The Community Reference System, Religiosity, and Race Attitudes

An empirical study was made of the attitude toward desegregation among northern migrants who are members of a religious minority in Tallahassee, Florida, during and after the bus boycott incident. Findings suggest that moral values, though important, do not decisively determine the individual's attitudes toward desegregation. Residential stability and subjective identification with the southern community seem to be crucial factors, thus confirming Campbell and Pettigrew's Little Rock study. T HIS paper analyzes the attitudes of a group of Catholics who migrated from other regions, mainly the North, to Tallahassee, Florida, measured during the crises created by a series of racial tensions in 1957. As members of a religious minority group in a community in which the known sentiment is to preserve a segregated system, how do they perceive the situation and, consequently, how do they react toward such a situation? Tallahassee is a small urban community located in the northern part of Florida. An estimated population of 38,000 was reported in 1955. The city is the state capital of Florida and is the seat of two segregated state universities, one white and one Negro. The economy rests upon white-collar work, and there is virtually no industrial base. The median family income in 1950 was $2,952 or about $600 higher than the state median income. The median number of years of school completed by persons 25 years or older in 1950 was higher than that for the state as a whole (11.9 as compared to 9.6 years). Negroes comprised 34 percent of the total population in 1950. The city follows the traditional southern etiquette of race relations, including the prohibition of social gatherings between students of the two state universities. Like any southern community, the capital city is predominately Protestant. Before the turn of the present century, the Catholic congregation of Tallahassee consisted largely of early Irish and French settlers, few in number and generally poor. Even among these, many had drifted away, and by 1904 there were only four Catholics in the city.' Recent expansion of the city's population has been caused by the influx of incoming technical and professional personnel as a result of the expansion of the state government and the two state universities. Members of the only Catholic parish consist largely of newer migrants.2 At the time of the racial crisis in Tallahassee, the local parish was the only integrated institution in which intermingling of two races was permitted and carried out in all regular church functions. Negroes comprised about 5 percent of the congregation. During the spring of 1956 and in subsequent months, a series of precipitating events concerned with the Supreme Court's decision on the integration problem finally led to a bus boycott by the Negro population of Tallahassee, Florida. A complete report of this crisis was later presented by Killian and Smith.3 Because of the importance of this event to the present research, it is necessary to describe briefly the incidents. In the spring of 1956, two months before the beginning of the bus boycott, a study of the attitudes of Tallahassee white people toward desegregation was made by members of the two state universities' sociology staffs. Interviews were conducted with 536 subjects, a 5 percent sample of the adult white population. In the study, which was primarily concerned with reactions to the Supreme Court ruling on school segregation, the general opinion was found to be overwhelmingly against the Court's decision. A series of precipitating events led to the ultimate episode *Revised paper read at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Sociological Society, August 31 to September 2, 1959. Acknowledgment is made to William A. Botzum, C.S.C., for critical reading and to Barbara Van Camp for editorial assistance. 1 Dorothy Van Brunt, Father Hugon and the Early Catholic Church in Tallahassee (unpublished private manuscript), p. 8. 2 Letter from the Department of Education, Diocese of St. Augustine, Florida (dated April 27, 1957). 3 Lewis, M. Killian and Charles U. Smith, The Tallahassee Bis Boycott (Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1958). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.215 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 05:03:01 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms