THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY:
AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT IN THE ERA OF SEGREGATED
RACE RELATIONS
DESMOND KING*
This article employs archival research to examine how the segregationist
order was introduced and maintained in the Federal civil service between
the 1890s and 1945. In the article a racial bureaucracy is defined by two
characteristics. First, one group of employees was placed in a subordinate
position to others, both formally and informally, as a consequence of their
“race.” Second, physical working conditions and daily routines were constructed around the segregation of one group of employees because of their
race and, furthermore, advancement and promotion within the bureaucracy
was delimited by race. This framework is used first, critically to assess two
common views of the composition of the US federal government (the local
race state thesis and the weak state thesis), and second, to illustrate how
segregation impinged directly upon African American employees in a range
of agencies and positions.
In the seventy years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964
and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, segregated race relations were the
norm throughout large parts of the United States, particularly though
not exclusively in the South, and were practiced in federal bureaucracies
and agencies. The Supreme Court’s 1896 Plessy decision gave “separate
but equal” segregationist arrangements constitutional authority. In this
article, I employ original archival records to illustrate how the US federal
bureaucracy operated by racial criteria in the segregationist decades.
These examples of segregated race relations, both of aggregate patterns
and of the experience of an individual African American, Charles Hall,
demonstrate how the principles of non-discrimination and meritocracy
were compromised by racism in the federal government, [thereby
reversing the intention of the 1883 Pendleton Act1 and going against
recruitment trends in other industrial democracies (Silberman 1993)].
The establishment of segregated race relations in judicial and administrative arrangements initiated a trajectory within which the struggle for
civil rights occurred: segregation not only served as an instrument with
*St. John’s College, Oxford University, UK
Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, Vol. 12, No. 4, October 1999
(pp. 345–377). © 1999 Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main St., Malden MA 02148, USA, and 108
Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK. ISSN 0952-1895
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Desmond King
which racists could confine Black Americans to second class citizenship
but, by its very group-specific character, it also partly structured the group
identity of African Americans when they mobilized politically against the
injustice and inequality of segregation (Dawson 1994). Du Bois’s “color
line” remains elemental to American politics and society (Du Bois 1903).
It underpins the multiculturalism debate (Glazer 1997); it is mobilized
problematically in public policy discussion, including most obviously
affirmative action (Skrentny 1996; Thernstrom and Thernstrom 1997); and
it has provoked a rich intellectual and historical literature (see in particular
Kelley 1994). The analysis presented in this article clearly builds on the
scholarship of those who, from C. Vann Woodward onwards, have documented the distinct position of African Americans forced upon them by
segregation and its legacies (Woodward 1974; Massey and Denton 1993),
and is indebted to studies of racism and the sources of racial ideologies of
African inferiority (see inter alia Appiah 1992; Fields 1982; Gossett 1997;
Smedley 1993).
Part of the diffusion of a segregationist order in the United States in the
decades following the end of Reconstruction and before the establishment
of civil rights after 1945 was the introduction of racial principles into the
federal civil service. I refer to these segregated race relations as constituting a racial bureaucracy defined by two features. First, one group of
employees was placed in a subordinate position to others, both formally
and informally, as a consequence of their “race.” Second, physical working conditions and daily routines were constructed around the segregation of one group of employees because of their race and, furthermore,
advancement and promotion within the bureaucracy was delimited
by race. The operation and consequence of these two characteristics is
explained in the bulk of the article. This conception of a racial bureaucracy
is well captured in a description forwarded to President Calvin Coolidge
by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) in 1923: “the situation in some of the government departments
at Washington has for a number of years been a smirch on the very name
of democracy. Colored Civil Service employees, regardless of their classification, rank, service or efficiency, have purely on account of race been
herded, segregated and Jim-Crowed under the very nose of the government.”2 Even though segregated race relations were not pursued as a
de jure government policy, they were established widely in the federal
government (and their proponents could cite constitutional authority)
and, of course, in many departments the failure to promote African Americans (or to recruit African Americans of the standard likely to be promoted) ensured that segregation by level of employment was a common
pattern. Part of the logic of the segregationist principles legitimated by the
US Supreme Court in the 1896 Plessy case was to make race a key organizing category for American society, and this principle extended into the
federal government, if fitfully and often unsystematically, as the examples
in this article are designed to document. Segregated race relations were
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
347
devised to widen and cement the gap between African Americans and
other members of American society. The millions of African Americans
whose life chances were delimited and restricted in the decades before the
1960s is testimony to the importance of this topic.
The article is structured as follows. First, the next section reviews the
theoretical concerns prompting a focus upon the nature of the racial
bureaucracy in which I take issue with two common views about the composition of the US federal government. Second, a general picture of the
introduction of segregated race relations into the Federal government after
the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 is presented together with examples of its tenacity. Segregated race relations remained in some government
departments until at least the early 1950s. Third, in order to demonstrate
how segregation impinged directly upon African American employees, the
career of Charles Hall is examined in detail; because Hall rose to be a senior
African American employee in the pre-1950s period his career trajectory is
exceptional, but his experience of segregation is all too routine. Fourth, to
illustrate how the principles practiced in the racial bureaucracy extended
beyond Washington to local federal agencies implementing federal policy,
the consequences of segregation in two New Deal agencies is delineated.
The final section discusses the implications for an analysis of the US federal
state focused on the era of segregated race relations.
STATE THEORY AND THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY3
To draw analytical attention to the importance of segregated race relations
within the federal bureaucracy in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s poses a challenge to two dominant views of the US state. Neither version is especially
satisfactory in explaining how segregated race relations were introduced
into the federal government or in analyzing the implications of this
arrangement.
The local racial state thesis: Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens
(1992) have formulated a thesis about the development of the US federal
state which emphasizes its decentralized character. Extensive decentralization, especially before the mid twentieth century, permitted local racial
arrangements to endure, they argue: “the decentralized political arrangements allowed the South to politically exclude blacks totally and install a
system of debt peonage which met their needs for a large supply of cheap
labor” (1992: 129). The error these three scholars make is to overemphasize the regional character of this bureaucratic racialism: segregationist practices were not simply a southern phenomenon as they imply
but were encountered both in Northern cities and in the federal government’s own administrative institutions. Thus, their characterization of the
democratic development of the US between the Civil War and World War
II as one during which “an authoritarian system in the South co-existed
with a democratic system in the rest of the country,” (1992, 132) misjudges
the significance and pertenacity of discriminatory segregation nationally
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Desmond King
and in the North. This proposition is demonstrated in the ensuing empirical discussions.
The weak state thesis: Political scientists are almost unanimous in characterizing the US Federal government as a weak state (Krasner 1978; Nettl
1968; Skocpol 1985; Skowronek 1982). This view arises both from comparisons with the power of the state in other countries and from consideration
of the institutional complexities posed by the US’s separation of powers
and federalism. For instance, Skocpol (1985, 27) records that “America’s
relatively weak, decentralized, and fragmented state structure, combined
with early democratization and the absence of a politically unified working class” advantaged business interests. The characterization of the US
federal government’s weakness—while underestimating the activism of
the US federal state since the New Deal (Brinkley 1998; Karl 1983)—pays
insufficient attention to the racial dimensions of government policy. For
African Americans, the US federal state has often appeared as a strong
institution whether as a source of oppression—as in the racial bureaucracy—or as an institution willing to thwart local racism.
I want to argue that while this recent scholarship on the state is of value
in comparative politics, the dichotomy assumed between “weak” and
“strong” capacities may be overdrawn. Rather than relying on such a
dichotomy it may be more useful to think of a state with a set of (variable)
capacities to achieve ends and to recognize that the exercise of these
means depends on political choices and contingencies. In particular, party
political and electoral calculations are crucial to the role that the federal
government adopts, in this instance toward African Americans of whom
it has proved capable both of segregationist measures and of the promotion of equality. Appreciating the dynamic nature of these state capacities
and identifying the political sources of this process has the advantage of
illustrating how, despite being a liberal democratic state, US government
policy has often not been applied uniformly to all citizens. This proposition points to a general deficiency in the weak/strong state theoretical
framework.
To support this claim, I explain how as a group African Americans
suffered discrimination and unequal treatment through the application of
segregated race relations in the federal government between the 1910s
and 1940s (a period which includes both the Republican administrations
of the 1920s and the reforming New Deal administrations). I also take the
case of Charles Hall, an individual African American whose experience in
the federal civil service demonstrates that although he benefitted from his
innate talents, the strictures within which those talents could be exercised
were set by general racial patterns.
The value of this approach can be illustrated in several ways. First,
imputing a dichotomy between strong and weak state capacities negates
how these may operate in tandem. For instance, while the federal government appeared externally weak before the 1950s in the half-hearted efforts
to dismantle racism, internally for its African American employees it was
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
349
(as the ensuing analyses show) a not inconsiderable presence in maintaining segregationist working arrangements. Furthermore, even within this
broad pattern there are significant variations: a few African American
employees achieved seniority (though invariably over sections of exclusively black workers) but these cases were rare, and African American
women employees often experienced worse discrimination than their
male colleagues.
Second, the apparent weakness or strength of the federal government
was not an immutable institutional fixture. Rather, the content of policy
arose at least in part from political choices by the executive and legislature. Thus, appeals to President Woodrow Wilson to halt the diffusion of
segregated race relations in government departments were ignored.
Consequently, segregated race relations were entrenched by the 1930s,
and by that decade formed the status quo. Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Deal had, of course, many benefits for African-Americans. Nonetheless,
Roosevelt was criticized for doing too little to end discrimination, and,
as illustrated below, many of the New Deal programs maintained segregated race relations (King 1995, 31–34). In the view of President Roosevelt’s own Fair Employment Practices Committee, “the rank and file
Negro Federal worker achieved little during the pre-war New Deal
administration. In 1938 Negroes were 8.4% of all Government employees in Washington. Ninety per cent of these were custodial, 9.5% were
in the clerical-administrative-fiscal or clerical-mechanical category, and
.5% were subprofessional.”4
Third, from the mid-1950s—in the wake of the Brown decision and
the findings of President Harry Truman’s investigative committees—the
federal government’s capacities were applied to racism in American society. US Department of Justice officials became instruments through which
civil rights for African Americans were finally realized (Graham 1990;
1994), galvanized by a powerful civil rights movement. These officials
chipped away at the gross violation of Black Americans’ voting and civil
rights in the southern states in this and the ensuing decade, bolstered by
the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Building on the civil rights acts passed in 1957
(which created the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice) and
1960, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 empowered the US Department of Justice to examine comprehensively and, where appropriate, prosecute discrimination and other violations of citizens’ rights. Section 717 of the Act
gave the US Civil Service Commission responsibility for monitoring and
enforcing non-discrimination in the federal civil service and military.5
Such actions (together with many other measures and Supreme Court
decisions) placed the federal government in a very different position in
respect of its treatment of African Americans compared with earlier,
pre-desegregation, policies. As a result, African Americans have reached
senior positions in the post-1960s integrated federal government.
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Desmond King
Building the Racial Bureaucracy
Segregated race relations in the Federal government were not ineluctable.
In the thirty years between the establishment of the US Civil Service Commission in 1883 and the election of Woodrow Wilson to the presidency in
1912, black Americans could realistically identify the federal civil service
and its regional offices as a source of employment.6 Such applicants were
treated in an equal and meritocratic way. Van Riper argues that the application of merit criteria and the eschewing of photographs on application
forms in the twenty-five years after the Pendleton Act of 1883 benefitted
African Americans attempting to enter the civil service: . . .“the generally
impersonal nature of the examination system encouraged Negro employment, particularly in the city of Washington, and the effective entry of the
Negro into the federal public service must be dated from 1883.” He noted
the success of college graduates: “Especially noteworthy was the entry of
numbers of graduates of the new Negro colleges and universities by 1890.
At this time the Negro employees included four consuls in the State
Department, a division chief in the Treasury, the recorder of Interior’s
General Land Office, at least three collectors of customs, and, at the top,
the Hon. Blanche K. Bruce, a former senator from Mississippi and the
Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, who was paid in fees at an
estimated $18,000 a year” (Van Riper 1958, 162). James Weldon Johnson,
later secretary of the NAACP, recalled in his autobiography how vibrant
and strong the Black American community in Washington DC was (when
he first visited at the beginning of the new century), and how this was
directly related to opportunities in the federal government:
the social phase of life among coloured people is more developed in Washington than in any other city in the country. This is on account of the large number
of individuals earning good salaries and having a reasonable amount of leisure
time to draw from. There are dozens of physicians and lawyers, scores of
school-teachers, and hundreds of clerks in the departments. As to the coloured
department clerks, I think it fair to say that in educational equipment they average above the white clerks of the same grade; for, whereas a coloured
college-graduate will seek such a job, the white university-man goes into one of
the many higher vocations which are open to him (Johnson 1989, 153–154).
These favorable circumstances changed in 1913. First, Woodrow Wilson
was elected to the White House and appointed southern Democrats to
Cabinet offices, many of whom proceeded to segregate their departmental
employees. Segregation was briefly discussed at the Cabinet in April 1913,
when the Postmaster General reported the difficulties for white men compelled to work side by side with African Americans: “it is very unpleasant
for them to work in a car with negroes where it is almost impossible to
have different drinking vessels and different towels, or places to wash.”
Consequently the Postmaster General was “anxious to segregate white
and negro employees in all Departments of Government” (Cronon 1963,
32). No action was taken at this meeting but the discussion illustrates the
atmosphere suffusing the federal government with the arrival of the
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
351
Wilson administration. Second, Democrats obtained control of the House
of Representatives for the first time in several decades and encouraged federal departments to segregate their workers. Third, in May 1914, the US
Civil Service Commission required applicants for civil service posts to supply a photograph with their application form7 (a requirement rescinded
only in 1940, after a campaign by the black Congressman Arthur Mitchell
(Nordin 1997, 222–224). This concatenation of forces resulted in the diffusion of segregated race relations into federal government departments,
consolidating such tendencies observable in the presidencies of Theodore
Roosevelt (1901–09) and William Taft (1909–13). As Krislov records (1967,
18), President Taft initiated segregation in the Census Bureau, which
proved a precedent for the actions of President Wilson’s cabinet members.
Taft’s desire to assuage southerners led him to appoint few Black Americans, viewing such elevations as, in Krislov’s words, “dangerous to racial
tranquillity” (1967, 18). Indeed, Taft questioned the suitability of African
Americans for federal office in general: “‘there is no constitutional right in
anyone to hold office. The question is one of fitness. A one-legged man
would hardly be selected for a mail carrier, and although we would
deplore his misfortune, nevertheless we would not seek to neutralize it by
giving him a place that he could not fill’” (quoted in Krislov 1967, 18).
The NAACP monitored the presence and diffusion of segregation.8 In
October 1913 the Association conducted its first systematic study of segregation in Federal government departments in Washington;9 the NAACP
undertook similar exercises periodically throughout the 1920s. Its author
discovered that segregation initiated in the Treasury Department had
quickly been emulated in other departments, such as the Post Office,10
though some (such as Agriculture) appeared to be less affected. The
NAACP had received complaints about segregation in departments for
several months before commissioning its study, as a letter in July from
the NAACP Executive Secretary Oswald Villard to President Woodrow
Wilson makes clear: “the colored people everywhere are greatly stirred
up over what they consider the hostile attitude of the Administration in
regard to colored employees in the government departments.”11
The NAACP’s report was forwarded to President Wilson.12 The study
examined several departments: the Post Office Department; the Treasury
Department including the Office of the Auditor for the Post Office; and
the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. May Nerney, its author, concluded
that the Wilson administration and the strengthened congressional position of the Democratic party had “given segregation a tremendous impetus and . . . marked its systematic enforcement.”13 At the Bureau of
Engraving and Printing, Nerney learned that, “colored clerks are segregated in work by being placed at separate tables and in separate sections
of rooms whenever possible. White guides told the investigator that it
was to be the future policy of the Bureau to segregate all its colored
employees.”14 Furthermore, “colored girls no longer use the lunch rooms
which for nine years they have been using in common with white girls.”15
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Desmond King
Exclusion from dining rooms befell black workers in the Post Office
Department too: “no lunch room is provided for the colored employees
in the Post Office Department. The white employees have a very attractive room. The guide advanced as a convincing argument in explanation
of this condition that as no restaurants in Washington were open to
colored people, the government could not be expected to furnish one.”16
Congress was responsible for facilities in Washington. Segregation was
occasionally subverted by other needs, as Nerney illustrated:
. . . economic efficiency refuses to follow the color line . . . [A] young colored
man . . . is the only colored clerk employed in a room of white clerks doing the
same work. Mr. Kram, when asked why he left him here, said he could not
spare him as he was his most expert operator. It is trite to point out that here
again the colored man is competing not with his own race but with the white
man. Segregate the colored man and he will lose this opportunity to develop by
competition.17
Far from “trite,” this observation proved perspicacious. It illustrates practice: black Americans were not promoted to supervisory positions unless
within segregated units.
Fearful of losing their jobs, black employees were reluctant to protest
the new arrangements:
the officials in Washington repeatedly call attention to the fact that the colored
people have protested against this [Treasury] order but have made no objection
to segregation in their work. The reason is, of course, that the colored people . . .
resent what they feel to be a personal affront; more important is the fact that
they cannot protest against segregation in their work when no official orders have
been issued in this regard. Should they make such complaint they would be
merely asked to cite a discriminating order and failing that would probably be
told that the changes that had been made had been necessitated by exigencies in
work, color having had nothing to do with it. They would be unable to prove
their case and might jeopardize their positions because of “insubordination.”18
Thus, the diffusion of segregation was underpinned by subtle justification, consistent with prevailing societal values.
The NAACP sent a formal letter to President Wilson, in August 1913,
entitled “On Federal Race Discrimination,” to protest his Administration’s support of segregated race relations in the federal bureaucracy:
the NAACP respectfully protests against the policy of your Administration
in segregating the colored employees in the Departments at Washington. It realizes that this new and radical departure has been recommended, and is now
being defended, on the ground that by giving certain bureaus or sections
wholly to colored employees they are thereby rendered safer in possession of
their offices and are less likely to be ousted or discriminated against. We believe
this reasoning to be fallacious. It is based on a failure to appreciate the deeper
significance of the new policy; to understand how far reaching the effects of
such a drawing of caste lines by the Federal Government may be, and how
humiliating it is to the men thus stigmatized.19
Employees of the federal government found themselves divided into two
classes, according to race, and one of the classes was dominant over the
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
353
other: “it has set the colored apart as if mere contact with them were contamination.” To African Americans, “is held out only the prospect of mere
subordinate routine service without the stimulus of advancement to high
office by merit.”20 Although not a uniform pattern, such arrangements
were sufficiently common and their effects observable to warrant description as a racial bureaucracy in the terms identified above.
Segregation in the civil service was facilitated by the sentiments
of many residents in Washington who themselves appeared, to many
observers, largely indistinguishable from southerners. One correspondent
of the NAACP concluded that the segregated race relations were “done on
the initiative of subordinate chiefs who would like to have done it long
ago but dared not, or who, mostly newly-appointed Southerners, took the
first opportunity.”21 These subordinate chiefs received no discouragement from their superiors, and the chief executive himself concurred in
the new policy. Such attitudes are further reason to judge the local racialist
state thesis too limited.
Treasury Secretary William McAdoo refused to accept that the measures he supported amounted to segregation. McAdoo then described
practices, which to most observers would be adjudged segregation:
“negroes have been put at separate desks in the same room with whites,
and there has been no discrimination against them in the matter of light,
heat, air, furniture or treatment.”22 Thirteen months later the Treasury
Secretary remained locked in correspondence defending practices under
his authorization. He wrote the editor of the World that: “the charge is
untrue as to the Treasury Department except to this extent: separate toilets
have been assigned to whites and blacks in the Treasury building and
in the office of the Auditor of the Interior Department. The toilets assigned
to the blacks are just as good as those assigned to the whites. There is no
discrimination in quality. I do not know that this can properly be called
segregation.”23 If this was not segregation it is difficult to imagine what
arrangement would have garnered the sobriquet. McAdoo presented a
convoluted justification for this separation of ablutions facilities based on
the prejudice of white employees: “. . . it is difficult to disregard certain
feelings and sentiments of white people in a matter of this sort. The whites
constitute the great majority of the employees and are entitled to just
consideration.” He maintained that segregation by race was no more
discriminatory than the provision of separate toilets for the higher officials of the department would be a denial of the rights of the ordinary
employees.”24 Unfortunately this comparison was exactly wrong: the
pretense of “separate but equal” facilities was that it did not rest upon
hierarchy but offered the same arrangements to the segregated group.
Nonetheless, it is worth underlining that McAdoo, President Wilson’s
son-in-law, felt the need to formulate some sort of justification of the new
arrangements even if this was unpersuasive. Although Democrats were
not pursuing African American votes they could not disregard such
complaints.
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Desmond King
In 1927, 36 black American employees at the Department of the Interior
wrote to the Secretary, Hubert Work, protesting a ‘reorganization’ which
happened to result in segregation: “the reorganization recently instituted
in the Pension Bureau has, it is believed, by the undersigned, meant segregation in its most insidious form. . . . We have not in the past objected to
being transferred and detailed to other divisions, but when almost every
colored clerk is put in one division we feel that we have every right to
complain. This division which has been created for colored employees
exclusively, all white clerks having been removed, is known as the “Files
Division” and the allocation in it are among the lowest in the office.”25
Moorfield Storey urged President Coolidge to “carry out” his expressions
of support for black Americans.26 The NAACP wrote directly to President
Coolidge about segregated race relations. The Association argued: “colored people feel that under your administration they have a right to
expect that such practices, expressive of the Jim Crow spirit and a relic of
slavery days, will receive the rebuke which they deserve.”27 Regrettably,
the Republican administrations of the 1920s were uninterested in addressing these issues as its policy on segregation became similar to that of the
Democratic party.28
The NAACP’s 1928 survey of segregation was based on visits to most
departments in Washington and interviews with both departmental
heads and clerks.29 One finding was a gender distinction: “Negro women
seem to suffer more from race discrimination than do the men. Negro
employees graded as laborers and messengers are not confronted with
race distinction as a general rule.” There was a simple explanation for
this pattern: “this may be due largely to the fact that most laborers and
messengers are Negroes.”30
Statistical data about black American employment in the US federal
government, collected in 1928, concerned the NAACP. These data provided a profile of the distribution of black employees across departments.31 The Association’s analysis showed a decline in the number of
African Americans and their increasing confinement to junior positions
between the mid-1910s and the date of the study.32 Of many departments
and bureaus it was on occasion impossible to obtain reliable information.
Some departments had too few black employees to segregate. Others,
such as State, solved the problem by hiring black employees for custodial
positions only.33 How administrators and Cabinet members assessed the
presence or absence of segregation did not always coincide with the
judgements of outsiders. Andrew Mellon, the Secretary of the Treasury in
1928, rejected the term segregation. Any segregation observed was for a
different reason, according to Mellon: “in the Register’s Office the colored
and white employees are working together in the same room. In the Treasurer’s Office there is no grouping of employees by reason of color
although it happens that the separation of certain colored men and white
women employees in separate rooms has resulted in placing the five colored employees in a separate room.” He added rather lamely that “it will
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
355
be obvious to you that this separation on the basis of sex is more pleasant
for both groups and this was the reason for the separation.”34 In correspondence with Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon the NAACP
endeavored to explain to him why such demarcation was objectionable,
“Many whites cannot understand why Negroes object to segregation in
their work, and regard such matters as complaints about separate locker
rooms and segregated parts of lunchrooms as trivial. . . . It is obvious that
a worker whom a caste prescription segregates has very little opportunity
for advancement, and a segregated locker room loses its insignificance
when it becomes a symbol of the belief that the Negro is unfit to associate
with his fellow workers of the other race.”35 In another context, Thurgood
Marshall wrote that efforts to “draw a line between a policy of ‘discrimination’ and a policy of ‘segregation’” were inherently problematic since,
“segregation is in itself discrimination. The moment you tell one citizen
that he cannot do what another citizen can do, simply because of his race,
you are maintaining a policy of discrimination.”36 Segregation implied
second-class citizenship and intrinsically constituted discrimination.
In sum, segregated race relations arrived decisively in the federal government in the years following the election of Woodrow Wilson to the
White House and the concurrent success of the Democrats in the Congress. The shift to segregation under Wilson was more comprehensive
and entrenched than that under his predecessors. Their introduction set
the pattern for black American experience of the federal government for
several decades. The War Department, in fact, was still segregating its
employees in the 1940s, as a complaint about card punch operators in the
Machine Records Branch makes plain.37 In this instance, the segregation
was a response to a protest by 26 white employees who “refused to perform their duties unless the Negro clerks were placed in separate
rooms.”38 Separate toilet facilities were ordered at the Interior Department’s Geological Survey unit in Clarendon, Virginia, also in 1943, as a
result of an increased number of African American women employees.39
After 1954 and the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown abrogated
constitutional–legal authority for segregated race relations, their presence
was no longer permissible.
The Segregated Life: Charles Edward Hall 1868–195240
The racial bureaucracy was never a monolith. For the most part, it implied
conditions of racial segregation for its African American employees; however, some senior personnel were able, on occasions, discreetly to advance
or protect the careers of black American civil servants. The case of Charles
Hall (Table 1) is instructive in this respect, also illustrating the transformation brought on by racialization; Hall was one of the few senior black
appointees in the pre-Brown (1954) era. His odyssey reveals a good deal
about how routinized segregated race relations functioned and the
dynamic character of the US state’s capacities.
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Desmond King
TABLE 1
Charles E Hall: A Chronology
Year
1868
1890
1892–3
1894–96
1897
1898
1897–99
1900
1905
1916
1918
1919
1921
1922
1930
1930
1933
1934–35
1935
1937
1938
Employment
Born in Batavia, Illinois; later graduated from Wilberforce
University.
Clerk, Eleventh United States Census.
Real estate business.
Employee, NY Central Railroad, Buffalo.
Clerk, Senate Committee in Illinois Legislature.
Assistant Secretary, Illinois League of Republican Clubs.
Managing Editor, The Illinois Record.
Appointed Clerk, Bureau of the Census.
Compiled data for Clay Products in the United States, the first report
on a commercial subject prepared by an African American and
published by the government.
Undertook field survey in Northern industrial centers for the US
Department of Labor.
Appointed Immigrant Inspector, Bureau of Immigration, US
Department of Labor; prepared report on African American labor
in Ohio. Appointed Supervisor of Negro Economics.
Prepared statistical tables for The Negro Farmer.
Named as delegate, First National Agricultural Conference,
Washington, DC.
Undertook survey of mortality of African American infants.
Detailed to Chicago. Supervisor 8th District, Census of
Distribution.
Section Chief (of an all African American section), Census Bureau.
Published The Negro Farmer in the United States.
Compiled report Negroes in the United States 1920–1932,
supplement to volume Negro Population in the United States
1790–1915.
Promoted to newly created position, “Specialist in Negro
Statistics,” Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, and
joined the informal Black Cabinet.
In July, Hall is appointed as Advisor on Negro Affairs at the
Department of Commerce, succeeding Eugene Jones.
Hall retires, aged 70, from the civil service.
Hall was born in Batavia, Illinois on May 22 1868. In January 1900,
Congressman A.J. Hopkins, Illinois (a Republican member of the House
between 1885 and 1903, and then a Senator from 1903 to 1909) secured
his appointment as a Clerk at the Census Office of the Department of the
Interior, earning $720 per annum, in the pre-segregation era.41 Seven
years after getting him appointed Hopkins, now a US Senator, recommended Hall as a field researcher for the Census Office in Illinois.
Hopkins noted the presence of African Americans in several Illinois
counties, thus making a Black American civil servant an appropriate
field worker. This request was rebuffed by the Office’s director for a set
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357
of reasons indicative of the position of African Americans at this time
and perceptions of them by senior federal officials:
Experience has convinced me that it is not desirable to detail our colored
employees for field work. As representatives of the office they are not always
able to command the same consideration and attention that are given to white
men. Furthermore, a colored man is not able to occupy a seat in a parlor car or a
berth in a sleeper, without the possibility of disagreeable experiences, so that he
generally avoids these necessary conveniences; he is seldom able to patronize
the dining car while there are other passengers occupying it; and having
reached a town or city where he is to work, it is practically impossible for him to
stop at a first-class hotel. In certain sections the office would be subjected to the
humiliation of having its representatives compelled to ride in cars reserved for
the colored race, popularly known as “Jim Crow” cars.42
This description vividly captures the reality of life in a segregated society
(Kelley 1994; Litwack 1998; Woodward 1973). The pretense of “equality”
within the segregationist framework is pellucidly imploded in the director’s account of the futility of expecting an African American civil servant
to be treated on a par with a white one. He concluded that “I regret to be
obliged to tell you that good administration does not seem to warrant the
detail of these men to the inquiries which are now pending.”43 The director’s comments are also noteworthy for his concern that segregation
meant the “office would be subject to the humiliation” of being treated in
a second-class way. This statement suggests that federal civil servants
worried about either permitting the service to be derided in society or
publicly exposing the presence of African Americans in relatively senior
positions or both.
When Hall himself requested a field position in the Census Office in
1903, he was alert to the problems he might encounter: “I would greatly
appreciate an assignment to a Northern or Northwestern state where race
prejudices would not embarrass me nor militate against the proper performance of my duties.”44 Hall’s request was ignored: he was not selected for
a field assignment in any location. The Census Office director aired the
same opposition to sending an African American into a field position in
1904, but was willing for Hall to act as a clerk responsible for the data submitted from Illinois, as a memorandum summarized: “Mr. Steuart says
that he does not think it advisable to send any colored man for field
work. . . . He suggests that Hall be detailed for field work with the understanding that Mr. Steuart is to instruct the man in charge at Chicago to
keep him in the office.”45 Another official was rather more curt about the
incidence of prejudice toward African American civil servants: “it has not
been deemed good business to assign colored men to the general field
work where they are obliged to visit court clerks and other officials in the
collection of Marriage, Divorce, and Criminal Judicial Statistics.”46
Hall was quickly returned to the Bureau’s office in Washington after a
brief assignment in Philadelphia. As his supervisor noted, this decision
arose because of race: “upon completion of Mr. Hall’s assignment in
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Philadelphia, I find that because of the peculiar status of his case it will be
necessary to recall him to the office. I know of no other city, in the East or
elsewhere, where a colored man can be used to advantage.”47 “Peculiar
status” was euphemism for race. The chief statistician for manufactures
observed, in connection with the proposed survey of northern industries,
that “I doubt whether it would be advisable to assign colored men for this
work unless the entire force, with the exception of the chief special agent,
is composed of the same race.”48 All these remarks, importantly, point to
the difficulties of deploying an African-American employee in US society,
not, in this pre-1913 period, to segregation internal to the bureaucracy.
Despite these obstacles, Hall’s career prospered and he was praised by his
supervisors. Thus, on his 1911 efficiency report, Hall’s supervisor
recorded, he “is not a routine employee. Manifests interest in his work,
makes intelligent suggestions, and works overtime when necessary.”49
This was faint, but nonetheless, real commendation.
Hall moved from the Census Office to the Immigration Service (in the
Department of Labor) but returned to the former in December 1919. He
accumulated further political supporters in Illinois—notably Senators
William Lorimer (a Republican who served in the House from 1895 to
1901, 1903 to 1909 and then in the Senate until 1912), James Hamilton
Lewis (a Democratic Senator from Illinois from 1913 to 1919 and from 1930
until his death in 1939), William McKinley (a Republican representative
from 1905 to 1913, 1915 to 1921 and then senator until his death in 1926),
Joseph Medill McCormick (a Republican congressman from 1917 to 1919
and senator from 1919 until his death in 1925, who was chair of the Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments) and Congressman Ira
C. Copley (who aside from serving as a Progressive in the 64th Congress,
was a Republican congressman in the 62th and 63rd and Republican
senator in the 65th to 67th Congresses)—and his achievements at the Census Bureau were the subject of features in The Scientific American and The
Literary Digest. In 1920, his appointment as chief of a section of African
American clerks was recommended.50 Hall had 31 clerks in his charge
responsible for editing general farm schedules. A year later Hall was recommended for a further salary increment; the supporting letter gives a
clear description of his position:
Mr. Hall is a permanent clerk in the bureau and has been since the census of
1900, with the exception of a short period of time when he was transformed to
the Department of Labor. He came into this division in December, 1919, to take
charge of a group of colored clerks who were assigned to this division at that
time. He is acting in the capacity of section chief in charge of all the colored
clerks in this division and he has given entirely satisfactory service. Charles E.
Hall is an unusually capable colored man, he is well educated, exercising most
excellent judgment in the conduct of his section, and the work turned out has
been in every respect satisfactory.51
Rather than simply describing Hall as “an unusually capable man” the
adjective “colored” is included.
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359
Hall and Segregation
Hall was not unaffected by the arrival of segregation in the federal government. It was in his old department, shortly after he was the subject of
this panegyric (which may have made Hall more confident and assertive),
that Hall objected to the introduction of segregated toilets in March 1921.
By that date, segregation had been widely applied in the federal civil service (King 1995; Weiss 1969). The secretary of commerce was Herbert
Hoover, to whom Hall addressed his remarks:
On Monday, April 26, 1920, I received a humiliating VERBAL ORDER to
instruct the colored lady clerks, who were working under my supervision, to
use a certain toilet which had been designated for their particular use. Upon
inquiry I found that the Chief Clerk of this Bureau, Mr. T. J. Fitzgerald, was
responsible for this very depressing and discriminatory order which was
so far-reaching in its effect upon the members of my race and which seriously
disturbed the morale of the clerks, most of whom were cultured and highly
educated.52
Hall’s request for a written version of the order was ignored by the Chief
Clerk, and Hall’s lobbying of Congress helped defuse the matter: “after several days of turmoil and unsuccessful subterranean efforts to force us to
issue the order, the matter was dropped; possibly because certain Senators
and Representatives began to exhibit their disgust with the ‘Negro baiting’
program of the Chief Clerk.” Hall informed Secretary Hoover that he
planned to resign if the written instruction had been forthcoming (later
attempts by Herbert Hoover to desegregate part of the Commerce department were rebuffed, with angry and racist language, by members of
Congress (King 1995, 23–24)). He cited other instances: “similar trouble
has happened in the Rest Room where fatigued colored lady clerks have
repeatedly been refused admission. You will doubtless agree with me that
TOILETS and REST ROOMS are EMERGENCY rooms rather than SOCIAL
CENTERS, or rooms for propagating the seed of SOCIAL EQUALITY.”53
Hall’s protests were slightly compromised—as he recognized in his
memorandum—by his recent failure to win promotion at the Bureau. He
had been highly recommended for the post (with support from his Division
head and other chiefs). Hall believed race had denied him promotion:
“believing that I can render more efficient service to the government if
placed in an environment where SERVICE rather than COLOR is the deciding factor in one’s advancement.”54 He was plainly under no illusions about
the racialized character of employment in the federal government.
The Director of the Census Bureau, Sam Rogers, defended the section’s
new segregated arrangements. He argued that the order to use certain toilets arose when employment was at its peak for the Fourteenth Census
(with 5,371 white and 930 African American employees) and the workers
were concentrated in a single building. As in other federal government
departments, bureaucratic rules—the ever nebulous “administrative and
other reasons” underpinning the racial bureaucracy—determined that the
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African American employees were grouped together: “for administrative
and other reasons it was desirable that the clerks should be grouped, as far
as possible, according to the work upon which they were employed, and it
was found necessary to group the colored employees in certain wings.”
However, these latter workers continued to use toilets other than the ones
closest to their workplace which led to the loss of “a great deal of time.” A
verbal order was then given: “the section chiefs, accordingly, were
requested to arrange for the persons working in their sections to use certain toilets.” Rogers denied that any discrimination was effected: “no discrimination has been made against the colored people. They have enjoyed
just the same facilities as the other employees, including toilets, emergency and rest rooms.”55 Implicit in this discussion, however, are fairly
obvious administrative arrangements whereby the African American
employees were confined to one set of facilities, segregated from their
white colleagues. Rogers went on extravagantly to praise the former
workers, but in a way which nonetheless reveals the extent to which he
thought of them in terms of forming a distinct, politically second class,
group:
I am glad to take advantage of this opportunity to state that the colored employees of the bureau have rendered efficient service. The larger proportion of them
were employed in punching the cards required for the census of population and
occupations. The average number of cards punched per employee among the
colored force is equal to the average attained by the white employees. As a rule,
the colored employees have been efficient, industrious and orderly.56
Hall’s intervention was courageous and earned him both respect from
his (white) superiors and a reputation as a troublemaker, (as the Director
of the Census Bureau observed in 1930, “Hall is sometimes difficult to
handle and he has on at least two occasions made statements which
gained considerable circulation derogatory to the Census Bureau and its
work”57).
By 1930 Hall had another mentor, Senator Charles S. Deneen (a Republican from Illinois who succeeded Medill McCormack) who asked the
Census Office to give Hall a field position in Chicago. The request was
denied because of lack of appropriate work; in compensation, Hall was
promoted to a supervisory position over other African Americans. The
deputy director wrote Deneen: “there is no separate statistical work
involving colored population only, this being assembled along with other
statistical data. However, Mr. Hall has just been placed in charge of a unit
of employees editing farm schedules.” He added: “this is considered quite
an important assignment.”58 Hall’s supervisory position could only be
one in which no whites were working under his charge. The Census
Bureau had sufficient segregation in its work arrangements to permit the
existence of an exclusively African American section.
The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president and the Democrats’
control of the Congress, expanded the opportunities for African Americans (as for all Americans) in the federal government. Advisors on African
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
361
Americans (or “Negro Affairs”) were appointed in several departments.
At the Department of Commerce, where the Census Bureau was located,
the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Negro Affairs, Robert L.
Vann, (in consultation with the departmental Adviser on Negro Affairs,
Eugene Kinckle Jones) wrote the Secretary, Daniel Hoper, in June 1934,
requesting a promotion for Hall. Hall had served thirty-four years in the
Census Bureau, and Vann wanted to recognize his unstinting service.
Such recognition had political benefits too: promotion “would be recognition of long, efficient service and during the closing years of Mr. Hall’s
connection with the Census Bureau would be gratifying to him and evidence of appreciation. His many friends throughout the country would
also be pleased to hear of this acknowledgment of his worth.”59 He was
then promoted to chief statistician in respect of “the Negro race,” a
responsibility reflecting the work he did for this publication: “in compiling this report it was necessary to go into the records of the Bureau, both
published and unpublished, and segregate, evaluate, and tabulate the
data relating to the Negro race. This work was under the immediate direction of Dr. John Cummings, but Mr. Hall compiled at least two-thirds of
the data in the volume.”60
The Bureau of Census’s efforts to get Hall into the CAF-7 grade faltered
and it settled upon requesting a two-step salary increase. In justification of
this proposal, the executive assistant of the bureau expounded Hall’s virtues:
Mr. Hall has been in charge of the Negro Statistics of the Bureau of the Census.
He has done a great deal of original work in publishing Negro Statistics, especially in making outside contacts for the distribution of the statistical information compiled and tabulated, as well as doing a great deal of contact work and
original research in securing the cooperation of leading negroes and representatives of negro agencies furnishing the data which the Bureau has published.
During the last summer, he spent considerable time at the Texas Centennial
Exposition at Dallas, Texas, in a responsible position in the Negro Exposition
building. Reports from the Exposition indicate that Mr. Hall took a leading part
in acquainting visitors to the building with the negro activities, especially those
revealed through Bureau of the Census inquiries.61
Hall’s own initiative had partly contributed to the creation of this post. He
wrote to the Director of the Bureau of the Census making the case for a
specialist position. “There appears to be an increasing demand from all
sections of the country for information concerning the status and progress
of the Negro.” Accordingly, he recommended “that all such inquiries be
referred directly to me. The centralization of these inquiries, particularly
those requiring considerable research for comparative data covering a
number of census periods, would, in my opinion, result in a saving of time
and expense, and permit the regular work of each division to proceed
without such daily interruptions.”62 Formally, Hall was promoted to the
CAF-7-2 post, junior administrative assistant.63
Hall’s appointment in 1935 to the position of Specialist in Negro Statistics made him the most senior African American civil servant to have
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served in the federal bureaucracy. The Department of Commerce
exploited the occasion. “For the first time in the history of the Bureau of
the Census of the United States Department of Commerce a Negro civil
service ‘career man’ has been promoted to a position of responsibility, one
that carries with it full authority to disseminate all available statistical
data relating to the Negro population, and to sign official correspondence.”64 The appointment was described as “particularly gratifying” to
the Department’s Advisory Committee on Negro Affairs, whose members
had lobbied for it.
Hall attended meetings of the so-called Black Cabinet. This was a selfappointed group, not a formal one, of African Americans working in government departments who met together to discuss how best to coordinate
policy for blacks across agencies. They took the appellation “Black Cabinet,” and historically constitute a precursor to the organized civil rights
movement of the 1950s. Other members included Robert C. Weaver, Lawrence Oxley, Frank Horne, William Hastie and H. A. Hunt, all holding
various appointments as advisers or directors of “Negro Affairs” in government departments. Robert Weaver, who served as an adviser on Negro
affairs at the Department of the Interior, described its work:
the Black Cabinet provided a forum where problems could be discussed and
potential solutions developed. The members often made concrete decisions and
carried out assignments concerning matters such as preparing memoranda for
future meetings, presenting ideas to government officials or black leaders, and
assembling information for release to the press (Louchheim 1983, 263).
Writing of Mary McLeod Bethune, director of “Negro Affairs” at the
National Youth Administration, Joyce Ross underlines the mixed record
of such appointees in challenging discrimination in government departments: she records “the failure of Bethune’s division in many instances to
challenge the Roosevelt administration’s reluctance to demand a desegregated society” (Ross 1982, 195) a point taken up in the next section.
The offices of Division of Negro Affairs at the Commerce Department
and the Office in Negro Statistics were merged with Hall now combining
responsibility for both positions.65 One newspaper story noted the importance of statisticians for the New Deal programs, a preference to Hall’s
advantage: “statistics of ‘the Negro’ having become popular and the Government over anxious to have them explained on the ground, Mr. Hall’s
missions to all parts of the country as representative of the department
have been frequent over the last three years.”66
Hall’s appointment drew an immediate letter of approbation from one
African American group to the Commerce Secretary: “we greatly appreciate the appointment of Mr. Charles E. Hall to a responsible and clearly
defined branch of work in your department. We trust his efficiency will
increase. . . . Any appointment or employment of members of the Negro
race is deeply appreciated by the National Association of Colored
Women.”67 Another newspaper characterized Hall as the “big Negro” of
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363
the Roosevelt administration: “by official designation, Mr. Hall is specialist, Negro Statistics in the Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau. In
fact he is ‘calling the tune’ in essentials for ‘the Race’ within the Roosevelt
administration;”68 while not as visible as some African Americans in
Washington, such as William Hastie or Robert L. Vann, Hall was a senior
public servant. Hall was the first official to suggest collecting data specifically about African Americans, a proposal acceded to by the Census Office
in 1903 as his correspondence recorded at the time: “although it was not
agreeable to have me assigned to the work, it is gratifying to learn that my
suggestion was adopted, and that the bureau will, confidentially, at least,
give me credit for the same.”69
By the time he retired in 1938, aged 70, Hall had spent thirty-eight years
in government service.70 A recommendation to the Secretary of Commerce from the Director of the Bureau of the Census that Hall be retained
beyond the mandatory retirement age—“his long experience and successful handling of negro statistics in the Census Bureau, and the fact that
he has supervision also of the Division of Negro Affairs of the Bureau
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, makes his retention most
desirable”71—was rejected by President Roosevelt, despite support from
the Commerce Secretary.72 The Census Bureau Director evidently regretted the departure of Hall because of his expertise. At a departmental meeting with the Commerce Secretary, he explained why Hall’s work had
become important: “he has developed into one of the very few authorities
on negro statistics.” In addition, “Hall is regarded as an expert by the
leading negro organizations and periodicals, and that his retirement
would seriously affect the administration’s program for the advancement
of negro interests.” The same memorandum added: “it was inferred from
Mr. Austin’s remarks that Hall’s immediate retirement might result in
discontinuing the work which the Bureau is doing in the field of negro statistics, thus subjecting the Administration to possible embarrassment.”73
Hall’s life shows the mixed fortunes of an African American employee
in the racial bureaucracy during segregation and the Janus-faced character of the federal government: it proved an institution in which Hall’s
skills developed and were recognized, but simultaneously one in which
these were limited in certain ways because of his race. His career is exceptional in that he rose to be a relatively senior employee who was black and
carved out a specialist role which gave him a position of some strength.
Despite this, Hall was affected directly by the introduction of segregation
and his supervisory work was confined to a section of African American
employees. Race constrained the work he was permitted to undertake: it
was as an expert in African American statistics that Hall distinguished
himself. For the vast majority of African American employees, limited to
junior positions in segregated sections, the experience of the racial
bureaucracy was even more constricting.
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Discrimination Under Segregation
Discrimination was inextricably associated with segregated arrangements
in federal government departments and agencies, commonly extending to
the local branches of federal agencies for which they were responsible. In
this section two agencies set up under the New Deal are examined. The
New Deal programs were established in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt’s
presidential victory in 1932, to provide public relief and employment for
all Americans (Badger 1989; Karl 1983; Louchheim 1983; Leuchtenburg
1963; Weiss 1983; Wolters 1970). However, many of these programs, especially for young people, were segregated. Two examples of these arrangements are the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the National Youth
Administration (NYA).
The CCC was one of a plethora of institutions created to combat the
misery of mass unemployment defining America’s Great Depression. It
was designed to “kill two birds with one stone. Put the young men
to work conserving the soil and planting trees. Save the soil, save the
forests and by that process save the young men.”74 Eligibility was strictly
regulated. Participation was limited to young men between 18 and 25
whose families were registered on the relief rolls, excluding married men,
women and young men in work. Part of the Emergency Relief Administration, it was administered by four federal government departments
(Labor, Agriculture, War and Interior). Enrollees received $30.00 a month,
$22.00 of which was intended for the enrollee’s dependents. The organizational principle informing the CCC was to employ the large numbers of
able-bodied young men unable to acquire work in the conservation of the
United States’s natural resources. The CCC established camps throughout
the United States in which enrollees, initially limited to six-month periods,
undertook vigorous outdoor activity, notably reforestation.
The CCC had separate camps for black Americans, promoted few
African Americans to supervisory positions, and its Director resisted
proposals to increase the number of Black American participants (Civilian Conservation Corps 1939; Salmond 1967). The Corps Director
defended segregation with the noxious “separate but equal” mantra.
“This segregation is not discrimination and cannot be so construed. The
negro companies are assigned to the same types of work, have identical
equipment, are served the same food, and have the same quarters as
white enrollees.”75 The director repeated these justifications after the
NAACP complained to President Roosevelt. “There is absolutely no discrimination in this segregation. The same quarters are provided for all
enrollees. Exactly the same type of clothing is issued to all enrollees. The
same allowance for rations is made to every camp. There is no difference
in the types of work to which negro or white camps are assigned. In fact,
there is absolutely nothing that could be pointed to as indicating discrimination.”76 Few Black Americans were promoted to supervisory
positions, even in the camps reserved for them. One observer remarked
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365
on the “notable absence of Negro officers” in the Corps at the end of
1937. “Here and there a line or staff officer has been appointed but in the
main, the obvious advantage of this practical experience in dealing with
human beings have been denied to Negro Reserve Officers.” He added,
“At present white officers and supervisors, with very few exceptions, are
in control of colored as well as white CCC Companies.”77 This pattern
held two years later.78 By 1939, of the 150 camps for African Americans
only two had Company Commanders who were Black, and from a total
of 25,000 foremen and 1,500 Camp Superintendents a mere 5 had been
black Americans.79
In its maintenance of segregation and discriminatory treatment of black
Americans, the CCC mirrored other New Deal agencies. As the historian
Tony Badger observes, “the New Deal specifically sanctioned discrimination against blacks.” Badger singles out Robert Fechner, who as a consequence of his commitment to segregated race relations, “made little effort
to open up CCC opportunities to blacks” (Badger 1989, 253). Whereas in
other agencies discrimination was an often unavoidable feature of local
administration, at the CCC it was embraced at the federal level.
Despite official denials, a quota system operated with respect to African American enrollees to the Corps and Director Fechner declined to
expand the number of places for blacks (Salmond 1965). Will Alexander,
of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, reminded the CCC of the
key role open to the federal government to thwart local racism. It was perceived as autonomous from local and state racism. “Negroes have always
had faith in the federal government. They have been held loyal to the
country by the fact that the federal government has always dealt justly
with them. Any real discrimination in relation to these government funds
would undermine this faith in the federal government, which, in view of
all the past history, would seem to me to be a great tragedy.”80 For African
Americans the federal government did not appear as weak in the way
theorists of the US state often assume.
At its establishment in 1935, the NYA set up a Division of Negro Affairs,
with Mary McLeod Bethune as Director. Aubrey Williams was Administrator of the NYA. Eleven percent (82,800) of the NYA participants in 1940
were African American, divided between two types of projects, the
out-of-school work program (40,200) and the student work program
(42,600).81 Special State Supervisors of Negro Affairs were appointed in 27
states; 23 of the state advisory committees had Black American members;
and there were some African American project supervisors. Most NYA
projects were segregated, though a few were integrated. For instance, in
Detroit, one NAACP visitor reported that “white and colored youth were
working side by side, as were white and colored instructors. I understand
that this is the case throughout the State.”82 New Jersey had a mixture of
segregated and integrated units.83 Some members of Congress could be
relied upon to complain about integrated training units in their constituencies, however.84
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There were significant complaints from Black Americans about differences in the courses made available to white youth compared with those
offered to young African Americans. The NAACP raised such discrepancies, reported in Kansas City, with the NYA Administrator. A newspaper
announcement from the Administration amounted to “as flagrant
discrimination as we have encountered anywhere in the setting up of
NYA courses for the training of Negro and white youth,” about which the
association wished to register a “most vigorous protest.” The promulgation was summarized thus: “the list of courses provided for white boys
include auto mechanics, woodwork, sheet metal work, air communications, automotive electricity and automobile body and fender work. The
only training provided for Negro boys is ‘building maintenance and
repairs,’ which is merely a euphemism for janitor work. The only course
given to both Negro and white boys is health and hygiene.”85 This was the
discrimination in respect of boys. Girls were also distinguished by race:
“for white girls training is to be given in office practices, including typing
and filing; commercial food service, power sewing, and clothing alterations and remodeling. Negro girls are to be given clothing alterations
and remodeling . . . and ‘Personel grooming.’”86 Walter White underlined
the perverseness of direct federal involvement in such discrimination:
the patent viciousness of this discrimination is readily apparent. Kansas City
has many industries to which have been given contracts by the Federal government for the national defense program which is being paid for and will be paid
for for many years, and perhaps generations, to come by the taxation of Negro
citizens at the very same time that white Americans are being taxed. But here is
the National Youth Administration, also Federally financed, giving white boys
and girls training which will enable them to work in these national defense
industries, while Negro boys and girls are shut out from training which will
enable them to be similarly employed.87
These inequities were confirmed for Walter White88 on subsequent visits to NYA training projects in Kansas City. As he told Aubrey Williams,
he left “dismayed at the differential in the training given to Negroes and
whites;” and urged “specific and speedy action to correct” these “very
bad conditions.”89 After seeing the generous facilities for whites, he
described those assigned to Black American boys: “I found there the exact
opposite of what I found at the white NYA training center. Except for
some sewing machines there is not one piece of equipment in the building.
I was told . . . that machinery had been on order for some time, but no one
seemed to have any idea when it would be received.” This contrasted with
the “ample machinery,” and the “large, well-lighted room” provided for
young white men.90 Equally dismal differences between the facilities provided by race were unearthed on NYA projects in St. Louis.
In the federal bureaucracy and in other agencies the notional ‘separate
but equal’ ethos of segregation was most commonly associated with
inequality and discrimination for African American employees. Walter
White underlined how discrimination at one level had perverse knock-on
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367
effects: by failing properly to train Black Americans, when good jobs arose
for NYA trainees, whites obtained them. He spelt this trend out to Aubrey
Williams:
I talked with the City Manager of Kansas City and he told me that the industries
there were beginning to beg for workers. But the almost complete failure of the
NYA in Kansas City to date means that those jobs will be given to white youth
and Negroes will be still further shoved down the scale. May I, therefore, urge
that your office in Washington intervene immediately and see that the equipment is sent for, or better still, that the Jim Crowism and segregation be abolished and all NYA trainees sent to the same institution.91
Walter White remarked that as a consequence of NYA practices, Jim
Crowist employers in defense industries “will be able to get away with
murder in claiming that they will not employ Negroes because they are
not ‘trained.’”92 Mary Bethune, the Director of the NYA’s Division of
Negro Affairs, promised to address the inequalities in Kansas City.93 A
report prepared for Bethune, however, reached conclusions consistent
with the NAACP complaints: “the Negro program has been neglected to
the point that it is difficult to understand how routine set-backs and procedural delays alone could be responsible for the almost complete lack
of equipment and the lack of correlation and balance throughout the
program;” furthermore, “the present program does not provide work
experience of the type required by industry and is therefore not in keeping with the plans of the national office.”94 There were no black American supervisors in the state. Immediate changes were recommended to
the NYA.
An African American employee in Bethune’s position had herself to
maintain a difficult balance between satisfying Black Americans who
looked to her as a defender of their interests and her immediate (white)
colleagues by whom she had been appointed and with whom she had to
work. The historian Joyce Ross stresses this dilemma, concluding that
Bethune was less active in criticizing segregation than she might have
been: “when addressing biracial groups, her appeals for racial equality
often were couched in terms which could only be flattering to white people, while her demeanor was usually that of a supplicant whose primary
approach lay in appeals to white people’s consciences and sense of fair
play” (1982, 195). Adopting the role of “supplicant” can again be traced
directly to the effects of the racialized bureaucracy within which an African American in Bethune’s role worked. In this context the US federal
government looks rather less weak than some scholars conclude in respect
of its African American employees and citizens.
Inquiries by the NYA directly to the Kansas City personnel produced a
response which cited the segregationist code as precluding integrated
projects: “with respect to Related Training groups, which would probably
be referred to as ‘classes,’ it is not probable that mixed classes will be carried on due to the fact that the state law in Missouri provides for separate
educational facilities for both races.”95 Although the NYA was a federal
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agency which could have challenged this local arrangement, its officials
chose not to.
NAACP’s Youth Director Madison Jones who had been impressed by
integrated facilities in Detroit, found a contrary arrangement in Champaign-Urbana, where there were “no integrated units.” He continued,
“there had been a sewing project, entirely Negro, but it has long since
been closed, with stress placed on the fact that the Negroes were not able
to do that type of work.”96 Jones was told by the supervisor that every
effort had been made by the local NYA to attract young Black Americans
and to inquire about their work interests but these initiatives “had not met
with any success.” The rebuffed participants had a different version for
Jones. “The youth I interviewed told a different story and said that no
such thing had happened and that when they did go down to the office
they were never given any assurance for consideration of their wants.”97
Integrated units were judged unfeasible by the supervisor. Writing more
generally, Jones warned that
where there are separate groups for whites and Negroes [on NYA training projects], many evils exist. Almost invariably the Negro projects do not have as
many courses of instruction as the white groups. Nor is there as much adequate
equipment to carry on a successful project. In many instances courses are not set
up to fit the needs of youth in these particular localities. In white units the opposite is true in most cases. The courses are varied and practically embrace all of
the program now being conducted as regards national choices. Classes are fitted
for the particular needs of the community. The same is not true in regard to
Negro units.98
Retrospectively, the New Deal projects, combined with the pressure
generated by mobilization for the second world war, unquestionably
played a significant political role in shifting the federal government
toward a desegregationist stance (Myrdal 1944; King 1993). However, in
the period of their operation many aspects of their work bolstered or sustained segregated race relations thereby perpetuating the precepts and
practices of racial categories in the organization of American society.
CONCLUSION
Historically, segregated race relations are an anomaly, which gained
constitutional authority in the United States between 1896 and 1954.99
Segregation was a profoundly illiberal institution, in that it violated the
liberal democratic principle of equality of treatment for citizens (King
1999). Several points can be made by way of conclusion.
First, American political rhetoric has implied that the US’s treatment
of citizens has been unaffected by race, despite permitting the “separate
but equal” doctrine which underpinned segregation. This view was contradicted in the single dissent to the Plessy judgment by Justice Harlan who
declared the Constitution “color-blind.” It was also flatly contradicted during the decades when segregation was common in federal departments.
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
369
Second, the fact that segregated race relations were bitterly opposed by
African Americans and organizations working on their behalf—opposition
which resulted eventually in the rescinding of the “separate but equal”
pretense and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights
Act of 1965 (Branch 1988; Chong 1991)—is evidence of the extent to which
the group affected by them viewed segregation as illiberal and unjust.
Third, the special treatment accorded African Americans under the Plessy
doctrine identified an aspect of US political culture often overlooked in
liberal egalitarian accounts of American political development. It explains
the need for what the political scientist Rogers Smith calls a “multiple traditions” approach to the formation of American political values; Smith
observes that, “for over 80% of US history, its laws declared most of the
world’s population to be ineligible for full American citizenship solely
because of their race, original nationality or gender” (Smith 1993; 549; see
also Smith 1997). And, fourth, the role of the federal bureaucracy as a
complicit agent in segregated race relations demonstrates how governments, often manipulated by the promoters of special interests, become
conduits (at the least) of illiberalism. The legacies of segregated race relations and of the federal government’s involvement in their maintenance
and perpetuation have been elemental to US politics. As one recent scholar
observed, “race has been and continues to be a principal thread in the
American political fabric, a thread so strong yet simultaneously so fragile
that politicians and political parties know that pulling it may win elections” (McClain 1996; 867; Kelley 1994; Woodward 1974; Sugrue 1996;
Hochschild 1995; Katznelson 1981).
The examples discussed here bear upon scholarly analysis of the US
federal state. Although the Federal government may be a weak one in
terms of centralized powers or level of policy activism compared with
those in other advanced industrial democracies, this does not mean it is
an inconsequential institution: either as a upholder of segregated race
relations or as a defender (from the 1960s) of African Americans’ rights,
the federal government has had a fundamental impact on black Americans’ lives. For African Americans working in the federal government,
its support and then rejection of segregated race relations shaped their
daily experiences. Taking account of such racial dimensions of federal
policy and bureaucratic organization modifies the commonplace scholarly view of the federal government’s relative weakness or strength
(Krasner 1978; Nettl 1968), by illustrating both the dynamic character of
such concepts as “weak” or “strong” state capacities, and the need to recognize how they may be manifest concurrently in certain political and
historical circumstances.
Acknowledgment
For valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper the author
is grateful to Governance’s three anonymous referees, the journal’s editors
370
Desmond King
Bert Rockman and Jon Pierre, and to Mr. Rodney A. Ross, archivist at the
National Archives and Record Administration in Washington, DC for supplying part of material drawn on in this paper. For financial support for
archival research I am grateful to the Trustees of the Mellon Fund, Oxford.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
The Pendleton Act was not designed especially to benefit African Americans of course; it was, however, intended to mitigate some of the negative
effects of party political patronage and the corrupting spoils system associated with the public appointments. The Act regulated entry into the civil
service and created the Civil Service Commission. It did not end patronage
and corruption but marked a decisive step toward the establishment of a
classified civil service entry to which rested on merit rather than favor.
Library of Congress (LC) Manuscript Division, Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Group I, Box C66,
Folder: Special Correspondence, J.W. Johnson, March–December 1923, letter
from James Johnson, NAACP Secretary to President Coolidge September
1923.
I use the terms “state” and “federal government” interchangeably in this paper
and indicate clearly where state applies to one of the fifty state governments.
National Archives (NA) Record Group (RG) 228 Records of the FEPC, Office
Files of John A. Davis, Box 358, Folder: Civil Service—Negro: “The Wartime
Enforcement of the Non-Discrimination Policy in the Federal Government:
Techniques and Accomplishments” (1944), p 3.
The Act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate and police employment practices in the private sector. Its powers were
strengthened in the Equal Employment Opportunities Enforcement Act of
1972. Each federal department was required to formulate and administer its
own “equal employment opportunity plan” (Walton 1988).
“Benefit to the Colored Race” in US Civil Service Commission Eighth Report
of the US Civil Service Comission July 1, 1890 to June 30, 1891 (Washington DC:
Government Printing Office, 1891) p 6.
US Civil Service Commission. Minutes 1886–1929 May 27, 1914, p228. In
NA, RG 146, Records of the US Civil Service Commission Box 21.
LC, Papers of the NAACP I Box C273 File: Discrimination—Government,
Federal Service 1925, includes “Memorandum on Segregation of Civil
Service Employees” which documents several cases of segregation. See also
the correspondence with individual departments about discrimination
in NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation–Federal Service June–
September 1928. It includes letters to and from the Office of the Postmaster
General, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of Public Buildings.
It is important to stress how difficult acquiring data about segregation is.
The Federal government, meaning principally the Civil Service Commission, rarely kept data about employees by race (though on occasions it
included relevant material in its annual report which I use below) and nor
did the agencies. Researchers are therefore compelled to rely on a range of
sources, which, while valuable, are rarely comprehensive.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service
August 27–31, 1913, contains many letters received during the preparation
of the survey.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403 File: Segregation—Federal Service
July 12–August 24, 1913, circular letter from NAACP August 18, 1913.
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
371
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978) letter to WW from Oswald Garrison Villard July 21, 1913, p 60. See also
the letter from Alfred B Cosey to Joseph Patrick Tumulty August 22, 1913,
ibid pp 209–212.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978), letter to WW from Oswald Garrison Villard, NAACP President,
enclosing a report by May Childs Nerney, NAACP Secretary on segregation
in government departments, October 14, 1913 pp 401–410. For the original
report see Papers of NAACP I Box C70 Folder: Nerney, May Childs 1912–14,
“Segregation in the Government Departments at Washington.”
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978), letter to WW from Oswald Garrison Villard, NAACP President,
enclosing a report by May Childs Nerney, NAACP Secretary on segregation
in government departments, October 14, 1913 p 402.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978), letter to WW from Oswald Garrison Villard, NAACP President,
enclosing a report by May Childs Nerney, NAACP Secretary on segregation
in government departments, October 14, 1913 p 403.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978), letter to WW from Oswald Garrison Villard, NAACP President,
enclosing a report by May Childs Nerney, NAACP Secretary on segregation
in government departments, October 14, 1913 p 403.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978), letter to WW from Oswald Garrison Villard, NAACP President,
enclosing a report by May Childs Nerney, NAACP Secretary on segregation
in government departments, October 14, 1913 p 404.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978), letter to WW from Oswald Garrison Villard, NAACP President,
enclosing a report by May Childs Nerney, NAACP Secretary on segregation
in government departments, October 14, 1913 p 407.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978), letter to WW from Oswald Garrison Villard, NAACP President,
enclosing a report by May Childs Nerney, NAACP Secretary on segregation
in government departments, October 14, 1913 p 409. A not dissimilar response was met by the authors of the 1928 survey of segregation: Papers
of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service, March
6, 1928–February 21, 1929. “Segregation in Government Departments”
Reports of Investigations made by W.T. Andrews and Walter White
NAACP 1928 p 1.
A Letter to President Woodrow Wilson “On Federal Race Discrimination”
by Moorfield Storey, President, W.E. Burghardt DuBois, Director of Publicity and Oswald Garrison Villard, Chairman of the Board, NAACP August
15, 1913, in NAACP I Box G-34, Folder: DC Branch 1913–1918.
A Letter to President Woodrow Wilson “On Federal Race Discrimination”
by Moorfield Storey, President, W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Director of Publicity and Oswald Garrison Villard, Chairman of the Board, NAACP August
15, 1913, in NAACP I Box G-34, Folder: DC Branch 1913–1918.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1978) Letter from John Palmer Gavit to Oswald Garrison Villard, October 1,
1913, p 350.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 28 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University
Press,1978) letter from William Gibbs McAdoo to Oswald Garrison Villard
October 27, 1913, p 453.
372
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
Desmond King
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 29 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1979) letter from Secretary McAdoo to F.I. Cobb, editor of the World, November 26, 1914, p 361, emphasis in original.
Papers of Woodrow Wilson vol 29 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1979) letter from Secretary McAdoo to F.I. Cobb, editor of the World,
November 26, 1914, pp 361–362.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service
1927, Press release by NAACP August 19, 1927 including the letter.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service
1927, letter from Storey to Secretary Work October 14, 1927.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service
1927, letter from NAACP to Coolidge December 7, 1927.
For instance, a request from the NAACP to Warren Harding in 1920 when
he was a presidential candidate to speak out “against the humiliating policy
of segregation in the civil service of the government” was ignored. NAACP
Papers Box C66, Folder: Special Correspondence, J.W. Johnson 1917–1920,
letter from Johnson to George B. Christian, Harding’s Secretary, August 28,
1920.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service,
March 6, 1928–February 21, 1929. “Segregation in Government Departments” Reports of Investigations made by W.T. Andrews and Walter White
NAACP 1928 pp 19.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service,
March 6, 1928–February 21, 1929. “Segregation in Government Departments” Reports of Investigations made by W.T. Andrews and Walter White
NAACP 1928 pp 19, p 1.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Papers of the NAACP Group I
Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service, 1928. Memorandum from
Walter White to the Board of Directors NAACP September 21, 1928.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service,
1928. Memorandum from Walter White to the Conference of Executives
NAACP October 17, 1928. For some scepticism about this trend see Krislov
(1967).
Segregation in Washington A Report of the National Committee on Segregation in The Nation’s Capital (Chicago, November 1948) p 63. For the background to this study see, LC, Papers of the NAACP Group II Box A386, File:
National Committee on Segregation in the Nation’s Capital 1942–49, which
includes minutes of the meeting at which the study was agreed upon. In
particular see the meeting of October 23, 1946 which includes a detailed plan
for the report’s remit.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service,
1928. Letter from Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon to James Johnson, Secretary NAACP May 16, 1928 pp 2–3.
Papers of the NAACP Group I Box C403, File: Segregation—Federal Service,
1928. Letter from NAACP to Secrerary Mellon September 26, 1928.
Letter to James Bennett, Director of US Bureau of Prisons, September 1, 1942,
in NA RG 129, Records of the Bureau of Prisons, Central Administrative File
Box 41. For the context see King (1998).
NAACP Press Release ‘NAACP Condemns Jim Crow War Department
Office’ March 12, 1943, in NAACP II Box A237, Folder: Discrimination and
Segregation: Government Agencies 1941–55.
Letter from Roy Wilkins to Lieut. Col. A. F. White, Chief Machine Records
Branch, Office of the Adjutant General, War Department, March 9, 1943, in
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
373
NAACP II Box A237, Folder: Discrimination and Segregation: Government
Agencies 1941–55.
Letter from Roy Wilkins to Harold L Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, April 14,
1943, in NAACP II Box A237, Folder: Discrimination and Segregation: Government Agencies 1941–55. It was the department not the owner of the
building who instigated this segregation.
The records concerning Charles Edward Hall were compiled by Mr. Rodney
A. Ross, an archivist at the National Archives in Washington. Mr. Ross has
kindly made these records available to me. They are cited hereafter as Personal Files of Rodney Ross (PFRR) at the National Archives (NA).
PFRR NA letter from Director of the Census Bureau to Congressman
Hopkins January 26, 1900.
PFRR NA, letter from S. N. D. North, Director of the Census, to Senator A. J.
Hopkins March 16, 1907.
PFRR NA, letter from S. N. D. North, Director of the Census, to Senator A J
Hopkins March 16, 1917.
PFRR NA letter from Charles Hall to John W. Langley, Disbursing Clerk,
Acting as Appointment Clerk, Census Office January 22, 1903.
PFRR NA Memorandum October 24, 1904.
PFRR NA Memorandum for the Appointment Clerk from the Chief Statistician for Population, March 2, 1907.
PFRR NA letter from Chief of Division, Bureau of the Census to Mr. Merrill,
Appointment Clerk, October 2, 1907.
PFRR NA Memorandum, Bureau of the Census, December 9, 1909.
PFRR NA Department of Commerce and Labor, Efficiency Report May 15,
1911: Charles E. Hall.
PFRR NA Memorandum on Promotion List by section chief agricultural
division, Bureau of the Census March 4, 1920.
PFRR NA Memorandum for the Director, Bureau of the Census from Chief
Statistician for Agriculture, February 16, 1921.
PFRR NA, letter from Charles E. Hall, Division of Agriculture, Bureau of the
Census, to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, March 19, 1921.
PFRR NA, letter from Charles E. Hall, Division of Agriculture, Bureau of the
Census, to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, March 19, 1921.
PFRR NA, letter from Charles E. Hall, Division of Agriculture, Bureau of the
Census, to Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, March 19, 1921.
PFRR NA Memorandum from Sam L. Rogers, Director, to Mr. Libbey,
March 22, 1921, responding to Hall’s letter.
PFRR NA Memorandum from Sam L. Rogers, Director, to Mr. Libbey,
March 22, 1921, responding to Hall’s letter.
PFRR NA Memorandum from Director Stewart July 18, 1930.
PFRR NA letter from R.P. Lamont to Senator Charles Samuel Deneen July
18, 1930.
PFRR NA letter from Robert L. Vann to Secretary of Commerce Daniel C.
Hoper June 13, 1934. Hall’s national reputation had been established when
his work, compiled in the Census Bureau, Negro Population in the United
States 1790–1915, was published.
PFRR NA letter from Oliver C. Short, Executive Assistant, Bureau of the
Census to Mr. Ismar Baruch, Chief, Division of Personnel Classification, US
Civil Service Commission April 19, 1935. Hall also published two short
reports, The Negro Farmer in the United States and Negroes in the United States
1920–32.
PFRR NA Memorandum by Oliver C. Short, December 15, 1936.
374
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
Desmond King
PFRR NA Memorandum from Hall to the Bureau Director, William L.
Austin, August 17, 1934.
The full description of his post was: “To be in charge, under the Chief Statistician, Division of Statistical Research, of the statistical work connected with
the Bureau’s inquiries regarding the Negro race; to supervise the employees
to engaged, to lay out and pass upon their work; to do original research work
in connection with collecting and distributing statistical data regarding the
Negro race; to search Bureau data both published and unpublished respecting the Negro race in order to arrange, index, compile, tabulate, such data for
use; to assist in the preparation of schedules used in making inquiries regarding negroes, including population growth, geographical distribution, nativity, sex and age distribution; marital condition, illiteracy, occupation, birth
and mortality data; to devise and recommend improved methods of editing,
examining, coding, tabulating, and arranging for publication data regarding
the Negro race; to prepare subject to editing and review text for bulletins and
other publications issued by the Bureau respecting the Negro race; to contact
educational institutions, research agencies, other organizations and individuals interested in negro statistics, in order to interpret the Bureau’s findings,
and to develop a wide and more scientific use of the data; to perform such
other related work of the Bureau of the Census as may be designated by the
Director.”
PFRR NA Department of Commerce release “Hall Appointed Specialist in
Census Bureau” May 23, 1935.
PFRR NA Memorandum from Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper, to
Mr. Austin, Director of the Bureau of the Census June 29, 1939.
“Most Important Negro In Black Cabinet Is Charlie Hall in Dept of Commerce.” Black Dispatch January 8, 1938.
PFRR NA letter from Mary Fitzbutler Waring, President, National Association for Colored Women to Secretary of Commerce, Daniel C. Roper May 24,
1936.
“Chas. E. Hall Rated The Most Important Washington Negro” Richmond
Planet January 8, 1938.
PFRR NA letter from Charles Hall to James Langley July 29, 1903.
Washington Tribune May 14, 1938.
PFRR NA Memorandum from Bureau of the Census Director, W.L. Austin,
to the Secretary of Commerce April 4, 1938.
PFRR NA letter from Director Austin to Charles Hall, May 28, 1938: “Secretary Roper has taken up your case with the President. He now advises me
that the President does not feel that he can make an exception to the rule
regarding age retirements. I am sorry that the decision is unfavorable.”
PFRR NA Department of Commerce, Office of the Secretary, memorandum
of meeting held on April 30, 1938, p 3, p 4.
NARA RG 35 Records of the CCC, Division of Selection: Records relating to
organization and operation of Selection Work, 1933–42, Box 15, Folder:
“Now They are Men.” Typescript of James J. McEntee “Now They Are Men:
The Story of the CCC” 1940, p 10.
Robert Fechner, letter to Thomas Griffith September 21, 1935. In NAACP
Box C-223.
Robert Fechner, letter to Thomas Griffith February 18, 1936. In Papers of the
NAACP Box C-223.
Eugene Boykin, ‘Negro Leadership in the Civilian Conservation Corps’ 1937
pp 1, 4. In NAACP Box C-233.
E. Frederic Morrow, Letter to Clifton Davenport 1939. In LC Papers of the
NAACP Box C-223.
THE RACIAL BUREAUCRACY
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
375
Letter to Walter White from Washington, DC branch of the NAACP, June
17, 1939. In LC Papers of the NAACP Box C-223.
NARA RG 35 Records of the CCC, Division of Selection Policy Files 1933–42,
Box 14, File: Negro Question General A-H. Letter from Will Alexander,
Commission on Interracial Cooperation to Frank Persons May 19, 1933, p 2.
See “NYA and Negro Youth,” (NYA, 1941) in NAACP II Box A448, Folder:
NYA 1940–41.
Memorandum for Walter White from Mr. Madison S. Jones, NAACP Youth
Director, March 5, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Report by Lillian Anthony, Herman Folkes, Vivian Bowen and Herbert
Polite, May 20, 1941, 5 pp, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
For instance, Congressman John Taber complained about NYA courses at
Auburn, NY, his constituency, on such grounds, stating in Congress to the
House Appropriations Committee, on July 1, 1943 that: “In my territory out
of their private boarding school (NYA War Training Center), we see a white
boy and a black girl come out and a black boy and a white girl come out
together. The entire program has been demoralizing. It has been demoralizing all the way through. I do not think we ought to permit it to continue any
longer.” Reported in a letter from Walter White to members of Congress,
June 29, 1943, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1943.
Letter from Walter White to Aubrey Williams, Administrator NYA, February 15, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Letter from Walter White to Aubrey Williams, Administrator NYA, February 15, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Letter from Walter White to Aubrey Williams, Administrator NYA, February 15, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Aubrey Williams acknowledged White’s letter, and promised to address
“the situation” in reply of February 19, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder:
NYA 1940–41.
Letter from Walter White to Aubrey Williams, Administrator NYA, March
4, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Letter from Walter White to Aubrey Williams, Administrator NYA, March
4, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Letter from Walter White to Aubrey Williams, Administrator NYA, March
4, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Letter from Walter White to Mary McLeod Bethune, March 4, 1941, in
NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
See letter to Walter White from Mary McLeod Bethune, February 21, 1941, in
NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Memorandum for Mary McLeod Bethune from T. Arnold Hill, February 15,
1941, “Field Trip to Missouri” p 5, pp 3, 4, in NAACP II Box A448 Folder:
NYA 1940–41.
Letter from G. Oscar Robinson to Aubrey Williams, April 18, 1941, in
NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Memorandum for Walter White from Mr. Madison S. Jones, Youth Director
NAACP, March 5, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Memorandum for Walter White from Mr. Madison S. Jones, Youth Director,
NAACP, March 5, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448, Folder: NYA 1940–41.
Circulate from Madison Jones, NAACP Youth Director, to all Youth Councils and College Chapters, NAACP, March 11, 1941, in NAACP II Box A448,
Folder: NYA 1940–41.
For introductions to the substantial literature on segregation generally and
race relations before the 1960s see inter alia Kelley (1994), Fredrickson (1981),
Woodward (1974).
376
Desmond King
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