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An American Dilemma
1332
are as yet not ripe for communism, it is undoubtedly because they have not had as yet
the opportunity to realize the evils of a free and competitive society.”*
^ The Communists have tried to circumvent this difficulty. The church is often the
only meeting place.^ But the great majority of Negro preachers will not only keep
them out of their churches, but use all their influence to stamp out Communism as a
“Godless,” anti-religious creed.
^ Negro Americans^ What Now? (1934), p. ii.
^ Ibid,, p. 68. Compare James Weldon Johnson, Along this Way (1934), p. 41 1.
^ James Weldon Johnson, Negro Americans, What Now?, p. 9.
® The following figures taken from a survey made by Fortune magazine show to what
a great extent Negroes support the New Deal:
Per cent in Favor
“Do you approve:
“in general of F.D.R.? 84.7
“of his economic objectives? 87.3
“of Wages and Hours Legislation? 91.3
“of F.D.R.’s attitude toward Business? 85.2
“of F.D.R.’s Advisors and Associates? 73*6”
These figures are quoted by courtesy of Fortune magazine. “The Fortune Quarterly
Survey: XIII,” Fortune (July, 1938), pp. 36-37 and 74-80.
® The most comprehensive and penetrating study of the subject is still, after half a
century, James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (1893).
^®W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Negro Citizen” in Charles S. Johnson, The Negro in
American Civilization (1930), p. 466.
Du Bois, “The Negro Citizen,” of, cit,, pp. 465-466.
“1 do not for a moment argue that political power will immediately abolish color
caste, make ignorant men intelligent or bad men good. We have caste and discrimination
in the North with the vote, and social progress in some parts of the South without it.
But there is this vast difference: in states like New York, where we are beginning to
learn the meaning and use of the ballot, we are building a firm and unshakeable basis
of permanent freedom, while every advance in the South, unprotected by political
power, is based on chance and changing personalities. I maintain that political power
is the beginning of all permanent reform and the only hope for maintaining gains.
“There are today a surprisingly large number of intelligent and sincere people, both
white and black, who really believe that the Negro problem in the United States can
ultimately be solved without our being compelled to face and settle the question of the
Negro vote.
“Nearly all of our social studies apparently come to this conclusion, either openly
or by assumption, and do not say, as they ought to say, that granted impulse by philan-
thropy, help by enlightened public opinion and the aid of time, no permanent improve-
ment in the cQonomic and social condition of Negroes is going to be made, so long as
they are deprived of political power to support and defend it,
“Nowhere else in the world is there any suggestion that a modern laboring class can
* Introduction to Charles S. Johnson’s Shadow of the Plantation (1934), p. xxii.
**
See J. G. St. Clair Drake, “The Negro Church and Associations in Chicago,” unpublished
manuscript prepared for this study (1940), p. 407,
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