V. TRAINING FOR RECREATION DIRECTORS
The importance of the personality of the park director in determining the conditions in the park, which was often emphasized, led to a consideration of the training for the work—whether training was required that would develop the understanding and vision necessary to handle the problems involved in racial contacts. The representative of the Municipal Bureau said that every effort had been made to get trained men, but that there was no school or curriculum of training that determined the efficiency of a person in charge. Some of his best directors had had no specific training, while some of the poorest came from the best recreational training schools.
Few Negro instructors were found at the places of recreation and these were employed by the Municipal Bureau. The representative of the West Side Commission said that he had been trying for a long time without success to get a Negro to take the civil-service examination for playground instructors, as he was anxious to get a Negro for Union Park. The representatives of the Lincoln and South Park commissions said that they used Negroes only as life guards, attendants, janitors, etc. The South Park Commission representative said the question of the desirability of having Negro instructors and play leaders had never come up, because no Negro had ever become a candidate for a position as a result of the competitive examinations.
Training opportunities for Negroes.—It was found that the Y.M.C.A. has a four-year recreational training-course in which no distinction is made between Negroes and whites. As the courses are not open to women, the Y.M.C.A. has no such race problem as arises in recreation courses where women are admitted. The president of the graduating class at the Y.M.C.A. College the year previous was a Negro, though the rest of the class was composed entirely of whites. The number of Negroes taking the Y.M.C.A. recreation course is relatively small, usually about two in a class of 150.
The American College of Physical Education and the Chicago Normal School of Physical Education reported that they did not admit Negroes to any courses, saying that their students would object to physical contact with Negroes.
The Recreation Training School of Chicago, successor to the Recreation Department of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, admits Negroes to the recreation course on the same terms as all other students and has trained several, both in the short courses and in the full year's course. This school admits both men and women.
VI. SUMMARY
Though the Negro areas are as well supplied with ordinary playgrounds as the rest of the city, they are noticeably lacking in more complete recreation centers with indoor facilities for the use of older children and adults. Several of these recreation centers, such as Hardin, Armour, and Fuller squares, Stanton and Ogden parks, border on Negro areas but are not used to any great extent by Negroes because the Negroes feel that the whites object to their presence. Though there are three publicly maintained beaches within the main Negro area the Negroes feel free to use only the Twenty-sixth Street Beach, though many of them live as far south as Sixty-sixth Street. Where Negroes do not use nearby facilities to any great extent they have usually either been given to understand, through unofficial discrimination, that they are not desired, or they have been terrorized by gangs of white boys. Few attempts to encourage Negro attendance have been made, and with the exception of Union Park these attempts have failed.
In the main there seem to be no difficulties arising from contacts between young white and Negro children at the playgrounds, no matter whether the playground is predominantly white or predominantly Negro, with the exception of one or two playgrounds, such as Sherwood and Moseley, which seem to share in traditional neighborhood antagonism between the two races. Voluntary racial grouping at the playground was found only in rare instances and usually involved the older rather than the younger children. The swimming-pools, for example, are patronized more by older children, and voluntary racial grouping at swimming-pools was reported in several instances. In the ordinary playground sports and athletic contests the two races mingle with the best of feeling.
Voluntary racial groupings and serious clashes are found mainly at the places of recreation patronized by older children and adults—the large parks, beaches, and recreation centers. Trouble is usually started by gangs of white boys, organized and unorganized. The members of so-called "athletic clubs," whose rooms usually border on the park, are the worst offenders in this respect. If they do not reflect the community feeling they are at least tolerated by it, as nothing is done to suppress them. Some park authorities that have made sincere efforts to have these hoodlums punished are discouraged because they get no co-operation from the courts, and the policeman who takes the boy to court gets a reprimand, while the boy is dismissed.