Nine hundred years before Christ the poet Homer, speaking of the death of Memnon, killed at the siege of Troy, says, “He was received by his Ethiopians.”  This is the first use of the word Ethiopia in the Greek; and it is derived from the roots [Greek:  aitho], “to burn,” and [Greek:  ops], “face.”  It is safe to assume, that, when God dispersed the sons of Noah, he fixed the “bounds of their habitation,” and, that, from the earth and sky the various races have secured their civilization.  He sent the different nations into separate parts of the earth.  He gave to each its racial peculiarities, and adaptability for the climate into which it went.  He gave color, language, and civilization; and, when by wisdom we fail to interpret his inscrutable ways, it is pleasant to know that “he worketh all things after the counsel of his own mind.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[27] Edward W. Blyden, LL.D., of Liberia, says, “Supposing that this term was originally used as a phrase of contempt, is it not with us to elevate it?  How often has it not happened that names originally given in reproach have been afterwards adopted as a title of honor by those against whom it was used?—­Methodists, Quakers, etc.  But as a proof that no unfavorable signification attached to the word when first employed, I may mention, that, long before the slave-trade began, travellers found the blacks on the coast of Africa preferring to be called Negroes” (see Purchas’ Pilgrimage ...).  And in all the pre-slavetrade literature the word was spelled with a capital N.  It was the slavery of the blacks which afterwards degraded the term.  To say that the name was invented to degrade the race, some of whose members were reduced to slavery, is to be guilty of what in grammar is called a hysteron proteron.  The disgrace became attached to the name in consequence of slavery; and what we propose to do is, now that slavery is abolished, to restore it to its original place and legitimate use, and therefore to restore the capital N.”

[28] Prichard, vol. ii. p. 44.

[29] Josephus, Antiq., lib. 2, chap. 6.

[30] Poole.

[31] Smyth’s Unity Human Races, chap.  II, p. 41.

[32] Herodotus, vii., 69, 70.  Ancient Univ.  Hist., vol. xviii. pp. 254, 255.

[33] Strabo, vol.  I. p. 60.

[34] It is not wise, to say the least, for intelligent Negroes in America to seek to drop the word “Negro.”  It is a good, strong, and healthy word, and ought to live.  It should be covered with glory:  let Negroes do it.

[35] Journal of Ethnology, No. 7, p. 310.

[36] Pickering’s Races of Men, pp. 185-89.

[37] Burckhardt’s Travels, p. 341.

[38] Euterpe, lib. 6.

[39] Jeffries’s Nat.  Hist. of Human Race, p. 315.

[40] Types of Mankind, p. 259.

[41] Types of Mankind, p. 262.