Thomas Athol Joyce and Walter Francis Willcox

“ The negro population of Africa is probably not increasing at all. But during the 19th century the negroes in the United States increased nearly ninefold. They are now much the most thriving offshoot of the race and the most civilized and progressive group of negroes in the world. Under a slavery system not permitting the importation of new supplies a high rate of increase by excess of births over deaths is an advantage to the master class. During the slavery period and until about 1880 the increase of southern whites and of southern negroes proceeded at about the same rate. ”

“ But though the mental inferiority of the negro to the white or yellow races is a fact, it has often been exaggerated; the negro is largely the creature of his environment, and it is not fair to judge of his mental capacity by tests taken directly from the environment of the white man, as for instance tests in mental arithmetic; skill in reckoning is necessary to the white race, and it has cultivated this faculty; but it is not necessary to the negro.
On the other hand negroes far surpass white men in acuteness of vision, hearing, sense of direction and topography. ”

“ They have been and are perhaps more acute in the United States than elsewhere, because there the lightest and the darkest races have commingled, because of the theory on which the government of the country nominally rests, that each freeman should be given an equal chance to improve his industrial position and an equal voice in deciding political questions, and because of the almost irreconcilable differences in the public opinion of the two great sections to only one of which do the problems come home as everyday matters. ”

“ A native who has once visited a particular locality will rarely fail to recognize it again. For the rest, the mental constitution of the negro is very similar to that of a child, normally good-natured and cheerful, but subject to sudden fits of emotion and passion during which he is capable of performing acts of singular atrocity, impressionable, vain, but often exhibiting in the capacity of servant a dog-like fidelity which has stood the supreme test. ”

“ Cannibalism is found in its simplest form in Africa. In that continent the majority of cannibal tribes eat human flesh because they like it, and not from any magical motive or from lack of other animal food. In fact it is noticeable that the tribes most addicted to this practice inhabit just those districts where game is most plentiful. Among the true negroes it is confined mainly to the Welle and Ubangi districts, though found sporadically (and due to magical motives) on the west coast, and among the Bantu negroids in the south-western part of Belgian Congo and the Gabun. ”

“ Occupations.—The slavery system furnished industrial training to many slaves who seemed likely to turn it to their master's advantage. When this system was abolished the opportunities for such training open to the race were decreased, and it is doubtful whether even yet as large a proportion of skilled negro artizans are being trained in the south as were produced there before the Civil War. The demand for skilled labour in the south is being met more and more by white labour. ”

“ But during the last score of years in the century the increase of negroes was much less rapid, the rate being only about three-fifths of that prevailing among southern whites.
Birth-rate.—As the increase of negro population is slackening, as the immigration and emigration of negroes are insignificant in amount, and as the death-rate is about stationary, it is reasonable to infer that the birth-rate is dwindling. This cannot be stated with certainty, for there are no registration records giving the number of births for any large and representative group of American negroes. ”

“ We have no means for judging what the possessions of the race were at the time of its emancipation, but in 1860 there were nearly half a million free negroes in the country, many of them holding property and some of them wealthy. The per capita wealth of the white population of the United States in 1900 was about $1320 and that of southern whites about $885, indicating that the property of the average negro person or family was about one twenty-fifth that of the average southern white person or family. ”

“ They throw no light whatever upon a point they are often quoted as establishing, the comparative criminality of the northern and southern negroes. Those residing in the north include an abnormal number of males, of adults, and of city population, influences all tending to increase the proportion of prisoners. It seems likely that if the figures for the south in 1890 could be made strictly comparable with those for the same region in 1904 the apparent decrease of 22% in the proportion of negro prisoners to population would almost but not quite disappear. ”

“ The problem of providing adequate educational facilities for negro children is made more difficult by the maintenance in all the former slave states of two sets of schools, one for each race. At the present time those states with one-third of their population negro assign about one-fifth of their public school funds to the support of negro schools. About $155,000,000 or one-sixth of the entire amount spent by southern communities for public schools between 1870 and 1906, has gone to support schools for the negroes. ”

“ It would be generally but not universally held, also, that the negroes in the United States progressed under slavery, that they were far better qualified for incorporation as a vital and contributing element of the country's civilization at the time of their emancipation than they were on arrival or than an equal number of their African kindred would have been. But probably the rate of progress has been more rapid under freedom than it was under slavery. ”

“ Where feudal kingdoms have been formed, ancestor-worship begins to appear and often assumes paramount importance. In fact this form of religion is typical of all the eastern and southern portion of the continent (see Africa: Ethnology) . With the negro, as with most primitive peoples, it is the malignant powers which receive attention from man, with a view to propitiation or coercion. Beneficent agencies require no attention, since, from their very nature, they must continue to do good. The negro attitude towards the supernatural is based frankly on fear ”

“ As the law and the social opinion of the Southern whites make little or nothing of this distinction between negroes of pure blood and mulattoes, it is often regarded as less important than it really is. The recognized leaders of the race are almost invariably persons of mixed blood, and the qualities which have made them leaders are derived certainly in part and perhaps mainly from their white ancestry. ”

“ As an agriculturist the negro is principally a vegetarian, but this form of diet is not the result of direct choice; meat is everywhere regarded as a great delicacy, and no opportunity of obtaining it is ever neglected, with one exception—that the cattle-keeping tribes rarely slaughter for food, because cattle are a form of currency. Fish is also an important article of diet in the neighbourhood of large rivers, especially the Nile and Congo. ”

“ Along with this decrease of pressure from without the southern states and the development of economic competition between the races within them, there has gone an increased demand on the part of the whites for a complete social separation between the races in school, in church, in public conveyances and hotels, all founded upon a fear that any disregard of such separateness will make intermarriage or fruitful illegal unions between the races more frequent. ”

“ The negro and negroid population of America, the descendants of the slaves imported from West Africa, and in a less degree, from the Mozambique coast, before the abolition of the slave-trade, are treated separately below. ”

“ Where the rainfall is uncertain, the production of rain by magical means is one of the chief duties of the magician, a duty which becomes paramount in the eastern plains among negroes and Bantu negroids alike. But the negroes and negroids have been considerably influenced by exotic religions, chiefly by Mahommedanism along the whole extent of country bordering the Sahara and in the east. Christianity has made less progress, and the reason is not far to seek. ”

“ The negroes in the United States have played and are playing an important and necessary part in the industrial and economic life of the southern states, in which in 1908 they formed about one-third of the population. ”

“ The true negroes show great similarity of physical characteristics; besides those already mentioned they are distinguished by length of arm, especially of fore arm, length of leg, smallness of calf and projection of heel; characteristics which frequently fail to appear to the same degree among the Bantu, who are also as a rule less tall, less prognathous, less platyrrhine and less dark. A few tribes in the heart of the negro domain (the Welle district of Belgian Congo) show a tendency to round head, shorter stature and fairer complexion ”

“ It must be remembered that the comparative infrequency of crime among slaves, even if it existed, is no proof of the absence of criminal tendencies and actions. Offences on the part of slaves, or at least minor offences which are always far more numerous than serious offences, were dealt with in most cases privately and without invoking the machinery of the law. ”

“ Wherever large numbers of full-blooded negroes and of persons of mixed central or north European and negro blood have lived in the same community for some generations, there is a strong and growing tendency to establish a social line between them. ”

“ Christianity has none of these advantages, but possesses two great drawbacks as far as the negro is concerned. It is not sufficiently categorical, but leaves too much to the individual, and it discountenances polygyny. The fact that it is divided into sects, more or less competitive among themselves, is another disadvantage which can hardly be overrated. ”

“ In all states containing a large proportion of negroes the results of the Federal policy of reconstruction were disastrous, and those bitter years probably contributed more than the Civil War itself to estrange the two sections. Since the withdrawal of Federal troops in 1877 the prevailing and persistent judgment of southern whites regarding the laws and the policy to be adopted upon this subject has been accorded more and more weight in determining the action of the states and the Federal government. ”

“ The number of negroes voting or entitled to vote has been reduced at first by intimidation or fraud, later by legislation or provisions of the state constitutions. If such enactments are nominally directed not against any race but against certain characteristics which may appear mainly in the race, such as illiteracy, inability or unwillingness to pay an annual poll tax or to register each year, they have been and are likely to be held within the constitutional authority of the state. ”

“ The last is not strictly typical of negro culture at all; nearly all the tribes by whom it is practised are of mixed origin, and their devotion to cattle seems to vary inversely with the purity of race. ”

“ We must necessarily suppose that the development of the negro and white proceeds on different lines. While with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brainpan, in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone. ”

“ Citizenship.—When the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution were adopted, the former conferring United States citizenship on all native negroes and the latter providing that the right of such citizens to vote should not be abridged by any state on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude, it was not the practice in northern states to allow negroes to vote. ”

“ The pessimist points to the alleged increase of idleness and crime, the meliorist to a demonstrated decrease of illiteracy and to considerable accumulations of property. The large majority of competent students believe that the American negroes have progressed, materially and morally, since emancipation, that the central or average point is higher than in 1865, although such persons differ widely among themselves regarding the amount of that progress. ”

“ Probably all competent students would admit, however, that the race has differentiated since 1865, that the distance separating the highest tenth from the lowest tenth has become wider, that the highest tenth is far better and far better off than formerly, and the lowest tenth is worse and perhaps also worse off than in slavery. ”

“ A general similarity in the outward conditions of soil, atmosphere, climate, food charged with an excess of carbon, such as the fruit of the butter-tree, and other undetermined causes have tended to develop a tendency towards dark shades everywhere in the negro domain apart from the bias mainly due to an original stain of black blood. ”

“ Not only would an enormous section of the population be deprived of all means of support, but the native wife would be infinitely harder worked; agriculture, the task of the women, would be at a standstill ”

“ Of the other tribes where pastoral habits obtain to a greater or less extent, the Masai have a large percentage of Hamitic blood, the eastern and southern Bantu-speaking negroids are also of mixed descent, &c.
The social conditions are usually primitive, especially among the negroes proper, being based on the village community ruled by a chief. ”