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Malnutrition and overcrowding have caused an appalling health situation. Whereas the general city death rate is less than 11 per 1,000, Harlem's is 18.15 and in its worst section ("the sore spot") the rate reaches 21. Tuberculosis causes 60 deaths out of every 1,000 in the city at large. Harlem's figure of 191 in 1929 has climbed to 250 since Depression.
To cry out against such evils, a quarter of a million Negroes must rely on an extraordinarily feeble collection of politicians of their own race. Tammany runs Harlem politically, parcels out a few appointive jobs to Negroes. In the district are one Negro police lieutenant, a Negro acting school superintendent, a Negro tax commissioner, two Negro judges, a Negro Civil Service commissioner, two Negro district attorneys. But in elective offices, Harlem has scant representation: two members of the Board of Aldermen, two State Assemblymen. Holding a balance of power last week, Harlem's two Assemblymen managed to defeat Governor Lehman's New York State reapportionment bill which would have given Harlem one more Assemblyman but no State Senator or U. S. Representative.
Committee & Culprit. After the Chicago riots a commission was appointed to see what could be done about improving the Negroes' lot. Following suit, Mayor LaGuardia last week appointed a similar committee composed of prominent Negroes like Poet Countee Cullen and President A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, such professional white committeemen as Trustee William Jay Schieffelin of Tuskegee Institute, Lawyers Morris Ernst and Arthur Garfield Hays.
And as the week ended, Culprit Lino Rivera bobbed up in a Brooklyn court on a charge of trying to use a tinfoil slug in place of a nickel in a subway turnstile. Promising once more to be good, he was paroled to a city probation officer.