The colored people often state that the colored professional men, lawyers and physicians, rather than the ministers and social workers, have been the real factors in the social improvement among the negroes of Chicago. They instance that the Frederick Douglas Center has staunch supporters among the professional men; that the president of their newly built Y. M. C. A. is a colored physician and that professional men are very active in the Chicago branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Musicians of
Prominence
Among the many colored musicians in Chicago are at least a score who may be called professionals; two of them direct orchestras; one is a pianist of local reputation; at least four of them singing in vaudeville are also composers of songs; two are young colored women who have extensively traveled as singers in Cuba and South America as well as in the United States. Every year several young people graduate at the various musical colleges, and a gifted young violinist is now studying in Paris. The Art Institute often has colored students, and there are a goodly number of colored people who write creditable poetry, chiefly words to songs which are set to music by their friends. Four newspapers edited in Chicago by colored men, as well as contributions to the “Crisis” and other magazines, give evidence of a remarkable ability for writing. In addition to several clergymen and attorneys of undoubted forensic ability, may be cited several lecturers, one of them a woman with a gift for public speaking, who years ago roused interest throughout England in the condition of colored people.
Church Chief
Factor in
Social Life
The church among the colored people has always been the chief factor in their social life. In Chicago there are twenty-nine regularly organized churches in addition to various missions, with approximately twenty thousand members. This includes nearly half of the colored population of the city, a much larger proportion than the church membership among the white population. The churches own property to the amount of six hundred thousand dollars, although every church is carrying a debt. The church is a center for the colored people for lectures, literary societies, civic meetings, and so forth. Many churches have young people’s societies, meeting every Sunday afternoon, united to the extent of sustaining in Chicago an annual oratorical contest to which they all send representatives. Two of the churches, one on the South Side and one on the West Side, at one time carried on institutional work, which has been discontinued because of lack of funds; one of the Baptist churches supports a religious training school which has eleven teachers and one hundred and fifty students. The clergymen are, as a rule, men who have been educated in some of the best northern and southern theological seminaries, but they are inclined to be sectarian and to confine themselves to the conventional church routine. The colored ministers of one denomination seldom meet with the colored ministers of another denomination and almost never with the white ministers of their own denomination. They complain that they meet with public approval when they work for the religious advancement of their own race, but are rebuffed when they enter into general movements for civic betterment.
Young Men’s
Christian
Association
A Young Men’s Christian Association building in Chicago represents the largest investment ever made by that association to be devoted to the interests of colored men and boys. Its entire cost approximates $195,000. It contains the standard equipment of gymnasium, restaurant, dormitories, etc., and has a membership of 2,000, although the annual fee is ten dollars.
Juvenile Officers
and Social
Workers
Among the colored social workers of the city are five Juvenile Protection Officers and one Adult Probation Officer. The county agent employed one colored investigator and the Juvenile Protective Association one colored officer; there are three colored nurses employed by the Visiting Nurses’ Association, and three others upon the staff of the public school nurses. The standard of all these social workers is as high as the average, and several of them—notably two young women living at the Wendell Phillips Settlement, have taken the full course at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. The colored people themselves feel that there is urgent need for more trained social workers. The clubs of colored women which are beginning to study the social needs of their districts urge their members to more serious study; of these clubs the Civic Club is devoted to rescue work, the Phyllis Wheatley Club to maintaining a permanent home for colored working girls, the Parents’ School Club to securing better school conditions, a Neighborhood Club to making local improvements. Several other women’s clubs, which take care of special cases in need of relief and co-operate with the United Charities, are eager for guidance as to the best method of Charitable administration. There are forty-one clubs of colored women in the city, with a total membership of 1,200, most of them devoted to philanthropy and closely allied to the women’s aid societies found in all the colored churches. Two clubs for colored women are of a somewhat different character, federated with the Cook County League of Women’s Clubs and co-operate in general social movements.
Social
Settlements