WILLIAM WHIPPER.
The subject of this sketch is one of the deepest thinkers of which the black man can boast in our broad land. In early life, he was engaged in the lumber trade in Columbia, Pennsylvania, in which he secured a competency. Even while battling with the world for filthy lucre, Mr. Whipper gave much of his time to the advocacy of the freedom of the slave, and the elevation of the colored men of the North. In his business relations with the whites he always left a good impression of the negro’s capability, honesty, and gentlemanly deportment.
In 1833, he took charge of the editorial department of the “National Reformer,” a monthly magazine, published by the American Moral Reform Society. Mr. Whipper’s editorials were couched in chaste and plain language, but bold and outspoken in the advocacy of truth. He said:—
“We believe that Education, Temperance, Economy, and Universal Liberty, if properly carried out, will prove a powerful auxiliary in producing this necessary reformation, on which rests the Christian’s hope. They are now producing wonders in our country, under distinct and specific organizations. They are adhesive virtues, and as capable of uniting with each other as a like number of seas are of commingling their waters, and forming one great ocean. If this mighty current of philanthropy could become united in one living stream, it would soon sweep from our country every vestige of misery and oppression. And is it not as necessary that it should be so, as that a single mind should embrace these principles alone? Our country is rich with the means of resuscitating her from moral degeneracy. She possesses all the elements for her redemption; she has but to will it, and she is free.”
Mr. Whipper is a mulatto of fine personal appearance, above the middle size, stoops a little,—that bend of the shoulders that marks the student. He is remarkably well read, able to cite authority from the ancients, and posted in all the current literature of the day. He is social and genial, and very interesting and entertaining in conversation. Mr. Whipper resides in Philadelphia, where he is highly respected by all classes, and loved and looked up to by his own race.
T. W. CARDOZO.
Mr. Cardozo is a native of Charleston, South Carolina; is a mulatto, with a slight preponderance of Anglo-Saxon blood. He is thirty-five years old, and therefore, is in the prime of life. He was born free, and had advantages of northern schools, and finished his education at the Newburg Collegiate Institute. From 1861 to 1866, he was a school-teacher. In 1868, he went to North Carolina as a pioneer in the cause of education among the freedmen, and to establish a normal school in the eighteenth congressional district, and to use his influence in procuring state aid in organizing a system of common schools. His success in this enterprise was all that the most sanguine devotee could have expected. He remained there until the schools were firmly fixed upon a substantial basis.
In 1870, Mr. Cardozo removed to Vicksburg, Mississippi. He did not apply for any office, although it is well known that all the offices in the State were in that year filled by appointment of the governor,—but he went to work, and organized a large school in the city, which soon took rank among the first in the State. In 1871, at the earnest solicitation of the members of the Republican party, he became a candidate for, and was elected to, the office of Circuit Clerk of Warren County. For the manner in which he has discharged the intricate duties of that very responsible office, he elicited the highest compliments from the judge as well as the members of the bar.
Mr. Cardozo has recently been nominated for State Superintendent of Education, a position which he is in every way well qualified to fill. He will bring to the office a practical knowledge which will be of great service to the State, and a lasting benefit to the race with whom he is identified.
Modest and reserved, dignified and gentlemanly, Mr. Cardozo is calculated to gain the esteem and confidence of all with whom he may come in contact.