he immigrating Negroes and the poor whites
from the uplands of Virginia and Kentucky. With some ill-informed
persons the question was whether that section should be settled by white
men or Negroes. The situation became more alarming when the Southern
philanthropic minority sometimes afforded a man like a master of
Pittsylvania County, Virginia, who settled 70 freedmen in Lawrence
County, Ohio, in one day.[15] It became unusually acute in Cincinnati
because of the close social and commercial relations between that city
and the slave States. Early in the nineteenth century Cincinnati became
a manufacturing center to which the South learned to look for supplies
of machinery, implements, furniture, and food.[16] The business men
prospering thereby were not advocates of slavery but rather than lose
trade by acquiring the reputation of harboring fugitive slaves or
frightening away whites by encouraging the immigration of Negroes, they
began to assume the attitude of driving the latter from those parts.

From this time until the forties the Negroes were a real issue in
Cincinnati. During the late twenties they not only had to suffer from
the legal disabilities provided in the "Black Laws," but had to
withstand the humiliation of a rigid social ostracism.[17] They were
regarded as intruders and denounced as an idle, profligate and criminal
class with whom a self-respecting white man could not afford to
associate. Their children were not permitted to attend the public
schools and few persons braved the inconveniences of living under the
stigma of teaching a "nigger school." Negroes were not welcome in the
white churches and when they secured admission thereto they had to go to
the "black pew." Colored ministers were treated with very little
consideration by the white clergy as they feared that they might lose
caste and be compelled to give up their churches. The colored people
made little or no effort to go to white theaters or hotels and did not
attempt to ride in public conveyances on equal footing with members of
the other race. Not even white and colored children dared to play
together to the extent that such was permitted in the South.[18]

This situation became more serious when it extended to pursuits of
labor. White laborers there, as in other Northern cities during this
period, easily reached the position of thinking that it was a disgrace
to work with Negroes. This prejudice was so much more inconvenient to
the Negroe