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<h1> THE COLORED PEOPLE<br/> OF CHICAGO</h1>
<p><span class="xlarge">AN INVESTIGATION</span></p>
<p><small>MADE FOR</small></p>
<p><span class="xlarge">The Juvenile Protective Association</span></p>
<p><small>BY</small></p>
<p>A. P. DRUCKER<br/>
SOPHIA BOAZ<br/>
A. L. HARRIS<br/>
MIRIAM SCHAFFNER</p>
<p><small>TEXT BY</small><br/>
LOUISE DE KOVEN BOWEN<br/>
<small>1913</small></p>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<h2 class="nobreak">The Colored People of<br/> Chicago</h2></div>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Colored People<br/>
in County Jail</b></div>
<p>In the course of an investigation recently
made by the Juvenile Protective Association
of Chicago upon the conditions of
boys in the County Jail, the Association was much startled
by the disproportionate number of colored boys and
young men; for although the colored people of Chicago
approximate 1/40 of the entire population, 1/8 of the boys
and young men and nearly 1/3 of the girls and
young women who had been confined in the jail during
the year were negroes.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Maids in<br/>
Houses of Prostitution</b></div>
<p>The Association had previously been impressed
with the fact that most of the
maids employed in houses of prostitution
were colored girls and that many employment
agencies quite openly sent them there, although
they would not take the risk of sending a white girl to
a place where, if she was forced into a life of prostitution,
the agency would be liable to a charge of pandering.</p>
<p>In an attempt to ascertain the causes which would
account for a great amount of delinquency among the
colored boys and the public opinion which would so carelessly
place the virtue of a colored girl in jeopardy, the
Juvenile Protective Association found itself involved in a
study of the industrial and social status of the colored
people of Chicago.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Morality and<br/>
Environment</b></div>
<p>While the morality of every young person
is closely bound up with that of his
family and his immediate environment,
this is especially true of the sons and daughters of colored
families who, because they continually find the door of
opportunity shut in their faces, are more easily forced
back into their early environment however vicious it may
have been. The enterprising young people in immigrant
families who have passed through the public schools and
are earning good wages, continually succeed in moving
their entire households into more prosperous neighborhoods
where they gradually lose all trace of their tenement-house
experiences. On the contrary, the colored
young people, however ambitious, find it extremely difficult
to move their families or even themselves into desirable
parts of the city and to make friends in these
surroundings.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>The First Negro<br/>
in Chicago</b></div>
<p>Because the fate of the young people
was thus so inextricably a part of the
life of the colored people in Chicago,
the investigators found themselves studying the entire
history of the negro on the shores of Lake Michigan,
following it to the very beginning where it is said the
first cabin was built in 1779, by a negro from San
Domingo.</p>
<p>Slavery, of course, prevailed in Illinois just as
everywhere else in the Northwest Territory, having
been introduced during the French occupation and allowed
to continue under the English. When, by an
act of Congress, in 1787, slavery was forever prohibited
“northwest of the Ohio River,” this act was so
strenuously objected to in the territory of Illinois that
it was construed to refer only to the introduction of
new slaves, not to the emancipation of those already
in slavery. When Illinois became a state in 1818, its
compromise constitution forbade perpetual slavery, but
allowed indenture for twenty-five years of service.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Illinois Liberal<br/>
in Slave Time</b></div>
<p>Although the state of Illinois was
bound by this compromise, the early
city of Chicago itself was most liberal
to the negro, as the following incident illustrates: In
1842 an industrious and well behaved colored man in
Chicago was arrested on the ground of being in the
state without a “free certificate.” He was taken before
a judge who promptly committed him to jail, to be sold
at auction if no owner turned up. In the meantime,
friends of the colored man printed handbills announcing
that “A man will be sold at auction next Monday
morning in the jail,” and distributed them on Sunday
among the church-goers. When the sheriff brought
out his “ware” on Monday to auction him off, he faced
an angry and scowling audience and when he began
his auctioneering, he found that no bids were forthcoming.
“What will you bid for a strong man who
can do all kinds of work?” he called again and again,
but meeting with no response he threatened to take
his man back to jail and lock him up. This threat had
the desired effect and he received a solitary bid of
twenty-five cents from Mr. M. C. Ogden, a prominent
man in the early life of Chicago. The purchaser then
addressed the colored man in the presence of the crowd
and assured him that he was free to go where he
pleased.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Chicago Police<br/>
Did Not Aid<br/>
in Fugitive<br/>
Slave Law</b></div>
<p>The passing of the fugitive slave law
in Congress in 1850, created a great
excitement in Chicago when the colored
people of the city met in convention
and resolved “not to fly to Canada,
but to remain and defend themselves.” A few days
later the City Council passed a resolution that the city
police should not be required to aid in the recovery
of slaves.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Colored Children<br/>
Admitted<br/>
to Public<br/>
Schools in 1873</b></div>
<p>In 1854 Stephen A. Douglas was hooted
off a Chicago platform when he tried
to speak for his pro-slavery resolution
in the Senate. From that day Chicago
took a leading place in the anti-slavery
fight, but it was not until 1872 that all laws discriminating
against the colored people were taken off the
Illinois statute books. In the next year, 1873, the
colored children were by statute allowed to attend the
public schools of the city.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>High School<br/>
Education of<br/>
No Value</b></div>
<p>Although no separate schools have ever
been established in Chicago, it was
found that many colored young people
become discouraged in regard to a
“high school education” because of the tendency of the
employers who use colored persons at all in their business
to assign them to the most menial labor.</p>
<p>Many a case on record in the Juvenile Protective
Association tells the tale of an educated young negro
who failed to find employment as a stenographer, bookkeeper,
or clerk. One rather pathetic story is of a boy
graduated from a technical high school last spring.
He was sent with other graduates of his class to a big
electric company where, in the presence of all his
classmates he was told that “niggers are not wanted
here.” The Association has on record another instance
where a graduate of a business college was refused a
position under similar circumstances. This young
man in response to an advertisement went to a large
firm to ask for a position as clerk. “We take colored
help only as laborers,” he was told by the manager of
a firm supposed to be friendly to the negroes.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Business Colleges<br/>
and Industrial<br/>
Schools<br/>
Discriminate<br/>
Against the<br/>
Colored People</b></div>
<p>All the leading business colleges in
Chicago, except one, frankly discriminate
against negro students. The one
friendly school at present among
twelve hundred white students has
only two colored students, but its
records show as many as thirty colored
students in the past. The manager, however, claims
that his business has suffered in consequence of his
friendliness to the negro. Even the superintendent of
the Illinois Industrial School for Boys at St. Charles
complains that it is not worth while to teach trades to
the colored boys in his institution because it is so very
difficult for a skilled colored man to secure employment.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Resulting Reaction<br/>
Against
Education</b></div>
<p>This reaction against education is one
of the indirect results of the difficulties
which young colored people encounter
in their efforts to find work. The investigators
considered this difficulty one of the gravest
features in the entire situation, affecting alike most
disastrously all of the colored people in Chicago.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Uncongenial<br/>
Employment<br/>
Often Cause of<br/>
Criminality</b></div>
<p>From the interviews with all the boys
in the jail it was clear that the lack of
congenial and remunerative employment
had been a determining factor in
their tendency to criminality, but because
the colored boys suffered under an additional
handicap and because the opportunities for work are
the essentials for all economic progress, the entire
investigation had much to do with the basic question
of employment.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Labor Unions<br/>
and the<br/>
Colored Man</b></div>
<p>The colored man believes that the Labor
Unions discriminate against him,
either openly or secretly; a few of the
organizations have a clause in their
constitutions stating that whites alone are eligible to
membership, but most of them allow the colored man
to pay his initiation fee and become a member; they,
however, take no pains to secure him a place, and when
he finds it difficult to find work because the contractor
and his fellow workmen discriminate against him and
only gets a job here and there, he is frequently tempted
to work with “scabs,” and after several fines for this
infringement of rules he drops out of the union. The
investigators found that this was not the exception,
but the rule. Mechanics who are members of the building
trades do not complain because they have been refused
membership in the unions, but because they are
discriminated against when it comes to working in a
building, although this discrimination is not extended
to the unskilled colored man. Therefore, while many
colored mechanics who come to Chicago for work return
to the South where there are fewer unions and
white men more willingly work with colored men,
this return to the South almost never occurs among
the unskilled.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>An Attempt to<br/>
Compel Admission<br/>
to Labor<br/>
Unions</b></div>
<p>The investigators found that a movement
was being discussed among the
colored people in Chicago to organize
unions for colored artisans to act as
strike-breakers whenever possible, until
the American Federation of Labor asked them to
join the white unions. This, of course, is the very
worst thing they could possibly do, as the colored people
in Chicago have not yet recovered from the animosity
excited against them during the stock yards
strike when colored men from the South were imported
as strike breakers. The colored people themselves
believe that their difficulty in finding work is
often due to the objection of the employers to treating
the colored man with the respect which a skilled mechanic
would command. Certainly the colored laborer
is continually driven to lower kinds of occupation which
are gradually being discarded by the white man.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Corporations<br/>
Usually Refuse<br/>
Employment</b></div>
<p>Certainly the investigators found that
the great corporations, for one reason
or another, refused to employ negroes.
Department stores, express companies
and the public utility companies employ very few colored
people. Out of the 3,795 men employed in Chicago
by the eight leading express companies, only
twenty-one were colored men. Fifteen of these were
porters. The investigators found no colored men in
Chicago employed as boot and shoe makers, glove
makers, bindery workers, garment workers’ trades in
factories, cigar box makers, elevated railroad employes,
neckware trades, suspender makers and printers. No
colored women are employed in dressmaking, cap making,
lingerie, or corset making. The two reasons given
for this non-employment by the employers are first,
the refusal of the white employes to work with the
colored people; second, that the “colored help” is
slower and not so efficient as the white. Some employers
solve the second difficulty by paying the colored
help less. In the laundries, for instance, where
colored people do the same work as the white, the
latter average a dollar a week more.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>The Field of<br/>
Undesirable<br/>
Occupations</b></div>
<p>The effect of these restrictions upon
the negroes are, first, that they are
crowded into undesirable and underpaid
occupations. As an example,
about 12 per cent of the colored men in Chicago work
in saloons and pool-rooms. Second, there is a greater
competition in a limited field with a consequent tendency
to lower the already low wages. Third, the
colored women are forced to go to work to help earn
the family living; this occurs so universally as to affect
the entire family and social life of the negro colony.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Pullman Company<br/>
the Largest<br/>
Employer of<br/>
Colored Men</b></div>
<p>A large number of negroes are employed
on the railroads, largely due to
the influence of the Pullman Palace Car
Company. There is a tradition among
colored people that Mr. Pullman inserted
a clause in his will urging the company to
employ colored men on the trains whenever possible,
but while the investigators found 1,849 Pullman porters
living in Chicago, they counted 7,625 colored men
working in saloons and pool rooms. There is also a
high percentage of them employed in the theaters,
more than one-fourth of all the employes in the leading
theaters of Chicago being colored men.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Contrast Between<br/>
Employment<br/>
by Local<br/>
and Federal<br/>
Government</b></div>
<p>The Federal Government has always
been a large employer of colored labor;
9 per cent of the force in all the Federal
departments are negroes. In Chicago
the percentage of colored men is higher.
Out of a total of 8,012 men, 755 or 10.61 per cent of the
whole are colored, approximately their just proportion
to the population. The negroes, however, do not fare
so well in local government. A study made of the city
departments in Chicago showed the percentage of
colored employes to be 1.87 per cent, in Cook County
to be 1.88 per cent. Three colored men have also been
elected as County Commissioners, and there is said to
be no instance on record in Chicago of a negro office
holder having betrayed his trust.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>The Colored<br/>
Man in<br/>
Business</b></div>
<p>The investigators found, in regard to
the colored man in business: (1) That
the greater number of their enterprises
are the outgrowth of domestic and personal
service occupations. (2) That they are in
branches of business which call for small amounts of
capital and very little previous experience. There are
at present in the city of Chicago, managed by colored
men, twenty-three manufacturing establishments of
various kinds, seventy-two barber shops, sixty-three
van, moving, and storage places, fifty restaurants,
thirty-four pool rooms, twenty-six real estate dealers,
twenty-six tailors, twenty-five coal and wood dealers,
twenty-four hair dressers, twenty-three groceries,
twenty cigar venders, twelve builders and contractors,
eleven undertakers, nine printing plants, and eight
hotels, besides a small representation in forty-one other
lines of business.</p>
<p>Table showing number of colored men employed
by the city of Chicago:</p>
<p> </p>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
<tr><td>Department of Police</td><td class="tdr"> 83</td></tr>
<tr><td>Fire Department</td><td class="tdr"> 11</td></tr>
<tr><td>Corporation Counsel Office</td><td class="tdr"> 1</td></tr>
<tr><td>Health Department</td><td class="tdr"> 22</td></tr>
<tr><td>Board of Education, not including educational employes of the Board</td><td class="tdr"> 9</td></tr>
<tr><td>Department of Public Works</td><td class="tdr"> 32</td></tr>
<tr><td>Board of Local Improvement</td><td class="tdr"> 3</td></tr>
<tr><td>Mayor’s Office</td><td class="tdr"> 1</td></tr>
<tr><td>Municipal Court</td><td class="tdr"> 1</td></tr>
<tr><td>Municipal Court—Bailiffs’ Office</td><td class="tdr"> 1</td></tr>
<tr><td>Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium</td><td class="tdr"> 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Department of Smoke Inspection</td><td class="tdr"> 1</td></tr>
<tr><td>City Comptroller’s Office</td><td class="tdr"> 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Public Library</td><td class="tdr"> 23</td></tr>
<tr><td>Labor Service</td><td class="tdr"> 100</td></tr>
<tr><td> </td><td class="tdr"> ———</td></tr>
<tr><td>Total colored</td><td class="tdr"> 292</td></tr>
<tr><td>Total number employed</td><td class="tdr"> 15,597</td></tr>
<tr><td>Percentage colored</td><td class="tdr"> 1.87</td></tr>
</table>
<p> </p>
<p>In the colored belt on the South Side of Chicago,
there are a number of business houses managed by
colored people and patronized exclusively by members
of their own race. There is also one bank located
in a fine building of which a colored man is president
and 80 per cent of the depositors white. According
to the evidence confirmed by the figures of the
United States census, however, there is little possibility
for a colored business man to make a living solely from
the patronage of his own people. The census report
holds that he succeeds in business only when two-thirds
of his customers are white. This affords one
explanation of the fact that most of his business is of
such a character that a white man is willing to patronize
it—barber shops, expressing, restaurants, and other
business suggesting personal service.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>The Principal<br/>
Business Street<br/>
in the<br/>
“Black Belt”</b></div>
<p>In a mile on State street, from No. 3000
to 3900, the investigators found 108
colored men in business, who employed
270 colored men. Of these business
undertakings, twelve were saloons—most
of them newly opened; twelve barber shops;
seven real estate offices—only three of them ten years old;
ten restaurants—five of them having been there for
more than five years and two for more than ten years;
six pool rooms—all recently opened; four hair dressers,
and three tailors, in addition to confectioners, bakers,
cleaners, decorators, dressmakers, druggists and the
other miscellaneous shops usually found in a self-contained
neighborhood. As ministering to the higher
life, there were found in the same block three music
stores, one “art” store, one piano store, two printers,
and—if they may be included in such a list—a photographer
and a florist. All of the latter save one have
been in existence for more than five years, in sharp
contrast to the more ephemeral life of the pool rooms
and saloons, only one of which has survived so long,
while eleven others have changed proprietors recently.
This may be partly owing to the fact that it requires
very little money to run either, since both the breweries
and the pool room manufacturers readily accommodate
their salesmen with their goods and other fittings,
and many young colored men, who have been employed
in them, are ambitious themselves to become
proprietors. While in a measure the decency of such
a place depends upon the proprietor, he usually responds
to the pressure of the large concern who is his
creditor. The total amount of capital invested in the
mile by the 108 colored men was found to be $15,750.
In addition to the colored men carrying on business in
the mile were twenty-six Americans, seventy-nine
Jews, eighteen Germans, thirteen Irishmen, ten Greeks,
nine Chinamen, and six other white men whose nationality
was not ascertained. Several colored women
manage independent hair dressing establishments in
Chicago. On State street there are two successful
restaurants conducted by women; also one saloon
and one florist shop; two widows of their original owners.
There are a large proportion of real estate dealers
among colored men, many of whom do business
with white people, the negro dealer often becoming
the agent for houses which the white dealers refuse
to handle. Colored people are very eager to own their
own homes and many of them are buying small houses,
divided into two flats, living in one and collecting rent
from the other. The contract system prevails in Chicago,
making it possible for a man with two or three
hundred dollars for the first payment to enter into a
contract for the purchase of a piece of property, the
deed being held by the real estate man until the purchaser
pays the amount stipulated in the contract.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Four Colored<br/>
Settlements in<br/>
Chicago</b></div>
<p>As a careful study of the housing conditions
of colored people made by the
students of the Chicago School of
Civics and Philanthropy ascertained,
there are four well defined districts in which colored
people have resided for a number of years—one at
Englewood, one at 55th street and Lake avenue, one
on the West Side, and the largest, known as the “Black
Belt,” which includes the old 22nd street segregated
vice district. In this so-called “belt,” the number of
children is remarkably small, forming only a little
more than one-tenth of the population, while the
lodgers constitute 37 per cent of the population. The
investigation made by the School of Civics showed
that only 26 per cent of the houses on the South Side
and 36 per cent of the houses on the West Side colored
district were in good repair. Colored tenants reported
that they found it impossible to persuade their landlords
either to make the necessary repairs or to release
them from their contracts, but that it was so hard to
find places in which to live that they were forced to
endure unsanitary conditions. The investigation by
the School of Civics confirmed the general impression
that the rent paid by a negro is appreciably higher than
that paid by any other nationality. In a flat building
formerly occupied by white people, the white families
paid a rent of twelve dollars for a six-room apartment
for which a negro family are now paying sixteen dollars.
A white family paid seventeen dollars for an
apartment of seven rooms for which the negroes are
now paying twenty dollars.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Real Estate<br/>
and the Colored<br/>
Tenant</b></div>
<p>The negro real estate dealer frequently
offers to the owner of an apartment
house which is no longer renting advantageously
to white tenants cash
payment for a year’s lease on the property, thus guaranteeing
the owner against loss, and then he fills the
building with colored tenants. It is said, however,
that the agent does not put out the white tenants unless
he can get 10 per cent more from the colored people.
By this method the negroes now occupy many
large apartment buildings, but the negro real estate
agents obtain the reputation of exploiting their own
race.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Lodgers a<br/>
Necessity</b></div>
<p>High rents among the colored people,
as everywhere else, force the families
to take in lodgers. Nearly one-third of
the population in the district investigated on the South
Side and nearly one-seventh of the population in the district
investigated on the West Side were lodgers. While
this practice is always found dangerous to family life,
it is particularly so to the boys and girls of colored
families, who are often obliged to live near the vice districts.
To quote from the report, “The history of the
social evil in Chicago is intimately connected with the
colored population. Invariably the larger vice districts
have been created within or near the settlements of
colored people. In the past history of the city nearly
every time a new vice district was created downtown
or on the South Side, the colored families within the
district moved in just ahead of the prostitutes.”</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Difficulties of<br/>
Buying<br/>
Property</b></div>
<p>When it becomes possible for the colored
people of a better class to buy
property in a good neighborhood, so
that they may take care of their children
and live respectably, there are often protest meetings
among the white people in the vicinity and sometimes
even riots. A striking example of the latter occurred
within the past three years on the West Side
of Chicago; a colored woman bought a lot near a small
park, upon which she built a cottage. It was not until
she moved into the completed house that the neighbors
discovered that a colored family had acquired
property there. They immediately began a crusade of
insults and threats. When this brought no results, a
“night raid” company was organized. In the middle
of the night a masked band broke into the house; told
the family to keep quiet or they would be murdered;
then they tore down the newly built house, destroying
everything in it. This is, of course, an extreme instance,
but there have been many similar to it. Quite
recently at Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago, animosity
against negro residents resulted in the organization of
an anti-negro committee which requested the dismissal
of all negroes who were employed in the town as
gardeners, janitors, etc., because the necessity of housing
their families depressed real estate values.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Housing of the<br/>
Well-to-Do<br/>
Colored People</b></div>
<p>The Juvenile Protective Association, as
a supplement to the previous housing
investigations, studied the conditions of
fifty of the better homes occupied by
the colored people of Chicago. Those in the so-called
“black belt” in the city; those in a suburban district,
and other houses situated in blocks in which only one
or two colored families lived. The size of the houses
varied from five to fourteen rooms, averaging eight
rooms each; the conditions of the houses inside and
out compared favorably with similar houses occupied
by white families. Classified according to occupation,
the heads of the household in nine cases were railroad
porters, the next largest number were janitors, then
waiters, and among them were found lawyers, physicians
and clergymen. In only four instances was the
woman of the house working outside the home. Only
four of the homes took in lodgers, and children were
found in only fifteen of the fifty families studied. The
total of thirty-three children found in the fifty homes averages
but two-thirds of a child for each family and but
for one family—a janitor living in a ten-room house and
having eight children—the average would have been but
half a child for a family; confirming the statement
often made that while the poorer colored people in the
agricultural districts of the South, like the poor Italians
in rural Italy, have very large families, when they
move to the city and become more prosperous, the
birth rate among colored people falls below that of the
average prosperous American family.</p>
<p>From the homes situated in white neighborhoods,
only two reported “indignation meetings when they
moved in” and added “quiet now”; one other reported
“no affiliation with white neighbors”; still another,
“white neighbors visit in time of sickness,” and the
third was able to say “neighbors friendly.” Of the
ownership of the fifty homes, thirty-five were owned
by colored men, twelve by white landlords and the
ownership of three was not ascertained. Thirty-four
of the houses were occupied by their owners.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Few Prosperous<br/>
Colored Men<br/>
Born in Chicago</b></div>
<p>In addition to the fifty families living
in comfortable houses, one hundred
more cases of fairly prosperous colored
families were investigated. It was
found that only six of the heads of these families had
been born in Chicago, that seventy-seven had come
from the South. All of the southern states were represented.
Twenty-four of the men were from Kentucky
and nineteen from Tennessee. Only six of the ninety-two
men born outside of the state had been brought to
Chicago as children, while seventy-one of the number
had come to the city between the ages of sixteen and
twenty-six. They, as well as the older men, had come
hoping for better conditions, their reasons being variously
put as “higher wages,” “learning a trade,” “to
get a home,” “to make big money,” “to get a position,”
“for more freedom,” “for more schooling,” etc., although
in nineteen cases the reason given was curiosity, an
attempt doubtless to formulate the desire for adventure.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Prosperity<br/>
Does Not Remove<br/>
Race<br/>
Prejudice</b></div>
<p>Of the men from the South every one
had improved his condition. Those who
said their condition had not improved
had been formerly working in the large
cities of the East or North, where living
expenses were less than in Chicago; only one received
lower wages in Chicago. He had earned sixteen
dollars a week before coming to the city and now earns
nine dollars; two said their conditions had not improved
because they “had been led off by fast company.”
The incomes varied from $9.00 a month
to $153.60 a month; the average wage was $67.32 a
month. Sixteen of the men owned real estate and six
others had liberal bank accounts. These results probably
compare favorably with one hundred white immigrants,
but the colored man insists that the immigrant
has the advantage for, when he learns the language of
the country and adopts American ways, he gradually
lives down any prejudice against him, while the colored
man can never make himself acceptable to the
white man and believes that he is often disliked in
proportion to his prosperity.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Family Life<br/>
Among the<br/>
Poorer Negroes</b></div>
<p>In contrast to these one hundred cases
of negro men who were fairly successful,
one hundred cases of colored families
were taken from the files of the
Juvenile Protective Association representing, of course,
as do the white families whose names are on the records
of the Association, people who were unable to
adequately protect their children. These cases, however,
proved to be typical in so far as the occupations
of the men were confined to very few lines of activity.
Forty-five of them were porters, sixteen janitors, thirteen
laborers, the rest scattered in different kinds of
work—teamsters, waiters, cooks, musicians, etc. The
striking difference between them and the more prosperous
families lay in the fact that the women were obliged
to work. Of the women in these families, only fourteen
stayed at home; of the others, twenty-six were day
workers in households; twelve worked in laundries;
seven were prostitutes; the others worked at various
occupations; two were hairdressers; one a music
teacher, etc. Of the one hundred families, thirty were
self supporting; sixteen did not support their families
at all, while fifty-four were dependent on outside assistance.
In regard to their family status, sixty-six
lived an unbroken family life; in twenty-one cases the
husband and wife were separated; seven women were
deserted; there were three cases of illegal relationship.
Out of the one hundred cases, there were seven inter-marriages;
in two instances white men had married
colored women; in five instances white women had
married colored men.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>86 Mothers Out<br/>
of 100 Go Out<br/>
to Work</b></div>
<p>Out of the one hundred poor families
taken from the Juvenile Protective Association
records, it was found that
eighty-six of the women went out to
work and, while there is no doubt that this number is
abnormally high, it is always easier for a colored
woman to find work than it is for a colored man,
partly because white people have the traditions of
colored servants and partly because there is a steadier
demand and a smaller supply of household workers,
wash and scrub women, than there is of the kind of
unskilled work done by men. Even here colored people
are discriminated against, and although many are
employed in highly respectable families, there is a
tendency to engage them in low-class hotels and other
places where white women do not care to go.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Percentage of<br/>
Colored Women<br/>
Working</b></div>
<p>No figures are available later than
1900, but in a governmental report
made then, the colored women in Chicago
constituted 42.5 per cent of the
bread-winners of their race, slightly lower than the
43.2 per cent given in the census report for the entire
United States. This is more than double the proportion
of white women employed, which the census gives
as 20.6 per cent of the entire white population. Only
.04 per cent of working white women are married.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>School Irregularity<br/>
Common<br/>
Among Colored<br/>
Children</b></div>
<p>As 60 per cent of negro working
women over sixteen years of age are
married, there is no doubt that many
colored children are neglected. Investigators
found from consultation
with the principals of the schools largely attended by
colored children that they are irregular in attendance
and often tardy; that they are eager to leave school
at an early age, although in one school where there is
a great deal of manual work this tendency is less pronounced.
Colored children, more than any others, are
kept at home to care for younger members of the
family while the mother is away at work. A very persistent
violation of the compulsory education law recently
tried in the Municipal Court disclosed the fact
that a colored brother and sister were alternately kept
out of school to care for the younger children, who
had been refused admittance in a day nursery, that the
old woman who cared for the little household for
twenty-five cents a day was ill and that the mother
had been obliged to keep the older children at home in
order to retain her place in a laundry. At the very
best the school attendance of her five children had been
most unsatisfactory, for she left home every morning
at half-past six and the illiterate old woman took little
interest in school. The lack of home discipline perhaps
accounts for the indifference to all school interests
on the part of many colored children, although this
complaint is not made of those in the high schools who
come from more prosperous families. The most striking
difference in the health of the colored children
compared to that of the white children in the same
neighborhood was the larger proportion of the cases
of rickets, due, of course, to malnutrition and neglect.
The colored people themselves believe the school authorities
are more interested in a school whose patronage
is predominantly white.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>No Congenial<br/>
Employment for<br/>
Refined Girls</b></div>
<p>It was found that young colored girls,
like the boys, often become desperately
discouraged in their efforts to find employment.
High school girls of refined
appearance, after looking for weeks, will find nothing
open to them in department stores, office buildings,
or manufacturing establishments, save a few positions
as maids in the women’s waiting rooms. Such girls
find it continually assumed by the employment agencies
to whom they apply for positions that they are
willing to serve as domestics in low class hotels and
disreputable houses. Of course, the agency does not
explain the character of the place to which the girl
is sent, but on going to one address after another she
finds that they are all of this kind. Quite recently an
intelligent colored girl who had kept a careful record
of her experiences with three employment agencies
came to the office of the Juvenile Protective Association
to see what might be done to protect colored girls
less experienced and self-reliant than herself, against
similar temptations. Quite recently a young colored
girl who at the age of fifteen had been sent to a house
of prostitution by an employment agency, was rescued
from the house, treated in a hospital and sent to her
sister in a western state. She there married a respectable
man and is now living in a little home “almost
paid for.”</p>
<p>The case of Eliza M., who has worked as a cook in
a disreputable house for ten years is that of a woman
forced into vicious surroundings. In addition to her
wages of five dollars a week and food, which she is
permitted to take home every evening to her family,
she has been able to save her generous “tips” for the
education of her three children, for whom she is very
ambitious.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Insults to Girls<br/>
Common</b></div>
<p>Colored young women who are manicurists
and hairdressers find it continually
assumed that they will be willing
to go to hotels under compromising conditions, and
when a decent girl refuses to go, she is told that that
is all that she can expect. There is no doubt that the
few colored girls who find positions as stenographers
or bookkeepers are much more open to insult than
white girls in similar positions.</p>
<p>All these experiences tend to discourage the young
people from that “education” which their parents so
eagerly desire for them and also makes it extremely
difficult for them to maintain their standards of self-respect.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Life Insurance<br/>
Popular</b></div>
<p>It was found that colored people in Chicago
do not patronize these life insurance
companies so successfully managed
by colored men in Atlanta and in other cities.
The investigators, however, found many colored agents
employed as solicitors among their own people; two
hundred colored agents, for instance, are writing policies
for accident insurance companies. The Metropolitan
Life Insurance Company alone has approximately
65,000 industrial policies on the lives of colored people
in the city of Chicago, many colored people having
more than one policy on every member of the family.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Many Professional<br/>
Men of<br/>
High Standard</b></div>
<p>Chicago has a large number of fine
negro professional men; this is due
largely to the number of schools and
universities accessible to the negro’s
use. There are in Chicago sixty-five colored physicians,
four of whom are women; twenty-five lawyers;
eighteen dentists; twelve pharmacists, with many students
in attendance at the universities and professional
schools. One of the physicians is on the staff of St.
Luke’s hospital and others are responsible for the fine
medical work carried on at the Provident Hospital,
the leading hospital for colored people in the United
States. The colored people are justly proud of this
hospital, founded in 1891, where there is no discrimination
between white and colored people, on the staff of
physicians and nurses, nor among the patients. The
hospital is managed by a board of trustees of fourteen
members—six white and eight colored, and has a good
standing among the hospitals of Chicago. Although
colored women have an aptitude for nursing, there
are not enough training schools in the country where
they can be properly trained as nurses, such as the Provident
Hospital in Chicago; the Freedmen’s Hospital
in Washington, D. C.; the Lincoln Hospital in New
York, and one in Philadelphia. One of the colored
dentists of Chicago is a leader in his profession. His
practice is exclusively among white people. Two
colored dentists are women. Several of the colored
lawyers have been in the State’s Attorney’s office, one
of them an assistant there from 1896 to 1911, was most
active in bettering conditions for the juvenile offenders;
still another colored man was District United
States Attorney for some years, and several negro
lawyers have been admitted to Supreme Court practice.
One of the prominent colored lawyers who was
for five years head of the department of the city damage
suits, has become a specialist in “track elevation
suits” with big corporations as his clients.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Physicians and<br/>
Lawyers Real<br/>
Factors in Social<br/>
Improvement</b></div>
<p>The colored people often state that the
colored professional men, lawyers and
physicians, rather than the ministers
and social workers, have been the real
factors in the social improvement
among the negroes of Chicago. They
instance that the Frederick Douglas Center has
staunch supporters among the professional men; that
the president of their newly built Y. M. C. A. is a
colored physician and that professional men are very
active in the Chicago branch of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Musicians of<br/>
Prominence</b></div>
<p>Among the many colored musicians in
Chicago are at least a score who may
be called professionals; two of them
direct orchestras; one is a pianist of local reputation;
at least four of them singing in vaudeville are also
composers of songs; two are young colored women
who have extensively traveled as singers in Cuba and
South America as well as in the United States. Every
year several young people graduate at the various
musical colleges, and a gifted young violinist is now
studying in Paris. The Art Institute often has colored
students, and there are a goodly number of colored
people who write creditable poetry, chiefly words to
songs which are set to music by their friends. Four
newspapers edited in Chicago by colored men, as well
as contributions to the “Crisis” and other magazines,
give evidence of a remarkable ability for writing. In
addition to several clergymen and attorneys of undoubted
forensic ability, may be cited several lecturers,
one of them a woman with a gift for public speaking,
who years ago roused interest throughout England in
the condition of colored people.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Church Chief<br/>
Factor in<br/>
Social Life</b></div>
<p>The church among the colored people
has always been the chief factor in
their social life. In Chicago there
are twenty-nine regularly organized
churches in addition to various missions, with approximately
twenty thousand members. This includes
nearly half of the colored population of the city, a
much larger proportion than the church membership
among the white population. The churches own property
to the amount of six hundred thousand dollars,
although every church is carrying a debt. The church
is a center for the colored people for lectures, literary
societies, civic meetings, and so forth. Many churches
have young people’s societies, meeting every Sunday
afternoon, united to the extent of sustaining in Chicago
an annual oratorical contest to which they all send
representatives. Two of the churches, one on the
South Side and one on the West Side, at one time carried
on institutional work, which has been discontinued
because of lack of funds; one of the Baptist churches
supports a religious training school which has eleven
teachers and one hundred and fifty students. The
clergymen are, as a rule, men who have been educated
in some of the best northern and southern theological
seminaries, but they are inclined to be sectarian and to
confine themselves to the conventional church routine.
The colored ministers of one denomination seldom
meet with the colored ministers of another denomination
and almost never with the white ministers of
their own denomination. They complain that they
meet with public approval when they work for the
religious advancement of their own race, but are rebuffed
when they enter into general movements for
civic betterment.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Young Men’s<br/>
Christian<br/>
Association</b></div>
<p>A Young Men’s Christian Association
building in Chicago represents the
largest investment ever made by that
association to be devoted to the interests
of colored men and boys. Its entire cost approximates
$195,000. It contains the standard equipment of
gymnasium, restaurant, dormitories, etc., and has a
membership of 2,000, although the annual fee is ten
dollars.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Juvenile Officers<br/>
and Social<br/>
Workers</b></div>
<p>Among the colored social workers of
the city are five Juvenile Protection
Officers and one Adult Probation Officer.
The county agent employed one
colored investigator and the Juvenile Protective Association
one colored officer; there are three colored
nurses employed by the Visiting Nurses’ Association,
and three others upon the staff of the public school
nurses. The standard of all these social workers is as
high as the average, and several of them—notably two
young women living at the Wendell Phillips Settlement,
have taken the full course at the Chicago School
of Civics and Philanthropy. The colored people themselves
feel that there is urgent need for more trained
social workers. The clubs of colored women which
are beginning to study the social needs of their districts
urge their members to more serious study; of
these clubs the Civic Club is devoted to rescue work,
the Phyllis Wheatley Club to maintaining a permanent
home for colored working girls, the Parents’ School
Club to securing better school conditions, a Neighborhood
Club to making local improvements. Several
other women’s clubs, which take care of special cases
in need of relief and co-operate with the United Charities,
are eager for guidance as to the best method of
Charitable administration. There are forty-one clubs
of colored women in the city, with a total membership
of 1,200, most of them devoted to philanthropy and
closely allied to the women’s aid societies found in
all the colored churches. Two clubs for colored women
are of a somewhat different character, federated with
the Cook County League of Women’s Clubs and co-operate
in general social movements.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Social<br/>
Settlements</b></div>
<p>There are four settlements in Chicago
in or near the neighborhoods of colored
people. The pioneer was the Frederick
Douglas Center on the South Side of Chicago, founded
to promote a better understanding between white and
colored people and to help remove the arbitrary disabilities
from which the latter suffer in their civil,
political and industrial life. The founder and head resident,
who had for years been troubled by the increasing
race antagonism against the colored people, believes
that much can be accomplished by a frank discussion
of the situation between the two races if it be carried
on with justice and good will; cases of unusual discrimination
are often arbitrated and adjusted.</p>
<p>The Wendell Phillips settlement was also organized
by a board of white and colored people who were
concerned over the conditions obtaining in the colored
district on the West Side of the city. Two young colored
women, graduates of Fiske University, are in
charge and have developed an excellent system of
clubs and classes. Both of these settlements own their
own property.</p>
<p>The Negro Fellowship League was founded as an
outgrowth of the discussion following the Springfield
riots, when it was said that the difficulty arose from
idle young men out of work, maintains a reading room,
a lodging house, and an employment agency on State
street in the midst of the “Black Belt.” The League
performs many offices for the colored men who have
newly arrived in Chicago similar to those of the League
for the Protection of Immigrants; in fact, the needs of
the two classes of people are similar in many respects,
implying lack of adjustment rather than lack of ability.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Enterprise Institute on State street has classes
in various lines, at present numbering 150 pupils.
There are in Chicago an entire group of institutions
which have arisen as colored people were discriminated
against in existing institutions, such as the Home for
the Widows of Colored Soldiers and the Home for
the Aged, all supported by associations of colored
women.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Race Prejudice<br/>
Found Even in<br/>
Day Nurseries<br/>
and Dependent<br/>
Homes</b></div>
<p>A day nursery for colored children was
organized a year ago because several
day nurseries refused to receive colored
children on the ground that “the other
people objected to them.” There are
likewise five homes for colored dependent
children; two were the outgrowths of apparent
discrimination against colored children in two
state industrial schools receiving public funds, although
in the case of the Illinois Industrial School for
Girls, situated at Park Ridge, Illinois, the Institution
is responsible for the branch maintained in Chicago
for colored girls and defrays all expenses. The board
managers believe that this segregation is equally valuable
to both sets of children. The similar school for
boys at Glenwood, Illinois, does not maintain a separate
branch, but in various ways avoids taking colored
boys into the school. At the time of the investigation,
the Glenwood School contained 500 white boys and
fifteen colored boys, a number disproportionate to the
cases of colored boys brought into the Juvenile Court.
It is becoming a custom, on the part of many places,
to refuse colored children, with the cryptic utterance,
“We have no room.”</p>
<p>In order to provide for dependent and delinquent
colored children, a colored workman, previously a probation
officer, established the Louise Juvenile Home,
which cares for twenty dependent boys. The Eldridge
Home and the Marcy Home each provides for smaller
children. The Amanda Smith Home was founded by
an ex-slave with a remarkable gift for public speaking
and great religious devotion. She spent twelve years
in China, Japan and Africa under the auspices of the
English Missionary and Temperance Society. Returning
home to Chicago in 1900, she invested the savings
of her lifetime, ten thousand dollars, in the Home,
which is chartered under the provision of the industrial
school act. The Home cares for fifty children, but
since Mrs. Smith left, on account of ill health, it has
been greatly crippled for lack of funds. All of these
homes for colored children are supported wholly by
colored people. The Illinois Technical School for colored
girls is maintained in Chicago by the Catholic
Church; there are fifty-one girls in the school, ranging
from four to sixteen years of age and receiving most
excellent care. In spite of these various efforts, the care
for dependent and semi-delinquent colored children is
totally inadequate, a situation which is the more remarkable
as the public records all give a high percentage
of negro criminals; the police department gives 7.7
per cent; the Juvenile Court 6.5 per cent; the county
jail 10 per cent.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Those familiar with the police and the courts believe
that negroes are often arrested on excuses too
flimsy to hold a white man; that any negro who happens
to be near the scene of a crime or disorder is
promptly arrested and often convicted on evidence
upon which a white man would be discharged. The
Juvenile Protective Association has on record cases in
which negroes have been arrested without sufficient
cause and convicted on inadequate evidence, and it is
well known that a certain type of policeman, juryman,
and prosecuting attorney have apparently no scruples
in sending “a nigger up the road” on mere suspicion.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Negroes Frequently<br/>
Convicted on<br/>
Suspicion</b></div>
<p>To take one record from the files of the
Association, the case of George W., a
colored boy, nineteen years old, who
was born in Chicago and had attended
the public schools through one year at
the high school. He lived with his mother and had
worked steadily for three years as a porter in a large
grocery store, until August 22, 1912, when he was
arrested on the charge of rape. On the late afternoon
of that day an old woman of eighty-three was assaulted
by a negro and was saved from the horrible
attack only by the timely arrival of her daughter, who
so frightened the assailant that he jumped out of a
window. Two days later George was arrested, charged
with the crime. At the police station he was not allowed
to sleep; was beaten, cuffed and kicked, and
finally, battered and frightened, he confessed that he
had committed the crime. When he appeared in
court, his lawyer advised him to plead guilty, although
the boy explained that he had not committed the crime
and had confessed simply because he was forced to do
so. The evidence against him was so flimsy that the
judge referred to it in his instructions to the jury. The
State’s Attorney had failed to establish the ownership
of the cap dropped by the fleeing assailant and the
time of the attempted act was changed during the
testimony. Though the description given by the people
who saw the colored man running away did not
agree with George’s appearance, nevertheless the jury
brought in a verdict of guilty and the judge sentenced
the boy to fourteen years in the penitentiary. When
one of the men who had seen the guilty man running
away from the old woman’s house was asked why he
did not make his testimony more explicit, he replied,
“Oh, well, he’s only a nigger anyway.” The case was
brought to the Juvenile Protective Association by the
employer of George W., who, convinced of the boy’s
good character, felt that he had not had a fair trial.
The Association found that the boy could absolutely
prove an alibi at the time of the crime and is making
an effort to get him out of the penitentiary.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>A Man’s Fate<br/>
Decided in<br/>
Sixteen Minutes</b></div>
<p>Occasionally it happens that very little
time is given to a case where a negro
is concerned.</p>
<p>Some time ago a colored man was
arrested and charged with murder. He pleaded guilty
and was sentenced by the judge to imprisonment for
life in the penitentiary. It took just sixteen minutes
from the time the negro was brought into the court
to the time he left it, to have his case brought up, to
plead guilty and to have a sentence of lifelong imprisonment
pronounced. It surely seems as if such a
serious crime as the taking of life and the commitment
of a man to prison for as long as he lives, should at
least require less haste and more mature deliberation.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Economic Condition<br/>
Largest<br/>
Factor in<br/>
Production<br/>
of Crime</b></div>
<p>The reasons given by the leading colored
men of Chicago for the large
amount of crime among their people
are curiously confirmed by the results
of this investigation. They contend
that first, the negroes in Chicago are
so limited in the choice of employment that they under-bid
each other and are forced to work for the smallest
wages. This obliges the wife and mother to go out
to work and the consequent neglect of the children
leads to truancy, incorrigibility and crime. Second,
that the colored people of Chicago are obliged to pay
such a high rental that a large number of families are
forced to take in lodgers, which results in much immorality
and indecency among colored people who
would otherwise remain respectable. Third, that the
colored people are forced to make their homes in and
near the openly immoral districts of the city so that
the only white people many colored children ever see
are those frequenting the vice district. Fourth, the
disproportionate number of negro criminals is due to
the fact that their desire for the friendship and sympathy
of the white people is often exploited by white
criminals who wish to secure shelter from the police.
Some obscure colored family, happy to render a service
to a white man, takes him in sometimes for weeks
or months, and he naturally influences the colored men
with whom he associates.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Remedies<br/>
Suggested</b></div>
<p>As remedies against the unjust discrimination
against the colored man
suspected of crime, a leading attorney
of the race in Chicago suggests: (a) Generalizing
against the negro should cease; the fact that one negro
is bad should not fix criminality upon the race. The
race should be judged by its best as well as by its
worst types. (b) The public press never associates
the nationality of a criminal so markedly in its account
of crime as in the case of a negro. This exception is
most unjust and harmful and should not obtain. (c)
The negro should not be made the universal “scapegoat.”
When a crime is committed, the slightest pretext
starts the rumor of a “negro suspect” and flaming
headlines prejudice the public mind long after the
white criminal is found.</p>
<p>The colored man complains of race prejudice exhibited
first in the readiness to condemn the untried
negro as a criminal; second, in the refusal to give him
employment fitted to his skill and capacity; third, in
crowding the colored population into the most undesirable
houses in the city. He does not resent social
ostracism, but he does make a vigorous demand for his
civil and economic rights.</p>
<p>In order to test the many times repeated statement
that colored people are discriminated against at public
cafes, a young colored woman, at the request of the
investigators, visited sixteen of the leading confectioners
of Chicago in the most crowded portion of the city,
asking to be served with a cup of hot chocolate. In
every place she was served, always by white men or
women, and the white patrons seated at adjoining
tables paid no attention to her presence. At one place,
however, she was obliged to wait for a long time, but
was finally served without remark. At another place,
after waiting for twenty minutes, she was asked to
take a seat at the counter and told that white people
would not sit at the same table with her. At two other
places she fancied that she was made fun of by the
waiters, but in none of the places did she encounter
actual rudeness. Possibly this treatment would not
have been accorded to her at the hotels. Quite recently
the County Federation of women’s clubs arranged a
luncheon at one of the leading hotels of the city. When
the proprietor objected to the presence of the colored
delegates, the officers of the federation gave up the
luncheon rather than to countenance such discrimination,
although the objection was made so late that a
committee was obliged to stand at the door of the hotel
to tell the members that the luncheon had been given
up and the program postponed. Naturally some of
the delegates objected, but the large majority approved
the action of the officers in spite of the great inconvenience
involved.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Colored People<br/>
Especially Fond<br/>
of Music</b></div>
<p>All colored people are especially fond
of music, but almost the only outlet the
young people find for their musical
facility is in vaudeville shows, amusement
parks and inferior types of theaters. That which
should be a great source of inspiration tends to pull
them down, as their love of pleasure, lacking innocent
expression, draws them toward the vice district, where
alone the color line disappears.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Model Dance<br/>
Hall Opposed<br/>
by White<br/>
People</b></div>
<p>An effort was recently made by some
colored people on the South Side to
start a model dance hall. The white
people of the vicinity, assuming that
it would be an objectionable place, successfully
opposed it as a public nuisance and this effort
toward better recreation facilities had to be abandoned.</p>
<p> </p>
<div class="sidenote"><b>Colored Boys<br/>
Cannot Bathe<br/>
in Lake<br/>
Michigan</b></div>
<p>Even the waters of Lake Michigan are
not available for colored children.
They are not welcomed by the white
children at the bathing beaches and
late last summer one little colored boy
who attempted to bathe at the Thirty-ninth street
beach was mobbed and treated so roughly that the
police were obliged to send in a riot call.</p>
<p>This investigation would certainly explain the
presence of so large a proportion of colored boys in
the county jail on the following grounds: First, the
colored children are forced to live in the very worst
neighborhoods in Chicago and even there the colored
families are charged such high rents that the house is
filled with “floaters” of a very undesirable class, so that
the children witness all kinds of offenses against decency
within the house as well as on the streets.</p>
<p>Second, the fathers of the families, because they
are so circumscribed in their lines of occupation, work
for very small wages, with the inevitable outcome that
the mothers go out to work and neglect their children.
As a result, the colored children are underfed, irregular
in school attendance, make slow progress in their
studies and drop out of school at the earliest possible
moment.</p>
<p>Third, there are not enough places in Chicago
where negro children may find wholesome amusement.
Of the fifteen small parks and playgrounds with field
houses, only two are really utilized by colored children.</p>
<p>They avoid the others because of friction and difficulty
which they constantly encountered with the
white children. The commercial amusements found
in the neighborhoods of colored people are of the lowest
type of pool rooms and saloons, which are artificially
numerous because so many young colored men
find their first employment in these two occupations
and with their experience and very little capital are
able to open places for themselves.</p>
<p>Perhaps the greatest factor of all is the difficulty
which all colored people have in finding employment;
and after an ambitious boy has been refused employment
again and again in the larger mercantile and industrial
establishments and comes to the conclusion
that there is no use in trying to get a decent job, he
is in a very dangerous state of mind. Idle and discouraged,
his neighborhood environments vicious, such
a boy quickly shows the first symptoms of delinquency
and the remedial agencies which should be prompt in
his case are the very weakest at this point. Added to
this is the conviction held by many colored boys and
young men that “the police have it in for them and
do not accord them fair treatment.”</p>
<p>In suggesting remedies for this state of affairs, the
broken family life, the surrounding of a vicious neighborhood,
the dearth of adequate employment, the lack
of preventive institutional care and proper recreation
for negro youth, the Juvenile Protection Association
finds itself confronted with the situation stated at the
beginning of the investigation, that the life of the colored
boy and girl is so circumscribed on every hand
by race limitations that they can be helped only insofar
as the entire colored reputation in Chicago is understood
and fairly treated.</p>
<p>For many years Chicago, keeping to the tradition
of its early history, had the reputation among colored
people of according them fair treatment. Even now
it is free from the outward signs of “segregation,” but
unless the city realizes more fully than it does at present
the great injustice which discrimination against
any class of citizens entails, we shall suffer for our indifference
by an ever increasing number of idle and
criminal youth, which must eventually vitiate both the
black and white citizenship of Chicago.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Press of Rogers & Hall Co., Chicago</span></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="transnote">
<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p>
<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p>
<p>Alternate or archaic spelling that may have been in use at the time of publication has been retained.</p>
<p>The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</p>
</div>
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