The American negro; a study in racial crossing

Front matter

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OF INTEREST TO

Preface

OR the student of human biology, the gathering Rey the data on which his conclusions are based presents a serious problem. Unlike the geneticist, who works with non-human forms of animal life, the anthropologist has little control over the selection of his material. He must trust to the good-will of the people among whom he is working, to their understanding and willingness to cooperate with him in his research, and to the chance of the moment. We of this day pride ourselves on our acceptance of the methods of science, and on our realization of the desirability of scientific research. Yet when a study touches man, the prejudices and superstitions that lie deep in our cultural heritage come to the fore, and too often we are not willing to submit.

The results set forth in the following chapters represent research conducted over a period of four years. During those years I measured some thousands of persons, and my assistants have measured more. Anthropometric research, if it is to be successful, must be codperative, and consequently I have accumulated many debts of gratitude to persons who have helped, financially and otherwise, in make

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Preface ing this study possible. It is a pleasure to make my acknowledgments at this time to some of those who have assisted me in the undertaking.

The major portion of my research was accomplished as a result of an appointment which I received from the Board of Fellowships in the Biological Sciences of the National Research Council, which allowed me to devote three years to this problem. The Columbia University Council for Research in the Social Sciences, at the instance of Professor Franz Boas, allotted funds to me for indispensable assistance, and allowed me a fourth year in which to analyze the material gathered during the preceding three. The Committee on Human Migrations of the National Research Council, through Dr. Clark Wissler, appropriated funds which permitted greater latitude in my work at Howard University. To my assistants, Mr. Louis King, Mr. Abram L. Harris, Miss Zora Hurston, and Mr. Greene C. Maxwell; to Dr. Jacob M. Ross, principal of Public School 89 and later of Junior High School 139, New York City, and to his teaching staffs in these two schools; to the President and Faculty of Howard University, and particularly to Professors Ernest E. Just and Alain L. Locke; and to Miss Beatrice Blackwood and Frau von Luschan, I wish to express my gratitude for numerous favors, loyal codperation, and patient forbearance. The

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Preface interest and guidance of Professor Franz Boas, at whose suggestion I undertook this research, have been a constant source of inspiration to me, and it is with deep pleasure that I acknowledge my indebtedness to him. Finally, I may say that without the graciousness of the people whose measurements go to make up this study, without their codperation when they would have been entirely justified in withholding it, my research could not have proceeded.

To all of these I am privileged to express my gratitude. To them is due whatever of value this bit of research may hold. Its shortcomings, however, are my own.

MELVILLE J. HERSKOVITS Evanston, Illinois October 22, 1927

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His Significance for the Study of Race page 67

BIBLIOGRAPHIC APPENDIX page 83

INDEX page 89

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Introduction

Smith’s Generall Historie—there came “a Dutch man of warre, that sold us twenty Negars,” the Negro problem, in all likelihood, was first introduced into what was to become the United States of America. For some three hundred years since then, these Africans and their descendants have lived among us. What has happened to them in that time? What contacts have they made? To what extent have they mingled their blood with that of the other peoples of this country? What have they given their neighbors, and what have they taken from them? How have they influenced them, and been influenced by them? I know of no more fascinating problem, nor of one which has been more inadequately dealt with. Our knowledge of the African ancestry of the American Negroes is of the vaguest. We know that they were exported from the Guinea Coast of West Africa; but we can only guess from how far inland they came. The stages of acculturation through which they passed after their arrival in this country have never been adequately described, nor, so far as one can see, are they likely

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Introduction to be. Even to the casual observer, however, it is ob« vious that Negroes have become an integral part of our civilization. They have solved the problem of meeting its requirements, though in a manner that may sometimes seem heightened and exotic. But what has happened to them as individuals is not so obvious. We must investigate what changes, if any, have taken place in their physical form and in their mental processes, before we can understand them. In the following discussion I present the results of an extended investigation of the physical form of the American Negro, and endeavor to throw some new light on the problems which have arisen concerning him.

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I The Amalgam He Represents

HE phenomenon of race crossing seems to hold ae fascination for students of population, of race, of genetics—indeed, for students of all phases of human development. A maxim which is never challenged in fact—since the fact is self-evident—is that two human groups never meet but they mingle their blood. It is this fact that makes the position of the American Negro peculiarly valuable for biology. Because the Negroes were slaves, the law of the masters was paramount; and the masters, as in all slave lands, took the slave women for themselves. But the offspring of a slave was also a slave, and so the mixed-bloods were regarded as “Negroes,” while the White stock remained largely free from the introduction of Negro blood.

Furthermore, there were American Indian peoples throughout the Southeast in the early days, and with these the Negroes mingled to a degree that Whites usually fail to recognize, though to a Negro knowledge of Indian ancestry is a matter of pride. This mingling also took place in the West Indian Islands,

Es whence came many of those who later formed part of the American Negro community. Thus to the Negro-White mixture a third element was added, so that in the American Negro of today we find represented the three principal racial stocks of the world: Negro ancestry from Africa, Caucasian from northern and western Europe, and Mongoloid (American Indian) from southeastern North America and the Caribbean Islands.

Obviously we have here an approximation to laboratory conditions for studying the results of human mixture, for we are dealing not only with a crossing of two races, but with a mingling of the three principal racial stocks! How has this crossing affected the bodily form of the Negroes? Are they Africans? Have the Negroid traits predominated? Or have the component ancestral traits mingled in the physical form of these people? To what extent, indeed, are these ancestral elements present in the contemporary American Negro population? For this is the first problem we must attack. In stating that this African population has undergone extensive crossing with other racial groups during its residence in the United States I should make clear that I am advancing a postulate which is far from universally accepted. The census figures of 1920 state that there are 10,463,131 Negroes in this country. Of these, we are informed, 8,802,577 are “‘Black’”—that is, unmixed Negro, or, to quote the instructions issued to the enumerators, ‘Negroes of full blood.” On the other hand, only 1,660,554 Negroes are listed as ““Mulatto” or, again quoting, as ‘‘Negroes having some proportion of White blood.” In other words, in 1920 it would appear that 84.1 per cent of our Negroes were of pure blood, while only the remaining 15.9 per cent were mixed. It is interesting to remark that the proportion of ‘‘Mulattoes” reported to the census-takers has decreased since 1910, when 20.9 per cent of the Negroes listed were so classified.

Although there are reasons for suspecting the reliability of these figures, they have been accepted by most scholars because of the absence of detailed investigation into the ancestry of the American Negro. It is usually stated that the vast majority of Negroes in the “Black Belt” are unmixed Africans, but that those in the North represent a con- - siderable amount of White ancestry. This argument has given rise, in turn, to an untenable assumption frequently encountered in discussions of the American Negro. Professor Jerome Dowd, for example, in his recent work on the Negro problem, strongly emphasizes a two-fold division of the Negro population: on the one hand, a small, active, violently discontented and agitating Mulatto group; and on the other, a large, sluggish, socially immovable, more or less shiftless and irresponsible unmixed-Negro group. Professor Reuter, in his well-known book on the Mulatto, also utilizes the official estimates for the number of mixed Negroes when he considers the relative social position of the two supposedly socially distinct groups. In his recent study, however, he questions the government figures. Dr. Mecklin is another sociologist who has discussed the Negro problem with an eye to this division. The Mulatto, he tells us, is ‘‘a Zwischending ethnologically and socially,’ temperamentally discontented with his inferior position, and unwilling to identify himself with the lowly full-blood with whom he is grouped in the minds of the dominant Whites.

Because of the general belief that the “pure” Negroes were in the great majority, I at once found it essential to face this problem and to devise a method for obtaining information regarding the amount of mixture represented by the American Negro. To what extent is he a child of Africa, groping his way about a White civilization? ‘To what extent may he claim a place in the culture of this country by partial blood-right, as well as by virtue of the contributions of his two hands? It was no easy matter to secure this information. How was one to obtain a control with which to check the figures commonly accepted by students of the Negro problem? Obviously, if control were to be exercised, the method of looking at a Negro and classifying him as mixed-blood or unmixed Negro, which is that utilized by the census enumerators, would be unsound. My study was primarily an anthropometric one, concerned with the measurement of certain definite physical traits—traits in which there are distinct differences between Africans and Europeans. But reliance on these measurements alone, in view of the scantiness of our knowledge of the manner in which human traits are inherited, seemed only slightly more desirable than dependence on the rough and ready methods of the census. One method remained—a simple one, but one which had been discarded prima facie by students who had considered the problem. This was the genealogical method— that of merely asking the people measured about their descent.

The objections to this method are familiar to everyone; indeed, they are stock jokes among Whites, many of whom assert that the sexual looseness of Negro women is such that “the Negro doesn’t know who his father is.’’ From this plane the theory goes through various gradations, until it reaches a culmination in the refusal of many of the life insurance companies to insure Negroes on the partial ground that, not knowing their ancestry with reliability, Negroes cannot declare diseases which may possibly be hereditary in their families. The few companies which insure Negroes increase the premium rates for them, again with this reason prominently given. In spite of this argument—and so often is it reiterated that it gains strength even in the minds of the skeptical—I determined to gather genealogies among the adult Negroes I measured. This was made possible when I worked first at Howard University, and later when work was done among the Harlem population of New York City, and still later in a rural community in West Virginia.

Let us examine the results of these studies, disregarding, for the moment, the question of the reliability of the genealogies obtained, the question of the reliability of all Negro genealogical material, and the question of the extent to which the Negro, may or may not know his father. First, however, we must point out how the individuals were placed in the several genealogical classes. ‘This I did as conservatively as I was able to do it. A given individual was classified only on the basis of the actual information given by him. If he stated that, to the best of his knowledge, three grand-parents were unmixed Negro, and if he had no information at all about the fourth grand-parent, then he was classified as unmixed Negro. If he knew of one White grand-parent and of another who was mixed Negro-White, and knew nothing of the other two, he was classified as more White than Negro. In this way eight classes were formed, as will be noted. Four of these represent differing degrees of Negro blood, and there are four corresponding classes for the subjects who were aware of some Indian admixture. The amount of Indian blood, however, is not indicated, since mixture with Indians is not a thing of the recent past. The classifications of the statements given by adult male and female Negroes who were measured were tabulated, and in the following table are given the classes, the number of individuals represented in each, and the percentage of the total number represented by each class:

Number Percent Class of Individuals of Total Unmixed Negro 342 22.0% Negro, mixed with Indian 97 6.3% More Negro than White 384 24.8% More Negro than Mute with Indian 106 6.9% About the same amount of Negro and White 260 16.7% The same class, with Indian mix- ; ture 133 8.5% More White than Negro 154 9.3% More White than Negro, with Indian 75 5.5% Total ISS 100.0%

This story differs somewhat from that found in the usual estimates of the amount of crossing. Here we have the astonishing information that, instead of 80 or 85 per cent of the American Negroes being wholly African in descent, only a little over 20 per cent are unmixed, while almost 80 per cent show mixture with White or American Indian, or with both stocks. Furthermore, this table points to another conclusion of importance in a consideration of the American Negro’s physical form and ancestral backeround. This is the fact that, according to the statements of the Negroes measured in this study, between one-third and one-fourth of them (27.3 per cent, to be exact) have American Indian ancestry, although the reliability of this percentage cannot be controlled by any method with which I am familiar.

At this point the problem of the validity of the genealogical information obtained in this study — comes to the fore. These statements and figures contradict the accepted statistics so strikingly, that commentators are certain to raise the obvious objection, namely, that the men and women who gave these genealogies were ignorant of their family histories. But, as I have said, the data gathered include a large number of physical measurements of the persons involved. Indeed, these measurements were the primary object of this research; the genealogies were a by-product, an experiment undertaken on the chance that this sort of information, in spite of everything that had been maintained, might throw some new light on the problem. But when the tabulated results showed such startling percentages, it was clear that an attempt to control their validity should be made. The physical measurements furnish this control. For, as will be understood by anyone who has ever had any contact with Negroes (unmixed Negroes, that is), the physical differences between these individuals and either Whites or Indians are striking. The differences between Whites and Indians, on the other hand, as compared with those between Negroes and either the one or the other, are insignificant.

What are some of these differences in physical form? The lips of the Negro are thick; those of the European and Indian are thin. The nostrils of the Negro are broad, while the nostrils of the Whites and Indians are narrow. The legs of the Africans are long in proportion to their total stature; that is, their height sitting is short as compared with that of the other two racial groups. Skin color is the outstanding trait which exhibits difference, while other traits, such as finger-length, interpupillary distance, stature, hip width, etc., show characteristic statistical differences between the races.

As a control, therefore, I employed a series of §38 adult males, measured partly in New York City,

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but mainly at Howard University. I left them in the eight-fold genealogical classification I have mentioned above, and then tabulated the statistical constants—the averages and variabilities—for the several classes. It is the averages which are of importance in considering the validity of the genealogies, although I give the variabilities as a matter of procedure, and for the reason that I shall refer to them in a later chapter. It is apparent that, if the genealogies given me were actual statements of fact, and if the amount of crossing has any proportionate effect on bodily form, there should be fairly definite results. There should be differences between the averages for the several groups; in any given trait the unmixed Negro class should be very near the average for the West African populations; the group more Negro than White should be somewhat less like the African and tend more toward the White norms; and so on, until we reach the group claiming to be more White than Negro, which should be nearest of all to the White averages. I have intentionally omitted mention of the Indian mixture, and for two reasons. In the first place, I rather doubt whether there was enough Indian blood in any given family to make a perceptible difference, although one sees Negroes from time to time with strong Indian cast of features. The other point is more serious, from a biometric aspect, for the only trait in which Indians and Whites are unlike (this difference being always understood as relative, to the extent to which both differ from Africans) is in the breadth of the cheek-bones. And it so happens that in this particular trait, Negroes and Indians resemble each other. Therefore I consider here only the classes with different amounts of Negro-White ancestry, and I do not give the Indian-mixed classes, which in general follow the corresponding groups without Indian blood.

Let us now check our genealogies with physical measurements. First of all, we shall consider nostril width, the Negro nose being broad, the White nose narrow. When we express this width in millimeters what do we find?

V aria- No. bility

Genealogical Class of Cases Average (c) Unmixed Negro 109 43.4 2.8

More Negro than White 129 ALS RU yee Same amount of Negro and

White 95 39.9 3-0 More White than Negro BO) Uae el ae

This is striking evidence, but it is not enough. It is axiomatic in the best biometric practice of today that many traits must be utilized in the analysis of human groups. Therefore let us next take height sitting, in which, as I have said, Whites are taller than Negroes. These results, in centimeters, are:

V ariability

Genealogical Class Average (c) Unmixed Negro Se Be: 3:1 More Negro than White 88.1 gi Same amount of Negro and White 88.35 3.3 More White than Negro 89.1 213

Again the trend is what would be expected were the genealogies valid. But let us take a third trait, this time the thin White as against the thick Negro lips. Expressing the averages in millimeters, we find:

V ariability

Genealogical Class Average (c) Unmixed Negro 23.9 4.2 More Negro than White 22.5 4.3 Same amount of Negro and White 22.0 3-9 More White than Negro 18.8 3.8

Again this checks. But before we assert our conviction that the genealogical statements of these individuals are valid, let us take the outstanding test, that of skin color. It so happens that the use of a color top gives a quantitative expression of darkness. By mixing black, red, white, and yellow, the color of any skin can be matched. If we tabulate the percentages represented by the black segment of the surface of the top for the cases studied, we shall have an expression of relative darkness that can be handled statistically. The higher the percentage, the darker the individual or the average of the group. What do we find when the percentages of the individuals making up these genealogical classes are tabulated? The result again is striking:

V ariability

Genealogical Class Average (c) Unmixed Negro OU G 10.3 More Negro than White 68.3 11.6 Same amount of Negro and White 61.2 12.0 More White than Negro 48.7 1

That is, the unmixed Negroes are markedly darker, on the average, than the other genealogical groups, while the class whose members told me that they represented more White than Negro ancestry are, on the average, by far the lightest.

These figures, I think, show with reasonable conclusiveness that these Negro genealogies are statements of fact and may be used to represent the proportion of mixture at least in this particular group. Whether this group is representative of the American Negro population as a whole, is another problem, and one with which I shall have to deal later. Certainly many students might insist that I had no right to base generalizations on the study of groups which, they would claim, were the product of social selection. I hope to be able to show that the differences between the various parts of the Negro population are much less pronounced than is generally assumed a priori, and thus to answer these critics in advance; but for the present I am content if the reader will agree with me that, for the particular group under consideration, the physical check on the validity of the genealogical material is impressive.

It will be apparent that this information forces us to revise our conception of the ancestral background of the American Negro and our judgment of his ability to give us this ancestral background accurately. Since the time when the Dutch ‘man of warre’ landed the twenty-four unfortunate ‘“‘Negars’” on the Virginia coast, millions of their fellows have been brought here. These have mingled with the Whites to an enormous extent, though not, popular impressions to the contrary notwithstanding, in the recent past—a point which I shall discuss later. They have also mingled with the American Indians on a scale hitherto unrealized. A mixture of all races—African, Caucasian, Mongoloid —the American Negro truly presents a fascinating example of racial crossing.

Our next step is to examine the resulting mixture, in order that we may see what this extraordinary and unsuspecting melting pot has brought forth,

We speak of Negroes in this country, but plainly this is nonsense if we are employing the word “Negro” in its biological sense. The American Negro is an amalgam, and the application of the term ‘‘Negro”’ to him is purely sociological. But the phrase ‘“‘American Negro” has real biological significance, and I shall attempt next to show that a physical type has developed from the mixture represented in his person.

II OR the past two or three years we have been

hearing about the “New Negro,” and we have come to associate the phrase with the literary and artistic naissance taking place among a group of young Negroes in this country. The movement has been of no little social significance, for it means that the American Negroes—or, in any event, a small group of them—are claiming a portion of their heritage as Americans, and are identifying themselves more and more closely with the culture of this country which is theirs by birth. It is worth noting that this phenomenon has manifested itself only in recent years, only, in fact, since the Negro has consolidated his position in this country and thus made possible the leisure necessary for such a group. And it is both interesting and significant that it is just at the same time when we are discovering that the New Negro is with us in physical form as well as in spiritual achievement, that a New Negro has indeed come into being, and that he is the American Negro.

I do not intimate, of course, that there is any causal relationship between these two phenomena. It is a matter of coincidence, interesting though it be; for it must be evident that while achievement in culture waits until opportunities are opened to an oppressed people, the development of distinct physical form is a matter of generations. Moreover, this is particularly true of a highly mixed stock such as we find in the American Negro. As has been shown, there are in his ancestry all of the principal racial elements of which humanity is composed— White, Negro, and Mongoloid. And from this mixture there is being welded, and is already discernible, a definite physical type which may be called the American Negro. It is not like any type from which it has come; it is not White; it is not Negro; it is not Mongoloid. It is all of them, and none of them.

Such statements as I have just made contradict accepted views so completely that the point must be thoroughly demonstrated before it will be believed. As we look at the American Negroes we see about us everywhere, we behold men and women exhibiting such varieties of color, of racial cast, of stature and of build that it becomes difficult to grasp how all these traits may be associated with a definite physical type. Can it be that all these individuals are to be classed together? They range from the man of darkbrown skin and African appearance to the man who is almost white, and from the broad-nosed, thick-lipped black man to the Caucasoid-looking, thin-lipped, narrow-nosed ‘“‘technical’? Negro. Then there is hair form, varying from the tightly curled to that of Indian-like straightness. Can these be grouped so that we may maintain that they constitute a definite physical type ? It seems almost incredible. But before we pass judgment, let us recall the differences that are to be found in any so-called “pure” stock. In the White population of this country we find variations in eye-color, in hair-form and color, and certainly in those physical traits which can be measured, that equal and probably surpass the range of variation found among the Negroes. One trait in all likelihood furnishes an exception to this statement, and it is precisely this trait, curiously enough, that makes it so hard to believe the validity of the assertion which I have made. The trait is skin color. ‘The pigmentation of Whites has never been studied by the method which I have employed in the study of the American Negro, but I believe that the skin color of Negroes, even unmixed African Negroes, is more variable than that of Whites. And it is pigmentation we first think of when the physical type of Negroes is being discussed, and in too many cases it is the only trait that comes to our minds, This is quite natural, because it is the most apparent trait. But if we think in terms of lip thickness, stature, head-form, and all the other thirty traits that have been measured in the course of this study, we will not be quite so certain.

What do we mean when we speak of a type? We must first introduce the idea of a variable. If one measures any natural phenomenon, one finds that there is variation in the thing measured, and that if one has a large enough number of cases they will distribute themselves about an average value in a manner that is well understood by statisticians and is termed the ‘‘normal” or ‘‘Gaussian’’ distribution. Now, in dealing with human populations, one finds that while they usually follow the rule which applies to other natural phenomena, there is a difference in the extent to which individual groups vary about their central or average values. Some spread more widely than others, or, to put it technically, the variability of one population is greater than that of another. It must follow, then, that when many traits of a population show a low variability, that population may be spoken of as homogeneous, or, as I have phrased it here, as constituting a ‘“‘type.”’ This, therefore, is what I mean when I say that the American Negroes are forming a definite physical type. In trait after trait, if one measures them and computes their variabilities, and if one then compares these with the variability in the same traits of unmixed African, European, or American Indian populations, one will find that in most of the traits measured the variability of the greatly mixed American Negroes I have measured is as low as, or lower than, that of the unmixed populations from which it has been derived.

Let us see how this works out. If we consider the total height of the face, for example, we find the following variabilities for certain populations that have been studied:

Number Variability

of cases Population (in mm.) 2,384 English criminals 7.70 vp Kagoro (West Africa) 7.58 20 Ekoi (West Africa) 6.82 24.7 Old Americans (White) 6.72 G37 Pure Sioux Indians oi tg 534 Mixed American Negroes 6.31 40 Vai (West Africa) 5.84

Here we see that the variability of the American Negroes (represented by a series of male Negroes | from Howard University, the typicalness of which will be discussed later) is very low. Indeed, only the sample of a West African tribe, which presumably represents much less mixture than is characteristic of our American Negroes, has a lower variability. The other populations mentioned, including other West African peoples, are all more variable.

Suppose we now consider the height of the ear, a trait which very noticeably sets apart Negroes, on the one hand, and Whites and Indians, on the other. In the former the ear is small and fine, while in the latter two races it is large. Here, then, we have a distinctive trait for purposes of comparison: