Charles LeRoy Lewis - Special Collections - University of Baltimore

LEWIS #099 3:1:74
that they also take in the girls. But that is a point of
it wa& helping the children out to go along. In other words,
we sponsored baseball games and basketball games, But some
of the children can't get equipment, so you don't embarrass a
child if he's not in position to get it: we always arranged
some kind of a deal that he won the equipment he needed, him-
self. Things that you do - and make them feel good. A child
gets out and learns- Now, most parents are busy making money
for their children and they don't really enjoy their children,
and when they come out with the men it gives them a chance to
see what they can do when they go out, I've had children
setting next to me didn't know they how to . . . at the
dinner - and I supervised and look after them, and I didn't
have no trouble with them. Later on, 3 met them different
places out and they always came around me. But the parents
give them money and all that, a lot of them. But they just
don't have the the to take care 05 them or take them any-
where.
Harvey: Is it accurate to say then that the new clubs are
more social clubs, wheras the old lodges dealt more with
moral and political things, and that there were more rigid
requirements for getting in?
Lewis: That's right.
Harvey: What kind of requirements did they have fox getting
in to, say, the Junior Order of Mechankcs?
Lewis: Well, those days you had to be clean character. You
couldn't have no police record and you had to be a church-
going person. And then, even then, something that maybe a