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 Negroes of Cincinnati than elsewhere because of the fact that most of the menial labor in that city was done by Germans and Irishmen.  Now, since the Negroes could not follow ordinary menial occupations there was nothing left them but the lowest form of “drudgery,” for which employers often preferred colored women.  It was, therefore, necessary in some cases for the mother to earn the living for the family because the father could get nothing to do.  A colored man could not serve as an ordinary drayman or porter without subjecting his employer to a heavy penalty.[19]

The trades unions were then proscribing the employment of colored mechanics.  Many who had worked at skilled labor were by this prejudice forced to do drudgery or find employment in other cities.  The president of a “mechanical association” was publicly tried in 1830 by that organization for the crime of assisting a colored youth to learn a trade.[20] A young man of high character, who had at the cabinet-making trade in Kentucky saved enough to purchase his freedom, came to Cincinnati about