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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 14. The Negro in Business, the Professions, Public Service and Other White Collar Occupations - 8. Negro Officials and White Collar Workers in Public Service
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Chapter 14. The Negro in Business 327
8. Negro Officials and White Collar Workers
IN Public Service
In previous sections we have touched upon certain groups of Negro
officials and white collar workers, all or some of whom are employed in
public service: teachers, physicians and surgeons, nurses, social workers,
extension service workers and so on. These categories include the majority
of all Negro workers of higher than wage earner status employed by
federal, state or county agencies.
The largest of the remaining occupations is postal service, which had
i8,chdo Negro workers in 1930, of whom 7,000 were clerks, 6,000 were
mail carriers and the rest were in various minor categories. This meant a
trebling in Negro postal employment since 1910, whereas the number of
white workers had increased to a far lesser extent. The gain was due,
mainly, to the development outside the South. In Northern states Negroes
generally had many more representatives, in proportion, among the postal
employees than in the total population, but in the South—^and particularly
in the Deep South—^they were grossly under-represented in the postal
service.^*
In other public services* there were scarcely 6,000 Negro officials and
white collar workers in 1930, constituting only about i per cent of the
total. Of these, less than 2,000 were policemen, sheriffs, and detectives j
and more than 3,000 were clerks and kindred workers j
the remaining 1,000
were in a large variety of other categories.®* There had been some increase
since 19 lO, but this seems to have been due largely to the development in
some Northern state and municipal administrations.®®
Negroes were driven out of Southern state and local government service
after Reconstruction. The decline of Negroes in federal jobs was more
gradual. During the Wilson administration, the Negroes position in the
federal government became even more critical than previously. The num-
ber of Negro postmasters declined from 153 in 1910 to 78 in 1930, and
several other Negro officials of the federal government were removed.
Segregation was introduced into Washington offices where it had scarcely
occurred before. The rule was devised that federal agencies, when employ-
ing civil servants, were allowed to choose among the three applicants with
the highest rating. Later exclusion of Negroes was made even easier by
the requirement that every applicant was to supply his photograph.®®
Moton observed that . . an almost perfect system had been devised for
eliminating Negroes without violating any specific regulation or officially
sanctioning discrimination on account of race.”®^ Its effects on the employ-
ment of Negroes in federal service was counteracted, to some extent, be-
cause of the expansion in the federal administration during the First
‘The armed forces are discussed in Chapter 19, Section 4.
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