Long before LaGuardia, Marcantonio, Ed Flynn and Ed Kelly found the formula of organizing Negroes into blocs which could be voted en masse to perpetuate control of left-wing and criminal political groups, that was old stuff in D.C., where it was invented by one “Boss” Shepherd in Washington, the first large city in the country where Negroes were allowed to vote, and where there were enough of them to throw any weight as citizens.
Washington had been a sewer of iniquity during the Civil War; when Shepherd took over control it turned infinitely worse. The stench asphyxiated the members of Congress, who were exposed to it so intimately, and they exercised a forgotten constitutional prerogative, “to exclusively govern the District.” The polling booths made swell bonfires.
As will be seen, however, under the unique voteless system, the Negroes now exercise far more power, and Puddin’ Head Jones is by common consent the “mayor” of Washington’s Black Belt. As we progress you will be let in on how that could come about.
Despite the high enrollment of Negro children in public schools where they enjoy facilities for education equal to white children, Negroes continue to have an illiteracy far above the full population. In 1942, illiteracy in the District was only 1 percent for all races, whereas the Negro group showed 4 percent. Weighing these figures against the proportions of population in 1942 would seem to indicate that the Negroes were about 15 times as illiterate as whites.
Much later figures are available, however. Only 4 percent of Washington’s white youths who took the Army’s mental tests in 1950 failed, but nearly 29 percent of the prospective colored recruits were turned back.
New York’s Harlem is self-contained. Though Chicago’s Bronzeville has gone over its borders and set up tributary colonies in other sections of the city, it is still the center of Negro life there and contains most of its colored population.
But Washington’s Black Belt is no belt at all. It is sprawled all over, infiltrating every mile and almost every block in sections which for 150 years were lily white.
In New York, when you refer to Harlem, everyone knows what part of town you’re talking about. Similarly, Bronzeville and Central Avenue have definite meanings in Chicago and Los Angeles. In Washington, you have no way of indicating Darktown, because the Negro section has no generic name and it isn’t a section. It is all of Washington.
What is occurring in Washington is happening on a lesser scale in large northern population centers, except probably Manhattan, where Harlem is geographically restrained by Columbia University and Central Park, though Puerto Ricans are generously overflowing its borders on both sides.
In Chicago, instead of being bound in black ghettos, Negroes have preempted many sections, including former residences of millionaires. They live along wide and vernal boulevards in once splendid apartments and luxurious private homes with greeneries, and in palaces of packers and pioneer pirates.
This process is being repeated in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit and especially Philadelphia.
The South, with its restrictive practices against Negroes and its underpayment of them, is gradually being denuded of its cheap labor, which is drawn North.
The recent census showed the population of most metropolitan cities remained stable. But their suburbs, beyond city limits, increased in many from 50 to 100 percent or more. This growth of Suburbia was made by whites who left as Negroes came. That kept city populations in status quo.
The words used to paint the picture in Chicago may be repeated in Washington, but with emphasis and re-emphasis. Here they took mile after mile of fine old dwellings on wide, tree-lined streets. And they also overran the slums. But Washington, despite the anguished yelps of the do-gooders, long was and now is practically slum-free.
Some rookery regions are on F St. and New Jersey Ave. near the Union Station and Capitol. But there are poor whites living in hovels equally depressed. On the other hand, 95 per cent of the Negroes live in lodgings as good as and better than most white residents’. Negroes have taken over most of the desirable blocks near the government offices and downtown.
We have before us an article on “The Negro in Washington,” in a recent issue of _Holiday_ magazine, a slick-paper, 50-cent pleader for leftist causes, published, curiously enough, by the staid, rich and conservative house of Curtis, owners of the _Saturday Evening Post_. This effusion is illustrated with four pages purporting to show the Negro’s treatment in Democracy’s capital, which the editors call a “democratic contradiction.” There are photographs of Negro children at play in cluttered backyards which are called typical of the city’s overcrowded Negro slums. Another picture shows a Negro woman in an alley dwelling; another is captioned, “Capitol Dome presents a contrast of obvious irony to the Negro slums which it overshadows. Overcrowding, dirt and disease are all prevalent.”
Your authors traveled up and down 1,000 miles of streets and boulevards, 404 of alleys, not once but a dozen times. They saw the slums illustrated in _Holiday_ magazine, but they saw few others, because there are few others. At the most, 20,000, of a total of 400,000 Negroes, live in these “slums,” which, even at their worst, are turreted castles compared to the degraded dwellings in which Negroes and myriad whites are forced to live in New York.
_Holiday_ did not print one picture showing the thousands of fine homes and small apartment buildings in which most of Washington’s Negroes live.
Cup your ear and we’ll let you into a little secret about these “slums.” Whether you read _Holiday_ or not, you’ve seen the pictures, because they are the ones which are always used by Reds and Pinks to point up to the world how gruesomely America treats its dark step-children. The reason you’ve seen these pictures--always with the Capitol dome in the background--is that there are no others available.
Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the chief propagandists who exploited this “blot” on Washington. This particular slum, always photographed, always on every sight-seeing itinerary, is only a couple of blocks long and is surrounded on all sides by presentable Negro homes. But this slum is permitted to remain behind the Capitol only so the lefties will have something to breast-beat over. It remained there during the Roosevelt administration, when public housing and public building projects were reshaping the face of Washington, only because an official who was in Mrs. Roosevelt’s confidence ordered it undisturbed--for propaganda purposes.
The headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is in a ramshackle old house near the New Jersey Avenue slums. These are the specious ones referred to elsewhere, which are kept untouched and maintained to impress visitors with the shocking degradation forced on Negroes in view of the Capitol dome.
The N.A.A.C.P. is rich and could locate in one of the prosperous, more imposing Negro sections. But that would wipe out the psychological advantage of bringing its visitors through the stage-managed slave-quarters area.
Under Negro occupancy, some of the best dwellings in Washington, once residences of ambassadors, cabinet officers and the hated capitalists, now look like the slums the Fair Dealers decry.
In Washington, a Southern town with a Southern mentality, Negroes are not popular, are not accepted as brothers except by a nagging and noisy minority. The Negro is not Jim Crowed in street cars. There is no law against a Negro’s attending a theatre with whites, eating in the same restaurant or sleeping in the same hotel. But the law has upheld proprietors who refuse to serve a Negro, though United States Supreme Court decisions have gone otherwise elsewhere.
Yet there is considerable intermixture between the races. It is not uncommon to see white girls with colored men, especially jazz band musicians, who seem to exert a magnetic appeal for Caucasian women all over the country. Many Negro madames and pimps employ white girls for their colored trade. In some New Deal left-wing circles it is considered chi chi to meet socially and even sexually with Negroes, though, because of accepted restrictions against Negroes in the better spots, these contacts are not evident in the better public gathering places.
White people frequent colored night spots. Most of the reputed 480 Negro after-hour bottle-clubs cater also to whites, though no white club admits Negroes except possibly a prominent entertainer or band leader.
It is not uncommon to find white women living with colored men. Practically no instance has come up in recent years of white men consorting with colored women, except temporary pick-ups or in brothels.
A raid on the Logan Hotel, at 13th Street and Rhode Island Avenue, disclosed a white girl living with a Negro. She was the daughter of a Texas physician.