The Conquest: The Story of a Negro PioneerMicheaux, Oscar
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The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Micheaux, Oscar
African American pioneers -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; South Dakota -- Fiction; Western stories
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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