Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1963-08-04


tinued to apply to him. In
some States he couldn't pos
sess firearms, poison, dogs or
whisky. Others had headlines
for him to get out of the State
or be sold back into slavery
Virginia, one year; North
Carolina. 80 days; Tennessee,
Immediately.
Some Negroes, for lack OF
security, returned to slavery
voluntarily. A rare few man.
aged their freedom quite well
In Louisiana, q free Negro
named Cypriai1 Ricard owned
nearly 100 slaves, and q North
Carolina freedman, Thomas
Day. hired white help in his
cabinet shop. A free Negro
shoemaker in South Carolina
earned enough to buy his wife
from her owner for $500. Later
he decided 1t was q bad deal
and sold her to someone else
for a $50 profit.
Status Sank
As the Negroes legal status
sank lower and lower, so did
his human status. He became
the butt of ridicule, the sub
ject Of caricature by comics
who discovered burnt cork.
Most famous Of all the ante
bellum oblackface ministries
was Daddy Dan Rice, who
toured the country for years
performing q thigh slapping
song -and-dance number titled
Jump, Jim Crow!"
The Negroes had songs Of
their own, generally regarded
as quaint. They had words like
go down, Moses, Way down
in Egypt land, and tell old
pharaoh to let my people CO."
and Nobody knows the trou-
BILE I've SEEM" and ".Oh, Mary.
don't you weep. don't you
moan :" .l
From Socrates to Lincoln,
wherever slavery has existed,
there have been voices to OPP
pose 1t.
Slave-owner Thomas Jeffer-
son, in his first draft Of the
Declaration of Independence,
wrote a blistering indictment
Of George III for his part In
the slave trade, but the 1877
words were stricken out.
jefferson Sees Trouble
Concerning slavery, Jeffer-
son later wrote, II tremble
for my country when ! reflect
that God is just, that His JUS
tice cannot sleep forever" and
predicted that slavery would be
the "rock upon which the old
Union would split" Patrick
Henry, another slave : owner,
said, IT will not, L. cannot,
justify it," Neither man anti
-cipated the cotton gin. and
both thought slavery would
gradually fade away.
BENJAMIN Franklin wasn't
that patient. He joined the
abolitionist society and became
its president. George Washing
ton set his slaves free on his
deathbed; John Adams refused
to own them at all.
Through the years, another
scheme has attracted intermit-
tent interest as a solution to
the Negroes plight: Emigration
to Africa. s
AS early as 1912. a Negro
sea captain, Paul Cuffee, tried
unsuccessfully to establish an
African colony for American
Negroes.
Became Liberia
In 1920, the American Colo
nization Society, backed by
John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay
and others Of similar promi-
hence. persuaded Congress to
buy some territory in Africa,
which later became the inde-
pendent state Of Liberia. Only
about 5000 American Negroes
chose to move there, however.
One Of the latest and per-
haps the most colorful back
to-Africa advocates was Marcus
Manasseh Carney, q jamaican
Negro educated In London, who
came to New York In 1917
wearing a purple and gold uni
form and three-cornered hat.
He wound up in the Federal
penitentiary at Atlanta for us
ing the mail to defraud.
From the beginning. most
Negro leaders have denounced
emigration ideas. During the
Liberian movement. a speaker
at a Negro rally In Hartford
cried, why should we leave
this land so dearly bought by
the blood, gr6aus and tears OF
our fathers2" : : =
Negroes In Ranks
The audience nodded, per-
haps recalling that. during the
Revolutionary War when all
the Colonies practiced slavery
except Pennsylvania. where the
Quakers held 1t TO be an evil
deserving Of accommodation
there we're enough Negroes In
the Continental Army's ranks
that the British had q bar
racks doggerel which went:
The rebel cIotUns, oh phGt a
sight,
So aUkward Is their figure.
Yonder stands a ptous might.
And here and there a Niger.
American abolitionists scored
their first major victory In 1905
J when Congress declared the
-