As in so much of American history, race has and continues to play an important role in Scouting. Race was as a factor in early American Scouting, especially in the South where early Scouters were determined to prevent black boys from entering the movement. The fact that the Baden Powell's Boys Scouts eventually decided upon an inclusive international approach to Scouting meant that to participate that an exclusive white program could not be mauntained, despite the attitudes of many in the movement. William D. Boyce who founded the Scouting movement in America was adament that it should be open to boys of all races and creeds--but his view was not shared by many. The BSA and YMCA alike were guided by adult volunteers who held socially progressive organizational goals. While their were some socially conservative elements interested in organizing a more overtly milataristic organization, the role the YMCA played in the early years of the BSA helped to imprint it with the YMCA stamp of social progressiveness. Enrollment patterns gave preference to middle-class boys in the early going. This was because these boys were the most interested and their parents could afford the program, all making organization easier. Later, both the BSA and YMCA reached out to lower-class youths, but with less favorable results. The leadership alternatingly displayed condescension and defeatism toward these poorer boys, and these youths often found the BSA and YMCA culturally alien. The BSA faced an even more difficult challenge when it came to black youthm especially in the South. Even in the north, Scouting in America from the beginning was a highly segregated activity. This is in part because many of the early sponsors were schools (many of which were segregated by law or demographic patterns) and churches (except for the Catlolics are among the most segregated institutions in America). Until the 1970s, fewer blacks than whites have particiapted in Scouting. A factor here is cost. We suspect that that there are other factors as well, some relating to why Scouting has had less appeal to the working-class in England. Many of the blacks that have participated have done so in largely black troops. This continues to be the case today. In fact Scouting is one of the most segregated youth activity in America. This is not because of BSA policy, but because of econonomic, cultural, and demographic trends in America.
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The BSA in the 1910s
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) was founded by William D. Bouce and several associates in 1910. Boyce was a businessman with an interest in youth work. His critical controbution to Scouting was to organize the BSA as a business. He incorporated the organization, choosing Washington, DC, rather than Chicago to emphasize its national character. He recruited key youth professionals, primarily from the YMCA, to design and operate the program, and he provided essential funding for the fledgling organization. Important decissions were made about Scouting in the 1910s which had a major impact on its character and success. There were many competing visions of the movement with varying influences including commercial, altruistic, patriotic, militaristic, social, religious, racial, and many others. The American Scout movement was relatively small in the 1910s before World War I (1914-18). The movement grew significantly beginning with the War when a patriotic fervor swept the country. The movement was to grow even more in the properous 1920s. Increasingly by the late 1910s it was becoming an excepted part of an American boyhood, at least in small towns and cities, to join the Boy Scouts. The organization became increasingly popular throughout the country and was supported by both schools and churches.
Black Youth
The character builders who so energentically approached the organization of white middle-class boys were not at all as interested in orgazing black boys. There were several reasons for this. Black boys were undeniable a much more difficult challenge. The black population was primarily located in the rural South and very poor. A variety of factors affected which children worked. The most significant was of course social class. Most of the children that worked were children from poor families that had to work. Their parents could not afford to send them to school and often needed their maeger earnings just to provide meer sustanance. There were, however, other factors such as demographics. Rural children were needed to work on the farm. Urban children were more likely to be sent to school. A major factor in the United States was race. Note that in images of child labor during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, black children (especially the boys) are almost always only seen as agricultural labor.
Racial Dilema
The povery and rural location posed major difficulties in themselves, but more was involved. The early 20th century character builders were white and even the most progressive of them were affected by a kind of "casual racism" that made it less urgent for them to focus on black youth. Many were unsure about organizing black youth in the north, organozing in the south was a virtual impossibility. The Southern white Jim Crow power-structure on whom the character builders needed to rely to orgnize white boys, was not just unconcerned about balcks, they were vehemently opposed to any effort at organizing them. To have challenged white leadership would have emperiled the organization of white boys in the South. Here it is easy to be critical. But would have it really been beneficial if the largely northern leadership of the BSA and YMCA had insisted on a more racially inclusive program? The result sure would have been that the BSA would have never received a Congressional charter and a probably a separate highly racist southern association would have been established which may well have appaeled to some northern whites. It may have also made it more difficult to eventually organize black BSA troops in the South. The various aternatives are difficult to assess, but in the final analysis BSA and YMCA leaders were simplly not that interested in black youth to jepoardize their national initaitives. America in the early 20th century was a rasist society and it can not be expected that the BSA, YMCA, and other youth groups would have somehow been unaffected by the prevailing racism.
More:
http://histclo.hispeed.com/youth/youth/org/sco/country/us/race/uss-race.htm
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