28                      THE REVIEW

Negroes in Lombard, Rodman and Naudain streets, near Sev-
enth, and in most cases charges a reasonable rent and keeps
the houses up to a certain standard of decency.
     The last twenty years have seen a bettering of conditions.
Except a few homeowners the better class of Negroes have
largely moved out of the east end of the Seventh ward, going
further west and south, securing better houses on better streets,
but still, in the case of the renters; paying high rents. Some-
times the tenants living next door to the newly arrived Negro
family threaten to move, and occasionally they carry out their
threats; sometimes they build a partition between themselves
and their Negro neighbor, as was done by one family to shield
itself from a negro Princeton graduate--now a most valuable
citizen--and in another case to prevent contamination from
a Negro bishop. In due time, however, the partitions and cur-
tains are removed, and instances are known where good fel-
lowship has been established. In nearly every case only a few
months' contact convinces most people that Negro neighbors
are not so bad after all.
                              II.
     According to the census of 1900 a larger per cent. of Ne-
groes were engaged in gainful occupations than for the coun-
try at large--84.1 out of a hundred Negro males over ten
years, and 40.7 per cent. of the Negro females were returned
as having gainful occupations, while for the country at large
the percentages were 80.0 for the males and 18.8 for the fe-
males. In Philadelphia, as in the rest of the country, a lar-
    ger per cent. of Negroes have gainful occupations than whites.




			

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 24, Num. 1

Negroes of Philadelphia

R.

Volume:  24
Issue Number:  01
Page Number:  20
Date:  07/1907