I should not like to be recorded as giving a criticism of the Board of Education, because I know that the present Board of Education believes in what I have to say now, but this is true: the colored boys are in the district that has practically been abandoned by the white people and the schools are only boxes for them to go to school in. You don't find any of the $900,000 school buildings in the colored population district, and I think that the time is approaching when the old system will be changed and we will have the vocational work, etc., thoroughly organized in the schools in these districts where most needed.[46] In dealing with boys I think more complaints come along that line than in any other, and I have made a report to the superintendent of schools on that at different times.
Boys who are "trusties" in the above school are allowed to secure jobs in Chicago. Their difficulties were outlined by Mr. Milliken as follows: "After a boy has been committed by the Juvenile Court, he is known by the police, and I have four or five colored boys today who are carrying letters from me asking the police to please allow these boys to go to work, and if the boys are in trouble to notify our institution."
Mr. Milliken told how, when the boys are seen on the streets, they are picked up by the police. He referred to "one of the finest lads we have had" and said, "I think probably within the last three months I have had to get him out of the hands of the police by calling up the police department twenty times, to get him to work." This difficulty, in Mr. Milliken's opinion, was more common in regard to Negro than white delinquents.
2. BUREAU OF IDENTIFICATION
While only 11.5 per cent of all persons arrested in Chicago in 1919 were Negroes, more than 21 per cent of all persons held on criminal charges in 1919 and taken to the Detective Division Identification Section were Negroes. In proportion to total arrests about twice as many Negroes as whites were taken to the Identification Bureau. Explanations of this disproportion by officials indirectly connected with this branch of the department and familiar with its methods are illuminating.
Judges of the criminal court have stated that "Negroes look alike," and that it is "more difficult offhand to place them than it is to identify a white criminal"; that Negroes are frequently taken to the Bureau for identification when white men would not be arrested or would be at once recognized, picked up, and booked.
Again, it is explained that it is unquestionably safer "to pick up and mug" a Negro than a white person, because there is less fear of an unpleasant "comeback." Negroes have fewer resources and less influence with which to insure their fair treatment, and so are more likely to be subjected to annoyance.
The fundamental reason, however, is perhaps more economic than racial. The City Council Crime Committee Report, or "Merriam Report," says:
The department of police maintains a bureau of identification with a system of photographs and finger prints, but it is largely a matter of chance as to who is photographed, and as to whether the record of criminality is asked for before he is sentenced, the judge relying largely on the statement of the prisoner and the memory of the officer. In general, all prisoners who are held to the Grand Jury and are not released on bail are taken to the bureau, photographed, and their finger prints are taken. This seems a very unfair and illogical arrangement. If there is a reason for photographing a man before he is tried and while he is still only a suspect, the reason should apply equally to those in jail and those on bail. The practice of taking the finger prints and photographs of only the men and women who cannot afford bail, seems hard to justify.[47]