The
editor conceded that they had an opportunity to better their material
condition and acquire wealth here but contended that they had no chance to
rise out of the peasant class. The _Memphis Commercial Appeal_ urged
the building of a large Negro nation in Africa as practicable and
desirable, for it was "more and more apparent that the Negro in this
country must remain an alien and a disturber," because there was "not and
can never be a future for him in this country." The _Florida Times
Union_ felt that this colonization scheme, like all others, was a
fraud. It referred to the Negro's being carried to the land of plenty only
to find out that there, as everywhere else in the world, an existence must
be earned by toil and that his own old sunny southern home is vastly the
better place.[9]
Only a few intelligent Negroes, however, had reached the position of being
contented in the South. The Negroes eliminated from politics could not
easily bring themselves around to thinking that they should remain there
in a state of recognized inferiority, especially when during the eighties
and nineties there were many evidences that economic as well as political
conditions would become worse. The exodus treated in the previous chapter
was productive of better treatment for the Negroes and an increase in
their wages in certain parts of the South but the migration, contrary to
the expectations of many, did not become general.
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