The Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois

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THE NEGRO

W.E.B. Du Bois

New York: Holt, 1915

[Transcriber's Notes for e-book versions:

Hyphenation and accentuation are inconsistent, but are generally left as
found in the edition used for transcription. This edition may or may not
have completely replicated the 1915 edition of the book. Where changes
have been made, they are noted below. If you are using this book for
research, please verify any spelling or punctuation with another source.

A missing quotation mark was inserted at the beginning of this
paragraph: "It is difficult to imagine that Egypt should have obtained it
from Europe where the oldest find (in Hallstadt) cannot be of an earlier
period than 800 B.C., or from Asia, where iron is not known before 1000
B.C., and where, in the times of Ashur Nazir Pal, it was still used
concurrently with bronze, while iron beads have been only recently
discovered by Messrs. G.A. Wainwright and Bushe Fox in a predynastic
grave, and where a piece of this metal, possibly a tool, was found in the
masonry of the great pyramid."]

CONTENTS

Preface
I Africa
II The Coming of Black Men
III Ethiopia and Egypt
IV The Niger and Islam
V Guinea and Congo
VI The Great Lakes and Zymbabwe
VII The War of Races at Land's End
VIII African Culture
IX The Trade in Men
X The West Indies and Latin America
XI The Negro in the United States
XII The Negro Problems
Suggestions for Further Reading

MAPS

The Physical Geography of Africa
Ancient Kingdoms of Africa
Races in Africa
Distribution of Negro Blood, Ancient and Modern

THE NEGRO

TO
A FAITHFUL HELPER
M.G.A.

PREFACE

The time has not yet come for a complete history of the Negro
peoples. Archaeological research in Africa has just begun, and many
sources of information in Arabian, Portuguese, and other tongues are
not fully at our command; and, too, it must frankly be confessed,
racial prejudice against darker peoples is still too strong in so-called
civilized centers for judicial appraisement of the peoples of Africa.
Much intensive monographic work in history and science is needed
to clear mooted points and quiet the controversialist who mistakes
present personal desire for scientific proof.

Nevertheless, I have not been able to withstand the temptation to
essay such short general statement of the main known facts and their
fair interpretation as shall enable the general reader to know as men
a sixth or more of the human race. Manifestly so short a story must
be mainly conclusions and generalizations with but meager indication
of authorities and underlying arguments. Possibly, if the Public
will, a later and larger book may be more satisfactory on these points.

W.E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS.

New York City, Feb. 1, 1915.

[Illustration: The Physical Geography of Africa]

I AFRICA

"Behold!
The Sphinx is Africa. The bond
Of Silence is upon her. Old
And white with tombs, and rent and shorn;
With raiment wet with tears and torn,
And trampled on, yet all untamed."

MILLER

Africa is at once the most romantic and the most tragic of continents. Its
very names reveal its mystery and wide-reaching influence. It is the
"Ethiopia" of the Greek, the "Kush" and "Punt" of the Egyptian, and the
Arabian "Land of the Blacks." To modern Europe it is the "Dark Continent"
and "Land of Contrasts"; in literature it is the seat of the Sphinx and
the lotus eaters, the home of the dwarfs, gnomes, and pixies, and the
refuge of the gods; in commerce it is the slave mart and the source of
ivory, ebony, rubber, gold, and diamonds. What other continent can rival
in interest this Ancient of Days?

There are those, nevertheless, who would write universal history and leave
out Africa. But how, asks Ratzel, can one leave out the land of Egypt and
Carthage? and Frobenius declares that in future Africa must more and more
be regarded as an integral part of the great movement of world history.
Yet it is true that the history of Africa is unusual, and its strangeness
is due in no small degree to the physical peculiarities of the continent.
With three times the area of Europe it has a coast line a fifth shorter.
Like Europe it is a peninsula of Asia, curving southwestward around the
Indian Sea. It has few gulfs, bays, capes, or islands. Even the rivers,
though large and long, are not means of communication with the outer
world, because from the central high plateau they plunge in rapids and
cataracts to the narrow coastlands and the sea.

The general physical contour of Africa has been likened to an inverted
plate with one or more rows of mountains at the edge and a low coastal
belt. In the south the central plateau is three thousand or more feet
above the sea, while in the north it is a little over one thousand feet.
Thus two main divisions of the continent are easily distinguished: the
broad northern rectangle, reaching down as far as the Gulf of Guinea and
Cape Guardafui, with seven million square miles; and the peninsula which
tapers toward the south, with five million square miles.

Four great rivers and many lesser streams water the continent. The
greatest is the Congo in the center, with its vast curving and endless
estuaries; then the Nile, draining the cluster of the Great Lakes and
flowing northward "like some grave, mighty thought, threading a dream";
the Niger in the northwest, watering the Sudan below the Sahara; and,
finally, the Zambesi, with its greater Niagara in the southeast. Even
these waters leave room for deserts both south and north, but the greater
ones are the three million square miles of sand wastes in the north.

More than any other land, Africa lies in the tropics, with a warm, dry
climate, save in the central Congo region, where rain at all seasons
brings tropical luxuriance. The flora is rich but not wide in variety,
including the gum acacia, ebony, several dye woods, the kola nut, and
probably tobacco and millet. To these many plants have been added in
historic times. The fauna is rich in mammals, and here, too, many from
other continents have been widely introduced and used.

Primarily Africa is the Land of the Blacks. The world has always been
familiar with black men, who represent one of the most ancient of human
stocks. Of the ancient world gathered about the Mediterranean, they formed
a part and were viewed with no surprise or dislike, because this world saw
them come and go and play their part with other men. Was Clitus the
brother-in-law of Alexander the Great less to be honored because he
happened to be black? Was Terence less famous? The medieval European
world, developing under the favorable physical conditions of the north
temperate zone, knew the black man chiefly as a legend or occasional
curiosity, but still as a fellow man--an Othello or a Prester John or an
Antar.

The modern world, in contrast, knows the Negro chiefly as a bond slave in
the West Indies and America. Add to this the fact that the darker races in
other parts of the world have, in the last four centuries, lagged behind
the flying and even feverish footsteps of Europe, and we face to-day a
widespread assumption throughout the dominant world that color is a mark
of inferiority.

The result is that in writing of this, one of the most ancient,
persistent, and widespread stocks of mankind, one faces astounding
prejudice. That which may be assumed as true of white men must be proven
beyond peradventure if it relates to Negroes. One who writes of the
development of the Negro race must continually insist that he is writing
of a normal human stock, and that whatever it is fair to predicate of the
mass of human beings may be predicated of the Negro. It is the silent
refusal to do this which has led to so much false writing on Africa and
of its inhabitants. Take, for instance, the answer to the apparently
simple question "What is a Negro?" We find the most extraordinary
confusion of thought and difference of opinion. There is a certain type in
the minds of most people which, as David Livingstone said, can be found
only in caricature and not in real life. When scientists have tried to
find an extreme type of black, ugly, and woolly-haired Negro, they have
been compelled more and more to limit his home even in Africa. At least
nine-tenths of the African people do not at all conform to this type, and
the typical Negro, after being denied a dwelling place in the Sudan, along
the Nile, in East Central Africa, and in South Africa, was finally given a
very small country between the Senegal and the Niger, and even there was
found to give trace of many stocks. As Winwood Reade says, "The typical
Negro is a rare variety even among Negroes."

As a matter of fact we cannot take such extreme and largely fanciful stock
as typifying that which we may fairly call the Negro race. In the case of
no other race is so narrow a definition attempted. A "white" man may be of
any color, size, or facial conformation and have endless variety of
cranial measurement and physical characteristics. A "yellow" man is
perhaps an even vaguer conception.

In fact it is generally recognized to-day that no scientific definition of
race is possible. Differences, and striking differences, there are between
men and groups of men, but they fade into each other so insensibly that we
can only indicate the main divisions of men in broad outlines. As Von
Luschan says, "The question of the number of human races has quite lost
its _raison d'etre_ and has become a subject rather of philosophic
speculation than of scientific research. It is of no more importance now
to know how many human races there are than to know how many angels can
dance on the point of a needle. Our aim now is to find out how ancient and
primitive races developed from others and how races changed or evolved
through migration and inter-breeding."[1]

The mulatto (using the term loosely to indicate either an intermediate
type between white and black or a mingling of the two) is as typically
African as the black man and cannot logically be included in the "white"
race, especially when American usage includes the mulatto in the Negro
race.

It is reasonable, according to fact and historic usage, to include under
the word "Negro" the darker peoples of Africa characterized by a brown
skin, curled or "frizzled" hair, full and sometimes everted lips, a
tendency to a development of the maxillary parts of the face, and a
dolichocephalic head. This type is not fixed or definite. The color varies
widely; it is never black or bluish, as some say, and it becomes often
light brown or yellow. The hair varies from curly to a wool-like mass, and
the facial angle and cranial form show wide variation.

It is as impossible in Africa as elsewhere to fix with any certainty the
limits of racial variation due to climate and the variation due to
intermingling. In the past, when scientists assumed one unvarying Negro
type, every variation from that type was interpreted as meaning mixture of
blood. To-day we recognize a broader normal African type which, as
Palgrave says, may best be studied "among the statues of the Egyptian
rooms of the British Museum; the larger gentle eye, the full but not
over-protruding lips, the rounded contour, and the good-natured, easy,
sensuous expression. This is the genuine African model." To this race
Africa in the main and parts of Asia have belonged since prehistoric
times.

The color of this variety of man, as the color of other varieties, is due
to climate. Conditions of heat, cold, and moisture, working for thousands
of years through the skin and other organs, have given men their
differences of color. This color pigment is a protection against sunlight
and consequently varies with the intensity of the sunlight. Thus in Africa
we find the blackest men in the fierce sunlight of the desert, red pygmies
in the forest, and yellow Bushmen on the cooler southern plateau.

Next to the color, the hair is the most distinguishing characteristic of
the Negro, but the two characteristics do not vary with each other. Some
of the blackest of the Negroes have curly rather than woolly hair, while
the crispest, most closely curled hair is found among the yellow
Hottentots and Bushmen. The difference between the hair of the lighter and
darker races is a difference of degree, not of kind, and can be easily
measured. If the hair follicles of a China-man, a European, and a Negro
are cut across transversely, it will be found that the diameter of the
first is 100 by 77 to 85, the second 100 by 62 to 72, while that of the
Negro is 100 by 40 to 60. This elliptical form of the Negro's hair causes
it to curl more or less tightly.

There have been repeated efforts to discover, by measurements of various
kinds, further and more decisive differences which would serve as really
scientific determinants of race. Gradually these efforts have been given
up. To-day we realize that there are no hard and fast racial types among
men. Race is a dynamic and not a static conception, and the typical races
are continually changing and developing, amalgamating and differentiating.
In this little book, then, we are studying the history of the darker part
of the human family, which is separated from the rest of mankind by no
absolute physical line, but which nevertheless forms, as a mass, a social
group distinct in history, appearance, and to some extent in spiritual
gift.

We cannot study Africa without, however, noting some of the other races
concerned in its history, particularly the Asiatic Semites. The
intercourse of Africa with Arabia and other parts of Asia has been so
close and long-continued that it is impossible to-day to disentangle the
blood relationships. Negro blood certainly appears in strong strain among
the Semites, and the obvious mulatto groups in Africa, arising from
ancient and modern mingling of Semite and Negro, has given rise to the
term "Hamite," under cover of which millions of Negroids have been
characteristically transferred to the "white" race by some eager
scientists.

The earliest Semites came to Africa across the Red Sea. The Phoenicians
came along the northern coasts a thousand years before Christ and began
settlements which culminated in Carthage and extended down the Atlantic
shores of North Africa nearly to the Gulf of Guinea.

From the earliest times the Greeks have been in contact with Africa as
visitors, traders, and colonists, and the Persian influence came with
Cambyses and others. Roman Africa was bounded by the desert, but at times
came into contact with the blacks across the Sahara and in the valley of
the Nile. After the breaking up of the Roman Empire the Greek and Latin
Christians filtered through Africa, followed finally by a Germanic
invasion in 429 A.D.

In the seventh century the All-Mother, Asia, claimed Africa again for her
own and blew a cloud of Semitic Mohammedanism all across North Africa,
veiling the dark continent from Europe for a thousand years and converting
vast masses of the blacks to Islam. The Portuguese began to raise the veil
in the fifteenth century, sailing down the Atlantic coast and initiating
the modern slave trade. The Spanish, French, Dutch, and English followed
them, but as traders in men rather than explorers.

The Portuguese explored the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, visiting the
interior kingdoms, and then passing by the mouth of the Congo proceeded
southward. Eventually they rounded the Cape of Good Hope and pursued their
explorations as far as the mountains of Abyssinia. This began the modern
exploration of Africa, which is a curious fairy tale, and recalls to us
the great names of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Stanley, Barth,
Schweinfurth, and many others. In this way Africa has been made known to
the modern world.

The difficulty of this modern lifting of the veil of centuries emphasizes
two physical facts that underlie all African history: the peculiar
inaccessibility of the continent to peoples from without, which made it so
easily possible for the great human drama played here to hide itself from
the ears of other worlds; and, on the other hand, the absence of interior
barriers--the great stretch of that central plateau which placed
practically every budding center of culture at the mercy of barbarism,
sweeping a thousand miles, with no Alps or Himalayas or Appalachians to
hinder.

With this peculiarly uninviting coast line and the difficulties in
interior segregation must be considered the climate of Africa. While there
is much diversity and many salubrious tracts along with vast barren
wastes, yet, as Sir Harry Johnston well remarks, "Africa is the chief
stronghold of the real Devil--the reactionary forces of Nature hostile to
the uprise of Humanity. Here Beelzebub, King of the Flies, marshals his
vermiform and arthropod hosts--insects, ticks, and nematode worms--which
more than in other continents (excepting Negroid Asia) convey to the skin,
veins, intestines, and spinal marrow of men and other vertebrates the
microorganisms which cause deadly, disfiguring, or debilitating diseases,
or themselves create the morbid condition of the persecuted human being,
beasts, bird, reptile, frog, or fish."[2] The inhabitants of this land
have had a sheer fight for physical survival comparable with that in no
other great continent, and this must not be forgotten when we consider
their history.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Von Luschan: in _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 16.

[2] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, pp. 14-15.

II THE COMING OF BLACK MEN

The movements of prehistoric man can be seen as yet but dimly in the
uncertain mists of time. This is the story that to-day seems most
probable: from some center in southern Asia primitive human beings began
to differentiate in two directions. Toward the south appeared the
primitive Negro, long-headed and with flattened hair follicle. He spread
along southern Asia and passed over into Africa, where he survives to-day
as the reddish dwarfs of the center and the Bushmen of South Africa.

Northward and eastward primitive man became broader headed and
straight-haired and spread over eastern Asia, forming the Mongolian type.
Either through the intermingling of these two types or, as some prefer to
think, by the direct prolongation of the original primitive man, a third
intermediate type of human being appeared with hair and cranial
measurement intermediate between the primitive Negro and Mongolian. All
these three types of men intermingled their blood freely and developed
variations according to climate and environment.

Other and older theories and legends of the origin and spread of mankind
are of interest now only because so many human beings have believed them
in the past. The biblical story of Shem, Ham, and Japheth retains the
interest of a primitive myth with its measure of allegorical truth,[3] but
has, of course, no historic basis.

The older "Aryan" theory assumed the migration into Europe of one dominant
Asiatic race of civilized conquerors, to whose blood and influence all
modern culture was due. To this "white" race Semitic Asia, a large part of
black Africa, and all Europe was supposed to belong. This "Aryan" theory
has been practically abandoned in the light of recent research, and it
seems probable now that from the primitive Negroid stock evolved in Asia
the Semites either by local variation or intermingling with other stocks;
later there developed the Mediterranean race, with Negroid
characteristics, and the modern Negroes. The blue-eyed, light-haired
Germanic people may have arisen as a modern variation of the mixed peoples
produced by the mingling of Asiatic and African elements. The last word on
this development has not yet been said, and there is still much to learn
and explain; but it is certainly proved to-day beyond doubt that the
so-called Hamites of Africa, the brown and black curly and frizzly-haired
inhabitants of North and East Africa, are not "white" men if we draw the
line between white and black in any logical way.

The primitive Negroid race of men developed in Asia wandered eastward as
well as westward. They entered on the one hand Burmah and the South Sea
Islands, and on the other hand they came through Mesopotamia and gave
curly hair and a Negroid type to Jew, Syrian, and Assyrian. Ancient
statues of Indian divinities show the Negro type with black face and
close-curled hair, and early Babylonian culture was Negroid. In Arabia the
Negroes may have divided, and one stream perhaps wandered into Europe by
way of Syria. Traces of these Negroes are manifest not only in skeletons,
but in the brunette type of all South Europe. The other branch proceeded
to Egypt and tropical Africa. Another, but perhaps less probable, theory
is that ancient Negroes may have entered Africa from Europe, since the
most ancient skulls of Algeria are Negroid.

The primitive African was not an extreme type. One may judge from modern
pygmy and Bushmen that his color was reddish or yellow, and his skull was
sometimes round like the Mongolian. He entered Africa not less than fifty
thousand years ago and settled eventually in the broad region between Lake
Chad and the Great Lakes and remained there long stretches of years.

After a lapse of perhaps thirty thousand years there entered Africa a
further migration of Asiatic people, Negroid in many characteristics, but
lighter and straighter haired than the primitive Negroes. From this
Mediterranean race was developed the modern inhabitants of the shores of
the Mediterranean in Europe, Asia, and Africa and, by mingling with the
primitive Negroes, the ancient Egyptians and modern Negroid races of
Africa.

As we near historic times the migrations of men became more frequent from
Asia and from Europe, and in Africa came movements and minglings which
give to the whole of Africa a distinct mulatto character. The primitive
Negro stock was "mulatto" in the sense of being not widely differentiated
from the dark, original Australoid stock. As the earlier yellow Negro
developed in the African tropics to the bigger, blacker type, he was
continually mingling his blood with similar types developed in temperate
climes to sallower color and straighter hair.

We find therefore, in Africa to-day, every degree of development in
Negroid stocks and every degree of intermingling of these developments,
both among African peoples and between Africans, Europeans, and Asiatics.
The mistake is continually made of considering these types as transitions
between absolute Caucasians and absolute Negroes. No such absolute type
ever existed on either side. Both were slowly differentiated from a common
ancestry and continually remingled their blood while the differentiating
was progressing. From prehistoric times down to to-day Africa is, in this
sense, primarily the land of the mulatto. So, too, was earlier Europe and
Asia; only in these countries the mulatto was early bleached by the
climate, while in Africa he was darkened.

It is not easy to summarize the history of these dark African peoples,
because so little is known and so much is still in dispute. Yet, by
avoiding the real controversies and being unafraid of mere questions of
definition, we may trace a great human movement with considerable
definiteness.

Three main Negro types early made their appearance: the lighter and
smaller primitive stock; the larger forest Negro in the center and on the
west coast, and the tall, black Nilotic Negro in the eastern Sudan. In the
earliest times we find the Negroes in the valley of the Nile, pressing
downward from the interior. Here they mingled with Semitic types, and
after a lapse of millenniums there arose from this mingling the culture of
Ethiopia and Egypt, probably the first of higher human cultures.

To the west of the Nile the Negroes expanded straight across the continent
to the Atlantic. Centers of higher culture appeared very early along the
Gulf of Guinea and curling backward met Egyptian, Ethiopian, and even
European and Asiatic influences about Lake Chad. To the southeast, nearer
the primitive seats of the earliest African immigrants and open to
Egyptian and East Indian influences, the Negro culture which culminated at
Zymbabwe arose, and one may trace throughout South Africa its wide
ramifications.

All these movements gradually aroused the central tribes to unrest. They
beat against the barriers north, northeast, and west, but gradually
settled into a great southeastward migration. Calling themselves proudly
La Bantu (The People), they grew by agglomeration into a warlike nation,
speaking one language. They eventually conquered all Africa south of the
Gulf of Guinea and spread their influence to the northward.

While these great movements were slowly transforming Africa, she was also
receiving influences from beyond her shores and sending influences out.
With mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest touch, so much so
that to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem Egyptian in origin. The
truth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and from
her vantage ground as almost the only African gateway received and
transmitted Negro ideals.

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