Orlean, her father and her brother-in-law had begun buying a home on Vernon avenue for which they were to pay four thousand, five hundred dollars. Of this amount three hundred dollars had been paid, one hundred by each of them. It was a nice little place, with eight rooms and with a stone front. Ethel had not paid anything, using her money in preparation for her wedding, which had taken place in September. Claves and her father had spent two hundred on it, which seemed very foolish, and were pinched to the last cent when it was done.

Claves had borrowed five dollars from his brother when they went on the wedding trip, to pay for a taxi to the depot. The wedding tour and honeymoon lasted two weeks and was spent in Racine, Wisconsin, sixty miles north of Chicago. They had just returned when I went to Chicago. When I first called, Mrs. Claves did not come down but when we returned to the house she condescended to come down and shake hands. She put on enough airs to have been a king's daughter.

With the three hundred dollars already paid on the home, they figured they should be able to pay for it in seven years in monthly installments of thirty-five dollars, paying the interest upon the principal at the same time, excepting two thousand which was in a first mortgage and drew five per cent and payable semi-annually. The house was in a quiet neighborhood much unlike the south end of Dearborn street and Armour avenue where none but colored people live.

The better class of Chicago's colored population was making a strenuous effort to get away from the rougher set, as well as to get out of the black belt which is centered around Armour, Dearborn, State and Thirty-first. Here the saloons, barbershops, restaurants and vaudeville shows are run by colored people, also the clubs and dance houses. East from State street to the lake, which is referred to by the colored people of the city as "east of State," there is another and altogether different class. Here for a long while colored people could hardly rent or buy a place, then as the white population drifted farther south, to Greenwood avenue, Hyde Park, Kenwood and other parts now fashionable districts, some of the avenues including Wabash, Rhodes, Calumet, Vernon and Indiana began renting to colored people and a few began buying.

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.