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Introduction
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Introduction Jack Woofter and Southern Research This book assesses the interracial cooperation movement in the south before the new deal and focuses on the work of its most important young white activist, the georgian sociologist Thomas Jackson (Jack) Woofter Jr. (1893–1972). as a field worker, researcher, and organizer, he maintained an unshakable faith in the “effectiveness of cooperation rather than agitation when real results are desired.”1 The extent to which this approach led the interracial cooperation movement to achievements of lasting note has divided both contemporary critics of the Jim crow system and subsequent analysts. The three main goals of the interracial cooperation movement—local dialogue between the races, improvements in education, and the reduction of lynching— were most clearly expressed by the commission on Interracial cooperation (cIc), founded by white reformers in atlanta in 1919 with the support of conservative african american leaders. Its staunchest black ally, Robert Russa moton, the virginian son of former slaves who succeeded Booker t. Washington as principal of tuskegee Institute in alabama, saw the cIc as “the organized conscience of the forward-looking white south . . . [attempting] to purge itself . . . [for] the development of a new national conscience in dealing with the negro as a free man.” He shared the cooperationists’ view that change had to be sought at a pace that took account of southern traditions. at the end of the 1920s, he wrote: The movement is launched not as an assault from the outside but as a confession from within that all is not as it should be; it is not one section coming to another section espousing the cause of a third party; it is instead the aggrieved parties themselves—the white man and the black man—meeting in peaceful conference, but with utmost candour, first of all to understand one another and then to work out a programme of cooperation up to the point of understanding , leaving to the future the handling of such problems as may still prove too difficult to approach.2 In the aftermath of Populism, a loose network of southern white writers and organizers had been inspired by education reformer and social critic edgar gardner murphy to harness the power of “goodwill.” emboldened by the social gospel and Progressivism, awakened by black migration and equal rights activism, and alarmed by the racial violence that accompanied World War I, these white liberals rejected, to some extent, new south orthodoxies that had smothered dissent 1 2 | Race Harmony and Black Progress since the restoration of white supremacy. Historians have assessed the contributions of a generation of reformers born between 1875 and 1890, including Will W. alexander, Jessie daniel ames, lucy Randolph mason, Howard W. odum, Julia Peterkin, Willis d. Weatherford, and aubrey Williams. lesser lights, such as lily Hardy Hammond, louis I. Jaffe, and gerald W. Johnson, have also been subjects of recent work, but numerous other conscience-stricken southern professionals were highly active in the revival of the interracial cooperation movement, and remain little known or evaluated—industrialists like John J. eagan, journalists like James Banks nevin, university professors like edwin mims, and social workers like carrie Parks Johnson.3 They tended the flame of white liberalism between murphy’s retirement in 1909 and the new deal, when a new generation of white dissenters emerged, such as virginia Foster durr and Howard kester. Jack Woofter has been one of the unsung, yet his name is familiar to careful students of america in the first half of the twentieth century from his own publications and countless references to them in the work of american historians , sociologists, economists, demographers, and political scientists. since the 1920s, hundreds of studies of american race relations, migration, rural development , population change, and social security have cited him as an essential authority . His work spanned several disciplines, was always accessible, and provided subsequent researchers with solid starting points on numerous topics. In a fortyfive -year career, beginning in 1913, he led or assisted dozens of philanthropic, academic, and governmental investigations into aspects of social justice, race, region , welfare, rural economics, demography, and statistical methodology, many of which were the first of their kind. Indeed, Woofter has been credited with the first academic pairing of the words “ethnicity” and “race.”4 The southern reformers who influenced Jack Woofter saw the moral, economic, and cultural advancement of african americans as an urgent objective—if only for the sake of the south—and one requiring thorough investigation. calls for more research after 1900 were led...