Transcription
All right, moving from the lower into the middle. Now, let's peek a bit closer into the realm of Chicago's 1930s middle-class negroes and see what interesting things we find. Studying from the 1945 book, Black Metropolis by Dr. Sinclair Drake and Horus Kaitton.
Integrity. Yet the ambitious Negroes are unable to keep their communities middle class because the black ghetto is too small to accommodate its population and the less well-to-do must filter into these best areas. This was around the 1930s to 40s when blacks in Chicago were mostly confined to one section of town. Middle-class Negroes found it difficult to cluster together because the area was too small and lower-class negroes inevitably spilled into their area.
One woman bemoans the fate of her neighborhood. "The spirit of the people around here seems to be broken." Which people? The black middle class. And here's why. "Some of them were buying their homes. Then the depression came and a lot of the property went into the hands of the receivers. And the receivers just won't make repairs on the houses."
The receivers were entities like banks, which took control of the property once the payment was defaulted on. When the depression hit beginning in 1929, many negroes lost their jobs and they couldn't afford the payment. So, the receivers swooped down on their property and apparently they didn't make repairs and they just let the houses sit. Then, too, many of the new people coming into the community are poor people looking for cheap rent.
This was part of the larger problem middle-class Negroes faced. The poorer Negroes typically brought a different pattern of behavior with them, which clashed with the standards that many middle-class Negroes were trying to maintain. Another woman describes her fears of what will happen to the house next door. "I hear that the people who are buying the place are going to cut it up into kitchenettes," which was the poor man's version of a multifamily unit, taking one house and creating sections within it so different families could live there. "This will be terrible, but what can we do? I wish that we could petition and protest against their making kitchenettes here."
Those kitchenettes were signs that the lower-class negroes were coming to town. Let's pan out a bit and get an eagle's view. Middle-class blacks not wanting affordable kitchenettes to attract poorer blacks in their neighborhood is very similar to a later era with whites promoting single-family homes over multi-unit buildings, especially in the suburbs. When race later became harder to use as a direct tool of discrimination, they looked for correlations like income that could be used as a mask. What do I mean? Blacks made less money than whites. Single-family homes cost more to build than multifamily units. So they built more single-family homes to keep blacks out of the area. That was the game. That's how they could continue to discriminate based on race without openly calling it that. So what the lady here wants to do is similar in nature but different in degree. She wanted to ban those kitchenettes so the lower-class negroes could not enter the neighborhood. Kitchenettes usually bring a lower class of people into the neighborhood. "That's why she wanted them banned," just like multifamily units, which made it more affordable for blacks in general to move into a neighborhood, which is why whites wanted them banned. You see, same thinking, different setting. Now, let's move on.
When a common laborer or a relief client tried to get into the project, he was attempting to take the first step toward living middle class. According to the authors, the project used to be the dream of respectable lower-class members. It had a long waiting list and was viewed as a step into the lower middle class. Now, obviously, it didn't remain this way, but apparently this was how it began in Chicago. Those who got in had gone one rung up the ladder or climbed just a bit higher out of the poverty pit. When a post office worker hopefully had his name put on the garden apartments waiting list, he too was trying to get into a middle-class atmosphere. This was a privately funded project built in 1927. The government-funded project was the Ida B. Wells Homes, built in 1938. Here are two extremes of occupation and income level. But as we shall see, there is enough in common between the two groups to dub them both middle class. For neither occupation nor income is in the final analysis the decisive measuring rod.
So if it wasn't occupation or income, then what was it? Rather, the middle class is marked off from the lower class by a pattern of behavior expressed in stable family and associational relationships, in great concern with front and respectability, and in a drive for getting ahead. So just because a person had the money, that didn't make them middle class, maybe in income only but not overall, because a person could make a lot of money and still have character and values that most would consider lower class, like a lot of rappers and entertainers today. So the negro middle class back in the day required a person to have more than just money. You needed a stable family, the ability to put on a good public front, and ambition to keep going forward. All this finds an objective measure in standard of living, the way people spend their money, and in public behavior that showed if a person was really about the middle-class way of life.
To be poor but middle class, a person must repudiate the pattern of behavior described in chapter 20, which was gambling, chaotic behavior, excessive loudness in public, loose sexual behavior, and others. Now, the beautiful thing about humans is that they can drop and pick up habits anytime they desire. So a poor person could be poor but middle class if they were willing to leave those behaviors in the past and must display some actual effort to better his condition, which means anything from joining the right club or church to getting a better job. So forward movement had to follow. No sitting around stagnant and doing a bunch of nothing.
Given a common interest in getting ahead and living respectable, the middle class is subdivided by effective income and to a lesser extent by occupation and education. So once a person was in the class, then income became an additional divider. They all shared the same baseline interest of getting ahead and respectability. But income still created levels within the middle class. Near the top are the upper middles, oriented toward the upper class and very conscious of the big shots above them. Within the upper middle class are many persons who are anxious to strengthen their ties with the people above them or to so train their children as to push them into that set. That's part of the getting ahead we mentioned. At the other end are the people socially and financially much closer to the lower class, which must have been a tough spot to be in. Life for these becomes a constant struggle to keep from falling back and to maintain a middle-class standard of living and conduct against the pressure of the lower-class world. The dominant energy is always applying pressure in a given environment. The lower-class world seeks to produce lower-class people. Anyone living in that environment and attempting to become anything other than that has nothing short of an uphill battle in front of them. This was the issue many middle-class Negroes faced by being cooped up with lots of lower-class blacks. Think about that and let's move on.
Established upper-middle-class families with an assured income are able to make long-range plans for their children. They've got the money and they take seriously the responsibility of raising children. So, not only could they make long-range plans in their imagination, they also had the financial means to make it a reality. To the parents of children like these, education often means more than formal schooling. And this mother was already making plans for sending her daughter to a summer camp to broaden her out and teach her how to get along with other children of her age. This same mother was a little worried about Junior, her 9-year-old son, because he didn't seem to be "learning as fast as he ought to." It would have to be summer school for him rather than camp. She was ashamed of not having a bright boy. "I was talking with a lady the other day who had to send her son to summer school. I didn't tell her, but I had a shaky feeling that my son will have to go this summer."
The children are closely supervised, have time for practicing music, and for studying. Junior is also being taught that even though he is a boy, he has to help with the dishes. "Get your behind in there and wash them dishes." In the upper middle class, this planning of the child's life often begins before birth. This is a major difference from the lower class, which typically makes no plans at all for the kids, which is neither a good or a bad thing in itself. But those practices do lead to greatly different outcomes. One expectant mother explained that she and her Pullman Porter husband had already looked over an educational policy and were studying Parents Magazine and a book on infant care. They're hoping the baby will be a pretty medium brown and smart. Here they go with the color thing again. One civil servant father of a 3-day-old baby observed, "I'm already thinking about how to give my daughter all the best advantages. She's only 3 days old, but I'm thinking about how I want her to finish college and about all the things I'd like her to do. She's going to get music and dancing and everything else that'll help her to develop her personality." That's a father who took his job seriously. You see, parenting is a skill. Nature only equipped humans with the basic survival set of parenting skills. When humans created civilization, parenting then took on a different set of skills that humans developed on their own. So parents have to be committed in some way like this father is if they want to provide the highest chance of raising kids that thrive within a civilized world. And so goes the preoccupation with children in this stratum. "Children are a lot of trouble, but when they're sweet like mine, they are worth all the trouble they give you. I pray that I'll live to see them grown and successful in something." "I try to take my children to a variety of programs. I want them to be at ease at musicals and lectures, so when they're old enough to understand these things, they'll seek cultural entertainment." "I want to give my children every opportunity to succeed in life. My husband and I try to be interested in all the things that will help the children. My youngest boy is seven. All my kids are in school. I try to instill in their minds that the only sound way to succeed is by laying a good foundation of learning and then to get actual experience. I hope to be able to see them all through college. I own the property where I live and have a few dollars in the bank. I own a car, too. My greatest ambition is to see my children come along and keep this cleaning and pressing business of mine going or else get into something they like better."
So that was a piece of the upper-class Negro approach to raising children. They made plans for them at an early age and they also had the financial means to realize those plans. Now let's return to the lower middle class.
Most parents in lower-middle-class families are people with a limited education and they earn their bread by hard work when they can get it. During the depression, many of them were on relief. The backbone of the lower middle class during the depression years was that group of semi-skilled and common laborers who had managed to retain their jobs. Most lower-middle-class adults, aware of the strata above them, feel that they have reached their limit in social mobility and place their hopes for family advancement in the children. They see the key to success in education plus hard work and they drive this point home to their children. A domestic servant talking about her 10-year-old son says, "He goes to Betsy Ross school now. He's in 3A and getting along fine. He's my greatest joy and happiness in the world. I'm going to do everything in my power to see that he gets the very best education so he'll be able to make a mark for himself in life. He'll be able to tell the world that his mother took an interest in him. And if he don't make good, he'll have nobody to blame but himself. I do know how necessary it is to have a good education today."
So, they're hoping they can pass on just enough foundation for the children to keep moving up the mountain. The last thing a parent in this situation wants to see is their child go backwards because they've worked so hard to get to a certain spot and they don't want it to be all for nothing. But if a parent has truly given their child all that they have and then the child still falls backward into the pit, then like she said, the child has nobody but themselves to blame. And I agree with that because you can do all you can to raise a child with proper values and even in the proper environment, but all humans still have that one neutralizing factor, which is choice. And that nobody but the individual can truly control.
A stockyard's worker expresses faith in the success of the builders of better mousetraps. "The laboring man's chance is slim. I'm trying to educate my children and bring them up so they won't have trouble finding work. I tell them all the time if they do what they're supposed to do well, they won't have to worry. Many negroes have good chances these days, if they'll only grasp the opportunity, especially if they've had a good education." Sometimes passages like this throw me off because this gentleman is talking as if things weren't bad at all at that time. He's speaking as if blacks actually did have many opportunities, which I find to be a bit difficult to believe for that time period. Now maybe from his view that was the case, but he speaks as if this was what it was.
Over and over again these sentiments are repeated by Bronzeville parents, usually accompanied by the statement that they are sacrificing for the children. This whole philosophy was summed up by the mother of five girls and three boys, all under 16. Her husband was earning $30 a week in a mattress factory. She did not work. Stating that, "I have too many children to work. The Lord knows I need to. Everything is so high, but I can't leave them to try to work. Raising them is a job that never ends. I have my children under pretty good control, though. I try to teach them to the best of my knowledge." This woman, a grammar school graduate, says that she constantly stresses the need for being prepared to be a good citizen and feels that all mothers ought to "teach their children the need of more education and the difference it makes to be intelligent." If they did this, "the country wouldn't be so full of people no good to themselves or anyone else." She makes them all go to Sunday school and the older ones to church also. She hopes they'll "choose the better things in life," but is going to "let them be what they want to be." She is very conscious of her sacrifice for the children, stating, "I do without almost everything myself in order for them to have what we can give them. I explain to them that I am doing my best and sacrificing my life, that theirs can be better for them than mine has been for me."
Children in lower-middle-class families very often get this kind of lecture and they needed it. Now stay tuned because we've got some more. I thank you for your time and attention. My name is Brooklyn St. Michael and I'll see you in the free.