DOES THE NORTH AFFORD TO THE NEGRO BETTER OPPORTUNITIES OF MAKING A LIVING THAN THE SOUTH?
BY REV. J. H. ANDERSON.
REV. J. H. ANDERSON, D. D.
Rev. J. H. Anderson was born June 30, 1848, in Frederick, Md. Dr. Anderson is what is called a self-made man, he having attended school only six months in his life and studied a short time under a private tutor. By hard, persistent efforts and close application to books, Dr. Anderson has risen to a point in scholarship and prominence that only a few college Negroes have reached. He is noted as a pulpit orator and platform speaker. He has attained to some prominence as a writer and takes front rank as a preacher in his denomination. For his scholarly attainments and usefulness as a minister of the gospel, Livingstone College conferred upon him, in 1896, the degree of doctor of divinity. Dr. Anderson was one of those heroic liberty-loving souls who went to the battlefield in the Civil War to fight for their and their race's freedom.
Colonization is a condition of cosmopolitan society as it is of races. As "birds of a feather flock together," so the different races in the American civilization form settlements or colonies, as far as possible. The truthfulness of this statement is seen in the thickly-settled German, Irish, Jewish and Italian communities in the North. Their race affinities produce natural and social relations promotive of their varied interests. The Negro's civil and social privileges are more restricted in the South than in the North, owing to which fact the Negroes of the South are more united than the Negroes of the North. In the North a few individuals may rise to intellectual, professional, business and mechanical distinctions, but from general employment in the skilled industries, business enterprises and political preferment he is debarred, and, being cheaply and conveniently accommodated in almost every respect by the whites, he is not under the same necessity as the Southern Negro to establish and operate business enterprises. It is rather inconvenient to establish and maintain Negro business enterprises and schools in the North, for the reason that there are no thickly settled communities. A Negro lawyer, doctor, dressmaker, music teacher, hair dresser and mechanic do well in some instances, because they receive patronage from the whites. It is not so much the prejudice of the whites nor the indifference of the Negro as it is the peculiar conditions of the North that prevent the Negro from enjoying the business enterprises and founding race institutions. The few new institutions and even churches in the North are largely sustained by donations from the whites. Renting houses and purchasing property and living in the North are commensurate with the large scale and competition along all lines of industry, and social life is so active that the most rigid economy and business tact are essential to success in any kind of business in the North.
The Negro who embarks in business in the North has not only to compete with his own people, but with the shrewd Yankee, who seeks to monopolize all interests that have money in them. The Negro of the North for the most part appears to be content with his superior civil and social privileges. He breathes the air with more perfect liberty, enjoys life free from violence, is vindicated and redressed at law and recognized in his citizen rights, and, like the Pharisee, thanks God that he is not like the ex-slave of the South, and this is the height of his ambition. Three-fourths of the freeholding and tax-paying Negroes in the North are from the South, and Southern Negro labor is preferred in the North as in the South. Waiters, domestic servants, janitors, teamsters, laundry men and coachmen from the South can find employment in the North. Any industrious Southern Negro can find common labor to do in the North.
Before the formation of labor unions and federations in the North, the Negro skilled laborer found employment, but after deciding to exclude the Negro from membership these unions became an effective dictating power to employ when Negroes applied to them for work.
The tax-payers in many Northern sections favor mixed schools because it is less expensive to have them. They would not be justified in maintaining separate schools for the few Negro pupils. Of course, race favoritism, competition and prejudice, combine to exclude Negro teachers, and yet a few Negro teachers are employed to teach in the mixed schools. That Negro children, procuring their education by Negro teachers in the Negro schools, can better appreciate race efficiency and dignity there can be no question. The Northern Negro is ill fitted for living in the South, it being difficult for him to adapt himself to the conditions of the South, yet it is quite easy for the Southern Negro to adapt himself to the North where full and free expression is equally accorded to all, and where no legal discriminations are made and where the social question is left for adjustment by the parties nearest concerned. In the North the Negro has the opportunity of advocating the interests of his Southern brother in a way that would not be tolerated in the South, and thus the Northern Negro can assist in the formation of a proper sentiment in his favor. The Northern Negro is, therefore, a necessity to the Southern Negroes, and vice versa. The Negro's destiny is to be worked out in the South because he has greater numerical strength and superior advantages in the South, notwithstanding the civil, social and legal restrictions upon him. The lesson of self-dependence and self-effort is forced upon the Southern Negro as not upon the Northern Negro.
When the Southern Negro was emancipated, his first thought was education, and, adhering steadfastly to this idea, he has made a progressive education since his emancipation that has astounded the civilized world. No school-loving race can be kept down or back. Brought here a heathen, the Negro soon exchanged fetichism for Christianity, and, having been trained in the school of servile labor for centuries, he learned how to labor so that when his emancipation came he was prepared to strike out on lines of self development, and he has made in thirty-six years a progress in the acquisition of wealth that is without a parallel in history.