RACES: Jim Crow Jr.

Youth is brave, but youth is cruel. Last week, two dozen young Negroes of Gary, Ind., were mortified by 1,357 young whites of Gary, Ind., probably more painfully than any adult Negro ever lynched by rabid adult whites.

The thing began when the pupils of Emerson High School returned to their classes and found the 24 Negroes enrolled in their midst. Emerson High School is in the “nice” residential section of Gary. It has never before had more than four or five Negro pupils. But during the summer, Gary’s school districts were redefined. Because they lived where they did, the 24 Negroes were entitled by law to attend Emerson High School.

Law or no law, the Emerson pupils whispered, gestured, glowered at the dusky newcomers. They told their parents, who protested to Superintendent William A. Wirt and Principal A. E. Spaulding, who said nothing could be done. “Segregation is impossible because of economic reasons,” said Mr. Wirt as tactfully as possible.

Winfield Eschelman of the Emerson senior class, glib talker, good swimmer, got together with Jack Keener, sleek cheerleader, and Sam Chase, smart debater, and some of the athletically “big men” of Emerson, to talk things over. Result: on Monday morning, instead of attending classes, some 800 Emersonians in floppy trousers, sporty sweaters, trim skirts and fetching blouses, went shouting and laughing through Gary’s business section. Police disbanded them for “obstructing traffic” but many of them later stood around outside Emerson High School, hissing, gibing, catcalling at nonstriking students when school let out. Policemen saw to it that the 24 Negroes went home unmolested.

Next day the “nice” residential part of Gary was littered and scrawled with placards and signs: “WE WON’T GO BACK UNTIL EMERSON IS WHITE. . . . NO NIGGERS FOR EMERSON. . . . EMERSON IS A WHITE MAN’S SCHOOL,” etc., etc.

The strikers’ ranks swelled to 900 that day. Then, emboldened by their elders’ actions or kept at home by nervous parents, Emerson’s seventh and eighth grades walked out, making a total of 1,357 strikers. Police broke up attempted Negro mass meetings. The school authorities threatened the strikers in vain.

Led by talkative Winfield Eschelman, the strikers formulated their demands at a mass meeting which the school officials attended: 1) Let all Negroes be segregated in corners of Emerson classrooms and in the school cafeteria. 2) Let no disciplinary reprisals be made upon the strikers when they should return. 3) Let the strikers not have to “make up” school work missed during the strike. 4) Let the Emerson Negroes be transferred to other schools as soon as possible. 5) Let an all-Negro high school be built in Gary as soon as possible.

The school authorities were helpless. President Ralph Snyder of the Board of Safety, representing Mayor Floyd E. Williams, arbitrated the situation and the strikers won all their demands. Magnanimous, Winfield Eschelman and friends permitted three Negro seniors to finish out the year at Emerson because they had been there all along, but the rest were transferred temporarily to an all-Negro junior high school elsewhere in town. The strikers returned to classes.

The issue then shifted to the City Council, a special sitting of which was called to hurry through a $15,000 temporary all-Negro high school. The galleries were packed with “race people” who came to hear their viewpoint at last expressed without hindrance, by three Negro Councilmen. The Council has 15 members, and in the absence of three white members, the three Negroes were sufficient to block the passage of the $15,000 temporary appropriation, which required a two-thirds council vote.

Negro Alderman A. B. Whitlock did not insinuate that Ku Klux Klannism lay behind the Emerson strike. Instead, he firmly said: “This [appropriation] is a useless expenditure of the taxpayers’ money. We have plenty of room now for all the schoolchildren of Gary. This money [$15,000] wouldn’t equip a shack, and the site you propose is in a wilderness. There are no streets, no sewers, no facilities there at all.”

White Alderman Merritt Martindale, senior Councilman, interrupted Mr, Whitlock. “Now, Bill.” he said, “I hope you’re not going to take a wrong view of us whites. The difference is there and it does no good to try to hide it.”

“My people are taxpayers,” protested Colored Alderman William Burrus. “They have a right to as good an education as anyone. You are setting an awful example by yielding to these striking students. . . . These young people are taking the law into their own hands.”

The whites promised that a $60,000 permanent high school would be built for Negroes as soon as possible. A Negro replied: “Even if you offered us a million-dollar school we wouldn’t take it. We’re fighting for the principle of the thing”

Numbers won. When the three absent white members were obtained for another council meeting, the two-thirds vote went through. Gary is to have $15,000 temporary quarters for the Emerson High Negroes. More suitable, permanent all-Negro quarters will probably be furnished in time.

Pondering this outcome, students of U. S. race problems reflected that 95% of all U. S. Negroes are descended from slave stock, some of which has been in the U. S. even longer than genuine Mayflower stock. They also reflected that, whereas U. S. Negroes form 14% of Gary’s population, U. S. whites form 36%, foreign born whites form 50%. Thus a large majority of Winfield Eschelman & friends were—if representative of Gary’s population—descended 14% from Slavs, 10% from Poles, 4% from Hungarians, 3% from Austrians, 3% from Croats, 3% from Italians, 2% from Germans, 1% from Greeks, 1% from Mexicans, 8% from miscellaneous white races, 1% from races of other colors.