The Omaha guide. (Omaha, Neb.) 1927-19??, November 05, 1932, ILLUSTRATED FEATURE SECTION, Image 9
. -' I The Writer* H Send Their Stones ■ First to the Ulus* a * __~ _ : » • - ....... w " ,r..a...T.Jryrrr^ CW'“* ILLUSTRATED FEATURE SECTION— November 5, 1992. BLUE EVERi WEEB ,N “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