Mark Ellis - Race Harmony and Black Progress: Jack Woofter and the Interracial Cooperation Movement

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

Telephone orders 800-842-6796

Fax orders 812-855-7931

2013 by Mark Ellis

All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association
of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes
the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for Information
SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ellis, Mark, [date]-

Race harmony and black progress : Jack Woofter and the interracial
cooperation movement / Mark Ellis.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01059-9 (cl : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-01066-7
(eb) 1. Woofter, Thomas Jackson, 1893-1972. 2. Alexander, Will Winton,
1884-1956. 3. Jones, Thomas Jesse, 1873-1950. 4. Odum, Howard
Washington, 1884-1954. 5. Commission on Interracial Cooperation.
6. Southern StatesRace relationsHistory20th century. 7. African
AmericansSouthern StatesSocial conditions20th century.
8. SociologistsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

E185.98.W66E55 2013

301.092dc23

[B]

2013019196

1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14 13

My interest in T. J. Woofter Jr. began when I came across his defense of the record of African American soldiers in World War I. He served as an officer in the AEF HQ under Pershing and was certain that derogatory comments made about the Ninety-second Division during and after the war were false. All I knew then was that he was a white southern sociologist whose work was widely referenced, especially in relation to black migration and farm problems during the Great Depression. I was unaware of his work for the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, or the Institute for Research in Social Science, or his association with key figures in the wider interracial cooperation movement and the antilynching campaign. As I examined the range of his activities and publications, it became clear that his work between 1910 and 1930 combined key elements of the Social Gospel, southern liberalism, and the engagement of the social sciences with the race problem. In his energetic yet diffident manner, Jack Woofter advanced all three phenomena.

Woofter left no collection of papers, so his career before the New Deal has to be constructed largely from the records of organizations that employed him or individuals with whom he worked or corresponded. I am grateful for the essential advice I received from archivists and librarians in many repositories, including the Strathclyde University Library, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta, the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Duke University, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, the Joyner Library at East Carolina University, the Rockefeller Archive Center at Sleepy Hollow, New York, the Southern Historical Collection of the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina, the Tuskegee University Archives, the Center for Oral History at Columbia University, the Danville, Virginia, Public Library, the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the National Personnel Records Center.

I would also like to thank the British Academy for a research grant that has enabled me to pursue aspects of this work further, and the School of Humanities at the University of Strathclyde for assistance toward the cost of reproducing photographs.

Many people helped me with various questions, including Julie O. Kerlin, Clarence T. Maxey, Sally Guy Brown, Lesley Leduc, and Alfred Perkins. For their kindness and hospitality, I am especially grateful to John and Sharon Mackintosh. For their support and advice, I am indebted to my colleagues David Brown and Allan Macinnes, and especially to Richard Finlay, for ensuring that I had the time to begin this project; and also to Tricia Barton and Ann Bartlett for countless favors.

I owe the biggest thanks of all, for their support and inspiration, to my father and to my wife, Sue, and to Tom and Sam.