Constructive Measures 179 



and city probation officers for colored juvenile offenders 

 are greatly needed throughout the South. 



Local Communities. — Though the need is pressing for the 

 adoption of these policies by the Federal Government, pri- 

 vate philanthropic agencies, the State Governments, and 

 industries, the crucial needs must be met by the patient and 

 sympathetic effort of the white and colored leaders in local 

 communities. Although successful programs of community 

 welfare are more efficient with central organization and ex- 

 pert supervisors, no amount of this overhead work can 

 relieve the people of the local communities of the responsi- 

 bility for the public opinion and local machinery through 

 which these programs must be worked out. No amount of 

 state supervision can give to a community sound institutions 

 unless the community itself is alive to the need for them. 



(13) For this reason it is extremely unfortunate that so 

 large a proportion of newspaper articles dealing with the 

 Negro treat only criminal or humorous news. It is impos- 

 sible for the Southern communities to know the real happen- 

 ings among their colored population from reading the local 

 papers and equally as impossible for them to know of 

 progress of the larger movements for improvement of race 

 relations. Nor is it possible under such conditions to de- 

 velop an enlightened public opinion on the subject. Since 

 the recent migration some of the northern papers have 

 adopted this short-sighted policy. Even such a former 

 staunch friend of the Negro as the Chicago Tribune is 

 widely known as a trouble maker because of its sensational 

 treatment of inter-racial matters. The Negroes are thrown 

 back on papers published by members of their own race, 

 and the larger and larger group of Negroes who read are 

 almost entirely dependent upon more or less destructive 

 newspapers for news. 



This anomaly of two groups living side by side in the 

 same town, with different organs of group opinion and 

 differences, which make for friction, or at least misunder- 



