|
|
|
Pushing the Color Line
Race and Employment in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1933–1963
PEGGY SEIGEL
| For black Americans seeking a place in the urban Midwest economy, the thirty years leading up to the August 1963 March on Washington were decades of hard-won gains amidst systemic discrimination. Black citizens suffered disproportional poverty and unemployment during the worst years of the Depression. In the defense factories that sprang up to meet World War II demands, they found new opportunities and hope. For the first time, several major industries hired blacks for skilled jobs at good wages, and federal regulations established anti-discrimination policies. African Americans were to learn, however, that regulations did not eliminate the color bar that confined them to the lowest paying and least secure jobs. Despite some wartime gains, black citizens in the postwar years once again found themselves in segregated workplaces, disproportionately trapped on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. |
1
|
|
Black workers in Fort Wayne shared these common experiences, but they also faced additional barriers influenced by their city's particular mix of politics, labor traditions, and economic pressures. Earlier studies have established the traditions, championed by the Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce in the 1920s and continued for decades by white trade union locals, that limited black workers' access to industrial jobs. Researchers have described as well a black population so weakened by complacency and financial depression that by 1963 it had become "a kind of social drag on the community." This study will build upon these earlier analyses by looking more closely at patterns of discrimination and protest beginning in the New Deal years and continuing until the national March on Washington in the late summer of 1963. I will examine how leaders of the Phyllis Wheatley Social Center/Fort Wayne Urban League worked to open new employment opportunities for black workers during World War II, and how liberal paternalism contributed to the loss of these gains in the 1950s and early 1960s. Finally, I will look at the increasingly activist stance of the local NAACP through the mid-1950s and early 1960s. In combination with new anti-discrimination legislation and the burgeoning civil rights movement, local efforts broke through Fort Wayne's legacy of discrimination to create new employment opportunities for the city's black workers. Such an investigation will add to our understanding of the complex racial dynamics that slowly built a national civil rights movement. At the same time, a closer study will uncover patterns that contributed to long-term demoralization and economic stagnation for black citizens in urban centers such as Fort Wayne.1 |
2
|
| |
|
THE NEW DEAL YEARS: 1933–1941 | |
|
Since its founding in 1920, the Phyllis Wheatley Social Center had served as the recreational and social hub of Fort Wayne's African American community. Originally funded by the National Recreation Association, the Wheatley Center affiliated with the Fort Wayne Community Chest in 1925. An interracial board of religious leaders and social workers provided oversight, while a small paid staff directed an array of popular social and civic clubs for children and adults, as well as athletic leagues for youth. As the Depression set in, the Wheatley Center's board of directors invited the director of research for the National Urban League to survey the needs of the city's black population. The immediate result was that in 1930 the Wheatley Center affiliated with the National Urban League. While researchers have been reluctant to link Wheatley Center programs with better defined national Urban League programs, the center nevertheless began to address more intentionally economic and social service problems heightened by the economic crisis.2 |
3
|
There are about 12586 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
|
