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Report on the condition of the people of color in the state of Ohio (1835)

Report on the condition of the people of color in the state of Ohio (1835)

Literary Fiction

Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention

Year: 1835
Authors: Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention
Print type: BOOK

Description:

About half of this 24-page document is a report for the Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention, held at Putnam, Ohio in April 1835 by a Committee assigned to investigate. The Committee estimated there were 7,500 colored people (African-Americans) in Ohio; about 2,500 in Cincinnati, 700 in two settlements in Brown county, and the remaining 4,300 “scattered in the principal towns in this state.” “A majority of the adults it is supposed were born in slavery. Many of them have gained their freedom by paying for themselves the market value.” Details are provided about some of the ways in which the African-Americans in Cincinnati were discriminated against, both informally and by law. For example, they were not allowed to attend public schools, even though they paid taxes. They were informally barred from nearly all skilled trades. In 1830, “the President of the Mechanical Association was publicly tried by the Society for the crime of assisting a colored young man to learn a trade.” One section of the report contains a number of examples of free African-Americans in Ohio buying in installments the freedom of relatives still enslaved. It includes the amounts in dollars that had been paid. There are brief life-stories of former slaves. Packaged with the report in this document is a “Report on the Laws of Ohio”, a long anti-slavery letter addressed to “the Presbyterians of Missouri who hold slaves” published in the St. Louis Observor, and several pages of “Anecdotes” about slavery, collected from various publications.