Page 28 - Pine Bluff and Jefferson County, Arkansas {1893}
P. 28
26 JEFFERSON COUNTY, ARK.
they look upon their own gray hairs and their forms county is owned and conducted by a colored man, J. C.
stooping to the grave, with no other prospect before Dukes. The two street car lines consolidated, of Pine
their sons and daughters than the lives of drudgery and Bluff, with a handsome park and race course, are owned
servile obedience that had troubled their own. No by Wiley Jones, a colored man, born in 1S48 and sold
wonder such people are discouraged, and a tone of com- as a slave in 1858, who has made a fortune of $200,000
plaint and misgiving marks their utterance. within the past twenty years. Many colored men hold
important and lucrative offices, and many are respect-
Many times they must have thought, how different able farmers. The best of feeling prevails. While the
would all this be had they followed the advice of some great body of the colored people still adhere to the Repub-
good friend in years gone by and traveled out to the lican party, they now do so more intelligently than
South or West, where many of their former neighbors formerly. Some act with Democratic party. Their
are situated in prosperity, if not wealth, and what is
best friends in both parties rejoice over their advance-
—worth still more a home. ment in intelligence and independence and regard it as
This is what Jefferson Counly offers in an especial
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W#'»fflliil1ffliiill|i||'''U[S[ltl'if': __ H,^
—-homes homes to all whose industry and in- a bright augury of the future.
tegrity will perpetuate them among their descendants. AVERSION OF LARGE PLANTERS.
There is room here for 10,000 families and a home for
every one of them. The impression is unfounded that the large planters
and Other leading men are so much identified with
POSITION OF THE COLORED PEOPLE. colored labor and vast plantations as to be indifferent,
if not averse, to poor men settling near them upon
The condition of the colored people has, in the past farms small in size. Self interest requires them to take
few years, undergone great changes in the respects the opposite course, if they had not been impelled to it
which have important bearings upon their relations to by natural kindness of heart, which has ever been a
the whites. The educational facilities of the colored characteristic of the Southern people. Small farmers,
people in Jefferson County are better than those which those cultivating 20 or 40 acres of land, are just what
the whites possess. Their churches, though not costly is considered by all classes to be the one thing needed
buildings, are commodious, convenient and numerous. to bring forth the hidden wealth of the county. Were
They are very rapidly acquiring homes and accumu- the population of Jefferson County quadrupled, and
lating property. The only Republican paper in the
