1984 Ethics Paper
The Te rribl e Beauty of the Slum
ou can find her in the group of beautiful thugs and too fast
girls congreg ating on the corner and humming the latest rag,
or lingering in fro nt of Wanamaker's and gazing lustfully at
a pair of fine shoes di splayed like jewels behind the plate-glass win-
dow. Watch her in the alley passing a pitcher of beer back and forth
with her friends, bras h an d lovely in a cut-rate dress and silk ribbons;
look in awe as she han gs h alfway out of a tenement window, taking
in the drama of the block a nd defying gravity's downward pull. Step
onto any of the path s th at cross the sprawling city and you'll encoun-
ter her as she roam s. O uts iders call the streets and alleys that com-
prise her world the slum . For her, it is just the place where she stay ·
You'd never happen on to her block unless you lived there too or had
loSt your way, or w ere out on an evening lark seeking the pl a ur s
yielded by the other ha lf. T he voyeurs on their slum.ming e pedition
feed on the lifeblood of th e ghetto, long for it and loathe it. h O
ial
scientists and the reformers are no better with their amera a n cl
their surveys, starin g intently at all the strang P cim n · Her ward of th e city is a labyrinth of foul 11 a
nd glo m
courts. It is Africa town, th Negro quart r, th n ti z O
• Th Italia d . · d · It i a world
ns an Jews, ngulfed by prox1rn1 Y 1 ppe r.
1 \\\'r\\\RDll\fS.B[\LllF U Lr PfRIM ~ S
the alley, one crosses the threshold into a raucous diso rd erly world,
a place defined by tumult, vulgar collectivism, and an archy. It is a
human sewer populated by the worst elements. It is a r ealm of excess
and fabulousness. It is a wretched environment. It is the plantation
extended into the city. It is a social laboratory. The ghetto is a space
of encounter. The sons and daughters of the rich come in search
of meaning, vitality, and pleasure. The reformers and so ciologists
come in search of the truly disadvantaged failing to see her an d her
friends as thinkers or planners, or to notice the beautiful experi-
ments crafted by poor black girls.
The ward, the Bottom, the ghetto-is an urban commons where
the poor assemble, improvise the forms of life, experiment with free-
dom, and refuse the menial existence scripted for them. It is a zone of extreme deprivation and scandalous waste. In the rows of tenem ents,
the decent reside peacefully with the dissolute and the immor al. The egro quarter is a place bereft of beauty and extravagant in its dis-
play of it. Moving in and moving on establish the rhythms of every-
day life. Each wave of newcomers changes the place-how th e slum
looks and sounds and smells. No one ever settles here, only Srays,
waits for better, and passes through; at least, that is the hop e. It is
not yet the dark ghetto, but soon only the black folks will rem ain.
In the slum, everything is in short supply except sensa t ion. Ybe · · uld experience is too much. The terrible beauty is more than one co .
ever hope to assimilate, order, and explain. The reformers snap their
picture of the buildings, the kitchenettes, the clothesline s, and the outhou es. he e apes notice as she watches them from th e third-
stup1d1ty. Th Y tak a pic ture of Lombard Street when haYJly 11 one is there. She wonders what fas inat them about cloth eslines and outhous s. They always tak pictur of the ame scuff. Are rhe
H E r RRIBLE BE TY OF rHr SlL~1
,, .. ..J • . ';) I cotton so different than ~auergarments of the r ich so much better. 5 . ross the streets?
. ture it to get it r1g .
h ~..__ . . . rhe relay of loo s an . . · nd h1nt at t e po 0 de ire that un settle their captions a
1 h an't be
d u heava t at c
d d • the beauty an by the cam ra . They fail to 1scern
6 \\A, WARD Ll'v E'>, B[ALTI FL, L EXPERIM [ \TS
l h d . d r missing all the ways black folks create life and make
on y t e 1sor e , .
b d • n arena of elaborauon. A half-dressed woman, wear-are nee mto a
• h t over a delicate nightgown, leans against the doorway mg a ousecoa . . , hidden by the shadows of the foyer, as she gossips with her girlfriend
standing at the threshold. Intimate life unfolds in the streets.
The journalists from Harper's Weekly gush in print: "Above the
Jews, in the same [tenement] houses, amid scenes of indescribable
squalor and tawdry finery, dwell the negroes leading their light-
hearted lives of pleasure, confusion, music, noise and fierce fights
that make them a terror to white neighbors and landlords alike."
Aroused at the sight of elegantly clad domestics, janitors and steve-
dores, elevator boys in rakish hats preening on the corner, and aes-
thetical Negroes content to waste money on extravagance, ornament,
and shine, the sociologist urges them to learn the value of a dollar
from their Jewish and Italian neighbors. Negroes must abandon the
lax moral habits, sensual indulgence, and careless excess that are the
custom of slavery. The present-past of involuntary servitude unfolds in the street, and the home, which was broken up completely by the slave ship and the promiscuous herding of the . . . plantation, is now broken again, broken open in its embrace of strangers.
The senses are solicited and overwhelmed. Look over here. Let your_ eyes take it all in: the handsome thugs lining the courtyard like sentmels· the immod d' l ed ' erate 1sp ay of three lovely flowerpots arrang on the sill of ate 'nd d h
nement w1 ow, the bed-sheets monogramme andke h' f · ' re ie s, embroidered silk hose, and whore's undergarments
suspended on a line h · e across t e alley, broadcasting clandestin
arrangements wa d l' k ages t' d. , ywar ives, carnal matters. Women, with pac . their : ; paper and string, flit by like shadows. The harsh light at
ac s transforms them· 'l c ms take the la into 81 houettes; abstracted dark ior
The p cc of who they really are. rag seller's daughters idl heir
cellar flat. The eldc . e on the steps that descend to t S st lS resplende , . . • her unday hat and ·• d f nt, sitting amid the debris in
so11e rock. The b!LJf• youngest remains mystery and
THE TERRIBLE BE-\L TY OF TH[ SLL\1
The sun pours down the stairwell, pressing against che girls and illu-
minating the entran ce to the small dank room, which is filled with
the father's wares: rags, papers, case-offs, piecework, and discarded ob' Jects salvaged for future use. He turns his back co the camera and eludes capture.
What you can hear if you listen: The guccural cones of Yiddish making English into a foreign tongue. The round open-mouthed sounds of North Carolina and Virginia bleeding into the hard-edged language of the city and transformed by the rhythm and cadence of northern streets. T he eruption of laughter, the volley of curses, th' shouts that make tenement walls vibrate and jar the floor. Yes, oOOh, baby that's so good!-the sweet music of an extended moan that hushes the ones listening eavesdroppers wanting more, despite kn · ' k of ~Wing they shouldn't. The rush of impressions: the mus. Y scene
tightly pressed bodies dancing in a basement saloon; the inadver- tent brush f . h moves across the
0 a stranger's hand against yours as s e C0Urtyard; a glimpse of young lovers huddled in the deep shadows of
8 \I\\ II \RD 11\ rs. Br \U nrut [XP[RIM[ N TS
a tenement hallway; the violent embrace of two men brawling; the
acrid odor of bacon and hoe-cake frying on an open fire; the hon-
eysuckle of a domestic's toilet water; the maple smoke rising from
an old man's corncob pipe. A whole world is jammed into one short
block crowded with black folks shut out from almost every opportu-
nity the city affords, but still intoxicated with freedom. The air is alive
with the possibilities of assembling, gathering, congregating. At any
moment, the promise of insurrection, the miracle of upheaval: small
groups, people by theyselves, and strangers threaten to become an ensemble, to incite treason en masse.
There are no visible signs on shop doors barring her entrance, just
the brutal rebuff of "we don't serve niggers." If she feels brave, she will shout an insult or curse as she retreats from the shop under the
hateful gaze of clerk and customers. She can sit anywhere she wants
on streetcars and in theaters, even if people inch away as if she were
contagious when she chooses the seat next to them, and she can go to
the vaudeville show or the nickelodeon on the same day as the white
folks, although it is more fun and she breathes easier when it is juSt
colored and she knows she will not be insulted. Despite the liberties
of the city, there is no better life here than in Virginia, no brighter
future to grow into, no opportunities for colored girls besides the
broom and the mop, or spread-eagle in really hard times. Everything
essential-where she goes to school, the kind of job she can get,
where she can live-is dictated by the color line, which places her
on the bottom and everybody else on top. Being young, she tries to
dream another life into existence, one in which her horizon isn't lim- ited to the maid's uniform and a white woman's dirty house. In this other life, she would not be required to take all the shit that no one else would accept and pretend co be graceful.
In this city of brotherly love, she has been confined to a squalid zone that no one else but the Jews would suffer. It isn't the cradle of
TH [ r ERRI BL[ BEAUTY OF TH[ SLUM 9
liberty or the free territory or even a temporar y refuge, bur a place
where an Irish mob nearly beat her uncle to death for some other
Negro's alleged crime; where the police dragged her to jail for being riotous and disorderly when she told them go to hell, after they had
grabbed her from the steps of her building and told her to move on.
At Second and Bainbridge, she heard a white man shout, "Lynch
him! Lynch him!" after a colored man, accused of stealing a loaf of
bread from the corner grocer, ran past.
When she arrives in the Tenderloin , the riot erupt s. At Forty-
First and Eighth Avenue, the policeman said , "Black bitch, come
out now!" Then dragged a woman from the hallway, pummeled her
with his club, and arrested her for being riotou s and disorderly.
Paul Laurence Dunbar caught sight of her on Seventh Avenue, and
he feared for American civilization . Look ing at the girl amidst the
crowd of idle shiftless Negroes who throng ed the avenue, he won-
dered, "What is to be done with them , wh at is to be done for them, if they are to be prevented from inocul ating our civilization with the poison of their lives? " The y are not anarchists; and yet in these seemingly careless, guffawing crowds resides a terrible menace to
our institutions. Though she had not rea d God and the State or What
Is Property? or The Conquest of Bread, the dangers she and others like
her posed was as great as those damned Jews Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman. Everyt h ing in her environment tended to the
blotting of the moral sens e every act enoendered crime and encour- ' b
aged open rebellion . Dunb ar lamented: If only they could be pre- \'ented from flocking to th e city, "if the metropolis could vomit them back again to the South th e whole matter would adjuSr." Better for them and c ' l h " eming lib-10r us, the re stri ctions of the sout 1, t an a se ehortywhich blossoms no; iou sly into license." Better the fields and the 1 tgun h h · · ble cycle of ouses and the du sty towns and t e mtermma Cl'tdit a d d b n e t, better this th a n black anarchy .
10 \\." \\ARD LI\ LS, BlA Ul II UL f\P[RIML NT S
t\1ost days, the assault of the city eclipses its promise: When the
water in the building has stopped running, when even in her best
dress she cannot help but wonder if she smells like the outhouse or
if it is obvious that her bloomers are tattered, when she is so hungry
that the aroma of bean soup wafting from the settlement kitchen
makes her mouth water, she takes to the streets, as if in search of the
real city and not this poor imitation. The old black ladies perched in
their windows shouted, "Girl, where you headed?" Each new depri-
vation raises doubts about when freedom is going to come; if the
question pounding inside her head-Can I live?-is one to which
she could ever give a certain answer, or only repeat in anticipation of
something better than this, bear the pain of it and the hope of it, the
beauty and the promise.