Paternal relationship.—In testimony before the Commission a witness said:
The prejudice against the colored people in the South isn't as strong in some instances as it is in the North. It's a queer thing, but the white man in the South, and the white woman, too, has a sort of paternal feeling that he must look after him and that the colored man's interests are better in his hands than if he is left to drift for himself. I don't state that as an actual fact, but I believe it is true. That is their point of view. They don't hate the colored man. They don't dislike him, but I should say this, that they won't take him into their homes. They don't dislike him, provided he keeps his place. I believe the white people of the South think more of the Negro than the white people of the North.
3. ABSTRACT JUSTICE
A trained nurse of Woodlawn said:
I meet colored people only on the cars. There are none anywhere around here, I believe. I don't know how I would feel if they came to Woodlawn to live. But they must live, and I hear their quarters are getting too small. It seems that Chicago ought to let them live somewhere. Some people treat Negroes terrible and I think that is all wrong. Why can't we act respectably toward colored people on the cars and treat them nice on the street? We surely don't want to be like the people in the South who make colored persons get off the walk when they come along. But I see white people here almost that bad—can't see a black man live.
The pastor of a church in Woodlawn said:
I have come to no final conclusion as to the best policy to pursue in the adjustment of the race problem. I am thinking about it a great deal and am deeply concerned over the whole matter. In the present state of popular mind, there is no doubt but property values are depreciated by the presence of Negro tenants or property owners in residential sections. However, if everyone felt as I do, it would not be so. I mean, provided that the same general social standards were observed by all nationalities in the city. It would be very fine, it seems to me, to maintain certain standards in each neighborhood. Why not bring pressure to bear on white landlords and make them keep their property up to a given average standard in the community, that only such a class of people will rent or buy as are already there? I am very anxious that the Negro shall be treated fairly. I do not want him to feel that I have stood in the way of his opportunities and his rights.
A professor at the University of Chicago said:
The final solution, it seems to me, must come as a result of honest and successful efforts for mutual understanding between the races. There must be apparent on the part of the white race an attempt to treat the Negro with justice, and I feel sure that he will respond. I do not think the black race, as a race, desires intermarriage more than the white race, yet the assertion to the contrary is much overworked by the white opposition in these neighborhoods.
A minister said: