LTHOUGH Negroes make up 25 percent of the population of Houston, Tex., Negro children were almost entirely left out of the community's plans for child welfare until 1939. In that year, after an extensive survey of the welfare resources of the city, the Community Chest voted an annual $10,000 for a 3-year experimental program of child-welfare services for Negro children. The program was to include case-work services for children in their own homes and also boardinghome care. To carry out this program a new temporary agency was established as a branch of the De Pelchin Faith Home and Children's Bureau, a private agency, partly supported by public funds.

De Pelchin Faith Home and Children's Bureau had been in existence nearly 50 years before 1939, but up to that time it had given services to white children only. It had been founded by

Kezia De Pelchin, a woman who was so poor in this world's goods that when she died she was buried at her friends' expense. She was, however, so rich in love and in her faith "in God and in the good people of Houston" that she brought into being the first child-welfare services that the city ever had. When she died she left to the agency that bears her name an enduring heritage of courage and vision.

The new little Negro agency had no illusions about the difficulties it had to face, and it felt a real need for a big share in that heritage. Over the director's desk hung a chalk portrait of Kezia De Pelchin. Somehow her picture seemed to belong there, for to her the greatest obstacles had always been the greatest challenge.

Organization

Since the Negro Child Center was a branch of De Pelchin Faith Home and Children's Bureau, the controlling board was the board of the parent agency. The center, though, had many problems with which the parent agency had no experience, and it had a very small budget; and so an advisory committee was appointed to deal directly with the affairs of the center, the chairman of this committee being a member of the Faith Home board.

The committee consisted of equal numbers of white and Negro members. For most of the white members it was their first opportunity to meet educated Negroes, and it was their first exposure to the difficulties that confront the Negro in everyday life. If the center has achieved success, much of it has been due to the mutual respect, understanding, and confidence that developed in the two groups.

On the staff, as on the committe both races have been represented fro the beginning. It seemed, and furth experience has borne this out, the. wherever segregation is the accepte pattern, a certain amount of liais work is necessary.

The center opens its doors

In June 1939 the Negro Child Ce: ter opened its doors. The office was four-room cottage in the heart of a N gro section, but within easy reach o the parent agency. The staff of thre workers consisted of a white directo and a case worker and a stenographe both Negroes. The prospect W bleak, but there was comfort in th thought that although in the past the community had shown apathy towar Negro children, yet by its very actio in calling the little agency into being it had shown that it was no longer wiliing that the former situation persis

Basic conditions

Basic conditions had to be considered in any long-range planning, conditions that were leading to a greater tha normal number of family break-downs! and of dependent children. (Most of these conditions still exist.)

The great majority of the Negroes were in the occupations that were least secure and lowest paid, and with few training opportunities to enable them to pass into a higher-income bracket. As with all low-income groups, economic pressure and inadequate housing wer forcing families to crowd together in cramped and unsanitary quarters. I the Negro family, overcrowding, with its moral as well as its physical dangers. was accentuated, since even the higherincome group had to live in districts. designated for them, with high rents and inadequate accommodations.

Many of the Negro houses had open privies. The houses were for the most part on unpaved streets, either with not drainage or with open ditches. After rains the streets were under water. which remained standing long after the rains had been forgotten.

Conditions among the children

The streets were as a rule the only playground of the Negro children. Even in families with both father and

mother, the majority of the women had to work outside the home, and a great number of the children were left alone from morning to night. Older children, without supervision and with no recreational facilities, were running the streets and fast becoming delinquent. There were no day nurseries, and small children were locked up in the house all day by mothers who had no other way to manage. Deserted, widowed, or unmarried mothers, struggling to keep their babies, were forced to make what plans they could, and Negro babies were often given away with little or no planning for their future welfare.

Health

Poor health goes hand in hand with low economic status and substandard housing, and the mortality rates for our racial groups reflected this very closely. From tuberculosis the death rate was more than three times as high among the Negroes as among the white. The significance of this in connection with family break-downs needs no pointing up.

Lack of resources

The rate of illness probably paralleled the mortality figures; and yet for a population of over 100,000 Negroes in the county in which Houston is located there were only 274 hospital beds for general hospital care. For Negro patients with tuberculosis there were in the whole of the county only 24 beds. There was no preventorium and no hospital care for infected Negro children.

If there were few resources in the field of health, the poverty of resources in other fields was even more disturbing.

The city and county gave considerable subsidies to Faith Home for the care of young dependent white chil

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dren, but for Negro children, no such subsidy was available. The county maintained schools for older white boys and girls who were dependent or in danger of becoming delinquent, and a boarding-home program, but not for the Negroes.

There was no provision-State or local-for Negro children with special health or social problems; no schools for the feeble-minded or for the epileptic; no school for delinquent Negro girls. All the State had to offer the Negro was a small orphanage, a school for delinquent boys, and limited aid for children who were deaf or blind. Apart from this and some emergency work done by the State department of public welfare, there was no provision for the Negro child.

A surprise and a challenge

Realizing the need that must have accumulated as a result of generations of neglect, the staff assumed that when the office opened there would be an avalanche of calls for help. With outward courage, but inner trepidation, they braced themselves to accept whatever might come. It was an anticlimax to find that the center was almost completely ignored. During the first few months the only requests for care came through other agencies.

A modern child-welfare program was outside the experience of the bulk of those who needed its help. The resources to help other children had for them been unobtainable, and they had had to work out their own welfare plans. Children had had to go to work early and distant relatives had learned to accept great responsibility. Organized authority frightened these people, especially authority that had relationship with court action.

DEPOSITED BY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

This slow acceptance of new ideas is not characteristic of any racial group. Looking back into the establishment of welfare programs in other groups, we were surprised to find how much of the same defensiveness had existed in the past, and how gradual had been the development and the growth. Recollections of those early difficulties had grown hazy during the long years when we had been content to let the welfare of Negro children lag behind.

It was a shock at first to realize that the community was unable and unready to accept our desire to be helpful. Then came the feeling of challenge. It was going to take time to win confidence and prove to these families that the agency was working in the interest of Negro children. It was going to take courage and skill to turn to the best advantage the tremendous inherent strength in this close family tie and this distant-relative type of planning. The effect of these homespun methods is shown by the fact that only one of every four children who have come to the attention of the agency has had to be placed in paid foster care.

Milestones

It is in the early struggling days of an agency that the incidents occur that later stand out as milestones in the memory-milestones that measure progress as well perhaps as any statistics.

One day toward the end of the first year, a Negro sorority came with a gift of $200. It was not the last gift from the sorority nor was it the largest, but it was the first public expression of confidence on the part of a Negro organization, and it came at a period of discouragement. The staff will never forget the lift it gave to their hearts.

35

But our milestone par excellence was Baby Louise! Louise was our first foundling. A Negro husband and wife were sitting on the front porch when they heard a baby crying. Over by the hedge, they found a cardboard box carefully padded, and in it a little Negro girl about 7 months old. She had been well cared for and was evidently unused to being kept waiting for her supper. Beside her lay a bundle of nicely washed and ironed clothing and a nursing bottle, empty, but apparently sterilized. There was something touching about the little dresses in the bundle; the material was cheap and roughly put together, but there was a little clumsy handwork on each.

When Christmas came the face of Louise beamed a cheery greeting from the center's first Christmas card. The photographer had caught something in her expression that won its way into the hearts of all who saw it.

Ever since that Christmas, the center has used the photograph on all its stationery and publications.

We did not realize at the time that the day that Baby Louise was brought to the center was to be a turning point not only in her life, but also in the life of the struggling little agency, nor that she would come to be to many the symbol of all that the agency stood for.

A permanent agency

By the middle of the second year the Negro Child Center had begun to hit its stride. Gradually a better community acceptance of the agency's functions had come about. Better relationships had been established with the courts, with the hospitals, and with other agencies. The number of children brought for help or counsel had steadily increased. In the course of 2 years applications had been accepted for some form of service for 215 children.

It was not a bad record for a $10,000 yearly budget, but we realized that without additional funds we would not be able to hold our own in the coming year. It was decided to approach the Community Chest and to give an account of the 2 years of our stewardship and then to ask that the experiment should now be considered a permanent agency and be financed accordingly.

The Chest not only granted the 40

percent increase that we asked for, but did it so cordially that the workers returned to their planning with a greater feeling of security than they had ever had before.

Since then the Chest has never failed to give us an annual increase. It has not always been all we wished for, but it has been steady, and for this year, the seventh of the agency's existence, the budget has reached $53,000, more than five times the original one.

Kezia De Pelchin was right in her conviction that with community knowledge would come community support.

The gift of Anna Dupree

Early in 1945 the community was startled by a gift to the Negro Child Center of $20,000 to build a cottage for children like Louise. The gift came from a retired beauty operator, Mrs. Anna Dupree. It was one of the first, and certainly one of the largest gifts that had ever been given to charity by a Negro in the South. Anna was one of nine children, who had grown up in great poverty. An enterprising girl, she had learned to be a beauty operator, and had built up a thriving trade.

Soon after the Dupree gift a sorority of Negro professional women volunteered to buy the land for the cottage. Within a few months they presented a check for $2,500 to the center. When they presented this gift, they made one stipulation and that was: If when the time came to buy the land, it was found that a larger sum was needed, they should be given the privilege of raising the rest of the money.

It was little wonder that the faith of the Negro Child Center grew with that sort of encouragement. When the following year suitable land was found, the price was $6,000. The sorority not only made good its promise, but 6 months later presented us with $1,000 to furnish the living room.

Then requests to be allowed to furnish rooms and to supply equipment came in from other sororities and women's auxiliaries, without solicitation by the agency. There was no doubt of the tremendous interest and potential strength that existed in the Negro community.

The gift of Mrs. Dupree came at an opportune time. The program from the first had been entirely limited to

foster-family home placement, and while this plan would always be the main resource for caring for the chil dren no matter how the program might develop in other ways, yet it left the agency vulnerable in case of emergen cies.

There were many foster-home" resources for the white child, some So beds in all, but for the Negro grou there were only the 35 foster home that the center had developed. Since the war had begun, this situation had become more difficult, for many of the best Negro families had moved away. and others had given up caring for chil dren to take jobs in the community. Search for a site

Even though the money was assured we knew that to find a site was a major undertaking. Not only were all the buildings in most Negro neighborhoodsubstandard, but so were the physical surroundings. The committee decided that it had better be clear as to what conditions were essential, and ther start a real search for the land.

In the minds of the group the following seemed to stand out:

1. The land should be reasonably well-drained and should be easy of ac

cess.

2. It should be near good schools. good health facilities, and good recrea tional facilities.

3. It should be located in a modest. self-respecting community.

Knowing the slimness of the resources, however, we suspected that our ideas were a little Utopian, but we were all so firmly convinced of the value of the undertaking that we were quite willing to hitch our wagon to a star. Eureka!

It was not till a year after the Dupree gift that we found what we wanted. It was a beautifully wooded area of 91% acres in the heart of the most densely populated Negro area in Houston. The land had just been released for sale after prolonged litigation, and it far surpassed in every way our rosiest dreams.

The land was only two blocks from a main thoroughfare with good bus serv ice; and most of the homes adjacent were owned by the occupants, stable people with long records of steady em

ployment. One of the best grade schools for Negroes was right across from the property, and a high school was in easy walking distance.

St. Elizabeth's Hospital, a beautiful modern building, was within six blocks; and Hester House, the only community house for Negroes in Houston, was also in the neighborhood. To crown everything, the price was within our reach. Almost breathlessly we put down our money. We felt as if the whole world must be waiting to pounce on our promised land!

There was an additional 41/2 acres adjoining our property; and last year Hester House bought it. The possibilities for service that may lie in these 14 acres are limitless.

Now that we had the land, we asked = our architect to draw up plans for a receiving cottage for about 20 children. Before these plans were completed

I a bank president gave the center $25,000 to erect a building in memory of his son. It was decided to use this money toward building an administration and community building, which would include a neighborhood health clinic. This would satisfy a crying need, for with over 300 children coming for casework or other service each year, our little office was bursting at the seams. Almost before we knew it, the center found itself embarked on a campaign to raise a building fund of $110,000.

Looking back, it is interesting to realize that from the first it never occurred to anyone at the center that we I could build any but first-class modern

buildings, functional and dignified, and that we undertook what was to this group the raising of a very large amount of money as a matter of course. It is even more interesting that no one in the community has so far ever questioned the wisdom of our assumption.

The center breaks ground

In December 1945 ground was broken for our new buildings. This was the first step in launching the campaign. The agency had $45,000 to start with, and, true to the De Pelchin tradition, it had also a deep faith in God and in the good people of Houston.

Fund raising

Of course, $65,000 is a large sum to collect when most of the contributions

will be small. But while large gifts

make matters move faster and are much

easier on the nerves of those responsible for money raising, yet it may be that smaller gifts from a large number of people do more in the long run toward community good will.

And that brings us to the most appealing gift of all. A heavy express package arrived at the center. In it was $26.36, all in nickels and pennies, and with it was a card in straggling childish characters: "Lov from Baby Louise." It was hard to believe that our little patron saint was growing up, and there was real inspiration in her loyalty and in the fact that she and her adopted parents were still following the fortunes of the Negro Child Center with eager and affectionate interest.

At present the amount collected stands at $104,000. The Negro group has contributed most of this, but the contribution of the white group is not far behind.

The old order changeth

It is now 7 years since the Negro Child Center opened, and during those years more than 1,154 children have passed through its doors. This summer the agency is moving into its new $118,000 plant.

In this development there is no doubt. that the real motive power has always come from within the agency itself.

But motive power cannot function without a framework, and in this case the framework was established when the community itself demanded that Negro children be included in the planning. Every time the Chest has increased the budget, that framework has been strengthened.

Other influences also have been at work. While the agency has been developing, a world war has been fought, and with the calling to service of all groups and with the names of people of all races in the casualty lists, there has come about an inevitable modification of community attitudes. Our talk of "one world" has brought with it the natural corollary of "one community," and we are coming to realize that what happens to any one group vitally affects all groups.

With this realization, new dignity and new hope have come to the Negro people, and with increased economic security there has come for them the opportunity to put into effect some of

their ambitions for the children of their race. Their cooperation in the work of the center is only one indication of their resolutions.

The old order has been changing, yielding place to a new one, and we are ready, as we have never been before, to think of service in terms of every child.

It is very doubtful if there is in the country any community which cannot, in the next few years, equal or surpass the record of the Negro Child Center, if it approaches the task with courage and patience, and with infinite and imaginative faith.

Reprints available in about 5 weeks

WILLIAM D. COCHRAN,

C

HILDREN OF DIVORCE are stepchildren of our courts. The laws and the court procedures for handling the problem of children of divorced parents are much the same as they were several generations ago, and it would appear that, at least in our courts, the problem is not recognized at all.

Years ago, when the procedures concerning divorce and child custody were developing, divorces were infrequent; and children of divorce, though individual problems, were not the social problem that they are today, since there were few of them. However, divorces are no longer infrequent, and children of divorce constitute a considerable proportion of American youth. In the light of this change in our social complexion it is of real importance that we reexamine legal procedures to the end that our courts may more intelligently and effectively handle the problem.

If the problem is to be intelligently met it must be first faced squarely as more of a social problem than a legal

one.

At present the court sets up a new situation for the child or children of parents involved in a divorce action. Whether the new situation has any relation to the real interests of the child, and whether it leaves as few emotional

scars on his personality as is reasonably possible under the circumstances, is something else.

How about interests of child?

Serving the welfare of children, just like intelligent adjudication of any problem, depends upon how well our courts are informed before the judgment is rendered, and intelligent information is something that our courts simply do not get. The child is unrepresented, save by the harassed judge or chancellor himself; there are no competent witnesses to advise the court about the child's interests. This statement will not be received graciously by most parents and a few lawyers but it is nevertheless true.

Neither courts nor lawyers have the special education and training that would enable them to determine intelligently what action in a given case will serve the real interests of the children involved. This may also seem to be a broad statement. However, no lawyer or court need feel offended, for child welfare is a highly specialized social science. It is an independent field of endeavor, about which lawyers and courts know little or nothing and are not expected to. If we are to get reliable information as to what these things are all about, it must come from those who, by reason of education, training, and experience, should know.

The picture of lawyers swapping the interests of children over their desks and reporting to the court in all seriousness that the parties have reached an agreement would be actually amusing were not the situation so deeply serious and the results to children so

pathetic.

pathetic. All it means is that opposing parents, through counsel, have reached an understanding, at least partially satisfactory to each. This relieves the chancellor of the necessity of making an independent guess and then worrying over the outcome. If nothing appears radically wrong to his uninformed mind the "understanding" of parents and counsel is placed in the judgment and the typical child of divorce is on his way. If legal opinions of the past are to be criteria of what we can expect in the future, the child of divorce will be no better off as time goes on.

Parents, and their testimony of charge and countercharge, do nothing

more than confuse the issue of the welfare of the children, and counsel on neither side are of any assistance. As lawyers, they do not necessarily understand underlying emotional problems of a child who is confronted with a broken home, and also, they often become so

Condensed from an article by Judge Cochran in the Kentucky State Bar Journal, September 1947.

determined to fulfill the desires of their clients that the real interests of the chil

get little or no place in the picture Irrespective of how conscientious a chancellor may be, and certainly all our chancellors try to be most conscientious he is nevertheless lost, and it is the child of course, who suffers.

As heretofore suggested, if this prob lem is to be met with any degree of real success it must be first recognized as the social problem that it is. It cannot b solved by the application of any known set of legal rules or maxims, and the longer we delay in taking a more intelligent and objective approach the mor serious the situation will become. tainly it is serious enough as it is, for at present some 80 to 90 percent of al litigation in our circuit courts involve problems in domestic relations.

Tug-of-war between parents

Cer

About the only rule our courts hav developed that has the unqualified ap proval of child psychiatrists is that generally speaking, little children are better off with their mothers. However. so far as the law is concerned, the application of this principle is most often so cluttered with rights of visitation that it becomes of little or no value, and so the child continues to be the center of a tug of war between parents. Save in cases few and far between, the most a court ever gets from the record is the feud between the parents, and many records consist of nothing more than invective. Under such circumstances. and it is the standard situation, no court can be expected to be able to act in the real interests of children.

During the war we learned that a siz able proportion of our young men were unfit to fight because of emotional immaturity and instability. Information concerning the number of these boys who had been children of divorce might be of more than passing interest.

Let us look at some of the things that contribute to a child's normal development as compared with what happens in our courts.

A personality that is mature and able to adjust to normal social existence in a productive occupation is just as important to an individual as his intelligence. But for the children under discussion the opportunity of normal personality development in a normal home