Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Footnotes - Chapter 42 - Chapter 43
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Footnotes 1425
he makes no secret of the fact that subjects of pictures are generally asked to under-
write the cost of cuts and mats.” {Ibid.y p. X: 4.)
Edwin Mims> The Advancing Soulh (1926), p. 268.
Chapter 43. Institutions
^‘‘Should the Negro Care Who Wins the War?” The Annals of the American
Academ"^ of Political and Social Science (September, 1942), p. 84.
^ The reader interested in the controversy may wish to compare the two points of
view as expressed in two pieces of research: E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family
in the United States (1939); Melville J. Herskovlts, The Myth of the Negro Past
(1941). See also these authors’ reviews of each other’s books: Herskovlts’ review of
Frazier: Nation (January 27, 1940), pp. 104-105; Frazier’s review of Herskovits:
Nation (February 14, 1942), pp. 195-196.
Herskovits earlier took just the opposite stand from the one he now takes. In 1925,
he was even more extreme than Frazier in denying an African tradition: “What there
is today in Harlem distinct from the white culture which surrounds it is as far as I am
able to see, merely a remnant from the peasant days in the South. Of the African
culture, not a trace. Even the spirituals are an expression of the emotion of the Negro
playing through the typical religious patterns of white America.” (“The Negro’s
Americanism” in Alain Locke (editor), The New Negro [1925], p. 359.)
®
“In the small upper class, where it [licensed marriage] has been accepted in form
and in meaning, it is altered chiefly by the emphasis and symbolism it has acquired. For
this class marriage is bound up with the moral and religious ideas of sin and virtue. It
carries the stern obligation of continence and fidelity, and is regarded as a solemn
contract upon which rest the stability and ultimately the meaning of the family. Since
marriage is expected to be permanent and binding, it is entered into with deliberation
and formality. To this group the courtship is highly important. Its form resembles that
in analogous white circles today, but the emphasis and the somewhat ceremonial flavor
are reminiscent of earlier white patterns. . . .
“In such courtships the idea of sexual relations before marriage would be scandalous.
It is considered essential that the girl be a virgin when she is married, and that the
marriage be legal, usually with a church ceremony. No member of this class in Cotton-
ville has had a divorce or separation. Their code requires that a marriage be maintained
even if it is not sexually or temperamentally satisfactory. For them divorce carries the
stigma it had in most white communities a generation ago, and which it still carries in
certain rural white communities today.
“Toward adultery also, this small group maintains an attitude more general among
whites of a generation ago, regarding it as an unforgivable sin.” (Hortense Powder-
maker, After Freedom [1939], pp. 1 49-1 50.)
^ We may present som^ samples of what is available In the way of legal divorce and
desertion statistics: In Mississippi, in 1934, the divorce rate for Negroes was 4,4 per
100 marriages, while for whites it was 12.6 per lOO marriages (Frazier, op. cit,,
P* 379) • Chicago, in 1921, the Court of Domestic Relations reported that official
recognition of desertion was given to 414 couples in which the husband was Negro.
This was 15.6 per cent of all desertions recognized, and it is to be compared with the
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
