themselves, shared its general anti-skilled African-American worker
prejudices. ² Myrdal cites the African-American historian Charles B.
Rousseve's findings, which state that as a result of these racist atti-
tudes toward the skilled African-American in the southern urban cen-
ters like New Orleans the African-American who before the war "per-
formed all types of labor, skilled and unskilled, found himself
gradually eliminated from the various trades." ³ Thus, while the Civil
War and Reconstruction may have brought political and legal equality
to African-Americans (at least in theory), their economic condition in
the industrial sector declined.

In the post-Civil War North, the situation for African-Americans
was not much better. In both the skilled and unskilled labor sectors
that they had come to dominate, the moves toward their exclusion
had started even earlier there than in the South. Myrdal notes that in
the North as early as three decades before the Civil War, whites and
African-Americans had engaged in race riots stemming from the fierce
competition for jobs, a competition that escalated with every new
wave of European immigration to the United States. Indeed, Frederick
Douglass, the great African-American freedom fighter, was well aware
of this competition and the decline of the African-American presence
in the labor force. Myrdal writes that he complained of whites becom-
ing house servants, cooks, barbers, and the like, which was not the
case before the 1830s. Douglass believed that the trend would con-
tinue "until the last [economic] prop is leveled beneath us [African-
Americans]." ⁴ Summarizing the African-American economic condition
from the Civil War to 1940, Myrdal concludes, however, that although
African-Americans were totally excluded from their traditional places
in southern industry, in the North (despite the widespread absence of
African-Americans from the manufacturing industries) they were
making significant gains, especially in some occupations that were
"new or where few if any Negroes were allowed to work before." ⁵ (By
the latter, Myrdal is probably referring to the automobile and aircraft
industries.)

The injustices that Myrdal outlines were not restricted to employ-
ment, for matters of health revealed comparable disparities. He states
that "a study made before the Civil War shows that the incidence of
tuberculosis was considerably higher for whites than Negroes." ⁶ How-
ever, after emancipation, the African-American overall rate was higher
than that of whites, and though it had decreased somewhat by the
1940s, at the time of Myrdal's writing the difference was still im-
mense. (It should be recalled that tuberculosis was a major cause of
death in the 1940s.)

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