Post, it being held libelous per se to allege that a company employs Negro males as supervisors over white females.


Uncle Sam as Bossman
Don't think if you are nonwhite that the way to avoid job discrimination. is to seek employment with the U.S. Government or in the national capital or colonial possessions of the U.S.A. In the jobs he hands out and in the territory he administers directly Uncle Sam has discriminated as much as or more than almost anybody else in the country.


If you are in a position to choose in your search for employment, you may prefer to choose one of the states and/or cities which do have laws against job discrimination, even though those laws are but feebly enforced; for the Federal Government has no law on the subject, either concerning its own employees, or the employees of firms receiving taxpayers' money through Government contracts, or concerns enjoying public subsidization in the form of tax exemption.


After Roosevelt's Fair Employment Practices Commission was killed in 1945, the only agency to which Government workers could complain of racial or religious discrimination was a fair employment board of the Civil Service Commission. This board limits its interest to individual complaints; collective complaints will not be heard. To give you an idea as to what may be expected of it: A survey made by the National Committee on Segregation in Washington (1948) compared two groups Of 40 white and 40 Negro Governmental employees, who were equal in terms of sex, age, education, experience, length of service, efficiency rating, etc. It was found that the whites had averaged one promotion for every two years of service, while the Negroes had averaged only one promotion every 14 years. In other words, all else being equal, your white co-worker can expect seven promotions from Uncle Sam to your one.


You can expect to find even worse conditions in private employment with firms holding contracts with the Government. The self-evident principle that tax-money, being collected without racial discrimination, ought to be expended without racial discrimination, is rendered little more than lip-service in the U.S.A.


To be sure, as a result of Roosevelt's initiative, all Government contracts with private industry now contain a clause obligating the industry not to practice racial or religious discrimination. However, a Presidential commission investigating the efficacy of such clauses reported in 1953 that "both industry and Government agencies have largely ignored existing nondiscrimination clauses in Government contracts". This has not changed.


As a poor Substitute for Roosevelt's F.E.P.C. the Eisenhower Administration has maintained a President's Committee on Government Contracts. But if you have been discriminated against by a firm holding a Government contract you would probably be wasting your time if you appealed to the President's Committee. For the essential truth is that the U.S. Government has never cancelled a contract because an industry practiced discrimination, though discrimination is common among very many industries holding Government contracts throughout the country (in the South, there is no industry which does not discriminate).
The notion that private enterprises, which enjoy public subsidization in the form of tax-exemption, are also under special obligation not to discriminate has scarcely scratched the surface of America's consciousness.


From one extremity of responsibility to the other, the factor of discrimination continues operative under the wings of the American eagle. Dr. Ralph Bunche, Negro, was not looking for a job as elevator boy with the tax-exempt fraternal order of Eagles; winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a United Nations mediator, he was offered the post of Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, but he felt obliged to refuse because he did not want to subject his children to the intense racial discrimination practiced in the nation's capital.


Perhaps you read in the newspapers that the Civil Rights Act of 1957 established a Civil Rights Commission. So it did; but a year later the Commission still did not even have a chairman. This did not matter much, since the Commission's life was limited to two years and its powers limited to, recommending civil rights legislation, which Congress will probably not adopt, anyway.


The U.S. Information Agency is wont to point out that back in 1928 no Negroes were employed by the Federal Government except as janitors and other menials, but by 1954 they constituted 23 per cent of all Government employees. This is due not so much to any Governmental enlightenment as it is to Negro militancy and the pressures of world opinion. Furthermore, it so happens that 35 per cent of the population of Washington, D.C., is Negro.
Some Governmental agencies have a record of discriminating more than others. The NAACP. has charged that the Department of Justice, Interstate Commerce Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and Bureau of Printing and Engraving have been among the worst offenders.
Even the Veterans Administration, in its Southern offices, segregates its few Negro employees.
Of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the NAACP. has said in a letter to F.B.I. Director John Edgar Hoover: "It is increasingly difficult for thousands upon thousands of American citizens to believe that an agency of Government whose personnel recruiting record is so badly tainted with racial bias, will, when it comes to protecting the rights I of minority racial groups give them a square deal."


The capital itself, though administered by a Congressional committee employs relatively few Negroes except in menial capacities. This has been especially true of the tax collector's office, purchasing office, and vehicles and traffic department. Both the police and fire departments are segregated; in 1952 Congress intervened to prevent the latter from integrating 16 Negro firemen into white firefighting brigades.


All progress reports aside, you will still find that in Washington, D.C., six out of ever-,, eight Negro job holders (public and private) are laborers domestic servants, or service workers, while Only One of every eight white workers falls in this category.
It so happens that America's colonies, or "territories and insular possessions" as they are called, contain a great many persons of different ethnic origin than the Nordic white in majority of the U.S. mainland.

Puerto Rico, the Panama Canal Zone, Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, and Pacific islands- all these are directly under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government. You might think that, under the circumstances discrimination in employment would be less rife in these places. Not so, however.


The situation in the Panama Canal Zone, which is officially described as a "U.S. Government reservation", is fairly typical. The Canal Zone has a civilian population of more than 50,000, some of whom are whites from the U.S. proper, but most of whom are an admixture of Negro, Indian and Hispanic strains. The U.S.A. whites, according to U.S. Government usage in the Canal Zone, are designated "Gold" while the remainder are called "Silver".
The racial differential in hourly wage scales as paid by the U.S. Government in the Zone gives "Silver" workers only one-fourth to one-third as much as "Gold" workers.
Moreover, if you are Silver you will not be paid any bonus for overtime work; if you are Gold you will get premium pay for overtime.
If Silver, you get exactly half as much food-money while doing a job away from your official station as a Gold worker is given each day.
Similar racial wage differentials are commonly in force wherever the American flag flies over nonwhites overseas.

Jim Crow in Uniform
If you are toying with the notion of a career in the U.S. armed forces, or are subject to induction therein, there are certain things you ought to know.
For instance, did you know-
§ That 4,000 Negroes fought in the armies of George Washington in the American Revolutionary War for Independence?
§ That 250,000 Negroes fought in the armies of Abraham Lincoln for the liberation of their people and the restoration of the United States?
§ That 500,000 Negroes fought in the armies of Woodrow Wilson in World War I to help "make the world safe for democracy"?
§ That 1,150,000 Negroes fought in the armies of Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War ii to help deny the Axis "Supermen" their "Thousand Years" of world dominion?
§ That Dwight D. Eisenhower as supreme commander of the armed forces said in 1942, "My policy for handling colored troops will be absolute qualitative treatment, but there will be segregation where facilities are afforded"?
§ That President Harry S. Truman, rejecting appeals that as Commander-in-Chief he issue an order abolishing racial segregation and discrimination in the armed forces, issued instead in 1946 an "instructive" which "called upon" the Services to eliminate segregation and discrimination "as rapidly as possible"?
§ That Eisenhower in testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee in 1948 said that the armed forces are not concerned with 94 social reform", and added that "a certain amount of segregation is necessary in the Army"?
§ That when in the same year the New York Star asked the Army about continued segregation under the new draft law, the Army replied: "Our policy must continue to be the employment of Negro troop units of appropriate size and conformation in the best interests of over all efficiency"?
§ That in spite of Truman's 1946 instructive, by 1949 there were still no Negro officers in the Navy, in the Marines and Air Force only 0.6 per cent of the officers were Negro, and in the Army 1.8 percent?
§ That Negro discontent with the slow motion of Truman's "rapidly as possible" program led this same year to threats to picket a testimonial dinner to Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, with the result that the dinner was cancelled?
§ That a Presidential investigating committee reported the following year (1950) that Negro servicemen were still largely consigned to labor detail; that the Negro's chance of obtaining an officer's commission in the Army was I in 70, compared to I in 7 for whites; that in 490 specialized fields of training in the Army, only 190 were open to Negroes; that cadet training schools were still closed to Negroes, et cetera?
§ That in 1957 the U.S. Information Agency had the nerve to point with pride to figures indicating that by 1954 Negroes constituted 3 per cent of the Army's officers, I - I per cent of the Marines' and Air Force's, and 0.1 per cent of the Navy's? (Don't forget that Negroes comprise 10 per cent of the population and an even higher proportion of the armed forces.

Don't forget too that these official figures do not reveal the extent to which such Negro officers as do exist are concentrated in the lowest categories.)
Nor should you think, if you are in line for compulsory military service, that you can get out of it by claiming induction would subject you to racial discrimination.
Winifred Lynn tried it during World War 11, to no avail. To be sure, the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution does say that A citizens shall be entitled to equal protection of the law. Taking note of this, Lynn *instituted habeas corpus proceedings charging that the Selective Service Act would subject him to racial discrimination; but his plea was thrown out by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Needless to say, Lynn was not just imagining things.

Suffice it to cite just two of the infinitude of cases in point:
When, during World War 11, Colonel William T. Colman, white, specified that he wanted a white chauffeur, and got Private William McRae, Negro, instead, he promptly shot him. A court martial reduced the charge of "assault with intent to do bodily harm" to 11 careless use of firearms", and Colonel Colman was reduced to a captaincy.


When German prisoners of war, assigned to work in the kitchen of an Army hospital at Macdill Field, Florida, refused to work because Negro patients were permitted to cat in the same mess-hall with white patients (albeit on separate sides), U.S. Army officials obligingly ordered the Negroes to another hall, whereupon the Nazis went back to work.
During World War II the armed services of the U.S.A. not only introduced the spectacle of segregated units to foreign lands, but in many instances sought to establish a measure of racial segregation in the civil life of European and Pacific countries.


For example, when Colonel James E. Manley set up U.S. Army headquarters in a Naples, Italy, hotel, he promptly ordered a "No Negroes" sign to be hung in front.
In Britain, the resentment of some white American troops against the equal treatment afforded by the English to Negro American troops reached such violent proportions that the authorities had to grant leave to the two groups on alternate nights.
In the Philippines, white troops pressured some restaurant owners into erecting "Whites Only" signs introducing a concept previously unknown on the islands.


From Australia, the Associated Press reported the following: "Newest and swankiest of three service clubs for American Negro troops has been opened. From the deep-cushioned leather chairs of its attractive lounge to the streamlined polished metal of its modem kitchen, the Dr. Carver Club is exclusive, 'out of bounds' to all white troops save those fortunate enough to receive special invitations. As one Army officer put it, 'those boys have been doing their country a great service. The clubs are just a token of our appreciation.'


In some places, the exported "Made in U.S.A.", segregation put down tenacious roots. The proprietor of the Thousand and One Nights Bar in Frankfurt, Germany, charged in 1949 with "conduct hostile or disrespectful to the Allied forces" for having refused to serve two American Negro corporals, replied in his own defense that he had taken his cue from white U.S. Army units which he had seen refuse to serve Negro troopers for five years.
On the home front, the treatment accorded Negro veterans was in strict conformity with the principles of white supremacy. Relatively little recognition was accorded them, even in the Press. Unique among the papers of the segregated territory in that it applauded Negro veterans at all, the Wilson, North Carolina, Daily Times in a special edition carrying photographs of all local service men who had been killed in action, grouped the Negroes together, added "Col." (Colored) after each of their names, and omitted titles of respect in listing their surviving relatives.


Similarly, in the first Armistice Day parade in Birmingham, Alabama, following the end of World War 11, the Negro troop units were required to bring up the rear, after the Fire Department, Boy Scouts, schoolboy patrol, and other such outfits had passed in review.
The services have likewise discriminated against Negro veterans.
Shortly after World War 11 the U.S. Army Air Corps excluded Negro patients from its hospital at Plattsburg Barracks, Washington, D.C. In an official explanation later, the War Department said that Negro patients there had been "unhappy" because of the "severe winter climate".
In view of such as this, it is not surprising that thousands of American Negro troopers discharged overseas chose to remain there, finding in Europe a far greater measure of freedom than that obtaining in their native land.


One Negro veteran, enrolled in a European medical school, upon being asked whether he planned to return to the U.S.A. to practice, replied: "Do you think I'm crazy?"
Another, singing in a Parisian night club, upon receiving an offer from an impresario to make him great if he would return to the U.S.A., replied: "Thanks, but I don't want to be great; I just want to be happy-"


Despite the continuing prospect of racial discrimination in the armed forces, Negroes continued to enlist at a greater rate than their white compatriots-partly because discrimination on the job made discrimination in service seem a lesser evil, and partly in the hope of getting a taste of equality by being assigned to overseas duty.


The Army, for some reason, deemed it necessary to discourage Negro enlistment, and to this end a quota system was adopted, limiting the proportion of Negroes in service to the proportion of Negroes in the population. For a time when the Negro quota had been filled the Army turned away all further Negro applicants; but then it hit upon the scheme of requiring Negroes to score 39 on a test in which all other applicants were required to score but 15.
By way of explanation, the War Department said: "In order to maintain the necessary controls relative to the numbers involved, the minimum acceptable grade on the pre-enlistment examination was raised in the case of Negro applicants."


The entry of the U.S.A. into the Korean fighting in 1950 focusedworld attention as never before on the status of Negroes in the armed forces.


To begin with, segregation-as-usual appeared to be the policy of draft officials in raising an army for the Korean fighting. Southern Congressmen almost succeeded in writing into the extension of the draft law a provision that any white draftees who objected to fighting side by side with Negroes would be given the privilege of being assigned to all-wbite units. Congress rejected this, however, but evidently on the assumption that segregation would be continued.
John LeFlore, Executive Secretary of the Mobile, Alabama, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wired a protest to General Lewis B. Hershey, head of the Selective Service System, protesting at the segregation of Negro draftees on buses on their way to induction, and also at the fact that "Negro draft registrants called here for pre-induction examinations are forced to eat in the hot kitchen of a private restaurant while white youths called for the same purpose eat in the main dining-room".


The indiscriminate application of the contemptuous word "Gook" by many white American troops to southern Koreans, northern Koreans, Chinese and Japanese alike, gave rise to such resentment that the military authorities were eventually obliged to frown officially upon its use, albeit with little effect.


As living evidence that the various Executive Orders calling for an end of segregation in the armed forces had not been carried out, the all-Negro 24th Infantry Regiment was thrown into the forefront of the Korean fighting at the outset. As Ollie Harrington, creator of the "Dark Laughter" cartoon in the Pittsburgh Courier, put it from the mouths of "Tan Yanks" up front, the perils of the war front were as nothing compared to the perils of a Negro sitting "up front" on the home front.


When General Walter Lee Weible in Tokyo ordered four portable swimming pools sent to the hard-pressed American forces in Korea, he specified that Negro troops were to have access to only one of the pools.


Casualties in the 24th were extremely heavy, and replacements and supplies, including shoes, were slow in coming. The white Press made much ado about the spectacle of colored G.Is. fighting colored Koreans; but the pages of the Negro Press began to fin with stories of atrocities committed, not by Koreans, but by white American officers against the Negro troops they were leading.


En came the incident of the 24th being bombed by mistake by the American Air Force, with serious casualties being inflicted.
On August 6, 1951, the 24th's newly appointed commanding officer, Colonel Arthur S. Champeney, white; saw fit to address his troops, telling them he was going to change their reputation from "the frightened 24th to the fighting 24th".
The case of Lieutenant Leon A. Gilbert, who was sentenced to death by a court martial, attracted special attention. A wounded veteran of World War II with a record of ten years' service in the Army, Lieutenant Gilbert, while suffering from shock and fatigue due to prolonged heavy fighting, refused to obey the command of a white superior officer to return with twelve of his men to a position which Lieutenant Gilbert felt sure meant "certain death". Following a storm of public protest, President Truman commuted Gilbert to 20 years' imprisonment at hard labor dishonorable discharge, and forfeiture of all pay and pension allowances. His wife has three children.


Following the court-martialing of Lieutenant Gilbert, mass court-martialing of whole units of the 24th Regiment ensued, with no comparable action being taken against white units, which fell back in haste under heavy pressure.


"The letters we have received from convicted soldiers and the talks we have had with war correspondents strongly indicate that many of these men have been victimized by racial discrimination," said Thurgood Marshall, general counsel of the NAACP. "It seems apparent that some of them are being made scapegoats for the failures of higher personnel."


Time and the military marched on, until today the U.S. Information Agency boasts that there are no more all-Negro units in the services, and that segregation has been done away with in service training programs, base facilities, et cetera. This sounds great, as indeed it is. But don't forget that segregation just happens to be the most conspicuous form of discrimination. What has happened is that the American armed forces that were long segregated in form and discriminatory in content are now integrated in form and discriminatory in content. Half a loaf is better than no bread, but there is no mistaking it for the whole.


When in 1958 Lieutenant William B. Morton of Texas, stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, refused to shake the hand of a Negro fellow officer, Army headquarters in Washington ordered that the charge of "conduct unbecoming an officer" be dropped, with the result that only a modest fine was levied against him.


An American Negro novelist living in Paris proposed to tour U.S. military bases in Europe and make a sub rosa survey of the sub rosa discrimination still being practiced, but even America's Negro newspapers declined to sponsor the project as "too hot to handle".

 

Continue on to Chapter 9