This policy was not limited only to the Jim Crow south but extended to some northern states as well. The national office left the final decision on exactly how to handle black Scouting to the local councils. During this period, the BSA actively promoted a separate but equal policy (extending to leader training, Courts of Honor, summer camps, rallies, etc.) reflecting the social condition of the times. By the end of 1927, the number of black troops (with black scoutmaster and under a council jurisdiction) in the region had been increased to at least 32 localities in the South. It has been commonly reported by some historians that of the 108 black troops with black scoutmasters registered in the BSA in 1926, only five were located in the South (this author doubts the veracity of this statement and thinks it’s many more). It would be several more years before (white) Boy Scout councils in the South began to formally sanction black troops under their jurisdictions and incorporate these units into their organizational structures in some manner. These units applied directly to the National office in New York for their organizational credentials. This said nothing for the numerous black scout troops that did not come under the immediate jurisdiction of local councils during the formative years of the movement (1910-1920s). West eventually decided that each council would follow the local “custom” in how it dealt with the admission of black scout troops. West proposed a completely separate system of Scouting that attended to black scouts, including black leaders, facilities, and administrators (Rowan 2005: 49). West, admitted that the only acceptable way to deal with the presence of black Boy Scouts in the deep south (or otherwise in areas where Jim Crow was the order of the day), would be to handle the admission of black Boy Scouts (and troops) in a similar fashion to how the segregated South implemented its bifurcated educational system–separate and divided. In 1911, the Chief Scout Executive, James E. Scouting then (and for a number of decades thereafter) reflected the prevailing social attitudes of the communities that it served and flourished in. Since almost immediately after the founding of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), Scouting was not immune to racial division.
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