Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/244

 Chicago is the Mecca for southern negroes. The better class continued to desert Dearborn and Armour and paid exorbitant rent for flats east of State street. Some lost what they had made on Armour avenue where rent was sometimes less than one-half what was charged five blocks east, and had to move back to Armour. As more colored people moved toward the lake more white people moved farther south, rent began falling and real estate dealers began offering former homes of rich families first for rent then for sale, and many others began buying as Rev. McCraline had done, making a small cash payment, and in this way otherwise unsalable property was disposed of at from five to ten per cent more than it would have brought at a cash sale.

The place they were buying could have been purchased for three thousand, eight hundred dollars or four thousand dollars in cash. After moving east of State street, these people formed into little sets which represented the more elite, and later developed into a sort of local aristocracy, which was not distinguished so much by wealth as by the airs and conventionality of its members, who did not go to public dances on State street and drink "can" beer. Here for a time they were secure from the vulgar intrusion of the noisy "loud-mouths," as they called them, of State street. The last time I was in Chicago State street, the "dead line,"" [sic]had been crossed and a part of Wabash avenue is almost as noisy and vulgar as Dearborn. Beer cans, rough clubs and dudes were becoming as familiar sights as on Armour, and a large part of that part of the east side is so filled up with colored people