By JEROME DAVIS
Yale University

ONE of the most complex and difficult problems confronting
American democracy is that of race relations between whites and
Negroes. Under slavery, when the number of free Negroes was
negligible and the vast majority of the race were in a position of
complete subordination, the problem of race adjustment, though
often troublesome, was comparatively simple, and the infrequency
of slave uprisings affords evidence that an adjustment was reached
and maintained. With emancipation, serious complications -- social,
economic, and political -- were introduced. Propertyless, for the
most part unskilled, and with the habit of depending on their "white
folks" strongly established, the Negroes were the easy victims of
unscrupulous Carpetbaggers and Scalawags who exploited them for
political purposes, and by their activities did much to intensify if
not create the bitterness that marked relations between North and
South, and between southern whites and Negroes, during the Recon-
struction era. Until recent years the problem of race relations be-
tween whites and Negroes has presented itself acutely only in the
South. For decades after emancipation the Negroes remained in
the rural areas of the southern states. But the industrial emergency
created by the World War and the reduction of immigration caused
a vast migration of Negroes to the North, where they have remained
in large numbers; with the decline of agriculture and the increasing
urbanization of American life, it seems unlikely that they can ever
be returned to their former economic status. Their future is linked
in a larger measure than before with that of American industry and
business generally. Relations between whites and Negroes, no longer
a sectional matter, are assuming increasing importance in our national
life, both in the North and in the South. Race relations has thus
become a field which demands the intelligent attention of every
educated citizen.

The authors of this book are leaders in the attempt to work out a
basis for intelligent and mutually tolerant relations between the two

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