Public Welfare News
Published Monthly and Distributed Free by The North Carolina State Board of Charities and Public Welfare
MRS. W. T. BOST, Commissioner . . A. LAURANCE AYDLETT, Editor
VOLUME 5 RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA, NOVEMBER, 1942 NUMBER 2
Tenative 1943 Program Set For
Work Among Negroes of State
October Reports
Still Show Jails
Holding Children
Three children Less than 10 years
old and a total o£ 49 white and Negro
boys and girls under 16 years o£ age
were held in county jails in 23 North
Carolina communities during the
month o£ October, the State welfare
department’s division o£ institutions
and corrections, has reported.
The division pointed out that the
action was in direct violation of the
statute terming such practice illegal
and cited as especially detrimental
to youth the two days a six-year-old
white boy spent in one jail on a
charge of “larceny.”
“Other undesirable instances were
those in which two white boys, aged
nine and eleven, were held 30 days
for “larceny’ and the 15 days a 10-
year-old white boy spent in jail on a
count listed simply as ‘delinquent’,”
the report said.
In personal visits to many North
Carolina county jailors and sheriffs,
the director said he had found the
practice of placing children under 16
in jail distasteful to those officials
but that “most of them felt nothing
much could be done about it until
other responsible authorities and
citizens in the community felt the
same way.”
Craven County led October’s list
with 10 children; Anson and Robeson
held five each; Wilson, four; Cald¬
well, three; Carteret, Columbus, Lee
and Pender, two each; and one child
was added to the score in Avery;
Columbus, Edgecombe, Greene, Hali¬
fax, Henderson, Hertford, Martin,
Person, Rowan, Sampson, Stanly,
Surry, Transylvania and Warren
counties.
“We have developed an Atlantic
Charter declaring the right to certain
freedoms for all nations,” the di¬
rector said, “but we need to look to
the freedom from want and fear of
our own youths, to determine that
they shall not be subjected to un¬
wholesome experiences that can be
avoided in making them citizens of
those nations.”
Delinquency in youth, he charged,
is largely the responsibility of their
elders as delinquent parents or as
citizens of the community who either
do not know about, or do not care to
remedy, unwholesome situations of-
the locality its children face every
day.
Raleigh — Jeff L. Fountain, Jr.,
former assistant judge of the Raleigh
city court has been named judge of
the city-county juvenile court suc¬
ceeding Harvey Jones who resigned
to enter the armed forces. Fountain
resigned as assistant judge of the
city court when he took over the
juvenile court direction.
A tentative program of welfare
work among Negroes in North Caro¬
lina has been set up for 1943 follow¬
ing a study and survey of the State’s
Negro population by John R. Larkins,
consultant, on Negro work for the
State Board of Charities and Public
Welfare, Mrs. W. T. Bost, State wel¬
fare commissioner, has announced.
“The State Board, through its
unit of work among Negroes, is at¬
tempting to ascertain the social and
economic needs of this portion of out-
population in order to develop an
effective, constructive and far-reach¬
ing program of social welfare,”
Larkins stated, in presenting some of
the pressing needs of Negroes.
The 1943 program will endeavor
to bring about better understanding
of the work among Negroes, the
establishment of facilities for de¬
linquent Negro girls, greater con¬
sideration of the problems of un¬
married mothers, extension of facili¬
ties for Negro feeble-minded, addi¬
tional day nurseries for children and
employment of more Negro workers
in county welfare departments to
devote their time exclusively to
problems affecting members of their
race.
Larkins said he expected to in¬
terpret his -work by utilizing for the
next year every opportunity to
explain it through religious, fraternal
and civic organizations and Negro
PTA meetings in addition to insti¬
tutes at schools and colleges.
“Facilities for the care of Negro
delinquents are very inadequate,”
the consultant said. “There is grave
need for a school for delinquent.
Negro girls, a problem accentuated
by the war emergency, which has
already been recognized and steps
taken to begin progress in this
respect.”
“We need extension of means of
caring for delinquent Negro boys
because there are a number who are
committed to Morrison Training
School but not always accepted be¬
cause of lack of space. The period of
time of confinement for effective
treatment has had to be shortened
in order to admit others.”
Maternity homes privately financed
and operated are needed, Larkins
stressed, to protect and train during
pregnancy Negro girls, many of them
between 12 and .1.4 years old, who arc
left to shift for themselves. They
are seldom taken out of the environ¬
ment. in which they were living at
the time they got into trouble, their
relatives often turning against them,
he said.
“There is an acute need for a con¬
structive program for vocational
training for the Negro feeble-minded,
and especially do we need to care for
and treat the higher-grade mental
defective who can in many cases be
returned to the community as a use¬
ful citizen. Although the State
Hospital at Goldsboro has been most
cooperative in caring for the feeble¬
minded Negroes of the State, its
0 -
facilities are not adequate to meet
the on tire need.”
The need for additional day nur¬
series and play centers for Negro
children, Larkins pointed out as
acute because so many Negro
mothers work out and are away from
home for long hours, leaving their
children unsupervised. “This leads
to delinquency, poor health condi¬
tions, family disorganization and im¬
morality.”
He stated there was often need for
additional Negro workers in social
work agencies in order to interpret
the needs of the race. North Caro¬
lina now has 25 Negro workers em¬
ployed in 14 counties where the
proportion of Negro population is as
much as 25 percent of the total.
It is an accepted fact by most
authorities on social work, Larkins
said, that Negro workers are able to
secure better results among members
of their own race and assist them to
make the easiest adjustment.
War Makes Health
Job For Children
An Important One
By Katharine F. Lknroot.
Chief of the Children's Bureau,
U. S. Department of Labor
In war our first thought must be
to defeat the enemy, our next to save
and protect our children. To deny
the importance of childhood in a
world at war is to yield all hope for
the future. In facing health prob¬
lems, therefore, we are dealing with
matters which play an important pan
in our total war effort.
We have made progress in health.
Since 1935. when the Social Security
Act made federal funds available to
aid states in their child-health pro¬
grams, the maternal mortality rate In
the United States has been steadily
dropping — a reduction of 3 6 percent
occurred between 1934 and 1940.
We can also be proud of the reduction
we have made in our infant-mortality
rate, which has been declining over a
still longer period. Yet the rate of
4 7 deaths for every 1,000 live births
could be cut in half if good care were
available, especially in the days and
weeks immediately following birth.
All the states are cooperating with
the children's bureau in providing
maternal and child-health services
under the Social Security Act. Such
services have been greatly expanded
and strengthened, particularly in
rural areas, since 1935. Yet we are
still far from according the uniform
protection which England extends to
mothers and children.
One-tenth of the nation's children
are born with no physician in at¬
tendance. In only about, one-fourth
Beware Offers Of
Changes In Public
Assistance Grants
Beware of strangers offering for
a small consideration to have old age
assistance grants increased or boys
released from selective service or not.
drafted to the armed forces. That
was the warning issued by R. Eugene
Brown, director of the State welfare
department’s division of public as¬
sistance.
Brown said he had received infor¬
mation from Mrs. Eloise G. Franks,
Macon county welfare superintend¬
ent, that a man described by Macon
Deputy Sheriff John Dills as giving
the name of Lawrence Lowdermilk
and claiming to hail from Benton,
Tenu., had been arrested and jailed
there for making such promises.
“Cash grants paid persons receiv¬
ing aid to the needy aged cannot be
changed one way or another except
by action of their respective county
welfare boards,” the State director
pointed out.
“Only persons connected with
county welfare departments have
anything to do with these grants and
there is absolutely no fee of any
nature whatsoever that can be
charged a person applying for a
grant or asking for a revision of his
monthly allotment.
"As far as selective service and the
draft laws are concerned, the county
welfare departments can do nothing
except verify the claim that ccrtaiu
persons actually are dependent, upon
the prospective draftee. Even in this
respect they make no recommenda¬
tions hut merely turn over the facts
as discovered to the local draft board
in the same community for action,”
Brown said.
The Macon county case may be the
first, to come to light of many such
instances, Brown suggested, and
urged private citizens to be on the
lookout for other cases of attempted
swindling and report them to county
officials or the FBI as soon as they
are uncovered.
Lowdermilk is alleged to have im¬
personated a Washington representa¬
tive and to have promised his
attempted victims an increase in
their assistance grants or modifica¬
tion of selective service regulations
for their sons for a foe of anything
from two to five dollars..
of our 2,400 rural counties have
child-health conferences been made
available, where mothers can bring
their preschool children for exami¬
nation and for advice on health and
nutrition. In one-l'ourth of our
smaller cities there is no child-health
conference. Nearly half of our chil¬
dren live in cities where there is no
out-patient clinic for treatment of
sick children who cannot, afford a
private physician. School medical
service is generally inadequate. In
rural areas one public-health nurse
(See WAR MAKES, Page 2)