Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New YorkOvington, Mary White
History
Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York
Ovington, Mary White
African Americans -- New York (State) -- New York
With the end of the War and the passage of the fourteenth and fifteenth
amendments came a revulsion of feeling for the race. "I remember," an
old time friend of the Negro tells me, "when the fifteenth amendment was
passed. The colored people stood in great numbers on the streets, and on
their faces was a look of gratitude and thanksgiving that I shall never
forget." Following the amendment came the State Civil Rights Bill in
1873, declaring that all persons should be entitled to full and equal
accommodations in all public places; and discrimination for a time
largely ceased.
While the colored people were winning citizenship, their progress in
industry was also considerable. Until 1860 the race was infrequently
segregated, and black and white were neighbors, not only in their homes,
but in business. Samuel R. Scottron, a careful Negro writer, compiled a
long list of the trades in which Negroes engaged before the War. Besides
the various lines of domestic service, in which they were more
frequently seen than today--coachmen, cooks, waitresses, seamstresses,
barbers--there were many craftsmen, ship-builders, trimmers, riggers,
coopers, caulkers, printers, tailors, carpenters. "Second-hand clothing
shops were everywhere kept by colored men. All the caterers and
restaurant keepers of the high order, as well as small places, were kept
by colored men.... Varick and Peters kept about the most pretentious
barber shop in the city. Patrick Reason was one of the most capable
engravers. The greatest among the restaurateurs was Thomas Downing, who
kept a restaurant under what is now the Drexel Building, corner of Wall
and Broad Streets. The drug stores of Dr. James McCune Smith on West
Broadway, and Dr. Philip A. White on Frankfort Street, were not
outclassed by any kept by white men in their day."[14]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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