On the contrary, Until the abolishionist made the blacks a political tool and a weapon to be used against the southern whites, assimulation, on an individual by individual basis was happening throughtout the South. The first casuality of the John Brown's raid in Harpers Ferry, VIRGINIA, was a free black telegrapher, or so the story and a histoirical marker in that town states. Well being a telegrapher in that day was a pretty skilled job.
I am told the the freed black tradesman in Petersburg, Virginia were a very sizable percentage of that cities population in the 1860 census. Almost every community had black tradesmen of some skill. In 1862 the Black tradesmen in my community had a ball/dance to raise money to buy equipment to outfit a company of local Confederate infantry. The Blacks raise more money for this purpose than the White of the community, who were having a ball at the same time in a different location. As strange as that may sound between the blacks and the white they raised over $1,500.00 in one night to equipe that Company.
I heard one noted historian once comment that the difference between Northerners and Southerners in their attitudes towards Blacks is the the Northerners looked upon the Negro as a race and made their evaluations on the whole race. They detested the Negro himself as a person, but felt pity on the plite of the race. While the Southerner looked upon the Negro as an individual and treated him accordingly accord to his worth as an individual, but thought little of the Negro race as a whole.
Growing up in the pre civil right south in an almost all black community I can remember several "Mammy's" that I respected, because I knew they would tell my momma and I would get into trouble, because of the relationship they had as next door neighbors. That individual relationship lasted throught the 1960's until the assination of Dr. Martin luther King and the Highway Department took our house and we had to move.