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

by Chicago Commission on Race Relations

A number of the schools have orchestras or occasional musical programs. The investigator heard one orchestra of eleven pieces in Doolittle School (85 per cent), which played remarkably well. All but one of the children were Negroes. A teacher in Webster School (30 per cent), where there was reported to be constant friction between Negro and white children, gave an incident of a Negro boy in the school playing the violin with a white accompanist and being enthusiastically applauded by the children.

The principal of a 92 per cent Negro school (Colman) reported an unpleasant experience when pupils from her school were invited to take part in a musical program at a West Side Park.

A group of sixty went with two white teachers in charge. On the way over a group of foreign women called out insulting remarks to the teachers, but no one paid any attention. After the program the group started marching out of the park and were met at the gate with a shower of stones. The teacher told the children to run for their lives, and they all had to scatter and hide in the bushes in the park or run toward home if they could. A rough set of boys had got together and were waiting for those children, stones all ready to throw. Since that time we have never accepted an invitation to sing outside our own neighborhood. Invitations have come from time to time, but the children all come with excuses. All of them, children and parents throughout the neighborhood, are afraid but you can't get anyone to come out and say it.

Attitude of parents.—Principals and teachers were questioned about their relations with the parents of both Negro and white children—whether they received co-operation from the parents in matters of discipline; what was the attitude of the parents toward Negro teachers; and whether many requests were received from Negro or white parents for transfers to schools where there were fewer Negroes.

In general it may be said that the principals who found Negro parents unco-operative, unambitious, and antagonistic were those who believed in separate schools, found Negro children difficult to discipline, and would have no Negro teachers in their schools. Such principals declared that Negro parents were "10 to 1 in the complaints brought into the office,"[38] and that "they fuss over everything and tell their children not to take anything from a white child." They also cited cases of insolence and threats which appeared to be exceptional rather than typical.

Some teachers said the reason they did not receive any co-operation from Negro mothers was because a large proportion of them were working. Tardiness and absence were due mainly to this cause, according to one principal, though a teacher of a room for retarded children in another school said there was little tardiness and practically no absence in her group. This teacher expressed the conviction, as did many others, that Negro parents were appreciative of school advantages and eager to have their children learn. Principals who came in contact with both Negro and foreign parents found the Negro parents much more interested and ambitious than the foreigners. Even the principal of a school 30 per cent Negro (Webster), who was somewhat prejudiced in her attitude toward Negroes in the school, said she had more Negro than white boys able to go to work whose parents wished them to remain in school.

Negro teachers were apparently acceptable to Negro parents, only one of the principals or teachers interviewed reporting objections by Negro parents. One teacher in a school 30 per cent Negro (Webster) said that Negro parents had their children transferred there from schools with more Negroes, so that they would have white teachers. The district superintendent said he had had some difficulty in placing Negro teachers in Negro schools, which he attributed to the fact that Negro parents felt that Negro teachers had not had the same opportunity for thorough training as white teachers. Some Negro parents, however, had indicated that their attitude was not due to belief that Negro teachers were inadequately trained, but to fear that too general placing of Negro teachers over Negro pupils was a step toward segregation.

The principal of a school 90 per cent Negro (Keith) thought Negro mothers preferred Negro teachers because several had said to her that the "colored teachers understand our children better."

The district superintendent in the area including most of the schools largely attended by Negroes said that few requests for transfers were made during the year, but he believed more were made at the request of Negro than of white parents. A number of these Negro children transferred not to go to a school largely white but to a school 70 per cent Negro, because they said they were afraid to go to the school in their own district which was across Wentworth Avenue. The race feeling between certain groups in this district was very intense, according to the superintendent. It was especially violent between the Negro children and the Italians and between the Jews and the Bohemians. The principal of a school 93 per cent Negro (Raymond) also testified to the spirit of antagonism along Wentworth Avenue:

Wentworth Avenue is the gang line. They seem to feel that trespass on either side of that line is ground for trouble. While they will admit colored members to the school without any trouble for manual training, they have to be escorted over the line, because of trouble, not from members of the school, but groups of boys outside the school. To illustrate: We took a kindergarten group over to the park. One little six-year-old girl was struck in the face by a man. The condition is a tradition. There does not seem to be any malice in it. "He is from the east side," or "Hit him, he is from the West Side," are remarks frequently heard.