C. CONTACTS IN RECREATION
In studying contacts between the races at places of recreation a survey was made of the various recreational facilities maintained by the Municipal Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing Beaches, the South Park Commission, the West Chicago Park Commission, and the Lincoln Park Commission. Recreational facilities maintained by twelve park boards which control smaller areas in outlying parts of the city were not included in the survey unless they were in or near Negro areas. Visits were made by the Commission's investigator to places in or bordering on the Negro areas at a time of day when the use of the park would be greatest; the director or one of his assistants was interviewed and observations were made as to the relations between Negroes and whites.
The information thus gathered was supplemented by a conference held by the Commission, at which representatives of the various park boards discussed policies and experiences with reference to race relations in the various recreation places under their charge.
I. CLASSIFICATION OF FACILITIES
Although there is no definite city-wide classification, the publicly maintained recreation facilities of the city may, for the purpose of this study, be grouped by types and defined as follows:
1. Playground.—A small tract of land, usually adjacent to public schools, providing space for ball games, gymnastic and play apparatus, and in most cases a small building used as an office and storage place for apparatus.
2. Recreation center.—Including outdoor and indoor gymnasiums for men, women, and children, a swimming-pool, and a little children's playground out doors, and a field house providing an assembly room and dance hall, clubrooms, shower baths, and often an infant-welfare station and branch library.
3. Large park.—A large area with lawns, shrubbery, and general recreation facilities, such as tennis, golf, baseball, and boating.
4. Bathing-beach.—Intended primarily for swimmers and usually including no other recreation equipment. A dressing-house, showers, and towel supply are provided with life guard and attendants on duty.
5. Swimming-pool.—In some instances a swimming-pool or natatorium is maintained separately from a recreation center.
II. DISTRIBUTION OF FACILITIES IN RELATION TO NEGRO AREAS
Of a total of 127 public places of recreation excluding the large parks, thirty-seven are in or near Negro areas. Of the eighty-two playgrounds, fourteen are in the Negro areas and nine are adjacent. Of the twenty-nine recreation centers, none is located within the Negro areas, but seven are adjacent.
Though these figures seem to indicate that the Negro areas are fairly well supplied with recreation facilities, it should be borne in mind that their use by the Negroes in their vicinity is by no means free and undisputed. The reasons for this are shown in the next section on "Use of Facilities," but the following summary of use will aid in considering the distribution of recreation facilities in relation to the Negro areas:
| Total for City | In Negro Areas | Near Negro Areas | Number Used 10 Per Cent or More by Negroes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Playgrounds | 82 | 14 | 9 | 13 |
| Recreation centers | 29 | None | 7 | 1 |
| Bathing-beaches | 8 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
The type of recreation facility most commonly found in the Negro areas is the playground. The lack of recreation centers within the Negro areas is conspicuous, as is also the fact that six of the seven recreation centers accessible to Negroes are not used as much as 10 per cent by them. The playground is intended for the use of young children and has practically nothing to attract older children and adults, except sometimes a baseball or athletic field. Indoor facilities are not a part of the equipment of a playground, so that the average maintenance cost of a playground is not more than $2,000 to $5,000 a year.[41]
RECREATION FACILITIES
The recreation center is the most unusual and notable feature of Chicago's recreation system but one from which the Negro gets little benefit. It is a complete community center, with both indoor and outdoor facilities. It represents an investment of from $200,000 to $800,000, according to the amount of ground, the location, and the extent of its facilities. The yearly expenditure necessary to maintain such a recreation center where older children and adults can hold meetings, dances, and entertainments, and where there are concerts, indoor games, swimming-pools, showers, etc., is shown by the reports of the park boards to be from $30,000 to $50,000. Though the argument that wholesome recreation makes for better citizenship applies to Negroes as well as to whites, no recreation center has been located within the Negro areas and only seven near them.[42]
The director of Armour Square, a recreation center which is just beyond the edge of the main Negro area, but which the Negroes do not feel free to use for reasons discussed later, was asked what places of recreation for adult Negroes existed in that neighborhood. She instanced a social settlement that had been out of existence for more than six years, an infant-welfare station and a commercial amusement park known to be in bad repute.
Although in recent years the Negro population has been increasing in density in the neighborhood directly east of Wentworth Avenue along which Hardin, Armour, and Fuller recreation centers are located, this has not increased the use of these centers by Negroes. It has tended, rather, to increase the antagonism of the whites in the vicinity to the use of the centers by Negroes. In this neighborhood the hostility toward Negroes of whites, especially gangs of hoodlums, is shown by the many attacks upon Negroes in this area as discussed in the sections on the "Riot of 1919" and "Antecedent Clashes."
Several representatives of the park boards strongly deprecated the lack of recreation centers within the Negro area and said that such facilities should be provided. The South Park representative recommended the area east of Wentworth Avenue between Thirtieth and Forty-seventh streets as one needing additional facilities. The West Park representative said: "A complete all-year-round recreation center for the colored people should be established at Ashland and Lake streets. We need greater facilities, or equal facilities, for the colored people. There isn't any place on the West Side that I know of, but yet we have many of these complete recreation centers there for the whites." Although the Negroes on the West Side had never asked for additional facilities, the white people in that neighborhood had frequently asked the West Park Commission to provide greater facilities for the Negroes. The Negroes in the district were not organized, according to the West Park official, but the white people realized that something ought to be done for the Negroes and made the request.
The director of Seward Park said the maintenance cost was the chief obstacle to additional recreational facilities. "The law permits acquisition of property for small parks by request of citizens and bond issues for the purchase of the property and its development," he said. "When it comes to maintenance the question of taxes comes in, and unless people are willing to be taxed in excess of what they are taxed now, there won't be any possibility of maintaining more parks."
Though there are three public bathing-beaches near the main Negro area, the whites seem to expect Negroes to confine themselves to the Twenty-sixth Street Beach. It is quite limited and unattractive in approach and surroundings. The approach is over a rough road through a much-neglected neighborhood, and then up a long flight of stairs to a four-foot viaduct over the railroad tracks, and a roundhouse and switch yards are near by. The beach is a strip of sand about fifty feet wide and a short block in length; it narrows at one end to the tracks and at the other end is walled by a high embankment. While it offers a chance to get into the lake, the atmosphere of wholesome, recreative outdoor life is entirely lacking.
In the Morgan Park region there is a large Negro population but no park or playground within its Negro area. Barnard Playground and Ridge Park are the nearest facilities, a mile or more distant. Negro children said they did not go there because "those are in Beverley Hills and only rich folks go there—no colored people." The directors of these parks said there was no discrimination against Negroes but that they did not come because they felt that these parks were "for white folks only."
III. USE OF FACILITIES
Table XVII gives estimates by the officers in charge of the Negro attendance at the places of recreation in or near the Negro areas.
| Name | Average Daily Attendance | Percentage of Total Daily Attendance | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School Time | Through Year | Vacation Time | School Time | Through Year | Vacation Time | |
| South Side District: | ||||||
| Twenty-sixth St. Beach | 200 | 95 | ||||
| Thirty-eighth St. Beach | 500 | Less than 1 | ||||
| Fifty-first St. Beach | 500 | Less than 1 | ||||
| Moseley Playground, Twenty-fourth St. and Wabash Ave. | 900 | 150 | 80 | |||
| Colman Playground, Forty-sixth and Dearborn Sts. | 350 | 700 | 90 | |||
| Doolittle Playground, Thirty-fifth St. near Rhodes Ave. | 800 | 500 | 90 | |||
| Oakland Playground, Fortieth St. and Langley Ave. | 600 | 400 | 75 | |||
| Beutner Playground, Thirty-third St.and LaSalle St. | 1,400 | 1,000 | 67 | |||
| Sherwood Playground, Fifty-seventh St. and Princeton Ave. | 1,500 | 900 | 50 | None | ||
| Drake Playground, Twenty-seventh St. and Calumet Ave. | 1,100 | 600 | 25 | |||
| McCosh Playground, Sixty-sixth St. and Champlain Ave. | 1,200 | 450 | 25 | 15 | ||
| Carter Playground, Fifty-eighth St. and Michigan Ave. | 1,200 | 500 | 25 | |||
| Fiske Playground, Sixty-second St. and Ingleside Ave. | 1,500 | 1,000 | 2 | |||
| Fuller Park Recreation Center, Forty-fifth St. and Princeton Ave. | 1,500 | 3 | ||||
| Armour Square Recreation Center, Thirty-third St. and Shields Ave. | 1,500 | 1 | ||||
| Hardin Square Recreation Center, Twenty-sixth St. and Wentworth Ave. | 800 | 1 | ||||
| Washington Park | 27,000 | 10 | ||||
| Jackson Park | 47,000 | 2 | ||||
| Ogden Park District: | ||||||
| Copernicus Playground, Sixtieth and Throop Sts. | 1,400 | 800 | 7 | 16 | ||
| Ogden Park Recreation Center, Sixty-fourth St. and Racine Ave. | 3,000 | Less than 1 | ||||
| South Chicago District: | ||||||
| Thorp Playground, Eighty-ninth St. and Buffalo Ave. | 500 | 350 | 5 | |||
| West Side District: | ||||||
| Robey Playground, Birch and Robey Sts. | 500 | 800 | 20 | |||
| Mitchell Playground, Oakley Ave. and Ohio St. | 1,200 | 200 | 5 | |||
| Washington Playground, Grand Ave. and Carpenter St. | 200 | 1 | ||||
| Otis Playground, Grand Ave. and Armour St. | 200 | 1 | ||||
| McLaren Playground, Polk and Laflin Sts. | 300 | 400 | ||||
| Gladstone Playground, Robey St. and Washburne Ave. | 1,300 | 400 | 1 | |||
| Hayes Playground, Levitt and Fulton Sts. | Closed | |||||
| Union Park Playground, Washington St. and Ashland Blvd. | 1,500 | 40 | ||||
| North Side District: | ||||||
| Northwestern Playground, Larrabee and Alaska Sts. | 300 | None | ||||
| Orleans Playground, Orleans St. and Institute Pl. | 150 | 400 | 5 | |||
| Franklin Playground, Sigel St. near Wells St. | 1,500 | 300 | 5 | 25 | ||
| Seward Park Recreation Center, Elm and Sedgwick Sts. | 1,500 | 15 | ||||
| Stanton Park Recreation Center, Vine and Rees Sts. | 2,000 | 1 | ||||
| Lincoln Park | 60,000 | 15 | ||||
Maximum attendance, 100,400. Negroes approximately, 19,000.[43]
Factors influencing attendance.—Out of the thirty-five playgrounds, recreation centers, and bathing-beaches in or near the Negro areas for which attendance figures were secured, at fifteen Negro attendance never amounted to more than 10 per cent, and usually was less. In several cases distance or such barriers as railroad tracks seemed to explain the small percentage of Negro patrons. In other cases it seemed due to the existence of other facilities nearer the center of the Negro area which were more largely patronized by the Negroes; an example is Stanton, which though not far from the Negro area is farther than Seward Park. The small number of Negroes at other places often could not be explained by the director. At Gladstone Playground, for example, in a neighborhood where the Negro population was increasing rapidly, practically no Negro children were found, though the white children said there were plenty of Negro children in the school. "They don't stick around after school hours or in the summer," said the children, but no one appeared to know why this was the case, as there had never been any difficulty at this playground. Negro children used Drake and Sherwood playgrounds much less, or not at all, after school hours and in summer. At Drake, though the two races mingled in games in the daytime and no disorders had occurred, the Negro boys took no part in the games in the evening when the older white boys were home. This, the director said, was due not to timidity or fear of aggression, but rather to "lack of ambition." At Sherwood Playground, west of Wentworth Avenue, where 50 per cent of the children using the playground during school hours were Negroes, there were no Negroes on the playground in the afternoon and evening and all summer. This was said to be due to the fact that the Negro children in the school, especially the girls, were larger than the white children and during the school session were the dominating group. After school, however, the older white children got home from other schools or from work and assumed control, allowing no Negroes in the playground. The Negroes then went to Carter Playground, which is east of Wentworth Avenue, in the main Negro settlement. This separation, the attendant stated, was due entirely to action on the part of the children, as the officials did not discriminate in any way. This neighborhood has been much disturbed and is discussed in more detail under "Contacts."
A TYPICAL SCHOOL YARD PLAYGROUND IN A WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD
Representatives of each park commission said that they had no rules or regulations of any kind discriminating against Negroes, and that all races were treated in exactly the same way. The only case in which this rule appeared to be violated was in connection with Negro golf players at Jackson Park. Two Negroes participated in the Amateur Golf Tournament at Jackson Park in the summer of 1918 and made good records. The only requirement for entrance into the tournament at that time was residence in the city for one year. In 1919 the requirements were increased, entries being limited to the lowest sixty-four scores, and membership in a "regularly organized golf club" being required. Since Negroes are not accepted in established golf clubs, the Negro golf players met this qualification by organizing a new club, "The Windy City Golf Association." In 1920 the restriction was added that contestants must belong to a regularly organized golf club affiliated with the Western Golf Association. As it was impossible for Negro clubs to secure such affiliation, it is impossible for Negroes to compete in the tournament.
Unofficial discrimination, however, frequently creeps in. According to the representative of the Municipal Bureau, "the person in charge of the park is largely influenced by the attitude of the people outside the park. We had trouble at Beutner Playground because of the tendency on the part of the director, who was a white man, to be influenced by the attitude of the white people in the neighborhood, and either consciously or unconsciously showed by his actions to the colored people that they were not fully accepted." Beutner Playground later became an example of unofficial discrimination in favor of the Negroes, for the Municipal Bureau decided to "turn over the playground particularly to Negroes" and instructed the director "to give them more use of the facilities than the whites." But this was found to be impossible as long as a white director was employed, because he was influenced by the feeling of the whites in the neighborhood who did not want the playground turned over to the Negroes. The desired result was finally obtained by employing a Negro director. "Then the switch suddenly came," said the park representative, "and the playground was turned over to the Negroes almost exclusively."
A similar method was employed with reference to the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, according to the head of the Municipal Bureau, who said: "As the colored population gradually got heavier and more demand came for the use of that beach it gradually developed into a beach that was used almost exclusively by Negroes. And we did as we did in the Beutner case: we employed a Negro director when the preponderance was Negro."
This beach has since been transferred to the South Park Commission, and there is no longer a Negro director there, though most of the attendants are Negroes.
Park policemen will not let Negroes go in swimming at the Thirty-eighth Street Beach, according to a Negro playground director. "The park policemen tell you, 'You can't go in, you better not go in, I'd advise you not to go in,'" said the director. "If you try to go in he keeps you out."
The Negro director of Beutner Playground reported an unpleasant personal encounter with the policeman of Armour Square. "Last summer I had occasion to go over there with my assistant who is colored. We went to the library and the park police officer we met said, 'niggers ought to stay in Beutner Park.'" Policemen in Armour Square also had helped to drive out Negro boys who had gone over there to use the showers, according to this director. In addition he said that Negro boys had been refused permits to play baseball at Armour Square. The director of the park said, in answer to these statements, that there was no discrimination on the part of the management and if such things had occurred it was without the knowledge of the management and due to the fact that the applicants did not see anyone in authority. "The only applicants I have had for a colored baseball team this year was for an outside industrial team, and they were given permission," said the director. "Whether the police officer followed them up and told them they shouldn't come back, I don't know, but they didn't come back. I gave them the permit to come."
At one or two parks definite efforts had been made to encourage larger numbers of Negroes to make use of the facilities, but at Armour Square the director did not believe this to be advisable. "I have never gone out to do any promotional work to bring them in," she said, "because I would not choose personally to be responsible for the things that would happen outside my gates if I were responsible for bringing large groups into Armour Square. If such groups come to me for reservations I give them, but they don't come." This director also said that she would feel it necessary to warn any Negro group that might come to her park that she could not be responsible for their protection outside the park.
At Union Park, which has a playground and swimming-pool and is situated on the edge of the densest Negro residential area on the West Side, every effort has been made to encourage the Negroes of the neighborhood to make use of the limited facilities, according to the representative of the West Chicago Park Commission, who said:
We have advertised among the colored people and done everything we could to get them to use the swimming-pool, shower baths, and reading-room, and send their children to the playground. The result to some extent is satisfactory but of course they are not using it in proportion to the population of the Negroes in that neighborhood. That, I think, is partly due to the fact that we ought to have some other facilities there. We ought to have some equipment for boys over sixteen years of age, and we ought to have an assembly hall, a regular library, clubrooms, and other facilities for the recreation of older boys and girls.
The director of Fuller Park told of a special effort he had made, with the assistance of a Y.M.C.A. physical instructor, a Negro, to increase the use of the park by Negroes living east of Wentworth Avenue. The Y.M.C.A. instructor guaranteed to get the people, and 400 application blanks were distributed among Negro children in the Sunday schools of the neighborhood. All the blanks were signed with the names of Negro children between eight and sixteen and returned to the office. When the classes started a few weeks later, no Negro children appeared. The distributor of the blanks tried for three or four weeks to find out why the Negro children did not come but failed to discover any reason. Then the director sent a notice to the Defender, a widely circulated Negro newspaper, saying that the children who had signed application blanks for classes at Fuller Park were requested to come at any time and were just as welcome as white children. Thereupon a few children came—two or three out of a class of thirty. Additional notices were put in the Defender, and an effort was made to interest the Negro pastors, but the attendance did not increase, and finally the attempt was given up for that year. The next year a similar effort was made but with only slightly better results. At the band concerts and moving pictures the Negro attendance is fairly good, and a large number of Negroes use the library, but the gymnasium and the children's playground are used very little by the Negroes, and the swimming-pool practically not at all.
The reasons advanced by the park officials for the non-use of convenient recreation facilities are that the Negro is timid and reluctant to go where he feels he is not wanted, or that he fears attack in the park or near it. At a conference the West Park representative said:
When we first opened the doors of Union Park we thought, owing to the large colored population in the district, that the colored people would come there most willingly and avail themselves of the facilities just as freely as any person would. But we found that it was not so, that the greater number of persons who came there were the whites, and they as usual availed themselves of the facilities freely. The colored were timid, came in gradually, and as soon as they found they were welcome, that there was no line of discrimination drawn, the attendance of the colored increased.
At Sherwood Playground, Armour Square, and Fuller Square, all west of Wentworth Avenue, which is considered the dividing line between the white and Negro areas, fear is probably a large factor in the small Negro attendance, as the feeling in the neighborhood is bitter and fights have been frequent. At Sherwood Negro children use the playground during school hours when they feel that they have the protection of the school, but not after school when they feel that protection is lacking. Webster School at Wentworth Avenue and Thirty-third Street, which is 30 per cent Negro, has its graduation exercises in Armour Square, but the Negro children do not go to Armour Square at any other time, and they did not go over at night for an entertainment which the principal of Webster School arranged at Armour Square. Negro children use the Armour Square library freely, according to the director, but there has never been an application for the use of a clubroom, and no Negroes come to the outdoor moving pictures which are given one night a week. "There's absolutely nothing to prevent them coming," said the director. "Why don't they come? There is nothing within the park they need to be afraid of. There has been absolutely no distinction made in the handling of colored children or colored men or colored women coming to Armour Square, but they do not come." The director was positive that the failure to come to the park was due to the attitude toward Negroes outside the park. She explained that although she could guarantee safety and police protection inside the park, she could do nothing to protect Negroes outside the park gates. The park policemen are employees of the park boards and not of the city and have no jurisdiction outside the parks. This is true of the police at all parks and beaches maintained by the park boards, but the police at the playgrounds and beaches maintained by the Municipal Bureau of Parks, Playgrounds, and Bathing Beaches are members of the regular city police force.
Continuing, the Armour Square director said:
Personally I know of no disturbances that have started within Armour Square, and yet we have had outside of Armour Square every year at least two riots, not counting the general race riot—riots that started largely in school clashes. There have been some very serious riots between the children of the Webster School and the Keith School just east of it, and there have also been some very serious clashes between the black and white children going to and from the parochial school—actual fights in which they have had to call large detachments of the police. Armour Square is not used by the colored people in proportion to their numbers in the neighborhood, but it has absolutely nothing to do with our management. It is because they are afraid to come to the park. They know absolutely that within the four walls of the park nothing is going to happen to them.
The testimony of the Negro director of the Beutner Playground seemed to indicate that Negroes were kept out of Armour Square in ways that its director did not know about.
IV. CONTACTS
Behavior.—The behavior of Negroes at the parks apparently has not been the major cause of the difficulties that have arisen in the past. Such complaints as were made by park officials in regard to the behavior of Negroes at the parks concerned groups of rough or domineering children at the playgrounds rather than adults.
BEUTNER PLAYGROUND
The largest in the Negro residence area.
FIELD HOUSE EQUIPMENT AT BEUTNER PLAYGROUND
NEGRO ATHLETIC TEAM REPRESENTING DOOLITTLE PLAYGROUND IN CITY-WIDE MEET
FRIENDLY RIVALRY
White and Negro boys at a playground near the Negro residence area.
The playgrounds where the attitude of Negro children was criticized were Sherwood and Moseley, both in neighborhoods where unusually bitter racial feeling was reported by the playground directors. The older Negro girls were particularly rough and hard to control, these officials said, abusing small children both white and Negro, monopolizing apparatus, and refusing to leave the playground when asked to do so.
Testimony in regard to adults indicated that the park directors found them quiet and desirable patrons of the parks. Said the director of Seward Park:
One of the most interesting and best-conducted and best-behaved groups I have ever seen is a group of colored people known as the "Jolly Twenty," a dancing organization. They started coming eight years ago and had a system of couple dancing which was marvelous. I have never seen it equaled anywhere. They have been coming every year, once a year, for a dance at Seward, and the "Jolly Twenty" has grown to be about the "Jolly Four Hundred," but the larger the group the better they seem to behave and the better they dance.
The director of Ogden Park told of a Negro club which holds frequent dances at Ogden Park. He said: "About 300 attended the last one. They are the best-behaved group that come. I never have to object to improper dancing or boisterousness, and they always leave on time, have had to object several times to conduct at white dancing parties."
This testimony in regard to Negroes at dances is interesting in view of the situation regarding the recreation facilities at the Municipal Pier. Negro attendance there is about 8 per cent of the total attendance of four million or five million a year, according to the director of the Pier. They are well dressed and well behaved and inclined to segregate themselves. There had never been a single instance of an intoxicated Negro or of one who had made himself in the least objectionable, the director said. The only people whom the pier authorities have had to reprimand for violation of pier rules in regard to cleanliness, monopolizing of furniture, etc., have been whites. Many of the attendants are Negroes, and the band which plays for the dance concessionaire is composed of Negroes. Negroes are welcome everywhere on the Pier, as are all races, according to the director, except in the dance hall, where their appearance is discouraged by the concessionaire. The following method is followed to discourage the appearance of Negroes on the dance floor, according to a white man who had observed it:
Admission to the dance floor is at the rate of five cents per couple, per dance. Each dance lasts about three minutes. If a Negro couple buys a ticket and dances one dance nothing is said. If the couple comes in for another dance, one of the floor managers—employed by the concessionaire—speaks courteously to the couple. He expresses regret that he must mention the matter of their dancing to them, but that they are not dancing properly, and he invites them to come to a corner of the dance floor where he will instruct them in the proper way to dance. This usually occupies the remainder of the particular dance, and results in the Negroes not coming on the floor again. If the couple does reappear, the floor manager again speaks to them saying he is very sorry he has to tell them again that they still are not dancing quite properly and again he invites them to a corner of the dance floor for further instruction. This is the procedure by which the Negroes are embarrassed and discouraged from using the dance floor.
Relations between the children.—Lack of antagonism was reported at a large number of playgrounds. Apparatus was used by both groups without friction, Negro and white children mingled freely in their games and in the swimming-pools, and both Negroes and whites played on baseball and athletic teams. Occasional playground fights had taken place, but usually without any element of racial antipathy. "There might be personal misunderstandings and disagreements between a white and a black just the same as between two whites," said the director of Union Park, "but I wouldn't lay it to race prejudice. They work together and play together and seem to harmonize in most instances." When this director came to Union Park a year before he found a tendency among Negroes and whites to group by themselves, but steps were taken to bring them together in games of various kinds, and toward the end of the season the director felt that they "harmonized better and worked together more cordially than they did before." When the investigator from the Commission visited Union Park Playground, he saw the small children playing together on the same pieces of apparatus—a Negro child on one end of a teeter ladder and a white child on the other.
These children were ten years or under. The director felt that it was not until children reached the age of eleven years or older that they began to feel racial antipathy. In the swimming-pool at this park, which is used by the older children and adults, the Negroes and whites kept separate. There was no trouble between them, but they stayed in separate groups. The director felt that there was little likelihood of trouble ever starting in this park, because "where such nicknames as 'Smoke' are applied to colored boys by white boys, and is given and accepted in a friendly spirit, there is little chance for serious disturbance."
As this playground in Union Park is intended for children under ten, the occasional difficulties between older children might be alleviated if the Hayes Playground, one of those in the system maintained by the Municipal Bureau, were kept open in the summer. The playground at the Hayes School, 80 per cent Negro, was closed and the apparatus dismantled in the summer of 1920 when the investigator visited it. Though it is not a large playground it is the one the older Negro children are accustomed to use during the school year, and they are doubtless reluctant to go in the summer to other school playgrounds which they do not ordinarily use.
At Seward Park the Negroes use the facilities freely and play with the white children on the apparatus and in the ball field. The only difficulty reported here was in connection with a wrestling tournament. The director described it as follows:
Last season we had a wrestling championship tournament. There were some colored groups who had wrestled at Seward who were eligible for entrance into this tournament, and when the night came for weighing in, the director for one of the other parks said, "What are these colored people doing here?" "They are weighing in." I said. "They will not wrestle with my group," he said. "Very well, then, I guess your groups will not be in it," I said.
It looked as though we were up against a problem, but the night when the wrestling came the colored contestants didn't show up, so that the problem was solved for that time. Of course we couldn't say that any white man must wrestle with a colored man. It presented a problem that had to be settled in some way. I think the reason they didn't show up was because I told my investigator to say to these colored men, "Next season if you have a sufficiently large group you can have a contest of your own. We'll award the same prizes to colored wrestlers as we do to the white."
The representative of the Municipal Bureau also spoke of occasional difficulty in wrestling, though there may be no objection to Negro participation in other events. He said:
We have athletic meets in which a Negro team has competed and for five years has won the championship in athletics. In baseball there is no trouble. The difficulty comes in some of the activities, particularly wrestling, because of the nature of the activity. It is a closer contact. We make no distinction, however, and when a Negro boy gets up to face a white boy and the white boy doesn't face him, the bout is forfeited to the Negro. I think more meet than fail to.
At Fiske Playground, where there are few Negroes, as they do not live near, the investigator witnessed a baseball game with a team from Colman Playground composed entirely of Negro boys except the pitcher. They played as any teams would, with no evidence of racial antipathy. The Negro team seemed to be the better, and according to the director had won every game so far that season.
At McCosh, Robey, Carter, Oakland, Colman, Doolittle, and Beutner playgrounds the children mingled without friction, according to the directors. Negroes were in a minority at the first three and in a majority at the last four. At Carter Playground the investigator witnessed the presentation of a medal for athletics to one of the white boys while the Negro boys looked on in admiration and, after it was over, invited the white boys to "come on out and play ball." The only trouble that has been experienced at this playground was a few days before the 1919 riot, when a fight between a white boy and a Negro started on the playground and the spectators divided along racial lines, especially after the fight was transferred to the street. A riot call was sent in, and the police put a stop to the fight. No trouble has occurred since and the director believed it could not happen again. "The boys have learned better," he said.
Free mingling of Negro and white children was observed at Oakland and Robey playgrounds and was encouraged by the directors. Italian and Negro boys were playing ball together when the investigator visited Robey Playground, and Negro and white girls were playing on the same slides. The director said that in the evening the ball games were watched by both Negroes and whites, and that frequently the Negroes had a game themselves, which white onlookers enjoyed watching. The only incident of importance at Robey Playground had occurred a few days before, when a dispute over a baseball game arose between a white boy of fourteen and two Negro boys of eleven, resulting in a fight in which the director had to interfere. The director said there was not the slightest chance that such a fight would divide the playground along racial lines, as there had never been any disorders there, and that animosity between the Negro and white groups was entirely lacking.
At Oakland Playground, where neither race predominated strongly, the assistant director said there had never been any difficulty. The investigator witnessed a ball game in which Negro and white girls participated and saw groups of Negro and white boys talking outside the playground in a friendly manner.
At Colman, Beutner, and Doolittle playgrounds, where the Negroes come in the majority, no difficulties were reported. The Negro director of Doolittle Playground encourages comradeship between Negro and white children and allows no discrimination against white children. "If a white boy can make a team, he makes it," this director says to a Negro team which objects to a white boy being allowed to play on it. When this director was assigned to Doolittle Playground he was told that 60 per cent of those who made use of the playground were Negro and 40 per cent white. When he got there he found that 70 per cent were white and 30 per cent were Negroes. He said:
I had to look around to find a colored child, but I never had any trouble. Of course the white people gradually moved out and the colored people moved in. We never had any trouble with colored boys or white boys—they played on the same teams. In fact, I think we won the district championship for four years. Then they moved me over to the Beutner and the majority of the white children got up a petition to bring me back to Doolittle Playground. That shows there was no distinction there. They wanted me because we carried on activities.
White ball teams often use the field at Beutner Playground in spite of the fact that Armour Square is only two blocks away. "Last year [1919] there were several games between white and colored teams," said the assistant director, "but there have been none so far in 1920."
No difficulties between Negroes and whites were reported at Palmer Park, Bessemer Park, or Thorpe, Otis, and Orleans playgrounds, which are patronized by a few Negroes, though they are too far away from the Negro areas to be generally used.
The supervisor of girls' work in the Municipal Bureau made the following statement in regard to the relations between the Negro and white children visiting the municipal playgrounds:
From my observation and supervision of the girls' work in the municipal playgrounds I can only say that in all our activities colored and white children mingle without restriction. In indoor gymnasium and dancing-classes as well as in games, athletics, and general informal use of the playground, they take part together. Ability and sportsmanship are the only qualifications considered in candidates for any playground team. In the field of adult recreation, since we have no community centers conducting indoor activities in connection with any of our playgrounds within the colored area, my observations refer only to outdoor gatherings. On such occasions adults of both races mingle without friction. It is my experience that the most harmonious relations are established in connection with band concerts, field days, festivals, pageants, etc., including all forms of community art, which tend to unify rather than to split those taking part. In the Illinois Centennial Pageant, presented by groups from thirty-eight neighborhoods in 1918, girls from Doolittle Playground represented "Dances of the New Freedom," bringing "Liberty and New Strength to Illinois." In preparation of this episode several rehearsals were held at Doolittle Playground, white dancers from other playgrounds taking part; and the interest and co-operation shown by the neighbors made each evening memorable.
Voluntary racial grouping.—Voluntary racial grouping appears to be a characteristic of the large parks and beaches, which adults frequent, rather than of the playgrounds which are used mainly by children. One instance of voluntary grouping among children was found at Copernicus Playground. The percentage of Negroes using this playground is much larger in summer than in winter. The playing space is in the shape of an "L," one end intended for boys and the other for girls, but by common consent the children divide along race lines rather than sex. The investigator saw small white children playing at one end of the playground, while Negro boys were playing ball in the larger end. Later, after the Negro boys left, some of the white children used the larger space while some Negro children collected around the apparatus in the smaller end. No instance of mixed play was observed, but there seemed to be no antagonism between the groups, and no disorders were reported.
The director of Union Park in speaking of boys who play games in the recreation rooms, said that there seemed to be a tacit understanding between the blacks and whites that they had certain nights. On certain nights all the attendance would be black and on other nights it would all be white. Asked whether Negro and white boys who were school friends played separately at the park, the director said that blacks and whites often came in together, but that for every case where they came in together and played a sociable game, there were probably three instances where groups were either of one race or the other. However, the director said that this grouping was casual, and that there was no prevailing community sentiment that the Negroes should use the park on separate nights. He believed that additional recreation facilities would help greatly in doing away with this tendency to voluntary segregation. He also said that the Negroes had a tendency to separate from the whites, not because they wished to avoid them, but because they preferred to associate with their own race.
In the general use of Lincoln and Washington parks the Negroes and whites stay in separate groups. There has never been any difficulty, according to the Lincoln Park representative, arising from the fact that Negroes have taken possession of a spot desired by whites for a picnic or other amusement. No part of either park is especially set aside for the use of one race, and groups of both Negroes and whites are seen everywhere in the parks, but they do not mingle. While there was no outward evidence of antagonism toward Negroes at the time of the investigator's visit to Washington Park, white visitors who were questioned showed an antipathy to the Negro which seemed to have its basis in the influx of Negroes into the residence districts. One man, originally from the South, was bitter against Negroes. He said he had left the Socialist party because it accepted Negroes as equals. At an open-air "free-speech" meeting speakers representing various radical doctrines were addressing a crowd composed almost entirely of whites. The chairman of the meeting, however, was a Negro, whose humorous remarks made him popular with the white crowd.
The only place in Washington Park where there seemed to be a general mingling of Negroes and whites was on the ball field. There were games in which the two teams were composed entirely of Negroes, and games in which the teams were composed entirely of whites; there were also games in which both Negroes and whites were engaged. The investigator watched one game in which vacancies on two teams from American Legion posts had been filled by Negroes. There was the best of spirit between the players and among the spectators. The white spectators were lined up along the first base line and the Negro spectators along the third base line, but rooters and players joked with each other with no sign of racial antagonism.
The South Park representative testified to the good feeling between Negroes and whites at a baseball game, and said the whites often preferred to watch the Negro games. At other points in the park, however, particularly the tennis courts and the boathouse, difficulties between the races were reported. These will be discussed in the next section on "Clashes."
Separate racial grouping is the general rule at the beaches, though it is not always voluntary. At the Thirty-eighth Street Beach, for example, Negroes are prevented by white boys and the park policeman from going into the water, according to a Negro playground director. "Boys who live around there from Thirty-ninth to Thirty-first Street have to swim at the street end between Thirty-third and Thirty-second. They rock you if you go in." This director was invited by white boys of the Vincennes Club to swim at Thirty-eighth Street, but when he suggested bringing some Negro boys along the white boys said, "Oh no, they can't come."
ARMOUR SQUARE RECREATION CENTER
Located at Thirty-third Street and Shields Avenue
BEUTNER PLAYGROUND
Located at Thirty-third Street and La Salle Avenue.
At the Diversey Beach in Lincoln Park both races go in the water, but a Lincoln Park representative said that the few Negroes who used this beach kept by themselves on one part of the beach, though there was no official rule compelling them to do this. There have never been any racial disturbances at this beach.
From the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, which is patronized almost entirely by Negroes, down to Thirty-sixth Street, Negroes and whites go into the water in separate groups, except at Twenty-sixth Street, where the few whites who go in mingle amicably with the Negroes. The investigator saw a white couple who had gone out to a raft and could not get back rescued by a Negro life guard. The other bathing-places along the shore for those ten blocks have been allotted by custom exclusively to one race or the other. At Twenty-ninth Street, where the 1919 riot started, a policeman is now stationed, and no trouble has occurred since the riot, though many fights have started which the police have stopped. Gangs of young men come from as far as Halsted Street, according to the policemen, ready to fight at the slightest opportunity. Fights usually occur because of some remark made by one group about a girl in another group. On the whole, however, few Negroes come to Twenty-ninth Street, the policeman said, going instead to Twenty-sixth Street.
At the beaches outside the main Negro area, such as Fifty-first Street and Triangle Park, and Clarendon and Rogers Park beaches to the north, the only Negro patrons are a few young children. The attendants at these beaches believe there would be trouble if adult Negroes started to use them. Negro children have been objected to at Clarendon Beach, where a man asked the director to put a little girl out because "she was a nigger."
Several directors reported that the Negroes did not use the swimming-pools much and segregated themselves when they did go in. The director at Union Park said the Negroes did not use the swimming-pool in proportion to their numbers, and that when they did use it, they came in small groups and confined themselves to a certain part of the pool instead of mingling with the whites. He said that there was nothing in the attitude of the white boys to make them do this, but that it was the "natural impulse of the colored people to do that in the swimming-pool." He thought that many Negroes did not use the pool more because "they are afraid of the water." A Negro playground director testified that he had frequently seen a white boy dive off one side of the pool at Union Park when a Negro boy dived off the other side and hold the Negro boy down until, when he came up, he was gasping for air.
The director of Ogden Park gave an incident that had occurred recently at that park:
One day I noticed three small colored girls sitting among the others in the "swimming line" waiting for the doors to open. A few minutes afterward they were at the end of the line. I tried to find out the reason but could discover nothing either from the colored girls or the others. I saw that they went back to the place in the line they had before and went to my office. Some minutes later I looked out and saw that while the swimming had begun, these three had not gone in but were sitting there watching the rest. I was unable to discover why they didn't go in—they said merely that they "didn't want to." Whether there was some threat or whether the girls were naturally timid about going into the pool I do not know.
The representative of the South Park Commission said that in the South Park district the parents were opposed to race contacts in swimming- and wading-pools. "Not 10 per cent of the families will allow contact with Negroes in the pools," he said.
None of the three natatoriums maintained by the Municipal Bureau is patronized by Negroes, with the exception of the Washington Heights pool which is used by a few Negro children in the summer. This pool is near a Negro district, but the other two are remote from the Negro areas.
A distinction was made by several directors between formal and informal activities at playgrounds and recreation centers. It was their theory that Negroes and whites mingled successfully in informal activities, but not in formal ones. "There is a difference in the informal use by children of a playground and the use of a recreation building where there are clubs and dances and classes and things of that sort," said the director of Armour Square. "Children and adults come in individually to use the library and other facilities, but there are no applications from organized groups of Negroes for any of the facilities at Armour Square." The real distinction in most cases is probably not between formal and informal use but between use by children and use by adults, as the formal activities are those in which older children and adults engage, as was pointed out by the representative of the West Chicago Commission.
Clashes.—Clashes between Negroes and whites at various places of recreation are reported as far back as 1913. These clashes in the main have been initiated by gangs of white boys. In 1913, for example, the secretary of boys' work at the Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A. (for Negroes) conducted a party of nineteen Negro boys from the Douglass Center Boys' Club to Armour Square. They had no difficulty in entering the park and carrying out their program of athletics. The party then took shower baths in the field house. The Y.M.C.A. secretary had noticed the increasing crowds of white boys near-by but had no misgivings until the party left the park. Then they were assailed with sandbags, tripped, walked over, and some of them badly bruised. They were obliged to take refuge in neighboring saloons and houses in Thirty-third Street west of Shields Avenue. For fully half an hour their way home was blocked, until a detachment of city police, called by the park police, scattered the white gang.
That same year the Y.M.C.A. secretary had found it impossible to proceed east through Thirty-first Street to the lake with groups of Negro boys. When this was tried they inevitably met gangs of white boys, and fights ensued with any missiles procurable. Attempts to overcome this antagonism by continuing to demonstrate that the Negro boys had a right to use these streets were unavailing for the next two years.
In 1915 similar conflicts occurred. That winter Father Bishop, of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, took a group of the Negro Y.M.C.A. boys to Armour Square to play basket-ball. The party, including Father Bishop, was beaten up by white boys, their sweaters were taken from them, and they were otherwise maltreated. The Y.M.C.A. staff then decided not to attempt to use the park or field house during the evenings.
The same year an attempt was made to take seventy-five of these boys through the Stock Yards. They had received tickets of admission to the annual stock show, in the pavilion at "the Yards." In spite of the four adult leaders, several of the boys were struck by sticks and other missiles while passing from one section of the show to another. The gang of white boys continually increased in numbers, and the situation by three o'clock, two hours after the Negroes had entered, began to look desperate. Police assistance was required to get the Negro boys safely out of the building and into street cars. No effort was made to restrain the white gangsters, who were allowed to range through the building at will.
An altercation between white and Negro boys in Washington Park is on record as early as the summer of 1913. These boys were sixteen or seventeen years of age. During the spring and summer of 1919, numerous outbreaks occurred because of the use of the baseball diamonds in Washington Park by Negro players. White gangs from the neighborhood of Fifty-ninth Street and Wentworth Avenue, not far from the park, also came there to play baseball, among them some of "Ragen's Colts."[44] Gang fights frequently followed the games. Park policemen usually succeeded in scattering the combatants. The same season gangs of white boys from sixteen to twenty years of age frequently annoyed Negro couples on the benches of this park. When the Negroes showed fight, minor clashes often resulted.
In Ogden Park, as far back as 1914, there were similar instances of race antipathy, expressed by hoodlums who were more or less organized. A Negro playground director said that if Negro boys attended band concerts in that park, white gangs would wait for them outside the park, and the Negroes were slugged. The white gangs also tried to keep Negro boys from using the shower baths at the park. This director told how a party of Negroes whom he had taken there was surrounded by white gangsters when they emerged from the shower house. "A boy reached around and caught me and pulled me up close to the other fellow," he said. "I dug down and got out. Of course they rushed for me. In the rush the other colored lads got out. Brass knuckles were used on me. When I looked up they said, 'My God, you have hit L—; you have hit the wrong fellow.'" The director declares that the man who hit him with the brass knuckles was discharged by the court with a reprimand.
This condition in the parks continued up to the early summer of 1920. George R. Arthur, secretary of the Negro Y.M.C.A. branch, expressed the fear at that time that a riot might occur in Washington Park any Sunday afternoon. He described the condition in the vicinity of the boathouse in that park as "fierce." There were fights there every Sunday. Five white men had beaten a Negro there one night the previous week. That sort of thing had been going on for years, he said. The Y.M.C.A. had long been dealing with the situation but he had noticed this trouble especially in the last two years. He attributed it to the gang spirit and to racial antipathy, which ordinarily would not amount to much, but which because of the tense situation in Chicago might lead to serious riots.
The director of the Negro branch of Community Service of Chicago ascribed the trouble to the same source. He said that most of the white boys came to Washington Park from the "Ragen's Colts" Club, that some of them went to poolrooms where the mischief was hatched. There was but one policeman in charge of about fifteen baseball games in the park, he said.
The racial difficulties at the baseball fields in Washington Park had doubtless never been brought to the attention of the representative of the South Park Commission, because he cited these games as an example of good feeling between the two races. He believed that there was never any difficulty at the baseball fields, and that the white people who enjoyed the Negro games would be the first to object if the Negroes were not permitted to play in the park. This opinion coincides with the situation at the ball fields observed by the investigator for the Commission, but apparently there are occasional clashes here as in other parts of the park.
The representative of the South Park Commission did not think Negroes hesitated to use any of the facilities of the park because of fear of mistreatment in the park, though they might have some fear of being mistreated outside the park. He did not know that any difficulties have ever occurred at the boathouse, though a Negro doctor testified that he had treated many Negro boys who had been assaulted there. The South Park representative said:
I have never known of any actual abuse of a colored patron in any park to which I was personally assigned. I have known people coming and going who were abused, mistreated, and actually assaulted, outside the park reservations, but I don't believe our records would show very many cases—probably no more than occur where the Poles and the Irish get together, or the Bohemians and the Germans.
Fights of a racial character were reported at one or two playgrounds. At Franklin Playground, where fights among boys between ten and fourteen are frequent, the director said he was always especially careful to stop a fight between a white and Negro boy because "a race riot would be easy to start."
At Sherwood Playground Negro children do not use the playground after school hours or during the summer. The attendant declared that "things used to be mighty rough but are better now." The change may have been due to a younger group of children replacing the former pupils, among whom were many children fourteen to seventeen years of age. There was much fighting between Negroes and whites in the neighborhood of Sherwood Playground, according to the attendant. Street fights were frequent, often ending in the use of knives or stones, and numerous arrests had been made. The fight usually started between two boys over some trivial dispute, a mixed crowd gathered, and the fight became general. Fights were also frequent within the playground, the attendant said; sometimes as many as three were going on at once. But a policeman had been stationed near-by, and conditions were improving. The playground had no director at the time it was visited.
An example of objection to the first Negroes appearing in a park was given by an official of the Municipal Bureau:
I remember a particular instance at the Beutner Playground in about 1903. Prior to that time we had very few colored people in that vicinity. One evening a young colored boy, probably seventeen or eighteen years of age, came in there. I happened to be on the athletic field at that time. He came in the rear gate, and the first thing I noticed there was quite a crowd of white fellows chasing this fellow all over the field. He ran down to where the Armory now stands, doubled, and came back and got out of the gates.
This official said that after that incident there was little trouble between the races at the playground until about 1910, when the balance of the patronage became almost equal. He continued:
That was when the trouble started. There wasn't any preference shown on the part of the park management to any particular race, but it was the people outside. They absolutely took the stand that as long as they could keep the colored people away they were going to do it. They used every means they could to keep the colored people away from Beutner Playground and Armour Square.
Another instance of whites objecting to the use of recreation facilities for the first time by Negroes was given by the representative of the West Chicago Commission:
Not long ago, two colored men, for the first time in the history of Garfield Park, came out there to play tennis. Immediately somebody in the neighborhood called up the Park Board and complained about Negroes breaking into Garfield Park. We frankly told the people who were complaining that they had equal rights to the use of the facilities at Garfield Park. But it seemed that while we said nothing, the colored gentlemen never appeared again to use the tennis facilities.
The representative of the South Park Commission in commenting on this same point said:
There is a history of development in amicable race relations. Most of the troublous conditions are where there is injected for the first time the question of racial intermingling. Where it is established, where it has gradually grown up, in time there comes an adjustment.
At Armour Square individual Negroes have been accepted as "part of the scheme," according to the representative of the South Park Commission, practically ever since the park was opened. But the director says that it is group action which stirs up trouble:
I think the trouble will adjust itself as the colored people continue to come into the neighborhood, but we are in the situation of having colored people come into the neighborhood where there haven't been any before. I think it will adjust itself in a year or so, and that possibly at that time colored people will begin coming.
The head of the Municipal Bureau thought the difficulties arose, not when Negroes first entered a white neighborhood, but when a balance between the two races was struck, and it was a question which race was going to predominate. "That has been my experience with the municipal playgrounds," he said, citing the case of the Beutner Playground which the Municipal Board decided to turn over to the Negroes.
Where Negroes are accepted and live amicably near white people, or where there has not been enough influx of Negroes to arouse feeling against them the contacts in the playground are usually peaceful. On the other hand, in communities where Negroes are looked on as intruders and objectionable neighbors, and where the white people are antagonistic, a contact between a Negro and white child, which would normally be peaceful, will result in a disturbance and tend to increase existing antagonism. This is the situation at Moseley and Sherwood playgrounds.
At Thirty-eighth Street Beach the prejudice is such as to prevent any Negro from bathing there, although it is as near the center of the main Negro area as the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, to which Negroes are expected to confine themselves. At Armour Square neighborhood sentiment permits a few Negroes to use the park, but trouble starts if new groups come. At Ogden Park a Negro playground director was assaulted by white boys and hit with brass knuckles in 1914, but now, according to a prominent Negro familiar with the situation at the center, there is order and fair treatment both within the park and on the way to it, and the Negroes prefer to travel out there than to go to Washington Park, which is closer at hand, but where they may be attacked if they try to use a boat or may be obliged to wait indefinitely for a tennis court.
The use of the parks by Negroes is determined almost entirely by the degree of antagonism in the neighborhood, and Negroes are afraid to make use of the parks where the neighborhood sentiment is hostile. "The neighborhood condition pretty much governs the feeling of security, on the basis of which the Negro will come in and use our park facilities," said the representative of the South Park Commission. "Without feeling secure in his neighborhood and in his access to the park, I don't think anything we could do would pull the Negro in."
A NEGRO AMATEUR BASEBALL TEAM
At Mitchell Playground, in a district with a reputation for lawlessness, and at Seward Park, two blocks from a region known as "Little Hell," no racial difficulty is reported.
The two causes of neighborhood antagonism most commonly cited were the real estate and the sex problems. Among visitors to Washington Park the real estate problem in the residence districts near the park seemed to be the primary cause of ill feeling. One of the property owners in that region showed his feeling by complaining that the park ought to be rechristened "Booker T. Washington Park." The figures in Table I indicate that only about 10 per cent of the patrons of the park are Negroes.
An important point in considering neighborhood sentiment is whether the white hoodlum who appears to be mainly responsible for the clashes which have taken place is a cause of neighborhood antagonism or whether he merely reflects the attitude of the community. The fact that the hoodlum is permitted to terrorize and mistreat Negroes without serious protest from whites is an indication that the hoodlum expresses what the white community feels. The hoodlum does not always live, however, in the immediate neighborhood of the place of recreation where he makes trouble. The gangs of white boys who come down to Twenty-ninth Street Beach and start trouble, for example, do not live near the beach, the policeman in charge says, but over at Halsted Street. The director of Armour Square, though she stated that the feeling in the immediate neighborhood of the park was responsible for keeping Negroes away from Armour Square, said that the boys who were active in starting trouble at the time of the 1919 riot came from west of the park, and that the boys in her vicinity tried to stop the others.
The head of the girls' work in the Municipal Bureau said:
It [hoodlumism] is a symptom, the reflection and logical carrying out of an attitude widely accepted by the community as a whole. Although a serious and troublesome symptom, I believe it should be faced and welcomed as evidence of the potential brutality of this attitude. Men and women of good standing in white society condone much that they would hesitate to do in person; and by their failure to protest prove themselves equally responsible for results.
The director of Fuller Park believed that the groups of hoodlums mainly responsible for keeping Negroes out of the parks were the athletic clubs "composed usually of a bunch of young sports that are not athletes at all." "These clubs, which have only about one athlete on the roster," he said, "are so situated that the Negroes have to pass them going to and from the park. Those are the boys, numerous in every park neighborhood, who are keeping the colored people out of the parks."
The director of Ogden Park took the part of a Negro boy set upon by a white gang during the 1919 riot and rescued by the police, though they did not keep the mob from killing the Negro. He advocated the formation of "square-deal" clubs to defend innocent people from hoodlums. "Members would be bound to fight for the square deal—whites against white hoodlums and blacks against black hoodlums," he said. "Until both races will act, the lawless elements will continue to cause trouble."
It is possible in some cases, such as those in which the "athletic clubs" are involved, to find out the identity of boys who molest Negroes, but, according to the testimony of several park directors, it is absolutely impossible to control these boys because the courts will not convict them. The director of Armour Square stated:
I have had boys taken down to the courts time after time, and now my policeman refuses to take them down to the court any more, because he is reprimanded when he brings them in.... One of our attendants was shot through the lung and is now absolutely incapacitated for work, and the policeman was reprimanded because he had kept the boy in jail two nights. When it came to trial, they had already seen somebody and the policeman got the reprimand.
There was a general feeling among park representatives that the presence of a director with a proper attitude toward the problem was the greatest factor in bringing about amicable relations within the park, but there was considerable difference of opinion as to whether the park management could or should attempt to influence the surrounding neighborhood. The West Chicago Commission representative said that there was no instructor at Union Park the first year it was open, and that considerable segregation and undesirable conduct on the part of both whites and Negroes resulted. Since then, there had always been a director in charge, and a very harmonious mingling of the two races had been brought about on the playground. He believed that a similar relationship could be brought about within the recreation building by a director with the right personality, if adequate facilities were provided.
The Seward Park director did not consider it a proper function of a recreation center to try to direct the community life outside it.
The director of Armour Square felt that she could do nothing to promote Negro activities there. She did not approve of the suggestion of turning over Armour Square to the Negroes as the best way of solving the problem. She thought this would result in ill feeling and trouble, since there was a well-established tradition that the whites should use Armour Square to the fullest extent. But since the Negroes had no such recreation center as Armour Square available to them, she believed that a new center with full equipment should be started in a neighborhood part white and part Negro with the understanding that it should be a Negro recreation center where the whites were welcome if they wished to come. She thought that white people would patronize such a recreation center and, with careful leadership, would mingle with the Negroes on friendly and peaceable terms.
Two recreation-center directors favored entirely separate recreational facilities for Negroes with whites excluded. One of these was the director of Fuller Park, who told the Commission that he had made every effort to get Negroes to come to the park, and that he considered it part of his duty to go out into the neighborhood and try to get Negroes to use the park. "Separate parks and playgrounds for colored people are advisable," he said, "not because one group is any better than the other, but because they are different. Human nature will have to be remodeled before racial antipathy is overcome."
The director of Hardin Square, another recreation center little used by Negroes, though it is near the main Negro area, believed that separate facilities for each race would be the best solution of the problem. He did not encourage Negroes to come to Hardin Square. The policeman at the park also believed that "you can't make the two colors mix." This policeman said he knows a group of young men in the district, mostly ex-service men, who would "procure arms and fight shoulder to shoulder with me if a Negro should say one word back to me or should say a word to a white woman." He thought it would not take much to start another riot, and that the white people of the district would resolve to make a "complete clean-up this time." This policeman is the one whose failure to arrest a white man accused of stoning the Negro boy, Williams, at the Twenty-sixth Street Beach was an important factor in precipitating the riot in 1919.
The director of Moseley Playground, who was born and raised in that vicinity, said there had been antagonism between the two races in that neighborhood for thirty years. He believed that separate recreation facilities would be impracticable because the taxpayers could not be divided in such a way that they would not be paying for fields their children could not use.
The director of Seward Park thought that it might be arranged in the small parks to give special hours to Negro groups. This would meet what he believed to be the desire of the Negroes to be by themselves and also the objection of the white girls who had protested against having Negro girls in the same gymnasium classes with them.
V. TRAINING FOR RECREATION DIRECTORS
The importance of the personality of the park director in determining the conditions in the park, which was often emphasized, led to a consideration of the training for the work—whether training was required that would develop the understanding and vision necessary to handle the problems involved in racial contacts. The representative of the Municipal Bureau said that every effort had been made to get trained men, but that there was no school or curriculum of training that determined the efficiency of a person in charge. Some of his best directors had had no specific training, while some of the poorest came from the best recreational training schools.
Few Negro instructors were found at the places of recreation and these were employed by the Municipal Bureau. The representative of the West Side Commission said that he had been trying for a long time without success to get a Negro to take the civil-service examination for playground instructors, as he was anxious to get a Negro for Union Park. The representatives of the Lincoln and South Park commissions said that they used Negroes only as life guards, attendants, janitors, etc. The South Park Commission representative said the question of the desirability of having Negro instructors and play leaders had never come up, because no Negro had ever become a candidate for a position as a result of the competitive examinations.
Training opportunities for Negroes.—It was found that the Y.M.C.A. has a four-year recreational training-course in which no distinction is made between Negroes and whites. As the courses are not open to women, the Y.M.C.A. has no such race problem as arises in recreation courses where women are admitted. The president of the graduating class at the Y.M.C.A. College the year previous was a Negro, though the rest of the class was composed entirely of whites. The number of Negroes taking the Y.M.C.A. recreation course is relatively small, usually about two in a class of 150.
The American College of Physical Education and the Chicago Normal School of Physical Education reported that they did not admit Negroes to any courses, saying that their students would object to physical contact with Negroes.
The Recreation Training School of Chicago, successor to the Recreation Department of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, admits Negroes to the recreation course on the same terms as all other students and has trained several, both in the short courses and in the full year's course. This school admits both men and women.
VI. SUMMARY
Though the Negro areas are as well supplied with ordinary playgrounds as the rest of the city, they are noticeably lacking in more complete recreation centers with indoor facilities for the use of older children and adults. Several of these recreation centers, such as Hardin, Armour, and Fuller squares, Stanton and Ogden parks, border on Negro areas but are not used to any great extent by Negroes because the Negroes feel that the whites object to their presence. Though there are three publicly maintained beaches within the main Negro area the Negroes feel free to use only the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, though many of them live as far south as Sixty-sixth Street. Where Negroes do not use nearby facilities to any great extent they have usually either been given to understand, through unofficial discrimination, that they are not desired, or they have been terrorized by gangs of white boys. Few attempts to encourage Negro attendance have been made, and with the exception of Union Park these attempts have failed.
In the main there seem to be no difficulties arising from contacts between young white and Negro children at the playgrounds, no matter whether the playground is predominantly white or predominantly Negro, with the exception of one or two playgrounds, such as Sherwood and Moseley, which seem to share in traditional neighborhood antagonism between the two races. Voluntary racial grouping at the playground was found only in rare instances and usually involved the older rather than the younger children. The swimming-pools, for example, are patronized more by older children, and voluntary racial grouping at swimming-pools was reported in several instances. In the ordinary playground sports and athletic contests the two races mingle with the best of feeling.
Voluntary racial groupings and serious clashes are found mainly at the places of recreation patronized by older children and adults—the large parks, beaches, and recreation centers. Trouble is usually started by gangs of white boys, organized and unorganized. The members of so-called "athletic clubs," whose rooms usually border on the park, are the worst offenders in this respect. If they do not reflect the community feeling they are at least tolerated by it, as nothing is done to suppress them. Some park authorities that have made sincere efforts to have these hoodlums punished are discouraged because they get no co-operation from the courts, and the policeman who takes the boy to court gets a reprimand, while the boy is dismissed.
Another source of racial disorder is the lack of co-ordination between park and city police. The park police stop a fight between a white child and a Negro child and send them from the park. Outside the park gates the children start fighting again, and the park police have no power to interfere. The spectators may then get into the fight, dividing along racial lines, and before the city police can be summoned a race riot may be well under way. Either city police should be stationed directly outside every park, ready to co-operate with the park police, or else the jurisdiction of the park police should be extended to include the area immediately surrounding the park.
The most important remedies suggested to the Commission for the betterment of relations between Negroes and whites at the various places of recreation were: (1) additional facilities in Negro areas, particularly recreation centers which can be used by adults; (2) an awakened public opinion which will refuse longer to tolerate the hoodlum and will insist that the courts properly punish such offenders; (3) selection of directors for parks in neighborhoods where there is a critical situation who will have a sympathetic understanding of the problem and will not tolerate actions by park police officers and other subordinate officials tending to discourage Negro attendance; and (4) efforts by such directors to repress and remove any racial antagonism that may arise in the neighborhood about the park.