The Southern Case for School SegregationKilpatrick, James Jackson
History
The Southern Case for School Segregation
Kilpatrick, James Jackson
African Americans -- Segregation; Segregation -- Southern States
“A comparison of Army General Classification Test (AGCT) scores of
white and Negro enlisted men in military service in March, 1945,
shows that 6.3 per cent of the whites, but only 1.0 per cent of the
Negroes, were in Group I (very superior) and that 39.7 per cent of
the whites, but only 7.4 per cent of the Negroes, were in the first
two (better than average) categories. On the other hand, only 26.9
per cent of the whites, as contrasted with 77.7 per cent of the
Negroes (more than three-fourths of them), were in the two bottom
(inferior and very inferior) groups.”
In World War I, Weyl continues, the Negro overlap on the combined
tests was 13.5 per cent--that is, 13½ Negroes in 100 scored as well
as the average white man. By the time of World War II, the overlap
had dropped to 12 per cent, and if the scores of mental rejects are
included for both races, to only 10 per cent. Still more embarrassing
to the equalitarians, their precious comparisons of World War I
between Northern Negroes and Southern whites tend to dissolve in
the findings of World War II. Weyl summarizes a comparison between
Negroes examined in the First Command Area (New England), where
Negroes had the highest median, with white recruits examined in the
Fourth Command Area (Southern), where white medians were lowest.
Some 34 per cent of the Southern whites made scores of superior or
very superior; only 9 per cent of the Northern Negroes were in these
brackets.
Finally, on the matter of AGCT scores, mention may be made of an
unpublished master’s thesis by B. E. Fulk of the University of
Illinois; the paper is cited by Shuey in her encompassing survey
of the field. Fulk obtained data on 2174 white and 2010 Negro
enlisted men examined by the Army Air Force Service Command. He then
correlated their AGCT scores in terms of the years of education they
had experienced. It may well be true that the Negroes here tested had
attended poorer schools than the whites; but to persons interested
in understanding some of the real and practical problems of school
desegregation, Fulk’s tabulations will be rewarding (see page 78).
If the formidable gaps shown by those figures do not persuade the
South’s critics of the difficult problems implicit in welding
together two country high schools, one white, the other Negro,
perhaps no evidence would persuade them. Yet abundant other evidence
is widely available.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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