news-record.com

I don't know about other writers, but I always need something to jump-start my thoughts.

This jump-start came in an e-mail from a well respected newcomer to High Point: "I just finished reading your article about the core city. It provides perspective for those of us who did not grow up here in High Point. I suppose the same could be said about many cities in America. Thanks for being that voice of the unheard."

Every day, people who drive through the core city condemn and blame folk in the core city for the blight and despair they see. But they don't have the whole, correct history of the core city.

Based on my reading through 1953, I am convinced that most people outside the core city pretended it didn't exist. This created problems that were compounded and never solved.

I will share some things I found in the local newspaper that should open your eyes.

April 1953: "A study in adult delinquency and the conditions that bring it about, can be seen just five short blocks from High Point's Main Street -- at 530 E. High Street." Negro Police Officers Leake and Steele said the people living there had lost initiative to do the right thing and any hope of finding something better.

Listen to a description of this 30-room building with six bathrooms, "The rooms are arranged along six halls, three upstairs, and three downstairs &ellipses; 10 rooms to a section. The inside of the building is in terrible condition. The walls are grimy. Stairways are torn down. There are holes everywhere, through which rats keep up a continual scurrying traffic."

The 530 building was referred to as the end of a downward road for many Negro citizens.

Leake and Steele talked to a woman who told them about the three-room flat where she lived. The 10-member family -- man, wife and eight children -- had to share a bathroom with the occupants of three other rooms on that floor.

On that same page of the paper, the headline "Problem of Water Service Extensions Last Big Issue Facing Present Council" jumps out and smacks me in the face. Black citizens were being forced to live in slumlike conditions, and our city fathers were worried about water, which was in abundance.

The conditions at 530 E. High didn't happen overnight, so I can only assume our city government fostered such treatment of its black citizens or just pretended that it didn't exist.

Both the beginning and ending of 530 E. High Street are tragic and good examples of conditions that breed delinquency.

I ran across another report in our local paper -- seven months after the first -- referring to High Point's slum belt. It may make you sick to your stomach.

November 1953: "Houses Without Electricity, Water, Found Within Six Blocks of City Hall" by reporter Forrest Cates.

"Within six blocks of the center of High Point, there are hundreds of people who still light their homes with kerosene lamps and share outside privies with as many as 50 neighbors," Cates wrote. "Across town from swank residential developments, High Point citizens are still bathing in wash tubs and hauling water to their homes from water taps outside because they have no indoor facilities."

Cates describes the homes as shanties built years ago for rent to Negroes and neglected by owners, satisfied to collect modest rents with "no upkeep outlay." This sums up what I've been preaching about the number of rental units versus private homes in the core city. Those landlords committed despicable acts and must have had no moral barometer.

No street address was given to identify the exact location of this slum area, but the author speaks of an interview with an elderly woman who lived in a house in the area with five family members. Her house is described as a ramshackle shack with three rooms, if you count the 4 by 4 cubicle called a kitchen. She had walls of splintered weatherboard with light showing through missing chunks; tacked up newspaper and wallpaper scraps to keep the wind and rain from blowing through the house; broken window panes replaced with cardboard; no sink or faucet in the kitchen; and stinking, stagnant water under the house.

Family members bathed in wash tubs and cooking pans, slept and ate in two rooms and hauled their water from an outside faucet shared with 50 other people.

Their toilet was an 8 by 8 foot hut 100 feet from the house in the middle of a garbage field.

As I typed this description, I found myself getting teary eyed. How could anyone treat another human being this way in what is supposed to be a Christian nation?

The city building inspector used the acute shortage of Negro housing and the number of families that would be put on the street if homes were condemned as an excuse.

"At least, as it is, they have a roof over their heads," he said. And "It has to be pretty bad before I can get by with condemning it."

How much worse can a house get? Did anyone ever consider erecting decent rental units or providing mortgage money for the construction of private homes in the Negro community as a possible solution?

Excuses like the inspector's, who was representing our city government, let us know racism trumped human decency in 1953.

The inspector could have forced owners to supply indoor water and sewer, but seldom was this done in the case of old construction, Cates wrote.

Where were the voices of reason and compassion when those with a different color skin were being treated like this?

William James wrote, "Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

If my columns on the early core city have opened your eyes as to the outside forces that pulled it down, use your change in attitude to help make it a better place to live today. That way we all benefit.

Glenn Chavis researches and writes about High Point's black history. Contact him at Storytime40@aol.com