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12. The Post-War Era
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134 12 The Post-War Era A merica has long grappled with juvenile gangs of one sort or another. This has been true throughout a good part of Houston’s history. Gang names seemed less sinister in the 1940s when monikers included the Long Hairs, the Black Shirts and the Alley Gang. Most American cities have also endured so-called “juvenile delinquency” problems. Like today, the media often exaggerated the incidence of youth crimes.1 During the 1940s, local newspapers filled columns chronicling the large number of crimes by minors and with pleas for curfews to curb juvenile delinquency . The Houston Post heralded the use of curfews in 500 American cities as a way of “solving the perplexing problems of teenage life.” The newspaper cited a Parade magazine article that claimed “curfew is, in part, America’s answer to the problem of youth in a country at war.” In reality, several city officials noted, there were few figures to support either a decrease or increase in youth crime, explaining that any infraction of a city ordinance was listed as a criminal offense. Hence, children who rode their bikes on sidewalks were committing offenses, as were children who “trespassed” on private property to retrieve a ball that landed there, or shot an air gun on their own lawn but the pellet landed in the next yard. Minors caught smoking cigarettes on the streets were even included in the statistics of law violations.2 It was not just the traditional Houston newspapers clamoring for better juvenile control. Houston was home to several African-American newspapers as well. One of the more prominent was the Negro Labor News. On March 25, 1944, the newspaper published an editorial captioned, “More Negro Policemen, Stricter Enforcement of Liquor Laws Will Help to Curb Juvenile Delinquency.” The article suggested that the increase of delinquency was the result of the number of parents involved in the war effort, either in the armed forces or in defense work. However, what was most edifying about the editorial was its suggestion that “more Negro policemen would go a long way in solving juvenile delinquency.”3 The Post-War Era 135 Black merchants were as befuddled as their white counterparts with how to evict unruly youngsters from their businesses. The popular notion among some members of the black community was that “some white officers take it as a matter of fun to catch a bunch of youngsters shooting dice” and using vulgar language, while “Negro policemen are more interested in curbing this sort of thing than white,” and were more willing to chastise the boy or girl and send them home.”4 One of the year’s most bizarre incidents ended on April 24 when the body of a missing African-American male was located in Buffalo Bayou. Detectives P. R. O’Neill and Manuel Crespo lent their help in finding the body of a young man who had drowned in the bayou. When efforts to locate the body failed, thirty-three-year-old Billy Williams Johnson approached the officers and asked if he could try and use his own method in locating the body. The officers granted him permission and he returned a few minutes later holding a shotgun, a loaf of bread and an old shirt. The shirt apparently belonged to the seventeen-year-old victim. Williams threw it in the water then proceeded to walk a short distance downstream where he threw the bread in. The shirt and the bread both drifted to a spot midstream before stopping. The man boarded a leaky skiff and rowed to the location of the shirt and bread and fired his shotgun once into the air. The detectives were astonished when the body of the boy immediately came to the surface. When asked for an explanation for his success, Williams responded, “It always works; it never fails.”5 In May 1944, Police Chief Percy Heard introduced a civil service ratings system that could be used to determine future promotions or the discharge of personnel. Among the system’s criteria were standards such as “cooperation ” and “emotional stability.” During its first run, all members of the department passed with grades ranging from 74 to 100, with 70 considered passing.6 However, a number of fire department and HPD representatives deemed the rating system unsuitable for judging “whether a man can stand smoke or whether he has to get out in the street to fight a fire.”7 Others felt that graders played favorites and...