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.
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.
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.
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.
There is one trait, and I might say only one, that I take off my hat to the southern "Cracker" for, and that is his respect and high regard for women. While he hasn't any for the other fellow's [the Negro's] wives and daughters, yet he respects his own. We must set a good example for him and respect all women, regardless of race, color, or creed. Then you will win the admiration of all civilized people. Men who do not respect and honor their women are not worthy of citizenship. Do you get me, brother?
White men have become much incensed when they have given seats to white women, and Negro men, not realizing what had happened, took the seats. The timekeeper at a large industrial plant said:
I was on an East Chicago Whiting car. Six Negro workmen were standing. The car was full about one-third with Negroes. A man got up to let a white woman sit down. A Negro, seeing the seat vacated, sat down before the woman had a chance to get to it. The man who had proffered the seat became indignant, cursed the Negro, yanked him out of his seat, and proceeded to beat him up. The Negro drew out a knife. About this time, it became a general race clash. One of the Negro workmen had a gun: he pulled it out of his pocket and cleaned out the car.
The following incidents were reported by two white investigators:
I was on a Cottage Grove Avenue car at 5:30 p.m. The car was crowded, about one-third colored people. A young, well-dressed colored boy of about twenty was standing in the aisle beside a white man and a white woman. The seat directly in front of this colored boy was vacated, and the white man made a move to seize it, but the boy by holding his arm on the back of the seat barred the white man's way and stepped aside to allow the woman to sit down. The woman nodded her thanks to the boy, and the white man went on reading his paper.
I was on an eastbound Oak Park elevated train at about 10:30 a.m. Several Pullman porters got on at Campbell Avenue and had to stand, as did several white women and men. As the crowd began to thin out, I noticed that the white men were apt to drop into a vacant seat themselves, while the Negro porters were careful to wait until the women sat down before they took advantage of any vacant seats.
A white woman in the Hyde Park district said to one of the investigators:
On the street cars I would rather ride with Negro gentlemen than with many of our so-called white gentlemen. A Negro man who has the slightest training is courteous and genuinely so. My children use the street car every day to go to the Hyde Park High School, and it's not the Negro men on the street cars I hate to think of; it's the cheap white men. A very rough element of whites congregate every night on Lake Park near Fifty-first Street—hoodlums that the colored people living there must fear.
No case of attempted familiarity by a Negro man toward a white woman on the street cars was reported to the Commission. Cases were reported, however, of accidental contacts between Negro men and white women which might easily have been misunderstood, but which seemed to the investigator, a white woman, to be due to the clumsiness of southern rural Negroes in crowded cars. Two such cases follow:
I was on a Madison car going west. A number of Negroes got on at the Northwestern Station. The car was crowded, and I felt someone in the aisle leaning heavily against my shoulder. I was very much annoyed and glanced up. I saw that the man was a Negro about twenty years old. He was with a girl, obviously his sister, who was also standing in the aisle. They both had childlike faces, and I could see that he was quite unaware that he was leaning against me. I didn't say anything, as the car was really crowded.
I was in the aisle seat of an Illinois Central suburban car about 5:00 p.m., waiting for the train to start. A Negro man standing in the aisle next to me suddenly leaned against my shoulder so hard that it hurt. I looked up at him resentfully but he didn't notice me. He looked as though he had been picked up in a little western town and dumped down in a city for the first time. He had a wide western hat on, and his face was lean and weatherbeaten. I take it he was about fifty years old. He was in animated conversation with a woman in a seat behind me. This woman had many bundles. Apparently they wanted to find seats together. Soon another man joined them who had been scouting for seats in the car ahead, and they all set out together for another car. They were so concentrated on this problem of getting a seat that they didn't know there was anyone else in the car. They lunged down the aisle knocking against people as they went along, but no one paid any particular attention to them.
Another case of accidental contact, showing an attitude of suspicion on the part of a white woman, was reported by a Negro Y.M.C.A. secretary:
I was on a street car going west through the "Loop" on Madison Street. A colored man, apparently a workman, was sitting across the aisle from me, looking out of the window, with his left arm stretched along the back of the seat. A white woman came in, glanced at the vacant seat beside me, and sat down beside the colored man across the aisle. He looked around and saw the woman sitting in the seat, and apparently was confused. He attempted to remove his arm, and in doing so his arm brushed across the woman's shoulder. She got right up and exclaimed: "How dare you put your arm around me?" The man looked at her dumbly, his face the picture of excitement and wonder. I said to the lady, "I was watching this man and he was honestly trying to remove his arm from the back of the seat. I think he was more surprised to find you there than anything else, and the whole thing was sheer accident." She wanted to know what I had to do with it, and I simply said I wouldn't like to see a matter of that kind misunderstood. She resumed her seat beside the colored man and nothing further happened.
Many cases of improper advances by white men toward Negro women were reported to the Commission by Negro women, well known to the Commission, whose character is beyond question. The following are typical:
Going south on a State Street car to Fifty-third Street, I noticed a man in the aisle staring at me. He kept moving down nearer and nearer to my seat and sat down in front of me. He handed me a note written on a scrap of newspaper. I opened it because I was curious to know what his motive was. He was a young man, in his twenties, and well dressed. He had written down his name and telephone number and the words: "Call me for a date."
I remember one man especially, because I used to ride downtown on the same car he took every morning. The first time I ever saw him, he stared at me a great deal and when I got off the car, he got off too. As he got off he said to me, "Don't take that car, wait for the other one." I noticed then that he went over to the corner and took a car going in the opposite direction from mine. I saw him lots of times after that, and he always got just as close as he could and stared. I always arranged it so that he could not sit next to me.
I was on the elevated with a friend the other day. We were sitting on end seats. A man got up to give a white woman his seat and then came over and stood close to us. He stood with his legs against my friend's knees, until she jerked around and sat facing me. Then he tried standing close to me. He had me so hedged in I could hardly move, and I had to make a very abrupt movement to get away. He moved on after a while.
What may be done to prevent misunderstanding and check in its incipiency trouble which might easily and suddenly become serious, is illustrated in the action of a white woman, a resident of the Chicago Commons Social Settlement:
One evening, soon after the race riot in July, 1919, I was riding on a State Street car, going south from Grand Avenue. I had only ridden a block, when there was a general stir in the car, a young woman fainted, and I learned that the conductor had been struck and his cap knocked off. Word went around the car that a "nigger" did it. Ugly remarks were being made and I feared there would be trouble. I stepped to the back of the car and asked two colored women if they knew who struck the conductor. One said, "He looked like a colored man," the other said, "I don't know." Then I asked the conductor, in a voice loud enough so that the rest of the car could hear me, whether it was a white or a black man that struck him and why. He said: "It was a white man. I wouldn't let him bring his big drum on the platform, it was too crowded." Having learned this, I turned to two young couples who were still showing much feeling and said, "A white man struck the conductor." The whole car then quieted down, and there was no more feeling.
Most of the difficulties in transportation contacts reported and generally complained of seem to have centered around the first blundering efforts of migrants to adjust themselves to northern city life. The efforts of agencies interested in assisting this adjustment, together with the Negro press, and the intimate criticisms and suggestion for proper conduct of Chicago Negroes, have smoothed down many of the roughnesses of the migrants, and as a result friction from contact in transportation seems to have lessened materially.
Here are included:
I. Contacts in public places, such as restaurants, department stores, theaters, and personal-service places.
II. "Black and tan" resorts, which present a much-criticized association because of the vicious elements of whites and Negroes in contact there.
III. Cultural contacts which indicate associations on a purely intellectual basis.
IV. Contacts in co-operative efforts for race betterment, which includes most of the social organizations working among Negroes.
On the street, in public conveyances, stores, restaurants, and commercial places of amusement, contacts of races and nationalities are unavoidable and have not the supervision that is common in schools or even public amusement places.
Where large numbers of Negroes live there are theaters, restaurants, stores, barber shops, and personal-service places, which are used by Negroes in the proportion in which they predominate in the population of the area. In any or all of these places, however, white persons are served.
The business district along State Street between Twenty-sixth and Forty-seventh, and on the car-line cross-streets, is maintained partly by, and largely for, the Negro residents in the general neighborhood. Since, however, about 50 per cent of the population is white, there are personal-service places which are used almost exclusively by whites. Barber shops are wholly exclusive, and several restaurants attempt to make themselves so. For example:
At Thirty-first Street and Indiana Avenue, in the heart of the Negro residence area, a restaurant proprietor maintains an L-shaped establishment. Fronting on Thirty-first Street is a neatly arranged and well-kept dining-room, with tables for ladies, and a lunch counter with white waiters. Fronting on Indiana Avenue is a narrow, dark dining-room, with a counter served by colored waitresses. It is not kept neatly, and is not so well supplied. Both dining-rooms are served from the kitchen in the corner of the L, and patrons in either dining-room would never suspect that there were two dining-rooms with connection through this kitchen. At the time of the investigation, the dining-rooms had different names.
Negroes entering the Indiana Avenue dining-room are given prompt service. If they enter the Thirty-first Street room they are given indifferent service, are required to wait long and the service given them is reluctant and discourteous.
At another restaurant in the same neighborhood, similar means are used to discourage Negro patronage. Sometimes in addition to long waiting and discourtesy, food is spoiled. For example, egg shells are placed in egg orders, and salt is poured into the food.
In the districts where whites predominate, the measures taken to exclude Negroes are very definite. In a lunchroom near Forty-third Street and Vincennes Avenue, a well-educated, well-appearing young Negro had the following experience:
I went into the restaurant about two o'clock June 13, and sat about four seats from the front at a counter. After about ten minutes the waiter came and asked me to move to a seat at the rear of the counter. I asked him why and he told me he could not serve me where I was sitting. He said the management reserved the right to seat its guests, and pointed to a sign on the wall bearing that notice. I asked him if he could not serve me just as well where I was sitting as on the rear counter. He said maybe he could, but it was a rule of the house not to, and he would not. I left without being served.
Another Negro experience in a lunchroom on Forty-third Street near the Elevated is thus described: "Service given was very poor. When protest was made, the police were called and the young man was arrested for disorderly conduct. The case was dismissed."
Fifty-ninth and Halsted streets: "Service refused in a Swedish café. No witnesses."
Near Berwyn and Broadway (North Side): "Service refused, and investigator ordered out."
In the "Loop," experiences are widely varied. In all of the following cases, carefully selected investigators were sent and asked to report in detail what happened. It is possible to gather large numbers of personal experiences, from any group of Negroes, but as the facts cannot be verified they have not been used. These instances usually go unnoticed by all but the participants, except where the parties offended may secure witnesses among the guests present, which is difficult.
At a large, popular, general restaurant on Randolph Street, two women investigators had this typical experience showing how a manager can refuse service, and still attempt to keep within the law:
Entered about 7:30 p.m. The restaurant was well filled; I counted only six vacant tables. A woman head waitress took us through the main dining-room to the annex, where another head waitress preceded us down the length of the room to a corner table in the rear. There was a vacant table on either side of us. We waited almost a half hour, with no attention, until a couple was seated at the next table. When the waitress brought water to them she also brought water to us. She took the orders for both tables. Mrs. H—— ordered steak, salad and tea. I ordered chicken salad and tea. Steak and potatoes were served to the next table in about ten minutes. The waitress came to me and said the chef said he was out of chicken. I ordered steak. After another long period of waiting, she came back and said, "The chef says he is out of small steaks." I asked, "What have you?" She said she would go and see. She did not return, but after about fifteen minutes a man came to our table, put his hands on it, leaned down and said, "Do you want to see me?" Although I suspected he was the manager, he had not said so, and I replied, "Who are you? I don't know anything about you. No, we don't want to see you." He then said, "I am the manager. What do you want?" "I came to be served with dinner." He replied, "We have nothing to serve you." I asked, "Why, what is the reason?" He replied "There is no reason; we haven't anything to serve you." He was evidently cautious to keep within the letter of the law, but was determined that we should not be served. He would give no reason, simply repeating his former statement. We left without further discussion, and without being served.
Mrs. T—— says the waitress was courteous, and evidently regretful of the embarrassment of repeated refusal to serve. None of the patrons sitting near made any protest at their presence. It has been her experience that patrons, waitresses, ushers in theaters rarely show any hesitancy in accepting the presence of colored people who are orderly and self-respecting. Almost invariably the disagreeable incidents happen through the management, or through the carrying out of orders.
An interview with the manager of this restaurant was willingly given to a white investigator who later visited the place, and questions were answered freely and carefully. He said he had a number of Negro friends and appreciated the differences in them, as he did in whites. The main points in a long discussion of restaurant management in general, and the particular problem with reference to serving Negroes, he summed up as follows:
In the past five years, only one Negro has been served in this restaurant. She came in with a southern family as maid to a small child. The family was told that she could be served at a table with them, or in a side room, but could not be served at an adjoining table, even with the child. After some discussion, the maid ate at one end of a long table with the child, while the family sat at the other end.
At the time of the recent instance, when the two Negro women came in, the manager was not in the restaurant. From what he was told of the incident, he thinks he should have asked them to come to the office, and explained the situation to them. He had no doubt they would have understood, as he has always found intelligent Negroes readily responsive to the things which might be injurious to their relations with whites.
Before he was manager, a man brought in two Negroes, seemingly to get a basis for a suit and damages. The manager offered to serve them in a side room, but refused service in the main dining-room. They left without being served, and nothing further was heard from them.
In former years he had seen dishes broken in the presence of Negroes after being used in high-grade restaurants where their patronage was not wanted.
Barring Negroes was not personal, he said. A successful restaurant must watch closely the desires of its patrons, and not allow anything to interfere with smooth running. Complaints are made after each appearance of Negroes. He did not know what he would do if Negroes insisted on being served, but was firm that no Negro could be served in the main dining-rooms. He would vary procedure to suit the circumstances.
The following case, illustrative of the witnesses and testimony necessary to a court decision, was tried before Judge Adams, and damages of $100 with costs were awarded:
In August, 1920, Miss Lillian Beale, Negro secretary to Miss Amelia Sears, white, superintendent of the United Charities, went as the guest of her employer to a candy shop and lunch room on Michigan Avenue. They seated themselves and remained for two hours without service. During this time several friends of Miss Sears came in, were served and left, all of them commenting on the apparently deliberate oversight of the party. They remained for some time and left. Suit was brought against the company, supported by Miss Sears and her friends. At the first hearing it was stated that the waitress was ill at a hospital in Cincinnati. The judge, however, was insistent, and she was produced. When placed on the stand she admitted, contrary to the expectations of the management, that she had been ordered by the management not to serve any colored persons at any time. Miss Beale was awarded and collected damages of $100 and costs.
Eight months later, in July, 1921, a test was made of the same restaurant. Two Negro women went together to the restaurant, and a white woman observer went along to watch what might happen. Their reports agree and are as follows:
Time, one o'clock. Restaurant 50 per cent filled. Mrs. L—— and Mrs. S—— came in and seated themselves at a table for two near the center of the room. Waitress followed usual routine of bringing water, taking order, etc. Service of a table d'hôte luncheon was prompt and courteous. No inattention was observed, nor any disturbance on part of neighbors. Two white women came in and seated themselves at the next table, though there were several others vacant.
Two other Negro women and a white observer were sent to another restaurant operating under the same firm name. It was reported by the white observer as follows:
Restaurant two thirds filled—12 o'clock. Mostly women patrons, though a fair number of men alone, and of couples use this restaurant. Mrs. T—— and her friend came in through the long passage by the candy counter, and crossed to a table for two in the middle of the room. The manager, who is a young woman of considerable poise and ability, came at once and gave them water, took their order, and later served them. Two young white women at an adjoining table moved, but it may have been because they were sitting with strangers and preferred a table for two. After finishing my lunch, I joined Mrs. T—— and her friend, and the manager kept us under observation, but nothing was said.
In a subsequent interview with the manager at the general office of this chain of tea rooms cautiously worded replies were made to questions, with constant reiteration of the statement, "But you know we must serve them." In general it was said: