The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Stephen Foster and Slum Clearance The other day, my old friend Frank Crosswaith called me up with a chuckle in his deep bass voice. He was being threatened. He...
...Foster, says this critic, wrote in the old days of slavery, and he referred to the Negroes in the old degrading terms...
...He discovered that the Negro had a soul...
...and waste material piles up...
...It was one of those horribly hot, humid afternoons...
...They do the natural thing: They throw it out of the windows...
...People just couldn't stand it in the breathless, stuffy tenements, and some of them were sitting or standing so close on the steps and sidewalks that they were touching one another...
...And the threat came, of all •things, from a Harlem Negro...
...Wright has not yet surmounted the old race hatred...
...This man, Bruce M. Wright, has discovered that it was at Frank's suggestion that Stephen Foster Houses were given that name...
...This man, Bruce M. Wright, proposed to sponsor a petition to the Mayor seeking Frank's removal...
...He is supposed to gather the garbage in the hallways and place it on the streets in covered cans...
...Then I discovered that, though Frank's accuser spoke of malfeasance and misfeasance, he is not charging my friend with anything dishonest...
...So they sublet a room—or perhaps two or three rooms...
...In those neighborhoods, there is no garbage in the streets...
...represent both white and Negro Americans...
...Then he told me the story of landlords and real estate in Harlem...
...Stephen Foster's songs," he sa\s...
...Frank replied with a tired smile: "Yes, there are laws...
...They have taken care of as many low-income people as possible...
...In time, we will get it all cleaned up," said my Negro housing man...
...And he thinks that the composer of Old Black Joe and My Old Kentucky Home does not deserve that sort of honor in a Negro area...
...100 per cent occupied...
...For one such room they get as much as half their rent money...
...but this is Harlem, so they are not enforced.' After viewing such sights and hearing such explanations, it was with deep pleasure that I looked at the various public-housing developments...
...He shows more contempt than he does tolerance for the black people...
...I asked, naturally, whether there were no ordinances applicable to such matters...
...of course...
...And presently there may be as many as a dozen persons occupying an apartment that was meant for three or four...
...Stephen Foster Houses, one of the Harlem developments, is not yet quite finished...
...What these Authority people have done is good...
...1 said to Frank: "How does this happen...
...Frank makes answer to him with the tolerance and insight of an inclusive Americanism...
...The completed ones are...
...It looks innocent enough, but it is a sign of trouble...
...First, Frank took me on a tour to see some of the housing which has been constructed during the past twenty years...
...I was interested in their names...
...With the new houses there seem to go new manners...
...You cannot expect all these crowded people to carry their refuse down four or five flights of stairs...
...After lunch, a fine lunch in a good restaurant where whites and Negroes sat down together, we had a talk in Frank's office...
...It means that the rent is so high the tenants cannot pay it...
...He does not do it...
...Frank told me that in Harlem they are named for white celebrities...
...The thing sounded serious, so up I went to look into it...
...But two great areas in the heart of Harlem are being rapidly cleared for new projects...
...He used the word "darkie," which is "rampant with connotations of racial inferiority.'' He falsely pretends that "de darkies are gay...
...Outside of the Negro section, a number of them bear the names of such distinguished Negroes as James Wel-don Johnson and George Washington Canver...
...He might be thrown out of his job as a member of the New York Housing Authority...
...Why is such a thing allowed...
...This is one of those affairs of emotion, of sentiment, which people often take more seriously than they do matters of money or morals...
...The landlord increases his profits by cutting down on the services...
...And they have furnished what they could of space and trees and greenery and playgrounds...
...You walk along one of those streets of uniform five- or six-story tenements north of Central Park and you see signs, "Furnished Room for Rent...
...This is one of the customs that makes Harlem what it is...
...This sort of improvement is still vigorously under way...
...All of this goes to show that Mr...
...They have contributed much to the cultural and human change which made possible the abolition of slavery and the elevation of the Negro to his rightful place in our society...
...On our tour, I was more than ever impressed with the fact that Harlem is in dire need of this sort of renovation...
...They have provided sanitary, decent homes for hundreds of thousands of citizens...
...And precisely in these most crowded spots there would be garbage lying loose on the pavement—knocked about by passing cars and drawing swarms of flies...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 31
