Black body

“ The palms of the hands and the soles of the feet of negroes are never black, but always yellowish, and in all coloured races the back of the body is a shade darker than the front.
It is noteworthy that the skin of the coloured races is always of a lighter tint in the newly-born than in the adult ; the negro baby is born a light grey colour, and the dark pigment is absent in the negro foetus. ”

“ We see, therefore, that there are two express provisions for the cooling of the negroes' skin, independent of the colour. The skin of the Esquimaux who inhabits a cold country is white, though it might be supposed that a black skin would best conduce to the warmth of his body. ”

“ To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and or red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. ”

“ In his native state the black is probably as healthy and has a body in all its parts as capable of repairing injuries unassisted as the animals that live with him in the forests. Under circumstances different from those natural to him—in the artificial life which the whites have forced upon him—he is not always very strong nor very healthy. ”

“ Now, if we were to conceive a black skin to be an universal freckle, or the rays of the sun to act so universally on the mucous substance of a person's face, as to produce these spots so contiguous to each other that they should unite, we should then see, in imagination, a face similar to those, which are daily to be seen among black people: and if we were to conceive his body to be exposed or acted upon in the same manner, we should then see his body assuming a similar appearance ”

“ No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America. ”

“ To these objections, which are political may be added others, which are physical and moral. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. ”

“ This case and the Court's holding in it illustrate the dangers inherent in such an 'activist' philosophy.
Commercial traffic in deadly mind-, soul-, and body-destroying drugs is beyond doubt one of the greatest evils of our time. It cripples intellects, dwarfs bodies, paralyzes the progress of a substantial segment of our society, and frequently makes hopeless and sometimes violent and murderous criminals of persons of all ages who become its victims. ”

“ It's always easy to remember that people looked like that, after something has happened to them. Still, that's what they say. There you are again, then: suicide! Now, why wasn't it suicide, Mr. Trent?"
"The facts, so far as I know them, are really all against it," Trent replied, sitting on the threshold of the window and clasping his knees. "First, of course, no weapon is to be found. I've searched, and you've searched, and there's no trace of any firearm anywhere within a stone's throw of where the body lay. ”

“ The Negro has already been pointed out many times as a religious animal,—a being of that deep emotional nature which turns instinctively toward the supernatural. Endowed with a rich tropical imagination and a keen, delicate appreciation of Nature, the transplanted African lived in a world animate with gods and devils, elves and witches; full of strange influences,—of Good to be implored, of Evil to be propitiated. Slavery, then, was to him the dark triumph of Evil over him. All the hateful powers of the Under-world were striving against him, and a spirit of revolt and revenge filled his heart. ”

“ Several trustworthy observers have assured me that they have seen on the faces of negroes an appearance resembling a blush, under circumstances which would have excited one in us, though their skins were of an ebony-black tint. Some describe it as blushing brown, but most say that the blackness becomes more intense. An increased supply of blood in the skin seems in some manner to increase its blackness; thus certain exanthematous diseases cause the affected places in the negro to appear blacker, instead of, as with us, redder. ”

“ There is the familiar figure of the African negro, with skin so dark-brown as to be popularly called black, and black hair so naturally frizzed as to be called woolly. Nor are these the only points in which he is unlike us. Indeed, the white men who blacken their faces and friz their hair to look like negros make a very poor imitation, for the negro features are quite distinct; we well know the flat nose, wide nostrils, thick protruding lips, and, when the face is seen in profile, the remarkable projecting jaws. ”

“ There is a general agreement, I may say, as to the remarkable brightness of the young negro child, and a scarcely less general agreement as to the fact that this brightness does not usually last far into the teens. Some theorists tell you that the sutures of the skull close earlier in the black than in the white, and thus do not leave room for brain expansion. In the West Indies it is said that precocious sexual development checks the mental growth of the negro. ”

“ In Africa the negroes are proud of their complexion and look with aversion on a white skin. In the United States, knowing that a black skin is looked down on as a symbol of slavery or inferiority, they are ashamed of it. The wife of an eminent Southern judge informed me that Georgia negroes believe that in heaven they will be white; and I have heard of one negro woman who declared that if she could become white by being flayed she would gladly submit to the torture. Thus have ideas regarding the complexion changed the emotion of pride to the emotion of shame. ”

“ Then, out of the hurly-burly of panting torsos and whirling limbs, there seemed to pop one black figure, in startling contrast with the lighter-hued athletes about him. My eyes focused on the stranger and stayed focused.
He was the blackest thing I ever saw in my life—blacker than a crow at mid night, blacker than the interior of a whale, blacker than the cellar of the Mammoth Cave, blacker than black velvet. ”

“ To a society that had been taught to venerate whiteness for over three hundred years, this announcement was rather staggering. What was the world coming to, if the blacks were whiter than the whites? Many people in the upper class began to look askance at their very pale complexions. If it were true that extreme whiteness was evidence of the possession of Negro blood, of having once been a member of a pariah class, then surely it were well not to be so white!
Dr. Crookman's amazing brochure started the entire country to examining shades of skin color again. ”

“ Look at the hundreds of advertised hair-dyes, used for the purpose of changing Nature! See men with their gray beards dyed black; women with those beautiful [Pg 388] black locks, which but yesterday were as white as the driven snow! Not only this, but even those with light or red whiskers run to the dye-kettle, steal a color which Nature has refused them, and an hour after curse the negro for a complexion that is not stolen. If black is so hateful, why do not gentlemen have their boots whitewashed? If the slaves of the South had been white, the same prejudice would have existed against them. ”

“ The white race have long, straight hair, high foreheads, high noses, thin lips, and white skins: the olive and sunburnt color, where the other characteristics are found, belong equally to the white race.
The negro or black race, are woolly or kinky-headed, low foreheads, flat noses, thick-lipped, and have a black skin. ”

“ Negroes are visibly mulattoes. This one third of the total Negro population represents every degree of blood, of color, and of physical demarcation from the fair complexion, light hair, blue eyes, thin lips, and sharp nose of the octoroon, who betrays scarcely a trace of his Negro blood, to the coal-black skin, kinky hair, brown eyes, thick lips, and flat nose of the man who has scarcely a trace of Caucasian blood. It is this gradual sloping off from one race into another which has made it necessary for the law to set artificial lines. ”

“ I admit that the condition of my race, whether considered in a mental, moral, or intellectual point of view, at the present time cannot compare favorably with the Anglo-Saxon. But it does not become the whites to point the finger of scorn at the blacks, when they have so long been degrading them. The negro has not always been considered the inferior race. The time was when he stood at the head of science and literature. ”

“ It is a very rare disease. Both Negroes and Caucasians occasionally have it, but it is naturally more conspicuous on blacks than whites. It absolutely removes skin pigment and sometimes it turns a Negro completely white but only after a period of thirty or forty years. It occurred to me that if one could discover some means of artificially inducing and stimulating this nervous disease at will, one might possibly solve the American race problem. ”

“ Now the colour of people depends a little on the colour of their blood, for there is a network of tiny veins in the lower part of their skin, but it depends even more on millions of little specks of yellowish and brownish paint which lie in the upper part of their skin. A negro may be as black as your hat outside, but his blood is red all the same, and he looks black because the little specks of paint in the upper part of his skin are very dark and hide the red blood behind them. ”

“ After a little more time the answer came.
“It is in the skin itself.”
“Oh.” I studied the black men again. “They were born with such skins? They are all of one mother?”
“No. They were born as we were. They are not brothers. Their skins were made black when they became men.” ”

“ But returning from properties to structure, we find his feet larger and flatter than the white man’s, his arms longer, his head rounder, his lips thicker, his nose flatter, and his eyes smaller; and what is equally a mark of specific nature, we find his eyes and his hair, with its kinks, always of the same color—invariably black. ”

“ From my verandah all day, and twenty times a day, I could see men arranging the load on their companion's head, and the woman accepting the help offered, and trotting along meekly behind the man, though he went empty-handed.
Men and women are in all shades, but mostly, of course, black, often with the woolly hair and thick coarse lips, that are considered typical of the negro. They are not. ”

“ After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; ”

“ Many writers and artists have found hidden inspiration in their Negro blood and from the first importation in the fifteenth century down to today there has been a continual mingling of white and Negro blood in the United States both within and without the bonds of wedlock that neither law nor slavery nor cruel insult and contempt has been able to stop.
Besides these influences in economics and the home there has come the work of Negro women in revolt which cannot be forgotten. ”

“ After all, some very well informed and very well meaning people will read what I have now said, and what seems to me so just and reasonable, and will still insist that the color of the negro has something to do with the feeling entertained toward him; that the white man naturally shudders at the thought of contact with one who is black -- that the impulse is one which he can neither resist nor control. ”

“ I noticed one unusually striking figure, a stunted negro with a pock-marked face who wore a gaudy yellow handkerchief bound about his head and heavy gold rings in his ears. I observed this sportsman looking hard at me and was a little nonplussed to see him apparently draw the attention of the man at his side to me. The negro's companion was a swarthy, lissom young fellow with handsome features and a pair of bold black eyes. The negro nudged him and broke into a torrent of words. ”

“ It has long been recognized by anthropologists that the differences of color march with differences in every comparable trait. Thus the ideal Negro is built upon a pattern in which all the elements are specific and singular. When the looms revolve that make him, there is produced a gleaming black skin, kinky black hair, squat wide-nostriled nose, thick protruding lips, large striking teeth, prominent jaws, and staring eyes. ”