Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

The case was brought to the Juvenile Protective Association by the employer of George W., who, convinced of the boy’s good character, felt that he had not had a fair trial. The Association, finding that the boy could absolutely prove an alibi at the time of the crime, is making every effort to get him out of the penitentiary.

As remedies against the unjust discrimination against the colored man suspected of crime, a leading attorney of the race in Chicago suggests that:

Generalizing against the negro should cease. The fact that one negro is bad should not fix criminality upon the race. The race should be judged by its best as well as by its worst types.

The public press never associates the nationality of a criminal so markedly in its account of crime as in the case of a negro. This exception is most unjust and harmful and should not obtain.

The negro should not be made the universal scapegoat. When a crime is committed, the slightest pretext starts the rumor of a “negro suspect” and flaming headlines prejudice the public mind long after the white criminal is found.

The investigators were convinced that there are not enough places in Chicago where negro children may find wholesome amusement. Of the fifteen small parks and playgrounds with field houses, only two are really utilized by colored children. They avoid the others because of friction and difficulty which they constantly encounter with white children. The commercial amusements found in the neighborhoods of colored people are the lowest type of poolrooms and saloons, which are disproportionately numerous because so many young colored men find their first employment in these two occupations, and with their experience and very little capital are able to start places for themselves.

All colored people are especially fond of music, but almost the only outlet the young people find for their musical taste is in vaudeville shows, amusement parks, and inferior types of theaters. That which should be a great source of inspiration tends to pull them down, as their love of pleasure, lacking innocent expression, draws them toward the vice districts where alone the color line disappears.

An effort was recently made by some colored people on the South Side to start a model dance hall. The white people of the vicinity, assuming that it would be an objectionable place, successfully opposed it as a public nuisance and this effort toward better recreational facilities had to be abandoned.

In suggesting remedies for this state of affairs, the broken family life, the surroundings of a vicious neighborhood, the dearth of adequate employment, the lack of preventive institutional care and proper recreation for negro youth, the Juvenile Protective Association finds itself confronted with the situation stated at the beginning of the investigation—that the life of the colored boy and girl is so circumscribed on every hand by race limitations that they can be helped only as the entire colored population in Chicago is understood and fairly treated.

For many years Chicago, keeping to the tradition of its early history, had the reputation among colored people of according them fair treatment. Even now it is free from the outward signs of “segregation,” but unless the city realizes more fully than it does at present the great injustice which discrimination against any class of citizens entails, it will suffer for this indifference in an ever-increasing number of idle and criminal youths, which must eventually vitiate both the black and white citizenship of Chicago.