“I Am a Negro” by Paul R. Williams

Note: Paul R. Williams, a groundbreaking Black architect, wrote “I Am a Negro” in 1937 about building a career in a segregated America. Back then, “Negro” was the common, respectful term for Black Americans, used in newspaper names and civil rights groups alike. Language changed over time as “Black” and “African American” became the preferred terms, so “Negro” now sounds outdated and is generally avoided. Keep that history in mind as you read Williams’ essay in its own time and words.

The American Magazine, July 1937

“I Am a Negro.”

By Paul R. Williams

I am an architect.

Today I sketched the preliminary plans for a large country house which will be erected in one of the most beautiful residential districts in the world, a district of roomy estates, entrancing vistas, and stately mansions. Sometimes I have dreamed of living there. I could afford such a home.

But this evening, leaving my office, I returned to my own small, inexpensive home in an unrestricted, comparatively undesirable section of Los Angeles because...

I am a Negro.

As Associate Architect of the Federal Negro Housing Project, I maintain an office in Washington, D.C. At frequent intervals I make hurried trips to supervise the work which is being done there. Should I travel through the South, I must ride in the ”Jim Crow” car because...

I am a Negro.

I and the millions of men and women whose faces, like mine, are black, dream and plan and work and progress. Our brains receive and nourish new ideas, our hands develop new abilities. In the past we were slaves; in the future we shall be God knows what, but today we exist in a state of almost incredibly rapid change. We are nearly a tenth of the earth’s population; we are more than a tenth of the population of the United States. And we are, when all is said and done, individuals, subject to the same laws which govern the mental and spiritual evolution of all individuals.

Deal with me, and with the other men and women of my race, as individual problems, not as a race problem.

I was born in Los Angeles, in a district which tolerated the residency of all races. As a child I played with white children without being conscious of the stigma attached to my color. Nothing prepared me for the shock of the discovery that some day those children who then accepted me as one of themselves would learn to treat me with a strange admixture of patronage and contempt, intolerance and condescension. There was nothing to warn me that coveted opportunities would be denied me because my face was black. I discovered the color line when I went out, as a schoolboy, to find a much needed job.

I was turned away by would-be employers who, to my certain knowledge, needed help. At first I could not understand, but gradually I came to realize that I was being condemned, not by a lack of ability, but by my color. I passed through successive stages of bewilderment, inarticulate protest, resentment, and, finally, reconciliation to the status of my race.

Eventually, however, as I grew older and thought more clearly, I found in my condition an incentive to personal accomplishment, an inspiring challenge. Without having the wish to “show them,” I developed a fierce desire to “show myself.” I wanted to vindicate every ability I had. I wanted to acquire new abilities. I wanted to prove that I, as an individual, deserved a place in the world.

I possessed natural skill at drawing and an instinctive interest in the design of buildings. I determined, when I was still in high school, to become an architect. When I announced that intention to my instructor, he stared at me with as much astonishment as he would have displayed had I proposed a rocket flight to Mars.

“Who ever heard of a Negro being an architect?” he demanded.... He pointed out that I would...be obliged to depend entirely upon white clients for my livelihood.

“You have ability—but use it some other way. Don’t butt your head futilely against the stone wall of race prejudice.”

It was apparent that my personal ability weighed less in his estimation than the burden of my color. His advice—if such blank discouragement can be termed advice—was an invitation to thought. I tried to analyze the factors affecting an ambition which until then had been more impulse than intelligently conceived purpose. And I reached these conclusions:

First: I have arrived at a turning point in my entire life. If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated.

Second: If prejudice is ever to be overcome it must be through the efforts of individual Negroes.... Therefore, I owe it to myself and to my people to accept this challenge.

I worked my way through university, managed to secure a job as a draftsman, won several small house competitions, and, eventually, took the great step. I established my own office.

Naturally, I encountered many discouragements and rebuffs, most of which were predicated upon my color. I survived a few financial hardships which might have been avoided had my face been white. But I do not regret those difficulties, for I think that I am a far better craftsman today than I would be had my course been free.

My hope for success was based largely upon my conviction that racial prejudice is usually blind, that it is less often the result of reason and personal experience than the offspring of inherited ideas and a hasty, American tendency to lump all things which look alike into a single category.... And while I felt the futility of any attempt to break down their aversion to my race, I believed that if I could shock, or startle, or in any way induce those white people to regard me, not as “just a Negro,” but as Paul Williams, an individual Negro, I might then be able to sell my ability.

During the early years of my practice, prospective home builders frequently came into my office without being aware of my color. Perhaps they had merely been attracted by the sign on my door; perhaps they had seen somewhere a house of my design, liked it, and inquired until they discovered the name of the architect. Most of them were obviously serious in their intention to build. Yet, in the moment that they met me and discovered they were dealing with a Negro, I could see many of them “freeze.” Their interest in discussing plans waned instantly and their one remaining concern was to discover a convenient exit without hurting my feelings.

“Just shopping around a bit...really not intending to build right now...maybe next year...thinking of spending about $8,000…” they would explain in voluble confusion.

The average figure quoted by such “shoppers” was low, for clients able to build expensive mansions were not yet patronizing my office. But I knew that the proposed cost, in each case, must seem to its owner a fortune. And I used that knowledge as the springboard for a deliberate trick designed to startle my visitor into regarding me as an individual.

“I am sorry,” I would say, “but I have been forced to make it a rule never to do houses costing less than $10,000—but won’t you sit down for a moment. Perhaps I may be able to give you a few ideas....”

Theatrical tactics? Of course—but I had to win a hearing, a chance to present my wares and prove my ability. And I knew that nothing so impresses the average American as the illusion of financial success, especially if that success is encountered in an unexpected quarter. The trick worked. Frequently it gave me needed clients.

My success during those first few years was founded largely upon my willingness—anxiety would be a better word—to accept commissions which were rejected as too small by other, more favored, architects. I could not compete successfully for big jobs; consequently, I tried to make the most of small house design. I labored over the plans for a $15,000 residence as diligently as I do today on the plans for a huge mansion, and the practical experience that I gained by working under such rigid cost limitations has been invaluable to me. I learned to make the most of every dollar that went into the construction of a building. I built a clientele which prospered with the mushroom growth of Los Angeles, and many of those for whom I planned small houses have since come to me for the design of expensive homes and buildings.

The weight of my racial handicap forced me, willy-nilly, to develop salesmanship. The average, well-established white architect, secure in his social connections, might be able to rest his hopes on his final plans; I, on the contrary, had to devote as much thought and ingenuity to winning an adequate first hearing as to the execution of the detailed drawings. Some of my simple ruses proved surprisingly effective.

For example—I spent hours learning to draw upside-down. Then, with a prospective client seated across the desk from me, I would rapidly begin to sketch the living room of his house. Invariably his interest would be excited by the trick. But it was more than a trick, for, as the room developed before his eyes, I would ask for suggestions and for approval of my own ideas. He became a full partner in the birth of that room as I filled in the details of the drawing.

My first residence costing more than $100,000 was designed for a famous automobile manufacturer. When I first met him, I did not know whether or not he shared the common prejudice against my color. I feared that he did, and I tried to devise some way of capturing his interest. He had telephoned and informed me, with his characteristic abruptness, that he had acquired a property in Beverly Hills and intended to build a new residence. Would I meet him and view the site—immediately? I tried to defer the appointment until the following day, but finally gave away before his insistence. On the strength of our telephone conversation, I judged that he worshiped prompt action.

After we had gone over the building site, he warned me that he had already discussed plans with a number of other architects and demanded to know how soon I could submit preliminary drawings.

“By four o’clock tomorrow afternoon,” I answered.

“Why, that’s impossible!” he cried. “Every other architect has asked for two or three weeks!” He regarded me shrewdly for a moment. “Go ahead,” he said.

I delivered those preliminary plans by the scheduled hour—but I did not tell him that I had worked for twenty-two hours, without sleeping or eating.

Virtually everything pertaining to my professional life, during those early years, was influenced by my need to offset race prejudice....

Occasionally, I encountered irreconcilables who simply refused to give me a hearing, but, on the whole, I have been treated with an amazing fairness. I have been rewarded on the just basis of my own ability—perhaps a bit more richly than my ability deserves, for it is an amusing irony that, with success, my color has a certain publicity value. I am a freak.

Since first establishing my office, I have done only a few jobs for clients of my own race. All of my other work has been done for white clients, and for more than five years I have been obliged to refuse at least 25 per cent of the commissions offered me. At the moment, I have 13 draftsmen working in my Los Angeles office and we are executing plans for 33 buildings—business structures, large apartments, and private dwellings. During recent years, commissions have come to me, not only from southern California, but from many other sections of the United States as well. Not long ago I designed, with a feeling of pride which any member of my race would share, a large residence for a socially prominent family in the deep South.

I am, of course, grateful for the tolerance and understanding which have permitted my professional success, but I am even more grateful for the unusual opportunities which that success has given me to enjoy intellectual contact with the finest representatives of the white race.

Each day, in my office, I consult with men and women who are leaders in the financial, intellectual, and cultural worlds. An exchange of ideas occurs. From the moment when the first sketch is conceived until the day when the building stands complete, there is, of necessity, a close bond between client and architect. To be sincere in my work, I must design homes, not houses. I must take into consideration each family’s mode of living, its present economic problems and its probable economic future, its entertainment needs.

INEVITABLY, such contacts have influenced my beliefs about the relationship, present and future, between the races in America.... If I could have the privilege of shouting in a voice that could be heard from border to border of this nation, I would cry:

“Negroes—WAKE UP! The emancipation which was given you was only an opportunity. Real emancipation lies in your own intellectual effort!”

And I would also cry:

“White people—WAKE UP! A race is beginning to stir beneath your feet and to demand a place in the sun—its place, mind you, not yours!”When I look about me and see the magnificent strides which so many men and women of my race are making, when I see the sacrifices they are undergoing in order to help other members of our race who deserve and need help, and when, remembering the burden of my own handicap, I realize the burden of theirs, it seems to me that the race problem is one of easy solution, indeed.

At such times I am ashamed of the shame I once felt because...

I am a Negro.