called Program Outreach. “For example, the program’s reports categorize some scouts as ‘Feeble-minded, Delinquency Areas, Orphanages and Settlements.’ Many of the scouts in ‘Delinquent Areas’ were blacks, who were measured as ‘Special Troops,’ ” according to the Registry.

The most blatant discrimination was faced by black scouts in the South, where they were often not allowed to wear the Boy Scout uniform and were allotted lower budgets, according to the Registry. But even tepid support for black troops could subject the local councils to vicious threats from the Ku Klux Klan, which denounced the entire scouting movement as a “puppet” of the Catholic Church.

A Registry report concludes with a mixed verdict on BSA’s racial history: “It is telling that an organization like Boy Scouts of America, dedicated from its inception to raising men of high moral strength and conviction, supported racism. But at the same time, on a national and local level, the Scouts did have certain leaders that pressed against the grain of society for racial change,” the report says.

BSA has made great strides toward diversity. Nowadays, the Web site contains links explaining how to adapt scouting for for Hispanic, Buddhist, and Islamic boys. Jewish scouts have an extra set of merit badges they can earn through studying their culture and faith. The section on African American scouting offers advice to anyone trying to establish a Cub Scout pack or Boy Scout troop in a black community, and holds up as an example the Hawk Mountain Council in Reading, Pa., where minority membership has increased dramatically, due in large part to a series of barbecue dinners used to recruit adult volunteers. The program has led to the founding of Cub Scout troops in three inner-city elementary schools, with standing requests from nine more.

Scoutreach, BSA’s program targeting inner-city youth, got a black eye in 2005 when an independent investigation of the Atlanta Area Council discovered that officials had claimed more than 10,000 boys

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