Black Population in Americ

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 31, 22 August 1885, Page 3

Black Population in Americ

The rapid progress of the blacks towards numerical supremacy in the United States is beginning to attract anxious attention (says the St. James* Gazette). Some startling numbers bearing on the subject were given by the Rev. Dr. Allen, secretary of the ireedmen's Aid Society, in the Presbyterian General Assembly at Cincinnati, on the 25th of May. Twenty years ago, he observed, at the close of the war, there were in the Southern States 3,947,000 colored people, and [ now there are more than 7,000,000. [ Then there were in Mississippi 220,000 negroes, now 657,000. Then there were in South Caraliua 400,000, now more than 600,000. Five hundred coloured babies are born in the United States every day. The coloured population of the United States doubles every twenty years ; the white population only once in 35 years. Eight years will not have passed before the negroes will be in a numerical majority in some of the Southern States. At the present rate of increase, in 1985 there will be 96,000,000 white people i& the United States and 192,000,000 colored people. The day, in Dr Allen's opinion, is not for distant when it will be a physical impossibility to continue the present practical disfranchisement of the colored men in the Southern States. In South Carolina he has bought and paid for 270,000 acres of land which he cultivates. In the South he pays taxes on $91,000,000 worth of property. He is editing, printing, and publishing 106 newspapers, and yet of the 9,000,000 colored people of the country more than 6,000,000 cannot read orwrite.