RACIAL SEGREGATION

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10167, 23 July 1924, Page 5

RACIAL SEGREGATION

A THEATRICAL “COLOUR-LINE.” New York is' threatened with a negro problem to add to its many racial difficulties and conflicts (says the New York correspondent of the “Evening Standard”). The growth of the so-called “Congo belt” has been so continuous during recent years that there are now half-a-dozen black quarters in the city, and white families constantly are compelled to move because of the Hamitic encroachments. No resentments have arisen on this account. The whites, retreating before the blacks, have patiently moved on to new housing accommodation. Nor are there difficulties about associating with negroes in business. Most of th© blacks occupy menial positions in town, or are employed as porters on Pullman cars. The fact that negroes live in their own zones, having their own shops, also prevents daily contact with the whites. But the negroes are now developing their talent for acting in a way that is attracting the notice of intellectual whites. Here, in tne theatre, at last a point of contact is being reached; and this peculiar situation is pointing to the possibility of racial segregation being insisted upon by the hitherto tolerant Caucasians. For several seasons the blacks have run their own theatres, where the whites were tolerated, * but not invited to come. Some whites, seeking new sorts of thrills, and jaded by the sameness of the Broadway theatrical productions, made occasional journeys into the “ Congo belt” in Harlem and reported that a naturalistic school of acting well worth seeing was being developed by the blacks. Fz*om this beginning the whites . have taken an increasing interest in black actors and actresses. The fame of tho blacks was greatly assisted by Eugene O’Aejll, j the nlaywriglit of New York’s young ) “ intelligentsia,” who are seeking to I return to primitive motifs and the naive crudities of the simple life as a relief from tlie tense and painful efficiency demanded by modern utilitarianism. But with New Yorks negro plays increasing the problem or seating mixed audiences has arisen. White do not want to sit with blacks in America. So the Jim Crow method of the South is now being planned. That is to say, part of the theatre will be reserved for one race, anu part for the other. Thus it is that New York’s melting-pot is turning sooty.