_Inadequate schools._--Overcrowded and p_The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot

responsible for the retardation of southern Negro children. One girl

attended a school which was in session only three months a year and

where there were 100 to 125 children under one teacher. Consequently

this girl was retarded four years. A boy who, when he came to Chicago,

was fifteen years old and six years behind his grade had always lived

in small country towns in the South. In one of these his teacher was

the iceman. "He didn't come to school until he was through totin' ice

around," said the boy. "Then if anyone wanted ice they comed after him.

He wasn't learning me anything so I quit." This boy was found to be

ambitious and was attending school regularly in Chicago in spite of the

fact that he was conspicuously over-age for his grade.

_Other causes of retardation._--Some over-age children are extremely

sensitive about their size and are irregular at school on this account.

A fifteen-year-old boy who was 5 feet 8 inches tall was in the fifth

grade. He refused to go to school because he was larger than anyone in

his class. At one time he was so ashamed of being seen in the room with

smaller children that he would go out of the classroom every time a girl

passed the door.

As in many white families where the importance of regular school

attendance is not fully understood, work at home or work after school

hours is sometimes permitted to interfere materially with school

attendance. Older children are kept at home to look after young children

while the parents are away at work and sometimes when the mother is home.

A fourteen-year-old girl who was three years retarded had always been

kept out of school to do housework. The five younger children were all

in the normal grades for their ages but the fourteen-year-old girl had

been out of school so much she had lost interest. Other children were

working after school hours selling papers and delivering packages and

wanted to leave school as soon as possible so that they could work all

the time.

The attitude of the teacher seemed in a few instances to be responsible

for the child's lack of interest. In one case the teacher threw a paper

at a boy instead of handing it to him, and the boy had refused to recite

to her ever since. He went to school but recited to his mother at home.

Another boy had been kept back in school by a misunderstanding between

his mother and the principal. The principal took the boy home with her

to do some work around her house and kept him until nine o'clock. The

mother became so worried she had the police out looking for him. When

she found out the cause of his lateness coming home, she went to the

school and threatened the principal. The principal afterward refused

either to promote the boy or transfer him to another school.

_Recreation._--A study of the favorite forms of recreation among 116

children, aside from the few who reported that they had no time to play,

showed the movies to be in the lead. Children economized on lunch, buying

potato salad and pickles, in order to have enough left from their lunch

money to go to the movies. One boy who worked outside of school hours

made $3 to $5 a week and spent most of it on the movies; he went three

or four times a day if he had the money. A few children played truant

in order to go to the movies.

TABLE XV

FAVORITE RECREATION OF 116 RETARDED NEGRO CHILDREN

Movies 85

Baseball 32

Reading 31

Marbles 29

Skating 20

Jumping rope 11

Music 6

Jacks 6

Vaudeville 5

Running games 4

Singing games 4

Sewing 3

Basket-ball 2

Target practice 1

Pool 1

Mechanical toys 1

Drawing 1

Dolls 1

Bicycle 1

Typewriting 1

Swinging 1

Rolling hoop 1

Card games, checkers, etc. 1

---

Total 248

Most of these children had two and even three forms of recreation, and the

second was usually some form of outdoor recreation--baseball, marbles, or

jumping rope. Most of the younger ones went to the playgrounds, except

those who had housework to do or the few who did not care to associate

with other children.

A reference to the section on "Recreation" will show that Negro children

are limited in their recreational activities by lack of recreation centers

where they are welcome. There are playgrounds for the younger children

in the areas of Negro residence, but no recreation centers with their

varied indoor facilities for the older children.

2. OPINIONS ON SCHOLARSHIP OF NEGRO CHILDREN

_Progress of the southern Negro._--The retarded Negro child, usually

from the South, who is conspicuous in the elementary schools, has been

referred to in the section on "Retardation in Elementary Schools." In

some schools such children are put in the regular grades, where they

receive no special attention and can progress only one year at a time,

though most teachers agree that retardation is due to lack of educational

opportunity rather than to inability to learn. In other schools there

are special rooms for these children where they are advanced through

several grades as rapidly as possible.

Doolittle School (85 per cent) had six first-grade rooms for such

children. In one of these rooms there were about twenty-five children

from twelve to seventeen years of age doing all the lower-grade work

up to the sixth. The teacher said that many of these children who were

unable to read or write when they came from the South showed remarkable

progress in a few months, and in less than a year were able to do fourth-,

fifth-, and sixth-grade work.

"One big girl of thirteen, when she arrived from the South," this teacher

said, "pretended to read with her book upside down, but in a little more

than a year she was doing sixth-grade work. One twelve-year-old boy from

the South, unable to read the primer or write his name, after about nine

months of applied work just ate up everything I gave him and during the

following year read sixty library books."

A thirteen-year-old girl, just five days in the school, had come from

Alabama, where she had never attended school. "There wasn't room for

me," she explained. She read for the investigator on the tenth page of

the primer, haltingly but with understanding. The teacher was confident

that she could put her through several grades next year. She said further:

These children who have been deprived in the South of their

rights educationally are very eager. At first they are timid,

but they learn very quickly. They're as smart as whips if

they'd just get down to business. Without question this is

the kind of attention all the colored children from the South

need when they enter school in the North. The plan has been

successful and should be adopted throughout the school system.

One appreciates by comparison the injustice of putting the

fifteen-year-old newcomer from the South into second grade,

requiring of him only second-grade work over the nine months'

period.

Another school, 92 per cent Negro (Farren), has a special room for

children from the South. "Our dull children are almost without exception

those from the South who have never been to school," said the teacher.

"Those children should not be classed as dull, either, for they learn

remarkably fast and often catch up to grade."

A teacher of the ungraded room in a school 38 per cent Negro

(Forrestville) said:

Practically all of the colored children are from the South,

where they have not been in school. Once they get started they

learn very rapidly and often catch up to the proper grade if

they are not too old when they start school. The older children

in this room have good power of concentration and consequently

learn much in a short time. Take, for example, a boy twelve

years old who came here not two months ago from the South. When

he came he had no idea how to write his name. A few days ago

he wrote for me a fourth-grade eight-line memory passage with

but three mistakes in spelling. Now I call that remarkable.

I have taught in this school all my teaching years, and they

have been many, and have never seen any child equal this,

either white or black.

_Capacity for advanced work._--Teachers in the seventh and eighth grades

usually found Negro children equal to the work, though in some cases they

felt that these children had been pushed out of the lower grade because

of crowded conditions before they were ready for the more advanced work.

An eighth-grade teacher gave the following statement:

When children get this far they have a good foundation and do

their work very well. One of my colored girls is the brightest

child in school--arithmetic is hard for her but she works at

it. One of my colored boys is seventeen years old. He came

here from the South last fall to live with an uncle and to

get to a better school. His father wants him to be a doctor

and thought he wasn't getting along as well in the South as

he would in the North. When the boy came to me he said he

had been going to a college[40] in the South. I took him into

the eighth grade but saw he didn't have the fundamentals. On

close questioning he told me he had been in the seventh grade

in that college. Now he is doing excellent work for me. He

has much broader interests than the other children. He reads,

reads, reads, all the time and is well informed.

Other teachers believed that there was nothing to keep the Negro children

from making equal progress with the white, given similar opportunities.

"The progress of the colored children in Drake school (30 per cent)

cannot be compared with that of the white," said an upper-grade teacher,

"because the colored are all from the South and have had the poorest

opportunities. But comparing a Negro child and a white child who have

had the same advantages in school and equal opportunities for observation

and example in the home, the Negro makes the same progress."

"I say that under the same conditions a Negro child will do as well every

time as a white," said the teacher of an ungraded room in a school 38

per cent Negro (Forrestville). "Many do as well as the white and live

in very poor neglected homes. I think every person who is not prejudiced

must admit that the colored do fully as well in school as the white."

An upper-grade teacher in the Felsenthal School (20 per cent) held a

similar point of view: "The colored are making wonderful strides. They

advance just as rapidly as the white, given equal opportunities. But their

background is so slight and so short in years that one cannot fairly

compare them. The southern colored child must be studied individually

to get his point of view in the school or he gets nowhere in his work."

_High-school work._--The principal of Wendell Phillips High School

prepared tables showing the numbers of white and Negro children dropping

out at the end of each school year. They show that the largest number

of Negro children dropped out during the first year, and the largest

number of white children during the first and second years, the number

of drop-outs being the same for both years. Some children repeat the

work so that all of them do not leave school.

One or two teachers in other schools stated concerning Negro children

that a "very limited number go beyond the first year." "They cannot

grasp the subject," said an English teacher; "they do not understand as

the white child does. They lack the mentality."

In the same school the Latin teacher held quite the opposite opinion.

"The colored children are in every way equal to the white children.

They are just as well equipped mentally and make similar progress. My

best student at present is a colored girl. Her choice of English and her

vocabulary and construction are far ahead of that of any white student."

Several teachers and principals testified to the brilliancy of individual

Negro students who not infrequently had the highest standing in the

school. The principal of an elementary school (Crerar) who had formerly

had experience in a school largely Negro felt that the junior high school

would meet the needs of the Negro children to a large degree:

More of them than the immigrant enter high school but do

not stay to finish. I suppose the parents insist upon some

high-school training, but it is necessary for the child to go

to work before he finishes. Another reason for the dropping out

might be the teachers' lack of interest in the child. In the

high school you don't find the teachers taking a keen interest

in every individual child as you do in the grades, and just

what colored children need is a keen interest in them. They

do better work.

_Academic v. other courses._--A preference of Negro children for academic

work was reported by principals and teachers at two high schools. This

may be due in part to the fact, testified to by many teachers, that Negro

children excel in languages and music and find mathematics and sciences

difficult. The usual implication was, however, that Negro children took

academic work because they thought it gave them better social standing.

A principal who said that "Negroes want to know nothing about industrial

training" and that "the girls don't care for sewing and cooking," said

on another occasion that the majority of children in auto-mechanics,

printing, and household arts were Negroes. He also reported more Negro

than white children in the normal course preparing themselves to be

teachers, though this was the first year that this had been the case.

_Comparative scholarship in elementary schools._--Negro children are

reported to be slower than the Jews, less responsive than the Bohemians,

and more ambitious than the Italians. A manual-training and domestic-arts

teacher thought Negroes did as good work as the Jews, Bohemians, and

white Americans whom he taught. A Latin teacher said that the Negroes

were studious and ambitious, and that in every way she preferred them

to the Jews.

Several teachers thought the Negroes were slow and lacked logic and

"sticking qualities." An upper-grade teacher explained the slowness

as partly due to the fact that they had been pushed out of the crowded

lower grades before they were ready for more advanced work. A physics

teacher who was convinced that Negro children had no ambition said it was

his policy to promote a Negro child if the child had made the effort,

because he appreciated that the child had come "to the limit of his

mental ability."

The principal who said that Negroes had no "sticking qualities" gave a

single instance of a boy who wanted to become a mechanical engineer but

gave up the course after five months, because he said he did not care

enough about the course to work at it for several years. In endeavoring

to prove that Negro children are not successful in completing high-school

work, this principal emphasized the fact that in the 3-B class 20 per

cent of the Negroes dropped out as compared with 6 per cent of the

whites. In actual numbers three Negroes and two whites dropped out. He

did not mention that in the 2-A class 12 per cent of the whites (sixteen

children) as compared with 3 per cent of the Negroes (three children)

dropped out. In the 4-B grade 21 per cent of the whites (three children)

and none of the Negroes dropped out. The fact that 21 per cent of the

whites dropped out was explained by the principal to be due to the fact

that the white children wished to graduate from a high school wholly

white. However, only three children were involved.

_Attendance and failures._--Table XVI shows the record for attendance

and failures in three groups of schools attended mainly by Negroes, by

children of immigrants and by white Americans. It will be noticed that

the best attendance records are found in Douglas and Farren schools,

both mainly attended by Negroes. The other schools, attended mainly by

Negroes, compare favorably with those attended by whites.

The smallest percentage of failures is at Colman (92 per cent), while

the next to the largest percentage is also at a school attended mainly

by Negroes (Raymond, 93 per cent). This may be explained to a certain

extent by the fact that there is a higher economic class of Negroes in

the neighborhood of the Colman School. In the other schools the percentage

of failures compares very favorably with that of whites.

TABLE XVI

ENROLMENT, AVERAGE ATTENDANCE, AND NUMBER OF FAILURES IN TWENTY SCHOOLS

===================================================================================

----------------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+---------

Colman, 92 per cent | 964 | 709 | 73 | 13 | 1.8

Doolittle, 85 per cent | 1,784 | 1,282 | 72 | 77 | 6.0

Douglas, 93 per cent | 1,443 | 1,341 | 93 | -- | ---

Farren, 92 per cent | 986 | 924 | 93 | 83 | 8.9

Forrestville, 38 per cent | 1,493 | 1,085 | 73 | 130 | 12.0

Haven, 20 per cent | 1,165 | 700 | 60 | 24 | 3.4

McCosh, 15 per cent | 1,280 | 1,017 | 79 | -- | ---

Moseley, 70 per cent | 923 | 605 | 66 | 81 | 13.3

Raymond, 93 per cent | 1,532 | 1,299 | 85 | 200 | 15.4

Webster, 30 per cent | 805 | 654 | 81 | -- | ---

Farragut | 1,729 | 1,502 | 86 | 107 | 7.0

Goodrich | 1,305 | 1,039 | 78 | 121 | 11.6

Kosciusko | 1,134 | 775 | 68 | 33 | 4.2

Lawson | 3,069 | 2,545 | 83 | 292 | 11.5

McCormick | 1,432 | 1,266 | 88 | 204 | 16.1

Seward | 1,058 | 708 | 67 | 43 | 5.9

Smyth | 1,106 | 860 | 77 | 69 | 8.0

Swing | 810 | 629 | 77 | 99 | 15.8

Fiske | 1,535 | 1,272 | 83 | 45 | 3.5

Howland | 2,161 | 1,809 | 84 | 100 | 5.0

-------------------------+--------+------------+----------+----------+------------

C. CONTACTS IN RECREATION

In studying contacts between the races at places of recreation a survey

was made of the various recreational facilities maintained by the

Municipal Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing Beaches, the South

Park Commission, the West Chicago Park Commission, and the Lincoln Park

Commission. Recreational facilities maintained by twelve park boards which

control smaller areas in outlying parts of the city were not included

in the survey unless they were in or near Negro areas. Visits were made

by the Commission's investigator to places in or bordering on the Negro

areas at a time of day when the use of the park would be greatest; the

director or one of his assistants was interviewed and observations were

made as to the relations between Negroes and whites.

The information thus gathered was supplemented by a conference held

by the Commission, at which representatives of the various park boards

discussed policies and experiences with reference to race relations in

the various recreation places under their charge.

I. CLASSIFICATION OF FACILITIES

Although there is no definite city-wide classification, the publicly

maintained recreation facilities of the city may, for the purpose of

this study, be grouped by types and defined as follows:

1. _Playground._--A small tract of land, usually adjacent to

public schools, providing space for ball games, gymnastic and

play apparatus, and in most cases a small building used as an

office and storage place for apparatus.

2. _Recreation center._--Including outdoor and indoor gymnasiums

for men, women, and children, a swimming-pool, and a little

children's playground out doors, and a field house providing

an assembly room and dance hall, clubrooms, shower baths, and

often an infant-welfare station and branch library.

3. _Large park._--A large area with lawns, shrubbery, and

general recreation facilities, such as tennis, golf, baseball,

and boating.

4. _Bathing-beach._--Intended primarily for swimmers and usually

including no other recreation equipment. A dressing-house,

showers, and towel supply are provided with life guard and

attendants on duty.

5. _Swimming-pool._--In some instances a swimming-pool or

natatorium is maintained separately from a recreation center.

II. DISTRIBUTION OF FACILITIES IN RELATION TO NEGRO AREAS

Of a total of 127 public places of recreation excluding the large parks,

thirty-seven are in or near Negro areas. Of the eighty-two playgrounds,

fourteen are in the Negro areas and nine are adjacent. Of the twenty-nine

recreation centers, none is located within the Negro areas, but seven

are adjacent.

Though these figures seem to indicate that the Negro areas are fairly

well supplied with recreation facilities, it should be borne in mind

that their use by the Negroes in their vicinity is by no means free and

undisputed. The reasons for this are shown in the next section on "Use

of Facilities," but the following summary of use will aid in considering

the distribution of recreation facilities in relation to the Negro areas:

=====================================================================

| | | | Number Used

| Total for | In Negro | Near Negro | 10 Per Cent

| City | Areas | Areas | or More by

| | | | Negroes

-------------------+-----------+----------+------------+-------------

Playgrounds | 82 | 14 | 9 | 13

Recreation centers | 29 | None | 7 | 1

Bathing-beaches | 8 | 3 | 2 | 1

-------------------+-----------+----------+------------+-------------

The type of recreation facility most commonly found in the Negro areas

is the playground. The lack of recreation centers within the Negro areas

is conspicuous, as is also the fact that six of the seven recreation

centers accessible to Negroes are not used as much as 10 per cent by

them. The playground is intended for the use of young children and has

practically nothing to attract older children and adults, except sometimes

a baseball or athletic field. Indoor facilities are not a part of the

equipment of a playground, so that the average maintenance cost of a

playground is not more than $2,000 to $5,000 a year.[41]

[Illustration: RECREATION FACILITIES]

The recreation center is the most unusual and notable feature of Chicago's

recreation system but one from which the Negro gets little benefit. It

is a complete community center, with both indoor and outdoor facilities.

It represents an investment of from $200,000 to $800,000, according to

the amount of ground, the location, and the extent of its facilities. The

yearly expenditure necessary to maintain such a recreation center where

older children and adults can hold meetings, dances, and entertainments,

and where there are concerts, indoor games, swimming-pools, showers,

etc., is shown by the reports of the park boards to be from $30,000 to

$50,000. Though the argument that wholesome recreation makes for better

citizenship applies to Negroes as well as to whites, no recreation center

has been located within the Negro areas and only seven near them.[42]

The director of Armour Square, a recreation center which is just beyond

the edge of the main Negro area, but which the Negroes do not feel free

to use for reasons discussed later, was asked what places of recreation

for adult Negroes existed in that neighborhood. She instanced a social

settlement that had been out of existence for more than six years, an

infant-welfare station and a commercial amusement park known to be in

bad repute.

Although in recent years the Negro population has been increasing in

density in the neighborhood directly east of Wentworth Avenue along which

Hardin, Armour, and Fuller recreation centers are located, this has not

increased the use of these centers by Negroes. It has tended, rather, to

increase the antagonism of the whites in the vicinity to the use of the

centers by Negroes. In this neighborhood the hostility toward Negroes

of whites, especially gangs of hoodlums, is shown by the many attacks

upon Negroes in this area as discussed in the sections on the "Riot of

1919" and "Antecedent Clashes."

Several representatives of the park boards strongly deprecated the lack

of recreation centers within the Negro area and said that such facilities

should be provided. The South Park representative recommended the area

east of Wentworth Avenue between Thirtieth and Forty-seventh streets as

one needing additional facilities. The West Park representative said: "A

complete all-year-round recreation center for the colored people should

be established at Ashland and Lake streets. We need greater facilities,

or equal facilities, for the colored people. There isn't any place on

the West Side that I know of, but yet we have many of these complete

recreation centers there for the whites." Although the Negroes on the

West Side had never asked for additional facilities, the white people

in that neighborhood had frequently asked the West Park Commission to

provide greater facilities for the Negroes. The Negroes in the district

were not organized, according to the West Park official, but the white

people realized that something ought to be done for the Negroes and made

the request.

The director of Seward Park said the maintenance cost was the chief

obstacle to additional recreational facilities. "The law permits

acquisition of property for small parks by request of citizens and bond

issues for the purchase of the property and its development," he said.

"When it comes to maintenance the question of taxes comes in, and unless

people are willing to be taxed in excess of what they are taxed now,

there won't be any possibility of maintaining more parks."

Though there are three public bathing-beaches near the main Negro

area, the whites seem to expect Negroes to confine themselves to the

Twenty-sixth Street Beach. It is quite limited and unattractive in

approach and surroundings. The approach is over a rough road through a

much-neglected neighborhood, and then up a long flight of stairs to a

four-foot viaduct over the railroad tracks, and a roundhouse and switch

yards are near by. The beach is a strip of sand about fifty feet wide

and a short block in length; it narrows at one end to the tracks and at

the other end is walled by a high embankment. While it offers a chance

to get into the lake, the atmosphere of wholesome, recreative outdoor

life is entirely lacking.

In the Morgan Park region there is a large Negro population but no park

or playground within its Negro area. Barnard Playground and Ridge Park

are the nearest facilities, a mile or more distant. Negro children said

they did not go there because "those are in Beverley Hills and only rich

folks go there--no colored people." The directors of these parks said

there was no discrimination against Negroes but that they did not come

because they felt that these parks were "for white folks only."

III. USE OF FACILITIES

Table XVII gives estimates by the officers in charge of the Negro

attendance at the places of recreation in or near the Negro areas.

TABLE XVII

NUMBER OF NEGROES ATTENDING PARKS AND PLAYGROUNDS IN OR NEAR NEGRO AREAS

AND THEIR PERCENTAGE OF THE TOTAL ATTENDANCE

===============================+=====================+=====================

| |

| AVERAGE DAILY | PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL

| ATTENDANCE | DAILY ATTENDANCE

+------+-------+------+------+-------+------

-------------------------------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------

Twenty-sixth St. Beach | | 200| | | 95 |

Thirty-eighth St. Beach | | 500| | | < 1 |

Fifty-first St. Beach | | 500| | | < 1 |

| | | | | |

fourth St. and Wabash Ave. | 900| | 150| | 80 |

sixth and Dearborn Sts. | 350| | 700| | 90 |

fifth St. near Rhodes Ave. | 800| | 500| | 90 |

Ave. | 600| | 400| | 75 |

third St. and LaSalle St. | 1,400| | 1,000| | 67 |

Ave. | 1,500| | 900| 50| | None

Ave. | 1,100| | 600| | 25 |

Ave. | 1,200| | 450| 25| | 15

Ave. | 1,200| | 500| | 25 |

Ave. | 1,500| | 1,000| | 2 |

| | | | | |

and Princeton Ave. | | 1,500| | | 3 |

and Shields Ave. | | 1,500| | | 1 |

and Wentworth Ave. | | 800| | | 1 |

| | | | | |

Washington Park | | 27,000| | | 10 |

Jackson Park | | 47,000| | | 2 |

| | | | | |

Sixtieth and Throop Sts. | 1,400| | 800| 7| | 16

Racine Ave. | | 3,000| | | < 1 |

ninth St. and Buffalo Ave. | 500| | 350| | 5 |

| | | | | |

Robey Sts. | 500| | 800| | 20 |

Ave. and Ohio St. | 1,200| | 200| | 5 |

Ave. and Carpenter St. | | 200| | | 1 |

Ave. and Armour St. | | 200| | | 1 |

and Laflin Sts. | 300| | 400| | |

St. and Washburne Ave. | 1,300| | 400| | 1 |

Ashland Blvd. | | 1,500| | | 40 |

| | | | | |

St. and Institute Pl. | 150| | 400| | 5 |

Sigel St. near Wells St. | 1,500| | 300| 5 | | 25

| | | | | |

Sedgwick Sts. | | 1,500| | | 15 |

Center, Vine and Rees Sts. | | 2,000| | | 1 |

Lincoln Park | | 60,000| | | 15 |

-------------------------------+------+-------+------+------+-------+------

Maximum attendance, 100,400. Negroes approximately, 19,000.[43]

_Factors influencing attendance._--Out of the thirty-five playgrounds,

recreation centers, and bathing-beaches in or near the Negro areas for

which attendance figures were secured, at fifteen Negro attendance never

amounted to more than 10 per cent, and usually was less. In several

cases distance or such barriers as railroad tracks seemed to explain the

small percentage of Negro patrons. In other cases it seemed due to the

existence of other facilities nearer the center of the Negro area which

were more largely patronized by the Negroes; an example is Stanton,

which though not far from the Negro area is farther than Seward Park.

The small number of Negroes at other places often could not be explained

by the director. At Gladstone Playground, for example, in a neighborhood

where the Negro population was increasing rapidly, practically no Negro

children were found, though the white children said there were plenty

of Negro children in the school. "They don't stick around after school

hours or in the summer," said the children, but no one appeared to know

why this was the case, as there had never been any difficulty at this

playground. Negro children used Drake and Sherwood playgrounds much

less, or not at all, after school hours and in summer. At Drake, though

the two races mingled in games in the daytime and no disorders had

occurred, the Negro boys took no part in the games in the evening when

the older white boys were home. This, the director said, was due not

to timidity or fear of aggression, but rather to "lack of ambition." At

Sherwood Playground, west of Wentworth Avenue, where 50 per cent of the

children using the playground during school hours were Negroes, there

were no Negroes on the playground in the afternoon and evening and all

summer. This was said to be due to the fact that the Negro children in

the school, especially the girls, were larger than the white children

and during the school session were the dominating group. After school,

however, the older white children got home from other schools or from work

and assumed control, allowing no Negroes in the playground. The Negroes

then went to Carter Playground, which is east of Wentworth Avenue, in

the main Negro settlement. This separation, the attendant stated, was

due entirely to action on the part of the children, as the officials did

not discriminate in any way. This neighborhood has been much disturbed

and is discussed in more detail under "Contacts."

[Illustration: A TYPICAL SCHOOL YARD PLAYGROUND IN A WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD]

Representatives of each park commission said that they had no rules or

regulations of any kind discriminating against Negroes, and that all

races were treated in exactly the same way. The only case in which this

rule appeared to be violated was in connection with Negro golf players

at Jackson Park. Two Negroes participated in the Amateur Golf Tournament

at Jackson Park in the summer of 1918 and made good records. The only

requirement for entrance into the tournament at that time was residence

in the city for one year. In 1919 the requirements were increased,

entries being limited to the lowest sixty-four scores, and membership

in a "regularly organized golf club" being required. Since Negroes

are not accepted in established golf clubs, the Negro golf players

met this qualification by organizing a new club, "The Windy City Golf

Association." In 1920 the restriction was added that contestants must

belong to a regularly organized golf club affiliated with the Western

Golf Association. As it was impossible for Negro clubs to secure such

affiliation, it is impossible for Negroes to compete in the tournament.

Unofficial discrimination, however, frequently creeps in. According to

the representative of the Municipal Bureau, "the person in charge of the

park is largely influenced by the attitude of the people outside the

park. We had trouble at Beutner Playground because of the tendency on

the part of the director, who was a white man, to be influenced by the

attitude of the white people in the neighborhood, and either consciously

or unconsciously showed by his actions to the colored people that they

were not fully accepted." Beutner Playground later became an example

of unofficial discrimination in favor of the Negroes, for the Municipal

Bureau decided to "turn over the playground particularly to Negroes" and

instructed the director "to give them more use of the facilities than the

whites." But this was found to be impossible as long as a white director

was employed, because he was influenced by the feeling of the whites

in the neighborhood who did not want the playground turned over to the

Negroes. The desired result was finally obtained by employing a Negro

director. "Then the switch suddenly came," said the park representative,

"and the playground was turned over to the Negroes almost exclusively."

A similar method was employed with reference to the Twenty-sixth Street

Beach, according to the head of the Municipal Bureau, who said: "As the

colored population gradually got heavier and more demand came for the use

of that beach it gradually developed into a beach that was used almost

exclusively by Negroes. And we did as we did in the Beutner case: we

employed a Negro director when the preponderance was Negro."

This beach has since been transferred to the South Park Commission, and

there is no longer a Negro director there, though most of the attendants

are Negroes.

Park policemen will not let Negroes go in swimming at the Thirty-eighth

Street Beach, according to a Negro playground director. "The park

policemen tell you, 'You can't go in, you better not go in, I'd advise

you not to go in,'" said the director. "If you try to go in he keeps

you out."

The Negro director of Beutner Playground reported an unpleasant personal

encounter with the policeman of Armour Square. "Last summer I had

occasion to go over there with my assistant who is colored. We went to

the library and the park police officer we met said, 'niggers ought to

stay in Beutner Park.'" Policemen in Armour Square also had helped to

drive out Negro boys who had gone over there to use the showers, according

to this director. In addition he said that Negro boys had been refused

permits to play baseball at Armour Square. The director of the park

said, in answer to these statements, that there was no discrimination

on the part of the management and if such things had occurred it was

without the knowledge of the management and due to the fact that the

applicants did not see anyone in authority. "The only applicants I have

had for a colored baseball team this year was for an outside industrial

team, and they were given permission," said the director. "Whether the

police officer followed them up and told them they shouldn't come back,

I don't know, but they didn't come back. I gave them the permit to come."

At one or two parks definite efforts had been made to encourage larger

numbers of Negroes to make use of the facilities, but at Armour Square

the director did not believe this to be advisable. "I have never gone

out to do any promotional work to bring them in," she said, "because I

would not choose personally to be responsible for the things that would

happen outside my gates if I were responsible for bringing large groups

into Armour Square. If such groups come to me for reservations I give

them, but they don't come." This director also said that she would feel

it necessary to warn any Negro group that might come to her park that

she could not be responsible for their protection outside the park.

At Union Park, which has a playground and swimming-pool and is situated

on the edge of the densest Negro residential area on the West Side,

every effort has been made to encourage the Negroes of the neighborhood

to make use of the limited facilities, according to the representative

of the West Chicago Park Commission, who said:

We have advertised among the colored people and done everything

we could to get them to use the swimming-pool, shower baths,

and reading-room, and send their children to the playground.

The result to some extent is satisfactory but of course they

are not using it in proportion to the population of the Negroes

in that neighborhood. That, I think, is partly due to the fact

that we ought to have some other facilities there. We ought to

have some equipment for boys over sixteen years of age, and we

ought to have an assembly hall, a regular library, clubrooms,

and other facilities for the recreation of older boys and girls.

The director of Fuller Park told of a special effort he had made, with

the assistance of a Y.M.C.A. physical instructor, a Negro, to increase

the use of the park by Negroes living east of Wentworth Avenue. The

Y.M.C.A. instructor guaranteed to get the people, and 400 application

blanks were distributed among Negro children in the Sunday schools of

the neighborhood. All the blanks were signed with the names of Negro

children between eight and sixteen and returned to the office. When

the classes started a few weeks later, no Negro children appeared. The

distributor of the blanks tried for three or four weeks to find out why

the Negro children did not come but failed to discover any reason. Then

the director sent a notice to the _Defender_, a widely circulated Negro

newspaper, saying that the children who had signed application blanks

for classes at Fuller Park were requested to come at any time and were

just as welcome as white children. Thereupon a few children came--two

or three out of a class of thirty. Additional notices were put in the

_Defender_, and an effort was made to interest the Negro pastors, but

the attendance did not increase, and finally the attempt was given up

for that year. The next year a similar effort was made but with only

slightly better results. At the band concerts and moving pictures the

Negro attendance is fairly good, and a large number of Negroes use the

library, but the gymnasium and the children's playground are used very

little by the Negroes, and the swimming-pool practically not at all.

The reasons advanced by the park officials for the non-use of convenient

recreation facilities are that the Negro is timid and reluctant to go

where he feels he is not wanted, or that he fears attack in the park or

near it. At a conference the West Park representative said:

When we first opened the doors of Union Park we thought,

owing to the large colored population in the district, that

the colored people would come there most willingly and avail

themselves of the facilities just as freely as any person

would. But we found that it was not so, that the greater number

of persons who came there were the whites, and they as usual

availed themselves of the facilities freely. The colored were

timid, came in gradually, and as soon as they found they were

welcome, that there was no line of discrimination drawn, the

attendance of the colored increased.

At Sherwood Playground, Armour Square, and Fuller Square, all west of

Wentworth Avenue, which is considered the dividing line between the

white and Negro areas, fear is probably a large factor in the small

Negro attendance, as the feeling in the neighborhood is bitter and

fights have been frequent. At Sherwood Negro children use the playground

during school hours when they feel that they have the protection of the

school, but not after school when they feel that protection is lacking.

Webster School at Wentworth Avenue and Thirty-third Street, which is 30

per cent Negro, has its graduation exercises in Armour Square, but the

Negro children do not go to Armour Square at any other time, and they

did not go over at night for an entertainment which the principal of

Webster School arranged at Armour Square. Negro children use the Armour

Square library freely, according to the director, but there has never

been an application for the use of a clubroom, and no Negroes come to

the outdoor moving pictures which are given one night a week. "There's

absolutely nothing to prevent them coming," said the director. "Why don't

they come? There is nothing within the park they need to be afraid of.

There has been absolutely no distinction made in the handling of colored

children or colored men or colored women coming to Armour Square, but

they do not come." The director was positive that the failure to come

to the park was due to the attitude toward Negroes outside the park. She

explained that although she could guarantee safety and police protection

inside the park, she could do nothing to protect Negroes outside the

park gates. The park policemen are employees of the park boards and not

of the city and have no jurisdiction outside the parks. This is true of

the police at all parks and beaches maintained by the park boards, but

the police at the playgrounds and beaches maintained by the Municipal

Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing Beaches are members of the

regular city police force.

Continuing, the Armour Square director said:

Personally I know of no disturbances that have started within

Armour Square, and yet we have had outside of Armour Square

every year at least two riots, not counting the general race

riot--riots that started largely in school clashes. There

have been some very serious riots between the children of the

Webster School and the Keith School just east of it, and there

have also been some very serious clashes between the black and

white children going to and from the parochial school--actual

fights in which they have had to call large detachments of the

police. Armour Square is not used by the colored people in

proportion to their numbers in the neighborhood, but it has

absolutely nothing to do with our management. It is because

they are afraid to come to the park. They know absolutely that

within the four walls of the park nothing is going to happen

to them.

The testimony of the Negro director of the Beutner Playground seemed to

indicate that Negroes were kept out of Armour Square in ways that its

director did not know about.

IV. CONTACTS

_Behavior._--The behavior of Negroes at the parks apparently has not been

the major cause of the difficulties that have arisen in the past. Such

complaints as were made by park officials in regard to the behavior of

Negroes at the parks concerned groups of rough or domineering children

at the playgrounds rather than adults.

[Illustration: BEUTNER PLAYGROUND

The largest in the Negro residence area.]

[Illustration: FIELD HOUSE EQUIPMENT AT BEUTNER PLAYGROUND]

[Illustration: NEGRO ATHLETIC TEAM REPRESENTING DOOLITTLE PLAYGROUND IN

CITY-WIDE MEET]

[Illustration: FRIENDLY RIVALRY

White and Negro boys at a playground near the Negro residence area]

The playgrounds where the attitude of Negro children was criticized

were Sherwood and Moseley, both in neighborhoods where unusually bitter

racial feeling was reported by the playground directors. The older Negro

girls were particularly rough and hard to control, these officials said,

abusing small children both white and Negro, monopolizing apparatus,

and refusing to leave the playground when asked to do so.

Testimony in regard to adults indicated that the park directors found

them quiet and desirable patrons of the parks. Said the director of

Seward Park:

One of the most interesting and best-conducted and best-behaved

groups I have ever seen is a group of colored people known as

the "Jolly Twenty," a dancing organization. They started coming

eight years ago and had a system of couple dancing which was

marvelous. I have never seen it equaled anywhere. They have

been coming every year, once a year, for a dance at Seward,

and the "Jolly Twenty" has grown to be about the "Jolly Four

Hundred," but the larger the group the better they seem to

behave and the better they dance.

The director of Ogden Park told of a Negro club which holds frequent

dances at Ogden Park. He said: "About 300 attended the last one. They

are the best-behaved group that come. I never have to object to improper

dancing or boisterousness, and they always leave on time, have had to

object several times to conduct at white dancing parties."

This testimony in regard to Negroes at dances is interesting in view of

the situation regarding the recreation facilities at the Municipal Pier.

Negro attendance there is about 8 per cent of the total attendance of

four million or five million a year, according to the director of the

Pier. They are well dressed and well behaved and inclined to segregate

themselves. There had never been a single instance of an intoxicated Negro

or of one who had made himself in the least objectionable, the director

said. The only people whom the pier authorities have had to reprimand

for violation of pier rules in regard to cleanliness, monopolizing of

furniture, etc., have been whites. Many of the attendants are Negroes, and

the band which plays for the dance concessionaire is composed of Negroes.

Negroes are welcome everywhere on the Pier, as are all races, according

to the director, except in the dance hall, where their appearance is

discouraged by the concessionaire. The following method is followed to

discourage the appearance of Negroes on the dance floor, according to

a white man who had observed it:

Admission to the dance floor is at the rate of five cents per

couple, per dance. Each dance lasts about three minutes. If

a Negro couple buys a ticket and dances one dance nothing is

said. If the couple comes in for another dance, one of the floor

managers--employed by the concessionaire--speaks courteously

to the couple. He expresses regret that he must mention the

matter of their dancing to them, but that they are not dancing

properly, and he invites them to come to a corner of the dance

floor where he will instruct them in the proper way to dance.

This usually occupies the remainder of the particular dance,

and results in the Negroes not coming on the floor again. If

the couple does reappear, the floor manager again speaks to

them saying he is very sorry he has to tell them again that

they still are not dancing quite properly and again he invites

them to a corner of the dance floor for further instruction.

This is the procedure by which the Negroes are embarrassed

and discouraged from using the dance floor.

_Relations between the children._--Lack of antagonism was reported at a

large number of playgrounds. Apparatus was used by both groups without

friction, Negro and white children mingled freely in their games and

in the swimming-pools, and both Negroes and whites played on baseball

and athletic teams. Occasional playground fights had taken place, but

usually without any element of racial antipathy. "There might be personal

misunderstandings and disagreements between a white and a black just

the same as between two whites," said the director of Union Park, "but I

wouldn't lay it to race prejudice. They work together and play together

and seem to harmonize in most instances." When this director came to

Union Park a year before he found a tendency among Negroes and whites

to group by themselves, but steps were taken to bring them together in

games of various kinds, and toward the end of the season the director

felt that they "harmonized better and worked together more cordially

than they did before." When the investigator from the Commission visited

Union Park Playground, he saw the small children playing together on the

same pieces of apparatus--a Negro child on one end of a teeter ladder

and a white child on the other.

These children were ten years or under. The director felt that it was

not until children reached the age of eleven years or older that they

began to feel racial antipathy. In the swimming-pool at this park, which

is used by the older children and adults, the Negroes and whites kept

separate. There was no trouble between them, but they stayed in separate

groups. The director felt that there was little likelihood of trouble

ever starting in this park, because "where such nicknames as 'Smoke'

are applied to colored boys by white boys, and is given and accepted in

a friendly spirit, there is little chance for serious disturbance."

As this playground in Union Park is intended for children under ten,

the occasional difficulties between older children might be alleviated

if the Hayes Playground, one of those in the system maintained by the

Municipal Bureau, were kept open in the summer. The playground at the

Hayes School, 80 per cent Negro, was closed and the apparatus dismantled

in the summer of 1920 when the investigator visited it. Though it is not

a large playground it is the one the older Negro children are accustomed

to use during the school year, and they are doubtless reluctant to go

in the summer to other school playgrounds which they do not ordinarily

use.

At Seward Park the Negroes use the facilities freely and play with the

white children on the apparatus and in the ball field. The only difficulty

reported here was in connection with a wrestling tournament. The director

described it as follows:

Last season we had a wrestling championship tournament. There

were some colored groups who had wrestled at Seward who were

eligible for entrance into this tournament, and when the night

came for weighing in, the director for one of the other parks

said, "What are these colored people doing here?" "They are

weighing in." I said. "They will not wrestle with my group,"

he said. "Very well, then, I guess your groups will not be in

it," I said.

It looked as though we were up against a problem, but the night

when the wrestling came the colored contestants didn't show

up, so that the problem was solved for that time. Of course we

couldn't say that any white man must wrestle with a colored

man. It presented a problem that had to be settled in some

way. I think the reason they didn't show up was because I told

my investigator to say to these colored men, "Next season if

you have a sufficiently large group you can have a contest of

your own. We'll award the same prizes to colored wrestlers as

we do to the white."

The representative of the Municipal Bureau also spoke of occasional

difficulty in wrestling, though there may be no objection to Negro

participation in other events. He said:

We have athletic meets in which a Negro team has competed

and for five years has won the championship in athletics. In

baseball there is no trouble. The difficulty comes in some of

the activities, particularly wrestling, because of the nature of

the activity. It is a closer contact. We make no distinction,

however, and when a Negro boy gets up to face a white boy and

the white boy doesn't face him, the bout is forfeited to the

Negro. I think more meet than fail to.

At Fiske Playground, where there are few Negroes, as they do not live

near, the investigator witnessed a baseball game with a team from Colman

Playground composed entirely of Negro boys except the pitcher. They

played as any teams would, with no evidence of racial antipathy. The

Negro team seemed to be the better, and according to the director had

won every game so far that season.

At McCosh, Robey, Carter, Oakland, Colman, Doolittle, and Beutner

playgrounds the children mingled without friction, according to the

directors. Negroes were in a minority at the first three and in a majority

at the last four. At Carter Playground the investigator witnessed the

presentation of a medal for athletics to one of the white boys while the

Negro boys looked on in admiration and, after it was over, invited the

white boys to "come on out and play ball." The only trouble that has been

experienced at this playground was a few days before the 1919 riot, when

a fight between a white boy and a Negro started on the playground and

the spectators divided along racial lines, especially after the fight

was transferred to the street. A riot call was sent in, and the police

put a stop to the fight. No trouble has occurred since and the director

believed it could not happen again. "The boys have learned better," he

said.

Free mingling of Negro and white children was observed at Oakland and

Robey playgrounds and was encouraged by the directors. Italian and Negro

boys were playing ball together when the investigator visited Robey

Playground, and Negro and white girls were playing on the same slides.

The director said that in the evening the ball games were watched by

both Negroes and whites, and that frequently the Negroes had a game

themselves, which white onlookers enjoyed watching. The only incident

of importance at Robey Playground had occurred a few days before, when

a dispute over a baseball game arose between a white boy of fourteen and

two Negro boys of eleven, resulting in a fight in which the director had

to interfere. The director said there was not the slightest chance that

such a fight would divide the playground along racial lines, as there

had never been any disorders there, and that animosity between the Negro

and white groups was entirely lacking.

At Oakland Playground, where neither race predominated strongly, the

assistant director said there had never been any difficulty. The

investigator witnessed a ball game in which Negro and white girls

participated and saw groups of Negro and white boys talking outside the

playground in a friendly manner.

At Colman, Beutner, and Doolittle playgrounds, where the Negroes come

in the majority, no difficulties were reported. The Negro director of

Doolittle Playground encourages comradeship between Negro and white

children and allows no discrimination against white children. "If a

white boy can make a team, he makes it," this director says to a Negro

team which objects to a white boy being allowed to play on it. When

this director was assigned to Doolittle Playground he was told that 60

per cent of those who made use of the playground were Negro and 40 per

cent white. When he got there he found that 70 per cent were white and

30 per cent were Negroes. He said:

I had to look around to find a colored child, but I never had

any trouble. Of course the white people gradually moved out

and the colored people moved in. We never had any trouble with

colored boys or white boys--they played on the same teams. In

fact, I think we won the district championship for four years.

Then they moved me over to the Beutner and the majority of the

white children got up a petition to bring me back to Doolittle

Playground. That shows there was no distinction there. They

wanted me because we carried on activities.

White ball teams often use the field at Beutner Playground in spite of

the fact that Armour Square is only two blocks away. "Last year [1919]

there were several games between white and colored teams," said the

assistant director, "but there have been none so far in 1920."

No difficulties between Negroes and whites were reported at Palmer

Park, Bessemer Park, or Thorpe, Otis, and Orleans playgrounds, which

are patronized by a few Negroes, though they are too far away from the

Negro areas to be generally used.

The supervisor of girls' work in the Municipal Bureau made the following

statement in regard to the relations between the Negro and white children

visiting the municipal playgrounds:

From my observation and supervision of the girls' work in the

municipal playgrounds I can only say that in all our activities

colored and white children mingle without restriction. In

indoor gymnasium and dancing-classes as well as in games,

athletics, and general informal use of the playground, they

take part together. Ability and sportsmanship are the only

qualifications considered in candidates for any playground team.

In the field of adult recreation, since we have no community

centers conducting indoor activities in connection with any of

our playgrounds within the colored area, my observations refer

only to outdoor gatherings. On such occasions adults of both

races mingle without friction. It is my experience that the

most harmonious relations are established in connection with

band concerts, field days, festivals, pageants, etc., including

all forms of community art, which tend to unify rather than to

split those taking part. In the Illinois Centennial Pageant,

presented by groups from thirty-eight neighborhoods in 1918,

girls from Doolittle Playground represented "Dances of the New

Freedom," bringing "Liberty and New Strength to Illinois." In

preparation of this episode several rehearsals were held at

Doolittle Playground, white dancers from other playgrounds

taking part; and the interest and co-operation shown by the

neighbors made each evening memorable.

_Voluntary racial grouping._--Voluntary racial grouping appears to be a

characteristic of the large parks and beaches, which adults frequent,

rather than of the playgrounds which are used mainly by children. One

instance of voluntary grouping among children was found at Copernicus

Playground. The percentage of Negroes using this playground is much larger

in summer than in winter. The playing space is in the shape of an "L,"

one end intended for boys and the other for girls, but by common consent

the children divide along race lines rather than sex. The investigator

saw small white children playing at one end of the playground, while

Negro boys were playing ball in the larger end. Later, after the Negro

boys left, some of the white children used the larger space while some

Negro children collected around the apparatus in the smaller end. No

instance of mixed play was observed, but there seemed to be no antagonism

between the groups, and no disorders were reported.

The director of Union Park in speaking of boys who play games in the

recreation rooms, said that there seemed to be a tacit understanding

between the blacks and whites that they had certain nights. On certain

nights all the attendance would be black and on other nights it would

all be white. Asked whether Negro and white boys who were school friends

played separately at the park, the director said that blacks and whites

often came in together, but that for every case where they came in

together and played a sociable game, there were probably three instances

where groups were either of one race or the other. However, the director

said that this grouping was casual, and that there was no prevailing

community sentiment that the Negroes should use the park on separate

nights. He believed that additional recreation facilities would help

greatly in doing away with this tendency to voluntary segregation. He

also said that the Negroes had a tendency to separate from the whites,

not because they wished to avoid them, but because they preferred to

associate with their own race.

In the general use of Lincoln and Washington parks the Negroes and whites

stay in separate groups. There has never been any difficulty, according

to the Lincoln Park representative, arising from the fact that Negroes

have taken possession of a spot desired by whites for a picnic or other

amusement. No part of either park is especially set aside for the use of

one race, and groups of both Negroes and whites are seen everywhere in

the parks, but they do not mingle. While there was no outward evidence

of antagonism toward Negroes at the time of the investigator's visit to

Washington Park, white visitors who were questioned showed an antipathy

to the Negro which seemed to have its basis in the influx of Negroes

into the residence districts. One man, originally from the South, was

bitter against Negroes. He said he had left the Socialist party because

it accepted Negroes as equals. At an open-air "free-speech" meeting

speakers representing various radical doctrines were addressing a crowd

composed almost entirely of whites. The chairman of the meeting, however,

was a Negro, whose humorous remarks made him popular with the white crowd.

The only place in Washington Park where there seemed to be a general

mingling of Negroes and whites was on the ball field. There were games

in which the two teams were composed entirely of Negroes, and games

in which the teams were composed entirely of whites; there were also

games in which both Negroes and whites were engaged. The investigator

watched one game in which vacancies on two teams from American Legion

posts had been filled by Negroes. There was the best of spirit between

the players and among the spectators. The white spectators were lined

up along the first base line and the Negro spectators along the third

base line, but rooters and players joked with each other with no sign

of racial antagonism.

The South Park representative testified to the good feeling between

Negroes and whites at a baseball game, and said the whites often

preferred to watch the Negro games. At other points in the park, however,

particularly the tennis courts and the boathouse, difficulties between

the races were reported. These will be discussed in the next section on

"Clashes."

Separate racial grouping is the general rule at the beaches, though it

is not always voluntary. At the Thirty-eighth Street Beach, for example,

Negroes are prevented by white boys and the park policeman from going

into the water, according to a Negro playground director. "Boys who live

around there from Thirty-ninth to Thirty-first Street have to swim at

the street end between Thirty-third and Thirty-second. They rock you if

you go in." This director was invited by white boys of the Vincennes

Club to swim at Thirty-eighth Street, but when he suggested bringing

some Negro boys along the white boys said, "Oh no, they can't come."

[Illustration: ARMOUR SQUARE RECREATION CENTER

Located at Thirty-third Street and Shields Avenue.]

[Illustration: BEUTNER PLAYGROUND

Located at Thirty-third Street and La Salle Avenue.]

At the Diversey Beach in Lincoln Park both races go in the water, but

a Lincoln Park representative said that the few Negroes who used this

beach kept by themselves on one part of the beach, though there was

no official rule compelling them to do this. There have never been any

racial disturbances at this beach.

From the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, which is patronized almost entirely

by Negroes, down to Thirty-sixth Street, Negroes and whites go into the

water in separate groups, except at Twenty-sixth Street, where the few

whites who go in mingle amicably with the Negroes. The investigator

saw a white couple who had gone out to a raft and could not get back

rescued by a Negro life guard. The other bathing-places along the shore

for those ten blocks have been allotted by custom exclusively to one

race or the other. At Twenty-ninth Street, where the 1919 riot started,

a policeman is now stationed, and no trouble has occurred since the

riot, though many fights have started which the police have stopped.

Gangs of young men come from as far as Halsted Street, according to the

policemen, ready to fight at the slightest opportunity. Fights usually

occur because of some remark made by one group about a girl in another

group. On the whole, however, few Negroes come to Twenty-ninth Street,

the policeman said, going instead to Twenty-sixth Street.

At the beaches outside the main Negro area, such as Fifty-first Street

and Triangle Park, and Clarendon and Rogers Park beaches to the north,

the only Negro patrons are a few young children. The attendants at these

beaches believe there would be trouble if adult Negroes started to use

them. Negro children have been objected to at Clarendon Beach, where

a man asked the director to put a little girl out because "she was a

nigger."

Several directors reported that the Negroes did not use the swimming-pools

much and segregated themselves when they did go in. The director at Union

Park said the Negroes did not use the swimming-pool in proportion to

their numbers, and that when they did use it, they came in small groups

and confined themselves to a certain part of the pool instead of mingling

with the whites. He said that there was nothing in the attitude of the

white boys to make them do this, but that it was the "natural impulse

of the colored people to do that in the swimming-pool." He thought that

many Negroes did not use the pool more because "they are afraid of the

water." A Negro playground director testified that he had frequently

seen a white boy dive off one side of the pool at Union Park when a

Negro boy dived off the other side and hold the Negro boy down until,

when he came up, he was gasping for air.

The director of Ogden Park gave an incident that had occurred recently

at that park:

One day I noticed three small colored girls sitting among the

others in the "swimming line" waiting for the doors to open.

A few minutes afterward they were at the end of the line. I

tried to find out the reason but could discover nothing either

from the colored girls or the others. I saw that they went

back to the place in the line they had before and went to my

office. Some minutes later I looked out and saw that while

the swimming had begun, these three had not gone in but were

sitting there watching the rest. I was unable to discover why

they didn't go in--they said merely that they "didn't want

to." Whether there was some threat or whether the girls were

naturally timid about going into the pool I do not know.

The representative of the South Park Commission said that in the South

Park district the parents were opposed to race contacts in swimming- and

wading-pools. "Not 10 per cent of the families will allow contact with

Negroes in the pools," he said.

None of the three natatoriums maintained by the Municipal Bureau is

patronized by Negroes, with the exception of the Washington Heights pool

which is used by a few Negro children in the summer. This pool is near

a Negro district, but the other two are remote from the Negro areas.

A distinction was made by several directors between formal and informal

activities at playgrounds and recreation centers. It was their theory

that Negroes and whites mingled successfully in informal activities,

but not in formal ones. "There is a difference in the informal use by

children of a playground and the use of a recreation building where

there are clubs and dances and classes and things of that sort," said

the director of Armour Square. "Children and adults come in individually

to use the library and other facilities, but there are no applications

from organized groups of Negroes for any of the facilities at Armour

Square." The real distinction in most cases is probably not between

formal and informal use but between use by children and use by adults,

as the formal activities are those in which older children and adults

engage, as was pointed out by the representative of the West Chicago

Commission.

_Clashes._--Clashes between Negroes and whites at various places of

recreation are reported as far back as 1913. These clashes in the main

have been initiated by gangs of white boys. In 1913, for example, the

secretary of boys' work at the Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A. (for Negroes)

conducted a party of nineteen Negro boys from the Douglass Center

Boys' Club to Armour Square. They had no difficulty in entering the

park and carrying out their program of athletics. The party then took

shower baths in the field house. The Y.M.C.A. secretary had noticed the

increasing crowds of white boys near-by but had no misgivings until the

party left the park. Then they were assailed with sandbags, tripped,

walked over, and some of them badly bruised. They were obliged to take

refuge in neighboring saloons and houses in Thirty-third Street west

of Shields Avenue. For fully half an hour their way home was blocked,

until a detachment of city police, called by the park police, scattered

the white gang.

That same year the Y.M.C.A. secretary had found it impossible to proceed

east through Thirty-first Street to the lake with groups of Negro boys.

When this was tried they inevitably met gangs of white boys, and fights

ensued with any missiles procurable. Attempts to overcome this antagonism

by continuing to demonstrate that the Negro boys had a right to use

these streets were unavailing for the next two years.

In 1915 similar conflicts occurred. That winter Father Bishop, of St.

Thomas Episcopal Church, took a group of the Negro Y.M.C.A. boys to

Armour Square to play basket-ball. The party, including Father Bishop,

was beaten up by white boys, their sweaters were taken from them, and

they were otherwise maltreated. The Y.M.C.A. staff then decided not to

attempt to use the park or field house during the evenings.

The same year an attempt was made to take seventy-five of these boys

through the Stock Yards. They had received tickets of admission to

the annual stock show, in the pavilion at "the Yards." In spite of the

four adult leaders, several of the boys were struck by sticks and other

missiles while passing from one section of the show to another. The gang

of white boys continually increased in numbers, and the situation by

three o'clock, two hours after the Negroes had entered, began to look

desperate. Police assistance was required to get the Negro boys safely

out of the building and into street cars. No effort was made to restrain

the white gangsters, who were allowed to range through the building at

will.

An altercation between white and Negro boys in Washington Park is

on record as early as the summer of 1913. These boys were sixteen or

seventeen years of age. During the spring and summer of 1919, numerous

outbreaks occurred because of the use of the baseball diamonds in

Washington Park by Negro players. White gangs from the neighborhood of

Fifty-ninth Street and Wentworth Avenue, not far from the park, also came

there to play baseball, among them some of "Ragen's Colts."[44] Gang

fights frequently followed the games. Park policemen usually succeeded

in scattering the combatants. The same season gangs of white boys from

sixteen to twenty years of age frequently annoyed Negro couples on the

benches of this park. When the Negroes showed fight, minor clashes often

resulted.

In Ogden Park, as far back as 1914, there were similar instances of

race antipathy, expressed by hoodlums who were more or less organized. A

Negro playground director said that if Negro boys attended band concerts

in that park, white gangs would wait for them outside the park, and the

Negroes were slugged. The white gangs also tried to keep Negro boys from

using the shower baths at the park. This director told how a party of

Negroes whom he had taken there was surrounded by white gangsters when

they emerged from the shower house. "A boy reached around and caught me

and pulled me up close to the other fellow," he said. "I dug down and

got out. Of course they rushed for me. In the rush the other colored

lads got out. Brass knuckles were used on me. When I looked up they

said, 'My God, you have hit L--; you have hit the wrong fellow.'" The

director declares that the man who hit him with the brass knuckles was

discharged by the court with a reprimand.

This condition in the parks continued up to the early summer of 1920.

George R. Arthur, secretary of the Negro Y.M.C.A. branch, expressed the

fear at that time that a riot might occur in Washington Park any Sunday

afternoon. He described the condition in the vicinity of the boathouse in

that park as "fierce." There were fights there every Sunday. Five white

men had beaten a Negro there one night the previous week. That sort of

thing had been going on for years, he said. The Y.M.C.A. had long been

dealing with the situation but he had noticed this trouble especially

in the last two years. He attributed it to the gang spirit and to racial

antipathy, which ordinarily would not amount to much, but which because

of the tense situation in Chicago might lead to serious riots.

The director of the Negro branch of Community Service of Chicago ascribed

the trouble to the same source. He said that most of the white boys came

to Washington Park from the "Ragen's Colts" Club, that some of them went

to poolrooms where the mischief was hatched. There was but one policeman

in charge of about fifteen baseball games in the park, he said.

The racial difficulties at the baseball fields in Washington Park had

doubtless never been brought to the attention of the representative of

the South Park Commission, because he cited these games as an example of

good feeling between the two races. He believed that there was never any

difficulty at the baseball fields, and that the white people who enjoyed

the Negro games would be the first to object if the Negroes were not

permitted to play in the park. This opinion coincides with the situation

at the ball fields observed by the investigator for the Commission, but

apparently there are occasional clashes here as in other parts of the

park.

The representative of the South Park Commission did not think Negroes

hesitated to use any of the facilities of the park because of fear of

mistreatment in the park, though they might have some fear of being

mistreated outside the park. He did not know that any difficulties have

ever occurred at the boathouse, though a Negro doctor testified that

he had treated many Negro boys who had been assaulted there. The South

Park representative said:

I have never known of any actual abuse of a colored patron

in any park to which I was personally assigned. I have known

people coming and going who were abused, mistreated, and

actually assaulted, outside the park reservations, but I don't

believe our records would show very many cases--probably no

more than occur where the Poles and the Irish get together,

or the Bohemians and the Germans.

Fights of a racial character were reported at one or two playgrounds.

At Franklin Playground, where fights among boys between ten and fourteen

are frequent, the director said he was always especially careful to stop

a fight between a white and Negro boy because "a race riot would be easy

to start."

At Sherwood Playground Negro children do not use the playground after

school hours or during the summer. The attendant declared that "things

used to be mighty rough but are better now." The change may have been

due to a younger group of children replacing the former pupils, among

whom were many children fourteen to seventeen years of age. There was

much fighting between Negroes and whites in the neighborhood of Sherwood

Playground, according to the attendant. Street fights were frequent,

often ending in the use of knives or stones, and numerous arrests had

been made. The fight usually started between two boys over some trivial

dispute, a mixed crowd gathered, and the fight became general. Fights were

also frequent within the playground, the attendant said; sometimes as

many as three were going on at once. But a policeman had been stationed

near-by, and conditions were improving. The playground had no director

at the time it was visited.

An example of objection to the first Negroes appearing in a park was

given by an official of the Municipal Bureau:

I remember a particular instance at the Beutner Playground in

about 1903. Prior to that time we had very few colored people

in that vicinity. One evening a young colored boy, probably

seventeen or eighteen years of age, came in there. I happened

to be on the athletic field at that time. He came in the rear

gate, and the first thing I noticed there was quite a crowd of

white fellows chasing this fellow all over the field. He ran

down to where the Armory now stands, doubled, and came back

and got out of the gates.

This official said that after that incident there was little trouble

between the races at the playground until about 1910, when the balance

of the patronage became almost equal. He continued:

That was when the trouble started. There wasn't any preference

shown on the part of the park management to any particular

race, but it was the people outside. They absolutely took the

stand that as long as they could keep the colored people away

they were going to do it. They used every means they could

to keep the colored people away from Beutner Playground and

Armour Square.

Another instance of whites objecting to the use of recreation facilities

for the first time by Negroes was given by the representative of the

West Chicago Commission:

Not long ago, two colored men, for the first time in the

history of Garfield Park, came out there to play tennis.

Immediately somebody in the neighborhood called up the Park

Board and complained about Negroes breaking into Garfield

Park. We frankly told the people who were complaining that

they had equal rights to the use of the facilities at Garfield

Park. But it seemed that while we said nothing, the colored

gentlemen never appeared again to use the tennis facilities.

The representative of the South Park Commission in commenting on this

same point said:

There is a history of development in amicable race relations.

Most of the troublous conditions are where there is injected

for the first time the question of racial intermingling. Where

it is established, where it has gradually grown up, in time

there comes an adjustment.

At Armour Square individual Negroes have been accepted as "part of the

scheme," according to the representative of the South Park Commission,

practically ever since the park was opened. But the director says that

it is group action which stirs up trouble:

I think the trouble will adjust itself as the colored people

continue to come into the neighborhood, but we are in the

situation of having colored people come into the neighborhood

where there haven't been any before. I think it will adjust

itself in a year or so, and that possibly at that time colored

people will begin coming.

The head of the Municipal Bureau thought the difficulties arose, not

when Negroes first entered a white neighborhood, but when a balance

between the two races was struck, and it was a question which race was

going to predominate. "That has been my experience with the municipal

playgrounds," he said, citing the case of the Beutner Playground which

the Municipal Board decided to turn over to the Negroes.

Where Negroes are accepted and live amicably near white people, or where

there has not been enough influx of Negroes to arouse feeling against them

the contacts in the playground are usually peaceful. On the other hand,

in communities where Negroes are looked on as intruders and objectionable

neighbors, and where the white people are antagonistic, a contact between

a Negro and white child, which would normally be peaceful, will result

in a disturbance and tend to increase existing antagonism. This is the

situation at Moseley and Sherwood playgrounds.

At Thirty-eighth Street Beach the prejudice is such as to prevent any

Negro from bathing there, although it is as near the center of the main

Negro area as the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, to which Negroes are expected

to confine themselves. At Armour Square neighborhood sentiment permits

a few Negroes to use the park, but trouble starts if new groups come.

At Ogden Park a Negro playground director was assaulted by white boys

and hit with brass knuckles in 1914, but now, according to a prominent

Negro familiar with the situation at the center, there is order and fair

treatment both within the park and on the way to it, and the Negroes

prefer to travel out there than to go to Washington Park, which is closer

at hand, but where they may be attacked if they try to use a boat or

may be obliged to wait indefinitely for a tennis court.

The use of the parks by Negroes is determined almost entirely by the

degree of antagonism in the neighborhood, and Negroes are afraid to

make use of the parks where the neighborhood sentiment is hostile. "The

neighborhood condition pretty much governs the feeling of security, on

the basis of which the Negro will come in and use our park facilities,"

said the representative of the South Park Commission. "Without feeling

secure in his neighborhood and in his access to the park, I don't think

anything we could do would pull the Negro in."

[Illustration: A NEGRO AMATEUR BASEBALL TEAM]

At Mitchell Playground, in a district with a reputation for lawlessness,

and at Seward Park, two blocks from a region known as "Little Hell," no

racial difficulty is reported.

The two causes of neighborhood antagonism most commonly cited were the

real estate and the sex problems. Among visitors to Washington Park

the real estate problem in the residence districts near the park seemed

to be the primary cause of ill feeling. One of the property owners in

that region showed his feeling by complaining that the park ought to be

rechristened "Booker T. Washington Park." The figures in Table I indicate

that only about 10 per cent of the patrons of the park are Negroes.

An important point in considering neighborhood sentiment is whether

the white hoodlum who appears to be mainly responsible for the clashes

which have taken place is a cause of neighborhood antagonism or whether

he merely reflects the attitude of the community. The fact that the

hoodlum is permitted to terrorize and mistreat Negroes without serious

protest from whites is an indication that the hoodlum expresses what

the white community feels. The hoodlum does not always live, however,

in the immediate neighborhood of the place of recreation where he makes

trouble. The gangs of white boys who come down to Twenty-ninth Street

Beach and start trouble, for example, do not live near the beach, the

policeman in charge says, but over at Halsted Street. The director

of Armour Square, though she stated that the feeling in the immediate

neighborhood of the park was responsible for keeping Negroes away from

Armour Square, said that the boys who were active in starting trouble

at the time of the 1919 riot came from west of the park, and that the

boys in her vicinity tried to stop the others.

The head of the girls' work in the Municipal Bureau said:

It [hoodlumism] is a symptom, the reflection and logical

carrying out of an attitude widely accepted by the community as

a whole. Although a serious and troublesome symptom, I believe

it should be faced and welcomed as evidence of the potential

brutality of this attitude. Men and women of good standing

in white society condone much that they would hesitate to do

in person; and by their failure to protest prove themselves

equally responsible for results.

The director of Fuller Park believed that the groups of hoodlums mainly

responsible for keeping Negroes out of the parks were the athletic clubs

"composed usually of a bunch of young sports that are not athletes at

all." "These clubs, which have only about one athlete on the roster," he

said, "are so situated that the Negroes have to pass them going to and

from the park. Those are the boys, numerous in every park neighborhood,

who are keeping the colored people out of the parks."

The director of Ogden Park took the part of a Negro boy set upon by a

white gang during the 1919 riot and rescued by the police, though they

did not keep the mob from killing the Negro. He advocated the formation

of "square-deal" clubs to defend innocent people from hoodlums. "Members

would be bound to fight for the square deal--whites against white hoodlums

and blacks against black hoodlums," he said. "Until both races will act,

the lawless elements will continue to cause trouble."

It is possible in some cases, such as those in which the "athletic clubs"

are involved, to find out the identity of boys who molest Negroes, but,

according to the testimony of several park directors, it is absolutely

impossible to control these boys because the courts will not convict

them. The director of Armour Square stated:

I have had boys taken down to the courts time after time, and

now my policeman refuses to take them down to the court any

more, because he is reprimanded when he brings them in....

One of our attendants was shot through the lung and is now

absolutely incapacitated for work, and the policeman was

reprimanded because he had kept the boy in jail two nights.

When it came to trial, they had already seen somebody and the

policeman got the reprimand.

There was a general feeling among park representatives that the presence

of a director with a proper attitude toward the problem was the greatest

factor in bringing about amicable relations within the park, but there was

considerable difference of opinion as to whether the park management could

or should attempt to influence the surrounding neighborhood. The West

Chicago Commission representative said that there was no instructor at

Union Park the first year it was open, and that considerable segregation

and undesirable conduct on the part of both whites and Negroes resulted.

Since then, there had always been a director in charge, and a very

harmonious mingling of the two races had been brought about on the

playground. He believed that a similar relationship could be brought about

within the recreation building by a director with the right personality,

if adequate facilities were provided.

The Seward Park director did not consider it a proper function of a

recreation center to try to direct the community life outside it.

The director of Armour Square felt that she could do nothing to promote

Negro activities there. She did not approve of the suggestion of turning

over Armour Square to the Negroes as the best way of solving the problem.

She thought this would result in ill feeling and trouble, since there was

a well-established tradition that the whites should use Armour Square to

the fullest extent. But since the Negroes had no such recreation center

as Armour Square available to them, she believed that a new center with

full equipment should be started in a neighborhood part white and part

Negro with the understanding that it should be a Negro recreation center

where the whites were welcome if they wished to come. She thought that

white people would patronize such a recreation center and, with careful

leadership, would mingle with the Negroes on friendly and peaceable terms.

Two recreation-center directors favored entirely separate recreational

facilities for Negroes with whites excluded. One of these was the director

of Fuller Park, who told the Commission that he had made every effort to

get Negroes to come to the park, and that he considered it part of his

duty to go out into the neighborhood and try to get Negroes to use the

park. "Separate parks and playgrounds for colored people are advisable,"

he said, "not because one group is any better than the other, but because

they are different. Human nature will have to be remodeled before racial

antipathy is overcome."

The director of Hardin Square, another recreation center little used by

Negroes, though it is near the main Negro area, believed that separate

facilities for each race would be the best solution of the problem. He

did not encourage Negroes to come to Hardin Square. The policeman at

the park also believed that "you can't make the two colors mix." This

policeman said he knows a group of young men in the district, mostly

ex-service men, who would "procure arms and fight shoulder to shoulder

with me if a Negro should say one word back to me or should say a word

to a white woman." He thought it would not take much to start another

riot, and that the white people of the district would resolve to make a

"complete clean-up this time." This policeman is the one whose failure

to arrest a white man accused of stoning the Negro boy, Williams, at

the Twenty-sixth Street Beach was an important factor in precipitating

the riot in 1919.

The director of Moseley Playground, who was born and raised in that

vicinity, said there had been antagonism between the two races in that

neighborhood for thirty years. He believed that separate recreation

facilities would be impracticable because the taxpayers could not be

divided in such a way that they would not be paying for fields their

children could not use.

The director of Seward Park thought that it might be arranged in the

small parks to give special hours to Negro groups. This would meet what

he believed to be the desire of the Negroes to be by themselves and also

the objection of the white girls who had protested against having Negro

girls in the same gymnasium classes with them.

V. TRAINING FOR RECREATION DIRECTORS

The importance of the personality of the park director in determining the

conditions in the park, which was often emphasized, led to a consideration

of the training for the work--whether training was required that would

develop the understanding and vision necessary to handle the problems

involved in racial contacts. The representative of the Municipal Bureau

said that every effort had been made to get trained men, but that there

was no school or curriculum of training that determined the efficiency

of a person in charge. Some of his best directors had had no specific

training, while some of the poorest came from the best recreational

training schools.

Few Negro instructors were found at the places of recreation and these

were employed by the Municipal Bureau. The representative of the West Side

Commission said that he had been trying for a long time without success

to get a Negro to take the civil-service examination for playground

instructors, as he was anxious to get a Negro for Union Park. The

representatives of the Lincoln and South Park commissions said that they

used Negroes only as life guards, attendants, janitors, etc. The South

Park Commission representative said the question of the desirability

of having Negro instructors and play leaders had never come up, because

no Negro had ever become a candidate for a position as a result of the

competitive examinations.

_Training opportunities for Negroes._--It was found that the Y.M.C.A.

has a four-year recreational training-course in which no distinction is

made between Negroes and whites. As the courses are not open to women,

the Y.M.C.A. has no such race problem as arises in recreation courses

where women are admitted. The president of the graduating class at the

Y.M.C.A. College the year previous was a Negro, though the rest of the

class was composed entirely of whites. The number of Negroes taking the

Y.M.C.A. recreation course is relatively small, usually about two in a

class of 150.

The American College of Physical Education and the Chicago Normal School

of Physical Education reported that they did not admit Negroes to any

courses, saying that their students would object to physical contact

with Negroes.

The Recreation Training School of Chicago, successor to the Recreation

Department of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, admits

Negroes to the recreation course on the same terms as all other students

and has trained several, both in the short courses and in the full year's

course. This school admits both men and women.

VI. SUMMARY

Though the Negro areas are as well supplied with ordinary playgrounds

as the rest of the city, they are noticeably lacking in more complete

recreation centers with indoor facilities for the use of older children

and adults. Several of these recreation centers, such as Hardin, Armour,

and Fuller squares, Stanton and Ogden parks, border on Negro areas but

are not used to any great extent by Negroes because the Negroes feel that

the whites object to their presence. Though there are three publicly

maintained beaches within the main Negro area the Negroes feel free to

use only the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, though many of them live as far

south as Sixty-sixth Street. Where Negroes do not use nearby facilities

to any great extent they have usually either been given to understand,

through unofficial discrimination, that they are not desired, or they

have been terrorized by gangs of white boys. Few attempts to encourage

Negro attendance have been made, and with the exception of Union Park

these attempts have failed.

In the main there seem to be no difficulties arising from contacts between

young white and Negro children at the playgrounds, no matter whether

the playground is predominantly white or predominantly Negro, with the

exception of one or two playgrounds, such as Sherwood and Moseley, which

seem to share in traditional neighborhood antagonism between the two

races. Voluntary racial grouping at the playground was found only in

rare instances and usually involved the older rather than the younger

children. The swimming-pools, for example, are patronized more by older

children, and voluntary racial grouping at swimming-pools was reported

in several instances. In the ordinary playground sports and athletic

contests the two races mingle with the best of feeling.

Voluntary racial groupings and serious clashes are found mainly at the

places of recreation patronized by older children and adults--the large

parks, beaches, and recreation centers. Trouble is usually started by

gangs of white boys, organized and unorganized. The members of so-called

"athletic clubs," whose rooms usually border on the park, are the worst

offenders in this respect. If they do not reflect the community feeling

they are at least tolerated by it, as nothing is done to suppress them.

Some park authorities that have made sincere efforts to have these

hoodlums punished are discouraged because they get no co-operation from

the courts, and the policeman who takes the boy to court gets a reprimand,

while the boy is dismissed.

Another source of racial disorder is the lack of co-ordination between

park and city police. The park police stop a fight between a white child

and a Negro child and send them from the park. Outside the park gates

the children start fighting again, and the park police have no power to

interfere. The spectators may then get into the fight, dividing along

racial lines, and before the city police can be summoned a race riot

may be well under way. Either city police should be stationed directly

outside every park, ready to co-operate with the park police, or else

the jurisdiction of the park police should be extended to include the

area immediately surrounding the park.

The most important remedies suggested to the Commission for the betterment

of relations between Negroes and whites at the various places of

recreation were: (1) additional facilities in Negro areas, particularly

recreation centers which can be used by adults; (2) an awakened public

opinion which will refuse longer to tolerate the hoodlum and will insist

that the courts properly punish such offenders; (3) selection of directors

for parks in neighborhoods where there is a critical situation who will

have a sympathetic understanding of the problem and will not tolerate

actions by park police officers and other subordinate officials tending to

discourage Negro attendance; and (4) efforts by such directors to repress

and remove any racial antagonism that may arise in the neighborhood

about the park.

D. CONTACTS IN TRANSPORTATION

I. INTRODUCTION

_Volume of traffic._--The number of passengers carried in 1916 in a

twenty-four-hour day by the Chicago surface lines was 3,500,000 and

by the elevated railway lines 560,000, according to a tabulation made

by the Chicago Traction and Subway Commission in 1916. With the city's

growth in population the traffic in 1920 doubtless showed an even larger

volume. This traffic is distributed over approximately 1,050 miles of

surface and 142 miles of elevated track. It is most congested in the

"Loop" area of the downtown business section, which is a transfer center

for the three sides of the city, North, South, and West; and of course

it is heaviest at the hours when people go to and from work.

_Concentration of Negro traffic._--Negroes constitute 4 per cent of

the city's population, according to the federal census for 1920, and

presumably about that percentage of the city's street-car traffic.

The Negro traffic, however, instead of being scattered all over the

city, is mainly concentrated upon twelve lines which traverse the Negro

residence areas and connect them with the manufacturing districts where

Negroes are largely employed. These twelve lines, which are shown on

the two transportation diagrams facing page 300, cover 11 per cent of

the total mileage of the surface and elevated lines. Because of this

concentration, however, the proportion of Negroes to whites on these

twelve lines is much higher than 4 per cent, and on such lines as that on

State Street, which runs along the principal business street of the main

South Side Negro residence area, it often happens that the majority of

the passengers are Negroes. In addition to these twelve lines of heaviest

Negro traffic, there are others traversing less densely populated parts

of Negro residence areas. In varying degrees contacts of Negroes and

whites may be found on other lines which serve the small proportion of

the Negro population scattered throughout the city.

The main area of Negro residence, on the South Side, where about 90 per

cent of the Negroes in Chicago live, is traversed by the State Street,

Indiana Avenue, Cottage Grove Avenue, Stony Island Avenue, and the South

Side elevated lines, running north and south, and by eleven cross-town

lines, running east and west, beginning with the Twenty-second Street

line at the north and ending with the Seventy-first Street line at the

south. From six to nine o'clock in the morning, and from four to six

o'clock in the afternoon, there is a heavy Negro traffic on the lines

going north to the "Loop," on the Cottage Grove Avenue line going south

to the South Chicago manufacturing district, and on the Thirty-fifth

Street and Forty-seventh Street lines and the elevated branch line at

Fortieth Street going west to the Stock Yards. To reach the Stock Yards,

Negro laborers must ride through a territory between Wentworth Avenue

and Halsted Street in which, as shown in the sections of the report

dealing with housing and with racial clashes, hostility toward Negroes

has often been displayed. This Negro traffic west of Wentworth Avenue

is, therefore, chiefly confined to a few hours in the morning and the

afternoon.

The West Side Negro residence area is connected with the "Loop" by the

Madison Street and Lake Street surface lines, and the elevated line on

Lake Street, and with the Stock Yards by the Halsted Street and Ashland

Avenue lines.

The North Side Negro residence area is connected with the "Loop" by

the lines on State and Clark streets and by the Northwestern elevated

lines. Contacts on these lines, however, are not as important as on

the lines serving the South and West Side areas, because the number of

Negroes involved is only about 1,500, or less than 2 per cent of the

Negro population.

_Contacts and racial attitudes._--As in other northern cities, there is

no "Jim Crow" separation of the races on street cars in Chicago. The

contacts of Negroes and whites on the street cars never provoked any

considerable discussion until the period of Negro migration from the

South, when occasional stories of clashes began to be circulated, but

only one such incident was reported in the newspapers. Even since the

migration began there have been few complaints based upon racial friction

in transportation contacts.

In response to inquiries, the South Side Elevated Company, which has the

largest Negro traffic of any elevated line, replied that except during

the riot in 1919, when a few cases of racial disorder were reported,

there had been no complaints from motormen or trainmen since 1918, when

a trainman was cut by a Negro but not seriously injured. No complaints

from white passengers had been received since the spring of 1917, when

white office workers objected to riding with Stock Yards laborers,

mainly Negroes, on the Stock Yards spur of the elevated. White laborers

in the Stock Yards mostly lived within walking distance of their work,

but Negroes found it necessary to use car lines running east to the main

Negro-residence area. The Chicago Surface Lines replied that complaints

due to racial friction were negligible.

Information obtained by investigators for the Commission showed that

the attitude of Negroes and whites toward each other was being affected

by contacts on the cars. A white woman in the Hyde Park district, an

officer of the Illinois Federation of Woman's Clubs, when interviewed

upon race relations, made special reference to transportation contacts.

She said:

While Negroes are coming into this neighborhood, especially

on Lake Park, I see little of them, except on the street car.

There I must say I have a decided opinion. Just last evening

around five o'clock, I took a Lake Park car at Fortieth Street

and Cottage Grove Avenue, and several colored men saw to it

that they were first to board the car. I had to sit near the

front and a great big Negro man sat next to me, smoking a cigar

right in the car. I told my husband when I got home, I was for

moving them all out of the city, and I never felt like that

toward them until just of late. There's a feeling of resentment

among us white people toward the colored people on the cars,

and they feel that, and they feel the same resentment toward

us. I think I see that very plainly. Last night, on this same

car, a colored man was hanging over me, and I know he didn't

want me there near him, any more than I wanted him.

As a factor in attitudes on race relations, transportation contacts,

while impersonal and temporary, are significant for several reasons.

In the first place, many whites have no contact with Negroes except on

the cars, and their personal impressions of the entire Negro group may

be determined by one or two observations of Negro passengers. Secondly,

transportation contacts are not supervised, as are contacts in the school,

the playground, and the workshop. If there is a dispute between passengers

over a seat it usually rests with the passengers themselves to come to

an understanding. Any feeling of suspicion or prejudice on either side

because of the difference in race accentuates any such misunderstanding.

In the third place, transportation contacts, at least on crowded cars,

involve a degree of physical contact between Negroes and whites which

rarely occurs under other circumstances, and which sometimes leads to

a display of racial feeling.

_Scope and method of investigation._--In obtaining information as to

transportation contacts the Commission's investigators, both white and

Negro, men and women, made many observation trips on the twelve lines

carrying the heaviest volume of Negro traffic and therefore involving

the greatest amount of contact. Counts of passengers, Negro and white,

were made, behavior and habits were noted, passengers and car crews were

questioned, and officials of the surface and elevated lines, starters,

and station men were interviewed.

Superintendents of 123 industrial plants were interviewed to ascertain

the numbers of whites and Negroes employed in offices and in plants,

transportation lines used by workers, nature of work and its effect upon

cleanliness of person and clothing, provision of baths, etc. A further

source of information was a report made for the officers of the Central

Manufacturing District, setting forth the transportation facilities

for the 12,000 employees of the district and providing data drawn from

questionnaires filled out by these employees. The district includes the

area from Thirty-fifth to Forty-third streets and from Morgan to Robey

streets.

II. DISTRIBUTION OF NEGRO TRAFFIC

Negro traffic is fairly continuous throughout the day in the Negro

residence areas, and the proportion of Negroes and whites is about the

same at different hours of the day. Except during the times of going to

and from work the cars are not overcrowded, and the danger of friction

is therefore small. On the routes connecting the Negro residence areas

with the Stock Yards and with South Chicago, where many Negroes are

employed in steel plants, the Negro traffic is confined to a few hours

in the morning and late afternoon, but at these hours the cars are very

crowded. There is much rushing to board cars and get seats, and white

office workers and other non-laborers are thrown into contact with Negro

laborers still in their working clothes. It is under such circumstances

that irritation and actual clashes are most likely to arise. It should be

noted that similar contacts with white laborers in their working clothes

are disagreeable in the same ways, though in such cases the odors and

grime are not associated with race and color.

[Illustration: TRANSPORTATION CONTACTS

MORNING TRAFFIC 7 TO 9 O'CLOCK FROM HOME TO WORK]

[Illustration: TRANSPORTATION CONTACTS

AFTERNOON TRAFFIC--4 TO 6 O'CLOCK FROM WORK TO HOME]

The hours of greatest general travel and car crowding were found to be

from six to nine o'clock in the morning and from four to six o'clock in

the afternoon.

The proportions of whites and Negroes on lines carrying the largest

numbers of Negroes to and from work are shown in two diagrams. These

are based on counts of white and Negro passengers, several trips being

averaged to show typical car loads during the heavy travel of early

morning and late afternoon. The first diagram shows the proportions in

travel from the Negro residence areas of the South and West sides toward

the Stock Yards, the other large industries employing Negroes, and

the "Loop" district during the period from six to nine A.M. The second

diagram shows the proportions in travel from the Stock Yards, the other

industries, and the "Loop" toward the Negro residence areas of the South

and West sides during the period from four to six P.M.

III. CONDUCT RESULTING FROM CONTACTS

As already noted, contacts of Negroes and whites on street cars provoked

little discussion until the migration of Negroes from the South began to

be felt. The great majority of the migrants are laborers. Many of them

are ignorant and rough mannered, entirely unfamiliar with standards of

conduct in northern cities. It is this type which is meant in references

hereinafter to the "migration" or "southern" Negro.

Coming to a city like Chicago, with no "Jim Crow" racial segregation,

was a new experience to many southern Negroes. They felt strange and

uncertain as to how they should act. Many whites and Negroes long

resident in Chicago have said that they could tell a migration Negro by

his ill-at-ease manner and often by his clothes.

The conspicuous points in the behavior of the migration Negro before he

became urbanized were his "loud laughing and talking," his "ill-smelling

clothes," his "roughness," and his tendency to "sit all over the car."

These are easier to understand when one considers the background of the

southern Negro.

Few white people realized how uncertain the southern Negro felt about

making use of his new privilege of sitting anywhere in the car, instead

of being "Jim Crowed." One Negro woman who came to the city during

the migration said, when she was asked about her first impression of

Chicago: "When I got here and got on the street cars and saw colored

people sitting by white people, I just held my breath, for I thought any

minute they would start something. Then I saw nobody noticed it, and I

just thought this is a real place for Negroes." There were exceptional

cases in which southern Negroes walked miles, rather than take a car.

It may seem strange in view of such uncertainty of mind and timidity

that the most noticeable point of behavior of the southern Negro was

loud talking, joking, and laughter. The South Side Elevated Company,

replying to the Commission's inquiries, said: "These colored people are

of a happy-go-lucky type and are often noisy, especially when two or

more acquaintances meet on the trains or station platforms or crossing

from one side of the station to the other. They laugh and talk a good

deal and seem to be happy and care-free."

Although some of this boisterousness was no doubt due to a care-free

spirit and a broad good humor, some of it had quite a different source.

Many a southern Negro thinks that the whites like him to be "typical,"

and that they will tolerate him as long as his dialect, his wit, and

his manner are amusing enough. A Negro newspaper of Chicago took the

southern Negroes to task for using this safety device in Chicago.

Many whites, clerical workers, shoppers, and others of a non-laboring

type, have expressed objections to what they term a tendency of Negroes

to "sit all over the cars," meaning to sit anywhere in the car. This was

most conspicuous when whites had to ride in the morning on a car which

had come from one of the Negro residence areas and was already filled

with Negroes, or when Negroes and whites were boarding a comparatively

empty car near one of the big industrial plants in the afternoon. The

employment manager of the Corn Products Company plant at Argo reported

a complaint about this tendency made to him by one of the girls in the

office:

An office girl told me she had trouble getting a seat on the

cars. She was not able to get a seat by herself and did not

want to sit next to a Negro. She said that Negroes would rush

in and get all the seats by the windows. She thought they

did it more to tease the office help than anything else. This

girl was undoubtedly prejudiced. That was one of her arguments

to explain why she had difficulty in getting to work in the

morning. She is a St. Louis girl of Flemish extraction.

Many of the southern Negroes were found to be very hesitant about taking

seats next to whites. The southern tradition was so ingrained in them

that they tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. On the other hand,

some, with the sudden removal of the restraints of the South, used their

new freedom without thought of the effect of their behavior on Chicago

whites and Negroes.

The attitude of migration Negroes was sometimes expressed to the

Commission's investigators. For example:

You can spend your money as you please, live better and get

more enjoyment out of it--I mean go where you please, without

being Jim-Crowed.

* * * * *

There's no lynching or Jim Crow. You can vote, you receive

better treatment and more money for your work.

* * * * *

The freedom of speech and action. You can live without fear

and there's no Jim Crow.

Some southern Negroes apparently came to Chicago with a real grudge

against all whites and ready at slight provocation to display their

resentment. The minister of one of the Negro churches in Chicago said:

After years of restriction and proscription to which they were

subjected in the South, they suddenly find themselves freed in

a large measure of these conditions. Their mind harks back to

that which they endured at the hands of members of the Aryan

race in the South, and they grow resentful, and in the midst

of their new environment they vent their spleen. One has but

to ride on any of the surface lines running into the section

of Chicago largely occupied by my race group to be convinced

of the facts mentioned above.

The southern Negro who got into trouble with whites by insisting on

his right to a seat sometimes belonged to the class of suspicious

and sensitive Negroes, and sometimes he was simply a "greenhorn." The

following cases show how "green" the migration Negro could be, and how

easy it was for him to make himself disliked and ridiculous. The first

case was observed by a Negro man, the second by a Negro woman, both long

resident in Chicago:

I boarded a crowded car in the "Loop" going south and was forced

to stand near the rear door. There are two lengthwise seats

at the rear of the car, one of which will hold three people

and one of which will hold two. Two colored women, carelessly

dressed and holding greasy paper bundles in their hands, got

on the car at Twelfth Street and stood in the back of the

car hanging on to straps. They rode this way until Eighteenth

Street, when one of them, a large woman, noticing that there

were three white people on one of the seats and only two on

the other said to her companion, "If three folks can sit on

that seat, I ain't going to stand over these white folks, who

are just like they are down South, and don't want you to sit

down. I'm going to sit down myself." She then inserted herself

between the two white women, one of whom was pushed to the

floor. The Negro woman was much embarrassed, but I don't think

she has yet realized that the seats were of different lengths.

* * * * *

I was on a State Street car when two southern Negro women got

on, talking loud, and throwing themselves around loose and

careless like. I was sitting on one of the end seats, just

big enough for three, and one of the women says to the other,

"Here's a seat, here's a seat." "You move over," she said to

me. There was fire in their eyes, and I don't like fighting,

so I made up my mind that if they started anything I'd get up

and give them my seat. Most people would have understood how

you felt if you did that, but I am not sure they would have

understood. I said to one of them, "There really isn't room on

this seat." She gave me a shove, so I said, "But I'll get up

and give you my seat." You wouldn't believe what happened then.

The conductor came in and said, "You just keep your seat."

And a white man, who was sitting in one of the cross-seats,

turned around and said, "I'll see that she does."

Soiled and ill-smelling clothes were a large factor in making Negro

workingmen objectionable to many whites even of the same working class.

At the time of the migration, in the fall of 1916 and the spring of 1917,

the Stock Yards were taking on hundreds of Negro laborers to increase

their war-time production, and these new hands, most of them migration

Negroes, rode to and from work with white office workers. How the white

office workers felt about it is shown by a statement of a white woman

clerk in the Stock Yards:

Some of the Negroes on the Thirty-fifth Street car are very

rough. Most of them work out at the Stock Yards and the smell

of the Yards is very bad. They seem to try to clean up, but

the smell is there, especially in cold weather when the cars

are closed. I would suggest that they run special cars from

the Stock Yards for those people, and that would leave enough

cars for us and we wouldn't get the odor either.

This situation was somewhat remedied by the fact that most of the Negro

laborers at least changed their clothes before going home, even if they

could not entirely rid themselves of the Stock Yards odor; also the hours

for Stock Yards employees were so arranged that the office workers came

to work later and left later than the white and Negro laborers.

The Negro press of Chicago tried to make the migration Negro realize

how the odor attaching to his clothes was affecting public opinion. The

_Chicago Searchlight_ of May 22, 1920, had this exhortation by the editor:

Did you ever get on the elevated train at Indiana Avenue about

5:30 o'clock in the afternoon, and meet the "gang" from the

Stock Yards? It would make you ashamed to see men and women

getting on the cars with greasy overalls on and dirty dresses

in this enlightened age. There is really no excuse for such a

condition to exist. There is plenty of soap and water in the

Stock Yards and you have better clothes in your homes. Why not

take a suit to the yards and wash up and change your clothing,

before attempting to mingle with men and women, many of them

being dressed for theaters and club parties, etc.? Don't you

know that you are forcing on us here in Chicago a condition

similar to the one down South?

In order to find out whether Negroes working in other plants than

the Stock Yards do work which leaves the worker soiled and smelling,

superintendents or foremen were questioned. It was learned that much

other work done by Negro laborers leaves oil, grease, and acid stains,

that many of the plants have no baths or adequate facilities for washing,

and that sometimes where there are such facilities they are not kept in

order. Three-fourths of the superintendents and foremen interviewed had

the impression that Negroes were more careful about bathing and changing

their clothes than whites. They said the difference was probably due

either to the fact that the white laborer who was doing the same class

of work as the Negro, was an immigrant, or to the fact that the white

laborer often lived near the plant where he works, and preferred to wash

up at home.

The Negro laborer meets little objection when he is riding with white

laborers; it is when he comes in contact with whites of a non-laboring

class that there is the most likelihood of trouble. Such whites often

find white laborers quite as objectionable. A lawyer in Indiana Harbor

who was questioned about the transportation contacts in the Calumet

industrial district, said:

So far as transportation is concerned, little trouble need

be expected. Most of the people here are working people, and

they know what to expect when a dirty workman comes and sits

down next to them. The fact of it is that if there is any

complaint to be made, it would be against the foreigners. In

the winter, when the doors are closed, the smell of garlic is

almost unbearable.

Another complaint from whites is that Negroes on the street cars are

"rough." It is significant, however, that all the incidents related to

the Commission in regard to "roughness" occurred on crowded cars. The

rush to get on a car before or after working hours is often heavy. The

Commission's investigator, describing the loading of cars at an important

transfer point near the Stock Yards at the evening rush hour, said:

I observed the loading and transfers at Ashland and

Forty-seventh from three to four o'clock in the afternoon.

With the possible exception of six to seven in the morning

the traffic is heaviest at this time. The transfers from the

Ashland to the Forty-seventh Street car are mostly Negroes

from the government plants at Thirty-ninth and Robey. About 40

per cent of them are women. Cars going east on Forty-seventh

Street leave every five minutes. There is a supervisor on this

corner, whose duty it apparently is to supervise the arrival

and departure of cars. He pays no attention, however, to the

matter of loading. Usually the men meet the car in the middle

of the block and climb on while it is moving. By the time the

car reaches the corner the seats are all taken and the doorway

is congested. The women, like the men, get on as they can. No

deference is shown them. Most of those who get on this car are

colored, and most of them, colored and white alike, are workmen.

Some friction between whites and Negroes has occurred during the boarding

of cars. It may be caused by general racial attitude as well as by the

circumstances of the particular case. The following cases were both

related by white men, one an assistant superintendent in a foundry, and

the other a barber:

One of our employees (Negro) in running to catch a car

accidentally knocked over a white man. The white man became

particularly abusive, and the crowd joined in with him. The

crowd attempted to beat the Negro up, but he ran back to the

plant here for protection and we quieted them down.

* * * * *

I remember one time about three years ago, I was coming home

on the Forty-seventh Street car and two Negroes were standing

on the back. It was pretty crowded. A man swung his wife on

board, and two more white men jumped on too. He got her through

into the car, and one of the Negroes said to her: "I'm going

to get that husband of yours." I went up and stood in back

of the white man and told him I'd stand by him, if anything

happened. There were lots of whites on the car but about half

Negroes, I guess. I think the Negroes have too much freedom.

They don't know how to act. Some of those Negroes on the street

car are real uncivilized.

The South Side Elevated Company, in answer to a questionnaire said:

"It requires constant watching to prevent Negroes from entering and

leaving cars through the windows." The following incident, reported by

the Commission's investigator, who traveled over all the lines used by

Negroes, shows that both whites and Negroes may climb through the windows

under the same conditions of crowding:

I was transferring from the Argo car to the Sixty-third Street

car with a number of white and Negro workmen from the Corn

Products Refining Company. The crowd rushed for the door,

and the doorway soon became congested. Two white men climbed

in the car through the back window, followed immediately by

a Negro. When the conductor came up, a white woman, who was

standing next to me and had seen the whole performance, said

to the conductor, indicating the Negro, who had climbed in

through the window: "I wouldn't take his fare, if I were you.

He came in through the window."

Selection of seats by white and Negro passengers often provides instances

of conduct which is based on racial prejudices. These seem to be most

frequent on lines with comparatively light travel by Negroes and where

there is thus less opportunity for the races to become accustomed to

contact. Sometimes whites show plainly their avoidance of Negroes.

Some Negroes have timidly offered their seats to women standing, and

have been chagrined by the refusal of the white women to accept the

courtesy. The superintendent of one of the plants where Negroes work

made the following comment:

Negroes seemingly refrain from showing courtesy to white women,

such as offering them their seats, because of two facts. Either

the woman to whom the courtesy was extended, or outsiders, seem

to the Negro to place a wrong construction upon his courtesy.

They think him either fresh or servile, and in the majority of

cases where a Negro would extend such courtesies, he refrains

from doing so.

A few Negroes justified themselves by pointing out that white men did

not give up their seats for Negro women, and so they did not intend to

give up their seats for white women. The editor of a Negro newspaper

took Negro men to task for their disregard of white women and also women

of their own race, as follows:

Do you know that there is a growing tendency among the young

men of our race to show disrespect for our womanhood? If

you don't think so, just get on a street car or visit public

amusement places, or even notice their actions as they walk

along the street. It is nothing to see hundreds of big strong

young men sitting on our cars, while women stand until they

become almost exhausted, while those "fellows" sit and read

their papers or gaze out of the car windows.

The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot · 第 18 / 28 章

_Inadequate schools._--Overcrowded and poorly taught schools also are