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CHAPTER 5

RACIAL SEPARATION

Negro Churches, Clubs, Fraternal Orders, Hotels, Theaters, Dance Halls, and So Forth-Refusal or Discouragement of Negro Patronage by Public Resorts and Private Businesses Primarily for Whites-Avoidance of Embarrassment through Exercise of Good Sense by Both Races

[OT only in respect to their place of residence, but in nearly every other respect, the Negroes in the North tend to live apart from the whites. The degree of segregation generally varies with the mass of the Negro population. In cities where the number of Negroes is large the segregation is sharply limited, while in cities where Negroes are few there is much freer commingling with the whites. Furthermore, in cities where the Negro population is large the degree of social separation varies in each locality with the number of Negroes who are thrown in contact with whites.

In the Negro quarters everywhere one notices exclusive Negro churches, Y. M. C. A.'s, fraternal orders, theaters, restaurants, and so

on.

Wherever the Negro, outside of his segregated quarter, comes in contact with the whites, whether he is on a business mission or is merely seeking recreation, there is apt to be friction between the races, especially in cases where the Negro attempts to enter resorts patronized exclusively by the whites.

Very frequently embarrassment, lawsuits, and even acts of violence grow out of the unadjusted contacts of the Negro and Caucasian in the Northern states.

In Boston, says Baker, "several hotels, restaurants, and especially confectionery stores will not serve Negroes, even the best of them. The discrimination is not made openly, but a Negro who goes to such places is informed that there are no accommodations, or he is overlooked and otherwise slighted, so that he does not come again." Even Booker Washington was turned away from hotels in Boston and Springfield. Similarly there are numerous hotels in Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus,2 Following the Color Line, p. 120.

'Quillin, The Color Line in Ohio, p. 146.

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Dayton, and other cities which refuse to admit Negroes. Some years ago there was much newspaper comment over the refusal of a white maid in an Indiana hotel to make up a bed occupied by Booker Washington. Also, a few years ago, much ado was made over the refusal of hotels to receive Negro delegates at a Methodist General Conference held in Los Angeles. When I was living in Madison, Wisconsin, a Negro glee club visiting the city had to be provided for privately because no hotel would lodge them.

Restaurants adopt a variety of ruses to avoid Negro patrons. The Chicago Tribune, referring to a famous restaurant in that city, says:

"When a negro entered and asked to be served he was seated in the usual way at a table on which were no menu or price cards. Presently a price card was laid before him. And in that price card lay all the effectiveness of the strictest Southern 'Jim Crow' law. It read something like this:

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One glance at that card and its awful prices was usually enough to send the colored man hurrying out of the place." One summer evening at an open air restaurant in Chicago I saw a group of Negroes seat themselves at a table. After they had been tardily served, one of them arose and spoke to the proprietor in a complaining manner of the prices charged. The proprietor refunded the overcharge upon the understanding that the Negroes would not return. Referring to the situation in New York, the Sun says: "In restaurants the waiters keep within the law. They do not say 'We will give you no dinner,' but 'We are busy now.' And the Negro may look at his empty plate, if he will, from 6 o'clock until midnight, and the excuse will be the same."

Helen Foil, writing to the Charlotte Observer from Boston, relates this story: "A negro entered a barber shop here and asked for a shave. The barber at first refused, but the law is on the negro's side. He told the Negro he would have to wait, and, after about an hour's time, he re-appeared with a razor which he had fixed for the purpose. He had taken an old one and had hammered on it with something heavy until it was dented and the edge broken in several places. He said to the Negro: "The law compels me to give you a shave, but by George, 'Quillin, The Color Line in Ohio, p. 136.

this is what I am going to do it with.' The Negro gave one look at the razor and fled."

Several years ago a white man in the Harvard Square barber shop refused to shave a Negro, and had to pay a fine of $20 for the discrimination.

In many Northern theaters Negro patrons find it difficult to secure seats except in the "nigger heaven." They are informed at the box office that all the parquet seats are sold. Negroes, however, very frequently get good seats by sending a white person to buy them.*

Many stores, especially clothing stores, shun Negro patronage as much as possible.5

In transportation there is no discrimination against the Negro in any Northern city except that some cab companies will not serve Negroes. On railway trains the Negros may ride unmolested in a Pullman car or parlor car. Friction between the races, however, often occurs on transportation lines through rudeness or ill manners on the part of one or the other or both. I was once riding on a crowded Pennsylvania Railroad train between Philadelphia and New York, and two Negro men were occupying separate seats in the same coach. The conductor politely asked if they would kindly sit together. They both flatly refused. In many cases the Negro is not only disposed to take all that the law allows but a good deal more. Speaking of Columbus, Ohio, Quillin says:

"When a negro boards the street car he proceeds to get a seat whether there is one vacant or not." A colored photographer "was on a street car one evening when a negro, fresh from his work in the steel mill, with his filthy working clothes on, boarded the car and, although there was no room, crowded into a seat by the side of a white woman, elegantly dressed. When the colored photographer remonstrated with him for his action, he turned and said, 'I'm no d-d white man's nigger like you. I have a right here, and I am going to take it.' The conductor came along and put him off the car, the colored photographer giving the conductor his name as a witness if needed." •

Riding in a crowded street car with Negroes is often very unpleasant for the white people. When Professor B. H. Meyer of the University of Wisconsin returned from a trip to Washington, where for the first time he came in contact with any considerable quantity of Negroes, he said in a talk to the student body he had made the discovery "that a

'Quillin, op. cit., p. 136.

Ibid., p. 136.

'Ibid., p. 112.

Negro in Georgia is a very different thing from one on a seat ahead of you in the street car."

Negroes are generally admitted to the municipal hospitals, though in some cases, as in Cincinnati, they occupy a segregated ward. Sometimes the white people rebel against the intermingling of the races in the same ward. For example, Miss Minerva Teague of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, expressed great indignation and humiliation because her niece, ill with pneumonia, was put in a room in the city hospital with a Negress. There was a column story about it in the Sentinel of December 11, 1904.

The use of the Chicago parks by Negroes is regulated by custom and varies with the degree of antagonism to Negroes in the park neighborhood. Negroes are not inclined to intrude where a park is predominantly patronized by the whites, and in a few localities white hoodlums prevent Negroes from using the parks. Negroes have been kept out of the public golf tournament at Jackson Park by the requirement that participants be members of a golf club affiliated with the Western Golf Association." "Separate racial grouping is the rule at the beaches, though it is not always voluntary." 10

In Indianapolis, where Douglass Park has been provided as a special resort for Negroes, many good results, it is claimed, have followed, such as "the elimination of friction and dangers that have heretofore existed between the races; a decrease in police supervision and costs of trials; a fifty-per-cent increase in property valuation in this part of the city; and a higher rating of the value of Negro citizenship." 11

"Association in such places as hotels, restaurants, barber shops, dance halls, and theaters is often limited by tradition and custom in the North as strictly as by regulation in the South." 12

There is one town in the North where the Negro is not allowed to live, and there are several such towns in the West. One of these is the town of Syracuse, Ohio, on the Ohio river, four miles above Pomeroy. The population is mixed, including many Welsh and Germans. Most of the people are day laborers working in the mines and factories. Anti-Negro towns in Indiana are Lawrenceburg, Ellwood, and Salem.13

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་ Quillin, op. cit., p. 146.

Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, pp. 294-6. 9 Ibid., p. 277.

10 Ibid., p. 286.

"W. P. Todd, "Douglass Park," Southern Workman, Aug., 1923. Report, Chicago Commission on Race Relations, p. 231.

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In some Northern cities there are educated and refined mulattoes * whose unobtrusive manners give them the freedom of all public places. They are welcomed as members of white churches, fraternal orders, and clubs. For example, William Stanley Braithwaite of Boston is a member of the Authors Club. And Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt of Cleveland, Ohio, is a member of a white church and resides in a street among white residents.

It is needless to add that, except in public places, there is little or no social intermingling of the whites and Negroes anywhere in the North or West. Speaking of the situation in Cleveland, Ohio, Quillin remarks that the race relations are there exceptionally harmonious but says: "There is no social equality between the two races and at the same time there is no bitterness over it. . . .

"Men of the two races meet as friends on the streets or in a business way, but their relation is never extended to the home life. The white man will not think of such a thing as introducing a colored person to his wife, nor will he have them meet on the same social plane."

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As a consequence of the social separateness of the races there are only rare instances of intermarriage and these, in most cases, occur only in the lower strata of both races. The Negro author, W. H. Thomas, declares that where the Negroes and whites intermingle, the whites are generally on a lower plane than the Negroes.15

The social aloofness of the whites and Negroes from each other is not a matter of hostile prejudice, but merely a matter of consciousness of kind which inclines each race to prefer its own in all intimate relationships. It is quite consistent with mutual respect and sympathy.

The racial problem in the North seems to be this: How to preserve separateness in all intimate relationships, and, at the same time, intermingle in all public places with due regard to mutual rights and feelings.

In the North the racial pique growing out of the social contacts is due mainly to the failure of each race to recognize one fundamental element of justice-good manners.

In any city, or section of a city, in the North where the Negro population is relatively small it is not possible for the Negro to find accommodations furnished by his own race, and it is a hardship for him to be denied accommodations primarily designed for white people. For humanitarian reasons, therefore, the Northern people have made it un"Op. cit., pp. 156-7.

"The American Negro, p. 406.

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