AMERICA'S COLORED POPULATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 100, 2 June 1900, Page 4

AMERICA'S COLORED POPULATION.

A colored delegate convention was held quite recently at Tuskegees, Alabama, under the auspices of Mr. Booker T. Washington and other leaders of the race. The closing day was devotad to tho discussion of this question: 'What has thirty-five years of freedom done for the negro?' Keports were submitted from every State where slavery prevailed prior to 1861 showing the negro's, property holdings and business enterprises, his work in schools of various grades, his condition as a man in morals and religion, his physical his relation to the white race. In Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee their property holdings have largely increased. In North Carolina the negro race pays taxes on £1,600,000 of property. In Georgia it pays 3 per cent, of all the taxes. In several cities of Alabama the negroes not only own their own homes, bub flourishing. stores, and in the rural districts they are buying farms. In Mississippi they own more land than in any other State, notwithstanding the fact that there they have fewer political or social privileges. One-half of Liberty County, Georgia, is owned by them. In Nashville, Tennessee, they own and run a large hotel and a number of office buildings. In Charleston, South Carolina, they operate a cotton mill, and in Concord, North Carolina, they own one. There are 1000 colored physicians in good and regular standing, more than 1000 educated ministers, 30,000 trained school teachers. All this and more that could be gathered from the reports is certainly a good showing. A mixed coference of leading whites and blacks is to be held at Montgomery shortly that will, we hope, harmonise the relation of the race's in the Southern States.