Another difficulty was suggested by the principal of a Chicago school (Webster) where 30 per cent of the children are Negroes, who said: "We base our educational ideas on certain backgrounds. The curriculum in Chicago was planned for children who come from families who are educated. It doesn't take children coming from uneducated families into consideration. That isn't fair either to the white or colored children."
The problem of readjustment to life in a northern city also affects the child's school life, and he is self-conscious and inclined to be either too timid or too self-assertive. A Negro teacher in speaking of the difficulties confronting the southern Negro, as well as the whole Negro group, said:
The southern Negro has pushed the Chicago Negro out of his home, and the Chicago Negro in seeking a new home is opposed by the whites. What is to happen? The whites are prejudiced against the whole Negro group. The Chicago Negro is prejudiced against the southern Negro. Surely it makes a difficult situation for the southern Negro. No wonder he meets a word with a blow. And all this comes into the school more or less.
Another Negro teacher thus analyzes further the adjustment problems which tend to make the Negro newly come from the South unpopular with the Chicago Negro, as well as with the whites:
These families from the South usually come from the country where there are no close neighbors.... Then the family is transplanted to Chicago to an apartment house, and even in with another family. The whole environment is changed and the trouble begins. No sense of property rights, no idea of how to use conveniences, no idea of how to live in the new home, to keep it up, to live with everybody else so near. On top of that, the father does not fit into his work, and therefore cannot support the family; the mother goes out to work, and what is the result? Poorly kept houses and poorly kept children.... A normal home shows itself in the school, and poor home conditions show up still more.
The Negro child born in the North is not found to an unusual extent among the retarded children. He has been able to enter school on time and to attend the full term of nine months; his teachers compare favorably with those in white American and foreign neighborhoods, and his parents as a rule have a better background. Many teachers say that the progress of northern-born Negroes compares very favorably with that of whites.
I. PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT OF SCHOOLS
Since the Board of Education keeps no record of Negro children as such, it could not furnish a list of the schools having a percentage of Negro children. Therefore a list was made up of all the schools in the Negro residential areas, the boundaries of these schools were obtained from the Board of Education, and the percentage of Negroes in each school district was worked out from the 1920 census figures. The schools listed in Table X were found to be situated in districts where the Negro population was 10 per cent or more. The figures at the right show the approximate percentage of Negro children in the school, as given by the principal of the school.
Fuller School is a branch of Felsenthal and has the same principal; it is in a neighborhood where the percentage of Negroes is practically the same as in the neighborhoods around Felsenthal, but there is a very great difference in the percentage of Negro children in the two schools, according to figures given by the principal. It appears from this that the principal, who is a believer in separate schools, places the large majority of the Negro children in Fuller School. Negroes in the vicinity say that Fuller School is run down and neglected, that the staff of teachers is below the average, that the school has no playground of its own but must use the one at Felsenthal, and that all the unmanageable children are sent there from Felsenthal. It is also believed by these Negroes that Fuller is used as a feeder for the other schools in the neighborhoods where there are fewer Negro children.
| School | Percentage of Negroes in District | Percentage of Negro Children in School |
|---|---|---|
| Colman | 81 | 92 |
| Copernicus | 18 | 23 |
| Doolittle | 65 | 85 |
| Douglas | 72 | 93 |
| Drake | 28 | 24 |
| Emerson (branch of Hayes) | 70 | 75 |
| Farren | 69 | 92 |
| Felsenthal | 38 | 20 |
| Forrestville | 20 | 38 |
| Fuller (branch of Felsenthal) | 42 | 90 |
| Haven | 24 | 20 |
| Hayes | 70 | 80 |
| Keith | 89 | 90 |
| McCosh | 13 | 15 |
| Mann (branch of Raymond) | 39 | 25 |
| Moseley | 46 | 70 |
| Oakland | 17 | 26 |
| Raymond | 85 | 93 |
| Sherwood | 20 | 25 |
| Tennyson | 14 | 28 |
| Webster | 50 | 30 |
| Willard | 15 | 13 |