• Race Relations, Representation, and Knowledge Production in the North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare, 1925–1950
• Seth Epstein (bio)

In February 1942, Warren County, North Carolina, social worker John R. Larkins sent a letter to the consultant heading the Unit of Work Among Negroes (the Unit), a division of the state's Board of Charities and Public Welfare that supported African American social workers in the state. Eschewing the friendly salutation of "Brother Johnson" that characterized his previous letters to consultant William R. Johnson, Larkins criticized Johnson's recent phone call with white state legislator John H. Kerr Jr. Johnson had called to arrange for Kerr to speak at the Unit's annual public welfare institute for African American workers. The phone conversation did not go well. Larkins reported that Kerr "did not like [Johnson's] business procedure at all." Larkins feared that as a result of Johnson's actions, "we (Negro race) have lost a potential good friend and gained a powerful enemy." Later that year, Larkins sent a copy of this warning to the commissioner of the Board of Charities and Public Welfare in the course of his ultimately successful application for promotion to the consultant's position after the resignation of Johnson, who had held the post since 1934. Larkins, whom historian Timothy B. Tyson describes as "a devoted racial accommodationist," held the position for the next twenty years, until the segregated unit was dissolved and he became the Welfare Department's coordinator for civil rights.¹ [End Page 209]

From its establishment in 1925, the consultant position demanded faith in the idea that the mediation of knowledge about African American communities to white authorities would contribute to both improved race relations and African Americans' well-being. This mediation was embedded in networks of unequal interracial cooperation, in which ostensibly "representative" African Americans were prominent participants. The Unit was a nexus for those networks, meant to produce objective knowledge about and for the benefit of African Americans in a state government dedicated to the maintenance of white supremacy. This article explores the ambiguous place of the Unit and its three successive leaders—Lawrence A. Oxley, Johnson, and Larkins—in the quarter century after its 1925 founding.

Despite the attention scholars have afforded to what historian William H. Chafe terms North Carolina's "progressive mystique," the state institutions that contributed to this image have been relatively unexplored. As historian Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore argues, African American women's determination to vote after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment brought about a different political era in North Carolina. Gilmore marks 1921 as the emergence of "a new racism," located "in new, more subtle provisions to sustain inequality in a state that became known for its comparative civility." As Gilmore and Annette Louise Bickford each point out, this arrangement accommodated, albeit to an extremely limited extent, African Americans' claims for recognition as clients of social welfare services.²

Scholarship on the "managed race relations" and "paternalistic interracialism" associated with this emerging political style of white supremacy has largely focused on the efforts of influential individuals and organizations such as the Commission on Interracial Cooperation to moderate white supremacy and improve African Americans' lives while not disturbing "the dividing lines of southern state and society" under Jim Crow. As part of a state agency, however, the Unit offers an opportunity to examine African Americans' influence on what historian Joan Malczewski identifies as two distinct aspects of state-building in the South during the Jim Crow era: its dependence on "collaborative relationships between private interests and the public sphere" and its location "in the lower tiers of government." The Unit [End Page 210] additionally illuminates African Americans' influence on a third essential element of state-building: the production of knowledge about racialized populations. Central to the Unit's importance to these developments was its role in pulling together three interlocking features of racial paternalism, as its establishment represented an attempt to stabilize representation and knowledge production as a means of managing race relations. How the management of race relations, the production of knowledge, and the practice of representation interacted, though, was unstable during this...

• 1925年至1950年，北卡罗来纳州慈善和公共福利委员会的种族关系，代表制和知识生产
• 塞斯·爱泼斯坦（生物）

我ñ ˚F月‧日1942年，W arren Ç ounty，N奥尔特Ç arolina，社会工人约翰·R·拉金斯（John R. Larkins）给该州黑人慈善与公共福利委员会的一个部门的负责黑人顾问的顾问致信，该机构为该州的非裔美国人社会工作者提供支持。拉金斯避开了对“约翰逊兄弟”的友好称呼，这是他以前给顾问威廉·R·约翰逊的信的特点，批评约翰逊最近与白人州议员约翰·H·克尔打来的电话。小约翰逊呼吁安排克尔在该单位的年度会议上讲话。非洲裔美国工人公共福利研究所。电话交谈进行得不顺利。拉金斯报道说，克尔“根本不喜欢约翰逊的商业程序。” 拉金斯担心约翰逊的行为会导致“¹ [末页209]

自1925年成立以来，顾问职位就要求人们相信，将有关非裔美国人社区的知识调解给白人当局将有助于改善种族关系和非裔美国人的福祉。这种调解植根于不平等的种族间合作网络中，表面上“代表性”的非洲裔美国人是主要参与者。该股是这些网络的纽带，旨在在致力于维护白人至上的州政府中产生有关非裔美国人的客观知识，并为非裔美国人造福。本文探讨了该股及其1935年成立后四分之一世纪中三位接班人领导人劳伦斯·奥克斯利（Lawrence A. Oxley），约翰逊（Johnson）和拉金斯（Larkins）的模棱两可之处。

尽管学者们对历史学家威廉·H·查菲（William H. Chafe）所说的北卡罗来纳州的“进步的神秘性”给予了关注，但促成这一形象的国家机构却相对未被开发。正如历史学家格伦达·伊丽莎白·吉尔莫尔（Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore）所说，第十九修正案通过后，非洲裔美国妇女的投票决心在北卡罗来纳州带来了一个不同的政治时代。吉尔莫尔（Gilmore）将1921年标记为“一种新的种族主义”的出现，它位于“一个新的，更微妙的规定中，以维持一个以其比较文明的国家而闻名的国家的不平等”。正如吉尔莫尔（Gilmore）和安妮特·路易丝·比克福德（Annette Louise Bickford）分别指出的那样，尽管这种安排在非常有限的程度上满足了非裔美国人要求承认其为社会福利服务客户的要求。^2个

与这种新兴的白人至上政治风格相关的“有管理的种族关系”和“家长式异族主义”的奖学金主要集中在有影响力的个人和组织（如种族间合作委员会）为缓和白人至上和改善非裔美国人的生活所作的努力同时不打扰吉姆·克劳（Jim Crow）领导下的“南方国家与社会的分界线”。但是，作为国家机构的一部分，该部门提供了一个机会，可以考察非裔美国人对历史学家琼·马尔切夫斯基（Jan Malczewski）在吉姆·克罗时代（Jim Crow）时期确认的南方国家建设的两个不同方面的影响：对“私人利益和公共领域”及其位置“此外，它还阐明了非洲裔美国人对国家建立的第三个基本要素的影响：关于种族化人口的知识的产生。该股对这些事态发展的重要性的核心是其在将种族家长制的三个相互关联的特征融为一体方面的作用，因为其成立是企图稳定代表制和知识生产作为管理种族关系的一种手段。但是，在此期间，种族关系的管理，知识的产生和代表实践的相互作用是不稳定的。