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During the 1960's and continuing into the 1970's, the charge that birth control and abortion are integral elements of a white genocidal conspiracy directed against Afro--Americans has been heard with increasing frequency and stridency in black communities. The genocide theory finds greatest acceptance among spokesmen for black nationalist and black revolutionary groups, but suspicion of family planning programs is not limited to them. An analysis of black leadership opinion on birth control is provided in this paper. The black debate over the desirability of population limitation is traced back approximately fifty years. It began with a dispute between those blacks who believed that in sheer numbers there was strength and those blacks, such as W. E. B. DuBois, who argued that among human races, as among vegetables, quality and not quantity counted. An appreciation of the sexual exploitation of the chattel slave in the ante-bellum period, which did not end with emancipation, is also essential to an understanding of the roots and rationale of the genocide notion which arc the foci of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers social and economic correlates of age-specific 1950-1960 net migration of Negro males from a sample of 150 southern counties. A model is developed with five components: (1) economic activity and urbanization, (2) white traditionalism, (3) demographic and ecological pressure, (4) nonwhite poverty, and (5) nonwhite home ownership. The dominant migration forces, as evidenced by correlations with component indicator variables, are the "pull" factor of change in non-primary industrial employment, the "push" factor of population pressure in the nonwhite rural-farm sector, and the "push" of white traditionalism. However, the significance of model components varied when analyzed along age and industrial development continua. In the younger age groupings, industrial employment growth, population pressure, and white traditionalism were dominant migratory forces while in the older age groupings, industrial employment growth and non-home ownership were most significant. For Negro males in agricultural counties, the major migration propellents appeared to be the "push" of population pressure in the rural farm sector and non-ownership of homes. On the other hand the statistical explanation for Negro migration in more industrialized southern counties rests primarily with the "pull" of increased employment in non-primary industries along with population pressure. The importance of the findings for migration theory is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article presents information on various associations, agencies and institutions in the field of sociology. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History will hold its 53rd annual meeting on October 3-6, 1968 at the New York Hilton Hotel. The Danish Institute will hold a seminar, "Social Denmark," on social welfare in Copenhagen, August 25-30, 1968. The seminar is intended for persons working in the administrative and practical field of social welfare and will be conducted in English. The Indian Sociological Society held its first conference since 1961 at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay, on October 14, 15, and 16, 1967. The Massachusetts Sociological Association was founded by 100 sociologists at Boston College on November 4, 1967 and will serve as a locus for the teaching and research concerns of sociologists throughout the commonwealth and for others seeking advice on community or state-wide problems. The National Institute of Social and Behavioral Science will hold its regular sessions for contributed papers at the 135th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, December 26-31, 1968 in Dallas, Texas.

There are several reasons to believe that white southerners have not been active in research on topics about black Americans. Blacks themselves have certainly not been accepted with open arms when calling attention to problems of blacks. For example, in 1927, E. Franklin Frazier, a writer wrote an article in which he used an analogy comparing the mental processes of racially prejudiced persons with insane persons. Subsequently, he was chased out of Atlanta, Georgia. A study was conducted on origins of researchers on Black Americans. One of the most interesting findings is that obtaining the highest college degree in a southern state of the U.S. does not produce as much of a tendency to study blacks as do childhood socialization or institutional affiliation in the South. One hypothesis is that graduate programs neutralize a tendency to deal with blacks that other socially connected experiences seem to enhance. What seems more likely is that the restrictive social climate of the South may be responsible for the relatively meager opportunities for academic specialization at the research level in southern graduate schools. It is likely, however, that the long trend is reversing. Southern sociologists, who have been criticized for not doing enough research on blacks, have actually been doing proportionately more research in this field than in other fields as compared with their northern, including western counterparts.

The article presents an evaluation of new estimates of the African American population. The first step consists of correcting single-year-of-age data of each census 1930-60 for age heaping. The adjustment involves cumulating census data or census-equivalent data in single years of age for African Americans into five-year age groups with the mid-ages ending in digits 4 or 9, mathematically smoothing the distributions and interpolating for single years of age (using Sprague multipliers), and then regrouping into the conventional five-year age groups. If the authors are suggesting that the (assumed) greater underregistration of deaths in 1930 than in 1940 was responsible in part or in total for showing that the 1930 Census was more completely enumerated than the 1940 Census, and that even higher levels of underregistration of deaths in 1930 would lead to even lower enumeration errors in 1930, then they are either incorrect or have not adequately described their methodology. Although the differences for African Americans between the complete counts and the sample counts for all ages combined are relatively small, more substantial differences are implied for some age groups.

Blacks are more likely than whites to have unwanted births. A common explanation for that difference is that blacks use less effective contraceptive methods, use contraception less effectively, and use contraception less often than whites. Analysis of data from 17 cities in our family planning evaluation project suggested that, among women living in low-income neighborhoods, the black-white difference in unwanted births was not due to (1) blacks reaching desired completed parity at younger ages than whites, (2) differences in age or parity in our black and white samples, (3) black-white differences in current use of physician-administered contraception, or (4) blacks being more likely than whites to adopt physician-administered contraception after having an unwanted birth. Black-white differences which might have contributed to relatively more unwanted births among blacks were (1) blacks desired fewer children, (2) blacks were less likely than whites to use nonphysician-administered methods and more likely than whites to use no contraception, and (3) blacks had higher failure rates than whites subsequent to the adoption of physician-administered methods and when not using those methods. Comparisons are made with the 1965 and 1970 National Fertility Studies, and program implications of the findings discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this study is to present an explanation of the interstate migratory movements of white and nonwhite persons which occurred over the period 1955-1960. The study is similar to several other recent studies in that we estimate the magnitudes in which various factors have influenced interstate or interregional migration in the United States. It differs from earlier studies in two important respects. First, we estimate and compare the magnitudes in which certain factors have influenced both white and nonwhite interstate migration. Second, unlike previous studies, many of which have made "country-wide" estimates of the determinants of migration, we have disaggregated data to the state level and obtained white and nonwhite "migration elasticities" for every state. These elasticities are in turn used to test several additional hypotheses relating to racial and regional differences in the elasticities themselves. We argue that discrimination against nonwhites and/or differences in "social milieu" between South and nonsouth provide a unifying explanation for most of the observed differences in white and nonwhite migration elasticities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the recent changes in fertility among African Americans. Crude birth rates for the African American population of the United States indicate that fertility declined while African Americans remained in the South and them climbed in the last twenty-five years as African Americans became urbanized. African-Americans migrated to cities at the very time when diseases were being controlled and when public health and welfare facilities were being expanded to serve all residents. This has contributed to higher African American fertility rates. The article indicates the birth rate fell slowly during the early twenties and then fell precipitously during the latter half of that decade and during the Depression. When the crude birth rate sank to a minimum, its value was perhaps half what it was 50 years earlier. So substantial was this decline in fertility that during the early thirties the net reproduction rate for African Americans hovered near unity. The observed pattern of crude birth rates is difficult to understand or explain, particularly the persistence and magnitude of the postwar rise in fertility.

The article focuses on stratification patterns among nonwhite races in the state of Washington. The U.S. Bureau of the Census, and other agencies which compile and analyze demographic data, usually treat nonwhite races in the aggregate, ignoring distinctions of socio-economic rank or other characteristics. Perhaps in certain parts of the U.S., especially where Negroes are overwhelmingly in the majority, this practice may be warranted. In the state of Washington, it will be found that there is a relatively consistent and well-defined strata hierarchy among the several nonwhite races, as measured by differences in education, occupation, and income. Patterns of social stratification exemplified by nonwhite races are not to be viewed as isolated phenomena but as elements interwoven with a larger, complex social system. A thorough understanding of social stratification patterns presupposes some knowledge of demographic characteristics of the population aggregates being studied. Thus, an effort is made to review briefly, the growth trends of each of the nonwhite races in this state.

The article discusses the implications of the migration of Negro population from rural to urban communities, from southern states to the metropolitan centers of the U.S. The South's percentage of the nation's Negro population, which was over 90 percent before 1900 and bad dropped to only 77 percent by 1940, reached 60 percent in 1960. Although the South's Negro population will likely continue to grow, the proportion of the South's total population which is Negro will decline. Except for the worldwide population explosion itself, the movement of Negroes from the southern part of the United States has without a doubt been the greatest and most significant sociological event of the country's recent history. Its repercussions will be felt for a long time and the social problems like education, housing, health and interracial adjustment will be most difficult to solve. The great danger is that the adjustments needed will be much too little and too late. Perhaps one of the most obvious demographic and hence socially significant consequences of the migration of Negroes from the South to large cities is that the flood of Negro migrants cannot and will not be contained within the old corporate city limits of the metropolitan central cities.

The article presents population statistics for Negroes over the years. The 1960 census resulted in greatly improved age reporting for all populations and especially the Negro population. This was accomplished primarily by computing age from date of birth instead of asking a direct question concerning age at last birthday. A rapid rise in the level of educational attainment and decline in the number of illiterates and quasi-illiterates also helped to improve age reporting among the Negro population. The most reliable data available for the Negro population are the total census count without reference to age and the registration data for deaths by age. By all evidence, the 1960 census was substantially more complete in relative terms than any preceding census since all the measures show the populations reconstructed from census to be larger than the actual count of the earlier census. In the 1950 census Negroes appear to have been more completely enumerated than in either the 1940 or the 1930 census.

This article documents how professional and learned societies perceived and dealt with the problem, immediately before and after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1963, before the act, and again in 1968, the executive secretaries of fifty-six societies were asked by mail questionnaire to provide information on the following: racial integration at meetings, size of Negro membership, extent of Negro participation as societal officers, and the occurrence of incidents or events related to Negro participation. Of the fifty-six societies approached, fifty returned questionnaires for both years. The fifty responding societies are diverse in size and purpose and include major professional bodies in the sciences and humanities. Some are learned in the strict sense, others are mixed professional-scholarly associations, and still others are primarily vocational. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only ended legal segregation of public facilities, it served as a sensitizing agent. To ignore the prescriptions could create both legal and public-relations problems for the operators of public facilities and for professional and learned organizations. Assuming that some disciplines are more liberal than others and that the difference might be expressed in integration policies, the fifty organizations were dichotomized into the hard sciences and applied fields on the one hand, and the social sciences, humanities, and general professional groups on the other.