American Dilemma, An

Project Beginnings

Credited with instigating the project that would produce An American Dilemma, Newton D. Baker, a Carnegie Corporation board member, suggested that a solution to the “Negro problem” required attention to the condition of Blacks in the North as well as in the South, and in October 1935 he proposed that the Carnegie Corporation sponsor a study on the condition of urban Blacks. Rather than selecting from the ranks of U.S. social scientists to direct their study, the Carnegie Corporation board sought a scholar personally unconnected to the nation's racial history and, therefore, theoretically free from charges of ideological bias in his or her findings. The board selected Gunnar Myrdal, a social economist at the University of Stockholm and a member of the Swedish Senate, as the study's general director, primarily because Sweden's history was free from imperialism or colonialism, a fact that would reassure African Americans that the resulting study would be completely impartial. Ironically, Baker and the other board members (many of whom disapproved of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and government-controlled social programs) overlooked Myrdal's belief in the power of government-legislated social reform, a particularly liberal worldview that would significantly influence the study's direction as well as its final conclusions.

Research, Methodology, and Findings

Myrdal, on accepting the commission, immediately began familiarizing himself with the existing scholarship on U.S. race relations. He visited the U.S. South on a two-month “exploratory journey” to develop his own personal understanding of U.S. race relations. In 1939, he began planning the study, collaborating with dozens of noted U.S. social scientists, including Robert Park, Charles S. Johnson, Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, Ralph Bunche, W. E. B. Du Bois, Melville Herskovits, and E. Franklin Frazier. Following these consultations, Myrdal largely rejected the isolated focus on urban and northern African Americans originally envisioned by Baker and instead made an already ambitious project even more so by widening the scope of the study to understand all aspects of African American life in the United States and to document the opinions held by the U.S. populace regarding the proper status and treatment given to African Americans. Understanding the impact that the study's findings would have on the African American community, leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, and the Commission of Interracial Cooperation all gave considerable research assistance to the project, including [Page 58]providing unfettered access to their organizations' archives. Myrdal, seeking the input of a Black social scientist, selected E. Franklin Frazier as the primary reviewer of the in-progress chapters. Frazier, originally skeptical of Myrdal's ability as a foreigner to decipher the peculiarities of U.S. race relations, generally approved of the submitted chapters and Myrdal's assessments.

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