A White Gentleman Speaks
January 21, 1905
Summary
A sarcastic attack on white injustice points out that black families are buying their own land and homes, stating that “material advancement of the colored man is a much greater menace to the ease and comfort of the aforesaid brother than all of the political offices the colored man as ever aspired to.”
Transcription
Editor Planet:
Dear Sir:--Since I wrote you for your advertising terms I have sold all three of the little farms I intended to advertise. My Christmas sales to colored people have been better than usual.
I note in the paper sent me that your Buffalo correspondent thinks that the colored man should give up all effort for political office leaving all the fat political positions for his ‘po’ white brothers. Would it not be as well for the Negro to give up buying lang and the idea of his having a home for himself so as to be sure of remaining a “hewer of wood and drawer of water” for him? I am very certain that the material advancement of the colored man is a much greater menace to the ease and comfort of the aforesaid brother than all of the political offices the colored man as ever aspired to. In my section of Virginia, the Richmond tax land grabber is nowhere compared with the colored land-grabber. He wants a home. He is bound to have it. He has saved the money to start to pay for it and if he starts and is given a fair chance, it is his home certain. I speak from an extensive experience having sold about one hundred little homes and farms to Negroes and every man of them has paid his debt and got his land. I can show you sections here where the colored man owns fully one-half of the land and these sections will compare very favorably with the sections where the white man is farming under his system.
The white owner complains bitterly that his former tenants who used to drive a little bull yearling to a rickety cart in going to town to sell his little part of the crop now drives to town with a good horse and top buggy and sells his whole crop to suit himself, while the land her formerly rented is growing up to scrub pines.
What has become of the laborer? Where has he gone? Why did he go? When the landowner and farmer has given these three questions careful, conscientious consideration, he will stop sending to the legislature men who will seek to add to the burdens of the colored men, men who fully believe that the more the laborer is deprived of his ambition and his comforts the better laborer he is and the lower he is in the scale of intelligence the better, but he must be a moral person as the same time. Nature doesn’t work that way, and the unjust laws made by them have cost the farmers of the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in the depreciation of the value of their lands from lack of labor to work them, and the colored man is fast taking advantage of that condition to buy him a home. Now is time for him to do it. I am taking too much of your time out I feel deeply on this matter.
Respectfully yours, S. S. Baker
Dear Sir:--Since I wrote you for your advertising terms I have sold all three of the little farms I intended to advertise. My Christmas sales to colored people have been better than usual.
I note in the paper sent me that your Buffalo correspondent thinks that the colored man should give up all effort for political office leaving all the fat political positions for his ‘po’ white brothers. Would it not be as well for the Negro to give up buying lang and the idea of his having a home for himself so as to be sure of remaining a “hewer of wood and drawer of water” for him? I am very certain that the material advancement of the colored man is a much greater menace to the ease and comfort of the aforesaid brother than all of the political offices the colored man as ever aspired to. In my section of Virginia, the Richmond tax land grabber is nowhere compared with the colored land-grabber. He wants a home. He is bound to have it. He has saved the money to start to pay for it and if he starts and is given a fair chance, it is his home certain. I speak from an extensive experience having sold about one hundred little homes and farms to Negroes and every man of them has paid his debt and got his land. I can show you sections here where the colored man owns fully one-half of the land and these sections will compare very favorably with the sections where the white man is farming under his system.
The white owner complains bitterly that his former tenants who used to drive a little bull yearling to a rickety cart in going to town to sell his little part of the crop now drives to town with a good horse and top buggy and sells his whole crop to suit himself, while the land her formerly rented is growing up to scrub pines.
What has become of the laborer? Where has he gone? Why did he go? When the landowner and farmer has given these three questions careful, conscientious consideration, he will stop sending to the legislature men who will seek to add to the burdens of the colored men, men who fully believe that the more the laborer is deprived of his ambition and his comforts the better laborer he is and the lower he is in the scale of intelligence the better, but he must be a moral person as the same time. Nature doesn’t work that way, and the unjust laws made by them have cost the farmers of the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in the depreciation of the value of their lands from lack of labor to work them, and the colored man is fast taking advantage of that condition to buy him a home. Now is time for him to do it. I am taking too much of your time out I feel deeply on this matter.
Respectfully yours, S. S. Baker
About this article
Source
Location on Page
Upper Right Quadrant
Topic
Contributed By
Ryan Shah
Citation
“A White Gentleman Speaks,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed August 13, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/195.