The Negro Market

"Economic equality is always a prelude to total equality."

This week Professor Henry Allen Bullock, 50, a trained sociologist (Ph.D., University of Michigan, '42) and director of graduate research at Houston's all-Negro Texas Southern University (enrollment: 3,000), told, in an 18-month study of his fellow Negroes' earning power and buying habits, how close the Southern city Negro has moved toward economic equality with whites. While his log-page report is confined to the South's largest city, Houston (pop. 725,000), it is a good indication of the Negro's material advances throughout the Southland.

More Money. Bullock's report is based on a poll of 1,028 households, out of Houston's burgeoning Negro population of 156,000, and of 127 stores patronized by Negroes. He calculates that Houston Negroes spend $168 million a year; they constitute 21.2% of the city population, account for 15% of its purchases. Furthermore, he figures that this spending power is backed by a property investment of $45 million.

Bullock reckons that the median income of the Negro household in Houston has risen from $2,900 in 1940 to $4,016 today. One reason for the relatively high income is that Negro families frequently have more than one wage earner; one family in three has a second paycheck.

More Work. The survey found that Negro unemployment in Houston has dropped from 11% in 1940 to "less than 3% of those who want to work now." Moreover, there has been a migration from the low-paying countryside to the city in response to expanding employment opportunities. From 1900 to 1950, while the Negro population of Texas went up 58%, the number of city Negroes quadrupled in the state. They are also getting better jobs. In 1940, only 2.9% of Houston's Negroes were in the professions; today the figure is 5.2%, of which almost half are teachers. Another factor in the fatter paycheck has been the lessening of barriers to better jobs. Bullock checked 736 Texas manufacturing firms, found eight of them now employ Negro chemists, nine have Negro engineers.

Houston's prospering Negroes spend more for housing (mostly rent) than whites, less for clothing and autos. Still, 53.9% of the Negro households in the poll owned autos. (Their preference, in order: Chevrolet, Buick, Ford, Cadillac.) Negro personal savings, proportionately, are double the savings of Houston families in general.

More Potential. Houston's Negro is a prolific buyer of appliances; for each dollar spent on home furnishings, 54-c- goes for washing machines, stoves, refrigerators, air conditioners, etc. Seventeen of 20 households plan to buy more appliances or furniture this year. Among Houston Negroes, 40.6% families own vacuum cleaners, 85.6% refrigerators, 37.6% TV sets.

Houston's Negroes still shy from some specialty products, not from lack of money, but because they have never felt the need for them, e.g., only 15.6% buy baby food. Concludes Pollster Bullock: "Because of its youth, its bettering education, its increasing life span (up to 63 for U.S. Negro males in 1950), the total Negro market has barely been tapped."

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