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“REMINISCENCES”
By MARY WHITE OVINGTON
CHAPTER FIVE
Living on San Juan Hill
A Lone White Woman Living in a City Block
with 5,000 Colored Folk.
Not living on San Juan Hill in Cuba up which the
the colored soldiers charged, but on San Juan Hill in New
York, a poor neighborhood running from West 60th
Street, to West 64th Street, between 10th and 11th Ave
nues. Whites dwelt on the avenues, colored on the streets,
and fights between the two gave the hill its name. A
rough neighborhood, but, at least among the Negroes, a
place where all classes lived.
There were people who itched for a fight, and people
who hated roughness. Lewd women leaned out of win-s
dows, and neat, hard-working mothers early each morn
ing made their way to their mistresses
homes. Men lounged on street eor
Bsrs in as dandified dress as their
women at the wash tubs could get for
them; while hard working porters
and longshoremen, night watchmen
and government clerks went regularly
% to their jobs. Race prejudice and
economic necessity rnrew an sorts women leaned out
and conditions of colored people to- the window
gether. I speak of the San Juan Hill of the past. I
know little about it now, but when in January, 1908, I
moved into the Tuskegee Apartments, built by Henry
Phipps, its reputation was little better than Hell’s Kitch
en, the picturesque Irish gangster neighborhood a few
blocks south.
John E. Milholland, whose name
should be revered by all of us, was
instrumental in having the Tuske
gee Apartments built. He knew
that Henry Phipps was building
model tenements, to return four per
cent on the investment. Milholland,
learning through me of the fright
ful housing conditions among the
Negro working class, persuaded
Phipps to put his second venture
in a Negro neighborhood. So the
Hill saw a fireproof, new-law tene
ment, with steam heat and unlimit
ed hot water, in the midst of its
double-decker and dumbell apart
ments that covered ninety per cent
* of each building lot. The manage
ment was in the hands of the City
and Suburban Homes Company.
I had begun my settlement work
in a model tenement erected by
Charles Pratt. My next venture
was in a tenement erected by Henry
Phipps, and while Mr. Phipps had
as yet shown no interest in settle
ment work, caring only for the
housing end, I hoped, by quietly
renting on my own account, to per
suade him to add social service
work.
The house had a playroom for its
children which the Walton Free
Kindergarten was allowed to occupy
in the morning. I could develop
more work that later might be
supported.'So I took a little furni
ture, a great many books, and mov
ed into my flat. It had three rooms
and a bath.
Life among working class people
was familiar to me, but I found that
San Juan Hill was very different
from Greenpoint. There was, of
course, the difference of race, or
color, but I soon forgot that. The
noticeable difference was in the
lower economic status of the Negro.
'fereenpoint had been a factory
neighborhood, and though the work
had been hard it had been fairly
constant. Girls worked in factories
and shops, men worked regularly at
skilled and unskilled labor. All got
a decent wag?, so that the house
wife stayed at home giving her full
time to her family’s wants. On San
Juan Hill, this was the exception,
not the rule.
There were families where the
husband and older children sup
ported the household, but usually,
the mother had to help support the
family. She did this by taking in
launary, or sne went out to service.
As_a domestic, she would be away
for twelve or fourteen hours. If
she went out to clean, she put in
eight hours of work. When she got
home she must at once attend to
her husband and children. Her
babies were boarded with some old
and inefficient woman unless she
was luckly enough to get them in
the Nursery. When they grew
older, they lived in the street. That
was safer than leaving them locked
in at home.
The men were unskilled laborers,
some longshoremen, a decently paid
group, some porters in factory or
store. Some were general utility
men in boarding-houses, with hours
as long as the women’s. Many a
boarding-house employs such a
man who W'orks early and late
about the place, receiving a scant
wage. Men worked at night as
watchmen, and must slepp through
the day’s noise. And lastly, far
more than at Greenpoint, men did
not work at all, either because they
couia not get jobs, or because the
jobs they might secure were hate
ful, and they could find some wo
man-wife, mother, or sweetheart—
to support them. These men loung
ed on street corners during the day,
or played pool in one of the many
pool rooms.
The absence of the mother from
the home led to juvenile delin
quency. More than white children,
colored boys and girls came before
the juvenile court for improper
guardianship. That was the only
offense where the Negro percentage
was higher than the white. I know,
for I spent many late afternoons
going over the juvenile court records
in the stuffy court house. Ruth
Draper, then a young girl, a mem
ber of the Junior League and work
ing at Greenwich House, used to
help me. I wish she might have
seen the cases instead of the records
only. We went patiently over the
pages and learned that environ
ment was the determining factor in
juvenile arrests. Where, as in a
Jewish neighborhood, the push-cart
stood temptingly by the side walk,
'“Yes, we knows deys women walkin'
de streets right now. But who’s
walkin’ wid ’em?”
there petty larceny abounded. And
where, as on San Juan Hill, moth
ers had to go out to work, arrests
were numerous for improper guard
ianship. Our researches exploded
the loose accusation that Negroes
are born with a propensity to steal.
The colored child stole no more and
no less than the average white
child.
My best friend on San Juan Hill
was the Rev. George Simms of the
Union Baptist Church. Since San
Juan Hill has become a W.;t In
dian neighborhood, his church has
moved to Harlem, but when I knew
it, it was frequented chiefly by
newly-arrived Southerners. They
went to the Union Baptist Church
and found themselves at home, got
"happy” and were not frowned up
on, though they never got beyond
their ministers’ control.
His sermons were madly pictur
esque and yet full of common sense.
He could preach as vivid a sermon
as any in “God's Trombones ” His
picture of Jesus in his blue smock
leaving his carpenter's bench to be
baptized by John the Baptist be
longs in “The Green Pastures.”
He co-operated with all of us on
the Hill, the kindergartners, the
day nursery workers, the superin
tendent of the Tuskegee. The suf
fragists came to his church, and
he made the best speech of any. He
had a rival in one of his deacons,
known as Brother Baptist.
Once, when an anti suffragist
complained that if women were
given the vote, the women who
walked the streets would be en
franchised, Brother Baptist said in
answer: “Yes, we knows dey's wo
men walkin’ de streets. Dey’s walk
in’ de streets right now. But who’s
walking wid ’em?”
Eight months was not a long time
to study a neighborhood, and I had
my hook to write as well as com
mittees to attend, but I managed to
see a good deal. With a tenement
house inspector, for ten days I
climbed thousands of stairs. The
white homes we looked into, homes
bordering on the Negro neighbor
hood, were more dirty than the
colored. They seemed to contain a
great many mangy dogs. But the
Negro, however poor, did not sur
render the attempt to make her
home attractive. A white spread or
a calico quilt would be on the bed,
the china on the shelf would be gay
and neatly arranged, the room usu
ally fairly clean. The standard may
have come from intimate acquaint
ance with the homes of well-to-do
mistresses, but it was there. The
streets, too, though they knew
fighting and heard guffaws of
laughter and screams of terror,
preserved a certain decency. I can
illustrate this in no better way
than by the fact that I never saw
the obscene writing that had been
common in Greenpoint.
I thought of this one day when I
was poking about in an inner court
to find the home of an impoverish
ed child. The walls offered space
for the gross oilers I had grown
familiar with years before. But in
stead, on one of these walls, in a
neat handwriting, I read: “Unless
above himself he can erect himself,
how poor a thing is man.” And be
low: “No conflict is so severe as his
who labors to subdue himself. But
in this we must continually be en
gaged if we would strengthen the
inner man.”
I would not imply that It was
usual to find Shakespeare and
Thomas a Kempis written upon the
walls. I never saw them again. But
the imagination and religious fer
vor that they expressed were fa
miliar to these sordid city blocks.
Negro children, when taught good
manners, enjoyed practicing them
Some of the children on my street
were a delight to entertain. I loved
to have them come to my flat, their
hair standing out in two little
braids, their eyes bright, their hands
slender and pretty. If one handed
line a flower it was done with grace.
I remember walking down my
block with an old Greenpoint friend
and seeing a boy of eight run up to
his mother, kiss her, and then take
a parcel from her arms. “That’s no{
: unusual,” I said to my friend. Quick
as a flash, her Irish wit responded:
“Then you needn’t be explaining
to me the reason for the high death
rate among children.”
The darkest part of life on the
HiJl was the realization that so
little was ahead for these same
children. Poverty was their lot. I
remember Annabel —ho came running
to me one evening to say'that her
mother would the next day be turn
ed out into the street. She had sup
ported the family by laundry work
until sickness came and now the
threatened dispossession. I went to
her apartment.
“It is the end,” she said, offering
me the one chair left. That morn
ing she had sold the furniture and
on the way home lost the money.
“It is the end.” Organized charity
came the next day and paid the
[rent, but there followed a long
period of want and suffering. Anna
bel told me one day what she ex
pected to do when she grew up. “I
shall dance,” she declared. “Dancers
make money. I shall not work the
way my mother does. She works
and works and never has anything.”
At the end of eight months I saw
that my settlement dream would
never be realized. Mr. Phipps was
interested in housing, but his inter
est stopped there. In the one inter
He Was for Women’s
Voting 20 Years Ago
The REV. GEORGE H. SIMMS,
pastor Union Baptist Church; pres
ident New York Baptist State
Convention,
Stfme of my friends thought I wad
running a risk.
view I had with him. I could not
convince him of the value of all that
I hoped to do. The City and Suburb
an Homes Company also took no
interest in supporting my plans.
I suspect they thought a settle
ment in a model tenement would be
a nuisance. I saw my savings rap
idly disappearing and no chance
of a salary. So when the summer
was over, very reluctantly I gave up
my apartment and for a second
time left busy, warm-hearted work
ing-class neighbors for middle class
respectability. It would have been
harder to do this, had I not been
greatly needed at home.
In all the months that I lived, a
white woman alone in a block with
five thousand Negroes, I never had
a disagreeable experience. I was
never accosted rudely. The race
riots of which I had heard had
ceased to occur. Some of my
friends thought I was running a
risk. One called me up after dining
with me, and in forceful language in
which the word “Nigger” was pres
ent, told me I should leave. I told
him I was as safe there as any
where. Danger is never absent, but
I did not taste it.
The colored people, more than
the whites in Greenpoint, took me
for exactly what I was. Had they
been better educated, more sophisti
cated, they might have been sus
picious of my sincerity. But I was
among big-hearted, friendly, hard
working human beings. They
thought me a teacher and put me
down at that.
it spoke well for the work that
had gone before mine, public school,
mission, kindergarten, health de
partment, charity organization so
ciety—that I was understood. They
saw that I wanted to help. They
believed that I respected them in
their terrific struggle to make life
easier for their children.
It was many months before I
mastered my disappointment, and
before I ceased to think of
that street and my home or it. I
had met the Negro race and felt
its charm, that charm that New
York has not yet wholly destroyed.
In the evening at my open win
dow on the crowded street I hear
the children calling to one another
in their play. They have a street
song, “Sound dem weddin’ bells ’’
that I have not heard before . . .
An evangelist moves past me say
ing, “Salvation is so convenient,
don’t forget that. Friends, it’s con
venient. It’s for this world.” . . .
An old woman, in a high, shaking
voice sings, “Give me Jesus, give me
Jesus. You may have all this world
but give me Jesus.” ... It is after
noon. A knock comes at my door.
I open it, and three little girls, in
freshly laundered white dresses,
slip shyly in. The oldest, she has
Continued on Pace Four
