St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1945-09-28

An assorted and motley
rounded up by hard working men,
bers of the police juvenile bureau,
detail and social workers, who are
making a study of the problem.
The assortment was herded into
one of the local high school audi
forums and then the big surprise
was sprung. These little gang men,
bers were treated to a $4.40 array
of talent brought to the school by
the police as an example" exhibit
ton of what good boys can hope
to be. The array of talent was &C
tually four star final. Heading the
list was Heavyweight Champion of
the world, Joe Louis, Canada Lee,
distinguished actor, and Colonel
Benjamin o. Davis, Jr., who was
flown up from Goldman Field, KY,
especially for this dramatic event.
For an hour or so, Colonel Davis,
Sgt. Louis, and Canada Lee ext
tolled the youngsters, pleaded with
them, cajoled them and actually
begged them to behave themselves.
After listening to all this talk, the
leaders of two of the toughest
gangs in Harlem were finally pre-
vailed upon to come up on the stage
and get their pictures made shak-
ing hands, calling an end to their
gang feuds, with Canada Lee, Joe
Louis, and Colonel Davis in the
background looking on.
1t was indeed a beautiful picture,
and was published in one of the
local papers, with much ado about
kids agreeing to call off hostilities.
A few hours later after the meet
ing, young teen-age hoodlums chas-
ed a victim who was II, cornered
him, and then took turns in firing
bullets into his back as he stood
helpless against a building, beg
ging them to leave him alone. There
were hundreds of the little vermin
involved. The boy was finally taken
to a hospital and it was later learn
ed that the gang had sent word
to him as he lay near death on a
hospital bed that they were pre-
pared to resume the shooting and
beating the minute he put his head
out of the hospital doors.
The same week after the meeting
at the school I saw a young kid
shot down in cold blood by another
mob of juvenile hoodlums up in
the Bronx. Since the meeting at
the school, the kid gangs have been
running wild, with citizens living
in the vicinity of 14sth Street and
Bradhurst Avenue reporting five
days of continuous gang warfare
among hoodlums armed with pipes,
sticks, stones, homemade revolvers,
and others that were evidently
bought in pawn shops or stolen,
Racing through the streets pell-
nell in droves, shooting and ours
ing and engaging in the most wan
ton kind of behavior, these young
Negro kids have turned Harlem
into something resembling Dodge
City of the wild west days.
No pedestrian is safe. A bullet
might strike down a mother, g
child, father, or any other peace,
able law-abiding citizen walking
Harlem's streets, both day anG
night. Yet the police will allow
themselves to be duped into giving
these young thugs a Broadway
show in the person of Joe Louis
Canada Lee, and Colonel Davis
instead of following through in the
one-two method of tried and true
police procedure.
What we cannot understand i:
why the police didn't act once they
got that mob of young hoodlumS
into that school. They had them al
there, it would appear. The doors
were locked and there were plenty
of police there. The police knew
who the offenders were and should
have been given the power to act
If the police were unable to make
charges stick to them in court, ther
the least they could have done
would have been to subject then
all to a good "going over" There
is only one way to break up juv.
emile delinquency and that is to breal