Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-02-25
Possibilities of Negro Emigration.
New Orleans Pieayune,


The Louisiana Morehouse Clarion, IN
some observations on the race question,
presents the following:
1t is unquestionable that there has been grow
ing in the negro mind for several years q spirit
oi nomadism which has been TO some extent en-
couraged by labor real estate and railroad pas
senger agents.
and the Carolina negro TO AlRbama, and the Ala
bama negro to Georgia, and the Georgia negro
to Mississippi, and the mississippi negro to
louisiana and the Louisiana negro 10 Arkansas,
and the Arkansas negro Todd you ever see
one of these fine DAYS there will be a great Zap
ping of black wings, and such hustling there
viii be- and forever thereafter two negroes IN
the same township will be as rare as hockof
black sheep.
This restlessness and desire TO move has
been the last impulse TO operate upon the
negroes. Immediately after the acquisi-
ton by them of freedom, they showed
decided disposition to move from one
plantation to another, and to change To-
cation in narrow limits, but there was no
sort of movement toward great exodus.
Many persons wondered why they did not
eInigrate Northward TO the people who,
as they were made to believe, cherished
a great love for them, and had gone to
the extent of making a terrible war IN
order to free them.
The negro, with conservatism born
of profound ignorance and lifelong habit,
waited to be fed and clothed and made
the recipient of all other benefits at the
expense of some other party. In old
times it was his master who supplied
everything. In his new found liberty he
still enjoyed for a time the bounty of
government rations. The time came
finally when he had 90 shift for himself,
ho hoS RI
ouire notion that there is somewhere in
the dim and PARKWAY regions he has
never seen a promised land which
if it flow not with verita-
BILE milk and honey, will at least
offer him better things than those he now
enjoys. At last occasional and spasmodic
tendencies toward emigration have
shown themselves. Several times there
have been movements of some local i'm
portance in which the negroes have
yielded to the solicitations of railway
agents who sought to find population for
their vacant lands, or of persons en-
gagged in hiring laborers for distant work.
In this way a number of negroes were in
duced to move to the bleak and drouth-
stricken plains of Kansas. Some have
gone to work on the Panama canal and
others to, the plantations of Central
America; but generally the movement
has been to- other states of the South.
With the exception of the Kansas
exodus some twelve years or so ago, there
has been no considerable emigration Of
Southern negroes to Northern states.
This is remarkable fact, and it must
be attributed more to the objections
made to such movement of popula-
ton by the Northern people themselves
than to any other cause. The negro
who attempts to work his way among the
Northern people has a hard time, and
enough have come back to tell the tale
of disappointment and persecution to
deter others from such action.
The negroes seem to have no desire TO
leave the South, but conffne their wan
behring's almost entirely to the limits of
the old slave states, but with tendency
southwestward. Should the movement
continue in its onward march it is not
difficult to forecast the final gravitation
of large negro population to Mexico.
They may also stop in New Mexico, Indian
Territory and Arizona. As time goes on
the negroes will seek to establish them
selves in some region which they can con-
troll and dominate. In the far Southwest,
perhaps, such a dream could best be re-
allied. When the migratory impulse
shall once take hold upon them we may
expect extensive and remarkable move
ments of negro population.