“Let me tell you, my friends, the slaveholders are not the men we
dread! They do not desire to have us removed. The Northern pro-slavery
men have done the free people of color ten-fold more injury than the
southern slaveholders… There is no prejudice against color among the
slaveholders. Their social system and one million of mulattos are facts
which no argument can demolish. If the slaves were emancipated, they
would remain where they are. Black labor in the South is at a premium.
The free man of color there has always had the preference over the white
laborers. Many of you are aware that Southerners will do a favor for a
free colored man, when they will not do it for a white man in the same condition in life.”
John Rock was an American teacher, doctor, dentist, lawyer and
abolitionist. Rock was one of the first African-American men to earn a
medical degree. In addition, he was the first black person to be
admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.
On January 23, 1863, John Rock made a speech at the annual meeting of
The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. What follows are excerpts from
that speech published 2/14/1863 in “The Liberator,” the paper of the
radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
Rock was a Yankee, born in Salem Massachusetts. He was certainly no
friend of the South, but he does provide some insight to the differences
between the North and the South regarding the black race.
First Rock points out that the “deep and cruel prejudice” against blacks in America is “much more abundant in the North.”
He then explains why, and closes this passage of his speech stating
that both rich and poor in the North hate blacks out of self-interest,
and hold no notion of “justice and humanity:”
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