THE NEGRO'S HALF SHARE

The Negro: A Step Behind

By Simmons Fentress

The Charlotte Observer

(December 18, 1956)

             The problem of the Southern economy cannot be divorced from the problem of the Southern Negro.

            The two are intertwined, just as they always have been. If the economic opportunity of the Negro does not expand, the development of the South will be hampered.

            The problem is grounded in numbers. Despite his heavy migration to the North, the Negro still accounts for 26 per cent of the South's population.

            In Mississippi, where he was in the majority a few years ago, he represents 45.4 per cent of the population. In South Carolina, 38.9 per cent. In Louisiana, 33 per cent. In Georgia, 31 per cent. In Alabama, 32 per cent. In North Carolina, 26,6 percent.

            Economically, he lives pretty much on crumbs from the table.

            He works generally in the lowest-paying jobs of the lowest-paying industries.

            In the United States, in 1949, the median income of non-white persons was only 46.8 per cent of that of white persons.

            In South Carolina, it was only 31.9 per cent. The median income of the white person there was $1,684; the Negro, only $525.

            In Mississippi, the dollars were fewer but the percentage slightly higher. The median income of a white person in that state was only $1,236. The Negro earned $439.

            In five other Southern states--North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana--the average was below that of the nation.

            Several factors are at work here.

            Education is one of them. The level of education in the Negro labor force is below that of the whites. The Negro thus is hampered in his competition.

            The barriers that restrict Negro opportunity are a major factor.

            Evidence of these barriers is found in figures showing that the income differential between whites and Negroes tends to increase as the level of education increases.

            For instance, in 1949 the income of white persons in the South exceeded that of the non-whites by 48 per cent at the level of a grammar school graduate.

            The differential jumped to 73 per cent among graduates of high school.

            It rose to 85 per cent among college graduates.

            The differential were considerably narrower in other regions of the nation.

            In the North and West the median income among whites, after fours years of college, was 59 per cent above that of Negroes with the same education. In the South the income among whites was 85 per cent higher.

            Yet the median income of whites with no education at all was only 16 per cent above that of Negroes in the same situation. In the North and West the spread was greater--28 per cent.

            The situation can easily be understood in terms of specifics. Suppose a young Negro graduates in engineering at state-operated A&T college in Greensboro. He immediately faces the fact that there are few Negro firms in the region that have use for his services. There are few Negro construction firms; few, if any Negro roadbuilders. In short, the avenues to employment within his own race are limited drastically.

            The chances of his securing employment of that kind with white firms is practically non-existent. The invisible barrier still rules out state employment, city employment and county employment at the levels of his training. This is true regardless of the need for engineers in these quarters.

            The ultimate choice, for man, is simply to leave their state and their region. Elsewhere they will face the same problems to an extent, but not to as large as extent.

            They take with them their education which was subsidized by the taxpayer.

            There are no hard figures on the degree of Negro migration from the South. There is no doubt that it is great. A walk through the trains moving up the Mississippi Valley toward Chicago and Detroit will establish the fact.

            That migration largely explains why two Southern states, Arkansas and Mississippi, actually lost population over the last 15 years.

            No one can say how many Negroes go in the interest of their dignity or in the interest of their economics or how many from a combination of the two.

            It is not hard to establish the economic connection. The two states, Arkansas and Mississippi, rank 47th and 48th in per capita income.

            Just as the South does not share fully in national prosperity, the Negro does not share fully in the beginnings of a Southern industrial revolution. In new factories he still does menial jobs.

            He has won major victories in the courts in terms of his citizenship. His progress in the realm of economic opportunity is slower.

            That fact figures heavily in the south's economic ranking. It will continue to do so as long as the Negro comprises more than a fourth of the Southern population.

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update 24 July 2008