Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890-1935

CHAPTER 5. Tragedy of the Colored Girl in Court: The National Urban League and New York’s Women’s Court, 1911–1931

159 5 tragedy of the colored girl in court THE NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE AND NEW YORK’S WOMEN’S COURT, 1911–1931 Of course the lure of the north for southern colored woman is just the same for the southern white woman who hopes to obtain employment here. But where there is protection for the white girl there is not so much for the Negro. —Grace Campbell, 1911 The colored girl lacks the right interest from her people both in and out of court. —Judge Jean Norris, 1925 Dominant narratives of the troubled female migrant emphasized grave moral dilemmas. All too often, these stories overlooked the legal problems that many black migrant women endured. Sixteen-year-old Faith Towns’s experience shows how some migrants ended up in prison. A native of Lenoir, North Carolina, she arrived in New York after a prospective employer paid for her transportation.1 In less than a week, Towns presented her employer with a letter (which, it was later revealed, was written by Towns herself) indicating that her mother was ill and she was needed at home. Her employer immediately rejected her request. Towns had not worked long enough to cover her expenses. She then stole $17 from her employer in order to return south. Having underestimated the train fare, Towns stayed at a friend’s apartment until she could acquire the remaining cash. The police arrested her there. After filing an insurance claim, her employer was advised by an agent to press charges against the former domestic, which she did. When a social worker suggested that the employer be more understanding about the young girl’s predicament, she responded, “You couldn’t treat niggers like URBAN REFORM AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE 160 other people.”2 Towns was sentenced to the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford. Towns’s experience brings to the surface several issues that reformers’ narratives frequently neglected. While the young woman was naive about northern life and quickly decided to return home, her difficulties were with her employer, not an unscrupulous labor agent. Her case shows how race relations in New York resembled those in the South, as white employers wielded power over black domestic servants and were able to prevail in the criminal justice system. Black women like Towns got into trouble with the law because of their immaturity and financial instability, not their lack of morality. Reformers like Victoria Earle Matthews and Frances Kellor failed to address the growing numberof black women whowere incarcerated; those who dealt with criminal cases understood the problem better. Black women, whether they were native New Yorkers, southern migrants, or West Indian immigrants, faced overwhelming odds once they became caught up in New York’s criminal justice system. Nineteenth-century prison activists established reformatories so that youthful offenders like Towns would not be imprisoned with Auburn’s “women of hard and vicious character,” although when released they had a criminal record. In addition to being vulnerable to poverty, black women were subject to a racially segregated, oftentimes corrupt criminal justice system. This chapter examines this problem from two reformers’ standpoints. Grace Campbell, a black probation and parole officer, emphasized the “tragedy of the colored girl in court” who received little or no state-sponsored preventive care and was seldom granted probation once she was arrested. In contrast, white municipal Judge Jean Norris believed that the real tragedy stemmed from the black community’s apathy toward delinquent girls and women. Comparing the professional biographies of Grace Campbell and Jean Norris raises a number of critical issues regarding gender and criminal justice, as well as urban reform and race. Unlike their predecessors, these women benefited from the work of Progressive reform that stressed government responsibility and legislative solutions for social problems. Both women expressed concerns about the inadequate services for delinquent black women, but they disagreed about the state’s responsibility. For Campbell , working with black women was a constant, uphill battle that she fought with insufficient state resources and mounting conflicts with her workingclass clients and professional colleagues regarding how to handle young black women. Influenced by the racial uplift ideology of an earlier generation , Campbell found that her vision of helping and protecting young women and black people was compromised by pervasive racism and class 161 The National Urban League and Women’s Court inequities. Like many activists of her time, she joined the vanguard of the radical black activists...