Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 1998
Social action research and
the Commission on Community Interrelations.
(Experts in the Service of Social Reform: SPSSI, Psychology,
and Society, 1936-1996)
Author/s: Frances Cherry, Catherine Borshuk
The legacy of Kurt Lewin's commitment to social action research
has been duly marked by the Society for the Psychological Study
of Social Issues (SPSSI) through its annual Kurt Lewin Memorial
Award and through its publication of The Heritage of Kurt Lewin
(Bargal, Gold, & Lewin, 1992). Whereas Lewin's impact on
organizational and educational psychology has been well documented,
it is less known that shortly before his death in 1947, he was
instrumental in bringing about an innovative community-based
research organization, the Commission on Community Interrelations
(CCI) of the American Jewish Congress (AJC).
The subject of this article is CCI, one of the earliest social
action research organizations designed to combat prejudice and
discrimination through community intervention. Research began
in 1944, and CCI developed as an active and productive research
unit for 8 years. The work of CCI was highly regarded among
social scientists: SPSSI awarded CCI the Edward L. Bernays Intergroup
Relations Award in 1949. Yet not long after it began, CCI researchers
were defending its action orientation to its sponsor, the AJC
(Jahoda, 1952), and were gaining employment and research opportunities
elsewhere (Smith, 1994).
This article examines the circumstances surrounding the founding
of CCI, its accomplishments, and the challenges it faced in
creating changes in urban communities in the period after World
War II. CCI's blending of research and social action and the
politics that surrounded the organization's antiracist work
serve as a useful case history for contemporary social psychologists
who continue to work for social change in general, as well as
those whose interests include the study of prejudice, discrimination,
and ethnocultural identity more specifically. A critical analysis
of CCI attempts to address the reason why, as Marie Jahoda (1989)
wrote, "a non-reductionist social psychology is almost too difficult
to be tackled but too fascinating to be left alone" (p. 71).
The work of CCI is best understood from within its institutional,
societal, and disciplinary contexts. First, we explore the role
of CCI as a part of the American Jewish Congress, an important
American liberal Jewish institution committed to progressive
social change (Dollinger, 1993). Throughout its years, CCI was
impelled to serve both the interests of the AJC as well as other
religious and ethnic communities with which it had formed alliances.
This article also describes the philosophy of science and social
action promoted by the social scientists affiliated with CCI
who pioneered a particular brand of community-oriented investigative
practice. Their work had in common the primacy of studying discriminatory
practices over prejudicial attitudes and of treating the community
as their laboratory. Additionally, CCI's location within a specific
ethnocultural community presented researchers with a unique
set of challenges addressed by placing an understanding of minority
identification at the forefront of their plan to combat racial
and religious discrimination.
|
The early CCI projects, particularly the incident control,
community self-survey, and multiple group membership projects
stand apart from the variables-based laboratory science taking
shape in the psychological social psychology of the late 1950s.
In time, social psychology would see the importance of culture
and community recede (Cherry, 1995) while basic research and
social application would grow increasingly disconnected from
one another (Collier, Minton, & Reynolds, 1991). In addition,
internal changes to the AJC as well as external political pressures
would ultimately redirect CCI's approach to social change.
The CCI: A New Approach to Old Problems
In 1944, the AJC sponsored a conference in New York City aimed
at finding solutions to the problem of anti-Semitism. In response
to calls raised at the conference for further action, AJC leader
Stephen S. Wise began discussions with Kurt Lewin, who at that
time headed the Research Center for Group Dynamics at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (M. Lewin, 1992), on methods for dealing
constructively with minority-majority conflicts. Within the
AJC there already existed two commissions - Economic Discrimination,
and Law and Legislation - that were active in monitoring anti-Semitism
and working toward legislation to fight discrimination in employment
and education.
The decision to establish a social scientific research unit
within the AJC had much to do with the transformation of the
goals and aims of the organization toward the end of World War
II. Originally, the AJC was organized for the specific purpose
of establishing civil rights for European Jews at the end of
World War I and for the continued defense of Jewish rights in
general, and to represent Zionist interests among American Jews
(Urofsky, 1982). Its permanent organization in 1922 reflected
a continued concern for more democratic processes in decisions
affecting Jewish communities abroad and at home rather than
the more elitist process of the American Jewish Committee (Cohen,
1972; Frommer, 1978; Urofsky). Although initially concerned
only with "issues that affected Jews as Jews" (Frommer, p. 540),
after witnessing the consequences of the failure of Western
democracies to intervene quickly in the Nazi expansions, AJC
leaders "were determined not to make the same mistake in the
domestic arena. Thus, infringement of anyone's rights - Jews
or non-Jews - was cause for concern by the Jewish Congress"
(Frommer, pp. 540541). The organization thus became gradually
more aligned with the interests of other minorities facing discrimination.
It was amidst this growing commitment to minority rights in
general, as well as emerging discussions of cultural pluralism
in American postwar democracy, that plans for the founding of
CCI took shape.
During World War II, civil rights became a fundamental issue
of American liberals as the Nazi persecution of European Jews
was translated into a fear of domestic fascism in the United
States (Jackson, 1990). By the war's end, the "work of democracy"
(Keppel, 1995) to protect minority rights was being conducted
in schools, mayoral standing committees, youth centers, trade
unions, church councils, and intercultural associations, as
well as in local branches and chapters of national organizations
such as the AJC, the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP), and the Urban League (Johnson, 1946).
The "battle for good citizenship" (Giles & Van Til, 1946,
p. 34) was being waged on the local, regional, and national
stages as both grassroots groups and large institutions joined
in the civic-minded effort to promote democracy on all levels.
|
Profoundly affected by Gunnar Myrdal's (1944) study of racial
inequality, the number of American organizations countering
ethnic tension and hostility grew from approximately 300 in
1945 to more than 1,350 by the 1950s (Herman, 1995). According
to Jackson (1990), Myrdal's location of the problem of American
democracy "as a conflict in the minds of White Americans helped
to focus postwar research on psychological issues at the expense
of social structural and economic analyses" (p. 279). Thus CCI,
with a staff of prominent social psychologists, became one of
many organizations of its day committed to the enhancement of
intergroup relations.
Given the work of existing AJC commissions and other organizations
committed to fighting discrimination, what exactly was new about
CCI? From the point of view of those within AJC involved in
establishing CCI, there was the appeal of continuing to oppose
anti-Semitism using a scientific approach:
There are other organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, engaged
in this work. The question the layman is entitled to ask is:
What innovation will the new Commission bring into the general
strategy? The answer is knowledge of facts. . . . What the Commission
on Community Interrelations proposes to do is to acquire precise
and thorough knowledge of facts and to proceed with action based
upon the facts. . . . ("An Action Program," 1945, pp. 4-5)
At midcentury, Lewin was hopeful about the potential of social
engineering, which he saw as a new science. Ash (1992) and Van
Elteren (1993) have both described the shift in Lewin's political
affiliations from his more left-leaning days in Berlin to his
liberalism in the United States. Working in America, Lewin became
increasingly concerned with questions of cultural pluralism
and the workability of liberal democracies within which, he
believed, social engineering could make a viable contribution.
Although autocratic leaders could be expected to exploit and
manipulate the less powerful, in democracies, he wrote, "the
'decent' citizen apologizes for his lack of active participation
in group affairs by condemning group manipulation and leaving
this business to the politicians" (Lewin, n.d., p. 4). He argued
that social scientists had an important role to play in the
social engineering process, and furthermore, that such a process
was beneficial to the maintenance of democratic traditions:
We do not want group manipulation, but we do need that amount
of management of groups which is necessary for a harmonious
living together. We want this group management to be done "by
the people, for the people." This presupposes that not only
the social scientist has to know more about all the factors
which make for good or poor relations among groups in a community;
this knowledge will have to be common knowledge to the ordinary
citizen. To my mind, there is hardly anything more essential
for the survival and the progress of democracy than that every
citizen understand more clearly how the "right to be different"
and the "cooperation for the common good" can and should be
integrated for harmonious group relations in a democracy. (Lewin,
1945, p. 7)
|
CCI was headquartered in New York City and was initially promised
generous funding to carry out a program of research aimed at
combating anti-Semitism and discrimination, improving intergroup
relations, and conducting action projects to ease racial and
religious tensions in communities across the United States (Marrow,
1969). Its approach was consistent with the brand of "radical
liberalism" of the AJC that depended on educating and immersing
citizens in the skills required for democratic participation.
CCI began with Kurt Lewin as chief consultant and Charles Hendry
coordinating early research projects. Lewin recruited Stuart
Cook to be director of research from 1946-50. Isidor Chein was
associate director of research from 1949-52, with John Harding
as assistant director of research. CCI's advisory council included,
among others, Gordon Allport, Nathan Cohen, Rensis Likert, Charles
Johnson, Margaret Mead, and Edward Tolman (Levy, 1945; Marrow,
1969; Smith, 1994). Over the years, CCI engaged a number of
social psychologists familiar to SPSSI (Deutsch, 1992; Harris,
Unger, & Stagner, 1986; Levinger, 1986), including Kenneth
Clark, Claire Selltiz, Marie Jahoda, and Goodwin Watson. Within
the AJC, CCI was applauded for presenting a new approach that
moved away from "goodwill meetings" and "lectures that 'make
things a little better'" (Levy, p. 6) toward a more effective
group approach. The enthusiasm with which action research was
embraced was evident, lauded because it was "not carried out
in ivory towers, but in communities where people live, work,
play, and go about their daily lives; in the places where tension
and conflict develop" (Levy, pp. 6-7).
Many of those involved with CCI were interested in creating
a social technology for addressing social problems. Their published
and unpublished research reports and popular pamphlets often
spoke of and to "ordinary citizens" at the neighborhood level
who, with training, would become a cadre of community "experts."
Their writings on discrimination reflected the enthusiasm and
hopefulness of the new technologies that had arisen with the
war effort. Goodwin Watson, reviewing CCI-sponsored community
research, wrote that the "social power of self-directed, cooperative
fact-finding in its potential contribution to strengthening
democracy, ranks higher than the discovery of atomic energy"
(Watson, 1952, p. 13). In their popular writings, CCI staff
made extensive use of military, engineering, and medical metaphors.
For example, their pamphlets spoke of "combating" prejudice,
"testing" a technique for reducing discrimination as one would
test a new consumer product, and "writing prescriptions" for
preventing or curing the disease of prejudice.
The development and transformation of CCI is one of the earliest
examples of the difficulties of liberal social scientists' relationships
to action agencies and the delicate balance they attempt to
strike between scientific credibility and social utility. The
following sections examine some of the contexts in which CCI
was enmeshed - scientifically and socially - in its optimistic
desire to deliver a "cure" for discrimination.
|
Action Research: Social Utility and Scientific Meaning
In the writings of social scientists associated with CCI's
most active years (1944 to 1952), we encounter the essential
ingredients of an early nonreductionist social psychology. Social
psychology in the United States had developed at a rapid pace
during World War II, and by the 1950s turned increasingly toward
laboratory methods to conduct research about individual cognitive
functioning, often with no immediate application (Collier et
al., 1991). By contrast, CCI's nonreductionism made the community
its laboratory, the group its level of analysis, and the solution
of social problems its purpose.
For example, Chein (1949a) wrote of the "danger of sterility"
as a methodological concern to social psychological research,
where "the sole consequence of the research process is that
the findings come to occupy a place on the well known library
shelf." Referring to his colleagues in "pure" research settings,
Chein questioned the practice of allowing experimental design
and scientific rigor to take priority over application of research
findings to real social problems. With respect to prejudice,
he criticized research done for its own sake, arguing that locating
the roots of prejudice was neither more basic than applied research
nor more likely to offer a solution for ending prejudice.
CCI conceived of itself as offering something different in
the effort to promote intergroup harmony: social action founded
on proven research knowledge. As one internal document stated,
CCI was formed to "take the struggle against prejudice out of
the realm of hope, faith, opinion and guesswork and place it
within the scope of scientific measurement and scientific fact"
(Commission on Community Interrelations, n.d., a, pp. 3-4).
Lewin's friend and biographer Alfred Marrow described the precision
with which data gleaned from research would be applied to community
problems, suggesting that action research was an attempt not
merely to measure situations, but to evaluate conditions of
success and methods of modifying situations in a scientific
manner (Marrow, 1969).
Selltiz and Cook (1948) addressed the question of whether social
scientific research could be both socially and scientifically
meaningful. Reflecting the concerns of both social researchers
and community service workers, they stated that socially useful
research should be applicable to concrete social situations;
concern problems that have immediate social consequences; and
ensure that practical action results from the research findings.
They suggested that for scientifically sound research projects
to be of social benefit, research must be focused on the process
of change, performed in collaboration with social agencies whenever
possible, and as part of a coordinated research plan to include
many replications in different settings and with different groups
(Selltiz & Cook).
Thus, the research objectives of the CCI placed equal emphasis
on knowledge gathering and social change. A pamphlet outlining
CCI's projects and methodology emphasized the importance of
the testing process in determining methods for reducing prejudice
and discrimination. The testing process was represented by a
five-step methodology (see Figure 1) loosely combining the principles
of hypothesis testing and action research, consisting of having
a clearly stated problem, getting ideas for solutions, testing
the ideas, reporting the findings, and putting the results into
action ("But What Works?" n.d.).
|
CCI's promotional literature appealed to midcentury Americans'
faith in scientific testing procedures and the effectiveness
of new technologies:
A good doctor does not prescribe a drug until its effects have
been carefully studied. A successful manufacturer does not buy
a machine until he has seen test production figures. A careful
housewife does not buy a washing machine or pressure cooker
until she has seen the seal of approval by a testing laboratory.
We need testing in the fight against prejudice. We cannot afford
to work in the dark any longer. ("But What Works?" n.d.)
It would be the job of "ordinary citizens" to research the
facts of discrimination in their communities, to respond to
bigotry effectively, and to raise children with a positive sense
of both their own and other groups' identity. Many of the results
of CCI studies were not published in scholarly books and journals
but appeared in popular Jewish periodicals or widely circulated
pamphlets or were publicized in addresses to community organizations
in order to reach a wider audience.
CCI associates wrote numerous position papers and books establishing
the philosophy of action research (e.g., Lewin, 1946; Selltiz
& Cook, 1948; Watson, 1947). In an article for the AJC membership,
Lewin outlined the philosophy of this "new approach to old problems"
(Lewin, 1945, p. 6). His faith in science, captured by his use
of the phrase "infra-red rays of social science" (p. 6) led
him to believe that the relations between majority and minority
racial and religious groups could be studied in the same objective
and scientific manner as any other form of social life. However,
to have true social utility, such studies must also extend beyond
the individual psychological level of analysis. Of the relationship
between scientific knowledge and social action, he wrote:
To be the basis for action, fact-finding has to include all
the aspects of community life - economic factors as well as
political factors or cultural tradition. It has to include the
majority and the minority, non-Jews and ourselves. The staff
of the CCI is composed of Jews and non-Jews, of sociologists,
psychologists and community organizers to fit this variety of
tasks. (p. 6)
CCI's action research necessitated the training and involvement
of a wide range of community members, often with little or no
previous research training. Unlike the top-down approach practiced
in industrial and organizational psychology, CCI promoted a
particular form of social engineering that relied on the local
voluntary efforts of community members, Jewish Community Center
workers, and a significant number of women drawn from the numerous
chapters of the Women's Division of the AJC.
The Role of the Women's Division of the AJC in CCI
National Women's Division (NWD)(1) members played a significant
role in the work of democratic social engineering throughout
the CCI's social action phase. Not unlike most middle-class
Jewish women's organizations (Baum, Hyman, & Michel, 1976),
the NWD existed as a parallel organization within the AJC. Founded
in 1933 by Louise Wise, its first president, the NWD was active
during and after the war in fund-raising, clothing drives for
European Jewish refugees, orphan resettlement, and intercultural
and interfaith activities (Urofsky, 1982). Local NWD chapters
had participated in the AJC's earlier Commission to Combat Anti-Semitism,
and after learning of the CCI's formation, sought representation
in CCI projects. Women's chapters formed committees to introduce
the "new approach" of CCI to its members and recruited volunteers
for many CCI projects ("News of Women's Division," 1945, p.
15).
|
The language of the NWD literature represented a blend of the
ideals of social engineering and democratic participation and
reflected middle-class women's domestic status as well. These
materials captured both the enthusiastic promotion of science
and middle-class women's growing opportunities for material
consumption. For example, one story written by CCI psychologists
rendered the new industrial and social technologies into metaphor.
NWD chairs introduced these technologies to their members by
reading the story, in which the "expert," Mrs. Greenberg, is
elevated to "social engineer" among her peers:
Mrs. Friedman got into a discussion with Mrs. Klein over what
kind of a vacuum cleaner Mrs. Klein should buy. Each woman was
set on a different brand. Finally, Mrs. Greenberg cut in. "Ladies,"
she said, "pardon me, but since my husband is an engineer and
since I know something about his methods, I can tell you that
you cannot possibly settle the merits of these machines merely
with your own opinions. I suggest you stop speculating and guessing
and look up reliable laboratory tests on these cleaners." .
. . The ladies agreed that this advice was sound. But would
the ladies have agreed if, instead of vacuum cleaners, they
had been talking about methods of combating prejudice, bigotry,
and discrimination? Would they have been as ready then to test
methods in a laboratory? (Commission on Community Interrelations,
n.d., c, p. 3)
For the women involved in CCI projects through the NWD, the
"work of democracy" was to be practiced in the home, in a classroom,
or on an assembly line. Reporting on its involvement with CCI,
an NWD president noted:
Perhaps the primary accomplishments of our CCI work in the
Women's Division this year has been a change in our members'
concept of CCI from one which held the Commission to be an ivory
tower to one which pictures it as a source of specific usable
techniques which the chairman can use in her own community to
go about her daily business of working for good intergroup relations
wherever she lives. (Coan, 1949)
Women participating in CCI projects through NWD chapters were
involved in community self-surveys, fund-raising for intercultural
education programs and cultural-sensitivity training for teachers,
study groups on raising Jewish children, fact gathering on housing
conditions in Harlem, investigation of "anti-democratic incidents"
in neighborhood schools and factories, and monitoring of the
introduction of religious curricula into local public schools.
In 1948, when AJC cut CCI's funding levels, CCI Director Stuart
Cook requested that the NWD recruit more volunteers from Women's
Division chapters to aid CCI research.
The women who participated as community researchers and organizers
were both promoting their beliefs in intercultural harmony and
fulfilling their own educational aspirations. Through working
with CCI, women could "obtain a concentrated course in the psychology
of prejudice, with readings in the best modern texts" (Brodsky,
1949). Further, women who were trained as interviewers and Incident
Control training leaders received "a very practical training
in the psychology of leadership in democratic groups" (Brodsky).
|
CCI's action research projects thus proceeded with extensive
help from Women's Division volunteers. A brief overview of CCI's
program of research illustrates the efforts of the research
staff to investigate and direct social action processes through
the use of social science methodology.
CCI's Action Research Program
Southern (1987) has argued that An American Dilemma (Myrdal,
1944) was perhaps the document most influential to midcentury
race relations. Certainly, one can see the impact of Myrdal's
study on the work of CCI researchers. Their projects were premised
on the notion that once Americans recognized the moral incompatibility
of racism and egalitarian democracy, exclusionary practices
would cease.
Although the list of research projects completed by or in cooperation
with the CCI between 1944 and 1952 is lengthy (see Marrow, 1969,
for an extensive summary), three major paths of investigation
guided their projects: the development of methods to be used
by small groups to oppose racism and improve intergroup relations;
the study of the effects of face-to-face contact between members
of different groups under varying circumstances, specifically
in cases where the contact resulted in bigoted statements or
actions; and the social psychological examination of problems
of minority group membership, especially the problem of achieving
positive identification with one's own group while participating
fully in the life of the larger community (Jahoda, 1952). Three
major research projects corresponding to these investigative
paths were the community self-survey, the Incident Control Project,
and studies in Jewish identification and child rearing.
Community Self-Survey: Auditing Discrimination
Perhaps one of CCI's best-known techniques in marshalling the
facts of discrimination was the adoption and refinement of the
community self-survey of race relations, originated at Fisk
University (Lambert & Cohen, 1949) and initiated by several
communities (Wormser, 1949). Stuart Cook (1949) cited the work
of Gunnar Myrdal and the impact of An American Dilemma on CCI's
support for community self-surveys. As project director, Margot
Haas Wormser described CCI's first community self-survey in
the fictional "Northtown" as a process intended to reveal facts
upon which further action could be taken by communities.
Community self-surveys were action research operations wherein
members of a community worked together to identify racial prejudice
in the places they lived, worked, and socialized. In effect,
a "discrimination index" was secured through the participation
of citizens in the community who were concerned about the democratic
makeup of their community. In the pilot project, Wormser herself
introduced the concepts and methods of the self-survey, but
it was the residents of "Northtown," through their social agencies,
community and church groups, ethnocultural organizations, labor
council, and business organizations who carried out the research.
Through sponsoring organizations, subcommittees were struck
and resources and volunteers solicited, and in the end, hundreds
of community members took part in the survey, which consisted
of in-depth interviews with families from all ethnic and racial
groups, employers, schools, and real estate representatives
(Wormser, 1949). Ultimately, the community was able to create
for itself a picture of intergroup relations and the extent
of discrimination in housing and employment, as well as an action
plan to address the most obvious sources of racial exclusion.
|
The community self-survey exemplified the democracy-oriented,
progressive community project CCI advocated, in the belief that
more progress could be made by involving people who were growing
concerned with discrimination than by attempting to activate
those who were apathetic. This reasoning illustrates CCI's attempt
to move beyond academic expertise and to place the tools of
research in the hands of concerned citizens.
The community self-survey became popular among civic organizations;
following the publication of Wormser's (1949) study of "Northtown,"
more than a dozen community groups contacted CCI for information
on planning their own self-surveys. In time, CCI published a
detailed manual, How to Conduct a Community Self-Survey of Civil
Rights, for distribution to interested community groups. The
manual was later published in book form (Wormser & Selltiz,
1951). Findings gleaned from the self-surveys assisted in the
preparation of legal interventions undertaken by the AJC's Commission
on Legal and Social Action (CLSA). These community audits served
a very real educational function that mobilized awareness of
the necessity for social change.
However, Wormser's published description of the "Northtown"
project is also a valuable process document on the limitations
that researchers faced in their attempt to develop a community-based
social psychology. She described problems stemming from disagreements
among community groups. For example, the sponsoring committee
ran into conflict with the employers' association, which objected
to some of the questionnaires included in the survey and threatened
to withdraw its support. Because members of the community at
large were for the first time documenting unfair business and
housing practices, the vested interests of the business community
were challenged directly. Their antagonism was in part fueled
by "the fact that outsiders were running the survey" (Wormser,
1949, p. 11) as well as by suspicions arising from Wormser's
own involvement with the project. "Rumors began to reach me,"
Wormser wrote, "that the survey was being called a Communist
survey, that the volunteers were accused of being Communists,
and that stories regarding the political orientation of CCI
were circulating" (p. 10). Instances of studies being interrupted
due to rumors of Communist involvement were in fact reported
in the community-based social psychology of the late 1940s and
1950s, as McCarthyism became more threatening to social scientists
(see Festinger et al., 1948).(2)
Incident Control Project: Stopping the Spread of Prejudice
After World War II, minority-majority public contact in Northern
cities on bus platforms and in restaurants and office buildings
was becoming increasingly common. As part of its efforts to
study face-to-face contact among members of different groups,
CCI turned its attention toward public manifestations of antidemocratic
racial and religious prejudice. To this end, CCI's research
on "how to answer the bigot" (Citron, 1946, p. 6) became a key
action research project. Initially named the Democratic Participation
Project, this large-scale training program was carried out in
collaboration with six Women's Division chapters. Once again,
it is possible to see the compatibility of this project with
Myrdal's analysis of America's fundamental dilemma, that bigotry
was un-American.
|
According to Abraham Citron, the project director, bigotry
was learned, and if left unchecked, could be passed along in
group situations. Through fact-finding techniques such as role-playing
bigoted incidents, then measuring audience reactions, one could
discover the most effective "antidote." The foes of democracy
were portrayed as spreading a virus in communities; CCI was
conceptualized as the medical team that could provide a vaccine
to protect the population from contamination. According to a
popular CCI pamphlet:
It is important that you answer the bigot, because careful
research has found that a bigoted remark, unanswered, can and
does spread prejudice to the people who hear it. . . . The bigot
is more than a pain in the neck. He is a source of infection
for the spread of prejudiced ideas. But you can stop him! (Commission
on Community Interrelations, n.d., c)
The Incident Control Project was more concerned with observers
of racial incidents than with bigots themselves. The rationale
was developed as one of the lessons of the Holocaust for American
democracy. As Citron (1946) explained, Nazis had tested the
acceptability of anti-Semitism to the broader German public
by organizing public insults, which at first met with little
enthusiasm. Citron argued that permissiveness ultimately lent
credibility and support for more extensive actions. Prejudice
was learned in small groups "from people - living among them,
listening, and talking to them" (Citron, p. 6). He went on to
argue:
The more intimate the group, the deeper the attitudes take
root. Although the bus and restaurant situations . . . are not
of the most intimate type, many people who hear such remarks
time after time are inevitably influenced by them. More people
"catch" prejudice in this way than are ever affected by hate
sheets or hate meetings. In this kind of incident we witness
the mass production of blind prejudice and hate. (Citron, pp.
6-8)
Research into the problem of public bigotry used the "socio-drama,"
wherein randomly selected participants (often passersby chosen
off the street) were asked to witness skits simulating public
race baiting in order to gauge ordinary citizens' reactions
to challenges to the race baiter. Socio-dramas were pretested
on more than 1,000 subjects in order to find the most effective
argument and tone for answering the bigot.
Myrdal's "American Creed" was built into the socio-dramas and
was often the most effective response for dissipating public
expressions of prejudice. The unfairness of anti-Semitism would
ultimately weaken democracy, according to the Creed, leaving
it open to the threat of Communism. In one scenario, two trained
volunteers role played an incident wherein Jews are stereotyped
in a public incident:
Stevenson: That's no way to talk. What kind of country would
we have if we didn't stick together? We'd be easy suckers for
someone to make trouble.
Jones: What business is it of yours?
|
Stevenson: I'm telling you it's unfair to pick on the Jews
or on any other group. Everybody in America should get the same
square deal.
Jones: Why are you so worded about the Jews?
Stevenson: It's not just the Jews I'm worried about. It's the
danger of that kind of talk to our democracy that worries me.
This country is made up of all races and religions and it's
up to us to see that they all get an even break. (Commission
on Community Interrelations, n.d., c)
CCI research found that some audiences - such as war veterans
and union members - were more likely to respond positively to
"Stevenson" employing the "American tradition" argument than
to silence or to an appeal to individual differences, which
stressed that personal traits were not unique to particular
social groups. People chosen off the street preferred the latter
appeal.
Citron (1946) was enthusiastic and saw his findings as "ammunition"
in reducing bigotry. He advised his readers: "Don't let the
bigot get away with it," "Remind the bigot that the country
was built for all and stands for equality," "Peg your argument
to the situation" - that is, state that in your personal experience
all members of any group are not alike and that you don't condemn
the actions of all members of a group based on the actions of
one - and, finally, use a "'somewhat militant' and serious"
but not "aggressive or unpoised manner" especially when "calling
up the 'American symbols' argument." He concluded that it was
best to "act in a spirit of fair play when you talk about fair
play" to avoid sounding "like a politician" (p. 8).
True to CCI's objective of following research with action,
Citron proceeded with an elaborate venture of setting up Incident
Control Training Institutes where community and religious organizations
as well as labor and women's groups were given skills to train
their members. In the training, a racist incident from one of
a number of scripts would be acted out, and participants would
practice their arguments. It is not known how many participants
were ultimately trained in how to answer the bigot, but institutes
were established in a number of Northern cities across the United
States, a training manual was made available to community groups,
and evaluations were conducted on the training institutes.
Jewish Self-Identification: Raising Healthy Minority Children
As CCI's social action projects got underway, so did a preoccupation
in Jewish communities with what it meant to be Jewish in the
postwar era. At various historical times, Jewish identity in
the United States had involved conformity to Anglo-American
standards as well as participation with other cultures in a
melting pot ideology to produce something uniquely "American."
Postwar discussions of Jewish identity, however, emphasized
retention of cultural identity in a pluralistic society where
one could be both American and Jewish (Shapiro, 1992). Not surprisingly,
with a research unit in one of the most prominent Jewish organizations
in the United States, support for research into determinants
for producing an increased sense of belonging in minority group
members became a priority. Both Lewin (1948) and Chein (1949b,
1949c, 1952) wrote extensively on multiple group membership.
After Lewin's sudden death in 1947, many of his essays on identity
were published in the collection Resolving Social Conflicts
(Lewin, 1948). Chein's works on identity were found mostly in
Jewish publications, as working documents for CCI, or as talks
given to Jewish community center workers, parents, educators
and social workers; most remain unpublished (Borshuk & Cherry,
1997).
|
Lewin's writings on Jewish identity focused on his people's
historical ambivalence and uncertainty, particularly after their
emancipation from the period of European ghettoization that
had previously "made the boundaries obvious and unquestionable
for everybody" (1948, p. 149). In the United States, where assimilation
had become more possible, notions of self-hatred and group belongingness
were especially relevant to a discussion of raising healthy
minority children (Lewin, 1946). For Lewin, it was not belonging
to many groups that caused difficulty for children, but an uncertainty
of where they belonged. "Parents," he wrote, "should not be
afraid of so-called 'double allegiance.' . . . The real danger
lies in standing nowhere" (1948, p. 185).
Chein's discussion of group membership was geared toward the
pluralism of American social life. Chein advocated Jewish participation
in institutional settings - for example, integrated housing
and hospitals - in order to avoid divisiveness or a sense of
separateness, but separation in matters uniquely religious.
He wrote, "Our goal is a feeling of Jewish identification which
is integrated with the best values of American culture and which
opposes both assimilation and ghettoism" (1949b, p. 8). Chein
was strongly in favor of the notion of multiple group membership,
writing:
Opportunities for Jews to participate as Jews in affairs which
are of concern to the general community - e.g., in working for
specific civil rights programs - should be developed and exploited.
. . . It helps the person to feel that being a Jew does not
prevent him from participating as an individual in the broader
grouping - and hence eliminates a barrier to a feeling of dual
membership. (Chein, p. 9)
Both Lewin and Chein expressed strong support for a dual-identity
role compatible with notions of cultural pluralism and intercultural
education and action. Lewin often repeated Rabbi Hillel's famous
phrase: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am
for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, when?" With that
in mind, both Chein and Lewin promoted working on behalf of
social justice for other ethnocultural and religious communities
as well as their own, something they felt was possible only
from a secure position of belongingness to one's own group.
Discussions of American Jewish identification after World War
II were increasingly set in the context of the meaning of the
Holocaust for Jewish religious life and the role of American
Jews in the newly formed State of Israel. CCI sponsored study
groups, published papers, and public lectures to promote discussion
and debate of these topics. Most of the research conducted focused
on in-group diversity and methods for grounding the Jewish child
in a positive cultural identification while maintaining a bicultural
stance toward American life (Chein, 1949c). Results of extensive
exploratory studies directed by CCI and carried out in Jewish
community centers in Boston and New York City revealed that
Jewish children sometimes experienced the non-Jewish world as
"alien and hostile," and displayed more dissatisfaction than
satisfaction with being Jewish. This led CCI to promote and
engage in further investigations into Jewish identification,
as well as to sponsor a study of African American group identity
(Rose, 1949).
|
It was the work on multiple group membership that the American
Jewish Congress would continue to support even as its overall
commitment to CCI was waning. The National Women's Division
furthered the issue by producing with CCI a discussion guide
to be used by its chapter members to promote exploration of
how to raise Jewish children (Chein, Kendler, & Coan, 1949).
Study group leaders prompted members to discuss their experiences
and ideas related to group membership and to discuss what it
meant to be Jewish in the United States, the role of yeshivas
and other Jewish education programs, the benefits and drawbacks
to homogeneously Jewish groups in education and housing, and
the general adjustment of Jews to American life.
The AJC had ample reasons for its increased interest in studying
the topic of Jewish identity. As expressed by a Mid-Queens study
group, Jewish communities of the time were faced with the growth
of anti-Semitism in America, the new State of Israel, effects
of World War II, and an increased interest among their children
in Judaism. Jewish identity was being reevaluated in light of
new challenges and changes in American life and world Jewry.
The Lewinian Project in an Era of Change
Community life in the United States in the immediate postwar
era was rapidly changing, as was the nature of civil rights
work in urban communities. And CCI, having established itself
as a liberal research institution focused on reducing intergroup
tensions through its work in communities, would also change.
CCI's social action research focused on three strategies: maintaining
vigilance over discriminatory practices in communities and making
findings part of a legal response; containing the spread of
prejudice by responding to rather than ignoring its public interpersonal
expression; and raising Jewish children with a positive sense
of their dual social identity as a preventive means of combating
the impact of prejudice and discrimination. With CCI as a research
unit within the AJC, these strategies had served the Jewish
community well in the immediate postwar period. However, CCI
was eventually challenged, and its struggles to maintain the
research unit by the early 1950s are best understood by examining
events both within and external to the AJC. The Lewinian project
became less of a priority for the AJC as civil rights battles
were fought in court and in mass political action. As well,
the rise of experimental social psychology in academic psychology
found researchers studying prejudice in the laboratory rather
than discrimination in communities.
The Civil Rights Battle Goes to Court
In its efforts on behalf of minority groups, the AJC, as perhaps
the most progressive of liberal Jewish organizations, became
less concerned over time with communities and more concerned
with courts. In fact, from 1944 to the mid-1950s, much of the
action around civil rights advancement and the attack on exclusionary
racial covenants was in the courts and in the executive orders
of the federal government. Beginning in 1948, the Commission
on Law and Social Action copublished with the NAACP what became
an annual joint report on civil rights in the United States.
The NAACP and its legal staff, headed by Thurgood Marshall,
made extensive use of social scientific research in its court
challenges, the most famous of which was Brown v. Board of Education
in 1954 (see Herman, 1995; Jackson, 1996; Kluger, 1976; President's
Committee on Civil Rights, 1947; Rosen, 1972; Southern, 1987).
The AJC, along with other civic agencies, filed amicus briefs,
and CCI staff such as Stuart Clark and Isidor Chein testified
in several court cases.
|
Divisions in the Jewish Community
The AJC also encountered factions within the Jewish community
that did not share its enthusiasm for racial integration. Dollinger
(1993), in reviewing the substantial literature on Jewish liberalism,
has argued that after the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education
decision to desegregate public schools, "Northern Jews discovered
that their own desire for social inclusion compromised their
liberal civil rights stand and drew them uncomfortably close
to the political view of their Southern co-religionists" (p.
207). Other variables also acted to dissolve longstanding organizational
alliances between Jewish and African American groups: the suburban
flight of Whites following urban rioting, decreased support
for public education, and the rise of Black nationalism and
increasing expressions of anti-Semitism (Clark, 1946; Diner,
1977; Salzman, 1992). By the mid-1950s, many American Jews were
benefiting from the postwar economic boom that was accompanied
by the lifting of anti-Semitic restrictions on housing, education,
and employment. The cost of social inclusion sometimes meant
collaboration with racial separation and a waning commitment
to African American civil rights, prompting one historian to
remark:
[After the Depression] the role of the Jewish agencies in nurturing
the national mood and making it more receptive to change was
critical. Arguably, the period from just before the end of World
War II to the mid-1950s, when the black-led protest movement
got underway, may be said to have been the Jewish phase of the
civil rights revolution. (Friedman, 1995, p. 136)
Throughout the 1960s, however, many Jews did remain committed
to the legal civil rights movement and were well represented
among White ethnics when it moved into mass social protest (Carson,
1992). In this phase, they participated by joining groups such
as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and Congress
of Racial Equality directly rather than through liberal Jewish
organizations (Dollinger, 1993). The intercultural work of CCI
was increasingly viewed as less useful by a younger generation
of activists for whom reformist solutions and unenforced court
decisions were insufficient to the task of full equality. Although
CCI's brand of social action research could assist in evaluating
a problem and creating mechanisms for slow change through educational
and legal venues, African Americans had been struggling to break
down the color line for too long to leave the matter to liberal
reform tactics.
CCI Comes Under Scrutiny
CCI continued to bolster the work of the legally oriented CLSA,
primarily through research on social contact that supported
desegregation legislation (Jahoda, 1952). But whereas the CLSA
remained at the forefront of legal efforts to combat discrimination,
the value to the AJC of an internal social psychology research
unit such as CCI came into question. As Marrow (1964) wrote,
"Although [CCI's] program was scientifically meaningful and
socially useful to an unusual degree, this was not recognized
by the local welfare federations across the country on which
the AJCongress depended for its resources" (p. 9). In response
to concerns about its continuing utility, Marie Jahoda was asked
to evaluate the feasibility of the research group.
|
In her evaluation report, Jahoda (1952) argued strongly that
officially sanctioned fact finding on intergroup relations and
prejudicial attitudes was consistent with American Jewish values.
She argued that scientific knowledge was better than mere "enthusiasm
and intuitive insights" in the matter of social action, but
that spectacular results could not be expected, only "application
of the most rational procedure available . . . in dealing with
complex social problems" (p. 4).
Some of the AJC's concerns were prompted by a worsening financial
situation as well as its desire to pursue legal courses of action.
How much of the research being done was actually related to
Congress activities? And weren't there other research units,
particularly at universities, where this work was being conducted?
Jahoda responded by pointing out that some of the work of CCI,
particularly "the development of methods that can be used by
the ordinary citizen to improve intergroup relations," had "a
special slant" not undertaken elsewhere in the United States
(1952, p. 6).
Jahoda also tackled the problem of adequate time for conducting
research in the context of a community agency that might desire
faster results. In fact, although shorter term research could
be of immediate use in legal argumentation, longer term research
extending up to 3 years was required to evaluate new techniques
for solving social problems. Researchers' success, concluded
Jahoda, could not be measured by the same standards as those
for the regular staff of AJC given the type of research being
undertaken; there were those who felt CCI's research standard
was too high, and others thought it too low. CCI staff were
often viewed as aloof from the main organization, yet they were
often self-critical, their morale low, ever mindful that they
worked in an environment where their funding was on the critical
list. Despite the fact that their function was never particularly
well defined, they were a highly productive research unit (Jahoda,
1952). When CCI did search for external financial support, private
foundations did not want to risk tax-exempt status by sponsoring
research of a political nature. "Apparently," Marrow wrote,
"the problems under study were too controversial" (1964, p.
9).
Changing Communities, Changing Tactics
There were also those who thought that CCI's research agenda
was not controversial enough. Gardner Murphy (1952), although
acknowledging the tremendous organization in the variety of
projects against discrimination, wondered if the skilled practitioners
involved were practicing "benevolent despotism" despite their
openness and purported commitment to democratic ends:
If a few people can get stores to hire Negroes and those who
don't like it have to accept it, we liberals will all applaud.
The game can be played exactly in reverse, and we will all groan.
But is the process democratic in a Lewinian sense - is it based
on a group decision? (Murphy, p. 13)
|
Murphy wrote that political pressure, contingent on increased
economic power, was the key to minority gains. He felt the racial
crises of the time required both "group decision and sheer force
of political pressure - mixed well before using," and that "political
democracy in large amounts" was required "to protect and to
implement the results of social science" (Murphy, 1952, p. 13).
Although it is not clear from the archival record exactly how
matters raised by Jahoda's report were resolved, it is known
that by the mid-1950s the focus of CCI had shifted away from
intercultural education toward social conflict and urban affairs.
CCI's new research director, Don Hager, expressed disenchantment
with the intergroup relations approach and its "studied avoidance
of the relation between economic and political power structures
and the fact of prejudice, discrimination and conflict" (Hager,
1955, p. 7). For Hager, conflict was part of the democratic
process. It could not be eliminated but only channeled to constructive
ends. Racial hostility reflected socioeconomic ills and differences
in social mobility. The urban crisis of impoverishment, violence,
and despair made the liberal goals of integration unrealistic
with respect to the priorities of low-income communities. Hager's
reorientation of CCI toward conflict analysis and urban affairs
would remain in place throughout the 1960s.
Laboratory Psychology and the Primacy of Prejudice
While CCI was being evaluated, several of its core group of
social psychologists became employed by the Research Center
for Human Relations at New York University (NYU). Stuart Cook
moved to NYU in 1949 and became head of the Department of Psychology
there in 1950, collaborating with colleagues Claire Selltiz,
Isidor Chein, and Marie Jahoda on research similar to that conducted
at CCI (Smith, 1994). Although the investigative practices developed
for a community-based social psychology were both pragmatic
and eclectic, designed for application to the particular problem
of intergroup discrimination, increasingly the social psychological
mainstream was disconnecting research and graduate training
from the immediacy of solving social problems (Lundstedt, 1968).
As American social psychology came of age between 1950 and 1970
(Apfelbaum, 1992; Collier et al., 1991), its practitioners would
devote their energies to a practice bounded by the parameters
of laboratory experimentation, based primarily on individual
behavior, and geared toward managerial concerns (Danziger, 1990,
1992). Removed from the intergroup context, the study of discrimination
would quickly reduce to attitude and personality measurement.
Samelson (1978) has documented social psychology's "thematic
reversal" from the study of race superiority in the early part
of the century to the social psychology of prejudice and race
relations that was developed by the end of World War II. Part
of that reversal involved the emerging distinctions between
prejudice and discrimination. As experimental social psychology
moved into laboratory settings, prejudice became an isolated
psychological variable, detached from the processes of intergroup
relations. In the 1950s, the study of prejudice, enhanced by
the use of attitude measurement techniques developed during
the 1930s and World War II, became increasingly the focus of
academic social psychologists (e.g., Allport, 1954). The study
of race relations turned to the study of individual attitudes,
cognitive biases, and personality dispositions, mainly of Whites
(Herman, 1995; Samelson). The focus on specific communities
was sacrificed for the general and the context-free. CCI, in
its promotion of community relations, was a noteworthy exception
to the movement toward laboratory experimentation on attitudes.
|
CCI's social psychology of community intervention was greatly
influenced by the social democratic notions of social scientists
such as Goodwin Watson, Kurt Lewin, and others who attempted
to bring a nonreductionist understanding to a point where society
and individual meet. However, the emerging demands of their
field downplayed those aspects of their work that were devoted
to community and group relations. Just as the AJC came to expect
quick and productive results from its researchers, so did the
culture of social psychology require traces of experimentally
derived evidence to add to its growing stream of literature.
Thus, large-scale societal investigations of prejudice and discrimination
(e.g., Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950;
Allport, 1954; Bettelheim & Janowitz, 1950; Dollard, Doob,
Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939) were abandoned to make room
for the products of prejudice research such as the F scale and
an increasing number of attitude and social-distance measures.
For the mainstream of social psychology's practitioners, scientific
meaning had been severed from immediate social utility as measurability
became paramount.
Conclusion
The history of CCI reveals a group of social psychologists
committed to the midcentury ideals of egalitarian democracy
and social engineering and heady with the promise of the technological
advance of social science methodology. Their story is instructive
as a precursor to the civil rights movement, experimenting with
a social psychology that was located in communities, identities,
and relations between groups. If their efforts to train citizens
to stanch the spread of racial hatred seem naive today, or their
technological and curative analogies quaint, it should be remembered
that this group also represented an early social psychological
attempt to place ethnocultural identity in a key position for
understanding prejudice and discrimination (see Gaines &
Reed, 1995, for earlier work in the African American tradition).
The challenges faced by those associated with CCI in the 1940s
are not atypical of those of social psychologists who continue
to create roles for their expertise in social agencies and community
organizations today. CCI's investigative practices offer a rare
glimpse into the action research of midcentury, when such work
was in its earliest stages of development. It was, of course,
only one of several historical models of action research that
inform contemporary scholar-activists in their social change
work (Wittig & Bettencourt, 1996). The record of CCI's research
unit reveals what were then the central difficulties faced by
community-based researchers working within larger agencies or
organizations. Balancing the demands of voices calling out for
social justice against the needs of sponsoring organizations
and their bureaucracies, along with expectations of methodological
rigor, continues to be a central challenge to community and
social psychologists.
|
Fig. 1. From CCI pamphlet on action research, "But What Works?
circa 1946."
THE TESTING PROCESS
Where Do We Stand In The Fight Against Prejudice?
How can we determine which methods are getting results and
which are not?
The testing process is basically the same in this field as
in any other.
To begin...
* We must have a clearly-stated PROBLEM
* Next, we need an IDEA about solutions to the problem
* Then we must TEST THE IDEA to see if it works.
* Finally, a report is made of the FINDINGS
* And, the RESULTS GO INTO ACTION
When these steps are followed, a TESTED method of combating
prejudice is being put to use.
* The authors wish to acknowledge their use of the following
archival collections: the Stuart Cook, Kurt Lewin, and Alfred
Marrow Papers at the Archives of the History of American Psychology,
Akron, OH; and the American Jewish Congress Collection at the
American Jewish Historical Society, Waltham, MA; as well as
recent correspondence with John Harding, Claire Selltiz, and
Brewster Smith.
1 The National Women's Division focused its efforts on family,
educational, and community activities of the AJC, whereas the
Commission on Law and Social Action - the product of a 1945
merger of the Commissions on Economic Discrimination and Law
and Legislation - focused on legal activities. Our reading of
the various efforts of the AJC suggests that during the period
under consideration (1944-52), the AJC reflected the different
spheres of men's and women's work consistent with the gender,
White ethnic and class stratification in activities of the period.
2 It is not known to what extent studies sponsored by CCI came
directly under the McCarthy glare. If anticommunism in the immediate
postwar period threatened liberal organizations such as the
AJC, it appears to have been well countered through legal action
(Dollinger, 1993).
References
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson,
D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality.
New York: Harper.
Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
An action program. (1945, February 16). Congress
Weekly, pp. 4-5.
Apfelbaum, E. (1992). Some teachings from the
history of social psychology, Canadian Psychology, 33, 529-539.
Ash, M. (1992). Cultural contexts and scientific
change in psychology: Kurt Lewin in Iowa. American Psychologist,
47, 198-207.
Bargal, D., Gold, M., & Lewin, M. (Eds).
(1992). The heritage of Kurt Lewin: Theory, research and practice.
Journal of Social Issues, 48(2).
Baum, C., Hyman, P., & Michel, S. (1976).
The Jewish woman in America. New York: Dial Press.
Bettelheim, B., & Janowitz, M. (1950). Social
change and prejudice. London: The Free Press of Glencoe.
Borshuk, C., & Cherry, F. (1997). Isidor
Chein: Theorizing multiple group membership. Unpublished manuscript.
|
Brodsky, B. (1949, May). Letter to CCI Chairman.
CCI Box 19. American Jewish Congress Collection, American Jewish
Historical Society Archives, Waltham, MA.
But What Works? (n.d.). CCI poster. CCI Box
20. American Jewish Congress Collection, American Jewish Historical
Society Archives, Waltham, MA.
Carson, C. (1992). Blacks and Jews in the civil
rights movement: The case of SNCC. In J. Salzman (Ed.), Bridges
and boundaries: African Americans and American Jews (pp. 36-50).
New York: George Braziller, Inc.
Chein, I. (1949a). Some aspects of research
methodology. Jewish Social Service Quarterly, 25(4), unpaginated.
Chein, I. (1949b). A psychologist's notes on
the impact of current trends on Jews. Unpublished manuscript.
Folder: 7, M1938. Alfred Marrow Papers, Archives of the History
of American Psychology, University of Akron, Akron, OH.
Chein, I. (1949c). The problem of belongingness:
An action research perspective. Unpublished manuscript. CCI
Box 21. American Jewish Congress Collection, American Jewish
Historical Society Archives, Waltham, MA.
Chein, I. (1952, June). Securing our children
against prejudice. Paper presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting
of the National Conference of Jewish Communal Service, Chicago,
IL.
Chein, I., Kendler, T. S., & Coan, C. (1949).
Discussion guide on raising Jewish children. Unpublished manuscript.
CCI Box 19. American Jewish Congress Collection, American Jewish
Historical Society Archives, Waltham, MA.
Cherry, F. (1995). The "stubborn particulars"
of social psychology. London: Routledge.
Citron, A. (1946, December 27). The Incident
Control Project. Congress Weekly, 13, 6-8.
Clark, K. (1946, February). Candor about Negro-Jewish
relations. Commentary, 11-12.
Coan, C. (1949, March). Letter to National Women's
Division President Victoria Brodsky. CCI Box 19. American Jewish
Congress Papers, American Jewish Historical Society Archives,
Waltham, MA.
Cohen, N. W. (1972). Not free to desist: The
American Jewish Committee, 1906-1966. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society of America.
Collier, G., Minton, H. L., & Reynolds,
G. (1991). Currents of thought in American social psychology.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Commission on Community Interrelations. (n.d.,
a). Proposed CCI Manual. Unpublished manuscript. CCI Box 19.
American Jewish Congress Collection, American Jewish Historical
Society Archives, Waltham, MA.
Commission on Community Interrelation. (n.d.,
b). Stand up and be counted among the voices for democracy.
Pamphlet. Folder 11. Alfred Marrow Papers, Archives of the History
of American Psychology, University of Akron, Akron, OH.
Commission on Community Interrelations. (n.d.,
c). The way to leave a race-baiter speechless. Pamphlet. Folder
11. Alfred Marrow Papers, Archives of the History of American
Psychology, University of Akron, Akron, OH.
Cook, S. (1949). Introduction. Journal of Social
Issues, 5(2), 2-4.
|
Cook, S. (1982). Obituary: Isidor Chein (1912-1981).
American Psychologist, 37, 445-446.
Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the subject:
Historical origins of psychological research. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Danziger, K. (1992). The project of an experimental
social psychology: Historical perspectives. Science in Context,
5(2), 309-328.
Deutsch, M. (1992). Kurt Lewin: The tough-minded
and tender-hearted scientist. Journal of Social Issues, 48(2),
31-43.
Diner, H. R. (1977). In the promised land: American
Jews and Blacks, 1915-1935. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Dollard, J., Doob, L. W., Miller, N. E., Mowrer,
O. H., & Sears, R.R. (1939). Frustration and aggression.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Dollinger, M. (1993). The politics of acculturation:
American Jewish liberalism, 1933-1975. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles.
Festinger, L., Cartwright, D., Barber, K., Fleischl,
J., Gottsdanker, J., Keysen, A., & Leavitt, G. (1948). The
study of rumour, its origin and spread. Human Relations, 1,
173-176.
Friedman, M. (1995). What went wrong? The creation
and collapse of the Black-Jewish alliance. New York: The Free
Press.
Frommer, M. (1978). The American Jewish Congress:
A history, 1914-1950 (Vols. I, II). Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
Gaines, S. O., & Reed, E. S. (1995). Prejudice:
From Allport to DuBois. American Psychologist, 50, 96-103.
Giles, H. H., & VanTil, W. (1946). School
and community projects. The Annals of the American Academy,
244, 35-41.
Hager, D. (1955, January 24). Blindspots and
brotherhood. Congress Weekly, 22, 5-7.
Harris, B., Unger, R. K., & Stagner, R.
(Eds.). (1986). Fifty years of psychology and social issues.
Journal of Social Issues, 42(1).
Herman, E. (1995). The romance of psychology:
Political culture in the age of experts. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Jackson, J. (1996). Creating a consensus: Kenneth
Clark and the social science statement for Brown v. Board of
Education. Paper presented at the 60th Anniversary Convention
of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Jackson, W. A. (1990). Gunnar Myrdal and America's
conscience: Social engineering and racial liberalism, 1938-1987.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Jahoda, M. (1952). The Commission on Community
Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress. Unpublished
manuscript. Box M1938, Folder 7. Alfred Marrow Papers, Archives
of the History of American Psychology, University of Akron,
Akron, OH.
Jahoda, M. (1989). Why a non-reductionistic
social psychology is almost too difficult to be tackled but
too fascinating to be left alone. British Journal of Social
Psychology, 28, 71-78.
Johnson, C. S. (1946). National organizations
in the field of race relations. The Annals of the American Academy,
244, 117-127.
|
Keppel, B. (1995). The work of democracy: Ralph
Bunche, Kenneth B. Clark. Lorraine Hansberry, and the cultural
politics of race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kluger, R. (1976). Simple justice: The history
of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's struggle
for equality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Lambert, B. W., & Cohen, N. E. (1949). A
comparison of different types of self-surveys. Journal of Social
Issues, 5(2), 46-56.
Levinger, G. (Ed.). (1986). SPSSI at fifty:
Historical accounts and selected appraisals. Journal of Social
Issues, 42(4).
Levy, H. P. (1945, June 8). Hitting at the danger
points. Congress Weekly, pp. 6-8.
Lewin, K. (n.d.). Philosophy and broader goals
of the Commission on Community Interrelations. CCI Box 20. American
Jewish Congress Papers, American Jewish Historical Society Archives,
Waltham, MA.
Lewin, K. (1945, February 23). A new approach
to old problems. Congress Weekly, pp. 6-7.
Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority
problems. Journal of Social Issues, 4(2), 34-46.
Lewin, K. (1948). Resolving social conflicts:
Selected papers on group dynamics. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Lewin, M. (1992). The impact of Kurt Lewin's
life on the place of social issues in his work. Journal of Social
Issues, 48(2), 15-29.
Lundstedt, S. (1968). Higher education in social
psychology. Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University Press.
Marrow, A. J. (1948). Kurt Lewin. Journal of
Social Issues (Suppl. 1), 27-34.
Marrow, A. J. (1964). Risks and uncertainties
in action research. Journal of Social Issues, 20(3), 5-20.
Marrow, A. J. (1969). The practical theorist:
The life and work of Kurt Lewin. New York: Basic Books.
Murphy, G. (1952, February 11). The application
of social science. Congress Weekly, 19, 12-13.
Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma: The
Negro problem and modern democracy. New York: Harper & Row.
News of women's division. (1945, May 25). Congress
Weekly, p. 15.
President's Committee on Civil Rights. (1947).
To secure these rights. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Office.
Rose, A.M. (1949). The Negro's morale: Group
identification and protest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Rosen, P. (1972). Supreme court and social science.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Salzman, J. (Ed.) (1992). Bridges and boundaries:
African Americans and American Jews. New York: George Braziller.
Samelson, F. (1978). From "race psychology"
to "studies in prejudice": Some observations of the thematic
reversal in social psychology. Journal of the History of the
Behavioral Sciences, 14, 265-278.
Selltiz, C., & Cook, S. W. (1948). Can research
in social science be both socially useful and scientifically
meaningful? American Sociological Review, 13, 454-459.
Shapiro, E. (1992). Jewish-Americans. In J.
D. Buenker & L. A. Ratner (Eds.), Multiculturalism in the
United States: A comparative guide to acculturation and ethnicity
(pp. 149-172). New York: Greenwood Press.
|
Smith, M. B. (1994). Stuart W. Cook (1913-1993).
American Psychologist, 49, 521-522.
Southern, D. W. (1987). Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White
relations: The use and abuse of An American Dilemma, 1944-1969.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Urofsky, M. I. (1982). A voice that spoke for
justice: The life and times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Van Elteren, M. (1993). Discontinuities in Kurt
Lewin's psychology of work: Conceptual and cultural shifts between
his German and American research. Societes Contemporaines, 13,
71-95.
Watson, G. (1947). Action for unity. New York:
Harper.
Watson, G. (1952, March 10). [Review of the
book How to conduct a community self-survey of civil rights].
Congress Weekly, p. 13.
Wittig, M. A., & Bettencourt, B. A. (Eds.).
(1996). Social psychological perspectives on grassroots organizing.
Journal of Social Issues, 52(1).
Wormser, M. H. (1949). The Northtown self-survey:
A case study. Journal of Social Issues, 5(2), 5-20.
Wormser, M. H., & Selltiz, C. (1951). How
to conduct a community self-survey of civil rights. New York:
Association Press.
FRANCES CHERRY is a Professor in the Department of Psychology
at Carleton University. She is author of The "Stubborn Particulars"
of Social Psychology (Routledge, 1995), which deals with the
history and theory of social psychology.
CATHERINE BORSHUK is completing doctoral research at
Carleton University in social and community psychology. She
is interested in grassroots organizing, social identity movements,
and alliance building among social action groups.
|
|