"[52] Olmsted recorded
a conversation which he had with a free colored barber on a Red River
steamboat who had been at school for a year at West Troy, New York: "He
said that colored people could associate with whites much more easily
and comfortably at the South than at the North; this was one reason he
preferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance from
white people, and more insulted on account of his color, at the North than
in Louisiana."[53] And at Richmond Olmsted learned of a negro who after
buying his freedom had gone to Philadelphia to join his brother, but had
promptly returned. When questioned by his former owner this man said: "Oh,
I don't like dat Philadelphy, massa; an't no chance for colored folks dere.
Spec' if I'd been a runaway de wite folks dere take care o' me; but I
couldn't git anythin' to do, so I jis borrow ten dollar of my broder an'
cum back to old Virginny."[54] In Ohio, John Randolph's freedmen were
prevented by the populace from colonizing the tract which his executors had
bought for them in Mercer County and had to be scattered elsewhere in the
state;[55] in Connecticut the citizens of New Haven resolved in a public
meeting in 1831 that a projected college for negroes in that place would
not be tolerated, and shortly afterward the townsmen of Canterbury broke up
the school which Prudence Crandall attempted to establish there for colored
girls.
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