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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Negro Community - 44. Non-Institutional Aspects of the Negro Community - 4. Recreation
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984 An American Dilemma
young people become involved in criminal activities through his influence.
The banter, loafing, wrestling, and working off of animal spirits, natural
and harmless in wide country spaces, become stealing and gang activity in
the city. Too, the free and easy sex contacts of the rural areas are classified
as juvenile delinquency in the city.^® On the other hand, Y.M.C.A.’s,
settlement houses, city playgrounds, and athletic clubs in the North do
provide organized and wholesome recreation, although not enough of it.
Since Joe Louis’ rise to fame and fortune, any place that provides gym-
nasium facilities attracts boys.
Negro people in the city, even of the respectable middle class, spend
much of their time on the streets, partly because of their rural background,
partly because of the crowdedness and unattractiveness of their homes. One
of the favorite Negro pastimes is “strolling.” James Weldon Johnson
describes it in Harlem:
The masses of Harlem get a good deal of pleasure out of things far too simple for
most other folks. In the evenings of summer and on Sundays they get lots of enjoy-
ment out of strolling. . . . Strolling in Harlem does not mean merely walking along
Lenox or upper Seventh Avenue; ... it means that those streets are places for
socializing. One puts on one’s best clothes and fares forth to pass the time pleasantly
with the friends and acquaintances and, most important of all, the strangers he is
sure of meeting. One saunters along, he hails this one, exchanges a word or two with
that one, stops for a short chat with the other one. He comes up to a laughing,
chattering group, in which he may have only one friend or acquaintance, but that
gives him the privilege of joining in. He does join in and takes part in the joking,
the small talk and gossip, and makes new acquaintances. He passes on and arrives in
front of one of the theatres, studies the bill for a while, undecided about going in.
He finally moves on a few steps farther and joins another group and is introduced to
two or three pretty girls who have just come to Harlem, perhaps only for a visit;
and finds a reason to be glad that he postponed going into the theatre. The hours of
a summer evening run by rapidly. This is not simply going out for a walk; it is more
like going out for adventure.^^
There is also much casual visiting back and forth in the respectable lower
and middle class community, especially among the women.
Urban Negroes find most of their amusement and recreation in the social
clubs, athletic clubs, churches and lodges.* Sports, dancing, card-playing and
other games, petty civic improvement activities, and, in the churches, singing
and dramatics are the chief forms of amusement. In the large Northern
(but not the Southern) cities, movies, theaters, concert halls, night clubs,
and restaurants are generally available to Negroes (if they can afford
them) j
but there is always the possibility of insult or unpleasantness, and no
Negro section, even in New York or Chicago, can support a complete set
of recreational facilities. The voluntary organizations, therefore, continue
• For a discti^ion of these voluntary associations, see Chapter 43, Section t.
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