Louise de Koven Bowen

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”