The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

V. NEGRO CRIME AND ENVIRONMENT

Housing.—Housing must be considered as an important element in the environmental causes of crime. Elsewhere this report presents a more detailed study of housing and it will suffice here to call attention to the prevalence of taking lodgers which is economically necessary in many Negro homes, and the consequent danger to the integrity of the family; to the laxity of law enforcement in certain sections; to the condition of streets and alleys; and to frequent instances of defective housing which have the effect of driving the children into the streets or to questionable places of amusement.

Recreation.—A comprehensive inquiry into the relations between recreation and delinquency, made by the Cleveland Foundation in 1917, showed that the use of leisure time had a relation to delinquency in 75 per cent of the cases observed, and that 51 per cent of the leisure time of the delinquent child was spent in ways that were aimless and undirected; while in the case of the "wholesome" child, only seven-tenths of 1 per cent of the spare time was thus spent. Local studies made by T. J. Szmergalski, of the West Chicago Park Commission, show that the establishment of a supervised park or playground tends to decrease complaints of delinquency from 30 to 40 per cent within the range of its usefulness—a radius of about three-quarters of a mile. With these facts as a background it is significant that there is no recreation center and only a few small playgrounds freely available for Negro children within the congested Negro district. In many of the crowded areas inhabited by foreign colonies are well-equipped recreation centers with model field houses, used by thousands of persons from these districts. The facilities available to Negro children and young people in this respect are much less adequate.[48]

Bathing-beaches, which are a summer-time boon to Chicago residents, foreign and native, are not freely accessible to Negroes. The tragic incidents in which the riot of 1919 began, illustrate the discriminatory attitude frequently observed when Negroes attempt to enjoy some of these recreational facilities.

The importance of these recreation opportunities is further emphasized in the Annual Report of the Crime Commission in its section on recreation.

The answer to the lack of a sufficient number of well-ordered places of recreation and amusement is to be found in the thriving condition of Chicago's cheap dance halls, underworld cabarets, unsupervised movie theatres of the cheaper class and the large number of pool-rooms scattered throughout the city. These establishments are the worst breeders of crime with which this community has to contend and they should be subjected to rigid police regulations on the part of the municipal authorities.

The chief counteracting influences of such places of amusement are the parks, playgrounds and other municipal recreation centers, and there is a great need for the establishment of more of these, particularly in the congested districts.

Psychological.—It is the opinion of criminologists that a "warped" mind is responsible for many crimes. This general condition is true of Negroes as well as whites. But another factor appears in many crimes of Negroes. The traditional ostracism, exploitation and petty daily insults to which they are continually exposed have doubtless provoked, even in normal-minded Negroes, a pathological attitude toward society which sometimes expresses itself defensively in acts of violence and other lawlessness. A desire for social revenge might well be expected to result from the facetious and insulting manner in which Negroes are often treated by officers of the law.

"Infective" environment.—Much of what is said in the Annual Report of the Crime Commission for 1920 regarding the relation of infective environment to crime, can be fairly applied to the congested South Side areas of Negro residence:

Infective environment as a cause of crime is classified separately from problems of home environment because where the latter may be conducive to the proper rearing of children into manhood and womanhood, the influence immediately outside the home may be exactly the opposite. There are, in a great city like Chicago, certain neighborhoods in which influences are at work continuously to produce criminals. While the production of criminals is by no means confined to any one section of the city but is widespread throughout the community, still there are sections in which conditions are such that the growing child is indeed fortunate if he can attain manhood without being led to commit some offense against society.

In Chicago our chief district of this character is, or was until recently at least, "Canaryville" and much of the other territory immediately adjacent to the Stock Yards. It was this section which produced "Moss" Enright, "Sonny" Dunn, Eugene Geary, the Gentlemen brothers and many others of Chicago's worst type of criminals. It is in this district that "athletic clubs" and other organizations of young toughs and gangsters flourish, and where disreputable poolrooms, hoodlum-infested saloons and other criminal hangouts are plentiful.

Often it has been the case that public officials having such constituencies have utilized these conditions to further their own political advantages without making the slightest effort to bring about improvements, in some instances, actually assisting their constituents to violate the law in order to aid the building up of their political machines.... Improvement of districts of this character and the elimination of such conditions within them is highly essential if organized crime is to be reduced.

Vice.—Vice districts and Negro residence districts are now and have long been close together. As late as 1905 a segregated vice district was tolerated on the West Side, on Green, Peoria, Sangamon, Morgan, Curtis, Carpenter, and Randolph streets, and Washington Boulevard. Just north of this district on Lake, Walnut, and Fulton streets, lived Negroes, segregated by public sentiment. Another vice district was along Custom House Place, now Federal Street, near which Negroes lived, similarly segregated by public sentiment. When this vice district was moved southward to Twenty-second Street it had a fringe of Negro residence. Later this district was abolished, and now vice of this kind is scattered and more clandestine and is to be found farther south, largely between Thirty-first and Fifty-fifth streets. More than 75 per cent of the Negro population of the city lives in this area.

ENVIRONMENT OF THE SOUTH SIDE NEGRO
NO. 1
HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION
1916
DEALT WITH BY THE MORALS COURT AND THE COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN. THE AREA OUTLINED IN BLACK SHOWS THE BOUNDARIES OF THE RECOGNIZED SEGREGATED VICE DISTRICT WHICH WAS IN EXISTENCE UP TO NOVEMBER, 1912.

ENVIRONMENT OF THE SOUTH SIDE NEGRO
NO. 2
HOUSES OF PROSTITUTION
1918
DEALT WITH BY THE MORALS COURT AND THE COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN. THE AREA OUTLINED IN BLACK SHOWS THE BOUNDARIES OF THE RECOGNIZED SEGREGATED VICE DISTRICT WHICH WAS IN EXISTENCE UP TO NOVEMBER, 1912.

Concerning the proximity of Negro residence areas to vice areas, the Chicago Vice Commission report in 1911 said:

The history of the social evil in Chicago is intimately connected with the colored population. Invariably the large vice districts have been created within or near the settlements of colored people. In the past history of the city every time a new vice district was created downtown or on the South Side, the colored families were in the district, moving in just ahead of the prostitutes. The situation along State Street from Sixteenth Street south is an illustration.

So whenever prostitutes, cadets and thugs were located among white people and had to be moved for commercial or other reasons, they were driven to undesirable parts of the city; the so-called colored residential sections.

The chief of police in 1912 warned prostitutes that so long as they confined their residence to districts west of Wabash Avenue and east of Wentworth Avenue, they would not be disturbed. This area contained at that time the largest group of Negroes in the city, with most of their churches, Sunday schools, and societies.

The Vice Commission report further said:

In addition to this proximity to immoral conditions young colored girls are often forced into idleness because of prejudice against them and they are eventually forced to accept positions as maids in houses of prostitution.

Employment agents do not hesitate to send colored girls as servants to these houses. They make the astounding statement that the law does not allow them to send white girls, but they will furnish colored help.

In summing up, it is an appalling fact that practically all of the male and female servants connected with houses of prostitution in vice districts and in disorderly flats in residence sections are colored....

The apparent discrimination against colored citizens of the city in permitting vice to be set down in their very midst is unjust and abhorrent to all fair-minded people. Colored children should receive the same moral protection that white children receive.

The prejudice against colored girls who are ambitious to earn an honest living is unjust. Such an attitude eventually drives them into immoral surroundings. They need special care and protection on the maxim that it is the duty of the strong to help the weak. Any effort, therefore, to improve conditions in Chicago should provide more wholesome surroundings for the families of its colored citizens who now live in communities of colored people.

That many Negroes live near vice districts is not due to their choice nor to low moral standards, but to three causes: (1) Negroes are unwelcome in desirable white residence localities; (2) small incomes compel them to live in the least expensive places regardless of surroundings; while premises rented for immoral purposes bring notoriously high rentals, they make the neighborhood undesirable and the rent of other living quarters there abnormally low; and (3) Negroes lack sufficient influence and power to protest effectively against the encroachments of vice.

The records of convictions in the morals court and the evidence of the Committee of Fifteen show the gradual drift of prostitution southward coincidentally with the expansions of the main area of Negro residence.

Between 1916 and 1918 houses of prostitution decreased from forty-eight to twenty-five in number in the territory between Twelfth and Twenty-second streets, and from 130 to 107 between Twelfth and Thirty-first streets. Between Thirty-first and Thirty-fifth streets, the number had slightly increased, while there was an increase of nearly 80 per cent between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-ninth streets. In the combined districts between Thirty-first and Thirty-ninth streets the number increased from sixty-two to eighty-four; and between Thirty-ninth and Fifty-fifth streets the increase was from eleven to fifty-four.

These are probably only a fraction of the number that really exist there, and while they are too few to be conclusive, they are significant when considered in relation to the movement of the Negro population. The accompanying maps show that the figures coincide substantially with the expansion of Negro residence areas southward and eastward.

Further evidence of this movement of vicious resorts, and an abnormally large number of them, into the Negro areas was obtained from the state's attorney's office, the Commission's investigations, and from confidential reports submitted by other organizations. Most of these places are maintained by white persons, because in this district there is less likelihood of effective interference, either from citizens or public authorities.

Cabarets and gambling.—In close relation to the disorderly houses are the vicious cabarets in the Negro areas on the South Side. Their reputation and the conditions existing in them have been given much publicity by the local press.

Gambling was found to be prevalent at many places in this section, and only slight effort was made to conceal violations of the law. Under the guise of "clubs" some places were being operated as gambling houses with dice and card games predominating. Other places, apparently with little fear of the police, both conducted and permitted gambling with cards and on pool games. Baseball pools and "policy," as well as betting on horse-race returns, were prevalent.