African

“ Let us begin by studying the scientific works of the African explorers and stop reading and believing the silly slush which ignorant missionaries put into our heads about the alleged degradation of our people in Africa. Let us learn to know Africa and Africans so well that every educated Negro will be able at a glance to put his hand on the map of Africa and tell where to find the Jolofs, Ekois, Mandingoes, Yorubas, Bechuanas or Basutos and can tell something of their marriage customs, their property laws, their agriculture and systems of worship. ”

“ The African seems to seize on the tropical fervor and luxuriance of Scripture imagery as something native; he appears to feel himself to be of the same blood with those old burning, simple souls, the patriarchs, prophets, and seers, whose impassioned words seem only grafted as foreign plants on the cooler stock of the Occidental mind. ”

“ Unprotected from the perpendicular rays of the sun, the African is black, muscular, and cheerful; under the shadow of primeval forest, man assumes a coppery hue, lacking the endurance of the negro, and becomes in disposition cold and melancholy. ”

“ Your anthropologists, your ethnologists, seem at fault here: the African traits have become transformed; the African characteristics have been so modified within little more than two hundred years—by interblending of blood, by habit, by soil and sun and all those natural powers which shape the mould of races,—that you may look in vain for verification of ethnological assertions.... ”

“ The African you have got in your mind up here, that you are legislating for and spending millions in trying to improve, doesn’t exist; your African is a fancy African.... You keep your fancy African and I wish you joy of him, but I grieve more than I can say for the real African that does exist and suffers for all the mistakes you make in dealing with him through a dream thing, the fiend-child African of your imagination. ”

“ The origin of the African race has provoked more criticism than any other of the various races of man on the globe. Speculation has exhausted itself in trying to account for the Negro’s color, features, and hair, that distinguish him in such a marked manner from the rest of the human family. ”

“ And among the earliest and most numerous [353] class who found their way to the New World were those of the African race. And it has been ascertained to our minds, beyond a doubt, that when the continent was discovered, there were found in the West Indies and Central America tribes of the black race, fine looking people, having the usual characteristics of color and hair, identifying them as being originally of the African race ”

“ Inasmuch as the history of most African tribes must ever remain unknown to us, their legends and all that is included in their folk-lore possess additional anthropological value as a medium through which to study the African mind.
The African, despite his degradation, is interesting; and that, not merely as an object of religious endeavour, but on the human level, as a man. ”

“ During my childhood my observations were centered upon a few very old negroes who came directly from Africa, and upon many others whose parents were African born, and I early came to the conclusion, based upon negro authority, that the greater part of their music, their methods, their scale, their type of thought, their dancing, their patting of feet, their clapping of hands, their grimaces and pantomime, and their gross superstitions came straight from Africa. ”

“ In Africa, the home of the negro, there has been a monotonous repetition of the same old facts which historians learned from monumental inscriptions and indestructible tablets thousands upon thousands of years old.
The African negro has always been a distinct type, an inferior type, a savage type, a non-progressive type. ”

“ More than this: the purest and finest physical specimens of the white race always have been and still are 106 found native to African soil; and the leading nations of the race, those who have most contributed to its glory, and to the advance of the civilization of the world, either have resided in Africa or can be traced to it as their ancestral home. ”

“ There are common elements which run throughout the entire continent of Africa, but to gain the best insight into the background of the American slaves, West African culture can be isolated and studied by itself. ”

“ Open an illustrated geography and compare the 'Type of the African Negro,' the bluish-black fellow of the protuberant lips, the flattened nose, the stupid expression and the short curly hair, with the tall bronze figures from Dark Africa with which we have of late become familiar, their almost fine-cut features, slightly arched nose, long hair, etc., and you have an example of the problems pressing for solution. ”

“ In a word, all the exertions now made, by the benevolent friends of the African, appear to us likely to produce or suggest, directly or indirectly, a great amount of good, and to promise the early dawning of that bright day, when, in the moral view of his fellow men, no less than of that Creator who has 'made them all of one blood,' the African shall be as the American, and the black man as the white. ”

“ The names of the great lights of the age,—statesmen, poets, and divines,—in all the great countries of Europe, and in this country too, are inseparably connected with the cause and destiny of the African race. This has been the theme whence most of them have reaped honor and immortality. ”

“ A cursory reading of this literature discloses at once that our general knowledge of Africa has been based in the past mainly on those external facts that strike the sense of sight, such as the physical appearance of the population, native dress and handiwork, musical instruments, implements of warfare, and customs peculiar to the social and religious life of the people. Only through the folk literature, however, can we get a glimpse of the working of the mind of the African Negro. ”

“ The millions, he says, of African negroes that have, during three centuries, been transported to the New World and its islands, are the same in colour as the present inhabitants of the parent country of their forefathers. ”

“ Here, on the contrary, the African part of our population bears so large a proportion to the residue of European origin, as to create the most lively apprehension, especially in some quarters of the Union. ”

“ But the native African has a totally different experience of life, and much that is taken for granted by a child of a Northern civilized land needs explanation to one used to tropical uncivilized surroundings. Again, the African knows the essential operations of everyday life in their simplest form, whereas the European knows them disguised by an elaborate industrial system. ”

“ Far away, toward the other side of the round earth, far to the east and south of America, lies the great continent of Africa. There live many people strange to us, with their black skins, kinky, woolly hair, flat noses, and thick lips. These black people we call Africans or negroes, and it is a little child among them that we are going to visit by and by.
Different as these African people of the negro race are from us, who belong to the white race, they yet belong to the same great family, as we say. ”

“ Now the race to which Americans of African lineage belong is often described as “a peculiar people,” having had, as we know, a peculiar history. They differ in color and in appearance, and in a very large degree their temperament and thought differ from that of the people about them. ”

“ But the reason for the fact that the African Natives have never thought as hard and as long as the ancient and modern peoples of other lands lies not, I think, in a lack of inherent capacity but in a lack of opportunity, the meaning of which now comes to be considered. ”

“ The numerous Central African tribes, as they exist to-day, exhibit marked differences in height, shape, language, habits, customs, and even in colour, some being an intense black, some of a chocolate hue, some reddish brown, and some of a bronze aspect. ”

“ The Lord is going to save that Dark Continent, and it behooves his servants here to honor themselves in doing something to hasten the completion of this inevitable work! Africa is to be redeemed by the African, and the white Christians of this country can aid the work by munificent contributions. Will you do it, brethren? ”

“ The African, it is admitted, was forcibly brought under the influence of the refinement, religion, and morals of the whites, whether as a domestic under the same roof, a field labourer, in the immediate vicinity of the master, or in some other way under his direct control and example. ”

“ Probably few men of my time of life have studied the character and condition of the African race more attentively than I have, with what success I cannot presume to say, but the opinion of any one devoting so much of his time to the subject ought to be of some value. ”

“ But do not laugh at the poor African: every human being is such another negro king, and all of us would like to appear before the public in a different colour from that which fate has given us. ”

“ More than ten millions of Africans are scattered over the wide area indicated, and possess amongst them instances of mental and other qualifications which render them remarkable among their fellow-men. But like the essential parts of a complicated albeit perfect machine, these attainments and qualifications so widely dispersed await, it is evident, some potential [260] agency to collect and adjust them into the vast engine essential for executing the true purposes of the civilized African Race. ”

“ The reader here will permit me to digress to explain a matter respecting which there has hitherto been some misconception. It has been asserted that the native African does not manifest under any circumstance the same deference for colored men, as he does for white men ”

“ It cannot fail to strike the traveller as remarkable that in all African nations he meets with individuals with black, red, and yellow complexions, whilst the yellow tribes of Asia and the copper-coloured tribes of America each present a remarkable uniformity in the tone and shade of their skins. ”

“ "It is with the oppressed, enslaved African race that I cast in my lot; and, if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather than one lighter. ”

“ For five years the Universal Negro Improvement Association has been advocating the cause of Africa for the Africans—that is, that the Negro peoples of the world should concentrate upon the object of building up for themselves a great nation in Africa. ”

“ No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen. ”

“ 'This is "a round unvarnished tale" of the chequered adventures of an African, who early in life, was torn from his native country, by those savage dealers in a traffic disgraceful to humanity, and which has fixed a stain on the legislature of Britain. The Narrative appears to be written with much truth and simplicity. The Author's account of the manners of the natives of his own province (Eboe) is interesting and pleasing; ”

“ Some of the advocates of this traffic maintained that the voyage from Africa to the slave-market, called the Middle Passage, was an exceedingly comfortable portion of existence. One went so far as to declare it "the happiest part of a negro's life." They aver that the Africans, on their way to slavery, are so merry, that they dance and sing. ”

“ So in Africa, the work of these settlements, colonies, and mission, is being done by Negroes. Some of these came from the British West Indies: numbers of them are recaptured Africans, trained in English schools: thousands of them are American black men, educated in the missions of Liberia, or amid the institutions and in the schools of this country: and all of whom, thus enlightened, are Presidents, Judges, Senators, Merchants, Civilians, Planters, and a host of Priests, and Deacons, and Catechists—sons of Africa! How mighty is the hand of God in the affairs of earth! ”

“ Of all the various tribes, nations, colours, and races of men who inhabit this immense country, there is not one which has not its enemy; and the universal creed of Africa seems to be, that the freedom and happiness of one tribe rest upon the slavery and misery of another. ”

“ Africa, like Europe and America, evidences a commingling of different stocks: the blacks are not all black, nor all woolly-haired; the Africans pass through all shades, from that of the light Berber, no darker than the Spaniard, to the deep black of the Iolofs, between Senegal and Gambia. ”

“ Let the reader picture to himself a hundred or more unclad Africans, besmeared and disfigured with copious defilements of red clay, and assuming with frantic gestures all the characteristic vehemence of a furious engagement. ”

“ Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so. ”

“ The full African moon poured down its light from the blue sky into the wide, lonely plain. ”

“ I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot. ”

“ During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. ”

“ The law of 1790 providing that no one could become a citizen of the United States except free Whites was the law until the aftermath of the Civil War added the word "black" or "of African descent" to those who could be naturalized. This last provision should be repealed and the blacks with the South American and Central American Indians put on the same footing as the Orientals. ”

“ These specific examples prove beyond question that Africans can advance. Every one of the settlements above mentioned is planted in an unpromising region, among Negroes presumably of a lower type than the average. ”

“ The scene he witnessed there in the twilight depths of the African jungle was burned forever into the Englishman's brain. ”