Room & Board

Unvisited by Capitol sightseers, there lies beneath the marble chambers where Senators & Representatives make the nation's laws, a musty rabbit warren of empty rooms, dark corners, labyrinthine corridors. Into these one cold night last winter crept a hungry, jobless Negro named Fulton Augustus Bond, out on bail after an arrest for vagrancy. A one-time employe in the House restaurant, he found icebox foraging easy, became a trencherman. Capitol police, drawn largely from the job-hungry following of Congressmen, bothered him not at all. Many of them attend Washington's law schools. No detectives, most of them are too immersed in thoughts of the Law to observe the faces of the hundreds of Negro employes who slouch through the Capitol corridors.

For weeks Fulton Bond padded about the building undetected. For a bed he had stacks of dusty documents and old law books. One night he fell asleep on a ledge. A shoe dropped off, was picked up by a policeman who did not bother to investigate its source. Early next morning Negro Bond hunted through offices until he found another pair of shoes which fitted him. Later he discovered a warm overcoat owned by the Deputy Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, appropriated it.

One night last week a yawning Capitol policeman heard a noise down a corridor, tiptoed nearer to investigate. The beam from his flashlight revealed Fulton Bond exploring the Senate restaurant's icebox. Dragged off to a station house where sheepish Capitol police attempted to keep the story quiet, Negro Bond mournfully gave his age as 22, his residence the U. S. Capitol.

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