ABSTRACT
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), as a young man, was a Protestant minister in the reform tradition. He served a parish in an industrial area of Detroit, where his concern for social justice deepened. Myrdal's most important contribution to social theory was An American Dilemma (1944)–his sensitive, though firm, critique of the social and economic bases of racial conflict in the United States. There is a "Negro problem" in the United States and most Americans are aware of it, although it assumes varying forms and intensity in different regions of the country and among diverse groups of the American people. To the great majority of white Americans the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. The strain is increased in democratic America by the freedom left open–even in the South, to a considerable extent–for the advocates of the Negro, his rights and welfare.
