The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-04-05
NEGRO BUNCO MEN ARE
 SUCCESSFUL DOWN SOUTH

know that in many sections of the south no black would take chance of doing anything calculated to raise the ire of blue-gummed negro.
 The supersttious black girls-house as well as field niggers'-are easy prey for the purveyors of love philters, who have become as thick as blackberries all over the south in the last decade They readily give up a months wages for little vial of eolored water which is sol- emnly guaranteed to bring the man Of their choice to their feet in a little less than no time.
 But the black girls are not alone in yielding to the blandishments of the col- ored con men who sell philters. There are phiIters devised for the flim-famming of the male blacks. smooth black grafter got away with a lot of money throughout Louisiana a year or so ago by selling to the black youths little Yials which he guaranteed would make the other fellow lose at craps or any other game of chance once he had involuntar- fly al -orbed the stuff into hls system. For a while q large section of the black pop ulace of interior Louisiana was trying to sneak these drops of water into each others drinks.
 Another very successful philter was one that an Alabama darkey. with an in- genious turn of mind, sold to large number of victims of his color. It was guaranteed to make the employers of the blacks leave them good-sized legacies in their wills when the employers died. The sinister character of this scheme, in the temptation it offered to the pur- ehasers of such philtcrs to do away with employers to whom had been secretly given the harmless contents of the little vals was apprehendcd by the Alabama authorities. and the black grafter wh0 engaged in th.s trade was roughly han died when the story of his scheme came out.
 "The more ignorant blacks of the cot ton belt are in such constant state of fear of the evil eye that the colcred bum co men who sell contraptions guaran- teed to render the evil eye intellectual have as much business as they can han de One of them made n good thing of it by selling at $2 apiece small quarter pint bottles of Tomblgbee water which he vowed he had got from the River Jordan.
 "A mother of the grarters sold scidltz powders to his brethren for dollar a throw. He described them as powdered all ligators teeth which taken internally would knock the tar out of any evil eye spell that was ever devised. The cfferves- cence of the seidlitz powders gave him the stronghold in the manipulation of this game, for not one far southern black in a thousand knows anything about effer- vescence powders.
 "Hundreds of freciSled yellow darkies were done out of sums ranging from SO 10 SS0 few years ago by black bunco- ist who claimed that he could infallibly remove their frecSles. He sold his vic tims some sort of mixture that had phos- phorus in it, and told them to rub the stuff all over their bodies for six nights running and then go swimming in the nearest stream after nightfall. The glow they emitted in the water made a hit with the freckled ones, who were con vinced that they were burning theit freckles off
 "The authorities in most of the southern states rarely bother to apprehend the black con men who make a business ot preying upon the supersttious beliefs Of their fellow negroes, mainly because they appreciate the virtual hopelessness ot such efforts The swindles are by and between the blacks and - victims rare ly or never complain to - authorities.
 "But several of the states are now en- deavoring to stamp out the insurance swndlers, most of them educated black grafters who have been preying upon the ignorant negroes for a number ot years. These fellows represent no com panies of course. and every cent they take from their credulous victims goes in to their own pockets. But they issue elaborate policies with ornate seals ana stamps and the blacks who fall to the game exhibit these fake policies to each other with delight.
 Pretty smooth are most of these black grafters and the field is all their own, for their fellow blacks who fall to the dodges would never bite if the scheme were put before them by white men.