Clara Kirk Sees Gent’s Addition as a neglected part of Marion
“Discrimination, Hate: Two-Way Street”
Words are easy to speak; songs are easy to sing. A popular song begins “Love makes the world go round, love makes the world go round.” Ministers preach these words. People’s actions often mock them.
Clara Kirk lives by them. Miss Kirk spent 41 years of her 69 years teaching primary grades. Before her retirement in 1969, she taught 30 years in Douglass School, Marion’s only all black school. After the school was abolished in 1965, she spent the last four years of the career at Washington School.
Miss Kirk taught the basic skills primary age children are expected to learn; and she taught a complicated emotion she wanted them to know.
“You have to learn how to live in the world with all kinds of people, all kinds of color. What is color? One sixteenth of an inch of your outer skin. What better place to learn that we’re all human, all divine creations, than in school. Children need to be taught love. Hate is what causes disturbances and separation. And little fellows don’t know hate, they are taught it.”
As proof of the learning experience, Miss Kirk related a tale of a 4 year old girl in Chicago who became attached to Miss Kirk. It was her first confrontation with a Negro and the child thought her color came from simply forgetting to wash her face.
Like other elderly blacks in Marion, Miss Kirk remembers when everyone viewed a difference in color with the innocence of the Chicago child.
Miss Kirk lived in Mt. Vernon for eight years before coming to Marion in 1912. At that time, blacks lived throughout the city except Parish Park, “and we got along beautifully,” she added.
But the separation came soon and with the trend came the beginning of Gent’s addition as a segregated black community.
“Many blacks live in Gent’s not so much as a matter of choice as just a place they were told they were able to live. I don’t think it’s fair to say you can’t live in a place because you’re a Negro.
“It’s so sad, because this is a way of classifying just because of your race.”
Miss Kirk says Gent’s Addition is not separated from the city, but simply a division like Parish Park or Northeast Marion. She thinks “it’s a neglected part of the city, but not a ghetto. “To me, a ghetto is where you have slum housing and none of the services the other parts of the city have. They do have services like garbage collection, police protection and mail service.”
“In fact, no one in Gent’s Addition or Burnett’s is denied the services of Marion.”
According to Miss Kirk, whites lived in Gent’s until the depression when “someone in authority advised them to move from there and they moved to the northeast section. About the time they started moving out came the wave of intense racism. Some never moved. Logan Allen died there; he said they were his friends and would take care of him. And they did.”
Miss Kirk does not live in Gent’s, but she is aware of racial discrimination in regard to housing.
She recently tried to rent, an apartment for her sister-in-law but was forced to rent house in Burnett’s Addition, the 700 block of South Liberty Street, between Cline and College. At one point during her two day search, a landlady told her over the telephone she had a vacant apartment ready for occupancy. When Miss Kirk arrived at the apartment building about 10 minutes later, she was told by the same landlady that the apartment had been rented.
And she is aware of racial discrimination when it comes to employment.
When she and Mrs. Russell Duncan, another black teacher, retired, they asked if this would be the end of black teachers in Marion. They were assured that it wasn’t; but there are no black teachers today.
“Children should not be denied the privilege of being around everyone. It’s not fair to youngsters to isolate races. That goes for pupils and teachers.”
Miss Kirk attributes the absence of black employees in local retail stores to the clerk’s union. She says local merchants cannot hire employees without union approval, and she doesn’t remember a Negro ever being admitted to the union.
“But discrimination and hate is a two way street. To avoid getting their feelings hurt again, many blacks just don’t try. It’s the same with Gent’s. Some blacks wouldn’t move out if it meant living with whites. More Negroes are being taught to hate, and that’s a sad thing. It frightens me. Hate is all-consuming.”
Hate was imported into Marion, Miss Kirk says, and hostility has been minimal. She regards black racism or black discrimination towards whites as a means created by people outside the frame who appealed to these blacks who always wanted to do something and we’re afraid to.
“Hate only destroys. Hostility is not the answer. Understanding is. Yet, through their hate they have shown others we are human and have heads on our shoulders like everyone else.”
Years have robbed Miss Kirk of much of her health and a profession that is her life; but they haven’t stolen her love of humanity or the color blind innocence of a 4 year old child.
“My mother used to tell me you can do anything you want to if you take ‘little willie’ with you. Do you know who ‘little willie’ is? He’s the will to want to do something. If we have the will, the situation will improve. To me, all people are my people. The Good Lord created both of us. How do you separate Divine creations?”
See Also:
1973, Gent’s Addition, Part 1 of 6
1973, Gent’s Addition, Part 2 of 6
1973, Gent’s Addition, Part 3 of 6
1973, Gent’s Addition, Part 4 of 6
1973, Gent’s Addition, Part 6 of 6
(Southern Illinoisan article by Sandy Blumenfeld, published August 16, 1973)