Heads of the Colored People.--
No. VIII.

THE WHITEWASHER.

Why is it that black men excel as white
washers? Perhaps our friend the jeweller
at 833 Canal Street may tell, as he boasts of
spiritual communications; or mayhap Elder
Kennaday knows, for he claimed to have
prophecied about your paper becoming Liberty
Party some fifteen years ago; but however
it may be accounted for, it is notorious
that all the whitewashing is done by black
men; and birds of passage do not visit the
thawing North more certainly the over
[?], long poles, and lime pails of the
whitewashers
throng our cities, villages and hamlets
from early March till brown October.

What becomes of the whitewashers in the
intervening months 'tis hard to say, they
certainly disappear, and like other
hibernating
animals are no where to be seen while the
snow lasts. In pursuing their "mission,"
they are a noiseless race; softly as much of
the servants of the Inquisition, you see
them
pass along the streets, with long, steady
strides, not a smile, scarce a nod from
their
pepper and salt visages. Whatever house
they enter, is, for the time, theirs.
Resistance is in vain; they represent an
invisible
but irresistible power, before which,
parler
doors, chamber doors, and all other
fastenings and hindrances at once give
way; but
unlike the cruel Inquisitors, they are met
with smiles by the mistress of the
mansion, (in dishabille,) who
conducts them through the various
apartments which require the exercise
of their cleansing Art.

The whitewasher is a man of few words,
but he can open his mouth wide enough
(which few of our people can do) when the
price is asked: I know one who charged a
fashionable physician fifty dollars for
whitewashing an ordinary basement; he
has since
retired. And I heard another, one day as
we looked at St. Paul's in London, exclaim,
"what an improvement a few coats of lime
would be to that dark building!" Some
years since, a tall "son of the brush" was
hired and paid by a wag to whitewash the
brown stone basement front of our City
Hall;
to work he went, and had covered many
yards with his brush before the
authorities
succeeded in stopping him—but we left
our
friend with the lady in her parlor; here he
reigns supreme; Anax audron agamemnon,with his golden "skeptson", never lorded it
more thoroughly over the "well-greaved
Greeks."

The accomplished whitewasher is a most
skilful mechanic; your painter, with a
brush-handle
a foot long, "lays himself out" on a
smooth continuity of parallel lines upon a
door or desk immediately under his grasp,
and strikes if wages go below two dollars a
day; but our whitewasher, with brush
fastened
at the end of a ten feet pole, strikes the
lofty ceiling with swift, sure and even
stroke,
and draws parallels as perfect some 60 or
70
feet long, without break, or wave or
scratch
of any kind; then your painter daubs and
spatters and greases everything around—is a
perfect abomination to all tidy housekeepers;
but the whitewasher, with keen eye and
steady hand drops not a speck of lime on
the
superb Wilton carpet, or delicate mantel
ornament,
and he soberly steers around gilded
cornices and diamond be-dropped candelabra.
How he manages to avoid drops and
spattering, I cannot tell; I "cave in" on
that; for even I, Communipaw, with my
short brush and dry paint, cannot do
these clumsy
portraits without spattering some
people, as
I learn by their squealing. In another
direction, I mean in the erection of
scaffolding for very high-roofed churches,
the whitewasher exhibits much
mechanical skill. You hear
of painters and masons tumbling from
insecure
scaffolds, but of whitewashers never.—And one ex-whitewasher, Stephen
Murrows,
holds a patent (done at Washington) for an
improvement in affixing a ball and
socket-joint
to the whitewash brush; it is applicable
to all brushes, and especially useful in
ship-painting.
When I saw the splended parchment,
with the superb engraving of the Capital,
rightly frowned over by a deep dark
cloud, and the twenty odd stars beaming
through; and when I saw the name of my black brother engrossed on the parchment, I
felt that he had now a place among that
long
line of flame-colored heroes who have,
thro'
terrible difficulties carved their names
among the WORKERS.

Our whitewasher is a chemist, too in his
way: a mediocral chemist working out
results without knowing deeply the
elements he
combines; he knows secrets about lime,
and
lamp black, and sizing, and mixing colors,
any of which are worth a patent; and
painters and chemists assay to discover
their art as vainly as they do the lost art of
glass-staining. In not a few old houses,
there are
room walls standing, with blue, or green,
or
yellow coloring, which ancient
housekeepers
keep untouched for years, well knowing
that
no living whitewasher can match the nice
colors which Uncle Johnny—now dead and
gone—had left behind on the walls
aforesaid:
for these old whitewashers held on to
their color secrets until, and after, and in
like fashion, that a certain lad personage
is said to hold on to them.

I know painters who would pay well for
a knowledge of this white and color
mixing
but money cannot buy it. And I know that
the whitewashing of such vast buildings
as
the Merchants Exchange, Astor House,
&c.,
&c., is retained by the superior skill of
my friend Surrah Carrtarr, ex-sexton of
St. Philips.

Surrah Carrtar, in the region about
Gotham,
is prince of whitewashers. African born,
and of the citizen, not the slave class, in
Africa (of the Soo-soo tribe) he can write
Arabic and repeat portions of the
Koran.—Stolen from home at an early age, he was
carried to Demara and became under
overseer on the estate of old Mr.
Vandenhoevel,
who brought him to New York many years
ago as his slave. Carrtarr soon heard of
the old Manumission Society and of his
own
right to freedom; one day in the summer
time, and at the country seat near Harlaem river, he demanded wages of his soi disant master, and was rebuffed. A day or two after, when the old gentleman walked into the orchard, Carrtarr talked Arabic and threw apples at him: he was thought to be crazed, and was seized and secured in an upper room until officers could be sent for. The door was of oak and heavily panelled; Carrtarr made for it head foremost, and burst an opening large enough to get through, master and servants stood aghast, as this crazy man ran past them down to the city where he has lived ever since.

Twenty-five years have made no difference in his personal appearance. Short, wiry, with a well developed head and keen black eye, his conversation, although in broken English, is full of apt proverbs and of comparisons, ottra ladicrons, always hot and pithy. And as to his sayings, is not Wall Street full of them.

One day he called on a Pine Street merchant for some money due; a young wag in the set asked "where did you come from, whitewasher?" A. From "Africa." Q -- "Africa! What brought you here?" A. "Your broder." Q (The questioner reddening) "My brother, he was never in Africa!" A. "Well, he had straight hair, blue eyes, small mout', and white skin, must be your broder!" As they say in Congress, the
"conversation dropped."

The whitewashers are a cleanly people
men of families, and regular church-goers.—There are in the city, some fifty bosses, and
two hundred journeymen. I learn that many
of the latter devote themselves to "waiting
and tending" in the winter. Except that a
large number will deal in the fatal policy
gambling, there is no better class, nor more
thrifty in our city. Their wives take in
washing, and their children attending school.
The boss whitewashers number about fifty;
their Sunday "habitat" is old. Their church;
almost every trustee of that venerable insti
tution, "handles the brush;" and they all
hold "a piece or parcel of land" in a snug
spot, growing in value, or else hold an ac
count in the Savings' Bank, in which the CR.
side is heaviest by an integer, and, too, often
three ciphers on the right side of it. Envi
ous people do say that there is a mysterious
connexion between financeing for old Tim
and growing rich; but I spurn the idea, for
my friend Carrtarr, ex-sexton of St. Philips,
and John Johnson, one of the pillars there
of, and ex-organ blower of Trinity—both boss

whitewashers—have their piles in Bank; it
is whitewashing that enriches them, as any
man may affirm who contracts a bill with
them. Journeymen whitewashers earn from
one to two dollars a day, according to their
ability as workmen.

Now, a word of gossip. The A. M. C. of
the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows,
met at Newark last week; twenty-two lodges
were represented, and they had fine times;
G. M. James Gordon, re-elected. The Rev.
Samuel V. Barry, has recently returned from
England, and is "fitting out for Liberia and
a resting place." He delivered two very su
perior discourses in St. Paul's to-day; the
white minister of which did not honor him,
nor the congregation by the usual courtesy
of being present, and reading prayers for
him. Mr. Lyman Eppes, from North Elba,
Essex county, a successful colored farmer on
the Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. lands, passed through New
York on Friday, (17th inst;) he has cleared
some sixteen acres, has a cow, and span of
horses, house, barn, &c., and looks and feels
as independent as the next farmer; they
have recently established a Congregational
church in North Elba, in which "no commu-
nion with slaveholders" is a standing resolu-

tion. Mr. Eppes informs me that there are
five colored settlers in Township Twelve, or
North Elba, all doing well. They all went
thither with little or no means, and are prov
ing how well the masses might have done
had they made proper use of this noble do
nation. The Rev. Mr. Inskip will preach in
Zion church, corner Leonard Street, on Sun
day evening, October 2d, for the benefit of
the Rush Academy, which is to be located in
North Elba, Essex county, N. Y. Mr. E. V.
Clark, delegate to the Rochester Convention,
from Zion church, held a meeting therein
on the 16th inst., gave an account of his
stewardship, and resolutions approving of
the "doings" that were passed. A commit
tee was appointed to get up a series of lec
tures during the winter.

Yours, COMMUNIPAWSmith, James McCune

James McCune Smith (1813–65), a prominent black physician, abolitionist, and writer, was born in New York City to an enslaved father and a self-emancipated mother. He attended the New York African Free School, but was denied admission to Columbia University, Geneva Medical College, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He turned to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where he received a B.A. (1835), M.A. (1836), and M.D. (1837). Upon returning to New York, he opened a pharmacy and medical practice that catered to both blacks and whites. He became involved in the abolitionist movement, serving as an associate editor of the Colored American in 1839, contributed regularly to the Anglo-African Magazine, and wrote correspondence for the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper under the pseudonym “Communipaw.” Smith also wrote the introduction to Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). In 1861, Smith helped finance the revival of the Weekly Anglo-African to oppose black colonization and emigration, and he was a prominent member of the New York City Young Men’s Association, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and the New York African Society for Mutual Relief. He was the sole attending physician of the Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children, a member and vestryman of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, and a trustee of the New York Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children. In 1863 Wilberforce College appointed Smith professor of anthropology, but illness kept him from assuming his post. Lib., 1 June 1838; FDP, 18 May 1855; Douglass Papers, ser. 2:7–19; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 243; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 90–92, 103, 110; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 115, 134; Rhoda G. Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 40–42, 177, 186, 195, 200, 247, 276, 286, 325, 353, 393; DAB, 27:288–89. .

NEW YORK, Sept. 23d, 1853.