Evidences of Progress Among Colored People

by G. F. Richings

Dr. O. A. Lockhart is another young man with a good practice and the owner of a successful drug store. He is a self-made man, who had a hard struggle to get an education.

Mr. F. H. Crumbly, who has for some years been in the regular army, has returned and opened a dry goods and notions store. Mr. Crumbly is a graduate of Atlanta University, and is a man who is much thought of by both white and colored people, and is meeting with success in his business because of his popularity and good judgment. He stood high as a soldier, and was a commissioned officer in the late war with Spain. He gave up a business to go in the army.

On the same street is to be found Mr. Peter Eskridge, who learned while a slave the blacksmith's trade, which he followed until 1880, when he started a grocery business, and in this he has succeeded. He had not the educational advantages needed for a successful business man, but he educated his daughters and since they have been of great help to their father in keeping his accounts.

I have always claimed that in most cases in the South white people would give some of their patronage to colored merchants, and I am more and more of that opinion since I met Mr. Willis Murphy & Son, who carry on a large and very successful grocery business in a part of the city of Atlanta where they reach a great number of the working people among the whites, and most of the trade comes from that class.

Mr. G. M. Howell, a young man, does quite a good business as a merchant tailor in one of the rooms under the Kimble House. I can speak for Mr. Howell's workmanship as a tailor from the fact that I have had work done by him. I think a large portion of his patronage comes from white people.

Mrs. M. A. Pennamone, of Atlanta, does quite a business as a milliner, and strange to say most of her customers are white people. I have often wondered why there were not more colored women in the millinery business.

In addition to those already mentioned from Atlanta, there are many engaged in various walks of life, such as conducting wood yards, coal yards, draying and doing just what white people do who want to earn an honest living. Atlanta has six educational institutions, to say nothing of the city or public schools, in which there are employed some seventy-five colored teachers. I have been told by the better class of white men in the South, that "colored people own far more property and are getting along much better than the middle and lower classes of the whites." I have heard it said that the only progress being made by colored people in this country was in the South. I am indeed willing to give the South credit for its wonderful development, but as a friend to the race in all parts of the country, I must say that the colored people are also making progress in the North. True, many of our successful men in the North came from the South; but they built up their business in the North.

I met while in Indianapolis, Ind., some very successful people in the persons of the following gentlemen:

Capt. J. Porter is employed as a bank clerk in a white bank. He is the only colored man I have met holding just such a position. The men at the head of the bank regard him as a very reliable and competent man.