Memorandum on a Psychiatric Reconnaissance

Abstract

An intensive psychiatric study of a few American Negroes of northern urban habitat having inspired in the writer an intense interest in the possibilities of obtaining significant data on interpersonal relations, he was persuaded to undertake a visit of exploration in the deep South. Nothing of optimistic expectation as to results was developed, despite the encouragement offered by Hortense Powdermaker and Charles S. Johnson. Such preliminary formulations as came of the experiment are largely to be credited to the group of graduate students at Fisk University, who were most cooperative in supplying personal data, to the assistance of the white and the Negro leaders in the area chosen, and to that of two clergymen who superintended a school there.