When, about 1830, anti-slavery agitation arose in this country, a new set of arguments were brought forward to justify slavery.  First in importance were those taken from the Bible.  Science also was called upon and brought forward a large number of facts to demonstrate that by nature the Negro was especially fitted to be a slave.  It happened that about this time anthropology was being developed.  Racial differences were some of the things which especially interested scientists in this field.  The races were defined according to certain physical characteristics.  These, it was asserted, determined the superiority or inferiority of races.  The true Negro race, said the early anthropologists, had characteristics which especially indicated its inferiority.  Through our geographies, histories and encyclopedias we have become familiar with representations of this so-called true Negro, whose chief characteristics were a black skin, woolly hair, protuberant lips and a receding forehead.  Caricaturists seized upon these characteristics and popularized them in cartoons, in songs and in other ways.  Thus it happened that the Negro, through the descriptions that he got of himself, has come largely to believe in his inherent inferiority and that to attain superiority he must become like the white man in color, in achievements and, in fact, along all lines.

In recent years it has been asked, “Why cannot the Negro attain superiority along lines of his own,” that is, instead of simply patterning after what the white man has done, why cannot the Negro through music, art, history, and science, make his own special contributions to the progress of the world?  This question has arisen because in the fields of science and history there have been brought forward a number of facts which prove this possibility.  First of all, the leading scientists in the field of anthropology are telling us that while there are differences of races, there are no characteristics which per se indicate that one race is inferior or superior to another.  The existing differences are differences in kind not in value.  On the other hand, whatever superiority one race has attained over another has been largely due to environment.

A German writer in a discussion of the origin of African civilizations said some time ago “What bold investigators, great pioneers, still find to tell us in civilizations nearer home, proves more and more clearly that we are ignorant of hoary Africa.  Somewhat of its present, perhaps, we know, but of its past little.  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 other respects,