Title: The Colored People of Chicago - An Investigation Made for the Juvenile Protective Association
Author: Schaffner, Miriam, Boaz, Sophia, Harris, A. L., Drucker, A. P.
Language: English
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  THE COLORED PEOPLE
  OF CHICAGO

  AN INVESTIGATION

  MADE FOR

  The Juvenile Protective Association

  BY

  A. P. DRUCKER
  SOPHIA BOAZ
  A. L. HARRIS
  MIRIAM SCHAFFNER

  TEXT BY

  LOUISE DE KOVEN BOWEN
  1913



The Colored People of Chicago


[Sidenote: =Colored People in County Jail=]

In the course of an investigation recently made by the Juvenile
Protective Association of Chicago upon the conditions of boys in the
County Jail, the Association was much startled by the disproportionate
number of colored boys and young men; for although the colored people
of Chicago approximate 1/40 of the entire population, 1/8 of the boys
and young men and nearly 1/3 of the girls and young women who had been
confined in the jail during the year were negroes.


[Sidenote: =Maids in Houses of Prostitution=]

The Association had previously been impressed with the fact that most
of the maids employed in houses of prostitution were colored girls and
that many employment agencies quite openly sent them there, although
they would not take the risk of sending a white girl to a place where,
if she was forced into a life of prostitution, the agency would be
liable to a charge of pandering.

In an attempt to ascertain the causes which would account for a great
amount of delinquency among the colored boys and the public opinion
which would so carelessly place the virtue of a colored girl in
jeopardy, the Juvenile Protective Association found itself involved in
a study of the industrial and social status of the colored people of
Chicago.


[Sidenote: =Morality and Environment=]

While the morality of every young person is closely bound up with
that of his family and his immediate environment, this is especially
true of the sons and daughters of colored families who, because they
continually find the door of opportunity shut in their faces, are
more easily forced back into their early environment however vicious
it may have been. The enterprising young people in immigrant families
who have passed through the public schools and are earning good wages,
continually succeed in moving their entire households into more
prosperous neighborhoods where they gradually lose all trace of their
tenement-house experiences. On the contrary, the colored young people,
however ambitious, find it extremely difficult to move their families
or even themselves into desirable parts of the city and to make friends
in these surroundings.


[Sidenote: =The First Negro in Chicago=]

Because the fate of the young people was thus so inextricably a part
of the life of the colored people in Chicago, the investigators found
themselves studying the entire history of the negro on the shores of
Lake Michigan, following it to the very beginning where it is said the
first cabin was built in 1779, by a negro from San Domingo.

Slavery, of course, prevailed in Illinois just as everywhere else in
the Northwest Territory, having been introduced during the French
occupation and allowed to continue under the English. When, by an act
of Congress, in 1787, slavery was forever prohibited “northwest of the
Ohio River,” this act was so strenuously objected to in the territory
of Illinois that it was construed to refer only to the introduction of
new slaves, not to the emancipation of those already in slavery. When
Illinois became a state in 1818, its compromise constitution forbade
perpetual slavery, but allowed indenture for twenty-five years of
service.


[Sidenote: =Illinois Liberal in Slave Time=]

Although the state of Illinois was bound by this compromise, the early
city of Chicago itself was most liberal to the negro, as the following
incident illustrates: In 1842 an industrious and well behaved colored
man in Chicago was arrested on the ground of being in the state
without a “free certificate.” He was taken before a judge who promptly
committed him to jail, to be sold at auction if no owner turned up. In
the meantime, friends of the colored man printed handbills announcing
that “A man will be sold at auction next Monday morning in the jail,”
and distributed them on Sunday among the church-goers. When the sheriff
brought out his “ware” on Monday to auction him off, he faced an angry
and scowling audience and when he began his auctioneering, he found
that no bids were forthcoming. “What will you bid for a strong man who
can do all kinds of work?” he called again and again, but meeting with
no response he threatened to take his man back to jail and lock him up.
This threat had the desired effect and he received a solitary bid of
twenty-five cents from Mr. M. C. Ogden, a prominent man in the early
life of Chicago. The purchaser then addressed the colored man in the
presence of the crowd and assured him that he was free to go where he
pleased.


[Sidenote: =Chicago Police Did Not Aid in Fugitive Slave Law=]

The passing of the fugitive slave law in Congress in 1850, created a
great excitement in Chicago when the colored people of the city met in
convention and resolved “not to fly to Canada, but to remain and defend
themselves.” A few days later the City Council passed a resolution that
the city police should not be required to aid in the recovery of slaves.


[Sidenote: =Colored Children Admitted to Public Schools in 1873=]

In 1854 Stephen A. Douglas was hooted off a Chicago platform when he
tried to speak for his pro-slavery resolution in the Senate. From that
day Chicago took a leading place in the anti-slavery fight, but it was
not until 1872 that all laws discriminating against the colored people
were taken off the Illinois statute books. In the next year, 1873, the
colored children were by statute allowed to attend the public schools
of the city.


[Sidenote: =High School Education of No Value=]

Although no separate schools have ever been established in Chicago, it
was found that many colored young people become discouraged in regard
to a “high school education” because of the tendency of the employers
who use colored persons at all in their business to assign them to the
most menial labor.

Many a case on record in the Juvenile Protective Association tells
the tale of an educated young negro who failed to find employment as
a stenographer, bookkeeper, or clerk. One rather pathetic story is of
a boy graduated from a technical high school last spring. He was sent
with other graduates of his class to a big electric company where, in
the presence of all his classmates he was told that “niggers are not
wanted here.” The Association has on record another instance where a
graduate of a business college was refused a position under similar
circumstances. This young man in response to an advertisement went to
a large firm to ask for a position as clerk. “We take colored help
only as laborers,” he was told by the manager of a firm supposed to be
friendly to the negroes.


[Sidenote: =Business Colleges and Industrial Schools Discriminate
Against the Colored People=]

All the leading business colleges in Chicago, except one, frankly
discriminate against negro students. The one friendly school at present
among twelve hundred white students has only two colored students, but
its records show as many as thirty colored students in the past. The
manager, however, claims that his business has suffered in consequence
of his friendliness to the negro. Even the superintendent of the
Illinois Industrial School for Boys at St. Charles complains that it is
not worth while to teach trades to the colored boys in his institution
because it is so very difficult for a skilled colored man to secure
employment.


[Sidenote: =Resulting Reaction Against Education=]

This reaction against education is one of the indirect results of the
difficulties which young colored people encounter in their efforts
to find work. The investigators considered this difficulty one of
the gravest features in the entire situation, affecting alike most
disastrously all of the colored people in Chicago.


[Sidenote: =Uncongenial Employment Often Cause of Criminality=]

From the interviews with all the boys in the jail it was clear that the
lack of congenial and remunerative employment had been a determining
factor in their tendency to criminality, but because the colored boys
suffered under an additional handicap and because the opportunities
for work are the essentials for all economic progress, the entire
investigation had much to do with the basic question of employment.


[Sidenote: =Labor Unions and the Colored Man=]

The colored man believes that the Labor Unions discriminate against
him, either openly or secretly; a few of the organizations have a
clause in their constitutions stating that whites alone are eligible
to membership, but most of them allow the colored man to pay his
initiation fee and become a member; they, however, take no pains to
secure him a place, and when he finds it difficult to find work because
the contractor and his fellow workmen discriminate against him and
only gets a job here and there, he is frequently tempted to work with
“scabs,” and after several fines for this infringement of rules he
drops out of the union. The investigators found that this was not the
exception, but the rule. Mechanics who are members of the building
trades do not complain because they have been refused membership in
the unions, but because they are discriminated against when it comes
to working in a building, although this discrimination is not extended
to the unskilled colored man. Therefore, while many colored mechanics
who come to Chicago for work return to the South where there are fewer
unions and white men more willingly work with colored men, this return
to the South almost never occurs among the unskilled.


[Sidenote: =An Attempt to Compel Admission to Labor Unions=]

The investigators found that a movement was being discussed among the
colored people in Chicago to organize unions for colored artisans
to act as strike-breakers whenever possible, until the American
Federation of Labor asked them to join the white unions. This, of
course, is the very worst thing they could possibly do, as the colored
people in Chicago have not yet recovered from the animosity excited
against them during the stock yards strike when colored men from the
South were imported as strike breakers. The colored people themselves
believe that their difficulty in finding work is often due to the
objection of the employers to treating the colored man with the respect
which a skilled mechanic would command. Certainly the colored laborer
is continually driven to lower kinds of occupation which are gradually
being discarded by the white man.


[Sidenote: =Corporations Usually Refuse Employment=]

Certainly the investigators found that the great corporations, for
one reason or another, refused to employ negroes. Department stores,
express companies and the public utility companies employ very few
colored people. Out of the 3,795 men employed in Chicago by the eight
leading express companies, only twenty-one were colored men. Fifteen of
these were porters. The investigators found no colored men in Chicago
employed as boot and shoe makers, glove makers, bindery workers,
garment workers’ trades in factories, cigar box makers, elevated
railroad employes, neckware trades, suspender makers and printers. No
colored women are employed in dressmaking, cap making, lingerie, or
corset making. The two reasons given for this non-employment by the
employers are first, the refusal of the white employes to work with
the colored people; second, that the “colored help” is slower and not
so efficient as the white. Some employers solve the second difficulty
by paying the colored help less. In the laundries, for instance, where
colored people do the same work as the white, the latter average a
dollar a week more.


[Sidenote: =The Field of Undesirable Occupations=]

The effect of these restrictions upon the negroes are, first, that they
are crowded into undesirable and underpaid occupations. As an example,
about 12 per cent of the colored men in Chicago work in saloons and
pool-rooms. Second, there is a greater competition in a limited field
with a consequent tendency to lower the already low wages. Third, the
colored women are forced to go to work to help earn the family living;
this occurs so universally as to affect the entire family and social
life of the negro colony.


[Sidenote: =Pullman Company the Largest Employer of Colored Men=]

A large number of negroes are employed on the railroads, largely due to
the influence of the Pullman Palace Car Company. There is a tradition
among colored people that Mr. Pullman inserted a clause in his will
urging the company to employ colored men on the trains whenever
possible, but while the investigators found 1,849 Pullman porters
living in Chicago, they counted 7,625 colored men working in saloons
and pool rooms. There is also a high percentage of them employed in
the theaters, more than one-fourth of all the employes in the leading
theaters of Chicago being colored men.


[Sidenote: =Contrast Between Employment by Local and Federal
Government=]

The Federal Government has always been a large employer of colored
labor; 9 per cent of the force in all the Federal departments are
negroes. In Chicago the percentage of colored men is higher. Out of a
total of 8,012 men, 755 or 10.61 per cent of the whole are colored,
approximately their just proportion to the population. The negroes,
however, do not fare so well in local government. A study made of the
city departments in Chicago showed the percentage of colored employes
to be 1.87 per cent, in Cook County to be 1.88 per cent. Three colored
men have also been elected as County Commissioners, and there is said
to be no instance on record in Chicago of a negro office holder having
betrayed his trust.


[Sidenote: =The Colored Man in Business=]

The investigators found, in regard to the colored man in business:
(1) That the greater number of their enterprises are the outgrowth
of domestic and personal service occupations. (2) That they are
in branches of business which call for small amounts of capital
and very little previous experience. There are at present in the
city of Chicago, managed by colored men, twenty-three manufacturing
establishments of various kinds, seventy-two barber shops, sixty-three
van, moving, and storage places, fifty restaurants, thirty-four pool
rooms, twenty-six real estate dealers, twenty-six tailors, twenty-five
coal and wood dealers, twenty-four hair dressers, twenty-three
groceries, twenty cigar venders, twelve builders and contractors,
eleven undertakers, nine printing plants, and eight hotels, besides a
small representation in forty-one other lines of business.

Table showing number of colored men employed by the city of Chicago:

  Department of Police                             83
  Fire Department                                  11
  Corporation Counsel Office                        1
  Health Department                                22
  Board of Education, not including educational
      employes of the Board                         9
  Department of Public Works                       32
  Board of Local Improvement                        3
  Mayor’s Office                                    1
  Municipal Court                                   1
  Municipal Court--Bailiffs’ Office                 1
  Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium                 2
  Department of Smoke Inspection                    1
  City Comptroller’s Office                         2
  Public Library                                   23
  Labor Service                                   100
                                               ------
  Total colored                                   292
  Total number employed                        15,597
  Percentage colored                             1.87

In the colored belt on the South Side of Chicago, there are a number of
business houses managed by colored people and patronized exclusively by
members of their own race. There is also one bank located in a fine
building of which a colored man is president and 80 per cent of the
depositors white. According to the evidence confirmed by the figures
of the United States census, however, there is little possibility for
a colored business man to make a living solely from the patronage of
his own people. The census report holds that he succeeds in business
only when two-thirds of his customers are white. This affords one
explanation of the fact that most of his business is of such a
character that a white man is willing to patronize it--barber shops,
expressing, restaurants, and other business suggesting personal service.


[Sidenote: =The Principal Business Street in the “Black Belt”=]

In a mile on State street, from No. 3000 to 3900, the investigators
found 108 colored men in business, who employed 270 colored men. Of
these business undertakings, twelve were saloons--most of them newly
opened; twelve barber shops; seven real estate offices--only three of
them ten years old; ten restaurants--five of them having been there
for more than five years and two for more than ten years; six pool
rooms--all recently opened; four hair dressers, and three tailors, in
addition to confectioners, bakers, cleaners, decorators, dressmakers,
druggists and the other miscellaneous shops usually found in a
self-contained neighborhood. As ministering to the higher life, there
were found in the same block three music stores, one “art” store, one
piano store, two printers, and--if they may be included in such a
list--a photographer and a florist. All of the latter save one have
been in existence for more than five years, in sharp contrast to the
more ephemeral life of the pool rooms and saloons, only one of which
has survived so long, while eleven others have changed proprietors
recently. This may be partly owing to the fact that it requires very
little money to run either, since both the breweries and the pool room
manufacturers readily accommodate their salesmen with their goods and
other fittings, and many young colored men, who have been employed
in them, are ambitious themselves to become proprietors. While in a
measure the decency of such a place depends upon the proprietor,
he usually responds to the pressure of the large concern who is his
creditor. The total amount of capital invested in the mile by the
108 colored men was found to be $15,750. In addition to the colored
men carrying on business in the mile were twenty-six Americans,
seventy-nine Jews, eighteen Germans, thirteen Irishmen, ten Greeks,
nine Chinamen, and six other white men whose nationality was not
ascertained. Several colored women manage independent hair dressing
establishments in Chicago. On State street there are two successful
restaurants conducted by women; also one saloon and one florist shop;
two widows of their original owners. There are a large proportion of
real estate dealers among colored men, many of whom do business with
white people, the negro dealer often becoming the agent for houses
which the white dealers refuse to handle. Colored people are very
eager to own their own homes and many of them are buying small houses,
divided into two flats, living in one and collecting rent from the
other. The contract system prevails in Chicago, making it possible
for a man with two or three hundred dollars for the first payment to
enter into a contract for the purchase of a piece of property, the deed
being held by the real estate man until the purchaser pays the amount
stipulated in the contract.


[Sidenote: =Four Colored Settlements in Chicago=]

As a careful study of the housing conditions of colored people made
by the students of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy
ascertained, there are four well defined districts in which colored
people have resided for a number of years--one at Englewood, one at
55th street and Lake avenue, one on the West Side, and the largest,
known as the “Black Belt,” which includes the old 22nd street
segregated vice district. In this so-called “belt,” the number of
children is remarkably small, forming only a little more than one-tenth
of the population, while the lodgers constitute 37 per cent of the
population. The investigation made by the School of Civics showed that
only 26 per cent of the houses on the South Side and 36 per cent of
the houses on the West Side colored district were in good repair.
Colored tenants reported that they found it impossible to persuade
their landlords either to make the necessary repairs or to release them
from their contracts, but that it was so hard to find places in which
to live that they were forced to endure unsanitary conditions. The
investigation by the School of Civics confirmed the general impression
that the rent paid by a negro is appreciably higher than that paid by
any other nationality. In a flat building formerly occupied by white
people, the white families paid a rent of twelve dollars for a six-room
apartment for which a negro family are now paying sixteen dollars. A
white family paid seventeen dollars for an apartment of seven rooms for
which the negroes are now paying twenty dollars.


[Sidenote: =Real Estate and the Colored Tenant=]

The negro real estate dealer frequently offers to the owner of an
apartment house which is no longer renting advantageously to white
tenants cash payment for a year’s lease on the property, thus
guaranteeing the owner against loss, and then he fills the building
with colored tenants. It is said, however, that the agent does not
put out the white tenants unless he can get 10 per cent more from
the colored people. By this method the negroes now occupy many large
apartment buildings, but the negro real estate agents obtain the
reputation of exploiting their own race.


[Sidenote: =Lodgers a Necessity=]

High rents among the colored people, as everywhere else, force the
families to take in lodgers. Nearly one-third of the population in
the district investigated on the South Side and nearly one-seventh
of the population in the district investigated on the West Side were
lodgers. While this practice is always found dangerous to family life,
it is particularly so to the boys and girls of colored families, who
are often obliged to live near the vice districts. To quote from the
report, “The history of the social evil in Chicago is intimately
connected with the colored population. Invariably the larger vice
districts have been created within or near the settlements of colored
people. In the past history of the city nearly every time a new vice
district was created downtown or on the South Side, the colored
families within the district moved in just ahead of the prostitutes.”


[Sidenote: =Difficulties of Buying Property=]

When it becomes possible for the colored people of a better class to
buy property in a good neighborhood, so that they may take care of
their children and live respectably, there are often protest meetings
among the white people in the vicinity and sometimes even riots. A
striking example of the latter occurred within the past three years
on the West Side of Chicago; a colored woman bought a lot near a
small park, upon which she built a cottage. It was not until she
moved into the completed house that the neighbors discovered that a
colored family had acquired property there. They immediately began a
crusade of insults and threats. When this brought no results, a “night
raid” company was organized. In the middle of the night a masked band
broke into the house; told the family to keep quiet or they would
be murdered; then they tore down the newly built house, destroying
everything in it. This is, of course, an extreme instance, but there
have been many similar to it. Quite recently at Wilmette, a suburb of
Chicago, animosity against negro residents resulted in the organization
of an anti-negro committee which requested the dismissal of all negroes
who were employed in the town as gardeners, janitors, etc., because the
necessity of housing their families depressed real estate values.


[Sidenote: =Housing of the Well-to-Do Colored People=]

The Juvenile Protective Association, as a supplement to the previous
housing investigations, studied the conditions of fifty of the better
homes occupied by the colored people of Chicago. Those in the so-called
“black belt” in the city; those in a suburban district, and other
houses situated in blocks in which only one or two colored families
lived. The size of the houses varied from five to fourteen rooms,
averaging eight rooms each; the conditions of the houses inside and
out compared favorably with similar houses occupied by white families.
Classified according to occupation, the heads of the household in nine
cases were railroad porters, the next largest number were janitors,
then waiters, and among them were found lawyers, physicians and
clergymen. In only four instances was the woman of the house working
outside the home. Only four of the homes took in lodgers, and children
were found in only fifteen of the fifty families studied. The total of
thirty-three children found in the fifty homes averages but two-thirds
of a child for each family and but for one family--a janitor living in
a ten-room house and having eight children--the average would have been
but half a child for a family; confirming the statement often made that
while the poorer colored people in the agricultural districts of the
South, like the poor Italians in rural Italy, have very large families,
when they move to the city and become more prosperous, the birth
rate among colored people falls below that of the average prosperous
American family.

From the homes situated in white neighborhoods, only two reported
“indignation meetings when they moved in” and added “quiet now”; one
other reported “no affiliation with white neighbors”; still another,
“white neighbors visit in time of sickness,” and the third was able
to say “neighbors friendly.” Of the ownership of the fifty homes,
thirty-five were owned by colored men, twelve by white landlords and
the ownership of three was not ascertained. Thirty-four of the houses
were occupied by their owners.


[Sidenote: =Few Prosperous Colored Men Born in Chicago=]

In addition to the fifty families living in comfortable houses,
one hundred more cases of fairly prosperous colored families were
investigated. It was found that only six of the heads of these
families had been born in Chicago, that seventy-seven had come from
the South. All of the southern states were represented. Twenty-four
of the men were from Kentucky and nineteen from Tennessee. Only six
of the ninety-two men born outside of the state had been brought to
Chicago as children, while seventy-one of the number had come to the
city between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six. They, as well as the
older men, had come hoping for better conditions, their reasons being
variously put as “higher wages,” “learning a trade,” “to get a home,”
“to make big money,” “to get a position,” “for more freedom,” “for
more schooling,” etc., although in nineteen cases the reason given was
curiosity, an attempt doubtless to formulate the desire for adventure.


[Sidenote: =Prosperity Does Not Remove Race Prejudice=]

Of the men from the South every one had improved his condition. Those
who said their condition had not improved had been formerly working
in the large cities of the East or North, where living expenses were
less than in Chicago; only one received lower wages in Chicago. He had
earned sixteen dollars a week before coming to the city and now earns
nine dollars; two said their conditions had not improved because they
“had been led off by fast company.” The incomes varied from $9.00 a
month to $153.60 a month; the average wage was $67.32 a month. Sixteen
of the men owned real estate and six others had liberal bank accounts.
These results probably compare favorably with one hundred white
immigrants, but the colored man insists that the immigrant has the
advantage for, when he learns the language of the country and adopts
American ways, he gradually lives down any prejudice against him, while
the colored man can never make himself acceptable to the white man and
believes that he is often disliked in proportion to his prosperity.


[Sidenote: =Family Life Among the Poorer Negroes=]

In contrast to these one hundred cases of negro men who were fairly
successful, one hundred cases of colored families were taken from
the files of the Juvenile Protective Association representing, of
course, as do the white families whose names are on the records of
the Association, people who were unable to adequately protect their
children. These cases, however, proved to be typical in so far as the
occupations of the men were confined to very few lines of activity.
Forty-five of them were porters, sixteen janitors, thirteen laborers,
the rest scattered in different kinds of work--teamsters, waiters,
cooks, musicians, etc. The striking difference between them and the
more prosperous families lay in the fact that the women were obliged to
work. Of the women in these families, only fourteen stayed at home; of
the others, twenty-six were day workers in households; twelve worked
in laundries; seven were prostitutes; the others worked at various
occupations; two were hairdressers; one a music teacher, etc. Of the
one hundred families, thirty were self supporting; sixteen did not
support their families at all, while fifty-four were dependent on
outside assistance. In regard to their family status, sixty-six lived
an unbroken family life; in twenty-one cases the husband and wife
were separated; seven women were deserted; there were three cases of
illegal relationship. Out of the one hundred cases, there were seven
inter-marriages; in two instances white men had married colored women;
in five instances white women had married colored men.


[Sidenote: =86 Mothers Out of 100 Go Out to Work=]

Out of the one hundred poor families taken from the Juvenile Protective
Association records, it was found that eighty-six of the women went out
to work and, while there is no doubt that this number is abnormally
high, it is always easier for a colored woman to find work than it is
for a colored man, partly because white people have the traditions of
colored servants and partly because there is a steadier demand and a
smaller supply of household workers, wash and scrub women, than there
is of the kind of unskilled work done by men. Even here colored people
are discriminated against, and although many are employed in highly
respectable families, there is a tendency to engage them in low-class
hotels and other places where white women do not care to go.


[Sidenote: =Percentage of Colored Women Working=]

No figures are available later than 1900, but in a governmental report
made then, the colored women in Chicago constituted 42.5 per cent of
the bread-winners of their race, slightly lower than the 43.2 per cent
given in the census report for the entire United States. This is more
than double the proportion of white women employed, which the census
gives as 20.6 per cent of the entire white population. Only .04 per
cent of working white women are married.


[Sidenote: =School Irregularity Common Among Colored Children=]

As 60 per cent of negro working women over sixteen years of age are
married, there is no doubt that many colored children are neglected.
Investigators found from consultation with the principals of the
schools largely attended by colored children that they are irregular
in attendance and often tardy; that they are eager to leave school at
an early age, although in one school where there is a great deal of
manual work this tendency is less pronounced. Colored children, more
than any others, are kept at home to care for younger members of the
family while the mother is away at work. A very persistent violation
of the compulsory education law recently tried in the Municipal Court
disclosed the fact that a colored brother and sister were alternately
kept out of school to care for the younger children, who had been
refused admittance in a day nursery, that the old woman who cared for
the little household for twenty-five cents a day was ill and that the
mother had been obliged to keep the older children at home in order to
retain her place in a laundry. At the very best the school attendance
of her five children had been most unsatisfactory, for she left home
every morning at half-past six and the illiterate old woman took little
interest in school. The lack of home discipline perhaps accounts for
the indifference to all school interests on the part of many colored
children, although this complaint is not made of those in the high
schools who come from more prosperous families. The most striking
difference in the health of the colored children compared to that of
the white children in the same neighborhood was the larger proportion
of the cases of rickets, due, of course, to malnutrition and neglect.
The colored people themselves believe the school authorities are more
interested in a school whose patronage is predominantly white.


[Sidenote: =No Congenial Employment for Refined Girls=]

It was found that young colored girls, like the boys, often become
desperately discouraged in their efforts to find employment. High
school girls of refined appearance, after looking for weeks, will
find nothing open to them in department stores, office buildings, or
manufacturing establishments, save a few positions as maids in the
women’s waiting rooms. Such girls find it continually assumed by the
employment agencies to whom they apply for positions that they are
willing to serve as domestics in low class hotels and disreputable
houses. Of course, the agency does not explain the character of the
place to which the girl is sent, but on going to one address after
another she finds that they are all of this kind. Quite recently
an intelligent colored girl who had kept a careful record of her
experiences with three employment agencies came to the office of the
Juvenile Protective Association to see what might be done to protect
colored girls less experienced and self-reliant than herself, against
similar temptations. Quite recently a young colored girl who at the age
of fifteen had been sent to a house of prostitution by an employment
agency, was rescued from the house, treated in a hospital and sent to
her sister in a western state. She there married a respectable man and
is now living in a little home “almost paid for.”

The case of Eliza M., who has worked as a cook in a disreputable house
for ten years is that of a woman forced into vicious surroundings. In
addition to her wages of five dollars a week and food, which she is
permitted to take home every evening to her family, she has been able
to save her generous “tips” for the education of her three children,
for whom she is very ambitious.


[Sidenote: =Insults to Girls Common=]

Colored young women who are manicurists and hairdressers find it
continually assumed that they will be willing to go to hotels under
compromising conditions, and when a decent girl refuses to go, she is
told that that is all that she can expect. There is no doubt that the
few colored girls who find positions as stenographers or bookkeepers
are much more open to insult than white girls in similar positions.

All these experiences tend to discourage the young people from that
“education” which their parents so eagerly desire for them and also
makes it extremely difficult for them to maintain their standards of
self-respect.


[Sidenote: =Life Insurance Popular=]

It was found that colored people in Chicago do not patronize these
life insurance companies so successfully managed by colored men in
Atlanta and in other cities. The investigators, however, found many
colored agents employed as solicitors among their own people; two
hundred colored agents, for instance, are writing policies for accident
insurance companies. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company alone has
approximately 65,000 industrial policies on the lives of colored people
in the city of Chicago, many colored people having more than one policy
on every member of the family.


[Sidenote: =Many Professional Men of High Standard=]

Chicago has a large number of fine negro professional men; this is
due largely to the number of schools and universities accessible to
the negro’s use. There are in Chicago sixty-five colored physicians,
four of whom are women; twenty-five lawyers; eighteen dentists; twelve
pharmacists, with many students in attendance at the universities and
professional schools. One of the physicians is on the staff of St.
Luke’s hospital and others are responsible for the fine medical work
carried on at the Provident Hospital, the leading hospital for colored
people in the United States. The colored people are justly proud of
this hospital, founded in 1891, where there is no discrimination
between white and colored people, on the staff of physicians and
nurses, nor among the patients. The hospital is managed by a board of
trustees of fourteen members--six white and eight colored, and has a
good standing among the hospitals of Chicago. Although colored women
have an aptitude for nursing, there are not enough training schools in
the country where they can be properly trained as nurses, such as the
Provident Hospital in Chicago; the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington,
D. C.; the Lincoln Hospital in New York, and one in Philadelphia. One
of the colored dentists of Chicago is a leader in his profession.
His practice is exclusively among white people. Two colored dentists
are women. Several of the colored lawyers have been in the State’s
Attorney’s office, one of them an assistant there from 1896 to 1911,
was most active in bettering conditions for the juvenile offenders;
still another colored man was District United States Attorney for
some years, and several negro lawyers have been admitted to Supreme
Court practice. One of the prominent colored lawyers who was for five
years head of the department of the city damage suits, has become a
specialist in “track elevation suits” with big corporations as his
clients.


[Sidenote: =Physicians and Lawyers Real Factors in Social Improvement=]

The colored people often state that the colored professional men,
lawyers and physicians, rather than the ministers and social workers,
have been the real factors in the social improvement among the negroes
of Chicago. They instance that the Frederick Douglas Center has staunch
supporters among the professional men; that the president of their
newly built Y. M. C. A. is a colored physician and that professional
men are very active in the Chicago branch of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People.


[Sidenote: =Musicians of Prominence=]

Among the many colored musicians in Chicago are at least a score
who may be called professionals; two of them direct orchestras; one
is a pianist of local reputation; at least four of them singing in
vaudeville are also composers of songs; two are young colored women
who have extensively traveled as singers in Cuba and South America as
well as in the United States. Every year several young people graduate
at the various musical colleges, and a gifted young violinist is now
studying in Paris. The Art Institute often has colored students, and
there are a goodly number of colored people who write creditable
poetry, chiefly words to songs which are set to music by their
friends. Four newspapers edited in Chicago by colored men, as well as
contributions to the “Crisis” and other magazines, give evidence of
a remarkable ability for writing. In addition to several clergymen
and attorneys of undoubted forensic ability, may be cited several
lecturers, one of them a woman with a gift for public speaking, who
years ago roused interest throughout England in the condition of
colored people.


[Sidenote: =Church Chief Factor in Social Life=]

The church among the colored people has always been the chief factor in
their social life. In Chicago there are twenty-nine regularly organized
churches in addition to various missions, with approximately twenty
thousand members. This includes nearly half of the colored population
of the city, a much larger proportion than the church membership among
the white population. The churches own property to the amount of six
hundred thousand dollars, although every church is carrying a debt.
The church is a center for the colored people for lectures, literary
societies, civic meetings, and so forth. Many churches have young
people’s societies, meeting every Sunday afternoon, united to the
extent of sustaining in Chicago an annual oratorical contest to which
they all send representatives. Two of the churches, one on the South
Side and one on the West Side, at one time carried on institutional
work, which has been discontinued because of lack of funds; one of the
Baptist churches supports a religious training school which has eleven
teachers and one hundred and fifty students. The clergymen are, as a
rule, men who have been educated in some of the best northern and
southern theological seminaries, but they are inclined to be sectarian
and to confine themselves to the conventional church routine. The
colored ministers of one denomination seldom meet with the colored
ministers of another denomination and almost never with the white
ministers of their own denomination. They complain that they meet with
public approval when they work for the religious advancement of their
own race, but are rebuffed when they enter into general movements for
civic betterment.


[Sidenote: =Young Men’s Christian Association=]

A Young Men’s Christian Association building in Chicago represents
the largest investment ever made by that association to be devoted to
the interests of colored men and boys. Its entire cost approximates
$195,000. It contains the standard equipment of gymnasium, restaurant,
dormitories, etc., and has a membership of 2,000, although the annual
fee is ten dollars.


[Sidenote: =Juvenile Officers and Social Workers=]

Among the colored social workers of the city are five Juvenile
Protection Officers and one Adult Probation Officer. The county
agent employed one colored investigator and the Juvenile Protective
Association one colored officer; there are three colored nurses
employed by the Visiting Nurses’ Association, and three others upon the
staff of the public school nurses. The standard of all these social
workers is as high as the average, and several of them--notably two
young women living at the Wendell Phillips Settlement, have taken the
full course at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. The
colored people themselves feel that there is urgent need for more
trained social workers. The clubs of colored women which are beginning
to study the social needs of their districts urge their members to more
serious study; of these clubs the Civic Club is devoted to rescue work,
the Phyllis Wheatley Club to maintaining a permanent home for colored
working girls, the Parents’ School Club to securing better school
conditions, a Neighborhood Club to making local improvements. Several
other women’s clubs, which take care of special cases in need of relief
and co-operate with the United Charities, are eager for guidance as
to the best method of Charitable administration. There are forty-one
clubs of colored women in the city, with a total membership of 1,200,
most of them devoted to philanthropy and closely allied to the women’s
aid societies found in all the colored churches. Two clubs for colored
women are of a somewhat different character, federated with the Cook
County League of Women’s Clubs and co-operate in general social
movements.


[Sidenote: =Social Settlements=]

There are four settlements in Chicago in or near the neighborhoods
of colored people. The pioneer was the Frederick Douglas Center on
the South Side of Chicago, founded to promote a better understanding
between white and colored people and to help remove the arbitrary
disabilities from which the latter suffer in their civil, political and
industrial life. The founder and head resident, who had for years been
troubled by the increasing race antagonism against the colored people,
believes that much can be accomplished by a frank discussion of the
situation between the two races if it be carried on with justice and
good will; cases of unusual discrimination are often arbitrated and
adjusted.

The Wendell Phillips settlement was also organized by a board of white
and colored people who were concerned over the conditions obtaining in
the colored district on the West Side of the city. Two young colored
women, graduates of Fiske University, are in charge and have developed
an excellent system of clubs and classes. Both of these settlements own
their own property.

The Negro Fellowship League was founded as an outgrowth of the
discussion following the Springfield riots, when it was said that the
difficulty arose from idle young men out of work, maintains a reading
room, a lodging house, and an employment agency on State street in the
midst of the “Black Belt.” The League performs many offices for the
colored men who have newly arrived in Chicago similar to those of the
League for the Protection of Immigrants; in fact, the needs of the
two classes of people are similar in many respects, implying lack of
adjustment rather than lack of ability.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Enterprise Institute on State street has classes in various lines,
at present numbering 150 pupils. There are in Chicago an entire group
of institutions which have arisen as colored people were discriminated
against in existing institutions, such as the Home for the Widows
of Colored Soldiers and the Home for the Aged, all supported by
associations of colored women.


[Sidenote: =Race Prejudice Found Even in Day Nurseries and Dependent
Homes=]

A day nursery for colored children was organized a year ago because
several day nurseries refused to receive colored children on the ground
that “the other people objected to them.” There are likewise five homes
for colored dependent children; two were the outgrowths of apparent
discrimination against colored children in two state industrial schools
receiving public funds, although in the case of the Illinois Industrial
School for Girls, situated at Park Ridge, Illinois, the Institution is
responsible for the branch maintained in Chicago for colored girls and
defrays all expenses. The board managers believe that this segregation
is equally valuable to both sets of children. The similar school for
boys at Glenwood, Illinois, does not maintain a separate branch, but in
various ways avoids taking colored boys into the school. At the time
of the investigation, the Glenwood School contained 500 white boys and
fifteen colored boys, a number disproportionate to the cases of colored
boys brought into the Juvenile Court. It is becoming a custom, on the
part of many places, to refuse colored children, with the cryptic
utterance, “We have no room.”

In order to provide for dependent and delinquent colored children, a
colored workman, previously a probation officer, established the Louise
Juvenile Home, which cares for twenty dependent boys. The Eldridge
Home and the Marcy Home each provides for smaller children. The Amanda
Smith Home was founded by an ex-slave with a remarkable gift for public
speaking and great religious devotion. She spent twelve years in China,
Japan and Africa under the auspices of the English Missionary and
Temperance Society. Returning home to Chicago in 1900, she invested the
savings of her lifetime, ten thousand dollars, in the Home, which is
chartered under the provision of the industrial school act. The Home
cares for fifty children, but since Mrs. Smith left, on account of ill
health, it has been greatly crippled for lack of funds. All of these
homes for colored children are supported wholly by colored people. The
Illinois Technical School for colored girls is maintained in Chicago
by the Catholic Church; there are fifty-one girls in the school,
ranging from four to sixteen years of age and receiving most excellent
care. In spite of these various efforts, the care for dependent and
semi-delinquent colored children is totally inadequate, a situation
which is the more remarkable as the public records all give a high
percentage of negro criminals; the police department gives 7.7 per
cent; the Juvenile Court 6.5 per cent; the county jail 10 per cent.

       *       *       *       *       *

Those familiar with the police and the courts believe that negroes
are often arrested on excuses too flimsy to hold a white man; that
any negro who happens to be near the scene of a crime or disorder is
promptly arrested and often convicted on evidence upon which a white
man would be discharged. The Juvenile Protective Association has on
record cases in which negroes have been arrested without sufficient
cause and convicted on inadequate evidence, and it is well known that
a certain type of policeman, juryman, and prosecuting attorney have
apparently no scruples in sending “a nigger up the road” on mere
suspicion.


[Sidenote: =Negroes Frequently Convicted on Suspicion=]

To take one record from the files of the Association, the case of
George W., a colored boy, nineteen years old, who was born in Chicago
and had attended the public schools through one year at the high
school. He lived with his mother and had worked steadily for three
years as a porter in a large grocery store, until August 22, 1912,
when he was arrested on the charge of rape. On the late afternoon of
that day an old woman of eighty-three was assaulted by a negro and
was saved from the horrible attack only by the timely arrival of her
daughter, who so frightened the assailant that he jumped out of a
window. Two days later George was arrested, charged with the crime. At
the police station he was not allowed to sleep; was beaten, cuffed and
kicked, and finally, battered and frightened, he confessed that he had
committed the crime. When he appeared in court, his lawyer advised him
to plead guilty, although the boy explained that he had not committed
the crime and had confessed simply because he was forced to do so.
The evidence against him was so flimsy that the judge referred to it
in his instructions to the jury. The State’s Attorney had failed to
establish the ownership of the cap dropped by the fleeing assailant
and the time of the attempted act was changed during the testimony.
Though the description given by the people who saw the colored man
running away did not agree with George’s appearance, nevertheless the
jury brought in a verdict of guilty and the judge sentenced the boy to
fourteen years in the penitentiary. When one of the men who had seen
the guilty man running away from the old woman’s house was asked why he
did not make his testimony more explicit, he replied, “Oh, well, he’s
only a nigger anyway.” The case was brought to the Juvenile Protective
Association by the employer of George W., who, convinced of the boy’s
good character, felt that he had not had a fair trial. The Association
found that the boy could absolutely prove an alibi at the time of the
crime and is making an effort to get him out of the penitentiary.


[Sidenote: =A Man’s Fate Decided in Sixteen Minutes=]

Occasionally it happens that very little time is given to a case where
a negro is concerned.

Some time ago a colored man was arrested and charged with murder. He
pleaded guilty and was sentenced by the judge to imprisonment for life
in the penitentiary. It took just sixteen minutes from the time the
negro was brought into the court to the time he left it, to have his
case brought up, to plead guilty and to have a sentence of lifelong
imprisonment pronounced. It surely seems as if such a serious crime
as the taking of life and the commitment of a man to prison for as
long as he lives, should at least require less haste and more mature
deliberation.


[Sidenote: =Economic Condition Largest Factor in Production of Crime=]

The reasons given by the leading colored men of Chicago for the large
amount of crime among their people are curiously confirmed by the
results of this investigation. They contend that first, the negroes in
Chicago are so limited in the choice of employment that they under-bid
each other and are forced to work for the smallest wages. This obliges
the wife and mother to go out to work and the consequent neglect of
the children leads to truancy, incorrigibility and crime. Second, that
the colored people of Chicago are obliged to pay such a high rental
that a large number of families are forced to take in lodgers, which
results in much immorality and indecency among colored people who
would otherwise remain respectable. Third, that the colored people are
forced to make their homes in and near the openly immoral districts of
the city so that the only white people many colored children ever see
are those frequenting the vice district. Fourth, the disproportionate
number of negro criminals is due to the fact that their desire for the
friendship and sympathy of the white people is often exploited by white
criminals who wish to secure shelter from the police. Some obscure
colored family, happy to render a service to a white man, takes him in
sometimes for weeks or months, and he naturally influences the colored
men with whom he associates.


[Sidenote: =Remedies Suggested=]

As remedies against the unjust discrimination against the colored man
suspected of crime, a leading attorney of the race in Chicago suggests:
(a) Generalizing against the negro should cease; the fact that one
negro is bad should not fix criminality upon the race. The race should
be judged by its best as well as by its worst types. (b) The public
press never associates the nationality of a criminal so markedly in
its account of crime as in the case of a negro. This exception is
most unjust and harmful and should not obtain. (c) The negro should
not be made the universal “scapegoat.” When a crime is committed, the
slightest pretext starts the rumor of a “negro suspect” and flaming
headlines prejudice the public mind long after the white criminal is
found.

The colored man complains of race prejudice exhibited first in the
readiness to condemn the untried negro as a criminal; second, in the
refusal to give him employment fitted to his skill and capacity; third,
in crowding the colored population into the most undesirable houses
in the city. He does not resent social ostracism, but he does make a
vigorous demand for his civil and economic rights.

In order to test the many times repeated statement that colored people
are discriminated against at public cafes, a young colored woman,
at the request of the investigators, visited sixteen of the leading
confectioners of Chicago in the most crowded portion of the city,
asking to be served with a cup of hot chocolate. In every place she
was served, always by white men or women, and the white patrons seated
at adjoining tables paid no attention to her presence. At one place,
however, she was obliged to wait for a long time, but was finally
served without remark. At another place, after waiting for twenty
minutes, she was asked to take a seat at the counter and told that
white people would not sit at the same table with her. At two other
places she fancied that she was made fun of by the waiters, but in
none of the places did she encounter actual rudeness. Possibly this
treatment would not have been accorded to her at the hotels. Quite
recently the County Federation of women’s clubs arranged a luncheon at
one of the leading hotels of the city. When the proprietor objected to
the presence of the colored delegates, the officers of the federation
gave up the luncheon rather than to countenance such discrimination,
although the objection was made so late that a committee was obliged to
stand at the door of the hotel to tell the members that the luncheon
had been given up and the program postponed. Naturally some of the
delegates objected, but the large majority approved the action of the
officers in spite of the great inconvenience involved.


[Sidenote: =Colored People Especially Fond of Music=]

All colored people are especially fond of music, but almost the
only outlet the young people find for their musical facility is in
vaudeville shows, amusement parks and inferior types of theaters. That
which should be a great source of inspiration tends to pull them down,
as their love of pleasure, lacking innocent expression, draws them
toward the vice district, where alone the color line disappears.


[Sidenote: =Model Dance Hall Opposed by White People=]

An effort was recently made by some colored people on the South Side to
start a model dance hall. The white people of the vicinity, assuming
that it would be an objectionable place, successfully opposed it as a
public nuisance and this effort toward better recreation facilities had
to be abandoned.


[Sidenote: =Colored Boys Cannot Bathe in Lake Michigan=]

Even the waters of Lake Michigan are not available for colored
children. They are not welcomed by the white children at the bathing
beaches and late last summer one little colored boy who attempted
to bathe at the Thirty-ninth street beach was mobbed and treated so
roughly that the police were obliged to send in a riot call.

This investigation would certainly explain the presence of so large
a proportion of colored boys in the county jail on the following
grounds: First, the colored children are forced to live in the very
worst neighborhoods in Chicago and even there the colored families are
charged such high rents that the house is filled with “floaters” of
a very undesirable class, so that the children witness all kinds of
offenses against decency within the house as well as on the streets.

Second, the fathers of the families, because they are so circumscribed
in their lines of occupation, work for very small wages, with the
inevitable outcome that the mothers go out to work and neglect their
children. As a result, the colored children are underfed, irregular in
school attendance, make slow progress in their studies and drop out of
school at the earliest possible moment.

Third, there are not enough places in Chicago where negro children may
find wholesome amusement. Of the fifteen small parks and playgrounds
with field houses, only two are really utilized by colored children.

They avoid the others because of friction and difficulty which they
constantly encountered with the white children. The commercial
amusements found in the neighborhoods of colored people are of the
lowest type of pool rooms and saloons, which are artificially numerous
because so many young colored men find their first employment in these
two occupations and with their experience and very little capital are
able to open places for themselves.

Perhaps the greatest factor of all is the difficulty which all colored
people have in finding employment; and after an ambitious boy has
been refused employment again and again in the larger mercantile and
industrial establishments and comes to the conclusion that there is no
use in trying to get a decent job, he is in a very dangerous state of
mind. Idle and discouraged, his neighborhood environments vicious, such
a boy quickly shows the first symptoms of delinquency and the remedial
agencies which should be prompt in his case are the very weakest at
this point. Added to this is the conviction held by many colored boys
and young men that “the police have it in for them and do not accord
them fair treatment.”

In suggesting remedies for this state of affairs, the broken family
life, the surrounding of a vicious neighborhood, the dearth of
adequate employment, the lack of preventive institutional care and
proper recreation for negro youth, the Juvenile Protection Association
finds itself confronted with the situation stated at the beginning of
the investigation, that the life of the colored boy and girl is so
circumscribed on every hand by race limitations that they can be helped
only insofar as the entire colored reputation in Chicago is understood
and fairly treated.

For many years Chicago, keeping to the tradition of its early history,
had the reputation among colored people of according them fair
treatment. Even now it is free from the outward signs of “segregation,”
but unless the city realizes more fully than it does at present the
great injustice which discrimination against any class of citizens
entails, we shall suffer for our indifference by an ever increasing
number of idle and criminal youth, which must eventually vitiate both
the black and white citizenship of Chicago.



PRESS OF ROGERS & HALL CO., CHICAGO



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Alternate or archaic spelling that may have been in use at the time
  of publication has been retained.





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