and
white labor. The continual flow of runaways from the South brought an
increasing supply of cheap black labor to compete with white workers, and
the friction between the two races continued. While many of the
runaways, like Frederick Douglass, had worked as skilled craftsmen in the
South, they found economic discrimination in the North limiting them to
menial labor.

After 1830, when the tide of European immigration began to swell, the
competition for jobs grew even sharper, and blacks found that even menial
jobs were being taken over by the new European immigrants. Jobs such as
stevedores, coachmen, barbers, and servants, which had traditionally been
left to blacks, were now being invaded by the Irish. Whereas in 1830 the
vast majority of New York City servants were Afro-American, after 1850
most of them were Irish. This economic competition contributed
considerably to the hostility, fear, and discrimination which confronted
the Northern freedmen.

In 1816 the American Colonization Society was founded. It was considered
the ideal solution to the American racial dilemma. Claiming to be
interested in the welfare of the African in its midst, the Society
advocated colonizing in Africa or wherever else it was expedient. It
comforted slave owners by announcing that it was not concerned with
either emancipation or amelioration. Both were outside its jurisdiction.
It did imply that slaves might eventually be purchased for colonization.
Most of its propaganda tried to demonstrate that the freedman lived in a
wretched state of poverty, immorality, and ignorance and that he would be
better off in Africa.

The movement received widespread support from almost all sectors of the
white community including presidents Madison and Jackson. Several state
legislatures supported the idea, and Congress voted $100,000 to finance
the plan which eventually led to the establishment of the Republic of
Liberia.

However, the Afro-American community was not very enthusiastic about the
project. In 1817 three thousand blacks crowded into the Bethel Church in
Philadelphia and, led by Richard Allen, vehemently criticized
colonization. They charged that the Society's propaganda only served to
increase racial discrimination since it stressed the poverty and
ignorance of the freedman and claimed he was doomed to continue in his
filth and degradation because of his natural inferiority. It also argued
that whites would only take advant