Robert C. Weaver lecture, " Blacks and Federal Agencies in the New Deal," at the University of Iowa, June 5, 1977

Speaker 1: The following was recorded June 5th, 1977. It's part of the 9th Annual Institute for Afro-American Culture. Blacks and federal agencies in the New Deal is the subject of this talk by Robert. C. Weaver, professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College. He is introduced by Dr. Darwin Turner, chairman of the Afro-American Studies program at the University of Iowa. Dr. Darwin Turn...: Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome you this evening to the opening lecture of the 9th Annual Institute for Afro-American Culture, the third successive institute which has been funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. As those of you who are participants and staff know, the topic for this year is Blacks in the Depression years: Afro-American thought from 1930 to 1945. When we proposed this topic, we considered the fact that the decade of the 1930s has been neglected in too many studies of Afro-American history and culture. It seems to be obscured by the brilliance of the Harlem Renaissance on one side. On the other side, it's obscured by the World War II era which, in retrospect, seems to move quickly from the post-war tolerance, improving the images of Blacks in film and providing new opportunities for Black writers to the desegregation of the armed services, to the Supreme Court's decision that schools should not be segregated, to the bus boycott in the 1960s. The neglect of this decade of the 1930s is unjust for the period has significance of its own, even though that significance may be of more interest to the teacher of Afro-American culture than to the average person in the streets. This was the era of the first suits to break down the walls of segregation in schooling. In the nationwide attention on the trial of the Scottsboro Boys accused of raping two White women in Alabama, the era anticipated by a generation the now familiar question of whether Blacks can secure fair trials in American courts. Politically, Blacks advanced not only as participants in Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, but also as appointees to political positions on a scale unprecedented since Reconstruction. Despite the Depression, Blacks seemed to gain in labor, partly as result of the establishment of the CIO. The Federal Writers' Project gave support to Black writers as the WPA Theatre gave support to performers and dramatists. Some Black leaders were reaching their maturity in the 1930s, and other scholars were just being born in the 1930s. We've discovered that there is a tremendous nostalgia for the 1930s. I was sharing reminiscences with an administrator of the university this evening. He was born in 1930 and I was born in 1931, so this seems to be our childhood that we're talking about. Some Black leaders were reaching their maturity. One at her prime was Mary McLeod Bethune, who is unfortunately neglected in most surveys of Afro-American history. Paul Robeson was at the height of his prominence. A. Philip Randolph also was in his prime as a political and labor leader. Langston Hughes, a product of the Renaissance, was gaining strength as a poet and dramatist, and new writers were emerging, some whose names are commonplace in Afro-American studies today. Some like Arna Bontemps and Zora Neale Hurston had been spawned by the Renaissance, but were matured by the Depression years. Others brought new insights, such new writers as Chester Himes, Richard Wright, Frank Yerby, Frank Marshall Davis, Ted Ward, Margaret Walker. Significantly also, this was an important period of Black scholarship. Older scholars such as Benjamin Brawley, W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter Woodson, Alain Locke were continuing their work, but new scholars and historians were emerging. James Weldon Johnson, formally a creative writer and anthologist, published his cultural history Black Manhattan at the beginning of the decade. Sterling Brown, the dean of Afro-American literary history, was publishing his first books. D. O. W. Holmes published the first significant study of Negro colleges during the '30s. Nick Ford published a study of Black fiction in '36 and Saunders Redding, three years later, published the brilliant To Make a Poet Black. E. Franklin Frazier published his first major work in 1940. Lorenzo Greene published a study of Negroes in colonial New England in 1942, and St. Clair Drake published his first book in 1945. Yet the Harlem Renaissance is remembered as an era during which Black creative writers flourished on unprecedented scale. The era 1930 to 1945 might be remembered similarly for the burgeoning of Black scholars. In short, we believe that a teacher of Afro-American culture is limited without a knowledge of the significant events, trends, personalities and scholarship of this period. Consequently, for the next two weeks, we propose to attend in part to that deficiency in the knowledge of the field. Tomorrow night in this auditorium, there will be a third lecture... There is one tomorrow afternoon... a third lecture by Lawrence Reddick on the topic Ralph Bunche and Black intellectual leadership. In previous institutes, because we focused primarily on the distant past, our lecturers were, consequently, primarily historians of that past. This year, however, because we're focusing on a more recent period, we're fortunate to have as lecturers individuals who have helped shape the era as well as write about it. Such an individual is our lecturer this evening, Dr. Robert Weaver, an author, the publisher of four books, presently the distinguished professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College of the city university of New York, an administrator who served as president of Bernard Baruch University from 1969 to 1971 and an individual who formally served as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development from January of 1966 to December of 1968. Robert Clifton Weaver was born in Washington, D.C. in 1907. He's a graduate of the distinguished Dunbar High School. He received his college degrees from Harvard University, a bachelor's cum laude, a master's and finally a PhD in economics. He entered government in 1933, almost at the beginning of our period, and continued to serve in Washington for the next 10 years, working in housing and labor recruitment and training, serving such important posts as advisor to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and as director of the Negro Manpower Service and the War Manpower Commission during World War II. In the middle and late 1940s, he served as executive secretary of the mayor's committee on race relations in Chicago and subsequently served as a teacher both at Northwestern and at Teachers College of Columbia University and at the School of Education on New York University. From 1949 to 1955, Mr. Weaver directed the opportunity fellowships program of the John Hay Whitney Foundation and was consultant to the Ford Foundation during 1959 and 1960. Normally, Dr. Weaver, despite the distinction of a lecturer, I would not read the details of the vitae in this matter, and yet I want to emphasize the breadth as well as the depth of the individual who has served in almost every walk, almost every area that is of significance in American life for Blacks and for other Americans who are not Black. In 1955, he was appointed deputy commissioner of housing for the state of New York and later became State Rent Commissioner. He's a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Benjamin Franklin fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He also serves on numerous boards and councils of various educational institutions and other institutions. His most recent affiliations include the position as president of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing from 1973 to the present, a position as chairman of Governor Carey's Task Force on Housing and Community Development in 1975, and presently he continues to serve as director of the Municipal Assistance Corporation for the city of New York, a position which he first assumed in 1975. Dr. Weaver is the author of more than 125 articles and four books, Negro Labor: A National Problem, The Negro Ghetto, The Urban Complex and Dilemmas of Urban America. This evening, he will speak to us on the topic the impact of the New Deal upon Blacks and their participation in World War II production. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Dr. Robert Weaver. Dr. Robert Weav...: Thank you very much. If this were in the backing of my public activity, I would say I accept the nomination. Although the New Deal was not an equal opportunity program or designed to hasten the enfranchisement of Black Americans, it had significant impact upon these and associated phases of the Black experience. It had been preceded first by decades of gross neglect and unconcern for Blacks, an era which Rayford W. Logan aptly described as the nadir, and then followed by a period of continued economic, social and political color discrimination and segregation. World War I brought some gains as Blacks migrated out of the South and became a part of the industrial reserve of the North. There, however, they were almost exclusively restricted to unskilled jobs, but had some relief from the southern system of a wage differential based upon color and began slowly to participate effectively in political life. A post-war economic expansion followed and gave rise to what some identified as black capitalism, but which was more rhetoric than substance. Finally, the Great Depression impaled the nation. In the process of these events, Black Americans' role in the federal government and the latter's concern for them declined. In contrast to recent years, the Depression was a period of mass rather than class unemployment. All racial, age and occupational groups were subjected to unprecedented high rates of joblessness. But as E. Franklin Frazier aptly expressed it, "The Depression revealed the insecurity of the Negroes' position in American industry." Some idea of that insecurity is reflected in the fact that by 1931, the urban Blacks had much higher rates of unemployment than their whites' prototypes. Although this is true today, the magnitudes involved for both races were much greater in the Depression. To cite an extreme case, in 1931, 32% of white male workers and 60% of Black male workers in Detroit were jobless. For females, the comparable figures were 17 and 75%. In 13 large cities which had significant Black populations, at least 25% of both male and female Blacks were unemployed. Black skilled workers, especially in construction and as railroad firemen, had deteriorated from a dominant factor in the South to a decidedly marginal one. The Depression accelerated the process. By 1936, almost half of the Black skilled males were in other than skilled occupations, and over four-tenths of them had been displaced from their usual types of employment. A third of the latter were in unskilled jobs and over 70% were unemployed. The impact of the Depression upon the Blacks, although less visible than in the cities, was probably even more severe in the rural South than in urban America. Increasing numbers of tenant farmers, especially the more numerous Black ones, beginning in 1929 found it impossible to obtain a contract for a crop. At the same time, many Black farmers lost their land and equipment. Displacement of Black tenants, as was the case with whites, began before and was greatly accelerated throughout the Depression. Viewed from this perspective, the New Deal had a profound impact upon the economic status of Blacks as well as their self-image and political sophistication. This was not, however, by special design, but an inevitable consequence of an approach designed to help those of the lowest status rain the federal benefits down to those who suffered from unemployment and want, including Black citizens. More specifically, the New Deal enabled a vast number of Blacks to subsist, retain work habits and obtain a minimum of health as a result of federal aid, and it brought them wider consciousness of and participation in government. President Roosevelt, when he entered the White House, was not dedicated to the cause of Negro rights. In fact, at Warm Springs, Georgia, he had easily accommodated himself to the segregationist folk ways of the South. In varying degrees, however, his appointees to high office were more conscious of and concerned for Blacks than had probably been true at any earlier period of history in America. And even more important, they directed activities which to an unprecedented degree affected Blacks. There is little evidence that Roosevelt prodded those assistants who dragged their feet or interfered with those who took an affirmative stance in race relations. Yet, it must be remembered that Roosevelt appointed and retained the latter. When it did not seem to endanger his grand program, Roosevelt spoke out against racial injustice. Subsequently, however, he refused to support publicly an anti-lynching bill. The most effective supporter of Negro rights functioning out of the White House was not an official. She was the president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, and hers was often a lonely effort. Mrs. Roosevelt understood the aspirations, frustrations and many of the hostilities of Black Americans. She gave hope to many Blacks and engendered actions on their behalf in the federal government. There were a few important policy officials in the New Deal who overtly espoused and instituted program for racial equality, but they were not typical of their colleagues nor certainly not of the mood of the nation. Civil rights, long on the back burner, remained there. Blacks, as most depressed Americans, stressed survival, even as many continued to resist discrimination and some turned to protest. Because the Depression marked the first time that a wide segment of the entire population shared the condition of poverty that had almost always marred the lives of Blacks, America developed a greater understanding of the impact of deprivation, hunger and neglect. Then the problems of the many disadvantaged mirrored the problems of Blacks. In this mirror, a new breed of federal bureaucrats emerged, many of whom were concerned with the underdog and by necessity, in varying degrees, with Black Americans. There was little inclination on the part of most of these officials or on the part of the vast majority of Blacks to challenge racial segregation, although dedicated Blacks and a few liberal whites opposed it and Black intellectuals planned strategies for breaking down Jim Crow. Walter White and most of the officials of the NAACP were unswerving in their advocacy of integration. It was also at this time that Charles Hamilton Houston was perfecting a legal strategy for the attack upon the then accepted by almost all whites and many Blacks concept of equal but separate facilities in public institutions and accommodations. The Howard University law school with Houston, and later his cousin William H. Hastie as its dean, became the center of legal assault upon racial segregation in public facilities and housing as well as Black disenfranchisement. The outstanding Department of Social Sciences at Howard reached its zenith during the period of the New Deal and included luminaries such as Ralph Bunche, E. Franklin Frazier, Abram L. Harris, Rayford W. Logan and others. These men and their associates worked, talked and debated with each other the brilliant young Black professors in the law school and the gifted [Doc C.] Wilkinson and Charles H. Thompson of the School of Education. The latter was a talented editor of the Journal of Negro Education which served as a forum for ventilating his ideas, those of his associates and others. It published scholarly papers on socioeconomic, public administration and legal issues as well as educational problems. Much of what this group taught, discussed and wrote had to do with the color line, its consequences and how to eliminate it. They were enlivened by the poetry of a colleague, Sterling A. Brown, who conveyed in delightful verse the tragedy of the southern Black without neglecting the tragic comedy of the folk experience and characters. What has happening in Howard and elsewhere was the thinking and writing of a vanguard composed of intellectuals. It did not reflect the attitude or ideology of the mass of Blacks in 1930. Rather, at that time, Blacks pondered whether or not the best way to deal with their unemployment and associated problems would be by patiently accepting the few concessions granted by indulgent whites or demand equal treatment. The New Deal was not impervious to the attacks upon it by white racists in and out of government. One articulator of this position wrote appropriately enough in The Georgia Woman's World, "There is much in the Roosevelt administration I don't like, but this Negro equality is about the worst feature he has tried to put over on us. It will sure cause trouble. No self-respecting white person, man or woman, would equalize with a Negro." What that means, I'm not sure. Many southern whites were reacting to what they conceived as a federal approach to race relations. Some had been outraged decades earlier when Theodore Roosevelt invited to the White House Booker T. Washington who publicly, at least, accepted racial segregation. The Blacks employed in the more significant jobs in the New Deal articulated no such acceptance. They were, for the most part, dedicated to equal participation, and many in the so-called Black Cabinet publicly opposed racial segregation. Of the Black Cabinet, Roi Ottley was to write in 1943, "To accomplish its ends, it often employs much of the positive features of a lobby. It arouses public interest through the press and pulpit, approaches influential white persons, puts the heat under congressmen with large Negro constituencies and frequently goes to the White House." Although the Black Cabinet was an appellation pinned on some Black advisors in the New Deal, its members, of course, were not a cabinet in the usual sense. They were certainly not advisors to the president. Indeed, only Mrs. Bethune among them had restricted access to him and ready entrée to his wife. Yet, their input upon government policy was more substantial than any group of earlier Black federal officials, largely due to their impact upon Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Department of Interior and administrator of the Public Works Administration; Aubrey Williams, soon named administrator of the National Youth Administration and Nathan Straus, administrator of the United States Housing Authority. The Black Cabinet did the day to day work of developing techniques to facilitate, encourage and effect equitable participation of Blacks in federal government programs. They worked primarily within the structure of the federal establishment, and in the Public Works Administration, the United States Housing Authority and the National Youth Administration in particular, they were able to achieve significant results. Despite the discomfort they personally derived from adverse publicity in the Negro press and criticism in the Black community, many of them encouraged such pressure, recognizing it often aided their getting things done. At a meeting of the YMCA secretaries and laymen in 1941, a panel of some eight of them stressed the importance of constant pressure. One said, "When the Courier or the Defender gives me hell in an editorial, or Walter White writes me a stinging letter, I take it to my chief and tell him I won't be any use to the agency unless I can produce for Negroes or if they think I'm an Uncle Tom. Then I can usually get some concessions that I've been after for weeks. I tell you, the only way we can operate in Washington is for you to keep putting plenty of pressure on us." The effectiveness of racial advisors in the New Deal varied considerably, depending upon the climate of the agency, the commitment and forthrightness of its head and the competency of the advisor. One of the group told how he did not see the cabinet secretary whom he was supposed to advise for the four to six months he endured the job. According to Charles R. [Lawrence], this particular advisor found the elegance of his office and the honorific title extremely ironic. Despite the contemporary controversy over the advisors of the New Deal, both have emerged with a general positive image. One of the earliest appraisals was that of Gunnar Myrdal who asserted that "Without question, the New Deal was of tremendous importance for the Negro in respect to the share he received in public services." It is true that the Washington administration did not dare... And in any case, did not succeed... in stabbing out discrimination in relief, agricultural policies or anything else in the South, but it definitely decreased it. It also brought a new kind of public servant to the South: educated and zealous officials who were not primarily interested in keeping the Negro in his place, but in encouraging and advancing him. This introduced a new and whole subtype of public contact for the Negro people in the South, and Negroes got a feeling that public authority could be other than arbitrary and suppressive. At the same time, the presence and functioning of highly trained Blacks in the federal government both in Washington and the field exposed most southerners and many in the North to a new experience. The consequences of this were not to become fully apparent until years after the New Deal. One national consequence was more immediate, the development of what John Hope Franklin identified as political respectability on the part of Negroes. Others have written in a singular vein, observing that Blacks regarded the New Deal as a tremendous step forward in their long battle to become first class citizens in a working democracy. In order to appraise these developments, the effort should be viewed in historical perspective. Negro gains during the New Deal may appear slight from the standpoint of the 1960s, but they are more impressive when judged against the Negroes' situation in the 1920s. One of the innovations of the New Deal which afforded Blacks unprecedented participation was the public housing program initiated in 1934. It was administered initially by the housing division of PWA and, in its earlier years, was a direct federal program operated out of Washington. PWA developed 49 housing projects in 36 cities. 14 were for Black occupancy, 17 for white and Black occupancy and 18 were for white occupancy. Leslie H. Fishel Jr. observed in 1964 that "while Ickes could not breach established segregated patterns in housing, one-eighth of the federal projects planned before the end of 1934 were in racially mixed neighborhoods. It should be noted, however, that in mixed projects, there was usually either token integration in the North or less frequently, separate racial sections in southern and border cities." [inaudible] committees set up to assist in the planning of these developments were aggressively encouraged to include Blacks. Several of the few Black architects then in practice were included among those who designed the projects, and Black engineers and architects as well as other professionals were utilized in Washington and the field. When it became apparent that a new profession, the management of public housing, developed and was on the horizon, the PWA established a training program to meet the need. The course had two Black lecturers and white and Black trainees. The most significant racial development in the PWA housing program was the emergence of an effective approach to achieve nondiscrimination in the employment of construction labor. It was based upon a definition of discrimination which set forth that the failure to pay Blacks minimum percentages of payroll going to skilled, to semi-skilled and to unskilled workers was prima facie evidence of racial discrimination. This was the first affirmative action commitment of the federal government. The PWA formula, however, based as it was upon past occupational patterns, was designed to meet a peculiar depression situation to retain past occupational advances of Blacks in a period of an extreme slack labor market. It was frankly a device to regain lost ground and not intended to open up new types of employment, an objective which became relevant in the defense and war year production period and was, of course, tied in with extensive training. In 1936, the direct federal program of public housing was terminated, largely in response to litigation which challenged federal use of the power of eminent domain to acquire property for low rent housing. A year later, the United States Housing Act was enacted, establishing the United States Housing Authority. This changed public housing from a direct federal program to a decentralized one where local housing authorities initiated, planned, constructed and managed projects. Immediately, the question arose in the minds of Blacks as to whether the equal participation, professional employment and effective action on construction employment would be continued. Fortunately, Nathan Straus, the administrator of the new agency, was no less committed on these matters than had been Secretary Ickes. The United States Housing Authority continued the PWA prima facie formula for nondiscrimination in employment of construction workers. It also continued to integrate racial considerations into its general policy and procedure requirements, rather than presenting them separately. USHA insisted that minority groups should not be displaced from stable and integrated neighborhoods, nor should more units occupied by minorities be demolished than were available to them in the program unless there were a loose housing market. And it implemented these and related policies. Early in his tenure of office, Straus stated that "in cities where a large number of Blacks lived in slums, it seemed fitting, proper and reasonable that one member of the local authority should be a member of that race." Equally important was the continued utilization of Black housing managers. The first step was to secure the retention of those Blacks who had been employed by PWA and were then employed by local authorities. This was achieved at salaries usually comparable to those of whites, a unique practice in southern local governments in the mid-1930s. The second step was to encourage local housing authorities to continue such practices. The effort was successful. As of May 1940, about 140,000 USHA aided units were under construction. Some 48,000 were for Black occupancy. By the end of the year, over $2,225,000 or five and eight-tenths percent of the total payroll to skilled workers in both PWA and USHA housing programs had gone to Black artisans. Myrdal evaluated public housing in these words: "The Negro has certainly received a large share of benefits under this program. Indeed, the USHA has given him a better deal than has any other public welfare program. This may be due in part to the fact that so far, subsidized housing programs have been built mainly in urban areas, where, even in the South, there is less reluctance to consider the Negro's need. The main explanation, however, is just the fact that USHA had the definite policy of giving the Negro his share. "The USHA," Myrdal continued, "Has given two valuable experiences. It has demonstrated that rehousing of slum families can be done in America. It has shown that a federal agency with only financial and no administrative powers in the local community can give the Negro a fair share, even in the South." Public housing's approach to Blacks was far from typical of the New Deal, but it was not unique. The Farm Security Administration directed by Will Alexander insisted that there be no discrimination between Black and white farmers, becoming the first... Probably the last... federal agricultural program to provide substantial aid to Blacks. The National Youth Administration not only aided tens of thousands of Black youths to stay in school during the Depression, it also employed Blacks at administrative capacities throughout the country. Its main contribution did not become apparent until the defense and war efforts when it was a crucial source of training for new job opportunities. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, FERA, and its successor, Works Progress Administration, WPA, while the latter usually accepted racial wage differentials in the South were, if not equitable, of great significance to the Black population. By 1939, more than one million Negroes owed their living to employment under the Works Progress Administration. Even some of the Black writers, actors and musicians that had gotten their start during the period of the Harlem Renaissance found an opportunity to continue their creative work under the WPA. Similarly, the Civilian Conservation Corps camps... Usually segregated... made their contribution to the survival of Black youth. At the other extreme, the National Recovery Administration almost completely excluded Blacks from its short-lived benefits. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration, in the tradition of the Department of Agriculture, paid little attention to Black tenant farmers and sharecroppers who became the chief sufferers from crop reduction. The Tennessee Valley Authority which was to bring the [inaudible], excluded Blacks from the new city of Norris, Tennessee and did little to open jobs to Black skilled workers, but it segregated them in construction crews. Despite the mixed racial record of New Deal agencies, most of them made a significant and crucial contribution to Black Americans in their time of extreme need. These benefits were enough to transfer Blacks' allegiance from the party of a conservative and cold Herbert Hoover to the party of a liberal, likable and warm Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose fireside chats gave most Blacks and many whites a feeling of belonging they had never had before. While Roosevelt stopped far short of being a civil rights activist, he visited Black institutions and sent messages to Black organizations, thereby creating an identification with them. There were, of course, other elements involved, not the least of which was that in the New Deal era, the federal government for the first time touched, sustained and identified with Blacks, mainly by grappling with the problems that affected them. Also, the increase in the number of Blacks in the federal service was most welcome to the group. According to Franklin, the number of Blacks employed in the federal government grew from 50,000 in 1933 to approximately 200,000 by the end of 1946. Although most of these new recruits were in low skilled and semi-skilled capacities, there was a fairly generous sprinkling of economists, statisticians, chemists, physicists and other specialists. In some portions of the government, the segregation of whites and Negroes was abolished, while most of the government cafeterias were open to Negroes. If I may interject here, it happened that my father was a clerk in the Washington Post Office and in the second Wilson administration, for the first time, they segregated cafeterias and toilets. For some reason, they always do those together. This had never occurred before and this stayed in effect until 1934 when Ickes broke it down in the Department of the Interior. This was what was happening in federal government at that time. As Black Americans welcomed and appreciated the aid that permitted them to survive, many appreciated as much, if not more, the fact that the first lady of the land became their advocate. These experiences, for the first time since Reconstruction, demonstrated to Blacks the potential importance of a positive racial policy in the federal government. This was a lesson which was remembered during the defense and war period. When the defense program got underway, Blacks were only on the sideline of American industrial life. According to the census, their proportion among those in manufacturing had increased from six and two-tenths percent in 1910 to seven and three-tenths percent in 1930, reflecting largely the impact of World War I. By 1940, it was at a new low, five and one-tenths percent. Save in domestic service, Blacks had suffered similar losses in other types of employment. Most significantly, they had little chance to participate in many of the industries which were destined to be the most important in imminent war production. For example, Blacks were but one-tenth of one percent of the workers in aircraft and parts. Comparable figures for other industries were as follows: electrical machinery, five-tenths of one percent; other machinery, one percent; rubber production, two and one-tenths percent; nonferrous metals and their products, two and four-tenths percent; apparel, two and three-tenths percent. Even in lines of production where Blacks had thought they had a foothold, it was often precarious. Witness the fact that Blacks were only six and four-tenths percent of those in ship and boat building, five and five-tenths percent in iron and steel and three and six-tenths percent in automobiles. Nor was their earlier participation in government training programs or defense and war employment encouraging. The directors of these federal activities accorded low priorities to Blacks. If Blacks could be included without threatening output, the agencies involved would go along with the program when pressured to do so by their few Black associates. If pressing the issue would endanger the delicate balance of negotiated cooperation from industry and organized labor, it was neglected. The situation was complicated because as in contrast to World War I, it soon became apparent that about three quarters of the working force in World War II production would be in professional, technical, skilled, semi-skilled and single skilled jobs. An effective program of mass training was required and Blacks had traditionally been denied such training, shuttered off into obsolete trades or limited to inadequate equipment. This pattern did not change until late in the war period. Even more discouraging was the fact that war industries were not using those Blacks who were trained, even in occupations which were essential and in which labor shortages were delay necessary defense production. During the period January to March 1941, for example, the United States Employment Service placed almost 9,000 workers in essential occupation in aircraft. Only 13 were Black. Of a similar group of 1,000 placed in electrical equipment, only five were Black. In ship building, an industry where Blacks had been used somewhat extensively during World War I, only one and seven-tenths percent of the essential placements were Black. The United States Employment Service reported at the time that "not only are nonwhite worker not receiving many skilled or semi-skilled jobs in a great many defense establishments, but they are receiving very few jobs of any type, even unskilled." The...