a spot on it; we 'come clean'; now we want to see our country live up to the constitution and the declaration of independence."
Soldiers, ministers, lawyers, doctors, politicians, machinists, teamsters, day laborers—this is the inevitable outstanding thought they offer when consulted about tomorrow, next week, next year or the next century for the colored race in America, There is no approaching the matters of housing, jobs or political relations of the colored people to-day without taking consideration of their own vivid conception of what they consider their unquestioned Americanism.
They had one bank three years ago. Now they have five. Three co-operative societies to run stores are forming. Five new weekly papers, two new monthly magazines, seven drug stores, one hospital—all of these have come since Junius B. Wood's encyclopedic recital of negro activities in Chicago appeared in The Daily News in December, 1916. Also since then a life insurance company and a building and loan association have been organized. In one district where there were counted sixty-nine neighborhood agencies of demoralization there have been established within two years under negro auspices, a cafe, a drug store, a laundry, a bakery, a shoe repair shop, a tailor shop, a fish market, a dry goods store—all told, twenty-four constructive agencies entered the contest against sixty-nine of the destructive kind.
The colored people of Chicago seem to have more big organizations with fewer press agents and less publicity than any other group in the city. They have, for instance, the largest single protestant church membership in North America in the Olivet Baptist church at South Park avenue and East 31st street. It has more than 8,500
