The continual flow of runaways
from the South brought an increasing supply of cheap black labor to
compete with white workers, and the friction between the two races
continued. While many of the runaways, like Frederick Douglass, had
worked as skilled craftsmen in the South, they found economic
discrimination in the North limiting them to menial labor.
After 1830, when the tide of European immigration began to swell,
the competition for jobs grew even sharper, and blacks found that even
menial jobs were being taken over by the new European immigrants.
Jobs such as stevedores, coachmen, barbers, and servants, which had
traditionally been left to blacks, were now being invaded by the
Irish. Whereas in 1830 the vast majority of New York City servants
were Afro-American, after 1850 most of them were Irish. This economic
competition contributed considerably to the hostility, fear, and
discrimination which confronted the Northern freedmen.
In 1816 the American Colonization Society was founded. It was
considered the ideal solution to the American racial dilemma.
Claiming to be interested in the welfare of the African in its midst,
the Society advocated colonizing in Africa or wherever else it was
expedient.
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