Transfers from schools with a predominant Negro membership were reported by one or two principals and teachers in schools with a Negro minority, who said that the Negro mothers objected to having their children in schools "where there are so many common niggers." One of the principals said she had many requests from Negro mothers for transfers from the branch of the school with 90 per cent Negroes to the main school with 20 per cent. The Commission did not find in its inquiry among Negro mothers that such an objection was prevalent, but that most of the transfers requested were due to the reputation of the school for being overcrowded, poorly taught, and generally run down.
2. HIGH SCHOOLS
Classroom and building contacts.—In the high schools the ordinary contacts in classes and about the building become subordinate to the more difficult problems created by the increased number of social activities—athletics, gymnasium exhibitions, clubs, and parties.
The dean of Englewood High School, which has only about 6 per cent Negro children, said that the white and Negro children mingled freely with no sign of trouble or prejudice but thought that if more Negro children came to the school the spirit would change. A teacher in this same school who had formerly been at Wendell Phillips, where the majority are Negro, said that a spirit of friendliness had grown up there between the two races, and race distinction had disappeared.
WENDELL PHILLIPS HIGH SCHOOL
Located at Thirty-ninth Street and Prairie Avenue, 52 per cent Negro attendance.
There was only one Negro teacher in the high schools of Chicago at the time of this investigation, the teacher of manual training at Wendell Phillips. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois and had substituted around Chicago for several years. Although they spoke very highly of him, none of the principals of three high schools with small Negro percentages and in which there were vacancies could use him. The principal of Wendell Phillips, with a large proportion of Negroes, told, however, of a different experience when this teacher was at that school. "In answer to complaints by pupils I told them that this man was a graduate of the University of Illinois, a high-school graduate in the city, and a cultured man. 'Go in there and forget the color, and see if you can get the subject matter.' In the majority of cases it worked."
Racial friction about the buildings and grounds was not reported by any of the high-school principals. "I have not known of a fight between a colored and a white boy in fifteen years," said the principal of Hyde Park.
Two principals said that the Negro children voluntarily grouped themselves at noon, either eating at tables by themselves in the lunchroom or bringing their own lunches and eating in the back part of the assembly hall. The gymnasium instructor at Wendell Phillips said that she had no difficulty in her work if she let the children arrange themselves. The gymnasium instructor at a school with a small proportion of Negroes said that the white girls had objected to going into the swimming-pool with Negro girls, but that she had gone in with the Negro girls, which had helped to remove the prejudice.