At Night, It Is a Nether Ghetto

Long after normal nightclubbing ends, the "after hours" and "cheat" liquor spots hold magic charm for some people.

A little-known

shady

fringe of society goes out looking for "kicks."

"Kicks" can mean anything from getting stone drunk to a homosexual experience. It can and frequently does mean something a person would be ashamed of-say, a family man who lived in the suburbs but got his "kicks" in East Side joints.

THE COLOR of skin makes no difference.

In a community such as Cleveland, with a large Negro population and

a

Cleveland's Frustration Negroes-

large area of the inner city turned into a ghetto, the "cheat" spot is a way of making that extra dollar.

That extra dollar lifts the divorced mother or the overburdened father an inch above the survival line.

Ghetto bootleggers sell whisky pints in the kitchen for instant, tax-free money. The only risks are the "shakedown" and the raid.

Hope

BY DORIS. O ́DONNE¡ I.

THE "STATE MAN"-the state liquor enforcement agent-is the big fear. Each risk is matter-of-factly considered in the profit-andloss columns of people running "cheat" spots.

On the surface, it looks like a small-potato operation. But Ralph E. Krieger, Cleveland area liquor enforcement chief for the state, estimates there are 5,000 small-time bootleggers

in Cleveland handling a multimillion-dollar business.

By daylight these places are hidden here and there behind the shabby architecture of many Negro neighborhoods

BY DAY children play in the streets. Bill collectors and deliverymen drive up in their cars and trucks, going about their daily tasks.

Perhaps the worst offense to be seen is a group of boys shooting dice.

At night the normal neighborhood people vanish with their children inside their homes.

Until the early dawn, the small narrow streets are alive with cars and people -the people looking for "kicks."

In these neighborhoods, the honest, hard-working Negro and his family and the Negro mother on welfare and her brood also live. They may complain about the illicit activities next door or up the street but nothing happens.

OBVIOUSLY a lot of "slumming" goes on in this sort of night life. Many of those who haunt these places night after night live either on the fringe of the law or else outside the law.

"They carry guns, they gamble and they go to cheat spots to drink-all these things are outside the law," said a resident. "They have no means of regular income except perhaps to work at a bar. Most make their money through thievery and robbery." Continued on Page 7, Col. 1