The American Negro Problem in the Context of Social Change

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Abstract
The highly elaborate social system which controls relations between Negroes and whites in the United States, especially in the Southern states where it had been built up for over a century, has shown signs of weakening especially since 1940. The major forces in this decline are analyzed as im personal, large-scale social forces arising outside the system of race relations—such as industrialization, urbanization, economic prosperity, the decline of the cotton economy, the growth of the United States as a great power with international obligations in a world that also includes hostile Communist states and neutral Negro states, and the ascendancy of the federal government over the state governments. A secondary set of variables in the social change are held to be a variety of "reform" organiza tions, with differing philosophies and strategies, which collec tively have created a social movement to improve or to equalize the position of Negroes. A tertiary set of variables analyzed are psychological changes. The major changes in race relations themselves are described, so that a summary picture of the position of the Negro in American society as of 1964 is presented.

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