Place of Enjoyment

Sightseers in Cleveland usually go to see Karamu House. A cross between a school and settlement house, it got its name from a Swahili word meaning "place of enjoyment," comes close to being the ugliest institution in the U. S. Its five grey shanties squat in the heart of the "Roaring Third," Cleveland's worst slum. Its students, dressed in caps, windbreakers, overcoats, shriek at each other as they work, now & again break off for impromp tu boxing matches. Yet Clevelanders were not surprised last week when the Charles Eisenman Award, Cleveland's most cov eted civic prize, was given to the directors of Karamu House.

Karamu House's directors are an extraordinary pair named Russell and Rowens Jelliffe. They went to Oberlin College together, did social work in Chicago, went to the "Roaring Third" in 1915 at the invitation of Cleveland's Second Presbyterian Church. Taking over an abandoned funeral parlor, they invited in the neighborhood youngsters, white and black, for games and dancing. They soon decided that 1) most Negroes are born artists, 2) in their art lies Negroes' best chance for winning a secure place in U. S. society.

The Jellifies had little money, used in genuity instead. When famed Negro Actor Charles Gilpin gave them $50 to start a Negro theatre, they launched the Gilpin Players in a converted poolroom. They made spotlights of tin cans, tapestries of burlap, seats of secondhand pews. They started other groups painting, etching, dancing, singing, composing, band-playing, glazing pottery. One day a 14-year-old boy named Zell Ingram, having learned puppet-making in Karamu House, decided to see the world. He bought an old Ford, converted its rumble seat into a stage, paid his way to Manhattan and back by giving shows along the road. Now Zell Ingram is a well-known sculptor. Karamu House also is proud of Elmer Brown, who arrived there as a fugitive from a Mississippi chain gang, eventually had his etchings exhibited in the International Print Show.

Today Karamu House is a study and workshop for 1,400 youngsters and 800 grownups. Its Gilpin Players have produced 140 plays, rank as the No. 1 Negro theatre in the U. S. They have graduated to the professional stage Playwright Langston Hughes, Actor John Marriott (The Little Foxes}, many another talented Negro. Two months ago 600 Clevelanders, big & small, gathered to celebrate Karamu House's 25th anniversary. Said Play wright Paul Green: "The Jelliffes are the kind of dreamers who have made America great." To play a joke on teacher by falling asleep in class, six Minneapolis eleven-year-olds took "sleeping tablets," niched from a medicine cabinet. Clark Synnes lost his nerve, began to pace the floor. Teacher: "Why are you so nervous?" Clark: "You'd be nervous too if you had just taken poison." Doctors administered emetics, found they had taken strychnine sulfate by mistake.

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