“Yes, I did, too. Folks are always yowling about colored slums.”

“Whatever got you on this subject, anyhow?”

“Mrs. Sadie Maxwell-Reeves, Joyce’s club lady friend,” said Simple. “She has done moved into a high-class white neighborhood. But no sooner than she got there hardly, than another colored family moved in—which made her mad. Now, six more houses in the block have been sold to colored. Mrs. Maxwell-Reeves is beginning to think that she had just as well have stayed in Harlem and not tried to get outside the circle. Which I reckon she had, because she says it won’t be no time now before the candy store on the corner is turned into a bar, and the jukebox will be playing ‘Jelly! Jelly! Jelly!’”

“Surely Mrs. Reeves does not object to living next door to Negroes does she, being colored herself?”

“She shouldn’t, but I am afraid she do. She’s been telling Joyce for a year that she was moving out into a nice white neighborhood in the suburbans. She has moved. But by this time next year, she’ll find herself in a nice colored neighborhood. Only Mrs. Maxwell-Reeves is afraid it won’t be so nice by then—when all her own peoples gets out there. She says we is caught in a vicious circle. I asked Joyce who’s to blame. Who started that neighborhood to turning colored? Answer: Mrs. Maxwell-Reeves herself! If she hadn’t broke the ice and overpaid the price to move in, that block would still have been white. But when them white folks looked out the window and saw Sadie Maxwell-Reeves they started packing to leave. Real-estate prices went way up the next day. The agents saw Negroes coming, so they charged double to even inspect a house. Still Negroes buy, no matter how high. Now, Mrs. Maxwell-Reeves is no longer by herself.”

“What do you mean, by herself?” I asked. “Negroes in white neighborhoods are not by themselves.”

“They are colored, though, ain’t they?” said Simple.

“Isolationist,” I said. “Self-segregationist! What do you want Negroes to do, never expand, never spread out?”

“Spread out all they like,” said Simple. “But don’t get mad if some other Negro spreads out with you. If Mrs. Maxwell-Reeves wants the whole white neighborhood to herself, with no other colored in it, then she ought to buy the whole neighborhood, the whole suburbans, not just one house. Mrs. Reeves got mad because when she moved in the block, here come some more colored folks moving in. Now one house has already got a ROOMS FOR RENT sign up, so she told Joyce. ‘Roomers run down property,’ says Mrs. Reeves. Which they do. Me, myself, to tell the truth, if I had a house, I would not want a roomer in it.”

“You were a roomer yourself for years,” I said, “before you got married.”