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104  THE READER'S DIGEST  September 

accurate figures are not obtainable on the number of Negroes now employed by the federal Government - most Government units no longer require a job applicant to state his race.

Today full integration has been accomplished in our Armed Forces. More than 390,000 Negro enlisted men serve in the same units, sleep in the same barracks and are trained in the same classes as whites. Segregated clubs and chow lines have vanished. Schools for the children of military personnel have mixed classes. Among the nearly 6000 Negro officers is Brig. Gen Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., of the Air Force, son of the Army's first Negro general, now retired. 

In 1949 Julius Thomas, Director of Industrial Relations for the National Urban League, an organization which aids Negroes in procuring jobs in industry, went to see the presidents of some 25 of the country's largest corporations. With him he took the files of hundreds of highly qualified Negro college graduates - engineers, chemists, business-administration majors. As a result, in the last five years, more than 1000 Negro college graduates have been placed in technical jobs. But the League's method of job-finding has largely outlived its usefulness in the technical and scientific field. Today recruiting officials from many major companies canvass Howard University and other Negro colleges, and busily bid for young Negro scientists.

As more and more Negroes have secured well-paid employment, the economic gap between Negro and white Americans has gradually narrowed. The Negro still earns less than a white worker on the average, but his wages have increased to more than four times their 1940 level. His new prosperity has created a vast new market with a purchasing power of 16 billion dollars a year - more than the annual value of all our exports. The Negro's new earning power has not been plowed only into material things. More than ever, he strives for education.

In 1932 there were only 7000 students in Negro colleges and possibly 2000 more in the unsegregated colleges and universities of the North and West. By 1947 enrollment in Negro colleges had climbed to more than 70,000, and Negroes in other colleges numbered 12,000. Since then, scores of additional colleges and graduate schools have opened their doors to Negroes and, conversely, some white students are enrolling in previously all-Negro schools.

Expanding opportunities have permitted the Negroes among us to contribute, far more than ever before, to American life. One of the Negro's greatest contributions has been in the world of melody and rhythm. In the days of his enslavement, spirituals and work songs provided the only form of free expression the Negro's master would allow him. Out of his frustrated yearnings came the blues; out of his indomitable zest