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When the city of High Point held the first public meeting about the core city plan, I stood and told the consultants I didn't trust them.

I glanced around the room looking for that expression of disdain on the faces of those who try to put a positive spin on everything while ignoring some obvious truths. I found that look where I expected to find it.

Who was I to question the wisdom of our local government? Not one of those people with that disdainful look has a clue about High Point's black community.

As long as I breathe, I will analyze and question every possible injustice that may befall my people.

Up to this point, we have gotten nothing but promises, broken promises, pain and years of suffering while others have profited at the expense of the core community.

High Point has had an on-and- off relationship with the word "slum" ever since they segregated the city in 1915. One year, they would declare we have no slums, and the next year it was as if slums appeared overnight.

In my last column I talked about Forrest Cates's November 1953 news column in the local paper. After his column, all of a sudden, someone downtown had an epiphany. Calls went out for what Cates called "the first determined assault on substandard housing ever to be launched in the city."

"In a combined effort, the city administration and the real estate board are planning to wage war on ill-kept, ill-equipped housing which has put a blight on portions of nearly every quarter of the city," he wrote.

Instead of our local government taking the lead to eradicate dilapidated, unsanitary housing in the Negro community, the local real estate board forced them to look at standards and housing ordinances. Cates' Nov. 15 column said, "The big guns of the battle will be aimed by local Realtors. Their weapons of war will be a set of standards setting minimum requirements for both old and new construction."

When you declare war on something or someone, there will always be disagreements among the troops as to the most effective tools to win a battle.

This war on poor housing got bogged down over where to draw the line in terms of just how far minimum standards should go. A major standard debated was indoor versus outside facilities. Most Realtors agreed that houses should have toilets and bathing facilities, but opinions differed as to whether or not the standards should require tubs or showers.

Cates's Nov. 15 column also mentions passionate statements by some of High Point's leading white citizens. Cates quotes Stephen "Steve" Clark, at the time High Point's postmaster and historian: "Housing in our Negro sections are the disgrace of the nation and of the community." He didn't say North Carolina disgrace -- he said national.

Cates quotes other old timers saying they could name families here who have made a large portion of their wealth on dilapidated Negro rentals -- keeping Negroes in virtual bondage, employing them and making them live in their rentals.

They spoke directly to the cause of the slums that kept popping up. Slums and degraded environments were the concern of then police Capt. W.G. Fiddle. Fiddle estimated that housing standards, which would eliminate congested living conditions, would cut crime in half in the substandard belts.

Fiddle made several profound statements:

• "Jam people together, and you've got trouble. But give a man a house with a little land on each side and he's apt to take pride in it and be a better citizen"

• In Daniel Brooks Homes, "When shanties were torn down and the apartments built, crime and disorder in that section dropped a good 50 percent."

A group of Realtors in 1953 realized that, over the years, there had been more lip service than action regarding slum clearance, restoring housing and improving city services within the core city.

It was Realtors who agreed that minimum housing standards should be drawn up and enacted by the city.

"The single factor which has kept down any concentrated movement to housing rehabilitation has been opposition -- not from the majority but from small influential groups and individuals," Cates wrote.

I guess these were those folks benefiting from dilapidated rentals in the Negro community.

In 1953, the national real estate organization didn't support public housing, and to stop its spread, it pushed for rehabilitation programs on the local level.

Joseph Cox, High Point's public housing administrator, said he would support wholeheartedly a good, strong rehabilitation movement.

"The need for Negro housing units is great, and while public housing certainly has its place, it should be secondary to really good privately owned housing," Cox said.

He left little doubt about the need for more and better living quarters for Negroes.

Building inspector A.R. Strange blamed the housing shortage in the core community on the lack of land in November 1953. Now some folk like Cox are speaking out in favor of more private homes as if available land just suddenly appeared.

As for rehabilitation, were they speaking of rehabbing a whole community or just a few shanties, duplexes, flats and other types of dilapidated dwellings in the core community?

Were privately owned houses to be owned by those living inside or outside the community?

I read nothing about financial institutions providing mortgage money.

I am left to assume that, in the end, this would have been nothing more than business as usual, and the community would be back to rundown tenements once the first coat of new paint wore off.

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

GLENN

Chavis