Race Unity

With white southerners opting for white servants instead of African American, John Mitchell, Jr. sees this as a chance for servants of all races to come together.

The August, Ga., Union calls the attention of its readers to the periodical agitation which takes place there in favor of supplanting colored servants with white ones.

It advocates the pooling of race interests by the establishment of enterprises by the colored people of that locality to the end that they may multiply the opportunities for their own employment.

This is sound advice. The amount of money needlessly wasted by the laboring classes of colored people in cities the size of Augusta would employ a thousand colored persons at wages equal to those which they now receive from white sources.

The cry for white servants in lieu of colored ones comes, however form the “dead poor” white elements and not from the better class of white people. The old slave-holding elements cling tenaciously to the off-spring of the old black mammy.

This affection is touching and the fact that tit is reciprocated is an additional testimony to the existence of that bond of union which will not be severed during their day and generation, but will grow stronger and stronger until both have gone the way of all the earth.

Our danger or rather our off-springs’ danger rests in the laps of time when the use of the biblical expression “Another king arose, who knew not Joseph.” With the ushering in of that era, friendship formed during the days of slavery will have passed away; because the friends will be resting beneath the clods of the valley, awaiting the sound of the last trump, when they will clasp glad hands and sing songs of love and peace forever and forever.

“Race Unity,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 19, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1462.