National Reports
SHELDON, COURTNEY R. & CORDON, WILLIAM
National Reports Atlanta: Joseph R. Fiszman. Boston: Courtney R. Sheldon. Chicago: Albert N. Votaw. Dallas: Bicknell Eubanks. Minneapolis: Sam Romer. New Orleans: Stephen Ryan. Richmond: Lawrence...
...In 1950, the survey revealed, the average Negro family income was $1,869, or only 54 per cent of the average income of $3,445 among white families...
...An objective appraisal indicates that the Negro has shared in many of the South's achievements over the past twenty years...
...They came to see first-hand the land of lynch law they had heard about: the plantation culture, the one-mule sharecropper, the "peonage system," the slums...
...Budget permitting, she might even have a telephone and TV set...
...The larger the total assessment, however fictitious, the lower the tax rate...
...The lower the tax rate, the more popular the Mayor...
...At the outset, they were forced into the slums, and this still is true to a certain extent...
...The same is true of technical and supervisory positions...
...The average Negro wage-earner gets only 52 per cent of the average for white workers...
...The political profiteer is immediately apparent...
...Reform-minded observers feel that the key to this peculiar situation lies in the answer to a simple question: Who makes a political or financial profit on the operation...
...Until an administration calls a halt to this suicidal practice...
...The overall picture looks good...
...Moreover, those able to remain on the farms are better supported, because the machine has increased production and brought greater net gains to the average family...
...which increased their population by nearly 8 million—a rate of growth almost three times that of the rest of the nation...
...San Francisco: Frank Mankiewicz...
...It is reported that some of them receive from 30 to 50 per cent of the total abatement as their fee...
...The site was the remaining portion of a recently condemned slum section...
...Large downtown firms complain to the assessing board or a state review board because they consider their property overassessed, win a tax abatement, and then find their assessment back at the original figure the following year...
...As a result of industry, too, he sees himself as part of a region that is gradually buying itself out of rundown sections...
...the patter of children's feet going up and down rickety stairs was clearly audible...
...According to the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, 770 new industries have been added to the Atlanta area alone since 1946, resulting in an annual payroll of $68,502,000...
...This is no idle supposition...
...But some clue to the present difficulties may be found in the high rate paid to these specialists...
...Richmond: Lawrence King...
...In private building, Negroes have met resistance from lending agencies...
...Even more iniportant, the South is in a position to pull itself up by its own boot-straps...
...But what about the racial breakdown...
...White-collar employment, except in wholly Negro firms, is almost completely unavailable...
...he said...
...Meanwhile, business firms shy away from Boston and creditra??ling concerns continue to give the cih an "unfavorable' rating...
...There has been a sharp reduction in Negro farm tenancy and a gain in farm ownership...
...But the fight goes on, and Negroes continue to improve their lot...
...In borderline areas, there have been bombings and even violence...
...Negroes have shared in public and private housing and they have obtained access to the ballot, even in many rural sections...
...And this increased income for the farm and city worker has spilled over into other areas of Southern life...
...Yes, things have changed in the South," the old woman said, observing the strangers' curiosity...
...The day-laborer and small tenant farmer, of course, left the soil with some regrets...
...Boston's growth will be stunted...
...They are still being given second-hand houses, secondhand schools, second-hand parks and truck-crowded streets...
...The old woman and her grandchildren would soon be moving into an $11-million low-rent housing project with adequate heating, a private bath, and hot and cold running water...
...The remaining interested party, the city assessing board, does not make any visible profit...
...For the first time in its history, there is a consciousness of the available skills, and they are being utilized to stimulate an industrial resurgence...
...Management and union practices discourage ambitious and capable Negroes who want to move forward in their jobs...
...In housing, Negroes have been crowded into many of the run-down central districts...
...Day by day, he sees his cities and towns blazing pathways to beauty and efficiency...
...To supplement the earnings of the family head, the League found, several members of the family are forced to work...
...And the trend in Atlanta, say business officials, may be used as an index for the rest of the region...
...It is still generally accepted that the Negro worker has to get along on much less money than his white brother...
...Improved health facilities have resulted in a reduced death-rate, and schools are getting better...
...Many were astonished, therefore, to find that the South they had visualized is merely a ghost of the past and that the entire region is rapidly taking on a new pattern of living...
...But, as the foreign visitors observed during their travels, the Negro still has a long way to go...
...The coming of new industry also created demands for new skills and provided higher wage rates for the average worker...
...The transition first became obvious between 1940 and 1950, when Southern rural areas lost more than 3 million people to the urban centers...
...The transplanted farm worker, cramped by the congested city slums, is getting relief and encouragement through increased purchasing power...
...Louis: William Wyant Jr...
...According to a recent study by the National Urban League, the Negro's economic status here has improved in the last 15 years, but the vast majority are still restricted to lowpaid and unskilled jobs...
...State and local governments are now able to collect more taxes and build more schools, hospitals and recreational facilities...
...occasionally, a dirty face peered through a broken window...
...nobody can deny that...
...Overall, however, the machine, which emancipated the lowpaid farmer to initiate the present change in the South, has had a good effect on living standards...
...They've been changing ever since the first big war and more so since the last war...
...It happens every day and is common knowledge to investors throughout the country...
...He cited a hotel assessed for $7 million...
...They had neither the capital to buy machines nor the ability to compete with them on the farm, so they came to the city...
...The financial profiteer is a little more difficult to determine...
...The overassessed company does not gain, even though it receives 4 per cent interest from the city on rebated taxes, because it often has to pay those who specialize in getting abatements...
...The expansion of existing industry- and the attraction of new industry from other regions has played a major role in this shift...
...Like hundreds of similar sections, this one was about to become the birthplace of a new industrial development...
...The foreign visitors were one of a dozen similar groups visiting the South this summer...
...The serious impact of the abatement practices on the city's economic life is indicated by the observations of the Boston representative for outof-town developers who are planning a $75-million business community in Boston's Back Bay...
...People like the old woman in the chair are getting fewer and fewer...
...Even a morally courageous Mayor hesitates to prick the abatement bubble because he feels certain that his successor will reinstitute the practice and get undeserved credit for tax reduction...
...This, however, does not prevent the skeptical from asking why the board is willing to continue its abatement practices despite stinging criticism from civic groups and newspapers...
...Boston Tax Juggling Stunts City's Growth By Courtney R. Sheldon Boston Efforts are being intensified here to find out what or who is to blame for some obviously irregular tax-abatement practices...
...If assessors monkey with valuations to set a phony tax rate or for other reasons, the assessment might go up to $8 or $10 million and the resultant tax increase might wipe out all profits...
...The loss of farm labor has had some, but not serious, adverse effects...
...Bright-eyed youngsters rushed about...
...New Look in the Old South By William Gordon Atlanta Five foreign visitors, including four Europeans and one Asian, stood watching an old woman who sat rocking gently in the warm breeze...
...Where Negroes have attempted to move out of dilapidated areas and into the suburbs, they have met resistance from whites...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 35
