University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER X
NEGRO COMMUNITIES AND NEGRO HOMES

IN THE year 1821, one of the best known among
the coloured people of Richmond, Virginia,
was a Baptist preacher by the name of Lott
Gary. This man had an extraordinary history.
He was born a slave, about the year 1780, on a
plantation thirty miles below the city of Richmond.
In 1804, when he was twenty-four years of age,
he was taken to the city of Richmond and employed
as a common labourer in the Shockoe
Tobacco Warehouse.

At this time he could neither read nor write, but
one Sunday, listening to the minister in the white
church which he attended read the words of Christ to
Nicodemus, he was seized with the desire to learn to
read. In some way or other he succeeded in carrying
out the purpose he then formed. He read the
Bible first but, as his mind was opened to new
thoughts and ideas, he began reading every book he
could lay his hands upon. His reading extended,
finally, to the subject of political economy, for it is
related that he was discovered one day reading
Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." In the meantime,

he made himself so valuable in the tobacco warehouse
in which he was employed that he was given
considerable sums at different times and for different
purposes as a reward for his services. By the year
1813 he had acquired money sufficient to buy his
own liberty and that of his two children. The sum
paid was $850.

Shortly after this time the subject of colonisation
had become a subject of earnest discussion among
the coloured people, particularly of Maryland and
Virginia. Lott Cary and a brother preacher by the
name of Collin Teage, who was a saddler and
harness-maker by trade, conceived the idea of going
to Liberia to assist in founding the proposed colony
there. Although Cary was at that time in the possession
of a snug little farm in the vicinity of Richmond
and was earning a handsome salary of $800 a
year, he decided to give them up and go to Africa as
a missionary.

He sailed in company with Teage in January, 1821.
When the first settlement was made, the following
year, at Cape Mesurado, Lott Cary became one of
the most active agents in establishing what was,
in fact, though not in name, the first colony of the
United States. During all the difficulties and discouragements
of the first years of that colony he was,
next to Jehudi Ashmun, the leading spirit of the
colony. In 1826, Cary was elected to the position of
vice-agent and, after the departure of Ashmun,

continued until the time of his death the virtual head
of the colony.

Cary, when asked by a brother-minister how he
could think of quitting a position of so much comfort
and usefulness as he at that time occupied among
the coloured people of Richmond, replied: "I am
an African; and in this country, however meritorious
my conduct, and respectable my character,
I cannot receive the credit due to either. I wish to
go to a country where I shall be estimated by my
merit—not by my complexion; and I feel bound to
labour for my suffering race."

An interesting thing about these efforts at colonisation
of Africa by American Negroes is that when the
colonists reached Africa they found that they were
Africans only on the outside. They were Africans
in colour but not, so far as they could see, in any
other respect. Two hundred and fifty years of
slavery in America had converted them into Americans,
at least in all their feelings and in all their
traditions, just as completely as any other race
which has settled on this continent. Thus Liberia
has become in its laws, in its customs, and in
its aspirations an American colony controlled by
American Negroes.

After the settlement of Liberia and while the desire
for colonisation was still strong among the free
coloured people, Benjamin Lundy, the Quaker
abolitionist, established a colony for Freedmen on the

Samana Peninsula on the island of Haiti in the district
of what is now Santo Domingo. Among the
Freedmen sent out had been slaves of David Patterson,
of Grange County, North Carolina. Mr.
Patterson had been converted to emancipation by
Lundy's preaching and desired to emancipate his
slaves, but was not able to do so until he had provided
for their removal from the state.

In March, 1825, Lundy opened at Baltimore an
Haitian office of emigration. He was assisted in
this work by Richard Allen, the founder of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church. Among the
shipments from Lundy's office at that time was a
colony of eighty-eight slaves, valued at $30,000,
who had been emancipated by their owner, David
Minge, of Charles City, Virginia. These slaves
were sent to Haiti, under an arrangement with the
Philanthropic Society of Haiti, which agreed to
advance money for the expense of their passage
with the understanding, however, that each Freedman
was to repay the Society by working on its
plantation for a certain length of time after his arrival.
After the expiration of his apprenticeship, every
Negro man, who had a family, was to receive fifteen
acres of land.

Lundy continued to send colonists to Haiti under
the arrangements with the Philanthropic Society
for some years. In 1825, within a few weeks
after his return from Haiti, he sent out a hundred

and sixteen emancipated slaves and in 1829 he found
it necessary to visit Haiti a second time. He took
with him a small colony of Freedmen, and upon his
return, announced that he had made arrangements
whereby Negroes who wished to go to Haiti could
obtain leases of plantations with buildings on them
for seven years, the first two years free of charge, and
the remaining five at a moderate rent.

In his newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation,
for November 13, 1829, there appeared an
advertisement addressed "to humane and conscientious
slave-holders," asking for from twenty to sixty
slaves "to remove to and settle in the Republic of
Haiti, where they will be forthwith invested with the
rights of free men and receive constant employment
and liberal wages in a healthy and pleasant section
of the country." The advertisement is signed,
Lundy & Garrison. The outbreak at Northampton
shortly after this seems to have put an end to
this emigration, but remnants of these colonies
speaking an English dialect may be still found
living on the Samana Peninsula.

Benjamin Lundy did not at this time cease his
efforts to find a place of refuge for the Freedmen.
He travelled through Mexico and he visited Canada,
in the interest of this purpose. It was in Canada
that the next settlements of Negro colonies of any
size took place. Slavery had been introduced there
under the French. At the request of the inhabitants

a royal mandate was issued as early as 1689,
permitting the holding of Indians as slaves. When
Canada came under the possession of England in 1760
this form of slavery was continued and Negroes were
introduced from the West Indies. But in February,
1800, the slave Robin, belonging to James Frazier,
was discharged from servitude upon a writ of habeas
corpus. In this case the court followed the ruling
of Lord Mansfield, in the famous Somerset case,
which put an end to slavery in England. The
result of the case of Robin was to put an end to
legalised slavery in Canada in the same way that it
had been done away with in England and in
Massachusetts.

Although slavery was not formally abolished by
law until the act of 1833, and slaves were held to
some extent in Lower Canada until that time, fugitive
slaves had already begun to turn their steps in the
direction of Canada in the early part of the century,
A good many of these slaves found refuge among
the Indians. The famous Mohawk Chief, Captain
Brandt, was a. holder of Negro slaves. He had large
estates on Burlington Bay and Grand River. Many
runaway Negroes took refuge there, were treated
hospitably, and began working and living with the
Indians, often adopting their customs and mode of
life.

After the War of 1812, the soldiers who had served
in that war brought back the news that there was

a country to the north of the United States where
coloured men and women were free and there was
no danger of their being captured and taken back
into slavery. From that time on the North Star
came to have a special and peculiar interest for the
discontented slaves, and many of them turned their
feet northward with no other guide than its light
to direct them.

In 1850, it is said that there were thirty thousand
fugitives from slavery in Canada. After the passage
of the Fugitive Slave Law, this number was greatly
increased. In 1860, the number of coloured people
in Canada was variously estimated at from 60,000
to 75,000, of which it is said 15,000 were free-born.

As a result of this influx of refugees, there grew up
on the outskirts of the cities numerous communities
of coloured people. In 1855, Benjamin Drew, who
had visited these communities in the interest of the
anti-slavery societies, published an account of the
condition of the fugitives of fourteen different settlements.
These were located at St. Catherine's,
Toronto, Hamilton, Galt, London, Queens-Bush,
Chatham, Buxton, Dawn, Windsor, Sandwich,
Amherstburg, Colchester, and Gosfield, all in the
province of Ontario. The most important and
interesting of these colonies were the Dawn Settlement,
at Dresden, the Elgin Settlement at Buxton,
and the Refugees* Home near Windsor.

In 1849, the Reverend William King, a Presbyterian

clergyman from Louisiana, emancipated his
slaves and settled them on the tract which afterward
became known as the "Elgin Settlement." His
company of fifteen Freedmen formed the nucleus of
the community which was called Buxton, in honour
of the noted philanthropist, Thomas Fowell Buxton.
This community grew rapidly and in 1850 it was
incorporated as the Elgin Association. Under the
direction of Mr. King, the plan was carried out
which provided for the parcelling of the land into
farms of fifty acres each, which were to be sold to the
colonists at the government price of $2.50 per acre.
A court of arbitration was established for the adjudication
of disputes, and a day and Sunday school,
supported by a missionary society of the Presbyterian
Church of Canada, were started, in order to give
the colonists the instruction they needed. Twelve
years later, in 1862, when Dr. Samuel G. Howe
visited this community, he found a settlement of
about one thousand men, women, and children, who
owned two thousand acres of land, one-third of
which had been paid for, including the principal
and interest.

"Buxton," said Dr. Howe, in his report, "is
certainly a very interesting place. Sixteen years
ago, it was a wilderness. Now good highways are
laid out in all directions through the forest; and by
their side, standing back thirty-three feet from the
road, are about two hundred cottages, all built after

the same pattern, all looking neat and comfortable.
Around each one is a cleared space, of several acres,
which is well cultivated. The fences are in good
order, the barns seem well filled, and cattle and
horses and pigs and poultry abound. There are
signs of industry and thrift and comfort everywhere;
signs of intemperance, idleness, of want,
nowhere. There is no tavern and no groggery;
but there is a chapel and a schoolhouse."

Reverend Mr. King said: "I consider this settlement
has done as well as a white settlement would
have done under the same circumstances."

The colony known as Refugees' Home, which was
located at Windsor, Ontario, directly opposite
Detroit, was started by Henry Bibb, himself a fugitive
slave. Soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave
Law of 1850 he suggested the formation of "a society
which should aim to purchase 30,000 acres of Government
land . . . for the homeless refugees from
American slavery to settle upon."

In the first year of the association's existence forty
lots of twenty-five acres each were disposed of, and
arrangements were made for a school and a church.
Mrs. Laura S.Haviland, who opened a day school and
a Sunday school there in the fall of 1852, says: "They
had erected a frame house for school and meeting purposes.
The settlers had built for themselves small
log houses, and cleared from one to five acres each
on their heavily timbered land, and raised corn and

potatoes and other garden vegetables. A few put
in several hundred acres of wheat and were doing
well for the first year."

The oldest of these communities in Canada, and
in many respects the most interesting, was the Dawn
Settlement at Dresden. It was at this settlement that
Josiah Henson, the original "Uncle Torn" in
Harriet Beecher Stowe's story, lived and worked for
many" years. In the year 1842 a convention of
coloured people was called to decide upon the expenditure
of some $1,500 which had been collected in
England by James C. Fuller, a Quaker. Reverend
Hiram Wilson, a missionary, and Josiah Henson
were on the committee to decide in what way this
money should be expended. It was determined, upon
the suggestion of Mr. Henson, to start a "manual
labour school, where the children could be
taught those elements of knowledge which are usually
the occupations of a grammar-school; and where
the boy could be taught, in addition, the practice of
some mechanic art, and the girl could be instructed
in those domestic arts which are the proper occupation
and ornament of her sex."[1]

In 1852 there were, according to the first annual
report of the Anti-slavery Society of Canada, sixty
pupils attending this school, and settlers on the land
of the institute had increased to five hundred.

In the neighbourhood of the school there was a
coloured population of between three and four
thousand.

Josiah Henson, who was so long connected with
this colony, was born a slave at Fort Tobacco,
Maryland, and escaped to Canada in 1828. He
became a Methodist minister and an anti-slavery
lecturer of considerable influence. He made three
trips to England and, on his final visit to that
country, in 1876, he was entertained by Queen
Victoria.

After the Civil War the interests which had brought
these colonies into existence had disappeared. Many
of the coloured people, particularly those who had
gone out to Canada since 1850, moved back to the
United States. The communities gradually dwindled
away or were absorbed into neighbouring cities, on
whose outskirts they had grown up. In the winter of
1895 and 1896, when I made a visit to several cities
in Canada, I had an opportunity to get information
from some of these fugitives. In Toronto, there was
living at the time I visited the city, Dr. A. R. Abbott,
who had graduated from the Toronto Medical
University before or shortly after the breaking out
of the Civil War in the United States. He enlisted
in one of the coloured regiments and was among the
first coloured men to be admitted to the Army Medical
Service. After the war he returned to Toronto,
where he practised his profession for many years.

It is not often one meets a coloured man acting in
the capacity of mayor of a city of 200,000 inhabitants,
but I met on this visit to Toronto a Negro who
had occupied that position during the previous summer,
while the regular mayor was absent in Europe.
This man was the Honourable William P. Hubbard,
president of the Toronto Board of Control, a body
which, in the government of Toronto, occupies the
position of the mayor's cabinet. Mr. Hubbard was
born in Toronto in 1848. His parents, who were of
African, Anglo-Saxon and Indian origin, came to
Canada from Richmond, Virginia, in 1844. They
had been, like the parents of Dr. Abbott, "free
people of colour." His father, having been employed
for several years as a carver in a Richmond hotel,
had accumulated something like $800 before he left
the South. The family settled on a little piece of
land on the outskirts of the city, where his mother
kept for many years a market garden, while his
father worked in the city. After getting a pretty
good education in the Toronto schools, young Hubbard
went to work as an apprentice in a bakery
shop, where he later served eight years as foreman.
After that he went into the livery business with his
brother, Alexander. In this business he prospered,
and putting his savings into real estate, soon accumulated
a small fortune. I was told at the time of my
visit that Mr. Hubbard paid taxes on $36,000 worth
of property. In 1894, he was elected to the position

of alderman from the Tenth Ward. He held that
position until he was elected, in 1899, to the position
he held at the time of my visit. At this time Mr. J. C.
Hamilton, who has made a study of the Negro in
Canada, said: "Hubbard has about the best record
of any alderman we have. I should not wonder if
he would be mayor of Toronto some day."

I learned also that Mr. Hubbard had a reputation
outside of Toronto and throughout the Province of
Ontario, for he has been elected, during previous
years, president of the Ontario Municipal
Association.

I referred, in an earlier chapter, to the town and
colony of Mound Bayou, which is situated in the
centre of the Yazoo Mississippi Delta, about midway
between Vicksburg and Memphis. This colony
which, as I have said, was founded by Isaiah T.
Montgomery, who had been a slave of Joseph Davis,
the brother of the president of the Confederacy, was
started about 1890. I frequently have heard Mr.
Montgomery tell the story of the way in which he
succeeded in arousing the interest of the first settlers
in this project. When he first went there the country
was a perfect wilderness; it was not believed that
white men could live in that region, and that was one
reason that it was decided to try the experiment of
settling a colony of coloured people there. Mr.
Montgomery finally succeeded in inducing a party of
coloured men to come down and look over the country.

A South-bound train dropped them off at a
saw-mill in the midst of the woods one morning, and
they walked several miles up the railroad track to
the site that Mr. Montgomery had selected for the
town.

"We had been pretty silent on the way up the
track," said Mr. Montgomery, "for we were in
the midst of a perfect wilderness. After we reached
the point where I desired to locate, I turned and
pointed in the direction of the woods and said to the
men: 'You see what this country is, but you should
remember this whole state was once like this. Your
fathers cleared it, cultivated it, and made it what it
now is. They did this for the white man. Now,
the question is, can we do the same thing for
ourselves?

"Well," continued Mr. Montgomery, "some of
them saw the point, and with these men we started in
and began cutting down the timber, and making it
into railway ties. Then we built the saw-mill and,
by that time, the town was fairly started."

I visited the town of Mound Bayou in the fall of
1908. I found a little village, with between five
hundred and a thousand inhabitants, which was the
centre of a community of perhaps four or five thousand
people, among whom there was not a single
white man. There were twenty or thirty little country
stores, three cotton gins, a bank, which at the
time had resources amounting to $100,000, and I

was told had paid 10 per cent. dividend on its stock
of $25,000. The town looked raw, but it looked like
the real thing. I learned that it had been growing
slowly but steadily. During the whole period of its
existence an earnest effort was being made to build
up the schools, and to adapt the teaching in them to
the actual needs of the people.

During my visit I made an address to the people of
that colony. As there was no hall sufficiently large
enough to accommodate the crowds that had
assembled, I spoke from a platform erected upon the
foundation of a new cotton-seed oil mill which was
being erected at the cost of $40,000, a sum collected
among the coloured people in different parts of the
State of Mississippi. The interesting thing to me
was that I found there a sober, earnest, orderly
community of coloured people, who had the respect
of all their neighbours, including the sheriff of the
county, and were going forward in the solution of
their problem, along the lines of orderly industrial
progress.

Mound Bayou is, so far as I know, the oldest
exclusively Negro community established since the
War. There is, however, a flourishing little town
in Oklahoma called Boley, which was started in
1903. There is a story told in regard to Boley,
which, even if it is not true in all its details, illustrates
the temper of the coloured people and their relations
to the white people in that region. Early in the

spring of 1903, so the story goes, a number of gentlemen
were discussing, at the neighbouring city of
Weleetka, the inevitable race question. The point
at issue was the capability of the Negro for self-government.
One of the gentlemen, who happened
to be connected with the Fort Smith Railway,
maintained that the Negro had never been given a
fair chance; that if Negroes had been given a white
man's chance they would have proved themselves
as capable of self-government as any other people of
the same degree of culture and education. The other
gentlemen naturally asserted the contrary, and the
result of this argument was, to state it briefly, Boley.

Just at this time a number of town sites were being
laid out along the railway which connects Guthrie,
Oklahoma, with Fort Smith, Arkansas. In order
to put the capability of the Negro for self-government
to test, there was established in August, 1903, seventy-two
miles east of Guthrie, the site of a Negro town.
It was called Boley after the man who built that section
of the railway, and it was widely advertised as a
town which was to be exclusively under the control
of Negroes.

One thing that, perhaps, made this town attractive
to coloured people was the fact that there are a
number of communities in Oklahoma which rigidly
exclude Negroes from settlement. On the other
hand, there has grown up in other parts of Oklahoma,
communities, like the little town of Taft,

which, although not settled exclusively by Negroes,
are sometimes referred to as "Negro towns," because
of the large proportion of the Negroes in the
population.

A large proportion of the settlers of Boley were
farmers from Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi.
The proprietor of the largest cotton-gin was, in 1907,
C. W. Perry, who came from Marshall, Texas.
Perry had worked in the railway machine shops for
a number of years and had gained enough of the
trade of a machinist to be able to set up his own
cotton-gin and the machinery connected with it.
E. L. Lugrande, one of the principal stockholders
in the second bank in Boley, came to this new
country, like many others, to get land. He had
owned 418 acres of land in Denton County, which
he had purchased some years before at a price of
four and five dollars an acre. In recent years land
has gone up in price and Mr. Lugrande was able to
sell his property for something like fifty dollars an
acre. He came to Boley and purchased a large tract
of land just outside the town. Now a large part of
this acreage is in the centre of the town. Mr.
Lugrande is representative of the better class of
Negro farmers who, for several years past, have been
steadily moving into the new lands in the West.

I might add, in conclusion, that from all I have
been able to learn Boley, which, like Mound Bayou, is
entirely controlled by Negroes, is one of the most

peaceful towns in that part of Oklahoma. When
I was at Topeka, Kansas, in 1907, I was told that not
a single citizen of Boley had been arrested for two
years.

I have spoken of the settlements of Negroes in
Liberia, in Canada, and in the different parts of the
United States in the same connection, because they
seem to me to represent the same wholesome desire
of members of my race to do something for which they
will be respected, not merely as individuals but as a
race; to achieve something in their own way and in
their own right, which would be a worthy contribution
to American civilisation.

The story told by one of the most successful citizens
of Boley, for example, illustrates the motives
which have inspired the building of this bustling and
progressive little Negro city. This man had been a
railway brakeman, was well respected by his
employers, owned a little home of his own, and had
a bank account. When it was learned that he was
selling his property in Texas in order to emigrate to
Oklahoma a number of the prominent white citizens
of the community called upon him and asked him
why he was going to leave. "We know you," they
said, "and you know us. We are behind you and
will protect you."

"Well," he replied, "I have always had an ambition
to do something for myself. I do not always
want to be led; I want to do a little leading."

Whatever one may be disposed to think of this
segregation of the white and black races which one
sees going on, to a greater or lesser extent, in every
section of the country, it is certain that there is a
temporary advantage to the Negro race in the building
up of these "race towns." They enable the
masses of the people to find a freer expression to their
native energies and ambitions than they are able to
find elsewhere, and, at the same time, give them an
opportunity to gain that experience in cooperation,
self-direction, and self-control, which it is hard for
them to get in the same degree elsewhere.

In the year 1905 I had occasion to visit Winston-Salem,
in North Carolina, to speak in a public meeting
in the interest of the Slater industrial and State
Normal School, at that place. This school had been
established some years before by Mr. S.G.Atkins, who
is now Secretary of Education in the A. M. E. Zion
Church. He had been a teacher in the public schools
in Winston. In 1892 he moved to some high ground
outside the city and built himself a home. A few
years later he started a little Industrial School at
this place. As time went on the school increased in
size and importance and a little community grew up
around it.

After the school had been established, Mr. R. J.
Reynolds, of the Reynolds Tobacco Company,
gave Mr. Atkins $4,500 to assist him in building
out there a hospital for coloured people. Mr.

Reynolds was a large employer of coloured labour
in the tobacco factory, and he assisted in establishing
this hospital in order to made some adequate provision
for his own employees in case of sickness.
The thing that impressed me at the time about this
little community was the fine location chosen for it
and the number of thrifty little cottages which I saw
growing up, nearly all of which, I learned, had been
paid for by the people who lived in them.

This was the first time, I think, that my attention
had been specially drawn to a number of quiet, clean,
thrifty little Negro communities that are growing up
everywhere in the South at the present day, frequently
in the neighbourhood of some school. Particularly
has this been true in the last ten years, since Negro
banks and building and loan associations have
sprung up to encourage the people in all parts of the
South, as well as in some of the Northern cities, to
purchase their own homes. Since my visit to Winston-Salem
in 1905 the coloured people in that city
have, I understand, prospered greatly. This is due,
to some extent, to the fact that since the organisation
of the Tobacco Trust they have had steady employment
in the tobacco factories, but it is also due in a
large part to the assistance and encouragement the
coloured people have received from the white people
of that city, particularly from the descendants of the
Moravians of Salem.

In May, 1907, the Forsythe Savings and Trust Co.

was organised at Winston-Salem. This bank, which
was organised largely for the purpose of assisting
coloured people in securing homes, reported in
December, 1908, that it had transacted a volume of
business from the time it was organised which
amounted to $302,738.86. In close connection with
this bank there was organised the Twin City Reality
Company, of which Mr. S. G. Atkins was president,
and Andrew Jackson Brown vice-president.

Mr. Brown is an interesting character. He came
from Lynchburg to Winston to work in the tobacco
factory. After he was forty years old, his home having
been broken up by the death of his wife, he
decided to go to school. He made his home in the
little community, Columbia Heights, which had
sprung up around Mr. Atkins's school. He had been
the chief agent of the True Reformers' Association
in the region before this time, and he supported himself
mainly in this way while he was in school. He
was a man of simple manners and sturdy honesty,
and has become, I have been told, a very positive
constructive force in his community.

What I have described as taking place in Winston-Salem
has been going on, in much the same way, in
every other part of the country where any considerable
portion of the population belongs to the Negro race.
In some places, like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and
New York, whole avenues for considerable distances
have been taken up by coloured people who have

moved out of the slums, in which the masses of the
Negro people are usually to be found during the first
years of their life in the cities. In these new
districts they have been building comfortable
and frequently handsome houses.

Perhaps I cannot better describe the change
that has taken place, in this and other parts of the
South, than in the words of a Southern white man
who has watched the changes I have referred to, and
has been able to appreciate their significance. Writing
in the Century Magazine for June, 1906, Harry
Stillwell Edwards, speaking of this matter, says:

In the course of my journeys about the country
I have had an opportunity to go into many Negro
homes in all parts of the United States, where I have
found, not merely the comforts, but some of the
elegancies of life. Books, pictures, fine table-linen,
furniture, carpets, and not infrequently mementoes
of travel in many parts of this country and of Europe.
What interests me more than anything else, however,
is to see the number of them who are collecting books,
histories, pictures, and all kinds of material concerning
their own race or of work by members of their
own race, showing evidences of its progress.

Aside from Chicago, Philadelphia is the only city,
so far as I know, in which a systematic and careful
study has been made of the condition of the Negro
population. In 1897, Professor W. E. B. Du Bois
estimated that Negroes owned $5,000,000 in that city.
A more recent investigation made by Richard R.
Wright, Jr., indicates that the number of home
owners has increased 71 per cent. since 1900. In 1907
he stated that within twenty months seven real
estate companies had been organised among Negroes
in Philadelphia. One of these had succeeded in
providing homes for twenty-five Negroes within a
year.

Probably the most important influence in assisting
coloured people to obtain homes in Philadelphia has
been the Berean Building and Loan Association,
established in connection with the Berean Presbyterian
Church, which is one of the three coloured
Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia. According
to a report published in 1906, this association has
purchased one hundred and forty-five homes for its
members, valued at $304,500 and has paid back
matured stock to the value of more than $80,000.
The Berean is the largest and the oldest of seven
building and loan associations of Philadelphia.

So far as I know there is no city in the United States
where the coloured people own so many comfortable
and attractive homes in proportion to the
population, as in the city of Baltimore. In what is
known as the Druid Hill district of the city, there are,
perhaps, fifteen thousand coloured people. For
fifteen blocks along Druid Hill Avenue nearly every
house is occupied or owned by coloured people.
In the latter part of the ninties Dr. R. M. Hall, who
is one of the oldest coloured physicians and one of
the wealthiest coloured men in Baltimore, moved into
1019 Druid Hill Avenue. He was almost the first
coloured man to make his home upon that street.
Since that time the white people who lived there
have moved out into the suburbs and the coloured
people have moved in to take their places. I have
been told that fully 50 per cent. of the coloured

people on Druid Hill Avenue own their homes,
though, so far as I know, no systematic investigation
has been made of the facts. This part of the city
has had for a number of years its own coloured
representative, Harry S. Cummings, in the city
council. This district which Mr. Cummings represented
in the city council in 1908 was that, I have
been told, in which, forty-five years before, his
parents had been held as slaves.