Negro Politics: The Search For Leadership

By James Q. Wilson

This is a study of a phenomenon which many people be- JL lieve does not exist. Anyone wishing to examine Negro leadership in a city such as Chicago will be met at the outset with the assertion, particularly from intellectual Negroes, that “there is no Negro leadership.” At the same time, the person who makes this comment will very likely be himself a member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) or the Urban League, or perhaps both; he will - be a member of one of the major political parties, probably the Democratic; he will often be in a fraternity, an organization which exists largely as a part of adult, rather than student, life; he may well be a member of a social club, a church, one or more organizations affiliated with the church, or a lodge; if he is a worker, he will likely be a union member; if he is a businessman, he will probably belong to a chamber of commerce; and it would not be unusual if he were a supporter of the YMCA, a boys’ club, a settlement house, a professional society, a neighborhood block club, or a conservation association. Each of these organizations will almost inevitably be led, at least at the local level, by a Negro. These men are, in some sense, Negro leaders. What is meant, of course, is that there are no “good” Negro leaders — leaders who are selflessly devoted to causes which will benefit Negroes as a race and as a community. One will also be told that Negroes are “unorganized.” But the simplest reckoning of the number of organizations in a Negro community will immediately suggest that this comment, like the • 3 4 NEGRO POLITICS one about leadership, cannot be taken at face value. In 1937, when Chicago had only 275,000 Negroes, an actual count revealed more than 4,000 formal associations among them.*1 Today, when the Negro population is about three times as large, there seems to be little doubt that the number of organizations is also comparably greater. In comparison with white communities of equivalent size, there is some evidence that Negroes are organized to an even greater extent than whites.2 Although Negroes, like whites, are more organized among middle-class than lower-class groups, on the whole, Negroes are fully as inclined to join associations as whites.3 The Negro community, whatever else its problems, is not characterized by an inability to create and sustain at least some kinds of organizations. What the Negro critics who argue that the Negro is “unorganized” mean is that he is not organized as a community to seek ends of benefit to the community or the race as a whole. There can be little doubt that the great majority of Negro associations have purposes other than Negro protest or improvement, and that these associations consume much of the time and money of Negroes which, their critics argue, should be devoted to race ends. Periodically, attempts are made to alter this, either by starting a new organization which will be the organization for the betterment of Negroes and to which all Negroes can flock, regardless of their special interests, or by creating an “umbrella” organization which will “co-ordinate” the plethora of existing Negro associations into collective action for communal goals. Such organizations have not endured.

STATE COLLEGE FOR TEACHERS, 1960, 338p.