Jackson advocate. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1939-current, 1943-08-07
n
TALK
Suqqests Plan
To Improve Race
Business Places
BY ELMER A. CARTER

SEVENTH AVENUE IN the City
of New York is a great arterial
highway linking aristocratic West
chester County with Manhattan.
Each morning hundreds of auto
mobiles bearing the leaders of
society, of finance and of COM
merce of the metropolis roll
swiftly down it's length to 10th
Street, the entrance to Central
Park. Each evening they return.
Seventh Avenue together with
Lenox and Eighth Avenues con-
stitute the main business thorough
fares of the colored citizens of
New York. There may be found
the shops of the small retailers,
the grocery stores, barber shops,
the restaurants, the stationery
stores, bars and grills, the drug
stores, the tailor shops and on the
corner of 125th Street there is the
imposing Teresa Hotel Many of
these small retail businesses are
owned by Jews and Italians but
a considerable number are owned
and operated by colored men and
women.
APPEARANCE Is BAD
How does Seventh Avenue and
to a greater degree Lenox and
Eighth Avenue look to those who
pass up and down each morning
and evening. It looks like the
colored business district of Chi
cago and Baltimore and Philadel-
phia and Buffalo and Cleveland
and Birmingham and Detroit and
Los Angeles and Montgomery, and
Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio. In
other words, it looks like hell.
For the most part the establish
ments are trun down, dilapidated
implanted, in bad repair, with at
rocious lettering on unwaShed
windows, and within it you can see
through the windows the same con-
dition exists.
1t the Negro inferior? OF course
not-not potentially but the Negro
too often acts inferior, lives in
ferior and piles up On his own
accord a tremendous burden so
that it is difficult to reduce the
shock of difference by which white
people defend their prejudices.
NOT PROSPEROUS
I know that Negro business as
a rule is not highly prosperous but
certainly it is PROSPEROUS enough to
seek the improvement which a
little paint and soap and water can
give it. In the City of New York
there is Board of Trade and I
suppose there are similar organiza-
tions composed of colored business
men and women in every large
American city. And to these or
CARNATIONS offer the outline of
a plan for the improvement of the
appearance of business establish
ments in the So-called cOfOred areas
of our cities. realize the plan
cannot be put in operation until
after the war but its preliminary
phases can be started now.
My plan for New York City Is
mass renovation for Seventh,
Lenox and Eighth Avenues between
125th Street and 145th Street. A
committee from the Board of Trade
could secure pledge from each
stable business which has been In
existence three or more years that
Immediately after the war he will
renovate his place of business.
This committee should confer
with the landlords, banks, holding
mortgages, and the Post War Plan
ming Committee of the city, state
and federal government in order
to arrange to help the business
man or woman who cannot afford
the cash outlay for complete reno
vation so that he might arrange to
pay the cost in installInentS.
ARCHITECTS NEEDED
A special committee Of srcn!tects