Hinds County Gazette clipping

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The Future of the Negro in the South.

M. M. McLeod, Esq., attorney-at-law, from Jackson, Miss., a native of this city, and who has resided in Mississippi for the past consecutive twenty years - a member of the Jackson bar, has been secretary of that State, prominent in politics, and probably one of the best known colored men there - was in our city, and gave to a reporter the following interview of the condition and progress of the black man in his State:

"What is the outlook for the colored man in the South?"

"Politically he has none. Materially and in an educational point of view, there is his best field."

"What are the opportunities for educated men of our race?"

"Openings for educational colored men are better now than ever before. The church congregations demand today a higher order ministerial intelligence, fixing the method for examination of school teachers, a much higher class intellectually will teach our public schools. Any line of business, trade or profession is open to men of color. The patronage of the negro alone on account of his numerical strength would guarantee success to the right kind of man but the white people join heartily in aiding everything that tends to advancement of the colored man on the lines that I have named."

"As to the material progress, how are they succeeding?"

"They are gradually increasing in wealth. I should suppose that there is at least five millions of taxable property owned by negroes in the State, and every facility to acquire lands and become property owners is extended. Quite a movement of my race has been made in purchasing a number of pieces of land along Mississippi river front in the great cotton producing section, which is in fact the great black belt, in some counties in which the ratio of population is twelve blacks to one white."

"How is the black man to come out from under the existing political oppression in your State?"

"Well, there is but one way in my judgment, and that is by the accumulation of property and educating himself. An influence in any community is readily accorded to the man of business or the man of brains, and there is no reason why the same result will not follow with my people down there. The bitterest enemy of the race will not say that they have not advanced on both of the above named lines since they were made freemen." -Cin. Commercial Gazette.

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Hinds County Gazette, “Hinds County Gazette clipping,” Mississippi State University Libraries, accessed April 25, 2024, https://msstate-exhibits.libraryhost.com/items/show/787.

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