Some Factors in the Development of Negro Social Institutions in The United States

Abstract

The assimilation of Negroes into the white culture is attributable largely to the conditions of the first hundred years of slavery in the Upper South. White institutional complexes have tended to be adopted entire from the formal social institutions to the minor modes of everyday behavior. The lag which exists between Negro and white institutions in any given area is due to the fact that acculturation was incomplete at the time of emancipation, that there has since been increasing separation of the races, and especially that economic drag has re-enforced cultural isolation and retarded the rate of cultural change among the Negro population. Cultural isolation, race prejudice, and economic drag have caused the intensification of those Negro institutions which offer opportunities for leadership and self-expression within the Negro group, particularly the church and the lodge. Race consciousness since emancipation has given rise to various agencies for racial solidarity, the Negro press being the most import...