Most of Chestertown's Negroes stayed at home and did nothing. Then, in the late 30's, Vita Foods established a factory to take advantage of the extremely rich soil on the Eastern Shore. This, together with the war industries that sprouted throughout Maryland, offered full employment for both Negro and white.

Vita takes on about 600 steady employees, most of them Negroes, and its existence made steady employment possible in the years after the war. Now Chestertown also plays host to a Campbell's Food factory, one of the many refugees from "creeping unionism" in the East. This allows the white community, if pressed, to point out that there is almost full employment for colored people, "and they receive better money than most of our white salesgirls, too."

Many of the older Negroes, recalling what life was like during their youths, share in this sanguinity. The younger ones are caught between an attachment to home and their families' traditions, and the knowledge that they might do better elsewhere, or even in Chestertown if they defy their parents. Getting away from home is a real problem for these young people. One of the brightest of them, for instance, quit Morgan State College in Baltimore after three months because he was too homesick; others have thought to make careers in the army, and then quit after two lonely years.

Six Self-Employed Negroes

At present, apart from ministers and teachers at the colored school, exactly six Negroes are self-sufficient: two own barber shops, one a beauty parlor, two have restaurants, and there is one undertaker. Young people, if they want to stay near their families, must confine their ambitions to the possible acquisition of skilled job either bottling pickles and herrings (at Vita) or plucking bones from dead chickens (at Campbell's).

The white communities' argument is that integration will come "through evolution rather than revolution." One might answer that the hiring of a few Negro sales-girls and floor-sweepers in white-owned shops hardly constitutes a revolution, but to say such things is to talk to oneself. Reason is no answer to the constant refrain: "we don't want trouble."

Some of the more liberal whites have learned just how deep-seated is this resistance to change. Several weeks ago the wife of one of the Gentile store owners invited a Negro to her house, to address some of the town's University graduates. Several days later she received a note saying that her house would be bombed if she continued to do such things. She immediately resigned from the University women's club, and her husband issued a public apology.