Miscellany 1971

many of the Negro families were supported by the mothers or females of the household. Usually this work took the form of taking in washing or other menial domestic activities.

The Ohio Anti-Slavery Society conducted a survey of two districts in Cincinnati in 1835. The conditions reported in this survey seem representative of the general situation of the Negro in Cincinnati during this time. In one district there were twentysix families numbering one hundred twenty-five persons. Of this total, there were nineteen Negroes who called themselves “professors of religion.” Because of the political, economic, and social deprivations forced upon the black community by white society, many blacks turned to religion for spiritual comfort, as Leon Litwack points out in his North of Slavery.

Clergymen, whether formally trained or not, became key social figures in black areas. Twenty children in this district, according to the survey of the Anti-Slavery Society, attended school. Of the total of one hundred twenty-five blacks counted in the area, ninety-five had been former slaves. The number of individuals who had paid for their own freedom was twenty-three, at a total cost of $9,112. The employment of the heads of families was as follows: common laborers and porters, seven; dealers in second­ hand clothing, one; hucksters, one; carpenters, two; shoeblacks, six; cooks and waiters, eleven; and washerwomen, eighteen. Five of these washerwomen had purchased their freedom. One had paid four hundred dollars for herself, and later bought a house and a lot worth six hundred.

In the other district there were sixty-three families with an aggregate of two hundred fifty-eight people. Sixteen heads of families called themselves “professors of religion.” Fifty-three children attended school. This black community owned $9,850 worth of real estate. The number of heads of families who had purchased themselves was thirty-six, for a total sum of $21,513 or an average price of five hundred ninety-seven dollars.

At least two important facts are suggested by these surveys: (1) the cost of buying one’s own freedom represented a tremen­ dous economic burden on the Negro, and (2) while the ability of some black men to raise substantial sums of money to buy freedom casts some doubt on the argument that they were econom­ ically repressed, one must remember that a few Negroes were able to better their economic status and that many blacks were helped by anti-slavery societies and abolitionist organizations.

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