ABSTRACT
Boston's black community in the pre-War years appears to be yet another variant of the ideological dualism which has been taken note of by many who have investigated black community life. The exclusionary practices of the larger white community can be said to have influenced the creation of the black ghetto; but what white racist beliefs and behavior had been responsible for bringing into being came, in time, to have an existence neither they nor blacks themselves were ever quite in control of. Poised between an occasionally benevolent, sometimes hostile, frequently indifferent white world and their own community, blacks were, in effect, suspended between two cultures; needing each and alternately, and frequently simultaneously, attracted and repulsed by both, the city's black community had become a mongrel composite. Black self-help was the avenue to success, and success was the greatest of equalizers.
