They are welcomed not only in Seward Park, one of the city's recreation centers, but in the settlements. At Eli Bates House, 621 West Elm Street, for example, there has been a club of Negro young men, and applications have been received for admission of Negro children to some classes. The head resident of the settlement reports, however, that it has not had much contact with the Negro group. A few Negro children come to the kindergarten; a group of Negro boys makes use of the gymnasium, and some neighboring Negro families have asked settlement residents for advice.
In this neighborhood friendly relations exist between the Sicilians, who predominate, and their Negro neighbors. Some Negroes live harmoniously in the same tenements with the Sicilians. Their children play together, and some Negro children have learned Sicilian phrases, so that they are able to deal with the Sicilian shopkeepers.
Elsewhere on the North Side the feeling between Italians and Negroes is not so cordial. During the riot of 1919, serious trouble was averted on the North Side through prompt and effective efforts by the police and members of the community. It was reported throughout the district that automobiles loaded with armed Negroes were on their way from the South Side to "shoot up the North Side." The Italians immediately armed themselves and began to shoot recklessly. They were eventually quieted by the police and others, and there was no retaliation of the Negroes.
Many Negroes who have purchased homes and lived on the North Side for years report little opposition. One family on North Wells Street has lived there since 1888 and now owns several valuable pieces of property. The man had no trouble in buying property, and the whites have always been friendly to them and to all Negroes in that section. Another Negro family on North Wells Street, where Negroes first lived, had no difficulty in getting their flat sixteen years ago. This block is occupied by whites and Negroes without friction.
Minor expressions of antagonism attended the moving in of some Negro families, but after several months the white neighbors accepted them and now are on good terms with them.
II. NON-ADJUSTED NEIGHBORHOODS
Failure of adjustment between whites and Negroes has greatly accentuated the difficulties of the housing problem for Negroes. When a general shortage of housing is relieved there may still be a serious shortage for Negroes because of the hostility of white neighborhoods. The sentiment for "all-white" neighborhoods has grown with the increase in Negro population and the threatened occupancy in small or large degree by Negroes. These non-adjusted neighborhoods fall into distinct classes:
1. Neighborhoods of unorganized opposition. These are neighborhoods where few Negroes live. Though contiguous they are sharply separated from areas of Negro residence and are definitely hostile to Negroes, even those passing through the neighborhood going to and from work, but the hostility in them is unorganized.
2. Neighborhoods of organized opposition. (a) Neighborhoods in which no Negroes live but which are in the line of Negro expansion. Opposition to threatened invasion has been strong. As yet they are exclusively white, and every effort is being made to keep them so. They are illustratively treated here as "exclusive neighborhoods." (b) Neighborhoods in which the presence of Negro residents is hotly contested, by organized and unorganized efforts to oust them. These for convenience are termed "contested neighborhoods."