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- Author’s Preface
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AUTHOR’S PREFACE
Late in the summer of 1937 Frederick P. Keppel, on behalf of the
Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, of which he was then
President, invited me to become the director of “a comprehensive study
of the Negro in the United States, to be undertaken in a wholly objective
and dispassionate way as a social phenomenon.”
Our idea, so far as we have developed it, would be to invite one man to be
responsible for the study as a whole, but to place at his disposal the services of a group
of associates, Americans, who would be competent to deal as experts with the
anthropological, economic, educational and social aspects of the question, including public
health and public administration.[1]
After some correspondence and, later, personal conferences in the spring
of 1938, when I was in the United States for another purpose, the matter
was settled. It was envisaged that the study would require a minimum of
two years of intensive work, but that it might take a longer time before the
final report could be submitted.
On September 10, 1938, arrived in America to start the work. Richard
Sterner of the Royal Social Board, Stockholm, had been asked to
accompany me. On Mr. Keppel’s advice, we started out in the beginning of
October on a two months’ exploratory journey through the Southern states.
Jackson Davis, of the General Education Board, who has behind him the
experiences of a whole life devoted to improving race relations in the
South and is himself a Southerner, kindly agreed to be our guide, and has
since then remained a friend and an advisor.
We traveled by car from Richmond, Virginia, and passed through most of the
Southern states. We established contact with a great number of white and Negro
leaders in various activities; visited universities, colleges, schools, churches, and
various state and community agencies as well as factories and plantations; talked to
police officers, teachers, preachers, politicians, journalists, agriculturists, workers,
sharecroppers, and in fact, all sorts of people, colored and white...
During this trip the State Agents for Negro Education in the various states were
our key contacts. They were all extremely generous with their time and interest, and
were very helpful.
The trip was an exploratory journey: we went around with our eyes wide open and
gathered impressions, but did not feel ready, and in any case, had not the necessary
time to collect in an original way data and material for the Study. The experience,
[1] Letter from Mr. Frederick P. Keppel, August 12, 1937.
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