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For all that, political involvement brought some gains, at least to individuals. In 1928, Oscar De Priest inaugurated the new era by becoming the first black congressman from the North and the first black congressman in America since the turn of the century. De Priest was elected as a Republican from the First Congressional District of Chicago. Six years later, Arthur Mitchell became the first Democratic congressman by winning election from the same district.

After 1930, black politicians, Republican and Democrat; were elected to the legislatures of most Northern states and the Border States of Kentucky and West Virginia. They also filled elective or appointive positions in the public service of every major city.

The disaster of the Depression widened the political alternatives in America. And with the coming of the New Deal, black people deserted the Republican party and gave their votes and their hearts to the politics of the welfare state. After World War II and the internatiuonalization of the race problem, the political horizons of the black community widened. There was a new and ominous rentlessness in the black community, and Negro protest organizations began to mobilize mass pressures. The government responded to this new mood by intervening dramatically on behalf on black Americans. In the fifties and sixties, a series of Supreme Court decisions and civil rights sets reopened the national compromise of 1877. Black people began to vote again in substanial numbers in the South. And in the South and North black people were named or elected to unprecedented political positions. By 1960, it was possible to speak of the beginning of the second Reconstruction.

This period of political growth brought striking gains, particularly in the black middle class. But the record shows that black people as a whole lost ground relative to whites. In 1930, the rate of unemployment for Negroes and whites, to use President Johnson's figures, was about the same. Thirty-five years later, the Negro rate was twice as high. To continue with the figures President Johnson cited in his 1965 speech at Howard University:

"In 1948 the 8 per cent unemployment rate for Negro teen-age boys was actually less ten that of whites. By last year (1964) the rate had grown to 23 per cent, as against 13