Free Blacks in the North and South, The Liberator, January 22,
1831 William Lloyd Garrison, a leading northern abolitionist,
began publishing his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, in
January 1831. In this early article he compares the conditions
of free blacks in the North and the South and the differences in
the discrimination and prejudice they faced. As Garrison noted,
freedom did not afford African Americans either civil rights or
justice. In most of the States in which slavery is tolerated,
the laws in relation to free colored persons are severe in the
extreme. Though their freedom is recognized, yet they have not
the rights of other freemen. . . . Few whites will eat with
blacks. Even where blacks and whites are domestics in the same
kitchen, the blacks, as I have been told, are often compelled to
eat at a separate table. So it is said that white journeymen and
apprentices of mechanics often refuse to work with blacks. The
prejudice has taken two different forms in the different parts
of our countr