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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Negro Community - 43. Institutions - 2. The Negro Family - 3. The Negro Church in the Negro Community
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Chapter 43. Institutions 935
Alabama, Charles S. Johnson found no spinsters and extremely few older
bachelors among the Negroes (612 families).® He also found only two
divorced persons who had not remarried. Further: common-law marriage
and illegitimacy are not seriously condemned within the Negro community
—except among the upper classes—and they have, therefore, fewer dis-
organizing effects on the individual. The Southern Negro community
defines divorce in a broad sense—to include most cases of desertion or
mutual agreement to separate and also the crossing of state or county lines
—so that there is no moral guilt attached to remarriage even if there is
legal guilt. The Negro community also has the healthy social custom of
attaching no stigma to the illegitimate child and of freely adopting illegiti-
mate children and orphans into established families. A high value is placed
on children generally, and those who mate outside of marriage do not have
a tendency to prevent the coming of children. There are few unwanted
children. Another healthy social attitude found by Charles Johnson is that
of regarding a forced marriage as less respectable than desertion after a
forced marriage. The erring daughter is forgiven by her parents and is not
ostracized by the community.
The existence of these practices does not mean that the Negro community
has no moral standards, even in the traditional American sense. ^Tast
women,” philandering men and ^^fly-by-night” affairs are condemned. In
the rural South, the rule is that a person may cohabit with only one other
person during a given period: there is little promiscuity.*^ But the important
thing is that the Negro lower classes, especially in the rural South, have
built up a type of family organization conducive to social health, even
though the practices are outside the American tradition. When these prac-
tices are brought into closer contact with white norms, as occurs when
Negroes go to the cities, they tend to break down partially and to cause the
demoralization of some individuals.
3. The Negro Church in the Negro Community*
At least 44 per cent of American Negroes were claimed as members of
Negro churches in 1936. Actually, the proportion is considerably higher,
for several reasons.® Although church membership means different things
to different people, it is quite obvious—not only from total membership
figures, but also from the character of the church service, the religious
nature of many of the Negroes songs, the great use to which the church
building is put, the diversity of voluntary activities organized around the
church—^that religion and church play an important role in the Negro
• The most useful general sources of information on the Negro church that we have found
and the ones we have relied upon for most of our factual data are: B. E. Mays and J. W.
Nicholson, The Negroes Church (1933)} and J. G. St. Clair Drake, “The Negro Church
and Associations in Chicago,” unpublished manuscript prepared for this study (1940).
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