Ohio History Journal

Negro Self-Improvement

Negro Self-Improvement

Efforts in Ante-Bellum

Cincinnati, 1836-1850

by Richard W. Pih

In recent years various historians, particularly Leon F. Litwack in his

North of Slavery, have focused on the speciousness of the North Star Legend

of Yankee tolerance and benevolence toward the free Negro prior to the

Civil War. Numerous state studies on this subject have been made, but

work on the local urban level appears neglected. Even though Carter G.

Woodson admirably pioneered an examination of antebellum race relations

in Cincinnati, further evidence and research sheds new light on his initial

optimistic appraisal.¹ Instead of "Yankee benevolence," especially after 1840

white Cincinnatians practiced social and economic repression of the Negro,

and the city's black community was forced to rely almost exclusively on its

own resources.

Between 1840 and 1850, the Negro population of Cincinnati increased

rather slowly from 2240 to 3237 in a total population of 46,338 and 115,434,

respectively.² A small portion included recently freed bondsmen, their

owners, relatives, or friends having purchased their freedom. Also fugitive

slaves, once across the Ohio River, found refuge in the city with assistance

from abolitionists, Quakers, and especially their own black brethren. The

remainder of the influx consisted of free Negro migrants who came in

search of greater economic opportunity in a growing urban center.³

A majority of the black folk resided in the First, Fourth, Sixth, and

Ninth Wards bordering the city's outer perimeter. The largest proportion

of them lived near Deer Creek, an area known as the "Swamp," in the

Ninth Ward. Others crowded into "Bucktown"--a "noisome hollow"--in

the First Ward. Aside from the unwholesome locations, Negro families

suffered also from terrible housing conditions. A few sources refer to their

dwellings as mere "huts" and "decayed shacks." In the open country to

the east, however, the more fortunate escaped to "small farms" or to a

"few settlements or clusters of homes.^"4

NOTES ON PAGE 223

180 OHIO HISTORY

One of the serious problems of the Negroes who remained within the

core of the city was white hostility over the issue of property rights.

In 1842, for example, organized white citizens attempted to secure the

legalization of heretofore de facto segregation barriers in housing. They

petitioned the city council for an ordinance to "effectually prohibit negroes

and mulattoes from purchasing or holding real estate" thereafter within

the city limits.⁵ The council, however, did not record any action taken

on this proposal.

A more divisive issue centered on economic opportunity. During the

1830's, Negroes, many of whom possessed skills in a variety of trades, had

migrated to the city, but white businessmen, German leaders of trade

associations, and Irishmen, who dominated in the menial occupations,

excluded them from most jobs.⁶ The attitude of the white population

had not changed significantly by l850 if a public comment by Dr. Daniel

Drake, a prominent local physician, is representative. He remarked that

"we do not need an African population. That people . . . are a serving

people, parasitic to the white man in propensity, and devoted to his menial

employments."⁷ Another commentator, Charles R. Ramsay, anti-abolitionist

editor of The Daily Cincinnati Republican, and Commercial Register also

saw little hope of advancement for the Negro. Discussing the status of

free Negroes in Cincinnati, he stated:

In what does their freedom consist? Is it in being permitted to earn

their bread by the sweat of the brow, or if incompetent, as many of

them seem to be, to obtain a livelihood, to be allowed to starve or

resort to crime? -- He is, and must always be, disenfranchised. He can-

not vote nor hold an office, either civil or military. He is constantly

subjected to the contumely and insults of the white man, and must

ever be an object of jealousy and persecution among those with

whom he comes in competition either as a tradesman or laborer . . . .

The liberal and honorable professions are to him forbidden fruit. He

cannot command Bank facilities. He cannot even embark in business

of any kind other than upon a meagre scale. His fate is to toll and

drudge for a subsistence, . . . .

Even though Ramsay granted that whites' ill will toward the Negro kept

him back, he primarily argued that the Negro's so-called inferiority rele-

gated him to his lowly status. "Whether bondsman or freeman," the editor

continued, "he must be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water." Why?

"Nature has decreed it and her laws cannot be changed."8

As further evidence of the correctness of their pronouncements on the

black man, whites offered vividly stereotyped descriptions of the Negro's

character and behavior. Basically, they found him "worthless," "dissolute,"

"extremely lazy," "stupid," and "incompetent."9 Although Dr. Drake

candidly admitted that "color" and lack of skills held the Negro back,

he chiefly emphasized his lack of "ambition; his intrinsic servility; his im-

mitativeness; his love of ease and conviviality" as major impediments to

equality of economic opportunity.10

NEGRO SELF-IMPROVEMENT 181

While respectable white citizens covered up their economic exploitation

of the black folk with a cloak of racial superiority, Negroes challenged the

whites' droll proclamations. By the summer of 1840, black artisans ap-

parently had made some inroads into the skilled trades. "Colored mechan-

ics," reported an observer, "now get as much labor as they can perform."¹¹

In late May 1841, however, Gamaliel Bailey, then editor of the abolitionist

organ, The Philanthropist, noted that "colored mechanics" received far too

little business except from their own people or from white friends. Even

their children were denied opportunities for apprenticeship training.12

At the time of the anti-abolitionist race riots in July and August of

1841, mobs of poor white laborers, both native and foreign, invaded

Negro homes and businesses. Acting "in a savage spirit of rivalry for em-

ployment, or under a feeling of antipathy to all association with the negro

in their daily occupations," these unruly whites resorted to physical repres-

sion in order to secure their economic dominance in the city.13

The heightened racial animosity aroused by these events depressed the

black folk's economic strivings in yet another, more unexpected area.

As a recent study of the free Negro in the North clearly demonstrates,

many white abolitionists often revealed a reluctance to hire Negroes or

patronize their shops.14 In November 1841 "A Virginian" opened a similar

controversy in Cincinnati. Despite the presence of "good mechanics" among

the Negroes, "I am told, by the colored people, that few abolitionists ever

call upon them." A year later the Philanthropist editor reminded his readers

that "it is the great duty of Abolitionists to encourage their industry." He

could readily understand the pro-slavery advocates' reluctance in this matter,

but he decried a similar response from those who professed to be the black

man's friend. Describing the bleak situation, "A Colored Man" wrote in the

Philanthropist:

We have among us, carpenters, plaisterers [sic], masons, etc., whose

skill as workmen, is confessed--and yet they find no encouragement-

not even among friends. True, they are sometimes favored with a call

to take an old door off its hinges, or some other petty job, that no

white carpenter will do unless well paid for . . . .15

The actual extent of abolitionist abandonment of the blacks in economic

terms remains difficult to judge. But the cumulative impact of the riots

between Negroes and immigrant whites and against the work of the

abolitionists probably furthered the Negroes' subjugation, relegating many

of them to the bottom of the economic ladder. As a result, most worked

as common laborers in commerce and construction, while others served

as waiters, cooks, stewards, bellhops, barbers, and shoe blacks in hotels and

boarding houses.¹⁶Even domestic service jobs became hard to find. "In

former times free negroes were in demand as servants," explained Dr.

Drake in 1850, "but that demand has greatly diminished, under the deep

and swelling tide of European emigration." Moreover, slaves hired or

purchased from the South by white Cincinnatians competed for these

positions.17

182 OHIO HISTORY

Even while engaging in economic discrimination against the Negro,

whites bitterly assailed the growth of pauperism in the black community

and excluded Negroes from the benefits of the Hamilton County Poor

House. When a Quaker superintendent allowed a few of them to secure

segregated refuge in the institution, he lost his job and the blacks, their

haven.18 By late 1848, left with few options, those who simply remained

idle or else resorted to theft in order to eat bore the brunt of the racist

commentaries in the local press.19

Northern white society generally practised what Litwack calls the

"economics of repression,"20and Cincinnatians by the 1840's had evolved

their own harsh system. Only the most resourceful Negroes were able to

survive by their own efforts. Among these were a few shoemakers, silver-

smiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, and plasterers. Attempts at cooperative,

self-help enterprises led them to form a steamboat company. In September

1838 they also established the Iron Chest Company which thrived as an

investment firm.21 The remainder of the Negro businesses were successful

largely through a combination of individual entrepreneurial skills and

patronage, though often begrudged, from the white community. A few

Negroes owned and operated hotels and boarding houses, and of these

the Dumas House ranked with the best local establishments.²²Two Negro

entrepreneurs were extremely successful. Robert Gordon, a former slave

from Virginia, built up a profitable coal business worth $15,000 by 1847,

and his subsequent earnings allowed him to retire in 1865. While Gordon

made his original stake in Virginia and in the East, Henry Boyd represented

the Cincinnati Negro community's own Horatio Alger. From humble begin-

nings as a skilled carpenter, he saved $9000 by 1835. Within six years,

he founded a business and began manufacturing his own patented corded

bedstead.²³Many prominent white citizens, even the bitter anti-abolitionist

Jacob Burnett, endorsed his product in the local newspapers. In 1844 the

Cincinnati Daily Atlas glowingly reported that his firm,

Turns out from 1,000 to 1,200 Bedsteads per annum. This kind is

extensively used in this quarter, and is sold at prices varying from

$3.25 to $30.00. They possess many advantages and some are finished

off in Black Walnut and Maple, in a very rich style.²⁴

Almost as quickly as Boyd rose to the top, he suffered financial reversals,

the reasons for which appear unclear. A series of fires apparently did the

most damage, for insurance companies thereafter refused to cover him.²5

As the black folk waged a constant uphill battle for economic security,

they also campaigned for better educational opportunities. In the local

newspapers racist rhetoric often focused on Negro intellectual inferiority:

History informs us that the white skin, from time immemorial, has

been of superior order. Civilization and all the arts and sciences have

originated with the white race, whilst the blacks have made scarcely

any advance from the state of nature . . . . The darker the various

shades of color, descending down to the jet black, the lower they

NEGRO SELF-IMPROVEMENT 183

descend in the scale of intellect and enterprise. This is an obvious truth

to every reader.²6

Most Negroes, however, viewed their backwardness as a result of

inadequate opportunity. For years they had paid taxes into the public

school fund, but their children were refused admittance into the common

school system, even though the 1834 city charter stated that school taxes

on Negroes were to be appropriated as "trustees and visitors" see fit "for

the education of black or mulatto persons . . . and for no other purpose

whatever."²⁷In practice, the Negroes were left to shift for themselves

except for brief tutorial assistance from the Lane Seminary "Rebels." When

the council refused their request for a share of the common school fund,

the explanation was: 'We take into view that the security of our govern-

ment rests and remains in the morality, virtue, and wisdom of our free

white citizens . . . . that the common school fund is not the offspring

of the offices of charity . . . .'28

In 1835-36 the black community, with the help of friends, secured

pledges of about $3000. With these funds they hoped to start construction

on a new school building, pending the outcome of a proposed grant of

land from the city council.²⁹It appears, however, that the council failed

to act favorably on the proposal, and black leaders next organized an

Education Society and mobilized support for their cause in the city's

churches. Further aid came from Professor Calvin Stowe, husband of

Harriet Beecher, who lent assistance in the academic and technical aspects

of curriculum and administration. In addition, the Lane Seminary board

of trustees seems to have encouraged several of its white students to instruct

in the Negro schools.³⁰Another, but still unsuccessful, petition for a share

of the public school funds was made in December 1842 by the Ohio

Ladies Educational Society, a benevolent white lobby, on behalf of Cin-

cinnati's black community.31 By December 1843 local black leaders had

established another committee, hoping to meet with public school officials

to discuss their children's integration into the common school system. A

vigorous petition campaign to the city council followed.³²This attempt

at integration may have stemmed from a misinterpretation of an Ohio

State Supreme Court decision that month. In Lane v. Baker et al., a Negro

plaintiff had brought suit against school officials, successfully pleading

for a readmittance of his three children to the public schools. Even though

the youths were of mixed parentage, the majority on the bench ruled

them acceptable for admission only because they had "more than half

white blood." As a result of this technicality, Negro petitions for integra-

tion failed.³³

Despite the failure of their petitions to the city council and the school

board, the black folk regrouped and founded five small elementary schools

on their own intiative. In 1844 Hiram S. Gilmore, an English clergyman,

established Cincinnati High School for Negro students, later known as

Gilmore. It was located in a renovated carpenter shop on Deer Creek Bluff

on the east end of Harrison Street. The staff consisted of four instructors.

184 OHIO HISTORY

Eighty pupils attended class on a full-time basis while studying the "3-R's,"

geography, classical languages, music, and drawing. Their first-term exams

showed arithmetic to be the weakest subject and music the strongest.³⁴

The following year, eighty additional students enrolled at the high

school. Eager to raise needed funds, especially for the support of their poorer

classmates, the Negro students decided to hold a public exhibition of poetry

readings and choral singing, as was the custom in white Sabbath schools. On

August 8, the Cincinnati Morning Herald, a Liberty party newspaper,

announced that their first performance was set for that evening in the

Union Baptist Church on Baker Street. Adding that those who "doubt

their capacity will be greatly surprised," the paper focused on two key issues

at stake: the black students' financial needs and their desire to destroy the

myth of their racial inferiority. One hundred fifty students performed

before an "overflowing" audience of both races. In January 1846, three

other similar exhibitions by the students for the benefit of their library

were equally successful. During the summer vacation, the children toured

the North, stopping at Springboro, Dayton, Columbus, Wooster, and Cleve-

land, Ohio; Buffalo, New York; and even Toronto, Canada.³⁵

In the spring of 1847, though, several incidents temporarily marred the

Negro students' plans for future exhibitions. When the proprietor of

Melodeon Hall refused to grant them the use of his building, the Morning

Herald editor interpreted his action as being motivated by race prejudice.

"If such be the fact," he angrily declared, "we have only to say he is

actuated by a motive most miserably mean."³6 An open letter from the

Negro auditorium committee further exposed the owner's real predilec-

tions:

The Sable Harmonists, with painted and disfigured faces, are ad-

mitted for the purpose of caricaturing and ridiculing the colored race:

but when a noble-hearted philanthropist [Hiram Gilmore] . . . seeks

admission with the view of proving to the public, what good can be

done in the way of education among this trodden class, the door of

that Hall . . . is closed in his face.³⁷

Gilmore High School's agents next approached an official in charge of

Cincinnati College Hall, received his consent for use of the building, but

then were rebuffed by the college's board of trustees. After several days

of negotiations and failures, the agents turned to Renselaer W. Lee, a local

businessman, who gave them free of charge the use of a "spacious Hall,"

and on April 21, the black children finally performed before an audience

estimated at "near a thousand persons."38

From 1847 to 1850 lack of money, teachers, and adequate facilities con-

tinued to plague the Negroes' educational efforts. When their leadership

finally recognized the limits of self-help tactics, they again agitated for

a rightful share of the common school allocations and for the incorpora-

tion of their black schools into the city school system. The blacks achieved

both objectives by 1850, but they had to accept segregation as a com-

promise.³⁹

NEGRO SELF-IMPROVEMENT 185

In their dismal situation the black people found little solace in the city's

churches, where they were further set apart from the whites in "Negro

pews" or in the "gallery."⁴⁰ A lively exchange of heated words in two city

newspapers illustrates the explosiveness of this social issue. With an opening

salvo, the Cincinnati Republican editor charged that in an abolitionist

lecture at the Sixth Presbyterian Church, the Reverend John Blanchard

spoke to a mixed audience on "amalgamation."⁴¹In reply, a writer in

the Cincinnati Journal explained that the Negroes sat in the upper

"gallery," while the whites occupied the lower floor. He then queried:

I know full well, that upon no other subject is a portion of this

community so sensitive and excitable as upon that of amalgamation,

and that there is no more certain way of producing a popular ferment,

and raising an infuriated mob, than by charging that blacks are ad-

mitted by whites upon terms of equality in social relations. Does he

wish to see the scenes of 1836 [the July riots] re-enacted in Cincinnati?

By way of conclusion, the correspondent denied that the lecturer had

advocated "amalgamation," saying that abolitionists contended only for

natural rights, not civil or social rights. "Social relations," he added, "are

regulated by tastes, and abolitionism has nothing to do with them."⁴²

While most of Cincinnati's churches remained segregated, a few white

Baptist and Methodist churches seem to have warmly accepted Negro

membership. Most significantly, the city's Catholic churches made "no

distinction in the laity . . . on account of color."⁴3 Nevertheless, as Salmon

P. Chase noted in a speech to a Negro audience: "Thrust by prejudice into

the obscure corners of the edifices in which men offer prayer, you have

erected churches of your own . . . ."⁴⁴ Between 1835 and 1851, the black

folk supported from three to five churches; the African Methodist Episcopal

Chapel, the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Baker

Street African Baptist Church survived throughout the period.⁴⁵

Among several general uplift programs supported by black clergymen

was a Sabbath school system. As of 1840 three such schools held classes

for 310 regular attendants. A. D. Barber's report on the "Condition of

Colored People in Ohio" noted the "good order, deep interest and marked

attention of the pupils." Moreover, by the early 1850's, two Methodist

churches, two Baptist, and the Colored Christian church offered regular

classes in Bible and an elementary education.⁴⁶

Moral reform movements likewise engaged the black community's efforts.

A prominent Negro educator, Owen T. B. Nickens, formed the Moral

Reform Society of the Colored Citizens of Ohio. The constitution, among

other things, called for "the suppression of intemperance, licentiousness,

gambling, sabbath-breaking, blasphemy, and all other vices."⁴⁷Excluded

from membership in white temperance organizations, the Negroes

established their own, the Total Abstainance Temperance Society.⁴⁸Charity

also became a part of the community spirit, and fairs were often held

for the benefit of the less fortunate black people. Organized in 1847, a

branch of the African Masonic Lodge of Ohio helped support the needy.⁴⁹

186 OHIO HISTORY

In 1849 a devastating cholera epidemic struck the city. Living in crowd-

ed hovels, huts, and shanties near the swamps of Deer Creek or along the

river bottoms, Negroes suffered severely. Even in such dire times dissident

white "scounderals" still tormented Negroes. During a funeral procession

along Fifth Street, a number of whites "threw brickbats" at the Negro

mourners. Once the funeral trains had reached their destination, the black

folk buried their dead in segregated cemeteries.⁵⁰Orphaned Negro chil-

dren, already denied the benefits of charitable societies, public schools,

and apprenticeship training, found the doors of white orphan asylums

closed to them.⁵¹In response to their need, "plain to every passer on the

street," Nicholas Longworth and Salmon P. Chase, two prominent lawyers,

aided by Lydia P. Mott, a benevolent Quaker, founded the Colored Orphan

Asylum in 1844--"the colored people themselves, as was becoming, took

the lead in the matter."⁵²The institution had to rely mostly on sporadic

charitable donations for its maintenance, and appeals for its support were

constantly issued by the Morning Herald. Meanwhile, the Negroes them-

selves held fairs, levees, and bazaars, and the Gilmore High School stu-

dents donated their time for concerts to aid the orphans' cause.⁵³

Within the broader context of social relations, whites in the Queen

City practised a highly sophisticated ideological repression of the Negro

people. The so-called logic for retaining their almost impassable color line

rested not only on apparent cultural and physical differences, but also on

a highly elaborated stereotype of the Negro, mockingly recorded by white

journalists. A composite carricature, gleaned from issues of three major

city newspapers, emphasized the black folk's heritage, "native Africans";

their complexion, 'gemman ob color' or 'weak females ob color,' "darkies,"

"darkies of the deepest rye"; their hair, "wool"; their dress, clownish for

the "Chinese fashion of pointed toe boots which gave them the appearance

of a man on runners"; their speech, plantation dialect, such as, "dat fust

last brick bat." If a bright Negro "calculator" arrived in town, the whites

simply marveled, almost in disbelief, at his accomplishments.⁵⁴This color-

ful, but degrading imagery was constantly reinforced by some Negroes

through such groups as the Congo Minstrels, the Sable Serenaders, and

the Sable Harmonists--to the consternation of Negro educators and re-

formers. All of these groups delineated the slap-happy, ever-smiling, banjo-

strumming "Sambo" as the "true negro character."⁵⁵

Once any intelligent white person grasped this "understanding" of the

Negro "character," white supremacy advocates reasoned, social intercourse

with them would seem most unnatural. "We hold them, indeed, at arm's-

length from us," explained Dr. Drake, "and, according to the instinct,

feeling, and opinion of an immense majority of our people, they are, and

should be kept, a distinct and subordinate caste."⁵⁶ In the same vein,

another white further admonished the Negroes always to act with

"propriety" and to avoid "assaults" or "insults" toward their white social

betters. Community peace, he concluded, depends on you "knowing and

keeping" your "place."⁵⁷Years later, William Dean Howells recalled the