Pershing and Theresa

MORALE

The fancy look of some hotels that the Army has taken over for its redistribution centers makes G.I. guests gasp. After a fortnight of top-priced splendor ($30 a day for two) at Asheville's Grove Park Inn (cost for soldiers, nothing; for soldiers wives, $1.50 a day) Corporal and Mrs. Harry Paczynski of Erie, Pa. were still pinching themselves. Said Mrs. Paczynski, after wandering through the huge, hushed lounge of the great grey stone pile: "Sometimes I wonder if I'm dreaming."

Grove Park Inn is one of 48 resort hotels--at Asheville, Miami, Lake Placid, Santa Barbara, etc.--now used as redistribution centers for soldiers returning from battle. Last week the Army got started on two more centers. For Negro troops, it took over the Hotel Pershing on the border of Chicago's Negro district, got ready to move into the Hotel Theresa in Harlem.

Although these hotels are among the biggest and best of their kind, both are located in jampacked sections, are far from extravagantly comfortable (single-room rates for civilians: $1.50 to $4 a day) The Pershing's best feature is a cocktail lounge on which $30,000 was spent last May. Facilities for golf, tennis, horseback riding, etc., are six blocks away (in Chicago's Washington Park). The Theresa has recreation rooms but is even farther from open spaces.

Crying Jim Crow, some Negro papers, while admitting that the Negro soldier would probably get along much better in Chicago and New York than in a place like Asheville, objected strongly to the segregation, on principle. They also objected because permanent guests of both hotels would be hard put to it to find room elsewhere.

By week's end the howl grew loud enough to reach the White House and partially halt the plan. The Army continued its evacuation of Pershing residents but the final decision was still to come from the President.

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