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782 Fulton Street, near Adelphi Street
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
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Brooklyn Agents for THE CRISIS
How to Elevate the Moral and Civic Tone of the Negro Community
Negroes—good, bad and indifferent—as long as they have lived in tenements, have had to live shamefully intermingled. Formerly they were forced to live in ramshackle tenements that had been abandoned by the whites, at exorbitant rents for wretched accommodations. But now, thanks to the thrift and enterprise of certain progressive Negro real estate agents, they may live in houses having the same conveniences and accommodations as the whites. While, happily, the physical surroundings of the Negro tenant have been radically altered, unhappily his moral surroundings remain unchanged. How, then, can we improve his moral surroundings? Co-operation is a sine qua non in the solution of this problem. Tenants MUST co-operate with their agents and agents MUST co-operate with one another in ameliorating the moral and civic condition of Negro communities. We can’t lean on the landlord. He is an indifferent third party. He cares not, so to speak, whether his house is tenanted with respectable or disrespectable tenants, so long as it is full and he gets his rents. If he’s at all concerned about the disrespectable or respectable tenants in his house, it’s only to the extent that he’s afraid the former may be the cause of some or all of the latter moving, thus leaving him with some vacancies.
The present moral conditions of Negro tenantry are indeed bad. The individual efforts of certain Negro agents toward bettering the conditions have been praiseworthy, to say the least, but as far as making any progress toward the desired goal is concerned, such efforts must needs be and practically have been of little or no avail. What is the desirable goal is too obvious to command explanation. But how to reach that goal is the matter under consideration. In the first place, we repeat that the united efforts of tenants and agents are the desideratum.