A few men of negro extraction, with white
blood in their veins, not any more negro than
white man,
Consequently not negroes in the true
sense of the word, are sent from the negro
colleges of the south to lecture northern
congregations upon the needs of their race; and these
one-quarter, or perhaps three-quarters, white
men are, with their intelligence, and sometimes
brilliant oratory, held up as true types of the
negro race by northerners; while there is, in
fact, as much difference between the
pureblooded negro of the rice-field and this false
representative of "his needs," as can well be
imagined.
An Irishman, just from the old country,
listened one evening to the fascinating eloquence
of a mulatto freedman. The good Irishman had
never seen a pure-blooded black man. The
orator said, "I am only half a black man. My
mother was a slave, my father a white planter."
"Be jabbers," shouted the excited Irishman,
who was charmed with the lecturer, "if you are
only half a nigger, what must a whole one be
like!"
The blacks were kind and civil, as they usually
are when fairly treated. They stood upon the
dike and shouted unintelligible farewells as I
descended the canal to Alligator Creek. This
thoroughfare soon carried me on its salt-water
current to the sea; for I missed a narrow
entrance to the marshes, called the Eye of the
Needle (a steamboat thoroughfare), and found
myself upon the calm sea, which pulsated in
long swells.
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