[Sidenote: =A Man’s Fate Decided in Sixteen Minutes=]
Occasionally it happens that very little time is given to a case where a negro is concerned.
Some time ago a colored man was arrested and charged with murder. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced by the judge to imprisonment for life in the penitentiary. It took just sixteen minutes from the time the negro was brought into the court to the time he left it, to have his case brought up, to plead guilty and to have a sentence of lifelong imprisonment pronounced. It surely seems as if such a serious crime as the taking of life and the commitment of a man to prison for as long as he lives, should at least require less haste and more mature deliberation.
[Sidenote: =Economic Condition Largest Factor in Production of Crime=]
The reasons given by the leading colored men of Chicago for the large amount of crime among their people are curiously confirmed by the results of this investigation. They contend that first, the negroes in Chicago are so limited in the choice of employment that they under-bid each other and are forced to work for the smallest wages. This obliges the wife and mother to go out to work and the consequent neglect of the children leads to truancy, incorrigibility and crime. Second, that the colored people of Chicago are obliged to pay such a high rental that a large number of families are forced to take in lodgers, which results in much immorality and indecency among colored people who would otherwise remain respectable. Third, that the colored people are forced to make their homes in and near the openly immoral districts of the city so that the only white people many colored children ever see are those frequenting the vice district. Fourth, the disproportionate number of negro criminals is due to the fact that their desire for the friendship and sympathy of the white people is often exploited by white criminals who wish to secure shelter from the police. Some obscure colored family, happy to render a service to a white man, takes him in sometimes for weeks or months, and he naturally influences the colored men with whom he associates.
As remedies against the unjust discrimination against the colored man suspected of crime, a leading attorney of the race in Chicago suggests: (a) Generalizing against the negro should cease; the fact that one negro is bad should not fix criminality upon the race. The race should be judged by its best as well as by its worst types. (b) The public press never associates the nationality of a criminal so markedly in its account of crime as in the case of a negro. This exception is most unjust and harmful and should not obtain. (c) The negro should not be made the universal “scapegoat.” When a crime is committed, the slightest pretext starts the rumor of a “negro suspect” and flaming headlines prejudice the public mind long after the white criminal is found.