Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-12-21
THE HOUSING PROTEST

TIME protest of the Colored Law
and Order League against hous-
ing conditions in some of the dis
tricts largely given over to the uses
of the negro population is not without
very good reason. 1t requires no
more than a casual examination of
conditions to show that. Nor is DR..
Champion, as spokesman of the lea
que in a recent newspaper interview,
far afield when he says that over
crowded houses and unhealthful
surroundings are responsible for
much of the crime that exists in those
districts. His opinions on this CO.
incide most remarkably with an ad-
dress, delivered on the same day that
his views were published, by
Mrs. Booker T. Washington at Plamer
Memorial Institute in Greensboro, n.
c., when she said:
What is said of the colored peo-
pie and their homes in the country
may as well be said of them in
their homes in the larger cities.
large, comfortable homes are the
select few. If the authorities of
the cities would take under con-
sideration the fact that we are
really a part of the body polite,
and although we are a distinct race
with, perhaps, some distinct traits
and characteristics, we have many
things in common with all other
citizens of the community, and one
of these is love for family life a
desire and yearning to bring our
children up in a wholesome and
clean atmosphere, a growing desire
TO create for ourselves an ideal
more in decent living, and to en-
courage such we would have more
and better homes in the cities.
Colored people should not only be
build them beautiful. Let the au-
thorities of the Southern cities
build the sidewalks and sewers in
front of the colored mans hame as
well as the white mans, if they
would encourage beauty and clean
liness in colored homes. The white
man of America is ahead of all
other men in and out of America,
because his devotion to beautiful
homes. wife and children ever in
spires him to greater and higher
life. Then If the white man would
help to further elevate the colored
race, let him aid in the encouraging
of greater respect for his family
and the providing of comfortable
and beautiful homes in the country
as well as in the cities, with cleanli-
ness a guiding word in every step
forward.
Mrs. Washington is correct in the
main and errs only in that the negro
is no better situated than many a
white man of far larger means, in
that he is, for one reason or another,
in no position to build for himself
the kind of house he would like to
have. 1t remains for the cities - the
big, broad men of the cities, we mean.
with the time and the means at their
command-to remedy this crying evil.
The housing conditions of Harrisburg,
for example, is a matter for public
shame. 1t menaces the health and
the contentment of the whole CITY.
The germ trail of the slum leads
everywhere. Disease bred in the
quarters were families live more like
more well-to-do sections, if you want
to take a purely selfish view of it.
and crime and anarchy are bred in
such places. There is no bigger work
before the State and the local gov
ernment to-day than that of provid-
ing proper housing facilities for
white and black alike.
Every man and woman has a right
to his or her share of sunshine
Every boy and girl has a right to his
or her share of good fresh air. What
boots it IL we pay hundreds of thou.
sands of dollars to give all the people
pure drinking water, and IL we pay
more thousands to protect their milk
and If we keep our streets free of dirt
so that bacteria may not breed; what
boots it If we do all this and then lei