PROGRESS Along the Potomac
Williams, David C.
PROGRESS Along the Potomac by DAVID C. WILLIAMS T^wo decades ago airplane designers •*- spoke of the speed equal to that of sound in air as a "sound barrier." The closer they pushed airplane...
...Employment: The most burning grievance of Washington Negroes remains the lack of employment opportunities, particularly in private enterprise...
...Here is a list of what desegregation, and the beginnings of integration, have meant to Washington: Restaurants, hotels, and theaters: The change most appreciated by the average adult Negro is that he can go into any restaurant, any hotel, any theater with confidence and without fear of discourtesy...
...Recently a member of the Washington school board, looking back over the experience of school desegregation, remarked that hindsight had fully confirmed the wisdom of making the change immediate and total, rather than indulging in token or gradual integration...
...Thus it is not surprising that the majority of Southerners view the end of segregation as a sort of human "sound barrier," at which their whole way of life will fall apart...
...move was an error in tactics...
...In 1946 the American Institute of Architects, Metropolitan Chapter, admitted its first Negro...
...There has been no apparent discrimination against Negro teachers...
...A further source of instability has been the execution of long overdue slum clearance projects, with their inevitable relocation of the former slum dwellers in other parts of the city...
...History may provide some lessons for the future...
...In terms of powers and staff, the new body leaves much to be desired, but it is at least a beginning...
...By pressure and by persuasion, new opportunities are being made for Negroes, but the problem remains grave...
...Negroes have been moving into the city from the South...
...segregation of the professional societies, with all it has meant in terms of opportunities for self-improvement by the exchange of ideas and information, has been a richly rewarding experience...
...They believe that services and the enforcement of legal standards will be improved according to the degree that the residents of the neighborhood affected can make their influence felt with the city government...
...Both systems suffered from a high degree of inbreeding, with teachers and administrators coming from the Washington area and having little or no experience elsewhere...
...So managed, the deadly vibrations never have time to build up to destructive magnitude...
...Negroes are conscious also of the need for education and self-improvement so that the newcomers, many of them unused to their new responsibilities either as home-owners or home-renters, will maintain better standards...
...pressed charges against the police for brutal treatment of Negroes, and insisted upon a hearing before Washington's "mayors," the District Commissioners, Who dismissed the charges...
...Violence in the streets is even more indefensible than it is deplorable...
...Above these grades, the problem is one of matching qualified Negroes with appropriate openings...
...Negro government workers, of course, generally have lunch in the inexpensive, unsegregated government cafeterias...
...But this problem is solved daily, except in a dwindling number of old-line departments which maintain, contrary to government policy, an effective color bar...
...Perhaps they have not studied with the care it deserves one Southern city which has passed through this barrier in recent years—the city of Washington...
...These habits persist, even among those who could afford "sit-down" meals...
...In private employment, the outlook is much bleaker...
...Victor R. Daly, minority groups consultant of the U.S...
...Now they are fully integrated, and direct their joint energies to the improvement of the school system...
...Before amalgamating with the white teachers' union, the former Negro teachers' union set aside a fund of $1,000 to fight any such case...
...Such strains as there are seem most evident in the upper levels of the administrative hierarchy, and arise in large part from the unreadiness of many Negro administrators for the competitive situation into which they were suddenly thrust...
...One by one the other professional societies have fallen into line, and the last major hold-out, the Bar Association, seems likely to capitulate at any moment...
...It has worked out best, as one might expect, among the children themselves...
...To gain perspective, I consulted some of Washington's senior Negro citizens—men and women whose memories extend back beyond the glacial age of race relations which began with the Wilson Administration and its infusion of Southern customs...
...There were many who felt this N.A.A.C.P...
...They fear that the topmost track will remain largely white, with the "talented tenth" of the Negroes who achieve it tending to become separated from their own people, while Negroes will predominate heavily in the lowest track, together with the children of white parents too poor or ignorant to insist upon an adequate education for their children...
...Much will depend upon the caliber and breadth of experience of the new superintendent the school board is in the process of selecting...
...In this highly political city, the police have learned to assume that any reasonably well-dressed white man may be the friend of some Congressman, and consequently handle him with care...
...Negroes have traditionally lived in most parts of the city, often in the same neighborhoods as white people...
...It has done so in large part because events have moved so rapidly and decisively...
...But these are infrequent incidents in the course of the bold exploration of a new frontier for human enterprise...
...As the nation's capital, Washington draws people from all over the country, but its solid core is Southern in outlook...
...Jet airplanes now cross this once-dreaded barrier every day...
...But in the past few years a checkerboard pattern of all-Negro neighborhoods has begun to establish itself, accelerated by the dramatic population shifts within the city...
...Indeed, many restaurant proprietors, conscious of a large potential market now open to them, go out of their way to make Negro customers welcome...
...He confirmed in human terms what engineers long ago observed about machines...
...Not all the problems are solved, of course—there are occasional tragic accidents which make the headlines...
...Housing: For the white citizens of the District of Columbia, the rapid change in the character of neighborhoods in recent years has been the most trying experience...
...There are encouraging signs, however, that the peak of the migration may have passed, as the difficulties of transportation increase and the attractions of living close to one's place of employment are felt...
...It arises in part, they feel, because city services tend to be less good in Negro or mixed neighborhoods than in white, and city regulations are more laxly enforced...
...Schools: In a recent report, a leading white school official of Washington described the desegregation of the schools as "a miracle of social adjustment...
...The closer they pushed airplane speeds to this limit, the more the problems of stress and vibration seemed to multiply...
...Negro and white Parent-Teacher Associations, before the integration of the schools, were often in bitter conflict as the need to transfer schools from white to Negro use arose in one neighborhood after another...
...It is true that, for the most part, the frontiers of genuine integration still lie ahead, but they are daily being penetrated by children at school, by the members of professional societies at their meetings, and by PTA's working together interracially...
...As things now look, there seems certain to be a growing preponderance of white officials in the posts with real power...
...Some thoughtful observers are concerned by the long-range implications of the "four-track" system which has been adopted—the division of students into four groups, according to ability...
...It is at least heartening that the question before Washington is no longer whether there shall be integration but how much...
...Distance in time lends enchantment, just as does distance in space...
...The Catholic churches are fully integrated, but, as yet, only a handful of the Protestant churches are...
...Nevertheless, the picture of pre-World War I days that comes through is of a freer and fuller life than Negroes enjoyed here between the two World Wars, perhaps than they enjoy now...
...In this respect, the integration of the competing neighborhood associations, white and Negro, into a single strong organization would be a big step forward...
...On the other hand, the chances are that the average Negro has no such connections, and he tends to be treated accordingly...
...Yet it has made the break with its segregationist past with little trouble...
...The official produced by this system finds himself at a disadvantage in the power-struggle at the upper levels, a struggle intensified because the merger of the white and Negro systems resulted in a grossly over-stuffed administration superstructure...
...Negro as well as white property-owners have complained bitterly that the newcomers lower the standards of the neighborhoods into which they move...
...Only two years ago the opposition of the transit union to accepting Negroes as bus and streetcar drivers was broken, and has led to the opening of job opportunities in the other public utilities...
...The transformation in this field has been complete...
...Indirectly, this painful incident seems to have had good consequences...
...While the standards of the old Negro division were deplorably low, those of the white system hardly rose above mediocrity...
...If there is a critical speed at which a machine vibrates dangerously, it should be accelerated right through that speed without pausing...
...Accordingly, they have recently established a "Council on Human Relations" to promote equality of employment opportunity and the observance of good human relations among the citizens of Washington...
...Typists and stenographers are sure of jobs for the asking...
...Washington's patterns of racial discrimination have tended, even in the past, to be genteel rather than violent, and the community was deeply shocked last year when the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P...
...Both unions and employers have put up stubborn resistance to the employment of Negroes beyond menial jobs...
...Meanwhile the white migration to the suburbs has been heavy, as in other cities...
...Washington's Negro citizens and their organizations are keenly aware of this problem...
...Can it be re-established throughout today's much larger city...
...Bold in technology, Americans are often timid about social innovations...
...For the others, restaurant eating is still a special treat, not an everyday occasion...
...Seventeen to 23 seems to be the prevailing age...
...The old Negro system was highly regimented...
...Employment Service in the District of Columbia, recently reminded his fellow-citizens that "there are currently 3,000 Negro boys in Washington between the ages of 16 and 19 who are out of school and out of work...
...In 1951 the District Nurses Association opened membership to Negroes...
...Promo-tion went to those who would peac-ably take orders from above, not to those with initiative...
...Moreover, it has a higher ratio of Negroes than any other Southern city: 46 per cent now, with the 50 per cent mark expected in 1960...
...This does not mean that the restaurants are crowded with Negroes...
...There certainly is discrimination by the police, but it seems to be discrimination in favor of white people rather than against Negroes...
...On the whole—and thoughtful Southerners may find a good deal of comfort in this—desegregation in Washington, well below the Mason-Dixon line, has taken place without the disasters which many people predicted...
...few have settled outside, because the Maryland and Virginia suburbs are virtually closed to them...
...Virtually all the skilled building trades unions refuse to accept Negro apprentices...
...In the small, provincial city of 50 years ago, Negroes not only patronized the best restaurants and theaters, but lived side by side with their white neighbors and in many instances shared their social and family lives...
...For many years Negroes had to bring their lunches to work or buy them at drug stores to eat elsewhere...
...Pointing out the obvious linkage with the city's much-publicized outbreak of juvenile crime, he said: "An overwhelming majority of the purse-snatchings, the yokings, and other assaults taking place by night in the streets of Washington are committed by Negroes . . . Take a walk into the police court any Monday morning and you will be impressed by two startling actualities: besides the fact that the overwhelming majority of those charged with street crimes are non-whites, you will be amazed by the youthfulness of these defendants...
...The fund has never been touched...
...The federal government is (and has been for the past two decades) the fairest as well as the biggest employer in the city...
...There are some who fear that this flight to the suburbs will approach the proportions of a panic evacuation...
...There is good reason to believe that the normal tide of migration to the suburbs has been swelled substantially by people who are moving out to escape the new patterns of Washington life, which they resent...
...Yet much of this crime could be averted by the untried process of putting more of the potential lawbreakers to work...
...As things stand now, we may be in sight of re-establishing this pattern for an educated and well-to-do minority here in Washington...
...Washington has never had the equivalent of a Harlem...
...The impression one gets is of a school system decently but not imaginatively run, a system which, if it fails to rise to the unique challenge with which it is faced, may find itself slipping gradually but irresistibly backward...
...If an airplane ever reached this "barrier," some thought, it might simply disintegrate, pulled apart by titanic and uncontrollable forces...
...Voluntary organizations: For the minority of Negroes who have the opportunity to benefit from it, deDAVID C. WILLIAMS is editor of ADA World...
...The Commissioners, intensely embarrassed at having to hold the hearings at all, realized the need for some public body to which such grievances could be referred rather than coming directly to them...
Vol. 22 • June 1958 • No. 6
