Atlanta Daily World

Solving Delinquency

We congratulate Miss Hattie Olivia Daniels and Eugene Thomas, student seniors at the Booker T. Washington upon their being named as the outstanding "Boy and Girl" of the Year contest, which ended here Sunday afternoon under the sponsorship of the Young Men's Christian Association. We congratulate those whose vision and foresight influenced those making possible the awards and most of all we extend deep appreciation to the donor whose faith in the potential worth and value of Negro youth is measured, both in spiritual values and financial investment.

Society is deeply concerned over the increase in juvenile delinquency. The school, the home, the neighborhood, the economic system--all come in for a substantial share of blame for the waste and tragedy that is manifest in the lives of our young people.

This excerpt from the New York Times: "Juvenile delinquency has its roots deep in our slums, in the economic inequalities of our system in the vast, subterranean human and social dislocations produced by the war, in our social mores which frustrate the deepest yearnings of young people, in economic insecurity, in racial discrimination, in parental neglect and cruelty, in ineffective schools--in short, in all that is evil in man and society."

We can all render an effective service in the matter of delinquency. The Butler Street YMCA has pointed the way, which if pursued to its logical ends, will do more than a thousand lectures on right and wrong: more than all the theory in books. What we need is a practical approach to this problem.