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4 Will alexander and the commission on Interracial cooperation Jack Woofter joined the commission on Interracial cooperation (cIc) on a temporary basis, but his commitment to the work in atlanta was so clear that anson Phelps stokes let him stay. during the early 1920s, as the interracial cooperation movement became more conspicuous, Woofter found his second great mentor in the cIc’s missouri-born cofounder and director, Will W. alexander. a former methodist minister, who worked in tennessee before joining the ymca’s War Work council in 1917, alexander came to rely on Woofter’s local knowledge and sangfroid, assigning him to special projects, involving him in key meetings , and entrusting him with increasingly important, and sometimes hazardous, missions.1 Woofter stayed for seven years with the organization that transformed the ambition and reach of white liberalism. He helped to change it from a religious initiative for lessening postwar local tensions into a regional campaign and education program against racial violence. He lobbied legislators; raised money; undertook research; published articles, handbooks, and a college textbook; liaised with the press and other campaigning bodies; assisted with the formation of the cIc’s nine original state committees and its county committees; dealt with city and state governments ; protected victimized black farmers; exposed and confronted the activities of the ku klux klan; and led the cIc’s successful fight against lynching, especially in georgia. In small, uneven, steps, the movement for interracial cooperation had grown since the 1890s, so that the cIc built on the groundwork laid by earlier regional groups, notably the southern sociological congress (ssc) and the University commission on southern Racial Questions (UcsRQ), and several local associations , such as the committee on church cooperation created in atlanta after the 1906 riot. although most of these organizations failed to expand beyond their initial memberships and faded away after 1920, a new momentum was already building for community-based and more truly interracial cooperation to reduce violence and foster black progress. The cIc attempted to move southern race relations onto a new plane by giving interracial cooperation a practical and visible form, harnessing local energies and residual goodwill. alarmed at recent changes in african american activism 80 The commission on Interracial cooperation | 81 and expectation, and infused with the social gospel, the white founders of the cIc fostered a new mentality among many middle-class white southerners. For some white people, the spark was a desire to halt the migration of black labor by improving health care, personal security, and education.2 other whites were prompted by perceptible changes in the class structure of the black population and a greater sense of common interests. every year, thousands of poorer families were abandoning tenancy or rural wage labor, so that one in four black georgians now lived in a town or city. since 1900, the number of black industrial workers in the state had risen from nearly 26,000 to over 68,000; those engaged in trade or transport rose from under 20,000 to over 43,000; and the number of black professionals had risen from under 5,000 to nearly 8,000. almost as dramatic was the rate at which black families with accumulated savings were leaving tenancy or wage labor behind by becoming landowners, so that by 1920, fourteen thousand black georgians owned nearly two million acres of farmland.3 These trends complicated the master-servant social order, heightened the political awakening of the african american masses, and gave new resonance to the equal rights movement led by northern-based organizations such as the national association for the advancement of colored People (naacP) and the smaller national equal Rights league. opportunist white politicians, citing the growing radicalism of the black press, the rapid demobilization of black soldiers, continued migration, and the summer riots of 1919, called for the entrenchment of white supremacy. But the white response was far from monolithic; many southerners plainly hoped for a new postwar relationship between the races, and between the south and rest of the United states. In these circumstances, the loose association of individuals and groups that made up the interracial cooperation movement carved a role for itself in promoting peace, reconciliation, and modernization. Without an organizational focal point, the movement had been forced to rely on education reform as a vehicle for improved race relations and black progress. For two decades, white northern philanthropists and their education agents had corresponded with southern black leaders, but arm’s-length interactions created frustrations on both...

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