Civil and Social Rights of the Negro

Report Outline
Race Discrimination as National Problem
Limitation of Political Rights of Negroes
Inequality in Educational Opportunities
Social Discrimination Against Negroes

Race Discrimination as National Problem

Finding that discrimination against Negroes in New York state is widespread, particularly in the fields of employment, education, housing, recreation, and hospitalization, an official Commission on the Condition of the Urban Negro Population has recommended passage by the New York legislature of 14 specific measures to improve the economic, social, and cultural opportunities of the state's 500,000 Negro residents. The fact, as shown by the commission's two-year investigation, that Negroes do not share equally with white persons the rights and privileges of citizenship was held to “seriously affect the general public welfare of the state.”

Discrimination Controversy in District of Columbia

National attention was centered on the problem of discrimination against Negroes, in mid-February, by the refusal of the Daughters of the American Revolution to rent Constitution Hall, at Washington, to the sponsors of a concert by Marian Anderson, Negro contralto, and by the subsequent refusal of the school board of the District of Columbia to allow the use of a white high school for the same purpose. Action of the D. A. R. led Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt to submit her resignation from the society.

Following the formation of a “Marian Anderson Citizens' Committee,” which sponsored a mass meeting in protest against the school board's decision, and the presentation of a petition bearing some 7,000 signatures urging reversal of the ruling, the board voted to rescind its earlier action and to permit use of the school auditorium on the “positive and definite assurance and agreement that the concession will not be taken as a precedent and that the board in future will not be asked to depart from the principle of a dual system of school facilities.”