Chapter VII: Crime and Vicious Environment (2)

The Negro crime rate is exaggerated quite as much by the fewer arrests of whites than Negroes, in comparison with the number of crimes committed, as by the ease with which many Negroes may be arrested for one crime. We have already noted the remarkable discrepancy between the police reports of crimes committed and the actual crimes listed by the Crime Commission. Fewer Negroes than whites escape arrest and prosecution. When comparisons are made on the basis of statistics for arrests and convictions, there is presented, unless proper explanations of the statistics are made, an exaggerated picture of Negro crime.

The views of many of these authorities on various branches of this inquiry are here given:

1. FEWER PROFESSIONAL AND BANDED CRIMINALS AMONG NEGROES

Judge Edmund Jarecki, municipal court:

I know of no built-up organization of Negroes that would have
any particular control over criminals.

Judge Daniel P. Trude, municipal court:

I think Negro criminals are more isolated. My experience in
the boys' court was with the colored boys who would go out
and steal clothes, a new shirt or some socks, or something
of that sort that they could pick off the back porch. I found
that there was considerable of that, but they are very partial
and take from their own people.

Judge Charles M. Thomson, criminal court:

Negro crime is not organized, but individual, I should say,
almost without exception.

Judge Kickham Scanlan, criminal court:

In May, 1920, I was assigned to the North Side to try some
unbailable murder cases. It was found that there were over
500 homicide cases ... these were nearly all cases in which
gangs of young white men confederated together to go out and
hold up places, and they made a business of it, and some of
these gangs have committed any number of hold-ups, and one
member of the gang explained that he had killed as many as
twenty victims. The evidence showed that they killed when they
didn't have to kill, just recklessly and wantonly. In none of
the cases of the character I have talked about were there any
colored defendants. They were all white men ... there were
some of the most vicious cases I know anything about in my
thirty-four years of experience.

I just want to make that one point to this Commission, that
never in the history of this community has the white race
stood so low from the standpoint of crime as it does at the
present time. White young men are banding together in gangs
and deliberately going out and holding people up, right and
left, and shooting them down. I notice that there are a few
colored imitators of the white men, but the bad man of the
city of Chicago at the present time is the young white man.

General Leroy T. Steward, former chief of police:

I think generally speaking that the Negro criminals work as
individuals. I only recall one instance where there was a gang
of colored men that came to my attention, but I know of many
white gangs.

Dr. Herman Adler, state criminologist:

You asked a question in regard to gangs--whether there is a
combination among Negroes. There are not many. They are more
individual, but on the other hand the lower grade of Negroes
are likely to be the tools of the others at times; they have
been used that way. Where you are dealing with murder, with
sex crimes, with certain forms of burglary, larceny, you are
usually dealing with individual criminals....

Now there is here, in Chicago, professional organized crime.
The colored people as a whole are less engaged in professional
crime and they are more the accidental, casual criminal or the
low-grade person with a strong temper and a strong physique
etc., who slips into crime by following the line of least
resistance.

Major L. M. C. Funkhouser:

Negro criminals are not organized.

Professor Charles E. Merriam:

My belief is that the Negro criminals are not so well organized
as the white. They don't go much in bands; furthermore, they
are not so much in the class of professional criminals as they
are in the class of occasional criminals. It seems to me that
the colored offender is the individual offender; his crimes
are more of haste or passion. He is in the occasional offender
class.

2. SEX CRIME AMONG NEGROES AS COMPARED WITH WHITES

Judge Edmund Jarecki:

So far as sex crimes are concerned, during the time I have
been there [in the boys' court] I have not noticed anything
that would indicate any difference between colored and white
boys.

Judge Charles M. Thomson:

In my work with the criminal court, I was astonished at
the large number of criminals involving the sexual abuse of
children, but I remember no case in which a colored defendant
was charged with that crime. Almost all races were represented,
but I don't remember one colored man charged with the abuse
of a child. There were many, however, accused of adultery.

Judge Hugo Pam, criminal court:

I have had more serious rape cases against white than against
colored people. The most serious case I had was about ten days
ago, and I sentenced the man to life imprisonment. I never
had such a case involving a Negro.

Judge Kickham Scanlan, criminal court:

I do not think Negroes are more liable to sex crimes than
whites. I tried a colored man six or eight years ago for rape.
He founded an alleged orphan asylum. The evidence showed that
he had held a number of young children in that place. He got
life in the penitentiary. He was the only colored man ever tried
before me with any offense of that character. The children in
that case were colored children. But I have tried a number of
white men for rape, and while I have had ten or a dozen cases
of crimes against children, in my twelve years' experience on
the bench, I have never had a case of a colored man charged
with crime against children.

3. OFFENSES AGAINST MORALS

Judge Arnold Heap:

The number of colored cases in the morals court is largely
disproportionate to the number of Negroes in the total Chicago
population. There are more colored cases now in the morals
court than formerly because in the past the houses kept by
white people with colored inmates were alone held responsible.
Since colored people are now doing business on their own
responsibility, they are at present brought in the same as
white people. At first the Negro newcomers were strangers to
our surroundings and were not such frequent offenders, but as
that strangeness wore off they became familiar with vice as
it exists among us today. The offenses of these new comers are
about the same as those of the northern Negroes. Some persons
think that the immorality of the colored is more gross than
that of the whites, but I have my doubts about it. One factor
in the problem is that colored people of the poorer class crowd
together in smaller quarters than whites, and this tends to
a lesser type of morality because they are so crowded.

Judge Wells M. Cook, municipal court:

Prostitution among the white people in Chicago in 1918 was more
or less clandestine, in flats and cheap hotels and in private
homes, and more or less under cover. The colored people, living
largely in one section of the city, and being naturally of a
social, emotional temperament, are apt to congregate in places
and in resorts where the police could more easily raid them,
and are much more easily apprehended. That is about the only
reason I can see for the disproportionate number of colored
defendants brought into the morals court. It is not that there
is any greater percentage of immorality, but prostitution
among whites was more clandestine.

O. J. Milliken, superintendent, Chicago and Cook County School for Delinquent Boys:

I don't think that homosexual relations are a racial matter
with the boys. The sex problem, I think, doesn't manifest
itself between races as much as it does in the lower classes
of whites that come in.

4. LYING AND STEALING

Judge Daniel P. Trude:

"I think the colored man, if he is not a desirable citizen, is
undesirable because he has not been given a chance; he has not
been given the advantages that a white fellow has from birth."
Judge Trude agreed with the view expressed in a question that
if the Negro were found careless as to the truth and as to
his promises, it was due to his heredity and lack of training
rather than anything inherently bad in him.

Judge Wells M. Cook:

I think there is a great deal of nonsense in the talk about
the colored man being more apt to lie or steal than the white
man. I think that is largely a question of environment and
training. He is not more inclined, in my judgment, to tell a
lie or steal than a white man.

Judge Charles M. Thomson:

I would say there is a far larger number of larceny cases
involving the white than the colored man, even in proportion
to the population. The larger proportion of cases involving
the colored is in having to do with fights, involving murder
in some instances.

Judge Edmund Jarecki:

No, I don't think Negroes are more likely to be guilty of
theft than whites; that is not usually the case.

5. TYPES OF NEGRO CRIMES

Judge Hugo Pam:

The colored man is frequently charged with robbery with a gun,
and a great many have guns. Relatively speaking, more colored
men have guns than white men.

Judge Kickham Scanlan:

The most prevalent crimes or types of crimes amongst Negroes,
according to my observation, are gambling, assault cases,
caused by drinking or women, petty theft.

F. Emory Lyon, superintendent, Central Howard Association:

My experience in dealing with colored offenders would indicate
a slightly larger proportion of crimes of violence than in
the case of white men.

Dr. Clara Hayes, Geneva School for Delinquent Girls:

I think there is a little more tendency on the part of colored
inmates toward violence than there is among white girls. I
mean such misconduct as attacks on other girls, etc.

6. MENTAL

Judge Daniel P. Trude:

I today received a letter from a young colored man who has
been in the boys' court several times. His father is a mental
defective, and he is a mental defective. That is the reason
he keeps committing these crimes. He is in the Dixon Home for
Feeble Minded. There are a number of colored boys that come up
from the South that way, and it is my judgment that southern
institutions are turning them loose. I think Illinois does as
well as other states. They all discharge mental defectives as
cured, and they wander all over the face of the earth, in and
out of other institutions.

Judge Charles M. Thomson:

As a rule the mentality of colored offenders was not high.
I had a few cases where the reverse was true, and one which
involved a man who was as smart a man as I ever tried.

Mary Bartelme, associate judge of the juvenile court:

As to mentality, I would say that in recent years we have had
a large number of girls who have come up to Chicago from the
South and their educations have not been equal to the educations
of the white girls and their mental development has not been
the same.

Dr. Herman Adler:

At Pontiac we find in general that the average of intelligence
in the colored people is rather less than in the whites. Take
the white people separately and you will find about the same
proportion of low grades as in the colored race. In actual
group comparison, the colored race is somewhat below that of
the whites. That is, in general the distribution is about the
same, but there is always a slight lag of the colored below
the white. The lower the intelligence, on the whole, the more
likely it is that the individual is in the institution for a
crime of violence or a sex crime or incendiarism; the higher
the intelligence, the more likely that the crime is forgery
or some crime involving fraud.

7. CHANGE IN CHARACTER OF CRIME OR INCREASE IN CRIME DUE TO MIGRATION

Judge Hugh Stewart:

I am of the impression that the colored men from the South
are in the courts in larger numbers than are those who have
lived here a long time.... A great many of the colored people
from the South are very dark skinned, and there is a larger
proportion, in my estimation, of offenses among dark-skinned
colored people than among those of the light color. I sometimes
try to trace out where they come from. I find a great many of
these cases come from the South.

I think there is a difference between offenses committed by
colored persons from the South and colored persons who have
resided for a long time in the North. I think there are more
hold-ups and burglaries committed by men who come from the
South than by the colored population before the influx.

I am of the opinion that Negroes who have recently come from
the South and find their way into the police courts do not
typify or reflect the general character of the southern Negroes
as a class, any more than the white people who find their way
into the police courts typify other whites who manage to keep
out of them.

Judge Daniel P. Trude:

It was frequently true that the boys would jump freights from
down South and come up here and be picked up and brought into
court and be left in jail for a while with nobody to keep
after them, or furnish bail. The South has never given the
Negro adequate educational advantages, so they come up here
more or less uneducated, many of them, and they are not given
a helping hand as they should be.

In the boys' court the number of southern boys recently arrived
in Chicago was startling. While I was in the boys' court, I
made it a practice to give every one of them a card to the
Urban League, so that they would know where to go to get advice
on any difficulty.

Judge Wells M. Cook:

I would say that of the colored men and women brought into court
in the summer of 1918, the greater percentage were colored
people who had recently come to Chicago. In most instances
the colored man brought in had money; he was receiving more
wages than in the South; the city was "wet"; he had come
from districts in the South where he could not get whiskey;
in a great many instances he had not brought his wife and
family with him, so he was easy prey for those engaged in
commercial sexual vice. In consequence he would be arrested
in these raids, made usually by the police on the night
when the underworld was supposed to be the busiest, usually
Saturday and Sunday nights. I do not think there are any more
vicious colored men than there are vicious white men, but the
colored man who was brought in largely was a newcomer. There
had been no particular increase in vice that I observed among
the native-born colored people or the man who had come to
Chicago a reasonable number of years back. As to the women,
they were almost entirely typical southern prostitutes, who
had come here from New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta,
Galveston, and other large cities in the South, attracted to
Chicago by reason of the fact there were a lot of colored men
up here who were making good money. I would say that so far
as the colored women of Chicago were concerned, there was no
noticeable increase in immorality among them.

Mr. O. J. Milliken:

In 1919, we ran up to 15 per cent colored. This year, 1920, it
is less than 7 per cent. The reason is found in the boys from
the South. They have stopped coming now and we are getting back
to normal. The boys from the South have been very illiterate.
We have received a number who could not write their own names
and would almost be counted subnormal on first examination
but are often found to be very bright. A great many asked to
come back or asked to remain in the institution until they
could get some education. I never noticed any difference as
to color in the handling of the boys in any department.

8. LIABILITY OF THE NEGRO TO ARREST

Judge Daniel P. Trude:

I think that at the time of the riot there was more disposition
on the part of the officers to make arrests of colored
offenders, frequently for protection. I think it was due to
what Dr. Shepardson used to call, out at the University, "the
mind of the mob"--a disturbed view of things which makes one
likely to go too far one way or the other. These people were
that way. They had to arrest a certain number and try to check
the riot, and they went too far in many cases.

Judge Charles M. Thomson:

I have seen cases where Negroes were arrested on suspicion; I
would not say there was any large proportion. I remember one
case was a young colored fellow arrested purely on suspicion.
The jury disagreed the first time. The next time he was tried
before me, and the jury found him guilty. Because it was a
second trial, and because of the disagreement, I watched it
very carefully as the evidence went in, and I became convinced
that it was a pure case of the officers having had some trouble
with this fellow before. A crime occurred in their district,
and they pounced on this chap. I felt pretty sure he was not
guilty. The state's attorney called the trial off. He became
convinced himself.

Mr. O. J. Milliken:

After a boy has been committed by the juvenile court, he is
known to the police, and I have four or five colored boys today
who are carrying letters from me asking that the police will
please allow these boys to go to work. Prejudice on the part
of the police in picking up alleged offenders is more apt to
occur against Negroes than whites.

Judge Kickham Scanlan:

Negroes are more likely to be arrested on suspicion than white
persons. If you will tell me why race prejudice exists in
this world, I will tell you why this is so. I don't think the
police are quite as careful with reference to the rights of
the colored man as with the white man. I think they hesitate
a little longer when a white man is involved; I am certain
that it is so.

State's Attorney Maclay Hoyne:

In the race riots, the police arrested almost exclusively
Negroes, and practically no white men.

General Leroy T. Steward:

Recently there have come to Chicago from the South large
numbers of colored men who have formerly lived in the country
and are not accustomed to city environments. These men have
largely been employed at the Stock Yards and, being unknown
to the police, there is concerning them naturally a greater
suspicion than would attach to the white man who had lived
for a greater length of time in the same district, and who
also would be more easily identified and traced, if need be,
and he would not, therefore, perhaps, be arrested but simply
be observed, while the police would, no doubt, feel if they
permitted the colored man to pass on at the time, they would
lose him completely. This would seem to me to be the real basis
of the feeling that has maintained on the part of these men,
that they are discriminated against as compared with the whites.

Another matter in this same connection that no doubt has a
bearing on the subject is that these same men who have been
accustomed to rather close surveillance in the South, seem
to feel that when they come to the North they must conduct
themselves in a manner to evidence to all concerned that they
have equal rights of every kind and character, with the result
that they sometimes are guilty of unnecessarily accentuating
these matters, and thus bringing on disputes which occasion bad
feeling and perhaps lead to disturbances resulting in arrest.

Dr. Herman C. Adler:

Repeatedly colored men have been convicted on evidence which
I know perfectly well would not have been satisfactory in
white cases. I know that was so in the case of the East St.
Louis riot where a colored man was sent down to the Southern
Illinois Penitentiary for participating in the riots on the
charge of murder. Even the prosecuting office, on reviewing the
facts, a year later, admitted he did not believe the evidence
sufficient. If that had been a white man the chances are that
he would not have been convicted upon that evidence.

We had the same thing here in Chicago: a colored man sent
to the penitentiary on a charge of attempted rape where the
identification was made by a child of six or eight years who
picked him out of a crowd under suspicion. No such evidence
ought to be accepted. We know there is prejudice, and when there
is prejudice we know the person against whom the prejudice is
directed has a hard time.

9. DISCRIMINATION IN THE COURTS

Judge Daniel P. Trude:

I think in the main the Negro gets as good a show as the white
man when he gets before the judge. Whether the other forces
before he gets up to that point treat him right or not, I
cannot say.... A certain number of policemen have "got it in"
for him and are going to "take a crack" at him because he is
a colored man.

Judge Hugo Pam:

In a murder case lawyers will challenge a Negro; if there were
a colored man in the box he would soon be put out.

Judge Charles M. Thomson:

Take for example a gun case, with twelve men in the box, and
one a colored man, and suppose that the lawyer challenged
the Negro. If you went to the lawyer and said, "Give me your
reason," I don't think he would give you any reason.... If you
had a case where the defendant was colored that juror would
stay in the box so far as the defendant was concerned.

Judge Kickham Scanlan:

Of course there is another thing about the colored man in the
criminal court that must be kept in mind. It is a peculiar
thing about human nature, that no man wants to admit that he
has prejudices. He will talk loosely on the outside that he
doesn't like the Negro, or doesn't like the Jew, or doesn't
like this person or that person, but you get him under oath in
the jury box and in my twelve years on the bench I never knew
a juror to admit that he was prejudiced against anybody. It
goes without saying that in such a state of affairs you will
probably get men on the juries that try colored men who have
some prejudice against Negroes. I would say that when there
is a colored defendant and white prosecuting witness there
would be grave danger that the jury might unconsciously favor
the white side of the case. Juries will convict a colored man
with less hesitation than they will convict a white man on the
same kind of evidence. For that reason, in the many cases in
which the colored man is involved, I watch the evidence like
a hawk. The verdict has got to pass me.

10. EASE WITH WHICH NEGROES ARE CONVICTED

Judge George Kersten, criminal court:

There is unfortunately a difference in the ease or difficulty
with which white and colored persons brought into court are
convicted, and the misfortune operates adversely towards
colored people. In many cases jurors have been excused from
service because upon examination under oath to test their
qualifications to act as jurors they said they could not give
a colored person a fair trial. In my experience I have known
verdicts to be set aside by the presiding judge, because he
was convinced that the jury was influenced by color prejudice.
As to the prosecution of colored offenders by white plaintiffs
and white offenders by colored plaintiffs, I believe that the
influence of color prejudice is sometimes felt in our courts.
I think it is easier under similar facts and circumstances in
evidence to convict a colored defendant than a white one. And
for the same reason, a white person on trial is less liable
to conviction if the prosecuting witnesses are all colored.
Perhaps an enlightening phase of the whole situation is to be
found in the fact that colored offenders, on being brought in
for trial, usually ask to be tried by the judge instead of a
jury.

Judge Hugo Pam:

In light cases involving pocket-picking, larceny, stealing a
bag of sugar, a barrel of flour, clothing, etc., I think the
races stand on an equality, but in a serious offense I think
the colored man has the less chance. I feel that the colored
man starts with a handicap. I haven't any question about it
in my mind. In the more serious crimes, where a hold-up is
committed or guns are used, I think there is great prejudice.
I think very few white or colored men are convicted that
shouldn't be; no judge would allow such a case to stand if he
thinks there has been unfair trial, but, for instance, where a
white man will be found guilty of manslaughter, a colored man
will be found guilty of murder. A white man might escape with
three to twenty years in the penitentiary, while the colored
man would get ten years to life.

I think the colored man would not be convicted if he is not
guilty, but I am not certain that the white man would be
convicted if he is guilty.

I see colored men, very resigned men, very often feeling that
most people are not interested in them. They come and take their
medicine, and go away. I feel that they are being disposed of
without the interest being shown that should be.

11. LEGAL REPRESENTATION FOR NEGRO DEFENDANTS

Judge Daniel P. Trude:

My experience in court work is that Negro lawyers in the main
lack education such as is necessary, but there are among the
members of the bar some very good colored attorneys. Many
Negroes cannot afford to pay the attorney's fees necessary to
obtain these, so that they are handicapped in court by lack of
competent counsel, and it becomes necessary for the judge to
give them more careful hearings and more careful consideration
to protect their interests.

Judge Wells M. Cook:

The handicap that the colored man seems to be under in the
severe cases is that he frequently does not get a good lawyer.
As a rule he is not represented by as good a lawyer as the
white. Of course there are capable Negro lawyers in Chicago,
but there were few such retained in the cases tried before me.

Judge Hugo Pam:

I do not think that Negroes have as able lawyers as whites.
I had a case of a colored man who I felt was misrepresented
instead of represented. He was convicted of murder and sentenced
to life imprisonment. I felt that the sentence was too severe.
I set it aside and granted a new trial and it resulted in a
verdict of manslaughter which was the thing that should have
been done.

Judge Kickham Scanlan:

The Negro hasn't the money to employ proper attorneys,
competent attorneys. In two out of three cases tried before
me in which there were colored defendants, I have appointed
attorneys to defend them. I appointed white attorneys. I asked
the defendants whom they wanted. They told me and I appointed
the white lawyers mentioned and made them serve.

12. IDENTIFICATION

Judge Daniel P. Trude:

I did find where certain of the police were going into Negro
clubs and arresting Negroes they found there, bringing them into
court without a bit of evidence of any offense. Somebody would
tip off the police that there was gambling going on so they
would raid the place, locking up all the men they found there
for the night and send them to the Bureau of Identification,
but that was all. Some policemen take many people to the Bureau
of Identification who absolutely should not be taken there,
but the judge only knows about it after they have been taken
there, when they are brought into court after the damage has
been done.

13. PROBATION ON PAROLE

Dr. F. Emory Lyon, superintendent, Central Howard Association:

In dealing with colored men on parole, our experience has
been that fully as large a proportion have completed their
parole with credit as in the case of white men under parole.
I should say that the task of securing employment has been
less difficult because colored men as a rule have been less
critical as to the kind of employment they would accept. They
have been willing to make an honest living at any work that
is offered.

John L. Whitman, superintendent of state prisons:

I have seen many colored men, young men or boys, who gave every
evidence of a sincere desire to do well on the outside. They
meet with disappointment that they did not expect, hardships,
difficulty in securing work as well as homes, and they fall.
The desire was there just the same. The opportunities were
not. But when the employer gives him a chance, the Negro
appreciates it and he sticks--and we have had employers say
during the last year many times, "If you have got such colored
men as you have sent before, give them to us in preference
to the whites, because there is a lack of appreciation on the
part of white men."

14. ENVIRONMENT: VICE IN NEGRO RESIDENCE AREAS

General Leroy T. Steward:

Where Negroes have come in and as a result white people
have moved out and the neighborhood has, plainly speaking,
deteriorated, there is a great tendency to permit infractions of
the law, as in any neighborhoods which are regarded as not as
important as high-class residence neighborhoods. For instance,
Calumet Avenue from Thirty-first to Thirty-ninth streets is
entirely colored. Fifteen years ago it was entirely white. Now
it would be much easier to establish vice there than it would
have been fifteen years ago when a lot of well-known people
lived in the neighborhood.

Major L. M. C. Funkhouser:

Most of the Negroes found in disorderly houses are employees.
There was one notorious place down there that we closed where
they were all colored. That was the most notorious one we had.

Professor Charles E. Merriam:

I think there is this to be said about the colored side of
it there [on the South Side]: I am asked whether the colored
protest against disorderly resorts would be as effective as a
protest made by an equal number of white men. Making allowance
for the fluctuating conditions in a long period, I don't believe
it would be quite as effective. Not only that, but I don't
think the colored people are so well organized to fight these
evils as a class of men ... they have not the wealth. In the
territory upon the North Side or in any territory where there
are many lawyers and people of some means, if they found a
place like that they would never rest until they got it out.
They would just keep at it with time and money until they
forced it out.

Dr. F. Emory Lyon, superintendent, Central Howard Association:

Our observation would indicate that the Negro delinquent has
suffered under the handicap of unsatisfactory home conditions.
Owing to the general public discrimination, fewer opportunities
have been offered him. In addition to adverse conditions in
the home, some opportunities in public places have been denied
him. Some of the discrimination and ostracism on the part of
his associates has been unconscious in many instances. The
colored boy has especially few recreational facilities.

Mr. O. J. Milliken:

It is up to us to give them the best that there is, and we
can clean up those districts. I don't believe the question
of color is going to enter into the matter at all if we once
clean up the districts where they are obliged to live.

Myron Adams, former pastor of the First Baptist Church:

North of my church for a block or two along Thirty-first
Street at the time I went there was almost exclusively a
white residence district. The moral conditions could not have
been worse. I had a list in my church study of the houses of
prostitution and other lawless agencies gathered by the police
and the Committee of Fifteen. I don't know of a district in
Chicago where there were more gunmen, more high-class criminals,
more high-class prostitutes than there were within three blocks
of the First Baptist Church when I came there as pastor.

Speaking from my observation I think that any colored community
is liable to be imposed upon by white men who are vicious, and
the colored people get no encouragement when they themselves
endeavor to rout out that vice. White prostitutes and white
gamblers and vicious resorts come into the "Black Belt" because
it is black; they operate with more safety than they do in the
white belt. That is true of every American city that I know
of personally.

15. ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL ASPECTS OF NEGRO CRIME

Judge Charles M. Thomson:

Colored people who were up before me in the criminal court
were mostly men who did not have steady employment.... My
experience was that the environmental conditions out of which
the colored defendant arose were an environment of idleness,
very largely. I would say, as to the economic factors, that I
don't remember a case that I had involving a colored defendant
whom I would call prosperous, whereas there were many white
defendants who were very prosperous. Most of the colored people
tried were in stringent circumstances and poverty.

Judge Kickham Scanlan:

My experience in the criminal court is that the colored
defendant, even in bailable cases, is unable to give bail. He
has to stay in jail, and therefore his case is very quickly
disposed of by the prosecutor. Defendants locked up are
usually tried first. The colored man is more apt to be out of
work than the white man, and that is a possible reason for
the large number of arrests of Negroes. His sphere is very
limited, and if there is any let up in the industry that is
involved in that sphere, he is a victim. I have often wondered
if you could change the skins of a thousand white men in the
city of Chicago and handicap them the way the colored man is
handicapped today, how many of those white men in ten years'
time would be law-abiding citizens.

Professor Charles E. Merriam:

This problem as I see it is very complicated. We have to deal
first with the matter of economic class which is at the bottom
of a good deal of it, then with the matter of race, which is
at the bottom of a good deal more of it, although perhaps not
as much as class; then there is the matter of politics or a
system which has grown up for thirty or forty years back, which
makes the class and race relations a good deal more difficult
to deal with.

If every man had good housing conditions and a steady job, at
a living wage, a good opportunity for education, there would
not be very much crime.... Particularly in the case of the
colored people, the crime is on the part of the community,
on the part of the city that allows bad conditions to exist.
Negroes ought to be protected. They don't get protection for the
same reason that it is always hard to protect the economically
weak against the strong. There is not any use of making a lot
of fine phrases about it--that is largely where the trouble
lies.