In short, the Negro is beginning to awaken to the fact that if he is to survive and succeed in Northern cities, it must be by his own skill, energy, and organisation. For, like any individual or any race, striving for a place in industry or in modern commercial life, the Negro must, in order to succeed, not only equal his competitor, but become more efficient. A Negro contractor said to me:
“Yes, I can get any amount of work, but they expect me to do it a little better and a little cheaper than my white competitors.” Then he added:
“And I can do it, too!”
Those are the only terms on which success can be won.
For so long a time the Negro has been driven or forced to work, as in the South, that he learns only slowly, in an intense, impersonal, competitive life like that of the North, where work is at a premium, that he himself, not the white man, must do the driving. It is the lesson that raises any man from slavery into freedom.
Pullman Porters
So much for industry. The Negro in the North has also been going into business and into other and varied employment. The very difficulty of getting hold in the trades and in salaried employment has driven many coloured people into small business enterprises: grocery stores, tailor shops, real estate or renting agencies. If they are being driven out by white men as waiters and barbers, they enjoy, on the other hand, growing opportunities as railroad and Pullman porters and waiters—places which are often highly profitable, and lead, if the Negro saves his money, to better openings. A Negro banker whom I met in the South told me that he got his start as a Pullman porter. He had a good run, and by being active and accommodating, often made from $150 to $200 a month from his wages and tips.
But the same change is going on in the North that I found everywhere in the South. I mean a growing race consciousness among Negroes—the building up of a more or less independent Negro community life within the greater white civilisation. Every force seems to be working in that direction.
Business Among Boston and Philadelphia Negroes
As I have showed many Negroes in Boston (and indeed in other cities) have made a success in business enterprises which are patronised by white people—or rather by both races. Coloured doctors and lawyers in Boston have more or less white practice. Of course, coloured men who can succeed without reference to their colour and do business with both races, wish to continue to do so—but the tendency in the North, as in the South, is all against such development and toward Negro enterprises for the Negro population. Even in Boston numerous enterprises are conducted by Negroes for Negroes. I visited several small but prosperous grocery stores. A Negro named Basil F. Hutchins has built up a thriving undertaking and livery establishment for Negro trade. Charles W. Alexander has a print-shop with coloured workmen and publishes Alexander’s Magazine. A new hotel called the Astor House, conducted by Negroes for Negroes, has 250 rooms with telephone service in each room, a large restaurant and many of the other attractions of a good hotel. But in this growth the North is far behind the South. Scores of Negro banks are to be found in the South, not one in the North. Cities like Richmond, Va., Jackson, Miss., Nashville, Tenn., have a really remarkable development of Negro business enterprises.