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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

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

The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.