“They’d think you’re crazy if you had a colored woman visit you in your home. They’d stare at you and there’d be a lot of talk.”

“I started to cry when my husband told me we were coming to live here…. I didn’t want to come and live here where there were so many colored people. I didn’t want to bring my children up with colored children, but we had to come; there was no place else to go. Well, all that’s changed. I’ve really come to like it. I see they’re just as human as we are. They have nice apartments, they keep their children clean, and they’re friendly. I’ve come to like them a great deal…. I’d just as soon live near a colored person as a white; it makes no difference to me.”

“They’re so prejudiced; I’d be afraid to live among them.”

The [housing] projects in Harlem [the predominantly black section of Manhattan] are hated. They are hated almost as much as policemen, and this is saying a great deal. And they are hated for the same reason: both reveal, unbearably, the real attitude of the white world, no matter how many liberal speeches are made, no matter how lofty editorials are written, no matter how many civil-rights commissions are set up … for the Northerner, Negroes represent nothing to him personally, except, perhaps, the dangers of carnality. He never sees Negroes.