If you rode with us in Washington, through the NW colored section, these are some of the things we could have shown you:
First, we parked our car at the corner of 10th and B Sts., in front of the Lincoln Barbeque. We waited five minutes, a colored man came out of the restaurant and took our order for bootleg liquor. It happened after two, when the bars were closed. His prices were moderate, no more than 50 cents to a dollar above the established tariff. But the stuff was moonshine and cut.
Let’s go to 1919 14th Street NW. This house was formerly the Star Dust Club, an after-hour drinking and gambling place. Now it’s a shoeshine parlor. It’s owned by William J. “Foots” Edwards, a notorious Negro gambler. If you want a game, you can find stud in the basement.
The dark corner of 5th and K looks quiet and serene. The colored damsels who parade past here singly and by twos are not. Stop your car at the corner and they will come over and solicit you. Business all night. If you’re a Negro you’ll know where to take them. If you are a white man they’ll go along in your car to an alley or steer you to a buggy rooming-house. Another corner frequented by dusky hustlers in search of white trade is 9th and Rhode Island.
At about this time, we’ll run through the 7th Street district, which is the Broadway of the NW Negro section, with the chief shops, restaurants, night clubs and theatres. You can make pick-ups anywhere around 7th, Georgia and Florida Avenues, but these streets are brightly lighted, so most white men who want to change their luck play the darker streets. And there it is not unusual to see white girls brace black men.
In addition to sex on sale at the corner of 7th and Florida, you can buy reefers or policy slips.
U Street, from 7th to 15th, is another bright light belt in the colored section. The Dunbar Hotel and the Whitelaw are the swank Negro inns. The Dunbar was once the aristocratic white Courtland Hotel. In its basement is the 20-11 Club, one of the Nation’s best-known colored cabarets, which caters to the cream of the colony and is patronized also by white novelty-seekers. Rich and visiting Negro celebrities check in at the Dunbar. So do Feds and cops, who have occasionally made pinches there for narcotics and morals violations. In the 20-11 Club you can pick up girls of any race.
On the corner of 7th and T are three hot spots—the Off Beat Club, for musicians, the Club Harlem, and the Seventh and T Club. We saw them serve drinks after hours and cater to fairies of all shades, female white thrill-chasers and Negro reefer addicts.
Washington, like Chicago, is a city of alleys in every block of residential property and many business squares, bisected by the rear passages. As in Chicago, they are conducive to crime, afford dark, narrow lanes for rape, assault, robbery and the pleasanter crimes of crap shooting and soliciting.
In some Negro sections where housing is at a premium, they live in shacks in the alleys. These are some of the slums already referred to—not many, but picturesque and odoriferous. One of the best-known is an alley oddly named Temperance Court. If white people lived there it would be fashionable at premium rents; it is similar to the aristocratic Washington Mews in New York’s Greenwich Village. But it is inhabited by some of the lowest members of the Negro race in Washington—and that means low.