University of Virginia Library

"Barbers" and "Tonsorial Artists"

During the past twenty-five or thirty years
we have let some golden opportunities slip
from us, and I fear we have not had enough
plain talk right on these lines. If you ever
have the opportunity to go into the large cities
of the North, you will see some striking
examples of this kind of thing. I remember
the first time I went North—and it has n't
been so many years ago—it was not an uncommon
thing to see the barber shops in the
hands of colored men. I know colored men
who could have gotten comfortably rich. You
cannot find to-day a first-class barber-shop in
New York or Boston in the hands of a colored
man. Something is wrong. That opportunity
is gone. Coming home, in Montgomery,
Memphis, or New Orleans, you will find that
the barber-shops are gradually slipping from
the hands of the colored men, and they are

going back on dark streets and opening little
holes. These opportunities have slipped from
us largely because we have not learned to
dignify labor. The colored man puts a little
dirty chair and a pair of razors into a dirtier-looking
hole, while the white man opens up
his shop in connection with some fashionable
hotel, fits it up in fine style with carpets, fine
mirrors, etc., and calls that a Tonsorial Parlor.
The proprietor sits up at his desk? keeps his
books, and takes the cash. Thus he transforms
what we call a drudgery into a paying
business. Sunday Evening Tuskegee Talks.