Читать книгу Washington Confidential онлайн

73 страница из 121

Despite the high enrollment of Negro children in public schools where they enjoy facilities for education equal to white children, Negroes continue to have an illiteracy far above the full population. In 1942, illiteracy in the District was only 1 percent for all races, whereas the Negro group showed 4 percent. Weighing these figures against the proportions of population in 1942 would seem to indicate that the Negroes were about 15 times as illiterate as whites.

Much later figures are available, however. Only 4 percent of Washington’s white youths who took the Army’s mental tests in 1950 failed, but nearly 29 percent of the prospective colored recruits were turned back.

New York’s Harlem is self-contained. Though Chicago’s Bronzeville has gone over its borders and set up tributary colonies in other sections of the city, it is still the center of Negro life there and contains most of its colored population.

But Washington’s Black Belt is no belt at all. It is sprawled all over, infiltrating every mile and almost every block in sections which for 150 years were lily white.