EXODUS OF "COLORED FOLK."

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3016, 24 February 1881, Page 4

EXODUS OF "COLORED FOLK."

Since the conclusion of the gigantic American Civil War the negro population of the Southern States lias been steadily on the decrease, chiefly owing to the ever increasing annual exodus of "colored folk" from territories in which, since their emancipation from slavery, they no longer find it possible to earn their daily bread. Last year there was a slight falling-off in the numbers of cable emigrants from Louisiana, Alabama, and the Carolinas ; but it would appear that during the summer and autumn of the present year an imporrant and widespreading organisation has been set on foot among the native blacks of those States with the object of promoting an exodus en masse. This was to be curried out during the ■winter months, and steps have been taken to found a negro colony in New Mexico, several hundred thousand acres of land in that territory having already been purchased with the funds resulting from voluntary subscriptions. American-born negroes appear to experience little or no ambition to return to Africa, the original home of their race, although it might reasonably be expeoted that Liberia, peopled by free blacks and blessed with a Republican Government, ■would offer them irresistible attractions. Neither to this thriving negro State, however, nor to the island Republic of Hayti, doe 3 thfi stream of colored emigration from the ex-Slave States of the Union tend, but rather to " fresh woods and pastures new " of the American continent. —Daily Telegraph,