[396] Ibid. p. 105.
[397] The New Republic, February 14, 1923.
[398] Negro in Chicago, p. XXIII.
[399] Ibid. p. 193.
[400] Ibid. p. 306.
CHAPTER XVII
Passing from the report of the Negro riot in Chicago, of 1919 to the Negro Year Book for the same date, we find therein the assertion, that the aggregate wealth of the 10,300,000 Negroes in the United States, at that date, was estimated at $1,100,000,000.
Whatever the wealth or progress of the Negroes in the United States is asserted to be, at any time, it is customary to allude to it, as that much in excess of nothing at the time of Emancipation. The Negro writers in particular are prone to claim this. This has been, in some degree, shown in this study to be incorrect; but it may be well to go a little further into the matter.
In the year 1860 the 4,441,800 colored persons in the United States consisted of 488,070 free persons of color and 3,953,730 Negro and mulatto slaves. The 488,070 free persons of color were about evenly divided between the Northern and the Southern States. They possessed property. What was the probable value of their holdings?
The Census of 1860 shows, that in the city of Charleston, South Carolina, there were 3,237 free persons of color and that 357 of them returned property for taxation, on which they paid $12,015.60 in taxes, mainly upon real estate, probably about seven-eighths of the whole. But they also paid taxes on income and business, as well as head taxes on the slaves they owned and upon their horses, carriages and dogs. With the generally accepted average value for slaves and a safe valuation for horse-flesh, as the value of the real estate is disclosed, we can calculate that the aggregate wealth of the free persons of color in Charleston, S. C., in 1860 must have been about $888,650. Unless there was some particular advantage, materially, in a residence, by free persons of color, in that State and city most identified with “the peculiar institution,” the per capita established can be extended to the whole population of this class in the United States, at that date; which would have accordingly amounted to about $133,989,231.