By Mary Lackie

Walt Anderson says he doesn’t know how he got involved, but he is working to get Negro and white teenagers off the streets.

Director of the House of USE (understanding, stimulation, education), Anderson said, “T guess I saw too many kids standing around on street corners with nothing to do.” About tow years ago, he said, “I just started walking up and sown the streets at night, going into poor halls, beer joints, crap games. Sure, the kids resented me at first—they were suspicious.”

“One guy stopped me on the street and asked me if I was a ‘secret agent’”, Anderson said. “I asked him if he had ever seen one. ‘No’, and I asked him, ‘Then why the hell do you think they would want to send a secret agent down here?’ The guy said, ‘Well, that’s the word that’s going around about you.’”

After Anderson got a “few guys out of jail, hired attorneys for them, and had some put on probation to me, the word got around, ‘If you’re in trouble, call Walt’”.

“Now I have so many phone calls, I can’t handle all of them,’ Anderson said. He has a file of about 300 boys and admits it is hard to do ‘follow-ups’ because he has been working alone. “But you have to stick with them, that’s all,” he said.

“Do you realize,” Anderson asked, “that 80 per cent of the juvenile crimes in this country are committed by 20 per cent of the teenage population? That Atlanta has one of the highest juvenile crime rates in the country? There is something drastically wrong somewhere.”

Most of the boys in the House of USE come from fatherless homes, and the majority have committed felonies of some kind, Anderson said. “They’ve spent time in the city stockade, juvenile courts, Alto, Reidsville. They have no sense of security.”

What does Anderson think about prison terms as punishment for teenage crime? “Prisons—are bad”, he said. “I’ve seen a 15-year-old kid sent up for five years for something so terrible as burglary.”

Anderson’s idea is “to try to do a little crime prevention.”

“I try to find them jobs, hire attorneys when they need one, get them back in school; give them a better self-image—that’s why I wear a tie.”

Anderson, an ex-Marine, said, “I guess the reason I get respect out of these guys is because I don’t take any trash from them. You have to be firm and fair—and the important thing is that when you have to discipline them, you are damn sure you are right.”

Anderson was sure he was right about his project, but he did a little crime prevention for a little longer than he could afford. “Most of my salary was spent on this—I was going broke,” he said.

So he started knocking on some doors and writing letters to people. “I just told them who I was, and what I needed.” Anderson said, “Out of 39 people, I had only three denials. I guess that is pretty good.”

Anderson gained support from business and civic leaders who formed an advisory council for the House of USE. The new program is sponsored by the Butler St. YMCA and funded by United Appeal and EOA. The House of USE will be located in a building at the corner of Georgia Avenue and Terry Street.

“Now we can provide help for 500 ‘hard-core, unemployed, disadvantaged teenagers between the ages of 16 and 25,” Anderson said. The renovated building will offer a place for recreational facilities, vocational training and basic education courses.

The House of USE will be staffed by Anderson, a full-time professional assistant, a counselor for the girls, and four assistants from among the boys “who have stuck with me,” Anderson said.

“Our main purpose here is just to get these kids to the point where they will be motivated to get into some legitimate enterprise, find jobs, get back in school—so they can grow up to be ‘decent citizens—for instance, buying their cars on time instead of hustling them,” he said.

“For some of the boys, it means giving them just a small responsibility at first,” Anderson said. “But they know they have that job to do, and do it right.’ Anderson doesn’t keep assistants long. “As soon as they are ready to get jobs and be on their own, I let them go,” he said.

Sometimes the change in behavior is slow. Anderson gave one example: “One of the kids kept getting into trouble for a long time. Then one day, he loaned his hat to another boy. That boy wound up shooting a man with a shotgun. So the police go looking for the kid that owned the hat. It took about a week to prove to them they had the wrong boy, and in the meantime, they found the other guy,” Anderson said.

“The incident really put a scare into that kid,” he said, “Now he has a steady job in a warehouse, makes about $85 a week, and is considered one of the leaders around here.”

Within the group of boys, there is a council called the Thumpers. “They are selected from among the biggest and toughest around here,’ Anderson said. Asked what the Thumpers do, Anderson replied, “They thump people. That’s their responsibility. When we have dances, they make sure nothing gets started, and they pick up weapons, like that, keep things under control. Of course,” he said, “you have to be careful they don’t start thumping just anybody.’

Anderson and the boys cleaned out the building that will be the House of USE. It is empty now, waiting for painters and planners to complete renovations. The place will be open from noon until midnight, Anderson said, “because that’s when the kids are on the corners. We expect to be in operation in about two weeks, and I think we are headed in the right direction.

“Atlanta has an unique opportunity” Anderson said, “We are looking at a growing city-a city still in the stages of conception. We have the chance to capitalize on all the mistakes that were made in cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit. Their slum problems, their crime rates—we could prevent all this, and what are we doing about it? Not a damn thing.”

In his spare time, Anderson is writing a book. “It will be about the South, and cover material nobody has thought about or written about before—it will make “Manchild in the Promised Land” look like a picnic, he said.

“Anderson is unencumbered,” said the Rev. Allison Williams, pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church, and an early backer of the House of USE project. “What intrigues me,” said the Rev. Mr. Williams, “is that there is not a lot of structure here to hobble the work. Anderson can establish a person-to-person encounter with people in need.” The minister, a member of the advisory council, said “The House of USE has generated a chain of interest among business leaders.”

One of the leaders and a council officer, said, “This is an area where businessmen should have an interest. We hope we can do some good in this effort to help unemployed youth develop their skills.”

“I have known Walt Anderson about three months,” said Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan, “but that was long enough to find out that this man is a Christian modeled after the gospels. When a man stakes his time, money and energies against the hopelessness and despair of young lives, I am for him.”

“I have been honored,” the archbishop said, “by this appointment to the advisory council, but also chagrined that these things had to be pointed out to me.”

He said, “Catholics who help Walt Anderson, whether in time or in money, are producting good credentials for the Last Judgment.”