Our Black
History Month series continues
COLUMBIA, 2/16/11 (Beat Byte) -- The
last local election saw much discussion about why Columbia needed a tax for
parks and recreation when so much infrastructure is in dire straits -- from fire
department cuts to sagging roads, sewers, and sidewalks.
The debate is not new. Rather than improve basic
services, which always lagged in the Black community, city leaders instead
pushed for expanded recreational opportunities in segregated, Jim
Crow Columbia.
The thinking originated with some misguided sociological
studies that suggested recreation could improve "moral character." Issues of
moral character defined stereotypes: Entire Black neighborhoods were condemned and
perished, over the excuse that their residents were living immoral lives.
Writing in Our Black Children: The
Evolution of Black Space in Columbia, Missouri, University of
Missouri geography graduate student Jason Jindrich explores the simple yet
complicated divide of an unpaved street -- and reprints a 1915
Missourian editorial that has an unusual suggestion about how to
improve Black neighborhoods.
"Because the city did
not pave Black community streets, segregation was physically enforced by
topography. Streets were engineered to avoid creek bottoms, and
Black residents were eventually ringed by White neighborhoods whose inhabitants
were able to follow well graded and paved roads that avoided entering Sharp End
[a segregated, Black-owned business district] on their way downtown.
Traffic that needed to cross the creek followed the paved
route of Broadway -- the one area of Flat Branch that remained White space -- or
crossed Stewart Road Bridge, a direct connection between affluent housing south
of Broadway and the University.
Further separation came when a spur of the
Missouri, Kansas, and Texas (MKT) Railroad entered at the
southern edge of the Black community along the low-grade of Flat Branch in the
early 1890's.
The rail connection attracted small industries and
warehouses, and in the opinion of Martin (1934), the Black settlements acted as
an effective buffer between better neighborhoods and the city's necessary but
dirty industries."
Prospering at the turn of the 20th century, Columbia's
black residents would be disorganized and destitute only twenty years later.
Wrongheaded, paternalistic attitudes about what needed to be done to reverse
their impoverishment and close the growing divide are at least partly to blame,
as this December 1915 University Missourian (later the
Columbia Missourian) editorial suggests.
Jindrich says the op-ed resulted from "a let-them-eat-cake attitude toward the black community in the Missourian editorial policy."
Jindrich says the op-ed resulted from "a let-them-eat-cake attitude toward the black community in the Missourian editorial policy."
University Missourian editorial, December
1915
"Now Columbia, all sob stories to the contrary, does not treat her Black children shamefully. Of course, conditions exist in their quarters which should be remedied. An open sewer draining through part of the district is unsanitary and uncivilized, and for the good of the Blacks and the Whites, should not exist.
The Negro school is crowded.
Some of the streets in the low section should be paved or
drained, and in other places granite walks would lend much to the joy of life.
Some few shacks should be torn down, and, of course, if it were possible to
supply everywhere sewage connections and modernly equipped houses, it would be
highly desirable.
But since such a thing is manifestly impossible, the hue
and cry that is being continuously raised about Negro housing conditions is both
unfair and foolish.
Perhaps the greatest need, on the whole
of the Negroes of Columbia, is the one touched upon seldomest -- the
need of a harmless place of amusement. No theaters, no picture shows,
no soda fountains -- where would you go if such conditions existed for
you?"
(Of course, such amusements didn't allow black patrons at
the time).
"Claiming that what the Black community desperately needed
was a soda fountain to keep them from shooting dice -- and not indoor plumbing
-- seems bizarre, and indicates how blame for
conditions in the 'Negro section' was laid upon the moral
failings of its occupants," Jindrich concludes.
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