Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries records, 1943-1970
| Amistad Research Center
Administrative/Biographical History
The Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries was created by the American Missionary Association Division in 1942 and was based at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The formal program of the department began in 1943 as a forum to engage in a national discussion with social scientists, religious leaders, educators, government officials, and other notable figures offering an arena for research studies and discussions on relationships between ethnic groups and racial stereotypes as they relate to economics, education, government policy, housing and employment. Notable figures who participated in the institute throughout its life include, Arna Bontemps, Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, Rachel DuBois, William Faulkner, John Hope Franklin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.
The first director was sociologist, Charles Spurgeon Johnson (1942-1950) who published To Stem This Tide: a Survey of Racial Tension Areas in the United States and for five years published The Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations. Herman Hodge Long was employed as a field representative before becoming the Associate Director of the department and succeeded Johnson as the director (1950-1964). In 1964, Long relinquished his position as director to become the president of his alma mater, Talladega College in Alabama. In 1944, the first Race Relations Institute was held at Fisk University and the institute continued to be an annual event until 1969. San Francisco became the first city to employ the staff required to provide technical assistance for one of its surveys and resulted in the publication, The Negro War Worker in San Francisco: A Local Self-Survey.
In 1947, Charles S. Johnson was named president of Fisk University but continued to direct the department. That same year, the Minneapolis self-survey was conducted with technical assistance from the department and People vs. Property: Race Restrictive Covenants in Housing was a published. In 1949, People vs. Property served as the basis for the United States Supreme Court decision that outlawed enforcement of racially restrictive covenants. The department circulated Current, an information bulletin to the constituency of the department. Other publications completed in 1951 with the assistance of the department include Segregation, a Challenge to Democracy by Margaret C. McCulloch, If Your Next Neighbors are Negroes by Roger G. Mastrude, and the article “How Minneapolis Beat the Bigots from the Woman's Home Companion,” by Clive Howard. In 1952, McCulloch also wrote Integration: Promise, Process, Problem and Long wrote Segregation in Interstate Railway Coach Travel. In 1955, An American City in Transition: the Baltimore Community Self-Survey of Intergroup Relations and This is the Task: Findings of the Trenton, New Jersey, Human Relations Self-Survey were published. Additional publications include Fellowship for Whom? A Study of Inclusiveness in the Congregational Christian Churches (1958) and The Negotiation of Desegregation in Ten Southern Cities (1965) by Lewis W. Jones and Long.
In 1966, Clifton H. Johnson became director of the department and the Amistad Research Center (a branch of the department) was established as the repository of the American Missionary Association’s archives, which included the records of the Race Relations Department. The Center was incorporated in 1969 as a non-profit archival repository and following the dissolution of the Race Relations Department moved to Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Author: Emanuella J. Spencer Subjects (links to similar collections) Administrative Information
The Race Relations Department was established in 1942 to define problem areas related to race relations in the United States, to develop programs and techniques designed to promote constructive action, and to work toward relieving areas of tension utilizing, wherever possible, local resources. Population movements during World War II had created pressure points in several cities. Race riots occurred with alarming frequency and the newly organized department attempted to alleviate or prevent the problem by dispatching field workers to the affected areas to collect data and to survey still other areas threatened with racial disturbances.
An imposing group of social scientists was involved in the work of the department from the outset. Its first director was the eminent sociologist, Charles S. Johnson (1942-1950), who was succeeded by Herman Hodge Long (1950-1964). Long eventually became president of Talladega College in Alabama and Clifton Herman Johnson (1966-1970) became the last director of the department. Throughout the years of its existence, the department could boast of such staff members as Ira De A. Reid, Carroll Barber, Horace Mann Bond, Margaret McCulloch, Grace Jones, Lewis Wade Jones, Bonita and Preston Valien, Vivian Henderson, John Hope, II, and Hattie McDaniel Perry. Numerous others could be added to the stellar roster of the specialists who participated in the work of the department.
The records consist of correspondence, speeches, publicity, programs, announcements, clippings, bibliographies, financial records, photographs, posters, and survey forms. There are department records and a small segment of personal papers for Herman H. Long and Lewis W. Jones. The collection is arranged chronologically, in general, within series which include an administrative series and additional series generated by the department's activities. Institutes, surveys, and studies comprised the major activities. Incoming and outgoing correspondence are interfiled.
The importance of the collection to the students of race relations is inestimable. The department played a key role in the removal of the issue of racial segregation and discrimination from the realm of social abstraction. It provided a basis for action in the foundation built upon research. The papers document the fact that the department pioneered in studies in race relations and significantly influenced intergroup relations in much of the United States. The Race Relations Institutes conducted by the department have been credited with exerting a greater effect upon the course of race relations in this country than any other single series of events. Certainly, no study of the issue in this century would be complete without recourse to the rich resources available in the records of the department.