The Tupelo journal., 1903-01-23

cipal of the largest and the central
school, and receives the same salary
(S220) as her husband, who is prin-
cipal of another school and is also
active in politics, being a member OF
the county~committee of his party,
One of the other women is principal
of the third school. The two Others
are assistants, and their salaries arc
about $3.50 a year of nine months.
That the individual undertaken OF
business enterprise is a lew figure
among the negroes is, broadly speak
ing, true; particularly as applied to
commercial life. But it must be
ger Or foreman was a familiar figure
in the plantation life of the south al
a~nte-bellum days; that the planta-
lions trained their own blacksmiths,
Wheelwrights, painters and carpen'
tiers; that the negro barber has long
been almost as familiar as his own
red, white and blue sign pole, and
that the negro cook and restaurant
keeper had for generations been fire.
quent, even before the days of the
old-time frequenters of Wormley'S
hotel in. Washington or of old Tom
Griffin's in Richmond. One of the dis
astrous effects of freedom upon the
negroes has been that so many OF
the older ones have failed to pass on
to their sons the industrial training
which they had themselves received,
and which would have been of great
value to the younger generation.
The business of barbering is only one
of the employments of the one Sandy
Spring operator, who has no regular
shop and who does perhaps more work
as a Whitewater than as a barber.
Of the six blacksmiths, two own
their own shops. One of these, now
well along in life, is somewhat out Of
the track of trade, and he and his son.
having but little work to do in the
shop, devote themselves largely t. their
little farm. The other owner has a
business of about $500 a year, and has
bought land and built himself a nice
home. One rents his shop and gets a
modest trade, about $25 a month. The
remaining two are assistants in differ
ent shops.
Two hucksters take their wagons to
Washington regularly, buying and sell
ing as they go, and importing articles
from the city on their own account or
on commission One also farms in
a small way. They are both property
holders. There is a mail contractor
who has secured a short c~ross-country
route, and he has in his employ a reg
ular mail carrier. The mail carrier
has owned his home for 20 years.
There are three shoemakers, who are
also whitewashers and common CARR
ers. There is only one merchant, a
young negro of free ancestry. He
rents the store which was started by
a negro cooperative society, having
credits according to their sharehold-
ings, and they soon ate up their enter.
prise. The store does very little cred
it business, and the proprietor is grad
ually growing rich-very rich for that
locality.
The Methodist church is the leading
religious denomination, 500 being en-
rolled in that church. They have nu-
merous meetings, and often hold pro-
tracted meetings, when religious ex-
element and fervor sweep the COM
munity until substantially all of the
people are shouting hallelujahs and
glorias. The church is the nucleus
for a score of benevolent and social or
CARNATIONS.
SIS a free niggah, 1 is" one often
hears from the lips of the aristocrats of
Sandy Spring, for there is an artistoc-
racy here, as there is everywhere.
These human beings never heard that
1.-THE gardener, Adam, and his wife.
smile at the claims of long descent"
In angry discussions the free-born
negroes or descendants of the free
born, settle all matters by saying:
.Shet up, you low-down, emery, slavery
black niggah. 'Memmer that rs a free
niggah, l is. Shet up"
And that always settles it. Aside
from the fact that an a~ristocracy has
been developed, freedom for more than
a century has not advanced these me-
groes in any degree. On the contrary,
they demonstrate the truth of the
statement of that most eminent of all
negroes, Fred Douglass: "The negro
race never accomplished anything of its
own force and yo1ition."
SMITH D. FRY.