XII. The Newspapers and the Negro.
There is general complaint among the colored people that we do not get newspaper notices only of our misdeeds. This is not true. The best papers, North and South, publish whatever information they can get worthy of commendation. We are too sensitive on this point. My experience and observation are that the press is well disposed toward the Negro. It is true there are many papers of small reputation full of prejudice, or surrounded by a narrow-minded constituency, that do not wish the Negro well, but they are a weak minority. The following taken from the Huntsville (Ala.) Daily Mercury of recent date, sufficiently proves my position.
"The workmen employed on the Baker & Helm block on the corner of Washington and Clinton Sts., are workmen right, and deserve a word of kind praise for the 'big licks' they have accomplished in the erection of this building.
"We are told that every brick layer on the work is a colored man, and we do not hesitate to say that they have shown up wonderfully well, and performed good, honest labor quickly done. The rafters for the roof are now being placed in position, and once the roof is on, the finishing strokes will be given with refreshing precision. All honor to the colored mechanics, they are entitled to much praise, and we shall see that they get all they deserve, and which they are justly entitled to."
Also, M. Quad, the correspondent of the Detroit Free Press, writing from Eufaula, Alabama, says of the colored people there:
"Come down here and I will show you hundreds of acres of the best lands which are owned by the black men. I can show you from ten to twelve colored men who have more acres, better buildings, and more cash than any like number of white farmers in some of our Michigan counties. The colored school is fully equal to the white one, and the people speak of this fact with pride. There was a time when the streets of Eufaula were crowded with vagrant blacks, none of whom had the ambition to earn a shilling more than would give him food and clothes. The vagrant laws were enforced, and the change was astonishing. There is not an idler in the place. There is not a black man in or around the town who isn't given the fairest kind of a show to go ahead. While the white man will always enforce respect, he will bear and assist and condone. Alabama is to-day doing more for the flesh and blood it once cracked the slave whip over than Michigan is doing for its unlettered and vicious white population. The black man of the south is improving every year, and no one will concede this quicker nor feel prouder over the fact than the southern whites. There need be no sympathy wasted on the black man of Alabama. He is doing for himself in education and finance, far better than some of the white population of the north."
Possess merit and that will tell whether you get into the papers or not.
The means of obtaining the kinds of notices we wish published in the white papers, are quite meagre. The court records are the only information accessible to them. Very few of us have any business or association with the white press. We never think of letting them know of our transactions, hence how can they receive notice? This complaint is without justification and should cease Stand up for the colored press, and it will prove ample for us in all things.