Segregation was accompanied by a new wave of race hatred. White
Americans came to believe that all Negroes were alike and
therefore could be treated as a group. An identical stereotype of
the Negro fixed itself on the white mind throughout the entire
country. If the Northerner hated this stereotype somewhat less
than did the Southerner, it was only because the number of
Negroes in the North was considerably smaller. At the end of the
century only two percent of the total number of Afro-Americans
was to be found in the North. The great northern migration had
not yet begun.
Both the Northern press and the genteel literary magazines
contained the same vulgar image of the Negro which was to be
found in openly racist communities in the South. Whether he
appeared in news articles, editorials, cartoons, or works of
fiction, he was universally portrayed as superstitious, stupid,
lazy, happy-go-lucky, a liar, a thief, and a drunkard. He loved
fun, clothes, and trinkets as well as chickens, watermelons, and
sweet potatoes. Usually he was depicted as having been a
faithful and loving slave before Emancipation, but,
unfortunately, he was unable to adjust to his new freedom News
stories and editorials referred to Negroes in slanderous terms
without any apparent sense of embarrassment.
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