Baltimore is aroused over the fact that the Negroes are buying
property on McCulloh Street. They are proposing to pass an ordinance
which provides that, within a section specified, it shall not be
lawful for any white person to move into or begin to occupy any house
as a residence in any street in which a majority of the bona fide
residents are Negroes; and, on the other hand, that it shall not be
lawful hereafter for any Negro to move into, or begin to occupy, as a
residence, any house in a street in which the majority of bona fide
residents are already white people. There is further provision that
it shall be unlawful hereafter for any person to open, or cause to
be opened, any new streets to be used for residences, without first
declaring in the application for a permit to build whether the houses
are to be built for and occupied by whites or Negroes, and the building
inspector is to issue a permit accordingly.
It is to be noticed that this ordinance does not interfere with any
residence heretofore acquired. The invasion of Negro property owners
is put down as a reason for the failure of Baltimore to grow faster in
population.
* * * * *
A similar question has arisen in Kansas City, Kan., where the
Mercantile Club proposes to cut off threatened Negro invasion by having
the state buy the property for parks and boulevards.
* * * * *
In Richmond, Va., a colored syndicate is about to buy property near a
park. This is said to be viewed with alarm at the city hall and the
city is urged to buy it.
* * * * *
In St. Louis a new Civic Realty Company is seeking to organize public
opinion and social ostracism against persons who sell property to
Negroes.
* * * * *
The Baltimore _News_ has sent a correspondent through the South to see
how the Negro ghettos are arranged there.
Most of the cities say that “public opinion” keeps the Negro population
segregated and intimate that mob violence is ready to enforce this
opinion together with social ostracism for the white seller of the
property. In Alabama disfranchisement is said to keep colored folks “in
their places.”
* * * * *
An ordinance for the physical separation of white and black residents
is being urged in Atlanta. Negroes are not to live in white settlements
“except as servants or tenants in the rear.”
* * * * *
The Central Labor Union of New Orleans, La., has written a letter
refuting the statement that increased pay of Negro laborers has
decreased their efficiency.
* * * * *
J. H. Grant has a $20,000 Negro shoe store in Memphis, Tenn., and is
trying to establish a chain of such stores in various Southern cities.
* * * * *
It is charged that the Barbers’ State Board of Examiners of Missouri
refused to license colored schools for training barbers.
* * * * *
The advice given the Negro to go South in the Negro Business League
has given rise to much comment. G. W. Crawford, in the _Evening Post_,
strongly combats the idea. “The Negro question in all its troublesome
aspects must be nationalized,” he says.
* * * * *