Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/76

 62 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

eyes and a general expression of honesty, courage, and modesty." He could not read. With all his later prominence Singleton remained frank, simple, and unspoiled.^

"After freedom cried out," Pap was not content to remain in the North and soon went back to his old home in Tennessee to work at his trade. His experience in the North had opened his eyes to the economic weaknesses and dangers of his race, and soon he began to complain that the blacks were profiting little by free- dom. They had personal liberty but no homes, and they were often hungry, he says, and were frequently cheated. He then began his "mission," as he called it, urging the blacks to save their earnings and buy homes and little plots of land as a first step toward achieving industrial independence. His later career showed that he had little confidence in political measures as a means of elevating the race and it was always difficult for political agitators to get indorsement from him. His ideas and plans were chiefly about industrial matters and much of the criti- cism he received from his race was like that later directed at Booker T. Washington. He declared in 1868 when he began his "mission" that his people were being exploited for the benefit of the carpetbaggers, whose promises were always broken :

After the war [he said] my race willingly slipped a noose over their necks

and knuckled to a bigger boss than the old ex-one Bimeby the fifteenth

amendment came along and the carpetbaggers, and our poor people thought

they was goin' to have Canaan right off. But I knowed better I said to

'em "Hy'ar you is a-potter'n* round in politics and tryin' to git in offices that aint fit, and you can't see that these white tramps from the North is simply usin' you for to line their pockets and when they git through they'll drop you and the rebels will come into power and then whar'll you be ?" '

Singleton's Scrapbook, pp. 16, 18, 21, 55. Pap was proud of haying his name in print, and kept in a scrapbook clippings that people gave him relating to him- self. He exhibited the book with pride to the United States Senate Committee in 1880. It now belongs to the Kansas Historical Society, to the secretary of which, Hon. George W. Martin, I am indebted for the privilege of examining it and much other material relating to Benjamin Singleton.
 * St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1879 ; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1883 ; Pap

newspaper. The arrangement or lack of arrangement of the clippings in the scrapbook seems to prove that Singleton could not read. So many circulars and addresses were sent out by him that some people thought him well educated. See Kansas Historical Society Collections, Vol. IX, p. 385.
 * Singleton's Scrapbook, p. 21 — an interview with a reporter of a St Louis