The NegroDu Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
History
The Negro
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
Africa -- History; Black race
In nearly every age and land men of Negro descent have distinguished
themselves. In literature there is Terence in Rome, Nosseyeb and Antar in
Arabia, Es-Sa'di in the Sudan, Pushkin in Russia, Dumas in France, Al
Kanemi in Spain, Heredia in the West Indies, and Dunbar in the United
States, not to mention the alleged Negro strain in AEsop and Robert
Browning. As rulers and warriors we remember such Negroes as Queen
Nefertari and Amenhotep III among many others in Egypt; Candace and
Ergamenes in Ethiopia; Mansa Musa, Sonni Ali, and Mohammed Askai in the
Sudan; Diaz in Brazil, Toussaint L'Ouverture in Hayti, Hannivalov in
Russia, Sakanouye Tamuramaro in Japan, the elder Dumas in France, Cazembe
and Chaka among the Bantu, and Menelik, of Abyssinia; the numberless black
leaders of India, and the mulatto strain of Alexander Hamilton. In music
and art we recall Bridgewater, the friend of Beethoven, and the
unexplained complexion of Beethoven's own father; Coleridge-Taylor in
England, Tanner in America, Gomez in Spain; Ira Aldridge, the actor, and
Johnson, Cook, and Burleigh, who are making the new American syncopated
music. In the Church we know that Negro blood coursed in the veins of many
of the Catholic African fathers, if not in certain of the popes; and there
were in modern days Benoit of Palermo, St. Benedict, Bishop Crowther, the
Mahdi who drove England from the Sudan, and Americans like Allen, Lot
Carey, and Alexander Crummell. In science, discovery, and invention the
Negroes claim Lislet Geoffroy of the French Academy, Latino and Amo, well
known in European university circles; and in America the explorers
Dorantes and Henson; Banneker, the almanac maker; Wood, the telephone
improver; McCoy, inventor of modern lubrication; Matseliger, who
revolutionized shoemaking. Here are names representing all degrees of
genius and talent from the mediocre to the highest, but they are strong
human testimony to the ability of this race.
We must, then, look for the origin of modern color prejudice not to
physical or cultural causes, but to historic facts. And we shall find the
answer in modern Negro slavery and the slave trade.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] "Some authors write that the Ethiopians paint the devil white, in
disdain of our complexions."--Ludolf: _History of Ethiopia_, p. 72.
[36] Ripley: _Races of Europe_, pp. 58, 62.
[37] Denniker: _Races of Men_, p. 63.
[38] G. Finot: _Race Prejudice_. F. Herz: _Moderne Rassentheorien_.
[39] Ratzel: quoted in Spiller: _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 31.
[40] Spiller: _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 35.
[41] Ratzel: _History of Mankind_, II, 380 ff.
[42] _Industrial Evolution_, p. 47.
[43] These and other references in this chapter are from Schneider:
Culturfaehigkeit des Negers.
[44] Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19.
[45] _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_, XLIII, 414, 415.
Cf. also _The Crisis_, Vol. IX, p. 234.
[46] Buecher: _Industrial Revolution_ (tr. by Wickett), pp. 57-58.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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