Horace R. Cayton, interviewed by Studs Terkel. In Terkel, Hard Times
Cayton, a sociologist, had co-authored Black Metropolis, a study of life in "Bronzeville" published in 1945. He had come to Chicago from Seattle, where his father was editor of a black newspaper.
I'll tell you how naive I was. This was along 1930, 1931. When I first got to Chicago, I came into the Union Station, got into a taxi cab and told the driver, "Take me to the best Negro hotel." He turned around and looked at me like I was a fool. He took me to the only hotel he knew. It was a whorehouse. I was never so hurt in my life. I don’t know what I imagined. Something, oh, fancy, like the Ritz. Only it wasn’t the Ritz.
I had a romantic notion about the black belt, the cabarets, the jazz— that was there, too. When we rolled out Michigan Boulevard and cut over to South Parkway, it was exciting. I walked around the streets, day and night, just like I did in Paris. It was a fantastic world. I met wealthy Negroes, but I knew nothing of the masses.
I was eating lunch on the South Side. I saw a group of Negroes marching by, marching by twos together, and silent. Not loud and boisterous. These people had a destination, had a purpose. These people were on a mission. They were going someplace. You felt the tension.
I still had my dessert to eat, but I was curious. I got in the back and marched along. I was dressed better than they were, but they showed no animosity toward me. I said to the chap next to me, "Where we going?" He said, "We just gonna put some people back in the building. They were evicted."
It was a ramshackle building. A shanty, really. A solid crowd of black had formed and they were talking great . . . what Robert E. Park* called an "indignation meeting." They used to have these indignation meetings down South, where Negroes just let off steam because they couldn’t contain themselves, from some injustice that had been done. They’d lock the doors and have an indignation meeting and curse out white people. Here was action.
They moved out from the church just rags of covers, broken down bedsteads and a chiffonier back into the house. Then they had a spiritual meeting. The weather was below zero at the time. We stood there and heard the sirens. Police cars. Everyone grew tense. A frail, old black woman waved her hand and said, "Stand tight. Don’t move." They started to sing: ". . . Like a tree that’s standing in the water, we shall not be moved. . . ." Then they sang another wonderful song, "Give Me That Old Time Religion." (He sings a phrase, ending with . . It’s good enough for me.") They added Communist words: "It’s good enough for Brother Stalin, and it’s good enough for me." And they had other verses, like: "It’s good enough for Father Lenin, and it’s good enough for me."
While they were singing, the tension was felt in the crowd. The sirens were there like a Greek chorus, coming from all directions. Somebody said, "It’s the Red Squad." The old woman said, "Stand fast." But they came through like Gangbusters, with clubs swinging. They pulled the old woman off, but in the general confusion, she disappeared in the crowd.
I didn’t run because I was so taken up with this great drama. I had never really felt the Depression and what it had done to human beings till then. I don’t know why I wasn’t clubbed. I was on the outside and I was better dressed.**
Truth is, the Communists made very little inroads with the Negro people. The Communists embraced many of the causes, but the black people didn’t take them seriously. For example, the Party would have a float in the Bud Billiken parade down South Parkway.*** But they really didn’t penetrate. They raised issues that Negroes were interested in and they learned a lot from the Communists. They accepted help from anybody. Why shouldn't they? They’d be damn fools if they didn’t.
One of the reasons the Communists flopped is they didn’t know how to deal with the Negro church. The church was the first Negro institution, preceding even the family in stability. Even in slavery where there was really no family tie, the first organization was the church. The Communists came in flat-footed with this vulgar Marxist thing. I was lucky I didn’t join. Now I say that, ‘cause at my age, I don’t give a damn what I join. Hell, I mean, let them drop dead, the bunch of them…
That indignation meeting in Chicago shocked me to my depths. The grimness of hunger and no place to sleep, of cold, of people actually freezing to death.
I remember the original lie-in. Negroes were out of work, after promise after promise after promise. One day a group of them lay down in front of the streetcar tracks. They all had white conductors and white motormen. They couldn’t come through. Mayor Kelly tried to make a deal with them. They were going to lay down and stop the God damn traffic from running through. They would erect a wall of human beings, a black wall. They hoped for jobs. They didn’t really hope for and didn’t get platform jobs. But there were people digging ditches for the utilities, just common labor. And Negroes weren’t on there. So they said, "We’ll just shut off the damn thing. It can’t work and we’re starving and these gangs of workers doing most of the menial work were white." Right in the black community.
Question: Do you remember the attitude of the black community then in contrast to today’s . . .?
In spite of the Depression, there was hope. Great hope, even though the people suffered. To be without money is a disgrace in America today. The middle class looks upon welfare Negroes as morally corrupt because they haven’t worked. But in the Depression, there were so many whites who were on relief. So the Negro would look, and he wouldn’t see any great difference. Oh, there was a difference: a disproportion of Negroes on labor than on skilled jobs in WPA. But if Negroes were on relief, so were whites: we’re gonna have a better day. That was the feeling. That hope is gone. It’s crystal hard now. It’s hatred and disillusion.
Question: What was the black people’s attitude toward Roosevelt?
Oh yeah, that was something. He broke the tradition. My father told me: "The Republicans are the ship. All else is the sea." Frederick Douglass said that. They didn’t go for Roosevelt much in ‘32. But the WPA came along and Roosevelt came to be a god. It was really great. You worked, you got a paycheck and you had some dignity. Even when a man raked leaves, he got paid, he had some dignity. All the songs they used to have about WPA:
I went to the poll line and votedThey had a lot of verses. We used to sing them:
And I know I voted the right way
So I’m askin’ you, Mr. President
Don’t take away this W P and A.Oh, I’m for you, Mr. PresidentWhen they got on WPA, you know what they’d mostly do. First, they’d buy some clothes. And tried to get a little better place to live. The third thing was to get your teeth fixed. When you’re poor, you let your teeth go. Especially, the child. If she’s got a rotten or snaggle tooth and that tooth may ache, dulled by aspirin or something or whiskey. Then they’d pull them out. They’d get their teeth fixed. WPA…
I’m for you all the way
You can take away the alphabet
But don’t take away this WPA.There was some humanity then. We don’t have humanity today….
* Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago; mentor of Horace Cayton.
** His impressions of this incident appeared as an article that year in The Nation.
*** An annual parade on the South Side, sponsored by the Chicago Defender