| ,  Jamuasxy 10, 1945.

Mr. Clifford Dean,
Superintendent of Schools, |
Lawrence, Kansas.

Dear Clifford:

I am sending you the time for Norman Carlson, Everett Hill and Wayne
Hird for their work at the Community Building during the holidays, and am
also giving you the attendance as nearly as we can evaluate it. Sometimes
we were in the same position as that old colored Peis ee ae
ing to count his pigs.

"Mose, how many piga do you have?" the fellow queried. "Well," Mose
said, "T gounted 24, but one little devil ran around so fast I couldn't
count him.” That applies to our Commmity Building.

: I might explain why we opened at one o’olock in“tho afternoon. They
stormed the building so vociferously that the janitor and Harold Fisher
agreed that it was better to let them in than to try to keep them out.

- We had all sizes and colors. We generally gave the colored boys half of
the court when they arrived in such numbers that it might appear 4s 4f

there would be race disotimination, but the discrimination was in favor
of the colored race because the white boys would have to wait an
their turn. Generally the colored boys were permitted have the north
half of the building.

I think it was a good thing to open the doors when we did.
the doors looked and keeping the boys out they created more noise and mis-
chief than if we let them in, but as soon as we opened the door they would
flock in, and strange as it my seem, we did not have one case of discipline.
. Neither was there any breakage, save a table that was out in the lobby -
one of those folding dining room tables which was rather fragile. Appar-
ently some one either sat on it or knocked it over and broke one of the
hinges. Otherwise, the boys were well behaved. |

Frankly, Clifford, I think we should do something more constructive
by hiring Woody or some of the boys to stay here during the Thanksgiving
and Christmas vacations and organizing things in such a way that the
gymasiums of the school buildings would be open. And I would even go

so far aa to suggest that we ought to arrange our painting of the high
school so that it could be done some tims other than at Christmas.

I used the four University balls, and while there was a good deal
of wear and tear on those things, there was no charge for them. One of
the balls disappeared for two or three days, but it turned up, which is a
fine criterion as to the honesty of some of the boys because who ever had