A close examination shows that what we know about the Negro both of the
present and the past vitally affects our opinions concerning him. Men's
beliefs concerning things are to a large extent determined by where they
live and what has been handed down to them. We believe in a hell of roaring
flames where in the fiercest of heat the souls of the wicked are subject to
eternal burnings. This idea of hell was evolved in the deserts of the
Arabian Peninsula where heat is one of the greatest forces of nature with
which man has to contend. Among the native tribes of Northern Siberia
dwelling in the regions of perpetual ice and snow, hell is a place filled
with great chunks of ice upon which the souls of the wicked are placed and
there subjected to eternal freezings. This idea of hell was evolved in the
regions where man is in a continual battle with the cold.
The beliefs of Negroes concerning themselves have to a large extent been
made for them. The reader no doubt will be interested to know that the
prevailing notions concerning the inferiority of the Negro grew up to a
large extent as the concomitant to Negro slavery in this country. The
bringing of the first Negroes from Africa as slaves was justified on the
grounds that they were heathen. It was not right, it was argued, for
Christians to enslave Christians, but they could enslave heathen, who as a
result would have an opportunity to become Christians. These Negro slaves
did actually become Christians and as a result the colonists were forced
to find other grounds to justify their continuation of the system. The
next argument was that they were different from white people. Here we
have a large part of the beginnings of the doctrine of the inferiority of
the Negro.
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, too, the genuine African of the interior
bears no resemblance to the accepted Negro type as it figures on drug and
cigar store signs, wearing a shabby stovepipe hat, plaid trousers, and a
vari-colored coat. A stroll through the corridors of the Berlin Museum of
Ethnology teaches that the real African need by no means resort to the
rags and tatters of bygone European splendor. He has precious ornaments of
his own, of ivory and plumes, fine plaited willow ware, weapons of superior
workmanship. Justly can it be demanded 'What sort of civilization is this?
Whence does it come?'"
It is also pointed out that one of the most important contributions to the
civilization of mankind was very probably made by the Negro race. This was
the invention of the smelting of iron. The facts brought forward to
support this view are: that no iron was smelted in Europe before 900 B.C.;
that about 3000 B.C., there began to appear on the Egyptian monuments
pictures of Africans bringing iron from the South to Egypt; that at a time
considerably later than this iron implements began to appear in Asia; that
there is no iron ore in Egypt; and that in Negro Africa iron ore is
abundant. In many places it is found on top of the ground and in some
parts it can be melted by simply placing a piece of ore in the fire very
much as you would a potato to be roasted.
Studies in the fields of ancient and medieval history are also showing
that in the past there were in Negro Africa civilizations of probable
indigenous origin which attained importance enough to be mentioned in the
writings of the historians and poets of those periods. The seat of one of
the highest of these civilizations was Ethiopia. Here the Negro nation
attained the greatest fame. As early as 2,500 years before the birth of
Christ the Ethiopians appeared to have had a considerable civilization. It
was well known to the writers of the Bible and is referred to therein some
forty-nine times. In Genesis we read of Cush, the eldest son of Ham. Cush
is the Hebrew word for black and means the same as Ethiopia. One of the
most famous sons of Cush was Nimrod, whom the Bible mentions as being "a
mighty hunter before the Lord; whereof it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty
hunter before the Lord." The Bible refers to Ethiopia as being far distant
from Palestine. In the book of Isaiah we read "the land of the rustling of
wings which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia that sendeth ambassadors by
the sea." The rivers of Ethiopia mentioned in Isaiah are the upper
tributaries of the Nile, the Atbara, the Blue Nile and the Sobat.
The later capital of Ethiopia was Meroe. Recent excavations have shown
Meroe to have been a city larger than Memphis. The Temple of Ammon, where
kings were crowned, was one of the largest in the valley of the Nile. The
great walls of cut stones were 15 feet thick and 30 feet high. Heaps of
iron-slag and furnaces for smelting iron were discovered, and there were
magnificent quays and landing places on the river side, for the export of
iron. Excavations have also shown that for 150 years Egypt was a dependency
of Ethiopia. The kings of the twenty-third and twenty-fourth Egyptian
dynasties were really governors appointed by Ethiopian overlords, while the
twenty-fifth dynasty was founded by the Ethiopian king, Sabako, in order to
check Assyrian aggression. Palestine was enabled to hold out against
Assyria by Ethiopian help. Sennacherib's attempt to capture Jerusalem and
carry the Jews into captivity, was frustrated by the army of the Ethiopian
king, Taharka. The nation and religion of Judah were thus preserved from
being absorbed in heathen lands like the lost Ten Tribes. The Negro
soldiers of the Sudan saved the Jewish religion.
The old Greek writers were well acquainted with Ethiopia. According to them
in the most ancient times there existed to the South of Egypt a nation and
a land designated as Ethiopia. This was the land where the people with the
sunburnt faces dwelt. The Greek poet, Homer, mentions the Ethiopians as
dwelling at the uttermost limits of the earth, where they enjoyed personal
intercourse with the gods. In one place Homer said that Neptune, the god of
the sea, "had gone to feast with the Ethiopians who dwell afar off, the
Ethiopians who are divided into two parts, the most distant of men, some
at the setting of the sun, others at the rising." Herodotus, the Greek
historian, described the Ethiopians as long lived and their country as
extending to the Southern Sea.
The great fame of the Ethiopians is thus sketched by the eminent historian,
Heeren, who in his historical researches says: "In the earliest traditions
of nearly all the more civilized nations of antiquity, the name of this
distant people is found. The annals of the Egyptian priests were full
of them; the nations of inner Asia, on the Euphrates and Tigris, have
interwoven the fictions of the Ethiopians with their own traditions of the
conquests and wars of their heroes; and, at a period equally remote, they
glimmer in Greek mythology. When the Greeks scarcely knew Italy and Sicily
by name, the Ethiopians were celebrated in the verses of their poets; they
spoke of them as the 'remotest nation,' the 'most just of men,' the
'favorites of the gods,' The lofty inhabitants of Olympus journey to them
and take part in their feasts; their sacrifices are the most agreeable
of all that mortals can offer them. And when the faint gleam of tradition
and fable gives way to the clear light of history, the luster of the
Ethiopians is not diminished. They still continue the object of curiosity
and admiration; and the pens of cautious, clear-sighted historians often
place them in the highest rank of knowledge and civilization."
Of these facts most modern historians know but little and Negroes in
general almost nothing. For example, how many have ever heard of Al-Bekri,
the Arab writer, who in the eleventh century wrote a description of the
Western Sudan of such importance that it gained him the title of "The
Historian of Negro Land"? How much, by means of research, might be learned
of the town of Ghana situate on the banks of the Niger, which the historian
Al-Bekri described as a meeting place for commercial caravans from all
parts of the world? This town, he said, contained schools and centers of
learning. It was the resort of the learned, the rich, and the pious of all
nations. Likewise, most of us have never heard perhaps of another Arab
writer, Iben Khaldun, who in writing about the middle of the fourteenth
century of Melle, another of the kingdoms of the Sudan, reported that
caravans from Egypt consisting of twelve thousand laden camels passed every
year through one town on the eastern border of the empire on their way to
the capital of the nation. The load of a camel was three hundred pounds.
12,000 camel loads amounted, therefore, to something like 1,600 tons of
merchandise. At this time we are told that there was probably not a ship in
any of the merchant navies of the world which could carry one hundred tons.
250 years later the average tonnage of the vessels of Spain was 300 tons
and that of the English much less. The largest ship which Queen Elizabeth
had in her navy, the _Great Mary_, had a capacity of a thousand tons; but
it was considered an exception and the marvel of the age.
Another thing that is not generally known is the importance to which some
of these Negro kingdoms of the Western Sudan attained during the middle
ages and the first centuries of the modern era. In size and permanency
they compared favorably with the most advanced nations of Europe. The
kingdom of Melle of which the historian, Iben Khaldun, wrote, had an area
of over 1,000 miles in extent and existed for 250 years. It was the first
of the kingdoms of the Western Sudan to be received on equal terms with
the contemporary white nations. The greatest of all the Sudan states was
the kingdom of Songhay which, in its golden age, had an area almost equal
to that of the United States and existed from about 750 A.D. to 1591.
There is a record of the kings of Songhay in regular succession for almost
900 years. The length of the life of the Songhay empire coincides almost
exactly with the life of Rome from its foundation as a republic to its
downfall as an empire.
The greatest evidences of the high state of civilization which the Sudan
had in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were the attention that was
paid to education and the unusual amount of learning that existed there.
The university of Sankore at Timbuctu was a very active center of learning.
It was in correspondence with the universities of North Africa and Egypt.
It was in touch with the universities of Spain. In the sixteenth century
Timbuctu had a large learned class living at ease and busily occupied with
the elucidation of intellectual and religious problems. The town swarmed
with students. Law, literature, grammar, theology and the natural sciences
were studied. The city of Melle had a regular school of science. One
distinguished geographer is mentioned, and allusions to surgical science
show that the old maxim of the Arabian schools, "He who studies anatomy
pleases God," was not forgotten. One of these writers mentions that his
brother came from Jenne to Timbuctu to undergo an operation for cataract of
the eyes at the hands of a celebrated surgeon there. It is said that the
operation was wholly successful. The appearance of comets, so amazing to
Europe of the Middle Ages and at the present time to the ignorant, was by
these learned blacks noted calmly as a matter of scientific interest.
Earthquakes and eclipses excited no great surprise.
The renowned writer of the Sudan was Abdurrahman Essadi. He was born in
Timbuctu in 1596. He came of learned and distinguished ancestors. He is
chief author of the history of Sudan. The book is said to be a wonderful
document. The narrative deals mainly with the modern history of the
Songhay Empire, and relates the rise of this black civilization through
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and its decadence up to the middle
of the seventeenth century. The noted traveller, Barth, was of the opinion
that the book forms one of the most important additions that the present
age has made to the history of mankind. The work is especially valuable
for the unconscious light which it throws upon the life, manners,
politics, and literature of the country. It presents a vivid picture of
the character of the men with whom it deals. It is sometimes called the
Epic of the Sudan.
From this brief sketch which I have given of the African in ancient and
medieval times it is clear that Negroes should not despise the rock from
which they were hewn. As a race they have a past which is full of interest.
It is worthy of serious study. From it we can draw inspiration; for it
appears that not all black men everywhere throughout the ages have been
"hewers of wood and drawers of water." On the contrary, through long
periods of time there were powerful black nations which have left the
records of their achievements and of which we are just now beginning to
learn a little. This little, however, which we have learned teaches us that
the Negroes of today should work and strive. Along their own special line
and in their own peculiar way they should endeavor to make contributions to
civilization. Their achievements can be such that once more black will be
dignified and the fame of Ethiopia again spread throughout the world.