Children playing in a vacant lot in the Negro section

"'Black Belt' housing, ninety per cent absentee-owned, was mostly old before Negro occupation. Landlord, sure of tenancy at high rents regardless of condition, do little in the way of repairs or improvements to prevent complete deterioration. Final results of this policy is demolition, collapse or destruction by fire and thus the further reduction of available facilitates." Horace Cayton, Negro Housing in Chicago, 1941