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SECTION III
REGIONAL TOPICS
CONSTRAINED COMMUNITIES: BLACK CLEVELAND'S EXPERIENCE WITH WORLD WAR II PUBLIC HOUSING
| By Todd M. Michney |
Tulane University |
| Amid the World War II urban housing crisis that was particularly severe for African Americans, dozens of black Clevelanders wrote letters to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, explaining their predicaments in finding shelter. These letter-writers, most of them women, emphasized the crowded and often horribly deteriorated quarters in which they were compelled to live. "The place I have now is not fit for dogs to live in," wrote one woman, "it even rains in the Bath [and] all the Window Frames are Broken & when I speak to the Landlord about it she say I can move if I don't like it." Another stated that "my baby fell through a Hole in the Porch, w[h]ich the Landlord will not fix" and that "[w]hen I clean the House it don't [en]sure any Results Becouse [sic] the walls are in such a bad condition." A young, pregnant wife self-consciously wrote: "The house we live in now, well, I know it's going to be awfully hard for you to believe in such a thing, but it has no bath room. By that I mean not [a] bath tub, face bowl, hot water tank [n]or hot water faucet." Grateful to have even their "two rooms and a closet," she nonetheless worried: "what will I do about hot water when my baby is born.... My last one was born at home and ... it was awfully hard for me to try and heat enough water and sterilize the necessary equipment for the doctors too." Other letter-writers worried about negative impacts on the health of their children or reported being refused accommodations because they had children. One desperate correspondent captured the inconveniences and indignities faced by many, writing: "The place I am now living in there are twelve rooms and twenty use one bath room.... [W]e don't have any privacy.... I am now in defense work at night and can't rest in the day. I have tried every way to find a house[,] for the place I am in is a kitchenett[e], so see if there is anything you can do to help me."1 |
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The letter-writers hoped for redress. Nearly all of them asked to be placed in the public housing, or so-called temporary war housing estates; many had been to the local housing authority multiple times, or had long-pending applications to get into the projects. As attempts by their writers to take charge of their lives in the face of desperation, these poignant letters appeal directly to the reader's sense of justice even today.2 But the letters never reached their intended audience. Instead, they were passed along to housing officials back in Cleveland "with instructions to help you with your problem," as a form letter sent to each letter-writer stated—an approach that prompted Katharine T. Patch, head of Cleveland's War Housing Service, to complain back to Washington: "I am asking you again please to change the wording you use in this letter.... There is nothing we can do for most of these Negro families, and they interpret this phrase to mean that you know we could help them and tell us to do so.... They are mad and disappointed enough anyway when their letter to the President gets right back to us!"3 |
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