In this prosperous condition the Negroes could help themselves.  Prior to this period they had been unable to make any sacrifices for charity and education.  Only $150 of the $1,000 raised for Negro education in 1835 was contributed by persons of color.  In 1839, however, the colored people raised $889.30 for this purpose, and thanks to their economic progress, this task was not so difficult as that of raising the $150 in 1835.  They were then spending considerable amounts for evening and writing schools, attended by seventy-five persons, chiefly adults.  In 1840 Reverend Mr. Denham and Mr. Goodwin had in their schools sixty-five pupils each paying $3 per quarter, and Miss Merrill a school of forty-seven pupils paying the same tuition.  In all, the colored people were paying these teachers about $1,300 a year.  The only help the Negroes were then receiving was that from the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, which employed one Miss Seymour at a salary of $300 a year to instruct fifty-four pupils.  Moreover, the colored people were giving liberally to objects of charity.  Some Negroes burned out in 1839 were promptly relieved by members of their own race.  A white family in distress was befriended by a colored woman.  The Negroes contributed also to the support of missionaries in Jamaica and during the years from 1836 to 1840 assisted twenty-five emancipated slaves on their way from Cincinnati to Mercer County, Ohio.[34]

During this period they had made progress in other than material things.  Their improvement in religion and morals was remarkable.  They then had four flourishing Sabbath Schools with 310 regular attendants, one Baptist and two Methodist churches with a membership of 800, a “Total Abstinence Temperance Society” for adults numbering 450, and a “Sabbath School or Youth’s Society” of 180 members.  A few of these violated their pledges, but when we consider the fact that one fourth of the entire colored population belonged to temperance organizations while less than one tenth of the whites were thus connected, we must admit that this was no mean achievement.  Among the Negroes public sentiment was then such that no colored man could openly sell intoxicating drinks.  This growing temperance was exhibited, too, in the decreasing fondness for dress and finery.  There was less tendency to strive merely to get a fine suit of clothes and exhibit one’s self on the streets.  Places of vice were not so much frequented and barber shops which on Sundays formerly became a rendezvous for the idle and the garrulous were with few exceptions closed by 1840.  This influence of the religious organizations reached also beyond the limits of Cincinnati.  A theological student from the State of New York said after spending some time in New Orleans, that the influence of the elevation of the colored people of Cincinnati was felt all the way down the river.  Travelers often spoke of the difference in the appearance of barbers and waiters on the boats.[35]