The Negro in Professional Occupations in the United States

Abstract

In appraising the educational attainment of the Negro population in terms of its professionally trained segment, one should remember that at the beginning of the 20th century the Negro population was markedly deficient in those characteristics which tend to increase the number of persons in professional occupations. The proportion of illiteracy among Negroes-44.5 per cent-was more than seven times that of the white population and, in addition, about 7 out of every 10 Negroes 5 to 20 years old were not attending school. These shortcomings are understandable since somewhat more than three fourths of all Negroes resided in rural areas which provided neither adequate school facilities nor a high vocational horizon for youth. An unfavorable occupational distribution in the parent generation was another hindrance to the development of a sizeable professional group. For the most part, the parents of Negro youth were farm laborers, domestics, or employed in other occupations at the lowest rung of the occupational ladder; hence, not many of them could envision their children as professional workers. Furthermore, Negroes employed in low level occupations did not have the income needed to finance the education of their children for the professions, nor could they rely, to any appreciable extent, on professionally trained members of their race to provide the equivalent of formal education in the professions by the apprenticeship methods' then in use. This was chiefly because the number of professionally trained Negroes was small and highly concentrated in two occupations -teaching2 and the ministry (Table I). In addition to the hindrances already mentioned, the mass of Negro families could not provide the inspirational guidance so much needed to stimulate high intellectual achievement among their children, for as Frazier8 has indicated, the number of stable Negro families was relatively small. The mass of Negro families had no tradition of achievement and had not developed any marked degree of solidarity based on habitual association.