The Keg with the Lit Fuse

Muggers attack in broad daylight. Churches lock their doors because, as one clergyman explains, "Too many bums come in, wander around and take what they like." Last week a purse snatcher was shot to death by a rookie patrolman; a 40-year-old man was beaten to death in his home with a leg wrenched by a couple of intruders from his end table; a bank was robbed and police pursued the bandits through the streets while passers-by scattered to escape the gunfire. All this is in Washington. D.C., the nation's capital and a city tortured by poverty and crime.

"Studied Neglect." Although few like to state the fact plainly, most of Washington's trouble has been caused by a flood of Negroes over the past two decades. As they have streamed into the city, whites have moved out, until Washington has the highest percentage of Negroes of any major U.S. city--53.9% of a total 764,000 population. Lured north by the siren song of federal jobs to be had for the asking, most come ill-educated and ill-prepared. Of those who do get jobs, many work for less than 75-c- an hour. Others stay unemployed, huddle together six to eight in slum rooms, become desperate. What does a man do then? Says Sterling Tucker, director of the Washington Urban League: "I guess he might go out and snatch a purse."

Crime in Washington has increased every month during the past eight; February's rate was 8.9% higher than a year before. Of 16 U.S. cities with populations between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Washington has more cases of assault with a dangerous weapon than any other--2,280 in the eight months between January and September 1962 (the last period for which figures are available). Tourists have been slugged while taking pictures on the Capitol steps, women assaulted while praying in church at high noon. Of all Washington crimes, 87% are committed by Negroes, 26% by youngsters under 18.

Many of these juvenile criminals hatch in a school system that one educator has labeled "a case of studied neglect." Into Washington's overcrowded school's each year pour 7,000 new students--95% of them Negroes. At Pierce school, a 69-year-old brick building with patched walls, peeling paint, and wrapping paper for window shades, nearly 400 students go to school in classrooms built for 280. On the third floor of Hine school (nicknamed "Horrible Hine"), litter and debris from a 1959 fire have yet to be cleaned up. The city's school dropout rate is 39%; discipline is so precarious that school officials have been forced to call for police aid nearly 300 times so far this school year.

$3 a Day. In all other areas, the story is the same. Washington reports more cases of gonorrhea than any city its size in the U.S.; its rate of illegitimate births is over three times the national average; welfare payments have nearly doubled since 1958. In 1961 a Senate subcommittee investigating aid to dependent children in the federal district discovered that 50% of aid recipients were ineligible. One mother of four, for example, had forced her husband to live away from home so that she could collect.

Nonetheless, a committee of professional social workers charged that the welfare department's policies were "inhumane," that those who needed aid were shortchanged because payments were based on outmoded cost-of-living standards. Thus a mother with four children would collect only $64 a month for rent and $3 a day for food. Moreover, the committee pointed out. rehabilitation efforts were virtually nonexistent, and welfare workers labored under an average load of 152 cases each, although the Federal Government recommended a maximum of 60.

To get its affairs in any sort of order, Washington clearly needs more money. But the city's purse strings are held by Congress--particularly by the House District Committee, which is headed by South Carolina's John McMillan and dominated by rural Southern conservatives.

"Hemmed In." Last January, President Kennedy proposed that the district's income be hiked by $47 million annually within the next three years by increasing federal payments and raising district taxes. Predictably, McMillan's committee whittled away most of the proposed hike. Later, in a huff over repeated newspaper and TV attacks on the cuts, McMillan announced that he figured the furor had ruined the chances for any raise at all in payments this year.

In the meantime, Police Chief Robert Murray predicts that the city's crime rate will continue to increase and racial tensions mount. Says one Negro leader: "Our people have a feeling that they're hemmed in. And when you feel hemmed in. there's always a bursting out." Says School Superintendent Carl Hansen: "There is a seething discontent in this city which is both justified and frightening. We're sitting on a keg of dynamite with the fuse lit."

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