The Negro’s Middle‐Class Dream

Oct. 25, 1964

A FAMOUS professor at a large university used to begin one of his lectures in social

psychology with a description of the characteristics of a typical American family. After

he had described the family’s income, address, religion, the kind of car they drove,

organizations to which they belonged and the occupation of the father, he would then

demand to know what social class the family belonged to. But before the students could

answer, the professor would add as an apparent afterthought: “Oh, yes, I forgot to

mention that this is a Negro family!” Inevitably, the students were stymied. What had

begun as a simple problem became insolubly complex by the addition of the word

“Negro.”

Where do Negroes fit into the prevailing American class structure? Most sociologists say

they don’t. Negroes have a parallel social structure, somewhat—but not

entirely—analogous to that of whites. This social parallelism, or two‐caste society, is

created by the color barrier which, with the rarest exceptions, prevents lateral

movement from class to class between Negroes and whites. As a prominent Negro

matron said in Detroit, “We Negroes and whites visit each other at times, and frequently

we belong to the same civic organizations and attend the same functions, but the lines

are there, and no one has to say where they are.”

The Negro class structure had its roots in the institution of American slavery, which, in

ignoring the African’s cultural presumptions, leveled all classes, and force‐fused highly

disparate individuals and groups into one conglomerate mass — “the Negro slave,” or

simply, “the Negro,” a word which, in America, became synonymous with “slave” or the

“descendant of slaves.” Prince and servant, Eboe and Mandingo, Moslem and

spirit‐worshipper were all the same to the slave master, who saw them only as

commodities to be bought and sold, or as a labor supply for his vast plantations.

WHATEVER the basis of past distinctions, the Negro social structure in America had to

evolve out of conditions connected with plantation life, and within a context which

recognized the absolute superiority of the white slave owner (although not necessarily

that of the small, nonslave‐holding white farmers, who supplied the “overseer” class;

and who were looked upon by house servants and slave owners alike as “poor white

trash”).

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The Negro’s “society,” then, had four more or less distinct social classes. In ascending

order, they were: (1) field hands (who had least contact with the socializing influences of

the white environment) ; (2) mechanics and artisans (bricklayers, carpenters, iron

workers, bakers, etc., who were frequently hired by the month or the year to merchants

or builders in the cities); (3) valets, butlers, maids, cooks and other household servants

(whose frequent personal contact With whites made them the most “acculturated”

class); and (4) free Negroes (who had bought their freedom or had become free by

mamumisSion— often because of faithfulness or some heroic exploit).

As slaves, the house‐servant class had by far the highest proportion of mulattoes. While

this did not by any means exempt them from the normal rigors incident to being slaves,

including sale, the light‐skinned mistresses of the slave masters were often granted

petty privileges and their children were more frequently given their freedom than those

of any other class.

At the end of the slave period, the mulattoes sought to establish themselves as a distinct

occupational and social class within the Negro subculture. For the most part, they

continued as servants and retainers to their erstwhile masters—as dressmakers, barbers,

coachmen and the like. For more than a generation they clung tenuously to a certain

degree of status derived from catering exclusively to the “quality” folk (as they had done

in slavery) under the then Current slogan of (serving) “mighty few white folks and no

niggers a’tall!”

BY the turn of the century, however, as the economy of the South began to revive, the

mulatto “retainers” were progressively displaced by European immigrants and poor

whites who were suddenly willing to do “Negro work.” From that date neither

occupation nor color has been a reliable index of social standing among Negroes.

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Today, a light skin is not an automatic key to social status. In this day of the Negro’s

increasing race pride and his subtle impulse to nationalism, a light skin can be a

handicap, especially if it is associated with “recent” miscegenation. Mass education and

the indiscriminate rise to power and money of significant numbers of Negroes

irrespective of their grandparents’ station in the slave society have all but destroyed the

effectiveness of the Negro’s private color bar. Leadership in civil rights as well as in the

professions has long since passed from the mulatto class. As a matter of fact, the

number of mulattoes in the general Negro population seems to be declining steadily,

and there is no evidence that legal integration will soon replace clandestine

miscegenation in restoring the ratio of light color.

THERE is no unanimity of opinion as to what proportion of today’s Negroes fall into the

traditional “lower,” “middle” and “upper” classes of the Negro social structure. Prof.

Tillman Cothran, head of the graduate department of sociology at Atlanta University,

estimates that “not more than 25 per cent of the Negro population can be called

middleclass by any reasonable standards. And not more than 5 per cent can be called

upper class.”

Other sociologists have argued that if one applies the full spectrum of criteria by which

the white social structure is measured — ranging from income to education, affiliation,

residence, etc. — the Negro middle class is reduced to 4 per cent or 5 per cent of the

Negro population, and the Negro upper class vanishes altogether.

Such an estimate is, I think, too drastic. If the theory of parallel social structure is valid

(and there seems to be no other way to measure “class” in an essentially segregated

society), certainly it can be shown that Negroes and whites of similar education and

income exhibit many of the same desires, restraints, conformities and general patterns

of behavior.

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AMERICA’s self‐image is that of an essentially equalitarian society best represented by

the middle class. Most Americans concede that there are a few snobs and millionaires at

the top, and a few poor people in Appalachia, or somewhere, at the bottom, but America

is middle class, and most Americans identify themselves as belonging to the middle

class.

Implicit in this identification is a belief in “democracy” and “fair play,” and also the

expectation of “the good life”—a home, a car, a regular vacation, an education for the

children, regular promotions, and maybe even extras like a boat or a summer place.

Despite the pessimism of the sociologists, more and more Negroes share this dream,

and to an increasing degree they are making it come true for themselves and their

children.

The Negro middle class is made up primarily of Negro

professionals, with school teachers probably constituting the largest single bloc.

Teachers, along with doctors, lawyers, college professors, small businessmen, ministers,

and postal workers have traditionally made up the bulk of the Negro middle class.

However, the recent availability of new kinds of jobs not previously held by Negroes has

begun to modify the character of this group. Technicians, politicians, clerical and sales

personnel, social workers, labor‐union officials, minor government bureaucrats, and an

increasing managerial class in such agencies as Federal housing and local units, of

national corporations have helped broaden the occupational range of the Negro middle

class.

UNDER the Kennedy‐Johnson Administration a few Negroes have been appointed to

the upper echelons of Government officialdom, and within the past two or three years a

few Negroes have reached executive status in white corporations. A recent dinner in

New York honored seven Negroes who were vice presidents or held managerial positions

in major firms. In Washington, Dr. James Nabrit, president of Howard University, and

Dr. Frank Jones have been elected to the board of directors of a major bank. And in that

city, several Negroes have been elected to the Board of Trade.

It is difficult to set a salary range for a given social class because social status does not

depend upon money alone. Some upper‐class whites are impoverished, but their

families have once held fortunes and they have traditions of culture and attainment.

Since the American Negro’s family traditions seldom antedate the Civil War, Negro

society puts an undue emphasis on moneyand material acquisitions. It is often said by

Negro critics themselves that “anybody with a dollar, no matter where he stole it, can

belong to Negro society.”

Most Negroes, like most other Americans, earn their living legitimately, of course, but

because of job discrimination and lack of skills, the total income of the typical

middle‐class Negro family will be substantially lower than that of a typical white family

of the middle class. An arbitrary figure of $7,500 a year as the average income of a

middle‐class family would severely limit the number of Negroes who could be called

middle‐class.

SOME Negro families do exceed a $7,500 income, but the vast majority of those who do

are families in which both husband and wife work full time. Very frequently among

home‐buying Negroes, the head of the family works at two jobs, and occasionally at

three. Such supplementary work or “moonlighting”—often driving a taxi, waiting on

tables, tending bar or bellhopping — is known as “a hustle,” a term quite familiar to the

Negro middle class.

In many of the large cities of the North such as New York or Boston where undeveloped

land is nonexistent, the middle‐class Negro, who has the means and the desire to live

elsewhere, is locked in the black ghetto. Only with difficulty can he find a house or

apartment outside the ghetto in a white community. As a consequence, many Negroes

despair of ever leaving the slums, no matter what their education or income.

Money that would normally go for anew house is spent in the hopeless task of

refurbishing antiquated apartments, or in conspicuous consumption which somehow

helps them to forget the horror of living in the nation’s Harlems. (In the South, the

housing problem is not nearly so acute. Space for building can be had in most Southern

cities, although it is likely to be in a segregated community.)

THE style of living of the Negro middle class does not differ radically from that of its

white counterpart. Bridge is a favorite pastime among both men and women. Those who

have the leisure belong to innumerable social clubs. An increasing number of Negro

men play golf and participate in water sports where facilities are available. In the South,

fishing and hunting are favorite pastimes, but only if one has the full regalia of dress,

and all the latest equip-, ment shown in the sports magazines.

To a far greater degree than whites, Negroes maintain affiliation in the graduate

chapters of their college fraternities and sororities, and these organizations are

important indexes of social stratification. Women of a given sorority tend to marry men

of its fraternal opposite number. Together, the eight major Negro sororities and

fraternities constitute the nucleus of any imaginary “blue book” of Negro society.

THE children of the Negro middle clan are taught to aspire to middle‐class standards.

They take lessons in piano and creative dancing on Saturday mornings and attend

carefully planned parties on Saturday night. A few are sent East to private schools.

Sometimes the interpretation of middle‐class values takes an unusual twist. A Negro

matron in a Memphis department store, for example, refused to corral her two children

who were busily chasing through the store and littering the aisles with merchandise. She

explained: “The white kids do it and the salesclerks think it’s cute. I don’t want my

children inhibited by feeling that they can’t do anything any other kids can do.”

In Washington, among those aspiring to the middle class, or those who are recently “in,”

status is measured by the quantity and the cost of whisky served one’s guests. The most

conspicuous feature in such a home will be the bar appointments, and it is considered

equally insulting for a guest to refuse a drink as it is for the host to offer his guests

“cheap whisky.” One Washingtonian gained prominence in his set by consistently being

first to serve rare and expensive imports before they were well known in the Negro

community. He learned what was “in” by frequenting an exclusive liquor store

patronized by high Government officials.

IT used to be said that the difference between a Negro making $50 a week and driving a

Cadillac and a white man making $100 a week and driving a Chevrolet was that the

Negro, having nowhere to live, needed the bigger car to sleep in! On Atlanta’s West Side,

where the Cadillac (or Lincoln) frequently comes with a split‐level ranch house, it is

popular to have the main for “status”) car match the house in color and appointments.

A second car for the Negro professional family is not unusual. Unlike most white

middle‐class families having two cars, the Negro’s second car is likely to be as big and

expensive as his first. An expensive automobile to drive to work is often as much a

matter of personal prestige for the working Negro woman as for her husband. Hence, it

is common to see large numbers of Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Mercurys parked near the

schools where Negro women are employed as teachers.

A cottage at Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard, or in Maine or Upper Michigan can be

claimed by a few. A very small number of Negroes go to Europe and to the Caribbean or

Mexico on vacation. A sort of pilgrimage to Africa has high status value for those seeking

to “understand their pre‐Western heritage.”

Some Negroes are in the middle class because there is nowhere else for them to go.

These few might be considered “upper class” but there is a certain incongruity in talking

about a Negro “upper class” so long as the color barrier operates to bar Negroes who are

otherwise qualified from full participation in American social life. “There may not be an

upper class,” says Clarence Coleman, southeastern director of the National Urban

League, “but there is a ‘power elite’ which abstracts itself from the rank and file of the

middle class and participates to an important extent in the decision‐making of the white

power structure where Negroes are concerned.”

CERTAINLY this power elite does exist. But where it was not created by the white

establishment, its power derives from white recognition and respect. Militant civilrights

leaders have discovered this again and again when the white establishment has refused

to negotiate with the Negro community except through “recognized channels.”

The Negro middle class, like any middle class, is pre occupied with making secure its

hard‐won social position. This is a characteristic of middle‐class aspirations.

Because of this preoccupation the Negro middle class has been criticized frequently for

not being more deeply and realistically involved in the struggle for civil rights. The

criticism is well placed, for given more manpower, more money and more dedication, it

is obvious that more walls could be breached. But this is not the whole story, and the

lack of total involvement may not be an accurate index of middle‐class feelings and

intentions.

MUCH of the criticism has come from within the ranks of the middle class itself. The

Urban League’s Clarence Coleman sees the middle class as the buffer between the

militants, whose aspirations are frequently unrealistic in terms of present possibilities,

and the power elite which seems concerned to protect itself and its privileged positions

from too rapid social change.

James A. Tillman Jr., executive director of the Greater Minneapolis Fair Housing

Program and a frequent writer on problems of social change, describes the Negro

middle class as “that class of Negroes who have bought the inane, invalid and

self‐defeating notion that the black man can be integrated into a hostile white society

without conflict.”

Tillman denounces the power elite as “the fixers and gobetweens who cover up rather

than expose the violent nature of racism. They are,” he dedares, “the most dangerous

clique in America.”

Tillman’s sentiments are echoed by Cecil Moore, militant civil‐rights attorney and head

of the Philadelphia N.A.A.C.P. Moore, who himself came from an accomplished West

Virginia family, insists that “the Negro middle class, and all those who consider

themselves above the middle class, ‘subsist on the blood of the brother down under,’ the

brother they are supposed to be leading. Who do these Negroes think they’re kidding?”

he asks, and then answers his own question. “They’re kidding nobody but the white folks

who are willing to pay ‘philanthropy’ to keep from having to come to grips with the

central problem, which is ‘full and complete citizenship for all Americans, right now!’”

DESPITE all such criticism, however, the Negro middle class has borne the brunt of the

civil‐rights protest. Critics of the so‐called “Black Bourgeoisie” have not always given

them credit for the, maturity and social responsibility upon which the Negro’s fight for

first‐class citizenship has finally depended. The civilrights fight, at least insofar as it

visualizes an integrated society, is a middle‐class fight. The N.A.A.C.P., CORE, the

Urban League and the followers of Dr. Martin Luther King are all middle‐class. (Indeed,

the lower‐class Negro has yet to be stirred by the promise of integration. He is more

concerned with such immediate needs as jobs and housing than with abstract values like

integration. He looks neither to Martin Luther King nor to Roy Wilkins; in fact, the

leader of the black masses, has yet to appear.)

In Atlanta and other Southern cities during the massive sit‐ins of 1962–63, housewives

baked pies, made sandwiches and provided transportation for the students. Negro

businessmen donated food, gasoline and other supplies. Then doctors, nurses,

professors and businessmen walked the picket lines. Similar middle‐class support has

assisted the activities of CORE in New. York, Cleveland and other cities in the North.

Voter registration is essentially a middle‐class project.

Middle‐class leadership and support of the civil‐rights movement has not been without

ambivalence. Desegregated schools frequently mean that Negro teachers will lose their

jobs. Negro businessmen often lose their most competent clerical help to recently

desegregated industries. Negro restaurants, drug stores, real‐estate firms and the like

may be adversely affected by desegregation. Some Negro churches have lost members to

white churches. In a fully integrated society, the Negro middle class would lose its

identity. Indeed, it would cease to exist.

SOME Negroes recognize all this, of course, and fight against it. Nor can it be said that

the majority of the middle class is active in the rights struggle. What can be said is that

the struggle is for the most part led, financed and supported by the Negro middle class

and of course, its white allies.

Certainly, Negro leadership has become a “profession,” and in some cases a lucrative

one. Yet most Negroes trying to help improve things are in search of neither fame nor

fortune and may be themselves disadvantaged by the race issue. A. Maceo Walker and

Jesse Turner of Memphis, for example, both executive officers of a sensitive banking

business that has important white as well as Negro depositors, come to mind. These

men and others like them have little to gain for themselves personally, yet they have

given leadership to the civil‐rights movement in their city for years. Other cases could

be cited across the country.

IN Washington, I talked with the distinguished Negro attorney, Belford Lawson, and his

wife, Marjorie McKenzie, who, as associate judge of the Juvenile Court there, is no less

distinguished. The Lawsons were undisturbed about the “black backlash” against the

Negro middle class, although they felt that the middle class was just beginning to realize

its responsibilities to the Negro masses. Nor did they recognize a middle‐class backlash

against the lower class (which has been roundly criticized by some Negroes for rioting in

the streets and undoing the patient and painful accomplishments of middle‐class

leaders).

“We must press on to the next phase,” Lawson said. “And it would be foolish to wait

until all of us have reached the place a few of us have reached today. Negroes, like other

people, move at different rates of speed. Our circumstances vary. Now we have a handful

of civil rights and no money. Our next front is economic. We want to buy stocks in banks

and corporations and sit on their boards. Every time a Negro reaches an executive

position in a ma jor corporation, he is in a better position to help that Negro in the

streets without a job.”

Mr. Lawson believes that it is time to stop complaining and to move on into the

American mainstream. “Breaking into the white man’s economy” he believes to be

essential to any further progress on the part of Negroes. “In Washington,” he says,

“where many social and cultural affairs are integrated, many doors would open if the

Negro would only push on them.”

Negroes are pushing — for status and respectability and economic security. They are less

concerned with integration for integration’s sake than they are with being comfortable

— middle‐class — and unhindered in enjoying all that America has to offer. The riots in

the city streets are not the work of sinister Communist agents, except where such agents

move in to exploit an already festering social situation. Nor are they the work of

hopheads and hoodlums bent on the destruction of the fruits of years of patient

interracial effort.

THEY are the social expressions of pent‐up anxiety and frustration which derive from

the hopelessness of the conditions under which those people live. They cannot hope for

“the good life.” They cannot appropriate the “middle‐class image,” the American norm

for democratic living.

I sat recently in a comfortable middle‐class home in northwest Washington talking with

Jerry Coward and his wife, both school teachers in the District of Columbia school

system. “You know, when we moved into this neighborhood five years ago,” Jerry said,

“the whites all threatened to move out. A few stayed. And since that time, two

brand‐new white families have moved in, right down the block. Professional people, too:

When white people start moving into, instead of away from, a Negro neighborhood. I

guess we’ve got it made.”

I guess they have.