Public-domain ebook

Work of the Colored Law and Order League, Baltimore, Md.

Name: Work of the Colored Law and Order League, Baltimore, Md.
Author: James H. N. Waring

by James H. N. Waring

Read now Add to library

Language: en210 downloads on Project Gutenberg

Subjects

Colored Law and Order League African Americans -- Maryland -- Baltimore

In: History - American·History - Modern (1750+)·Sociology

Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #60670.

The opening · free to read

Work of the Colored Law and Order League of Baltimore

THE Atlanta riot had sent a thrill of horror throughout the country, and colored people generally, whenever they met, were eagerly and anxiously discussing it, not only because of the desolation it left behind it, and the misery and suffering it had entailed to the families of the victims, but because as they discussed it they saw in their own neighborhoods more or less of the causes which led to that unfortunate affair.

With the colored people here in Baltimore it was for a long time a common topic of conversation. True, Baltimore had no incendiary press to inflame the passions of the poor whites of the city, nor had she a class of hysterical women to take fright at the sudden appearance of a black face, nor was there here that loose attitude toward law and order which permits the disorderly elements of the population to disregard and defy the authorities in their enforcement of the laws of the city and State. But there were sections of the city, where the colored people in large numbers reside, infested with saloons kept principally by white men of the lowest type; there were dens of vice in too large numbers scattered throughout the city—all of which were exercising a demoralizing effect upon the colored youth and furnishing schools of crime for colored children. These places appeared to have a quasi-police protection, and as it appeared later, in the testimony before the Liquor License Board, at least one policeman regarded the saloons about which there had been complaint from the best citizens of the town, white and black, as “less troublesome than the colored churches in the neighborhood.”

There were saloons of the lowest type in the most densely populated colored residence neighborhoods, and some of the public schools were within 300 feet of from two to eight of them. It was such conditions as these that laid the foundation for the trouble in Atlanta, and surely the existence of similar conditions in Baltimore justified the apprehensions felt by many of Baltimore’s best colored citizens.

THE DISTRICT SURROUNDING PUBLIC SCHOOL No. 105

This district is infested with dives and disorderly houses. The small dots indicate the disorderly houses; the large dots liquor saloons; the crosses around them are liquor saloons which have disorderly houses connected with them; the small triangles are houses that are suspected.

In this district some of the women who keep these houses have their names printed over the doors. ]

Finally, after some casual conferences and informal discussions at promiscuous meetings and gatherings, Rev. John Hurst, one of the most useful of Baltimore’s colored men, took the initiative and called together at his house a number of representative colored men to discuss the situation more formally. At this meeting there were present: W. Ashbie Hawkins, one of the leading lawyers of the city; Dr. Howard E. Young, one of the leading druggists; Dr. Whitfield Winsey, a physician who has practised among the colored people for about thirty years; Dr. Thomas S. Hawkins, one of the younger physicians, and a man who has always been prominent in every movement looking toward the betterment of the condition of the colored people; Heber E. Wharton, a vice-principal of one of the public schools; Harry T. Pratt, a grade supervisor in the public schools; Rev. J. Albert Johnson, who has recently been made a bishop in the A. M. E. Church; Rev. E. F. Eggleston, pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church; and Dr. J. H. N. Waring, principal of the Colored High and Training School. This group of men, after an informal discussion of the situation, decided to organize into a committee of ten, and elected Rev. Mr. Hurst as chairman of this committee, a position in which he served through the whole campaign with tact and firmness and wisdom. Later Dr. Hurst, who moved to Washington to live, was succeeded by Rev. John A. Holmes, who took up the fight with the same earnestness, intelligence and zeal which have characterized his entire life in this community.

It was from this little band of men, all of whom were colored, that the Law and Order League grew. The larger body was likewise made up entirely of colored men, all of them deeply interested in the general development of the whole colored population and fully determined, so far as lay in their power, to make the best possible contribution to good citizenship in Baltimore. The membership of the League was composed not only of the best colored men of the city, but they were the men who are always foremost in any movement for civic betterment, and men who are occupying the most prominent and influential positions in the city.

MAP showing LOCATION of SALOONS and DISORDERLY HOUSES

At this meeting in October, 1906, it was decided to investigate the conditions in colored neighborhoods, and learn more in detail of the environments of their homes and schools and churches, to study the sanitary conditions of colored neighborhoods and to collect all the reliable data possible to be used in the effort to improve conditions among the colored people. It was thought best to limit the size of this committee to the ten men who met at Dr. Hurst’s house. They divided themselves up into sub-committees to study and report on the sanitary conditions in colored neighborhoods, to investigate the school conditions with special reference to their surroundings, and to secure such printed matter and collect such reliable statistics as they might need in their future work.

At the subsequent meetings reports from these committees brought out many interesting and startling facts. In Baltimore, as in most other cities, the colored people are grouped together in certain neighborhoods whose white population is very small and composed of the degraded rum-seller or the small shopkeeper, who has no social antipathy toward his black neighbors so long as business is good.

It was reported that there were at least three neighborhoods in the city in which the conditions with reference to schools for colored children and housing of colored families were deplorable in the extreme.

There was the Caroline and Bank Streets district, in which a colored school was surrounded by a network of saloons and houses of prostitution. It was found that within a block of the school there were nine saloons and no less than forty-seven houses of ill-repute. It was learned that it was most difficult to keep girls in this school after they became thirteen or fourteen years of age. So powerful were the influences of this neighborhood upon them that at thirteen some of them passed from the school to the houses of prostitution and to lives of shame. In a tour of inspection of this neighborhood young girls were pointed out one after another, who, the previous year, had been pupils of the school. One mother, who had recently moved to Baltimore from the country, told how she had rescued her twelve-year-old daughter from one of those dens, and how a policeman, to whom in her agony and distress she had appealed, threatened to arrest her for disorderly conduct!

Public School No. 116, surrounded by eleven saloons, 8 of which are within 300 feet of the school premises. ]

The Rogers Avenue district, in which another colored school was located, while not quite so bad so far as the number of saloons and questionable houses was concerned, was yet a neighborhood infested with both kinds of places, and the block just below the school, on the street through which nearly half of the children must pass on their way to and from school, was lined on both sides with houses of prostitution, over whose doors, in some cases, the women who kept them had their names printed. Such a condition as this existed nowhere else in the city, and made this particular street a demoralizing influence which was different from any other and in many ways more powerful for harm than any other which was found.

(Click on the map for a slightly-larger version.)

The Druid Hill Avenue district is the largest and most populous colored neighborhood in Baltimore, if not in the world. It probably contains more homes owned and occupied by colored people than any similar residential neighborhood anywhere. It extends from Eutaw Street to North Avenue, and with the adjacent streets covers an area a mile and a half long by from one-sixteenth to one-half a mile wide. The upper part of this district is as fine a colored neighborhood as one would wish to see, and is comparatively free from nuisances of any kind.

In the lower Druid Hill Avenue district, which was the largest district studied, it was found that in a section seven blocks long and two blocks wide there were located forty-two saloons, fifteen churches, twelve schools, one home for old people, one home for friendless children, the Colored Young Men’s Christian Association and the Colored Young Women’s Christian Association. This section was honeycombed with gambling dens, known not only to the initiated, but carrying on unblushingly a business which was known to the citizens if not to the police. There were numerous dance houses, clubs and billiard halls which were in actual practice only assignation places for girls and young women, and to which many of them owed their downfall.

The Health Office furnished a map which showed that the lower Druid Hill Avenue district was the “tuberculosis centre” for the city of Baltimore and the State of Maryland. From “A Study on Housing Conditions in Baltimore,” an investigation prepared under the direction of the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor and the Charity Organization Society, the following is quoted, showing the bad conditions of health, sanitation and morals with reference to one alley in this district:

“The Biddle Alley district, of all sections of the city, holds the record for the tuberculosis death rate. In the year 1906 eight deaths from tuberculosis occurred in families known to the agent of the Federated Charities, and according to the statement made a short time ago by a Health Department official, there is not a house on Biddle Alley in which there has not been at least one case of tuberculosis.”

“From morning until midnight the beer can circulates with a regularity that is almost monotonous.”

“Another striking characteristic of the occupants of this district is what appears to be in many cases an entirely undeveloped moral sense.”

“Gambling is also prevalent and there is reason to believe that the cocaine habit hastens the decay of many of these degenerates.”

As to the sanitary conditions, the report states further:

“Of the two hundred and fifteen houses in the Biddle Alley district, seventy-one had leaking roofs.”

“Dirty, dark, damp and dilapidated are adjectives that fairly describe nearly two-thirds of the four hundred and thirty-eight basements and cellars included in the investigation.”

“In several cellars in the Biddle Alley district the surface drainage from the adjoining alley or street was found to be oozing through the foundation walls.”

“A basement apartment in the Biddle Alley district had no light or ventilation except that afforded by a window 3½ feet square in area, placed so high in the wall that it was necessary to stand on a chair to take measurements. The walls and ceiling of this dungeon-like apartment were damp and in bad repair. From the physical condition of the occupant it seemed likely he was suffering from tuberculosis in its incipient stage.”

The book keeps going