Interdisciplinary aspects of Negro studies: proceedings of a Conference on Negro studies, held at Howard University, Washington, D.C., Mar. 29-30, 1940 000000620

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Contents: Conference on Negro Studies
Preface (page 3)
Introduction
1. Organization of the Conference (page 5)
2. Summary of Findings and Recommendations (page 6)
Proceedings
I. Purposes of the Conference (page 11)
II. Negro Studies in Latin America
Paper by Richard Pattee (page 16)
Discussion (page 22)
III. Bibliographical Problems in Negro Research
Paper by L.D. Reddick (page 26)
Discussion (page 31)
IV. Problems of Historical Research
Paper by Harvey Wish (page 35)
Discussion (page 42)
V. Problems of Economic Research
Paper by Abram L. Harris (page 46)
Discussion (page 53)
Added Comment respecting the West Indies
Paper by Eric Williams (page 58)
Discussion (page 64)
VI. Linguistic Research and African Survivals
Paper by Lorenzo D. Turner (page 68)
Discussion (page 78)
VII. Problems in Physical Anthropology
Paper by W. Montague Cobb (page 90)
Discussion (page 99)
VIII. Some Objectives of Negro Studies
A general discussion (page 101)

Citation preview

| SOCIETIES | | AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED

Organized, 1919. Incorporated, 192§.

Composed of two delegates from each of twenty-one national learned organizations devoted to humanistic and social studies.

Aims: ee

(1) To advance the interests of the humanistic sciences in | America, especially by encouraging, initiating, and promoting research in those studies, and by maintaining and strengthening the relations between the national societies

devoted to them. , |

(2) Through its membership in the International Union of Academies (UAI) to serve as an agency for the conduct

of continued relations between its constituent societies and other American organizations of scholars, on the one

hand, and academies and analogous bodies in foreign

countries, on the other.

THE BULLETIN © ‘Published irregularly, several numbers a year. For a list of back issues, see the inside of the back cover. The Bulletin

studies. | | | contains, in addition to the proceedings of the ACLS and the UAI,

and reports of their committees, other material and information of interest to scholars and institutions devoted to humanistic

Edited in the Executive Offices of the Council by the Adminis-

trative Secretary. ,

Published at the Executive Offices

1219 Sixteenth Street, N. W. ~ Washington, D.C. Prices: $1.00 for 5 numbers; $.25 per number, post-free.

, Made in United States of America

AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES Number 32 B U L L E T I N September, 1941

CONTENTS | | CONFERENCE ON NEGRO STUDIES

Preface... 0... cece cece eet teeeevesee.e §

Introduction — ,

1. Organization of the Conference.................... 5

2. Summary of Findings and Recommendations........ 6 PROCEEDINGS

I. Purposes of the Conference........................ Il

II. Negro Studies in Latin America | | Paper by Richard Pattee........................ 16 Discussion.... 0.0.00... 00... cece ee cece eee eccees, QQ III. Bibliographical Problems in Negro Research

Paper by L. D. Reddick......................... 26

DiscuSSION.......... 0... cc ee eee ccc cece eccceceee Sl IV. Problems of Historical Research

Paper by Harvey Wish.......................... 35 Discussion... 0.0.0.0... cece cece cece cece ce ecees 42 V. Problems of Economic Research , Paper by Abram L. Harris....................... 46 Discussion... ........ 00.000 c eee ee eee cee sees. BB

Added Comment respecting the West Indies

Paper by Eric Williams......................... 58 Discussion............. 0000 e cee cece eee eseeees. 64

VI. Linguistic Research and African Survivals

Paper by Lorenzo D. Turner..................... 68 Discussion... ....... 00.00 c cece eee teen ee ees 78

VII. Problems in Physical Anthropology

Paper by W. Montague Cobb.................... 90 Discussion............. 0c cece cc cee eee cece ee eee 99

VIII. Some Objectives of Negro Studies

A general discussion............................ 101 Copyright, 1941 AMERICAN CouNcIL oF LEARNED SOCIETIES

DELEGATES OF CONSTITUENT SOCIETIES (Societies are listed in order of foundation: terms expire on December 31 of year named) American Philosophical William E. Lingelbach, University of Pennsyl-

Society vania, 1942 Edward Capps, Princeton University, 1944

American Academy of J. D. M. Ford, Harvard University, 1942 Arts and Sciences Fred N. Robinson, Harvard University, 1944 American Antiquarian Clarence S. Brigham, Worcester, Mass., 1942

Society Clifford K. Shipton, Worcester, Mass., 1944

American Oriental So- James R. Ware, Harvard University, 1942

ciety Ephraim A. Speiser, University of Pennsylvania, 1944

American Numismatic Alfred R. Bellinger, Yale University, 1942

Society George C. Miles, Washington, D. C., 1944

American Philological Campbell Bonner, University of Michigan, 1942

Association George L. Hendrickson, Yale University, 1944

Archaeological Insti- William B. Dinsmoor, Columbia University, 1942

tute of America Clark Hopkins, University of Michigan, 1944

Society of Biblical Lit- Henry J. Cadbury, Harvard University, 1942 erature and Exegesis Nelson Glueck, Hebrew Union College, 1944 Modern Language As- William A. Nitze, University of Chicago, 1942 sociation of America George Sherburn, Harvard University, 1944 American Historical Wallace Notestein, Yale University, 1942 Association William Scott Ferguson, Harvard University, 1944 American Economic Frank H. Knight, University of Chicago, 1942

Association Edgar S. Furniss, Yale University, 1944

American Philosophical Glenn R. Morrow, University of Pennsylvania,

Association 1942 Curt J. Ducasse, Brown University, 1944

American Anthropolog- Franz Boas, Columbia University, 1942

ical Association Robert H. Lowie, University of California, 1944

American Political Sci- Frederic A. Ogg, University of Wisconsin, 1942

ence Association J oseph P. Chamberlain, Columbia University, Bibliographical Society H.B. Van Hoesen, Brown University, 1942

of America H. M. Lydenberg, New York Public Library, 1944 Association of Ameri- S. Whittemore Boggs, U. S. Department of

can Geographers State, 1942

Preston E. James, University of Michigan, 1944 American Sociological F. Stuart Chapin, University of Minnesota, 1942

Society J. H.S. Bossard, University of Pennsylvania, 1944

American Society ofIn- Elbert D. Thomas, United States Senate, 1942

ternational Law George Grafton Wilson, Harvard University, 1944 History of Science So- Henry R. Viets, Boston Medical Library, 1942

ciety Esmond R. Long, Henry Phipps Institute, 1944

Linguistic Society of Edgar H. Sturtevant, Yale University, 1942

America George S. Lane, University of North Carolina, 944 Mediaeval Academy of Samuel H. Cross, Harvard University, 1942

America Richard P. McKeon, University of Chicago, 1944

[338 ]

| PREFACE Although studies of the Negro are conducted within a large number of disciplines and involve problems, methods, and materials as diverse in character as those of economics and physical anthropology, or of linguistics and military history, these different types of research do, nevertheless, have interests in common that, to the detriment of scholarship, are not frequently enough recog-

nized. That a satisfactory understanding of any cultural group requires, on the one hand, investigations from many points of view, and, on the other, the integration of the contributions of the

different disciplines, is a commonplace to the modern social scientist, but what steps must be taken to produce such studies in a specific instance may be anything but obvious.

The Negro presents unusual problems in this respect, particularly in the Western hemisphere, where, as in the United States, he may constitute a distinctive cultural element within a larger society of which he is at the same time an active part. In the United States, for example, studies taking account of the Negro but employing only the techniques and materials developed

in relation to the total population cannot be expected to be complete, although they may serve certain purposes well enough.

Studies of the Negro may, then, be singled out for special consideration because of the cultural patterns he has developed in a variety of environments, and, in addition, because recently evolved methods and perspectives in research reveal opportunities

for a better understanding of those patterns than has hitherto been possible. Newer approaches to cultural problems, notably some of those which have been developed in anthropology and social psychology, are applicable to many types of research in an extended range of subjects. But there exists need for a wider exchange of informa-

tion respecting progress in both the methods and results of research. Papers read at meetings of learned societies, articles published in scholarly journals, and in some cases even comprehensive books concerned with the Negro often show that their authors are ignorant of significant and relevant advances made

| [ 339 ]

4 American Council of Learned Societies outside the fields of their own immediate specialization. There is reason to believe that the usefulness of certain of the older methods

and points of view has been nearly exhausted, and that the advancement of scholarship requires a type of inter-disciplinary

cooperation that will diligently apply the newer techniques to both new and old sources of information to produce fresh inter-

pretations of the history and culture of the Negro. | D. H. DauGHErty

Washington, D. C. |

[ 840 }

INTRODUCTION

1. ORGANIZATION OF THE CONFERENCE | | The Proceedings which follow are those of a Conference which was called under the auspices of the American Council of Learned

Societies, to permit a small group of scholars, representing a variety of fields, to exchange information concerning the present state of research on the Negro and to suggest means of improving and stimulating that research, particularly through interdisciplinary cooperation. Both subjects for research and methods were prominent in the discussions, and attention was repeatedly given to insufficiently studied aspects of Negro life and culture which may be effectively dealt with at the present time. The Conference, held at Howard University, in Washington, D. C., on March 29 and 30, 1940, was attended by the following: Melville J. Herskovits, Northwestern University, Chairman Herbert Aptheker, Columbia University William R. Bascom, Northwestern University | William Berrien, American Council of Learned Societies

Sterling Brown, Howard University | , W. O. Brown, Howard University _ |

Ralph J. Bunche, Howard University W. Montague Cobb, Howard University D. H. Daugherty, American Council of Learned Societies -

J. Franklin Frazier, Howard University Mortimer Graves, American Council of Learned Societies

Abram L. Harris, Howard University _ ,

Charles 8. Johnson, Fisk University ,

Waldo G. Leland, American Council of Learned Societies

Alain Locke, Howard University :

Richard Pattee, Division of Cultural Relations, United States

- Library |

_ Department of State L. D. Reddick, Schomburg Collection, New York Public Newbell Niles Puckett, Western Reserve University [341]

6 American Council of Learned Societies George Simpson, Pennsylvania State College Lorenzo D. Turner, Fisk University Mark Hannah Watkins, Fisk University Eric Williams, Howard University Harvey Wish, De Paul University Invited but unable to attend were Guy B. Johnson, University of North Carolina

Gunnar Myrdal, The Carnegie-Myrdal Study Elsie Clews Parsons, New York, N. Y.

Carter G. Woodson, Association for the Study of Negro Life and History Donald Young, Social Science Research Council Among the scholarly disciplines represented were physical and cultural anthropology, history, political science, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, literature and the arts. Papers were presented at each session of the Conference and followed by discussion. The stenotyped record of the complete proceedings which was prepared has, in the interests of economy,

been considerably reduced to form the present report. All of the papers, which are given practically in full, were submitted to their authors for corrections before publication. In editing the discussions effort was made to prevent the exclusion of any comments

contributing to the main purposes of the Conference; incidental remarks and repetitions of argument were deleted; and for the sake of clarity or conciseness the form of the conversations was

atIt seems some points altered. | desirable at this point to present a summary of the

findings and recommendations of the Conference as they were defined at the close of the final session. Following this summary the papers and other discussions will be given in their chronological order. 2. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

At the final session of the Conference, the numerous suggestions that had been made for further work in the field of Negro studies, and the general agreement as to the stimulation afforded workers [ 342 ]

Introduction 7 in this field by opportunity to discuss together their mutual problems, clearly indicated the need for a continuing body which should act as a center for the advancement of Negro research. It was felt that the work of such a group would include the integration of Negro studies in one discipline with those in others; that

such a body could aid in making possible greater facilities for Negro students by breaking down or circumventing social barriers

that make their work difficult; that a group of this kind might arrange for the setting up of microfilm centers where copies of documents important in the study of Negro history and otherwise difficult to obtain could be made available to qualified scholars; that such a group might direct the publication, either in periodical

form or as memoirs, of significant studies in the field, giving particular aid where such studies fall between two disciplines; that such a publication program might include the encouragement of dignified popularization of valid scientific materials concerning

Negroes; and, finally, that such a group could act as a clearing house for research projects and thus bring about increased coordination and at the same time provide a logical channel through which funds available for Negro research might eventually flow. To this end the Conference named a special Committee on Recommendations, consisting of the Chairman (Mr. Herskovits), Mr. Bunche, and Mr. Turner, and instructed that Committee to transmit to the American Council of Learned Societies the concensus of the Conference that the appointment by the Council of a permanent Committee on Negro Studies, which might act in the capacity dutlined above to achieve the ends there stated, would be of great advantage to scholarship. In carrying out this mandate the Committee on Recommendations later submitted the following report to the Executive Offices of the Council: “It was the unanimous opinion of the Conference that a continuous interchange of information and integration of interests in the total field could be best achieved by acceding to the sugges-

tion made...in opening the Conference, that a permanent Committee on Negro Studies be set up by the Council. It is not too much to say, indeed, that the entire proceedings of the

, [ 343 }

8 American Council of Learned Societies Conference... will constitute. a documentation of the need for a central agency such as a standing committee of this kind would

constitute. In accordance with the action of the Conference, therefore, we wish to request the Executive Committee of the Council to authorize the establishment of a standing Committee on Negro Studies.” |

[Note: Acting on the above request the Executive Committee of the Council subsequently appointed a standing Committee on Negro Studies, consisting of the following members:

Chairman, MetvitLte J. Herskovits, Northwestern University STERLING Brown, Howard University; Orro KLINEBERG,

Columbia University; Ricaarp Patresz, United States Department of State; L. D. Reppicx, New York Public Library; Lorenzo

D. Turner, Fisk University; Donaup Younc, Social Science Research Council; D. H. Daucuerrty, American Council of Learned Societies, Secretary. That Committee held its first

mittee. | ,

meeting in Washington, D. C., on June 6, 1941. Publication of the present proceedings was authorized by the Executive Com-

[ 344}

PROCEEDINGS OF A CONFERENCE ON NEGRO STUDIES WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 29-30, 1940

Blank Page

AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES Number 32 B U L, L, K T | N September, 1941

THE INTERDISCIPLINARY ASPECTS OF NEGRO STUDIES PROCEEDINGS OF A CONFERENCE ON NEGRO

| STUDIES, HELD AT HowarRp UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, D. C., Marca 29-30, 1940

Edited by Melville J. Herskovits

I. PURPOSES OF THE CONFERENCE Watpo G. LELAND, Director of the American Council of Learned

Societies: The American Council of Learned Societies is engaged

in promoting work in the fields of study to which the societies which form its component membership are themselves devoted. It accomplishes this end in various ways. It does it by organizing and carrying out projects of research, such as the Dictionary of American Biography or the Linguistic Atlas of the United States. It does it by assisting research projects initiated by its member societies. It is also able to make small grants in aid of research

to individual scholars, and thus to assist them in meeting the expenses of their investigations. In a similar way, it is able to make small grants in aid of publication to individual scholars or to publishers or to learned societies for specific works of scholarship, since, unfortunately, in this country and in our time scholarly

publications are by no means all self-supporting. The Council is also interested in the development of superior personnel for research and teaching, which it endeavors to achieve through a Committee on Research and Teaching Personnel, by awarding varying sums as study aids, as we call them, or fellowships, for assistance in training from the first year of graduate work to and beyond the doctorate. [ 347 J

12 American Council of Learned Societies One of the Council’s most important activities is that which we

call development and planning. We realize that American scholarship tends to occupy itself at present with only a small part

of the entire area of human knowledge; that it devotes itself rather narrowly to Western civilization, to the rather well worked fields of the modern languages and literature, to classical studies

and modern and medieval history, ancient history and related studies; and that 1t would be a great advantage to us if the scope of our interest should be broadened to take in the cultures of the

entire world. , |

In order to encourage this broadening of interest we have organized a number of committees that we call development

committees. The earliest of these, now in existence for over ten

years, is the Committee on Chinese Studies; we have also a Committee on Japanese Studies, on Indic and Iranian Studies, on Slavic Studies, on Near Eastern Studies, on Arabic and Islamic

Studies, on Latin American Studies, on American Culture (one of the latest committees to be organized), on Renaissance Studies, on Musicology, on the History of Ideas, on the History of Religions. These committees operate in fields which we regard as exceedingly

interesting and worth while, and to which we therefore wish to give emphasis and encouragement in this country. And in some

of these fields, especially the Chinese, Japanese, and Latin American, we have been gratifyingly successful, thanks to the great assistance of the Rockefeller Foundation. The situation with regard to Chinese studies in the United States is entirely different now from what it was ten years ago, largely because of the operations of our Committee on Chinese Studies. Instead of Chinese being taught in only one or two institutions, there are now fifteen or twenty centers; and instead of having a dozen or twenty scholars interested in Chinese studies, we now have a list of two hundred. This interest is in turn having an influence on related fields, not only in history and art and general culture, but also in sociology, economics, and political science. In this way we feel that American scholarship has had its horizon greatly

broadened. |

_ For a long time we have been conscious of the importance, [ 348 ]

, Purposes of the Conference : 13 especially in the American world, of what, for lack of a better name, we can call Negro studies. I suppose by Negro studies we mean, largely, investigations of the effect—at least from the American point of view—upon American culture of the transfer of African cultures and civilizations to a new world where, in a new physical, social, and human environment, they have had a part in producing what we now call American civilization or American culture. The importance of such contributions in the United States is obvious, of course, but they must be studied carefully and analyzed until we know a great deal more about

them than we do at present. During a recent trip in South America, I was greatly impressed with the importance of the African contribution to South American civilization and culture, especially in such countries as Brazil and Peru.

I take it that this Conference will ask itself two questions. The first begins with “What,” and the second with “How.” The first question is, What are the needs, at the present time, of Negro studies in the United States? What is the best means of expressing these needs? In what directions do they extend— linguistic, historical, sociological, economic? The second question is, How can we best meet these needs? What sort of machinery should be devised in order to deal with them in a systematic and comprehensive way, and what plans can be made. that will have a chance of being reasonably successful over a period of years?

Those are the two questions that, speaking from the point of view of the Council at least, I hope you will consider with a great deal of care. Since the question of how these needs can be met is

asked by the Council, we should ask in turn how the Council can be useful in helping to meet them. If, in your opinion, it should be desirable to set up a temporary or permanent committee on Negro studies under the auspices of the Council, we shall be very glad to have your advice, and the Executive Committee and Advisory Board will consider the recommendations

that this Conference may make. I think that, personally, I should be in favor of asking the Council to set up a permanent standing committee on Negro studies, to take its place with our [ 349 ]

14 American Council of Learned Societies other standing committees that are charged with developing certain fields of study and with making plans for them. MELVILLE J. Herskovits, Northwestern University, Chairman of the Conference: The agenda before you and the list of members

of this group show what diverse disciplines we represent. We range from linguistics to physical anthropology; sociology and history, economics and political science are represented, and we could have had place for still more subjects. It seems to me that to approach the study of the Negro from a broad base is desirable because of the fact that historical develop-

ments in the New World have given us a kind of laboratory difficult to find elsewhere. It is because this laboratory is so vast, however, that cooperation between men of varied training

is essential. What, we may ask, is the relationship between a given group and its environment when the group has experienced

a great variety of environmental changes? What happens to a given series of historically related cultures when they come into contact with other cultures as different as the European civilizations which spread all over the New World, and with which the Negroes, who themselves differed in their own aboriginal cultural backgrounds, came into contact? What, in the field of physical type, are the results of the race crossing that has gone on so con-

tinuously and extensively in the New World between various types of Africans, Europeans, and American Indians? These are challenging problems, and they must be treated with some imagination. In the case of Negro studies, we have a great advantage in the recourse we can take to historical documenta-

tion. We can discover the tribal origins of the New World populations. To a far greater extent than is the case with many other civilizations influenced by foreign traditions, we know or can find out what happened in the New World to the Negroes who were exposed to such varying experiences in such differing degrees of intensity.

This meeting has been called to bring together a group of scholars interested in attacking a series of problems which are not only of scientific importance but which at the same time also have great practical significance. And this very fact is meaning[ 350 ]

Purposes of the Conference 15 ful, since in the field of Negro studies men have worked in isolation

from their fellows. To some extent this isolation exists in all fields of science, but, nonetheless, it has seemed to us as we contemplated the field that if we could gather around a table a repre-

sentative group of men who are interested in Negro research, something fruitful in the way of an increased understanding of the difficulties that they have individually and variously met, and of the problems and objectives of the various disciplines concerned, would eventuate from their discussions. Cross-disciplinary research is being more and more encouraged, perhaps as an outgrowth of that cooperative research which was

at one time the vogue in scientific circles. When the concept of cooperative research was developed some ten or fifteen years ago, it meant essentially that someone, conceiving a problem he felt should be studied, farmed the research to a colleague who, in turn, used his graduate students or his younger associates as collaborators. It is not surprising that an approach of this kind was as little successful as it turned out to be. Yet there is a kind

of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization possible when scholars who have demonstrated their competence in special fields are brought together to talk over problems and methods and to exchange information. Sooner or later such men will find ways in which they can be of help to one another; and if our Conference accomplishes nothing

more than an exchange of reprints, it will have been worth a great deal. Because, as I have said, it is striking to what an extent men who are working in the field of Negro studies may be unknown to other men concerned with related problems. And it

is to the end of correcting this situation in some measure that this conference has been called.

[ 351 |

16 American Council of Learned Societies II. NEGRO STUDIES IN LATIN AMERICA , RicwarD Parrrsz, U. S. Department of State

In considering the broad topic that has been assigned to me, I have tried to work out a number of observations that will not only indicate the status of Negro studies in Latin America but

will at the same time point out what seem to be some of the principal needs to be kept in mind if that type of integration to which the Chairman has referred is to be achieved. As you realize, the question of Negro studies in Latin America, at least in four or five of the countries where the Negro element is most important, 1s in every sense of the word a matter which not

only has implications for scholarship but also involves factors

arising out of an acute social consciousness. I think we can find in most of the scholarly production now taking place in the Latin American countries an appreciation of the fact that it is not merely the academic analysis and investigation of the Negro

in that society that is important, but that there are also to be considered questions of much broader cultural import. In a nation like Brazil or Cuba, where the Negro element makes up probably at least half of the population, it is a question of the integration of a national culture, so that we find a double purpose involved in most Latin American scholarship in this field.

The progress that has been made, especially during the last ten or fifteen years, is really astonishing. There is, first of all, the

actual amount of production in both the scholarly and popular publications concerning the Negro. A glance at the bibliography of the Negro in Brazil, for instance, would reveal that the number of studies has increased a dozenfold over the last decade. At the

same time there would seem to be a very marked increase in what we might call dispassionate analysis. Up to a decade or fifteen years ago the interest in the Negro in a country like Brazil

was largely confined to the picturesque. It was much the same as the interest manifested in the Indian, which was to a considerable degree literary. There was very little in the way of historical or sociological analysis, or of studies representing the innumerable

| [ 352}

Negro Studies in Latin America 17 other points of view which of course are of great importance to the scholarly consideration of the Negro.

This scholarly approach today, however, is developing significantly in almost every one of the Latin American countries. Consider, for example, such a well-known older Haitian work as Price’s De la Réhabilitation de la Race notre, and contrast it with the writings of Mars and the many other contemporary Haitian students who have approached the study of the Negro not merely

with an eagerness to vindicate for their own race its place and prestige, but at the same time to analyze critically and in scholarly

fashion the contribution and réle of the Negro in that particular West Indian island. Accompanying this increase in breadth of attitude, there has been a widening of the scope of subject matter. Today in these countries where the Negro element is important, you will find attention paid not merely to the common historical development

of the people but also to linguistics, and to the sociological, musical, artistic, and other manifestations of life wherein the

Negro has made his contribution.

I think it may be suggestive to consider very rapidly the status of Negro studies in those countries which have been most active

in the field. I may take Brazil first, since I dare say that there the largest amount of scholarly activity has been directed toward

the study of the Negro. In the field of sociology, the research of Octavio de Freitas is outstanding. He has done a magnificent piece of work in Doencas Africanas no Brasil especially in relation to northern Brazil, wherein he considers the problem of accultura-

tion, including the impact of the Negro upon the Portugese and all the various consequences that flow from it. This is a monumental contribution which comprises several very significant volumes.

Dr. Arthur Ramos, a doctor of medicine and a psychiatrist, has,

as you undoubtedly know, produced a half dozen of the most important volumes on the Negro in Brazil that exist today. It is especially important to note how, in this case, Dr. Ramos began his investigations in a more narrow field and gradually [ 353 ]

18 American Council of Learned Societies broadened his interests to produce the only volume, so far as I

know, which attempts to relate the problem of the Negro in Brazil to that of the other countries of America, including the United States. In the field of linguistics I may mention Renato Mendonga, Jacques Raimundo, and various others, who have analyzed the African influences on the Portugese language. All of these, in a specialized way, have provided an enrichment of the scholarly

literature available in Brazil, and all of this is the work of the

past ten years and represents a distinct departure from the traditions of writing which prevailed up to that time. Now, in Brazil this development has not been merely a scholarly

one. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, there is a very real consciousness in Brazil that the Negro is not merely something to be studied, but that he is as much a person as 1s the Portuguese.

And these scholars have been so conscious of this fact that two Afro-Brazilian congresses have been held, not only to examine the problem of the Negro from the scholarly point of view but at the

same time to bring about cooperative activity between Negroes and whites, an aim which is there considered an indispensable corollary to these other more scientific activities. It is also important to note in the case of Brazil that studies

of the Negro have not been limited to any one region. There has been a realization of the importance of this problem throughout

the republic. You find, for instance, in far away Rio Grande do Sul, a scholar named Dante de Laytano who has published some excellent linguistic works; in Bahia work has been done under men

like Carneiro; while in Natal, in the northern part of Brazil, the work of such a scholar as Luis da Camara Cascudo is to be remarked. Even in the Amazon, where the Negro population is

very small, Ferreira Reis has published a number of works, especially on the problem of the racial mixture of Indians and

Negroes. So that throughout the country, from the extreme South to the North, there is productive activity, motivated by a very real concern with this problem.

In the case of Cuba, which I think is probably the second Latin-American nation in importance as regards the study of the [ 354 }

Negro Studies in Latin America 19 Negro, there has been greater specialization. One associates Negro studies in Cuba almost entirely with the name of Dr. Fernando Ortiz, who was the initiator, the promoter, and in that

republic is still the dean of scholars dealing with the Negro. Dr. Ortiz, in spite of his prodigious production—and he has examined almost every aspect of the subject, treating it as an economic problem as concerns policy regarding Haitian immigra-

tion, or as a linguistic problem as evidenced in his magnificent

dictionary, and the like—has also created, to some extent, a school of Negro studies. You may be aware of the establishment two or three years ago of the Sociedad de Estudios Afro-Cubanos,

the Society for Afro-Cuban Studies. The first volume of its review was published some six or eight months ago, and the second number has just appeared. The Society attempts to bring together Cuban Negroes and Cuban whites of scholarly persuasion with the purpose of integrating and coordinating their activities. Although this society has but recently been organized, it is already doing very effective and significant work.

In Cuba this scholarly output has been accompanied by a most extraordinary interest in the Negro from the literary point of view. Concerning this many of you here present can speak with more authority than I, but I know, of course, of the work of

Guillen and Ballagas and many others. Works written either by Negro Cubans or written by whites interested in the Negro as

literary inspiration appear in Cuba almost every month. Only last week, for instance, I received two new works, one a series of short essays by a young woman, Lydia Cabrera, the title of which is Cuentos Negros de Cuba, the other, El Negro en Cuba, by Alberto

Arredondo, which, interestingly enough, is entirely in the realm of economics.

In Haiti, as I have indicated, the same type of interest has been

developed. At the present time, particularly through the inspiration of Dr. Price Mars and others with whom he has sur-

rounded himself, there is a much broader emphasis on the contribution of the Negro in Haiti and in the West Indies generally

than heretofore. For instance, within the last three years Dr. Jules Faine, of Port-au-Prince, has published in two volumes, [ 355 ]

20 American Council of Learned Societies : La Philologie Créole, which, whatever its intrinsic merit as a philological work, shows at least an interest in this broader approach. The Revue de la Société d’Histoire et de Géographie d@’Haiti constantly has articles dealing with various aspects of the study of the Negro. When we move to some of the other Latin-American countries,

however, even where the Negro is an appreciable factor in the

society, we find less activity of this type. In the Dominican Republic, for example, which lies next to Haiti, sharing the same island, where the Negroes, or those of mixed blood, represent a large element of the population, practically nothing of a scholarly character has been done. There are some indications of literary

interest of the Afro-Cuban genre, but this is limited to casual works or small monographs, of no very serious character.

In Puerto Rico a similar situation prevails. The Negro has come into his own in Puerto Rico only as a literary subject. We find an important poet such as Palés Matos has produced two or three volumes of poetry in which the Negro is the inspiration, but no one has been concerned to any great extent with historical

or sociological investigations. |

In Venezuela, Negro studies are even less developed than is the

case in the two West Indian countries to which I have just referred. A few things are to be found, such as the novel of Gallegos,

Pobre Negro. Yet this is a literary work, whose author makes no pretense at evaluating the historic or scientific réle of the Negro

in Venezuela. In this country, interest in the Negro is literary to such an extent that, in making inquiry concerning persons in Venezuela interested in the subject, I was told that not only were the Venezuelans not interested in the Negro as yet, but they had

scarcely recognized the existence of the problem. Isolated individuals concerned with the Negro are, of course,

to be found, as the Chairman has already observed. Such a person is the very able Peruvian scholar, Fernando Romero, a naval officer by profession, who is much interested in the Negro in Peru, where the Negroes constitute an element which is much more numerous than one might assume at first glance. Romero has produced a number of interesting papers on the slave trade [ 356 ]

; _ Negro Studies in Latin America 21 and has organized a small group which has published a review where, little by little, scattered writings on various aspects of the Negro in that republic are being brought together. In the more southern countries such as Argentina, which we may take as an example, the bibliography of the Negro, as far as I have been able to discover, consists of perhaps three works, none of them very extensive. La Trata de Negros, by Diego Luis Molinari, is a study of the slave trade and has a certain

significance because of the fact that up to the middle of the nineteenth century the Negro was an important element in the Argentine, although today his importance has diminished as a result. of the enormous European immigration. There is also a little work by Vincente Rossi, Cosas de Negros, which likewise

deals with the Negro in the Rio de la Plata area. , You will notice that in making this very rapid analysis of the status of Negro studies in Latin America, I have left out of account numerous areas where the Negro is a factor to be reckoned with— Columbia, Panama, Bolivia, certain portions of Central America,

and Mexico. In all these countries, however, it is impossible to discover that anything of any real scholarly or literary importance

produced. a

dealing with the problem in which we are interested has been It seems to me, as we survey the field, that a number of specific points concerning Negro studies in Latin America present them-

selves. First is the problem of exploration and investigation in those areas which have not yet been touched and where the Negro

element is important. You have, for instance, in Panama, the very interesting phenomenon of the transfer of Negro populations from certain of the British West Indian islands, which involves the impact of the Barbadian and Jamaican Negroes upon the Spanish and Indian populations. There is thus a vast amount of virgin territory for exploration in Latin America, where no effort has been made, either by nationals or scholars from abroad, to examine the problems of Negro research. The second point as regards Latin America seems to me very definitely to concern the proper distribution of available literature, and the furthering of first-hand contacts among scholars. I think [ 357 ]

22 American Council of Learned Societies we will appreciate that fact if I point out that up to a few years ago Dr. Arthur Ramos was unaware of what was being produced in Haiti and Cuba, while in like manner Ortiz did not know the work being done in Brazil. These two countries present analgous situations in which the essential problems are quite similar, but despite this their scholars were working completely out of touch with those having similar interests in other parts of Latin America. Today, happily, we begin to find references in Brazilian writings

to work among the Cubans and Haitians, and in other countries there is a new awareness generally of what is going on elsewhere.

The third and last point we must raise concerns the dearth of material in the United States, not only as far as scholars are concerned but to an even greater extent as regards those who are interested in the problem from a less scholarly point of view. It is assumed, of course, that the scholar will probably handle the languages he needs for his work, but for those who are inter-

ested and do not have available the instruments of another language there is practically nothing in English—none of the material out of Brazil and Cuba is available in the English language. Here, of course, there is a real possibility of a contribution toward the understanding of the Negro as constituting one of the most fundamental problems of Latin America. DISCUSSION

Mr. Locke: It should be recorded how modest Mr. Pattee was in not mentioning the fact that he himself has translated one of Ramos’s works, The Negro in Brazil, thus making available to

us in this country this important contribution. |

Mr. Turner: What can you tell us concerning the availability of Latin American documents which relate to the importation of slaves? Of course, I understand that in Brazil such documents have been largely destroyed, but what is the situation in other

countries? ,

Mr. Patres: That varies greatly from country to country.

As you say, a large proportion of the Brazilian documents relating to the slave trade were destroyed, the main reason for this being

the interesting belief that by removing the evidence of slavery,

[358 ]

Negro Studies in Latin America 23 its stigma could also be removed. In Cuba, I think, the documentary materials to be had are probably much more extensive, and I dare say that in the Spanish and Portuguese archives a very considerable amount of data is to be found that has been practically untapped. Mr. LELAND: Has any attempt been made to construct anything like a bibliography of works dealing with the Negro in South America?

Mr. Patree: I don’t know of any. Mr. Levanp: I have talked with some of the people Mr. Pattee mentioned. I had the pleasure of meeting Commander Romero in Lima when I attended sessions of Insula, an exceedingly interesting group for the study of cultural problems. There I heard him read a paper on the Negro in Lima, in which he pointed out that at one time about fifty percent of the population of Lima had been Negro. Mr. Patree: One finds some very interesting references, even in older works, that have never been followed up by workers in this field. For instance, in Rojas’s History of Argentine Literature an entire chapter is devoted to the Negro, in which is made the comment that in the 1820’s and 1830’s forty to fifty percent of the population of Buenos Aires was Negro.

Mr. Buncue: Is it possible that less attention has been accorded the Negro in some of these Latin American countries, as compared with the situation in the United States, because there exists less consciousness of this group as a social minority?

Mr. Pattee: In part I think that is unquestionably a factor. Mr. Herskovits: Yet that is not the case in Colombia, where the racial differences loom almost as prominently as in the United

States. But when I have tried to find something about the Negroes there, all I have been able to discover is that they number almost two million and live in the western part of the country.

Mr. Buncue: Have any governmental surveys been made which would be helpful?

Mr. Patrree: Not that I know of. The Cuban Government

point of view.

has done some work of this sort, but primarily from the economic [ 359 ]

24 American Council of Learned Societies Mr. Bunce: How are the Negroes classified in the census? _ Mr. Patres: In most Latin American countries the color line is so flexible that, in most cases, there has been no serious attempt

to differentiate Negroes from the rest of the population. Even in those countries where some attempt has been made—as in Ecuador—to take a census based on such racial affiliations as Indian, Negro, and white, the results are so inadequate and so inaccurate that I doubt whether any useful conclusions could be

reached. |

Mr. LELAND: What you have said, Mr. Pattee, has impressed upon me very strongly the importance of considering the possi-

bility of establishing closer relations between scholars in this field in the South American countries. If ways can be devised to bring isolated workers together, and of becoming more closely associated with them ourselves, it should be to the great advantage both of them and of us. I was constantly struck by what seemed to me the state of intellectual fermentation in Brazil. There is great interest in new fields of study, especially in sociological and economic problems and in certain other disciplines such as linguistics.

Mr. JoHnson: The exchange of students and scholars strikes me as being a very useful step towards introducing American methods of research to scholars there, while benefiting from their individual discoveries and becoming acquainted with the materials they have. Mr. Levanp: You all know of the regular exchange of students which is now going into effect under the Convention of Buenos Aires.

Mr. Locks: [I should like to return to Mr. Bunche’s question concerning the relation of interest in Negro studies to the racial situation. It seems to me that a great deal of our interest in the ‘Negro problem,” manifesting itself in antiquarian research, derives from group pride. Even when the situation of a group is relatively good, a considerable amount of sentiment about the traditions of these groups is found—in this case, a sort of second and third generation reaction of historical pride. Certainly, as far as Ortiz is concerned, and I suspect in the case of Ramos, we

, [ 360 }

Negro Studies in Latin America 25 find scholars who are working unhampered by any sense of their research being something which can fill the compensatory need of

a minority group. It is a matter of cultural interest with them. Mr. Buncue: We must be alert to attitudes in this country which, in a practical way, influence even the financing of research. Thus it has been held that it would not be wise to encourage American Negro scholars to go into the Latin American field, because interracial relations there are so different from those here that in all probability the American Negro scholars who came in contact with this situation would return with ‘‘undesirable”’ ideas.

Mr. Patrse: One of the most interesting things to be found in so many of the Brazilian writings, especially when they deal with

certain historical periods, is that it is impossible to present the Negro under the designation, ‘‘Negro.”’ It may be written, “This person was distinguished as an artist,” but whether Negro or not cannot be said since no one ever took the pains to make note of his racial derivation. Mr. APTHEKER: Is there any government censorship that would curtail the value of scholarly research in South America?

Mr. PatrTes: That is difficult to say. After all, there are twenty Latin American countries; so far as I know, however, none of the countries I have mentioned has anything of the sort.

[361 ]

26 American Council of Learned Societies Iil. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PROBLEMS IN NEGRO RESEARCH L. D. Reppicx, New York Public Library One of the basic reasons for the present unfortunate state of so much research on the Negro, and on related topics, is to be found

in the problem of sources. Sources unknown. Sources inaccessible. Sources imperfectly exploited. Ever so often, one discovers with astonishment that some scholar has missed several relevant collections of documents; or that non-scholarly barriers have kept others from their materials; or that ineptness or bias has rendered so much labor of still others valueless for the pur-

poses of scholarship. |

Within the space of this brief discussion, a survey of recent

productions in the fields under consideration is, of course, impossible. Nor is this necessary. Examples will occur to each special-

ist. What may be attempted with some profit is a statement of three of the major problems arising out of the use and need for sources, with one or two illustrations of each, and a plan for overcoming some of the difficulties. A typical illustration of the scholar who works without knowlledge of essential sources is furnished in the case of a writer engaged In preparing a definitive history of the anti-slavery movement in America who in a recent and otherwise excellent little book on the anti-slavery origins of the Civil War completely ignored the active participation of the Negroes themselves in the abolition move-

ment. Upon inquiry, it was revealed that he was entirely unacquainted with sources such as the minutes of the many “‘national,”’

regional and state conventions of the free people of color which

were held from the 1830’s through the 1860’s. Yet quantities of these proceedings are located in the libraries of New York and elsewhere, and their significance is such that it is quite possible that a full examination of them will suggest a new point of view comparable in significance to the current one. Evidence of the inaccessibility of known materials to a group of serious students may be found in the southern part of the United

States. Here the Negro scholar is not only more often isolated [3862

Bibliographical Problems in Negro Research 27 from his fellows than the white student but may actually be barred from his data. Elsewhere I have set down some of the details of

the plight of the Negro scholar in the South. If he is a teacher, and he usually is, his classes are heavy; appropriations for his research are virtually nil, and the facilities in his own college library quite inadequate. Some state and municipal libraries will admit

him; others will not. A few of the privately endowed institutions will permit individual Negroes to read ‘“‘somewhere in the

building’; many of them will not even do this. Inter-library loans may bring in certain of the books, but letters, manuscripts, and other rare items which are what he really needs, obviously,

cannot be handled in this way. With the Negro and white scholars of the South separated from each other, and with the Negro scholar further handicapped by the social barriers to his documents, is there any wonder that so little is produced and so little of that little is of first quality? Workers, white as well as Negro, suffer further from the inaccessibility of relevant materials located in Europe and, as Dr. Pattee has shown, in Latin America. For example, a study of the era of the French Revolution as concerns the Negro is literally

worthless without the use of evidence to be found in France as well as in the West Indies. Yet the best study to date has failed to use the French records. Even in normal times the problem is a real one. The trip abroad is expensive. The available guides in this country to materials there are of doubtful assistance. The

primary data are, ever so often, not even cataloged. Despite these social and natural barriers, the fact remains that the results of scholarship are inadequate without the use of just such sources. Some of the important collections are in the national archives of

Spain, Portugal, France, and England; others consist of those records of the commercial companies and church missions which

proved so influential in facilitating the expansion of Europe. The papers of the French abolitionists have been scarcely touched

by American students. And in 4 city like Liverpool, which was built upon the slave trade and world commerce, there exists a

veritable mine of source materials. ,

The third problem of sources is one of the most disheartening, [ 363 ]

28 American Council of Learned Societies for here the sources are known and available, yet are ignored or

only partially exploited. Consider, for example, the recently published volume, The Slavery Controversy, by Arthur Young

Lloyd. This is the latest work on the subject. Accordingly, with the benefit of the previous spade work and the wealth of data now at hand, it should represent a notable contribution. Unfortunately, this is not so. Granting that Dr. Lloyd read the materials listed in his bibliography, the conclusion is inevitable that his social attitudes were such as effectively to block the satisfactory exploration of his sources. Dr. Lloyd’s problem was to study two competing and conflict-

ing propagandas—the pro-slavery and the anti-slavery. Here was an unusual opportunity to reveal the real interests behind the battle of verbal symbols; to analyze and compare the techniques of the opposing sides; to estimate the effectiveness of each; and

finally, to relate these to the stream of historical development. Instead, Dr. Lloyd conceived his approach in terms of a NorthSouth attack and defense. Normative and ethical judgments of the author creep in at every point. He has failed so completely to maintain the discipline of objectivity that he speaks of the “violence and injustice of the abolition attacks”; terms the movement in the North a hateful crusade; identifies the slave interest with the Southern people; and himself rises to the defense of slav-

ery. This work, thus, must be re-done. This bare outline,

other fields. | |

perhaps, suggests a pattern which could be easily retraced in Turning to some of the specific problems of sources, we must

ask what can be done to improve the situation. It must be understood, of course, that these and other problems of the scholar are only segments of larger and deeper problems of our society. After all, research itself takes place within a social environment. Mannheim has made clear to all how the whole structure of as-

sertion is influenced by the social structure. Events in Europe during the past decade have dramatized what we already knew, namely, that what we call objective scholarship is a rare and delicate flower, which is seldom allowed to bloom. Concretely, any

[ 364 ] ,

Bibliographical Problems in Negro Research 29 alert student of American life can explain the general lack of support, the encouragement of this type of research, the discouragement of that—and the other tendencies—in terms of relations and

forces basic to the social order. Despite this fundamental consideration, which is never to be forgotten, there are several im-

mediate steps which may be taken. |

Let us review the problems of this paper in reverse order.

It is clear that the effective corrective for the neglect or distortion of sources is the development of a criticism which will insist upon vigorous standards of scholarship, and which will include scrutiny of the social philosophy explicit or implicit in a work. The whole question of bias in scholarship on the Negro needs a frontal rather than an oblique approach. Some of the specific studies we are all so interested in pursuing might well be delayed until some of the theoretical and methodological mistiness has been cleared up. The social barriers to research in their particular application to

the Negro scholar in the South may be attacked along several

lines. It is to be noted that the statement of this problem as given above took account only of the use of documents. The difficulty becomes more complicated when we come to, say, the

taking measurements of whites, which may be required of a Negro making a comparative study in physical anthropology, or when a Negro attempts the comparative analysis of the speech of whites and Negroes needed in linguistic studies, and the like. Laudable ingenuity has been exercised by several students in overcoming these hurdles. These devices include the employment of white colleagues and light-skinned Negroes; the exploitation of ties of kinship; alliances with janitors and domestic serv-

ants. A great deal may be done through legal action. A thorough test of the arrangements which bar Negroes from tax-supported

libraries and archives should clear the air. For privately endowed institutions, other methods suggest themselves. All schol-

ars, in the South particularly, should be called upon to require that some arrangement be established and maintained whereby [ 365 ]

30 American Council of Learned Societies the Negro scholars shall have the benefit of the increasing deposits

of data in the semi-public and private institutions of the region. If the Southern white scholars, who are so frequently bemoaning their own difficulties, are not scholars enough to support actively such an effort, then they should be condemned. There are many suggestions that might be made for removing the barriers of space and communication. Three of them may be mentioned here. _ 1. There are about a half dozen important collections of Negro literature in this country—all suffering from a rather indifferent support. The largest of these collections could be immediately doubled with items of value equal to those now possessed, if the budget permitted. 2. There is a need for three guides to materials for the study of the Negro; one to the sources located in the United States; another to those in Latin-America; and the third to those in

- Europe. 3. Great aid is to be rendered by the advances in photographic techniques. Two projects that are coming up for immediate consideration elsewhere may interest this group. The first is to microfilm a few thousand books and manuscripts, otherwise unattainable, which are now located in Europe, as soon

as war conditions permit. A survey will be made among interested scholars here and abroad to determine the most desirable materials, and the value of such a project is so

obvious that comment is unnecessary. We have a preliminary and partial assurance that funds for this endeavor await the drawing up of a detailed plan and the cessation of military activities. The second project envisages the microfilming of all extant files of Negro newspapers printed in the United States prior to 1900. When we remember the difficulty of securing even single copies of Freedom’s Journal, The Rights of All, Fred Douglass’ Paper, La Tribune and others, the worth of this effort becomes manifest.. In concluding our summary statement of problems with these

few suggestions for improvement, we might well repeat the old phrase, still not without some truth—a scholar’s work seldom rises above his sources. [ 366 ]

Bibliographical Problems in Negro Research 31 DISCUSSION

Mr. LELAND: The suggestion Mr. Reddick made with respect to microphotography is especially interesting in view of the fact that the Council will soon call a conference to begin the consideration of definite plans for microphotography. I should therefore be glad if this Conference included some reference to its possibilities among its recommendations, because it will be desirable to take into account special needs such as those Mr. Reddick has indicated.

It also occurs to me that such a step may, for the time being, help in a practical manner to solve some of the difficulties Mr.

Reddick has indicated with regard to access to materials. Through the use of present day microfilm equipment it would be quite possible to build up important libraries, or collections, in Negro universities and Negro schools. Mr. APTHEKER: Would it not be of great aid if the documents

located in county seats could be brought together into state archives or other central repositories? One frequently has to spend much time merely getting out to some county court-house.

Mr. Wisu: I think that problem is almost insoluble. There is felt to be a certain commercial value 1n maintaining documents

in local areas, and I hesitate to say what the Virginia Historical Society would say about the removal of some of their local colleetions. Indeed, some of the coolness manifested toward microfilms has been caused by the belief that this copying would nullify the value of local records.

Mr. Herskovits: The problem of preserving other collections of original data is also important. Ten years ago, for example, I briefly visited the island of Antigua, where I learned of a very large

collection of original documents appertaining to the plantation system and the history of slavery. Last summer, when the vessel I was on called at Antigua, I discovered that the ‘“‘place of safety”’

I had been assured housed this collection was a very damp stone building, where many of these documents were being eaten by

worms or were just disintegrating. I found huge piles of folio volumes scattered over the floor, and only the most important and

best preserved housed in the poor accommodations the private [ 367 }

32 American Council of Learned Socieites offices of the Chief Justice offered. I hope that the entire collection may soon be microfilmed and thus made available to scholars

centers. :

in the British Museum Library, in the Library of Congress, in the New York Public Library, and perhaps in one or two other _ Certainly, with regard to the vast amounts of materials on the whole history of slaving that are found in European ports, such preservation is imperative. I know, for example, that the Fabre family in Marseilles, who own the Fabre Line and operate the Compagnie Fabre in West Africa, have extensive documents in the family files, and I suspect that in Scandinavia and Holland there are many documents. Mr. BuncHE: What sort of materials would there be in Scandi-

navia? | |

Mr. Herskovits: The Scandinavians were full participants in the slave trade in the early days, and of course for materials concerning the history of the Danish West Indies—the Virgin Islands, that is—you must go to Copenhagen. Mr. Jounson: I should like to ask Mr. Reddick if there is a full catalog of the documents in the Schomburg Collection.

Mr. Reppick: A catalog is in preparation sponsored by the Historical Records Survey. Mr. JoHNsON: It seems to me a first step would be the consolidation of the document lists of the major collections dealing with

the Negro. Hasn’t the Library of Congress spent a great deal of money recently getting some Latin American documents re-

produced? | | ,

Mr. Patrrre: Do you mean the material from the archives of the Indies? That has been going on for a great many years. Mr. Leuanp: No, these relate specifically to Latin America. The project in the Library of Congress was to secure copies of all

the documents in European archives relating to the history of the United States. Originally that was based largely on an exploration made by the Carnegie Institution; then it was intensified when the gift of Mr. Rockefeller made a large-scale project pos-

sible. The Library of Congress has brought together copies of some millions of pages of material from a great number of archives,

especially in Great Britain and Spain. In Spain the production [ 368 ]

Bibluographical Problems in Negro Research 33 has been very large indeed. It relates to the Spanish United States, not to the West Indies, although the source of the archives was the archives of the island of Cuba, to which the archives of St. Augus-

tine and of Florida and of other cities now in the United States

were transferred. They were then transferred from Cuba to Seville, so there is a vast amount of material that 1s not very much exploited. When I was working in France in the French archives, preparing the guide (which has not as yet been published) on materials for American history in the French archives, I became interested in

the French West Indies. Since copying was then beginning for the Library of Congress, I suggested copying the whole series of correspondence on French Santo Domingo, the present Haiti. Acting on that suggestion, they did copy the entire series of letters written by French officials in Santo Domingo to the home govern-

ment. Those are all in the Library of Congress, and they comprise a large series, a matter of about 100 manuscript volumes; there are also some for Martinique and some from other series. For South America, a good deal of copying from the Spanish archives has been done, and the copies are in some depositories in

South America. But there again it is a matter primarily of interest for colonial history. The greatest collection of this kind 1s

in the Argentine, I think. | Mr. Herskovits: There is still another type of material that is important because it throws light on the African background of New World Negroes. In working up the sources on one of the West African folk among whom I studied, the Dahomeans, I found that the corroborative evidence concerning the customs of pre-European culture available in the writings of the men who had been there in the capacity of traders or diplomatic representa-

tives—Richard Burton, for example, who was sent by Queen Victoria to Dahomey with the idea of suppressing the slave trade—

was of the utmost significance. Captains of early slaving-times, sometimes men of considerable literary ability, give us in their writings no little information about the cultures from which the African ancestors of the modern New World Negro population came. Mr. LELAND: In such a collection as that of the French Colonial [ 369 |

34 American Council of Learned Societies archives, a very long series of correspondence from the French colonies in Africa is to be found. Much of our knowledge about the American Indies is contained in such archives, while an enormous amount of information on Africa is contained in the correspondence from officials in French African colenies.

Mr. Warkins: Are there any materials written by the Arabs that are pertinent? Mr. Herskovits: This question takes us a little afield, perhaps, but I may mention the so-called Bilali diary from St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, which has at last been translated by Mr. Joseph Greenberg. We know now that it isn’t a diary at all, but a series of passages from certain Arabic legal treatises. The originals were shown to Hausa malams, or learned men in West Africa, who were able to assist the translation of this material which was written by a Negro slave in this country. Arabic materials are highly pertinent, certainly for Brazil, where a Moslem group still exists.

Mr. Bascom: Mr. Greenberg has been going through also some of the early Arabic documents from the region where he worked. He secured the loan of a copy of the so-called Kano Chronicle, a

written history of the city. Mr. Herskovits: We have been able to obtain microfilm copies of that, and a duplicate of the original, which we have at Northwestern, can be made at any time.

[ 370 ]

Problems of Historical Research 35 IV. PROBLEMS OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH Harvey Wisu, De Paul University

The problem of integrating the findings of the various social sciences dealing with the Negro includes the difficulties, experienced in other fields, resulting from increasing scientific speciali-

zation. Present-day tendencies towards an autonomous position for each discipline threaten to erect an intellectual Chinese wall which may become a permanent barrier to free codperation among scholars in the social studies. Each science is itself a product of a

history and a deterministic tradition, which have shaped the nature of its techniques and set the chronological limits of its investigations.

These centrifugal tendencies are counteracted only in part by bibliographic handbooks, for the increasing refinements of vocabulary alone in each discipline, however necessary they may be, tend to weaken the common language of the social scientists. Within the field of Negro studies, as elsewhere, specialized sociological work without historical perspective is frequently evident, against which can unfortunately be balanced the historical volume which has buried social perspective beneath a multitude of unique instances. One type of specialist who has tended to complicate the study of the Negro has been the student of Southern Life who uses the data concerning the Negro only when the facts obviously relate to the pattern of the dominant culture, thus creating a serious problem of balance and proportion. The reverse of this type is the specialist who seeks to establish a chauvinistic thesis by

ment. . } -

minimizing non-racial factors which may explain the position of the

Negro. Any attempt at scientific integration must avoid these common pitfalls in favor of some balanced interdisciplinary treat-

Between the superficiality of the completely unspecialized and the serious limitations of the minute specialist must lie middle ground. There are important interstitial areas among the social sclences—a virtual no man’s land—which remain to be explored

by the more catholic-minded investigator. The institutional approach of J. Franklin Frazier in his recent work, The Negro [371 ]

36 American Council of Learned Societies Family in the United States, is fertile in a combination of historical and sociological techniques. The series of monographs in sociol-

ogy and economics sponsored by the Committee on Negroes in Economic Reconstruction, which includes such works as Charles S. Johnson’s Collapse of Cotton Tenancy, and Arthur Raper’s A Preface to Peasantry, appears to have presented the operation of the historical conditioning forces upon the contemporary scene. The conjunction of African and New World studies fostered by the Journal of Negro History has been of increasing importance for

the multiple type of analysis. One must note, however, the serious dangers which beset studies that stress exclusively what is unique in Negro development rather than considering the full context of national and world conflicts of which the Negro problem is, after all, an integral part. Remedial efforts in this direction may well follow the principles laid down in Donald Young’s American Minority Groups, which considers the broader social and psychological framework which explains minority status. Within the past six years there has been an increasing utilization of the Marxian approach to Negro studies. The monographs of the International Workers Press, such as those of James 8. Allen, deal with the Negro in a setting of class warfare, but while careful in the presentation of the facts these studies have tended to arouse professional criticism as to proper emphasis and selection. The same difficulty is encountered in Dr. W. E. B. DuBois’s Black Reconstruction. Most fortunate, perhaps, in the cautious application of a Marxian technique is Professor Abram Harris’s The Negro as Capitalist, which shows an excellent interdisciplinary approach, based on good historical scholarship as well as upon sound economic and sociological techniques. Certainly, one need not embrace Stalin and the Comintern to profit by the wealth of suggestive material in the Marxist analysis. This has been done with outstanding success in the general historical field by students well-grounded in the several social sciences, such as Charles A. Beard, Louis Hacker, and the late Vernon L. Parrington. ‘The recent rise of the Southern Historical Association, the various new historical societies, such as that in Mississippi, and their journals, tend to add fresh prespective to the field of Negro studies. [ 372 }

Problems of Historical Research 37 There is reason for optimism in noting the relatively objective standards set, for example, by the Journal of Southern History, although the book reviews occasionally remind one that some of

the membership are not fully satisfied with the settlement at Appomattox. The rich source materials of these articles, frequently transcriptions of previously unpublished manuscripts, contrast with the relative dearth of like material in the field of Negro studies. That these new Southern historical societies may be regarded as auxiliary for our purposes rather than as destructively competitive is evident from their continuous accessions of

manuscript collections dealing with the Negro. This year, for example, Louisiana State University, which publishes the Journal of Southern History, has acquired the magnificent Johnson Collection, dealing with the ante-bellum activities of a free Negro family. The codperative publishing venture of the Louisiana State University and the University of Texas in the Southern Biography Series, and the monographic series in Southern history, are ap-

parently to be undertaken in the same spirit of free inquiry as characterizes the work of the University of North Carolina Press. Inevitably these activities must affect our knowledge of Negro

history, although one is entitled to the inference that the rdéle of the Negro will not receive the same proportionate emphasis that a less sectional enterprise might offer. One must also note the promising new quarterly of Negro studies, Phylon, issued by Atlanta University. Inevitably our discussion must embrace this serious problem of original sources, since further historical research upon the Negro is contingent upon it, and since the other social sciences usually await the historian’s spade before completing their own ground-

work and perspective. This problem of bibliography has been dealt with today by Mr. Reddick, but I should nonetheless like to

point out that the time has come for an adequate extension to date of Munroe R. Work’s Bibliography of the Negro, with some provision for the listing of manuscript sources dealing with the subject. The supplementary issues of the biennial Negro Year Book, however excellent for some purposes, are not adequate as far as articles and certain other types of publications are concerned. [ 373 ]

38 American Council of Learned Societies Students would be benefited immeasurably if the excellent indexes in the separate volumes of the Journal of Negro History were converted into a single master index. In this connection, also, I may remark that I have had occasion, in. the course of my own work, to note how inaccessible for the study of Negro history are such Southern journals as the ante-bellum Southern Quarterly

Review, for the simple reason that they are not indexed. It would be well, therefore, to consider to what extent some of the WPA projects could undertake the task of making a master index of all these various journals. With more adequate bibliographic sources, it should be possible to develop another important field—that of Negro biography in

the “‘life and times” tradition. Works like those of Emmet J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe on Booker T. Washington, and Charles Wesley on Richard Allen, suggest further possibilities of

this type. Such biographies would be an excellent foundation for studies in Negro leadership. While no monographic work seems to be impending in Negro history and life on the scale of the old Johns Hopkins University

Studies in History and Political Science relating to the Negro, a number of recent significant works have appeared. Professor Charles Wesley in his Collapse of the Confederacy seems to have undone what the traditions evident in Gone With the Wind have

tended to establish. It is gratifying to note that the Daughters of the Confederacy have subsidized so truthful and iconoclastic a work as Bell I. Wiley’s Southern Negroes, 1861-1865, which destroys the older belief that the slaves were indifferent to freedom. Professor Wiley, an active member of both the Southern Historical Association and the Mississippi State Historical Society, has given

an intimate picture of the various cooperative steps taken by the slave in behalf of the Union cause. Slave disloyalty to the Confederacy he shows, was the rule; loyalty the exception. Similar conclusions were reached independently by Joseph Carroll, Herbert Aptheker, and the present speaker. Various students have pointed out in the past that major gaps still exist in the field of Negro studies for certain geographic areas, as we also learned from what has already been said this morning.

[ 374 ] ,

Problems of Historical Research 39 Professor Herskovits’ paper, ‘““The Significance of West Africa for

Negro Research,” still remains a challenge to the enterprising scholar; and his work in the Caribbean, together with that of other

students, particularly in history, such as Professors W. L. Burn, William L. Mathiesen, and others for the West Indies, suggests the possibilities of further researches into these newer areas, such as the Virgin Islands. The work of Professor Burn of. the University of St. Andrews, Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies, proves that the problem of bibliography is not as formidable as is generally feared. One wonders also whether the time has not come, in view of the increasing output in the field of African studies, for the historian to transform the more or less

static descriptive studies of the anthropologist for this area into narratives possessing a larger degree of continuity of a more dynamic character. It would also be advantageous to consider a cooperative historical work upon Negro slavery on a large scale by competent scholars, which would expand and revise the basic work of U. B. Phillips into a more interpretive as well as factual form. A comprehensive Dictionary of Negro Life and History, along the lines of the Dictionary of American History, would be of

obvious value. Let us return once more to the original problem of an interdisci-

plinary approach and seek concrete applications of this idea. The historian, who would modestly refuse to deal with a highly complex contemporary economic problem as outside his province, is nevertheless expected to attack such problems when they are no

longer contemporary. But is the historian’s ability to comprehend a technical problem increased by the mere fact that it is over thirty years old? The implications of the new history would seem to encourage so absurd a conclusion, and this, in turn, engenders an attitude that has been inevitably carried over into the field of Negro studies, with the result that sociologists, political scientists,

economists, and others have waited for the historian, with his more or less blunt tools, to bring data of an institutional character

to them. If the sociologist were to read original sources when undertaking institutional studies, would he not grasp relationships

hidden to the ordinary historian? Or if the historian came with [ 375 ]

40 American Council of Learned Societies a fund of basic concepts from sociology, would his descriptive powers not improve? The value of this multiple approach was deeply impressed upon

me when undertaking graduate investigations in Negro history and anthropology some years ago under the direction of Professor Herskovits. Beginning with studies in American slave insurrec-

tions on slave ships and the plantation, I became aware of the variety of social factors involved but not conventionally treated by historians. Professor William Sumner Jenkins, a sociologist, in his comprehensive work, Pro-slavery Thought in the Old South, has endeavored to describe the various Southern schools defending slavery, but he has not attempted to codrdinate his evidence nor to give the proper historical perspective to each of these schools of thought. To defend slavery, the Southern leaders were compelled to reject

liberalism as a system. George Fitzhugh and George Frederick Holmes, both of Virginia, attempted to make that rejection complete in every field, politics, economics, and literature, and finally to create a new sociological and political theory based upon the

premises of Aristotle relating to the natural inequality of man. Fitzhugh proclaimed a so-called universal law of slavery which made for paternalistic societies, carefully graded as to social rank, and dominated by aristocracies founded on primogeniture and en-

tail. Almost every important southern newspaper and magazine of the time paid high praise to these views, some declaring themselves convinced for the first time; and De Bow’s Review aggressively championed such arguments. The pro-slavery group wasdriven to demand the removal of Northern text-books from the schools, the appointment of active proponents of slavery to the

universities, and the punishment of all critics. In the middle fifties there was an important movement, inspired by L. W. Spratt, a lawyer of South Carolina, to reopen the African slave trade and thereby provide the entire Southern white population with slaves, thus developing the motives of self-interest in the

perpetuation of slavery. Only the fear among Southern politicians of alienating the border states which exported slaves finally ended this agitation, but not until the controversy had [ 376 ]

Problems of Historical Research 41 revealed the growing acceptance of a social order opposed to the doctrines of liberalism. It is significant that the first two books on sociology written in the United States appeared as an attempt to create fundamental principles which would eternally justify slavery. In 1854, Fitzhugh published his pioneer work, Sociology for the South, and Henry Hughes, of Mississippi, that same year wrote A Treatise on Sociology.

The doctrinal predecessor of these two men was George Frederick Holmes, the most prolific contributor to periodical literature in the South, an editor of the Southern Quarterly Review, and a pro-

fessor of history and literature at the University of Virginia. Holmes had begun to discuss the necessity of a “‘sociology”’ anti-

thetic to liberalism in 1849 while a professor at the College of

William and Mary. He had been born on the plantations of British Guiana and had evidently acquired in his youth the attitudes and defenses characteristic of a slave-holder. The writings of August Comte exerted a profound influence over him, although

he rejected the religious heterodoxy of the father of sociology. By 1852, Holmes became the foremost interpreter of Comte in America, and in 1882 he gave the first university courses in the novel science of sociology. American anthropology was also affected by the slavery contro-

versy. In examining the anthropological literature of the 1840’s and 1850’s, one becomes aware of the common complaint of some

scholars that the attempt to justify slavery had determined the conclusions of others of their colleagues. Dr. Van Evrie, despite his amazing lack of logic, seems to have enjoyed an excellent reputation among some of the London anthropologists, who approvingly quoted his alleged proofs of Negro inferiority. Special considera-

tion was accorded a Southern anthropologist like J. C. Nott, on the ground that Southerners were most familiar with the Negro. Van Evrie converted Fitzhugh to a racialism of the Gobineau brand, and Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, and others lent their public endorsements. The combination of slavery and the rising Southern nationalism produced an aggressive type of imperalistic thought which came as

[ 377 ] .

42 American Council of Learned Societies a product of the new anti-democratic political science. Fitzhugh wrote on the eve of the Civil War, “‘War elevates the sentiments and the aims of men; makes them love, honor and appreciate each other according to each one’s moral worth; begets enterprise and hardihood of character .. . strips off masks, exposes humbug, and pretension.”” On another occasion he wrote, ‘‘War alone subjects all to those perils, trials, vicissitudes, dangers, and privations, that are necessary agencies in developing, maturing and fortifying character.”’ The Richmond Enquirer editorialized, ‘It is by war you conquer the barbarian race, and by slavery you reduce them to labor and the arts of civilized life. Slavery and war have thus been the two great forerunners of civilization.” It is not without interest to compare these statements with Mussolini’s dictum,

‘War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon peoples who have the courage

to meet it. All other trials are substitutes... .” This is the dangerous legacy of the Southern slaveholders’ ideology, which the social scientist may examine from various angles as to its repercussion upon the future of democracy and

especially in regard to the position of the Negro. The oneparty system, the existing sectional inequalities, and the inheritance of an older racialism springing from the same ideological source as the German Teutonic myth, foreshadow the possible shape of things to come. It is the function of the social scientist to offer a factual and analytical presentation of social problems; but it is largely through an approach enriched by interdisciplinary training and coéperation that he can best offer results which will serve research, and inevitably, afford a basis for social action. DIscUssION

Mr. APTHEKER: | was wondering if you could not go a little further back in your chronology in finding the antecedents of the literature you cited. Mr. WisuH: This work has been done by Jenkins and others. In the early period of pro-slavery thought, the entire controversy 1s laid along defensive lines, since there was a feeling that, given time,

slavery would end. But by the forties, through the work of [378 ]

Problems of Historical Research 43 Thomas R. Dew, the famous propagandist, and because of the disappointing results of the colonization movement, it was felt that that door was closed so far as the solution of the Negro prob-

lem by emigration was concerned. Therefore the question had to be settled on the assumption that slavery would exist forever. Mr. JoHNsoN: Wasn’t Dew’s philosophy simply an extension of the new German political science? He had studied in Germany. Mr. WisuH: That is the position of Professor Dodd, at least, but I don’t think one can account for Dew’s outlook merely by reference to the German scene.

Mr. Reppick: Perhaps the question suggested by Dr. Johnson might be reversed. Since in the ante-bellum South pretty definite social and racial theories were elaborated, to what extent were

these taken over in Europe? |

Mr. Wish: The only indication I can think of at the moment is an address and some other comments made by the president of the London Anthropological Society, which cited as proof the research done by such pro-slavery men as Van Evrie and Nott. Mr. Herskovits: The slavery controversy in England actually caused the formation of the pro-slavery London Anthropological Society, as a protest against the anti-slavery position of the existing Ethnological Society. Not until 1871 did these two societies merge into the present Royal Anthropological Institute. Mr. AprHeKErR: Some of the anti-slavery agitators also used anthropological evidence. If I am not mistaken, I think it was Clarkson who took some examples of the handicrafts and art work of the Negroes to France as an argument against Negro inferiority. Mr. JOHNSON: Speaking of movements in thought, I wonder

whether Mr. Wish included the anti-slavery movement in the South. I believe it began there, didn’t it? Mr. WisH: Yes, during the Colonial period. Mr. JOHNSON: In my research I have come upon a great deal of material on this point, and I believe the movement began not

so far from me in Tennessee. A great many efforts toward abolition, it seems to me, developed in different parts of the South. Of course, everything was stopped when the Northern abolitionists made it a very forceful issue. [ 379 ]

44 American Council of Learned Societies Mr. WisH: Another aspect of our problem is the effect of the slave insurrections on Southern psychology. It is very hard to measure this, but we do find any important plot or insurrection followed by the enactment of restrictive codes, and it was regarded as a mark of disloyalty for any individual to foster manumission or anything of that sort. Mr. Reppicx: I should like to suggest another problem related to your various disciplines—that is, the question of acculturation, which might, for example, be studied in the historical mould of

Louisiana. There one sometimes comes on the results of an interpenetration of five more or less distinct cultures.

Mr. Herskovits: There is a point here that has been overlooked. We have all been talking about social history in terms of the currents of thought among the white people. I realize that the documentary evidence with regard to currents of thought existing at the same time among the Negroes is extremely difficult

to find; yet it is unfortunate that no historical or sociological analysis takes this into account. I hope that the day will come when historians will discover some kind of documentary evidence

that will give us information, for this country, of the kind that Monk Lewis gave us for Jamaica, for example, or that some of

the French writers gave us for Haiti and Martinique. I refer to documents that will furnish us some idea of Negro life under slavery in terms of the reactions of the Negroes themselves, that will give us the kind of background materials that are hinted at in the autobiographies of escaped slaves. Mr. JoHNSON: The best material of that kind, so far as I can determine, is to be found in such autobiographical accounts, taken from ex-slaves. A number of these have been collected, perhaps a hundred. But the point is that it will be no more than perhaps

five or six years before the possible human sources will have disappeared.

Mr. Wisu: I can think of another source, but it is extremely unsatisfactory. That is the legal source. In the American Law Digest can be found the cases affecting slavery. Of course, the Digest takes in only the most important cases and considers only their legal aspects. It does, however, give exact references, [ 380 }

Problems of Historical Research 45 and if one could go to the local courts and get transcripts of the hearings, the problem might be solved.

Mr. STERLING Brown: The Federal Writers’ Projects have collected a number of narratives by living ex-slaves, but the references to slavery and reconstruction and to the entire routine of slave life must, of course, be taken by the scholar for what they

are worth, especially since it seems to me that they are very frequently distorted. I saw a good example of that on’ the Project. Most slave narratives speak of “Christmas in the quarters,’’ and so forth. The anecdotes in a book of slave narratives which is to be published soon as The Negro in Virginia, were collected by Negro workers. When these workers turned in pictures of the plantation life which were not so pastoral, however,

such materials were immediately discounted as having been influenced by the collectors. The stories collected by white Southerners, which presented the kindly old master, were of course accepted as accurate. As I said, we have a large number of such documents, and I understand that Dr. Reddick also has

a good number. I know there are some at Fisk. So in the future, I suppose a critical study of the entire series can be undertaken. Whatever their defects, they are certainly more valuable than Old Master’s People, by Orland K. Armstrong. Mr. ApTHEKER: There is one manuscript autobiography of a

slave, in the Library of Congress, which dates from the early 1830’s.

Mr. JouNnson: Johnson’s diary, from Natchez, Mississippi, referred to by Mr. Wish, is an exceedingly valuable document that

comprises some twelve volumes. Louisiana State University is getting it ready for publication.

[ 381 ]

46 American Council of Learned Societies V. PROBLEMS OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH ABRAM L. Harris, Howard University

The purpose of these discussions, I have been informed, is to facilitate a much desired cooperation among the representatives of the various disciplines engaged in research on Negro problems

in the United States, in the Caribbean, and in Latin America. I consider that research, whether devoted to Negro or other problems, should not be merely a quest for knowledge (although

this is frequently the only motive that actuates the scholarly investigator), but should also provide a basis for formulating intelligent social policies. In my conception, we are concerned not solely with stimulating cooperative research, but are also interested in seeing that a contribution is made to a better understanding of the Negro’s adjustment to Western culture and of the impediments to his full participation in the civil and economic life of the Western world. To my mind, Western civilization or culture, if I may use the terms culture and civilization interchangeably, comprises two sets of institutions or, in the language of Thorstein Veblen, two patterns of social habits. On the economic side these social habits

are made up of the system of free enterprise and markets, or capitalism as more or less modified in recent years by government

interference and public regulation. On the political and civic side they are made up of individual freedom, civil rights, and legal equality—that is, political democracy. It is this scheme of life that serves as the necessary foundation for the rights and freedom of the individual, of voluntary action, and free inquiry,

protest, and criticism. I would be the last in this assembly to contend that the character and extent of the Negro’s participation in the economic and political life of the Western community has been either satisfactory from his standpoint or consistent with

the community’s professed equalitarianism. Yet it is because of the ideals of free inquiry and criticism that the Negro, aided by those who have studied his problems, has been able to acquire some of those rights and opportunities accorded human beings in

Western culture. Thus, while admitting the serious limitations [ 382]

Problems of Economic Research 47 placed by custom and tradition upon the Negro’s participation in our economic and political institutions, I am inclined to think that because a degree of freedom of thought and action is afforded by these institutions, the status of the Negro is less unhappy and his advancement is more certain than would be the case within the systems of authority and compulsion offered today by Germany,

Italy, or Russia. In considering the position of the Negro in the Western hemisphere, we are confronted by a two-fold problem. First, we must find a way to improve our wealth-producing machinery so as to banish want and poverty without at the same time destroying the basic economic pattern of free enterprise. Secondly, we must give practical effect and a wider meaning in every-day affairs to the democratic faith, not alone in matters of citizenship, law, and politics, but in the realm of social morality—the faith that upholds the right of every individual to the free and full development of his capacities, to be rewarded according to his contnbution, and to be advanced according to his ability. The practical. consideration which actuates our inquiries, then, has to do with what will directly or indirectly assist the removal of those obstacles

that prevent the full adjustment and participation of the Negro in the material and spiritual culture of the Western world. And adjustment and participation are essential to the triumph of democracy over aggression and authority. One of our great difficulties is the habit inherited from the 19th century of thinking of Western culture as the peculiar expression of Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic genius, and thus as the more or less

exclusive property of northern Europeans and their American descendants. As E. N. Saveth has observed, in 19th century America this conception of the origin and development of Western

institutions and ideas had as its chief exponents such historians as Herbert Baxter Adams, John Burgess, John Fiske, H. H. Bancroft, and Albert Bushnell Hart. Under the influence of those German historians and philosophers who sought to discover the original “‘Aryan”’ source of Western civilization, these American

scholars traced self-government, individual freedom, and the Mayflower compact to the mystic Black Forests of Germany [ 383 ]

48 American Council of Learned Societies where the last, let us hope, and perhaps greatest racial egotist now broods. This view of history was an American expression of those spiritual forces that gave rise to the political anthropology of Count de Gobineau and the chauvinism of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. And although such views have scientifically long since been discredited, racial conceit continues to exercise a profound influence over those common-sense attitudes by which the plane and character of association between Negroes

and whites is fixed. In crude and unsophisticated form it may be found, say, in Senator Bilbo’s racial bigotry; or it may remain dormant as a sort of non-aggressive Aryanism which while tolerating the Negro’s presence may on occasion admonish him in the

recent words of the Governor of Tennessee: “This is a white man’s country. America was settled by the English, Scotch, and Irish settlers who came here and shed their blood for it. White men cut down the trees, plowed the fields and developed America. The colored man had nothing to do with the settling of America.’”’ Today the world is being made painfully conscious

of the fact that this idea of the superior genius of the so-called Anglo-Saxon and Teuton which found its natural expression in individual freedom and self-government can be used, as paradoxical

as it may seem, to enslave the white as well as the black man. In the skillful hands of Hitler it is being used as the means of destroying these free institutions and of subjugating the very people from whose natural endowment these institutions are supposed to have sprung.

We have thus been led by our habits of thought both in their sophisticated and common sense formulations to consider the Negro as an ‘‘alien’”’* from the cultural as well as the biological standpoint—as someone well suited to economic exploitation but unfit fully to exercise the political rights of man. I am inclined *In view of the discussion provoked by the use of the word “alien,” the author in editing the transcript of his remarks was inclined to substi-

tute one with a less objectionable connotation. For fear of distorting the sense of the discussion, this change was not made. What the author sought to convey by the use of the word is the disposition to regard the Negro as “not belonging’? to Western culture, as not being ‘‘a part’? of it, or as having “‘contributed”’ nothing to it. [ 384 ]

Problems of Economic Research 49 to agree with Professor Herskovits that the three hundred years of Negro contact with Western civilization could hardly have destroyed every vestige of the African inheritance. As to how much of this inheritance remains as an effective or controlling influence over the present behavior patterns there seems to be little agreement among those who have studied Negro life. It is my belief, for which I must apologize, since my study of anthropology has been limited, that the so-called African survivals have probably been influenced in great measure by life in the Western

hemisphere and are thus as much the product of New World influences as of the native African environment.

Historically, the Negro is less of an “alien” to the material culture of the Western World than he is to its non-material culture. If one accepts the conclusion that the accumulation of capital, and the commercial and industrial expansion from the 15th to the 18th centuries—in brief, the evolution of capitalism— rested upon slavery and slave traffic, then one must consider the Negro an important factor in the material culture. In describing the genesis of industrial capitalism, one writer has stated, ‘‘The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the

beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. ... Direct slavery is the pivot of bourgeois industry as well as machinery, credit, and so forth. Without slavery you cannot have modern industry. It is slavery which has given the colonies their value, it is the colonies which have created the commerce of the world, it is the commerce of the world which is

the essential condition of the great industry.’”’ In the 18th century writers like Malachi Postlethwayte, the study of whose works has just begun, were more or less unanimous in the belief that the introduction of African slaves into the Western world, the profits from the slave traffic, the commerce in slave products, and, likewise, the acquisition of gold from Africa were essential to the overseas expansion of Britain. Our knowledge on the subject of the relation of the slave traffic [ 385 ]

50 American Council of Learned Societies and slave labor to the development of capitalism is still quite general. We do not know, for example, (1) the amount of precious metal that found its way from Africa to England; (2) the estimated net profits derived from the slave trade from 1700 to 1775, perhaps the most prosperous period; (3) the profits from the plantations; and, (4) the accumulation and investment of this surplus wealth in shipping and manufacturing. A thorough examination should be made of the following sources: (1) the West Indian Committee

Archives, the records of the English African companies, the Colonial Office papers and the abstracts of Jamaica wills in the British Museum; (2) privately owned records of plantations in Jamaica; (3) records of slave merchants in New England; and, (4) documentary materials of the type contained in Dr. Elizabeth ‘Donnan’s work, Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America.

While, I would not exclude New England from the study of Africa

and the rise of capitalism, I think attention should be concentrated on the French West Indies, the British West Indies, and,

perhaps, Brazil and Cuba. :

The emancipation movement and the collapse of slavery were associated with, if not determined by, changes in the domestic economy and also in international commerce. This was true in the United States and likewise in the Caribbean. But the manner in which the economic and political factors influenced the abolition

of slavery was quite different in the British West Indies and the

French colonies. Furthermore, because of geographic and industrial circumstances the conditions that followed emancipation

were quite different in the United States as compared with the French and British colonies.

By virtue of tremendous natural resources, the United States developed a great industrial economy. The Negro in the United States, although until 1910 mainly employed in Southern agriculture, was always considered a sort of labor reserve for expanding

industry in the Northern states. Moreover, the Negro’s position in agriculture as well as in the industrial labor market was complicated by European immigration and the general racial composition of the population in the United States. While the divisions within the Negro population have tended to follow the occupational and [ 386 ]

Problems of Economic Research 51 social interests of the general population, the race as a whole is regarded as a subordinate caste. Unlike the United States, the West Indies, for example, remained an agricultural economy closely tied to British capitalism. And the class and occupational structure of the islands is quite dissimilar from that in the United States. At the top of the social ladder are to be found the white landlord, financiers, and merchants. At the bottom of the ladder are to be found the black laborers who work in the fields or work-

shops either as independent proprietors or hired hands. In between these two social classes are the mulattoes, who are chiefly engaged in the professions and civil service. This in-between class is decidedly distinguished from the black laborers by ties of blood

and education and, in some cases, by inherited wealth. This stratification of class has given to the West Indies a unique political

and economic history. The research begun by my colleague, Professor Eric Williams, suggests that it is impossible to under-

stand the political significance of these classes without first studying the slave regime and the causes of its abolition in the

West Indies. From casual observations we are aware of the relation of this class pattern to the control of political power. We know less about its economic significance or manifestations. As an economist, I should like to know the complex of factors

responsible for the social division of labor in the West Indian population and its relation to the commercial or other interests of the British Empire. Of further interest are the organization of agriculture and the character of the non-agricultural labor market and its labor supply. And the position of the peasantry and of the middle class of mixed blood vis-a-vis the great white landowners and capitalists, the market and credit mechanism, and the distribution of wealth and income, would of course constitute the core of any economic study of the West Indies. ‘The economic inquiry would be furthered, moreover, by studies of the educational system, the political organization, the religion, the family, and the African survivals. In carrying forward research in the West Indies, and in Latin America, I would follow the scheme of organization suggested by Professor Williams in terms of the following topics: (1) Africa [ 387 }

52 American Council of Learned Societies and the Rise of Capitalism; (2) The British West Indies and the French Colonies; (3) Cuba, Brazil, Haiti and St. Domingo; and, (4) The Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The impact of international events upon the Western hemisphere

makes studies of these areas imperative at this time. One of the great needs of our diplomatic service, we are frequently told, is unbiased information on the customs, traditions, and economic problems of these areas. Such information is vital to the formation of an intelligent colonial policy for this country. Some work, I understand, has already been undertaken by the Department

of Labor on wages, population, and the standard of living in Puerto Rico. In addition to research in the West Indian and Latin American fields, studies of the Negro in continental United States are also badly needed. Since 1930 far-reaching changes have taken place in the domestic economy which have affected the Negro laborer, the white collar employees, the farmer, the professional man, and the business man. While The Negro as Capitalist (Harris) gives us some idea of the effect of the depression upon Negro banking, we know virtually nothing about that other form of Negro adjust-

ment to an enterprise economy—the insurance company. Mr. James Mitchell has made a promising start in research on the Negro insurance company with a study, The Collapse of the National Benefit Life Insurance Company, published in the current

series of The Howard University Studies in the Social Sciences. This study demonstrates that one of the basic problems of the Negro insurance company is its restricted investment market, and that in this respect the Negro insurance company is like the

Negro bank. The other great problem of the Negro insurance company is that of underwriting, but no studies that could be called scientific have been made of this aspect of the matter. A study of this problem involves an examination of the policies of ‘Negro companies in calculating risks, the premiums on different

types of insurance, and the mortality experience of individual companies on the basis of the standard tables and general mortality of Negroes. If the Negro is biologically foredoomed to die earlier than the white man, and if education and economic advancement { 388 ]

Problems of Economic Research | 53 are unable to change this fact, not only are white insurance companies justified in their differential premium rates but the Negro companies must inevitably collapse if they fail to modify their policies according to this biological principle. What changes have occurred in the position of the Negro in the labor market since the N. R. A.? How have penetration of col-

lective bargaining in the mass production industries and the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act affected Negro and white labor competition, especially in the South? Is there reason to believe that the tendency to establish trade union agreements for entire industries instead of companies and plants threatens to curtail Negro employment opportunities and occupational advancement? What has been the effect of the tremendous expan-

sion of government agencies since the New Deal upon the employment opportunities of Negroes in the white collar occupa-

tions? What have been the actual effects of the agricultural program upon Negro farmers? Is it true that in spite of liberal grants of relief to Negroes and the appointment of educated members of the race to certain special jobs, the New Deal has inaugurated policies which by checking the expansion of private enterprise are in the long run inimical to the economic interest of

the masses of Negroes? Finally, if, as some economists think, capitalist enterprise has reached maturity, and if, as a result, expansion of private investments and employment will in the future rest to a considerable extent upon federal deficit-financing and state intervention, is an improvement in the position of the Negro probable? DISCUSSION

Mr. Simpson: I am greatly interested in your statement about the three social classes in the various West Indian countries, and in the possibility of a more detailed analysis of each of those social classes than has thus far been made. By this I mean not only an analysis of the structure of these societies as a whole, but a study of the differences within each society in terms of the ideal patterns

of action which people carry in their minds and which each individual, in the terms of his own position in society, tries con[ 389 ]

54 American Council of Learned Societies cretely to put into action—though he never does, of course. So far as I know, no studies have been attempted which envisage such a detailed analysis of the roles played by people in each of the social classes within these societies.

Mr. Harris: Of course, Ragatz’s book, The Fall of the Planter Class, gives us the historical background for an understanding of the position of the various classes in West Indian society today, but does not tell us, however, the relations of these classes with respect to current economic and political issues within the islands. Mr. AprHeKker: I think Gilberto Freyre’s work on slavery in

Brazil and the relation of the slave cabin to the “big house,” does a good job, so far as Brazil is concerned, and so far as it relates to the period of slaving. Mr. Frazier: In the beginning of his paper, I think, Mr. Harris made the statement that, in a certain sense, the Negro is less an alien to the material aspects of Western civilization than to the non-material. Is it not possible that the Negro in being exploited

was an instrument in the accumulation of capital without his being acquainted with or having become habituated to the material aspects of Western civilization?

Mr. Harris: Yes. To that proposition I suppose I could offer no criticism. The statement I made, however, had a connotation a little different from what you seem to have in mind. I was trying to emphasize the relationship between the institutional development of Western civilization—democracy and the expansion of capitalism—and African slave traffic and the uses of slave labor; and also, the degree to which the accumulation of capital and expansion of commerce were linked up with Negro labor and its exploitation.

Mr. Herskovits: Your point was also that there were perhaps more aboriginal endowments of the Negro carried over into the realm of the material culture than into the non-material. Mr. Frazier: From the point of habituation to technics, and so forth, one would understand that the Negroes were of assistance

to the material aspects of the culture. If that were true it would be interesting, but is it true that the Negro was any less an alien? Mr. BuncHEe: We would be interested in hearing Mr. Frazier elaborate this statement. [ 390 ]

Problems of Economic Research 55 Mr. Frazier: To say that a person was less of an alien to the material aspects of a culture would simply mean that he had acquired the technics of a culture, and so forth, without acquiring what we call the spiritual and non-material aspects of a culture, the ideals and patterns of behavior, religious ideas, family patterns

and the like. But I doubt that the Negro, even as an exploited instrument of production, would acquire even the technics of Western civilization. They were perhaps not so highly developed

in the seventeenth century, but they were quite different from African technics.

Mr. Harris: What are the technics in the material culture to

which you refer?

Mr. Frazier: Such a matter as steering a ship across the ocean. Mr. Harris: But you can find numerous examples of Negroes who did steer ships across the ocean in the eighteenth century, and did this quite well. Mr. Bascom: One can also find examples of those who lived a Christian life, can one not?

Mr. Frazier: As exceptions.

Mr. Herskovits: Are we trying to assess the relationship between physical type and cultural behavior, or to establish the fact that cultural behavior can be learned? I imagine we are all agreed on that; yet other than this, I do not quite see the point at issue.

Mr. Frazier: I had not thought of Negroes becoming acquainted with the material phases of European culture rather than with other aspects, perhaps thus exemplifying Rivers’ thesis that people take over the material aspects of a culture before they take over the non-material. Mr. Harris: I made the statement that perhaps in the material sphere of the culture the Negro has been less an “‘alien,’’ meaning

by this that his work was essential to wealth production, etc. I don’t think there can be any quarrel about this general description of the economic development.

Mr. Reppicx: May I raise a somewhat different question? I was wondering if Mr. Harris would consider as a fruitful field for

investigation the position of the free Negro in the ante-bellum world, and his whole economic and social relations with the whole [ 391]

56 American Council of Learned Societies structure in the South. This appears to me something that might interest sociologists and historians as well as economists.

Mr. Harris: In America? Yes, I think so. Hasn’t some work been done on that problem already?

Mr. Reppicx: A little has been done, but .very little as concerns the economic origins of this particular class and its social setting.

Mr. Harris: Do you think it possible or desirable to tie up the research you suggest with investigations in the West Indies?

Mr. Reppicx: Yes. The situation in South America, particularly in Brazil, could also be studied so as to lead to a kind of comparative analysis of these class structures in their economic and social relations.

Mr. Harris: It is in this way that Professor Frazier, I think, approaches his study of the Negro family in the United States. He views it in terms of the history and current position of the Negro family in Brazil, Cuba, and the West Indies.

Mr. Jounson: I should like to shift the discussion once more, by raising an entirely different question. Not very much has been said about the possibilities for studies of the present economic patterns of Southern agriculture and the réle of the Negro agricultural worker. Just to point one such problem I may mention the transition from plantation slavery to, let us say, a tenancy which created a status which was inherited, in turn, by white agricultural workers who are caught up in present tenancy pat-

terns; and the relation between this situation and the larger

economic system of this country. |

Mr. Harris: Your idea is implicit in the statement I made concerning the difference in the way economic factors influenced

abolition in the West Indies and in the United States. It is my belief that the growth of the peculiar agricultural system in the South is connected with the failure of the democratic aims of the

Republicans after the Civil War. What seems to have been in the minds of the so-called left-wing Republicans led by Stevens was the development of a system of small farming. That purpose was never realized, or only partly realized. The plan could not be carried out for numerous reasons: first, because it was opposed [ 392 ]

‘Problems of Economic Research 57 by the more conservative leaders of the Republican party; and, secondly, because the government never confiscated sufficient land to make small-scale farming general among the emancipated slaves.

The relation of the political and economic resurgence of the old South to the failure of, let us say, the “‘40 acres and a mule” policy, provides a basis for an explanation of the Southern planta-

tion system in the United States. The course of events seems to have been different in the West Indies, where a fairly general system of peasant proprietorship arose. If I were making a study of the two situations, I would surely keep this difference in mind.

Mr. WIsH: Since we are interested in the interdisciplinary point of view, I wonder if any economic approach to that problem

in terms of an institutional study would not run the danger that the power of ideas as opposed to the determining economic forces might be overlooked. For example, in studying the rise of emancipation in the West Indies, a conflict between the mother country

and the local interests must be taken into account wherein the local economic interests were overridden by powerful impulses coming from the mother country, which in turn were a product of eighteenth century humanitarianism. Which of these impulses came first? Mr. Harris: If you mean that the economic studies we have in

mind would not be very illuminating if they wholly excluded reference to the ideological factors, I think I agree with you.

- Mr. Herskovits: There are economists who would not agree with such a position.

Mr. Harris: I would put it this way. If we look at patterns of thought and behavior over a considerable period, we find that the economic conditions or factors exert a predominant influence

on their character. I am inclined to think that the belief of the radical Republicans concerning landholding grew out of their petty bourgeois economic and political views. In this country, the political ideas of the petty bourgeois were connected with enterprise, including small-scale farming, and especially with the frontier, the expansion to the West and with the early development of capitalism. Thus in answering the question as to which [ 393 }

58 American Council of Learned Societies come first, ideological or economic factors, I would say that changes in economic organization over long periods shake the ideology and the patterns of behavior, while at particular times political and moral factors are in the ascendant. ADDED COMMENT RESPECTING THE WEsT INDIES

Eric Wiuuiams, Howard University

In considering research problems bearing on the West Indies, I should like to start from the same point as Dr. Harris, when he considered the matter of slavery. Dr. Harris and I are both agreed

that the question has barely been touched. Thus, when I was studying the question of the abolition of British slavery, I was struck by the fact that many of those who had written on the subject had, in the first place, not utilized any of the mass of original documents. In the second place, those students apparently failed to attack the subject except in a very limited way. Even the humanitarian aspect of the matter—the extent to which

humanitarian ideals influenced the course of events—has not been touched upon. A discussion of West Indian slavery should be related to the general questions of the rise of capitalism, and the extent to which British industrial development was made possible by the overseas trade, which means particularly the West Indian plantations and

the sugar trade in the eighteenth century. The observation would similarly apply to France.

So far as I know, almost the only book touching on slavery in the British West Indies from about 1688 to 1833, when slavery was abolished, is far from complete. This work, W. L. Burn’s

Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies, really covers only the apprenticeship period and four or five years after emancipation, when this. apprenticeship system was instituted. It is, as a matter of fact, even somewhat weak on the question of emancipation, since this book of some three hundred pages devotes only about ninety to the emancipation movement. The same ‘charge of inadequacy of treatment or no treatment at all would also apply to the French colonies. Nobody knows

, [ 394 ]

Problems of Economic Research 09 the reasons why slavery was abolished by France in 1848, especially

why it came as late as 1848. The answer would seem to be that the cultivation of beet sugar, begun in the time of Napoleon, had developed to such an extent by 1848 that there was a conflict between beet sugar producers and cane sugar growers. By 1848 the humanitarian interest in the black slaves and the economic advantage of the beet sugar interests in France came to coincide. And while we can get figures on the extent of the increase of beet

sugar production, you will not find any work that treats the problem of French emancipation from the point of view of the attitudes and conflicts of opinion expressed in contemporary documents.

This will perhaps make clear to this Conference just what Dr. Harris and I mean when we hold that it is so important to consider as a unit the question of slavery and the rise of capitalism, with special reference to the part which the black slaves played in the rise and development of capitalism in western Europe. I may say something now about the social and economic conditions in the islands today, and I shall confine my remarks to the

British islands, since I know these better than the others. For the last five years public attention has been focused on these British islands by reason of the recent labor troubles which have occurred. If we are not prepared to admit that the Negroes have “made trouble’ just because the weather is too hot, or because they see too many American films, or because they are bad and immoral, I think we must realize that a great deal is to be gained by studying those social and economic conditions in the islands

which caused this unrest among the Negroes. Some time ago Mr. Lloyd George called the British West Indies islands the slums

of the Empire, and that best describes the status and condition of these islands today.

From the point of view of the economists, perhaps the most interesting question is the extent to which the plantation system, the unit: of production in the slavery period, has survived the abolition of slavery, and has thereby stifled the development of peasant proprietorship. One of the characteristic things about the British islands is the [ 395 }

60 American Council of Learned Societies number of commissions which have visited them, each commission

repeating what its predecessors said without any improvement whatsoever in the years that have elapsed between one commission

and the next. The biggest commission was that of 1897, which

really attacked the question of peasant proprietorship. This report showed that in places where the laborer owned his land there was less crime, less vagrancy, taxes were better paid, and there was less immorality; on the other hand, it showed in general that the plantation system was not paying.

The system of peasant proprietorship has been considerably extended, particularly in Jamaica. In recent years Jamaica has concentrated on growing bananas, and this industry is to a large extent in the hands of very small peasant proprietors who are cultivating fairly successfully anything between two and ten acres. In some of the smaller islands, like St. Vincent and St. Kitts and one or two other places, peasant proprietorship has gained ground. But the system has gained its greatest victory in Trinidad. It has always been assumed that the peasant might grow various crops, but that there was one crop he couldn’t grow—

the plantation crop par excellence, sugar. Today about 44 per cent of the cane produced in Trinidad comes from small peasant holdings, which are no larger than five to ten acres. Commission after commission has pointed to the fact that in the

islands where there is a system of peasant proprietorship the standard of living is much higher and the population more content with life than where there is no peasant proprietorship and where Negroes work as agricultural laborers. The best instance of that is Barbados, where the island is so small and densely populated that the poor laborer is lucky if he gets about a quarter of an acre of land on which to grow his green vegetables. That, incidentally,

is one reason why the Barbadians have tended to emigrate in such large numbers, colonizing Panama, Costa Rica, and other areas of Central America. It is possible, certainly, to argue that Barbados needs colonies far more than Italy and Germany.

Yet despite the fact that we know peasant proprietorship is possible under certain conditions, we are quite ignorant concerning this important problem. Economists could tell us without [ 396 ]

Problems of Economic Research 61 too much difficulty to what extent a system of cooperative enter-

prises, cooperative credit, and so on, might assist the peasant and wean him from his primitive and conservative ways. British Guiana has made great strides in the development of cooperative credit and cooperative enterprises. I understand there is some

sort of village community dating back to emancipation days, when three or four hundred Negroes would get together and buy some abandoned estate and cultivate that estate in cooperation—

perhaps a sort of primitive communism. A few books indicate this to have happened, but no one knows anything definite about

it; and it is apparent that it would be both interesting and

profitable to study.

The economists could also, for instance, tell us the weakness of a system of government which gets its revenue mainly from indirect

taxation—taxes on food—rather than from direct taxation. The West Indian colonies are a paradise for the civil servant and for the upper-class Englishman, by reason of the low income tax. The greater part of the government revenue comes from taxes on food. All the colonies, the American as well as the British,

show the peculiarity that they concentrate on export crops. Barbados has been concentrating on sugar for three hundred years; Jamaica on bananas; Trinidad at one time had cocoa, but now it is practically dependent on its oil. The greater part of the food-stuffs consumed (about 80 per cent today in Trinidad) is

imported, so that the islands are at the mercy of all sorts of vicissitudes. With rearmament and the increase in shipping rates, prices have gone up; perhaps in the present war they can’t even import the food they want—we do not know about this as yet—but certainly in the last war there was great hardship in the islands because they couldn’t get their food, since they depended on the outside.

Respecting the class structure, as Dr. Harris mentioned, you have a small white aristocracy at the top, constituting about 2 per cent of the population, and at the bottom a mass of Negroes who

are either peasant proprietors or laborers on the estates. Between these is a relatively small, fairly prosperous middle class of persons whose education, opinions, and ideas reflect the whites [ 397 ]

62 American Council of Learned Societies with whom they have been in contact for some 150 years to such an extent that they are really black Englishmen or black French-

men. That is, they are English or French in outlook; so that when they say, “I am going home for the holidays,” “home” means for them not Africa, but England or France. The consideration of the class structure of society in the Islands entails the study of one especially important group—the mulatto

middle class. Just how rapidly has this class grown? No one, for instance, can tell us the source of the wealth of, let us say, ten mulatto families in Trinidad. Nobody can tell us to what extent

there has been white intermixture, or when it took place, or to what extent it led to the formation of these mulatto fortunes. But just how powerful is this class? It is easy to say that its membership comprises about 90 per cent of the professional men and about

80 per cent of the civil servants, but one cannot be certain even of this, except in roughest fashion. _ Another peculiarity about some of the islands is the large percentage of British Indians, or as they are called in the islands, East Indians, people who came from India after the emancipa-

tion. These people were brought in as the result of a kind of brown slave trade that took the place of the black slave trade. In places like Guiana and Trinidad, where there was a great deal of fertile unappropriated land, the Negroes, when freed, preferred

to become squatters on those lands instead of working for the planters. So the plantation owners resorted to Indian immigration in order to stimulate the Negro and force him to work. Trinidad is today about 36 per cent Indian, and in British Guiana the Indians constitute the largest numerical group in the colony. Just what do these immigrants from India do? In Guiana they concentrate on growing rice. In Trinidad they are small peasant proprietors. The Negro prefers to work in the oil fields, and the Indian prefers to own his spot of land. The Indians were originally brought in for five years at very small wages. Like the apprentices just after slavery they could be punished by the magistrate with whipping for breach of contract, or for running away from their jobs to seek work elsewhere. Immigration was so arranged by the planters that the Indians were introduced in the interest of the planters but at the expense

[ 398 ] ,

Problems of Economic Research 63 of the community, and therefore the Negro laborer, with whom the

Indian laborer competed, indirectly paid for this immigration. Indian immigration has been stopped since 1917, but the problems it presents, both historical and economic, remain to be investigated. The sociologist could trace the relation between the low wages

paid—about twenty-five or thirty cents a day for the agricultural

laborer for four days a week—and the malnutrition and high infant mortality rate that are so prevalent in the British Islands at least. In Barbados the infant mortality rate is about three hundred per thousand. What, also, is the relation between low wages and the high incidence of preventable diseases? About seventy per cent of the population in the whole British West Indian area are affected by hookworm, for example. The sociologist could also trace the effect of the new immigration

restrictions enforced by Cuba, Haiti, and the United States; the repatriation of these immigrants, particularly in Jamaica, and the effect of these repatriated persons on the consciousness of the Negro. They have gone back with American ideas, Cuban ideas, Haitian ideas; and constitute, so to speak, the advance guard of the wave of unrest which has been spreading for the past five years.

- Others could tell you better than I to what extent the West Indian field supplies data for the anthropologist; or how far the religious customs, the dances, the pocomania of Jamaica, the shango of Trinidad, and so on, would be interesting subjects for anthropological research. On the political side, the question of crown colony government

must be assessed. The ethical justification for the existence of crown colonies is in the principle of trusteeship, which holds that these backward people should be guided until such time as they

are fit to stand alone. We want to find out to what extent this precept is honored; to what extent a system which originally began as a humanitarian measure to protect the black slaves from the white planter has ended by being whole-heartedly accepted by the white planters as the best means of preserving their own domination of the state. Jamaica, in 1865, openly asked for the

abrogation of its own Constitution, under which it had selfgovernment, and the establishment of crown colony government, [ 399 ]

64 American Council of Learned Societies the reason being that under the old constitutional arrangement the mulattoes were so increasing their numbers and influence and

wealth that they were about to get the franchise in numbers that would have permitted them to swamp the small white minority.

But in this field again, nothing of any great significance has

been written. A book appeared about 1920 by a Canadian, Humphrey Wrong, but it is quite a superficial work. Mr. Wrong never worked in the Public Records office in England, but wrote his book in Canada where he did not have access to the documents. A publication recently issued by the Stationery Office in London

shows the extent to which a small minority dominates these governments in the West Indies. About six per cent of the people in Trinidad, about three per cent in Barbados, and about five per cent in Jamaica have the vote. One could trace, therefore, the extent to which conditions, social and economic, are the result of a political form of government which gives control to the sugar planters, oil interests, and the like. It is apparent that very important materials are to be had in

the West Indies. To what extent that would help us with our knowledge of the American Negro and research being done or projected in this country, others here are better qualified to judge than I; but it seems as though the comparative point of view must be of value in such work.

Discussion Mr. ApTHEKER: For the sake of the record, I would like Mr. Williams to give us his opinion on Mathieson and Coupland, who

have written on slavery in the West Indies and who have, or I

think at least pretended to have, dealt adequately with that question.

Mr. Wiuuiams: Professor Coupland’s books, frankly, seem to me to be very bad books. In the first place, one of his books, a small general work in the Home University Library, concerns the

British anti-slavery movement in general. The authorities he quotes, as far as I can remember, are Clarkson’s History of the Abolition Movement and the Life of Wilberforce, by the latter’s sons. I don’t think he quotes parliamentary debates at all. [ 400 }

, Problems of Economic Research 65 Mr. Herskovits: He has done other things than that, especially in the field of slavery in East Africa. You feel that in

the sources? | | |

the general discussion of slavery you mentioned he hasn’t gone to

Mr. WItiLiaAMs: He didn’t go to the sources at all. A German

writer, Hochstettet, has done a small book on the economic motives for the abolition of the slave trade, and although he used purely secondary sources he used them well. But so far as I can remember, Coupland didn’t even know of the existence of the

parliamentary debates. In those days what was said in Parliament wouldn’t be the sort of thing that would be said now, for they spoke openly. Mr. APTHEKER: You feel that Mathieson is better?

Mr. Wiuiiams: Mathieson is better. He likewise uses only secondary authorities, but he makes better use of them.

Mr. Herskovits: I wonder if I might speak of some possible interrelationships in following the lead of Mr. Williams ‘concerning

anthropology, first pointing out that anthropological studies are not a search in the nooks and crannies for such exotic curiosities as the Shango cult in Trinidad or the Pucumarians in Jamaica, but are concerned instead with the whole range of human institu-

tions. |

The significance of the material from the Islands for those who are concerned with social problems in the United States, a matter Mr. Williams mentioned in passing, I think should be stressed. I may draw on my own field work of last summer in Trinidad for an example. This was the first opportunity I had to work in any > Negro community where the general socio-economic pattern of

West Africa, such as would be found in Haiti or among the Maroons of Jamaica or in the Guiana bush, was lacking. In terms of this pattern, the family homestead is the center and stabilizing force for social organization, and the economic security that is given by the fact that a man belongs to a large relationship group to which he can turn for help in time of need is of primary

importance. In the extreme northern portion of Trinidad, far removed from the oil fields and sugar belt of the island, the plantation system is fundamental in the economy. Here a condition approximating that of the landless wage workers and the share-

[ 401 ] ,

66 American Council of Learned Societies croppers of the United States obtains. I have the feeling that a person dealing with the problems of sharecropping, or even the special problems of the Negro in industry, could get a great deal by making a detailed study of what is to be found in this island, and perhaps in Jamaica and a few of the other islands.

The arrangement in Trinidad whereby a worker who cuts the bush and plants it for another may live on it for five years, getting everything that is grown on it during that time before he turns it

over to the proprietor, is very interesting. Such a matter would seem to have an immediate relevance to the American scene that has gone unrealized because, so far as I know, almost no one who has worked on the economics of the Negro has ever taken his find-

ings into the West Indies and subjected them to analysis on the

basis of comparative studies. | Mr. Wisx: Much of what Mr. Williams brought out about the

economic despair in the West Indies had an economic effect on the

South, because they felt there was no solution to their perpetua-

tion of slavery. a

Mr. APTHEKER: I would add that what took place in the West

Indies affected not merely the masters but the slaves as well in the United States. The Haitian revolution had a very great effect and there is direct evidence that slaves who plotted revolt here

were aware of what had gone on there. Some evidence also exists of intercommunication between slaves here and those in

the West Indies. |

Mr. Wisu: Here is still another aspect of the matter. Some of

the slaves who rebelled in the United States were deported to the West Indies.

Mr. Herskovits: One of our most interesting ethnological problems, as yet completely unstudied, is a direct result of such a revolt. Negroes and Carib Indians formed a mixed-blood community on the island of St. Vincent. Because these people were difficult, they were deported to Honduras, where their descendants

live today as the black Caribs. As far as I know, all we know about those people is contained in a cursory paper that appeared in the American Anthropologist about twenty years ago. May I mention also the importance of the very rich material to be ob[ 402 ]

| Problems of Economic Research 67 tained in Dutch Guiana? The most successful revolts, the most instructive cases of mingling of cultures, took place there. Thus in Dutch Guiana, not only was there an infiltration of British Indians such as occurred in Trinidad, but when the importation of British Indians was stopped, Javanese were brought to work the

plantations. Taki-taki gives them all a common medium of expression. As for Negro research, situations to be studied in Dutch Guiana range from colonies deep in the bush, living the life

of Africa of the 17th and 18th centuries, to groups who are as acculturated as Negro town-dwellers anywhere else in the New World.

Mr. Turner: What of the slaves, some 25,000, that were taken from America to the West Indies during the Revolutionary period by loyalist slaveholders? Mr. WiuuiaMs: I thought the largest number went to Canada.

Mr. Herskovits: I have come on the descendants of some of them in Haiti and in Trinidad. _ Mr. ApTHEKER: The basis of the Negro armed force in one, of

those West Indian Islands—I think Barbados—was a shipment of Negroes who fought for the British here.

Mr. Herskovits: The whole subject of small population movements in the West Indies offers more in the nature of striking cases

than in any other area | know. Thus a large number of Acadians, Longfellow’s Evangeline people, were settled during the eighteenth

century in the little valley in Haiti where I worked. Most of them died within about five or six years, and the rest moved on. There was also a large German colony which was settled in northern Haiti. The migration of the Maroons of: Jamaica is an epic in itself. When defeated, they were supposed-to be given land in

Jamaica, but a large number of them were deported to Nova Scotia and remained there. Arthur Huff Fasset has published a Memoir of the American Folklore Society giving their folk-tales. Part of them went back to Sierra Leone where they settled, to mingle with Africans from all parts of Guiana; the released cargoes

of slave ships brought there to live. ,

[ 403 ]

68 American Council of Learned Societies VI. LINGUISTIC RESEARCH AND AFRICAN SURVIVALS Lorenzo D. Turner, Fisk University

In the study of African survivals in New World culture the linguist, like the ethnologist, has certain large handicaps to overcome.

In the first place, there is the insistence on the part of a large number of people, including many authorities on language, that no African linguistic survivals are to be found among New World Negroes. Inasmuch as my own research in this field during the past few years has been concerned with the speech of Negroes in the United States, especially with respect to African survivals, my

remarks will be directed toward this aspect of the problem. I shall read a few quotations from the writings of some of those American students of language, and of a few other writers, who are responsible for this wide-spread but mistaken impression. Ambrose E. Gonzales, who edited several volumes of Gullah stories, and whose interpretations and reproductions of Gullah have been generally accepted as accurate, says that “the African brought over or retained only a few words of his jungle tongue, and even these few are by no means authenticated as part of the original scant baggage of the Negro slaves. ... As the small vocabulary

of the jungle atrophied through disuse and was soon forgotten, the contribution to the language made by the Gullah Negro is insignificant, except through the transformation wrought upon a large body of borrowed English words.” (The Black Border, pp. 17-18). Gonzales then published what was taken to be a complete glossary of Gullah. This contains about 1700 words, most of which are English words misspelled to indicate the Negro’s mispronunciation. ‘The other words in the glossary that are in reality African terms have been interpreted as English words which

the Negro was unable to pronounce. For instance, the English phrase done for fat is given as being used by the Gullahs to mean excessively fat (the assumption being that in the Judgment of the

Gullah Negro when a person is very fat he is done for). But if Gonzales had had enough training in phonetics to reproduce the word accurately, it would have been dG@fa, which is the Gullah

word for fat, and if he had looked into a dictionary of the Vai [ 404 ]

Linguistic Research and African Survivals 69 language, spoken in Liberia, or consulted a Vai informant, he would have found that the Vai word for fat is daéfa (—_)* literally, mouth full.

Many other items in Gonzales’ glossary which, because of his lack of acquaintance with the vocabulary of certain African languages, he interprets as English, are in reality African words. Among other Gullah expressions which he or other American writers have interpreted as English, but which are African, are the Mende suwaygo (~—_), to be proud (explained by Gonzales as being a corruption of the English swagger); the Wolof lir, small (taken by Gonzales to be an abbreviated form of the English lztile, in spite

of the fact that the Gullah also uses lzttle when he wishes to); the Wolof benj (banj, bonj), tooth (explained by the Americans as a corruption of bone); the Twi fa, to take (explained by the Americans as a corruption of the English for); the Wolof fui, to be nude

(assumed by the Americans to be the English foot); the Wolof dzogol, to rise—used in Gullah in the term dzogal goard, rise-up board, seesaw (explained by the Americans as juggling board); the Mende loni (--), stands, 1s standing (explained by the Americans as a corruption of the English alone, said of a child who is beginning to walk—Mende taloni (}__), he is standing, Gullah ilant, he 1s standing; in Mende 2 lonz (_~_) means he ts not standing) ;

etc. , Apparently influenced by Gonzales’ interpretation of Gullah,

the late Professor Krapp of Columbia University, author of many

publications on the American language and considered an authority in this field, without having acquainted himself either with Gullah or with any of the African languages spoken in those sections of the West Coast from which the Negroes were brought

to the United States as slaves, writes in this fashion regarding Gullah: ‘The Gullah dialect is a very much simplified form of English, with cases, numbers, genders, tenses reduced almost to the vanishing point.... Very little of the dialect, however, perhaps none of it, is derived from sources other than English. In vocabulary, in syntax, and pronunciation, practically all of the *Indication of tone, an important element in African languages is as follows: (~) high, (-) middle, (~) low; (1) high to low, ete. [ 405 }

70 American Council of Learned Societies forms of Gullah can be explained on the basis of English, and probably only a little deeper delving would be necessary to account

for those characteristics that still seem strange and mysterious.”’ “Generalizations are always dangerous,” he continues, “‘but it is reasonably safe to say that not a single detail of ‘Negro pronunciation or Negro syntax can be proved to have other than an English origin.” (‘“The English of the Negro’, American Mercury, June, 1924). Mr. H. L. Mencken, in the 1937 edition of The American Language, says that the Negroes have inherited no given-names from their African ancestors and that the native languages of the Negro slaves seem to have left few marks upon the American language (pp. 112, 523). On one Georgia island alone, St. Simons, near Brunswick, I have collected more than three thousand Afri-

can words that are used as given-names. So far. as I know,

given-names. |

Mencken never made any inquiries of the Gullahs concerning their

Dr. Reed Smith, of the University of South Carolina, says:

‘What the Gullahs seem to have done was to take a sizeable part of the English vocabulary as spoken on the coast by the white inhabitants from about 1700 on, wrap their tongues around it, and reproduce it changed in tonality, pronunciation, cadence, and grammar to suit their native phonetic tendencies, and their existing needs of expression and communication. The result has been called by one writer, ‘the worst English in the world.’ It

would certainly seem to have a fair claim to that distinction.’ ‘There are,’ he continues, ‘‘curiously few survivals of native African words in Gullah, a fact that has struck most students of the language’’; and he lists about twenty words which he thinks may be African in origin, though he cites no parallels for them in

African languages. (Gullah, pp. 22, 32). Dr. Guy B. Johnson, contributing one of the chapters in T. J. Woofter’s Black Yeomanry,

is of practically the same opinion as Smith. He says: “There are older Negroes in the Sea Islands who speak in such a way that a stranger would have to stay around them several weeks before

he could understand them and converse with them to his satisfaction. But this strange dialect turns out to be little more than the peasant English of two centuries ago, modified to suit the

[ 406 } :

Linguistic Research and African Survivals 71 needs of the slaves. From Midland and Southern England came planters, artisans, shopkeepers, indentured servants, all of whom had more or less contact with the slaves, and the speech of these poorer white folk was so rustic that their more cultured countrymen had difficulty in understanding them. From this peasant speech and from the ‘baby talk’ used by masters in addressing them, the Negroes developed that dialect, sometimes known as Gullah, which remains the characteristic feature of the culture of

the Negroes of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. ... The grammar of the dialect is a simplified English grammar taken over

from the speech of the poorer whites. ...The use of many archaic English words no doubt contributes to the belief held in some quarters that the sea island Negroes use many African words.” (pp. 49-51). It should be noted, however, in fairness to the writers whose views on Gullah have just been quoted, that the

Gullah Negro when talking to strangers is likely to use speech that for the most part is English in vocabulary, being different in this respect from his speech when he talks to his associates and to

the members of his family. My first phonograph recordings of the speech of the Gullah Negroes contain fewer African words by far than those made when I was no longer a stranger to them. One

has to live among them to know their speech well. So much, then, for this first handicap that faces the linguist studying African survivals in American Negro speech. I doubt that scholars studying African linguistic survivals in other parts of the New World will find this handicap so great as those working in America. I should think that in Brazil, for example, it would be

taken for granted that there are such survivals. Another handicap that affects the linguist, as well as the ethnologist studying African survivals in the New World, is the lack of adequate historical documents relating to the importation of

slaves to the New World. This handicap is apparently much greater for scholars working in Brazil than for those working elsewhere in the New World. For those of us who have been working in the United States, the work of Professor Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade

to America, has been most helpful. With the aid of this work I [ 407 ]

72 American Council of Learned Societies was able to decide upon what West African languages I should study in preparation for my work in the United States; and thus far a fairly high correlation has been revealed between the number of slaves reported as coming to South Carolina and Georgia from certain sections on the West Coast, and the number of West African words I have found surviving in Gullah from the languages

of those sections. We need more such studies. A third handicap that the linguist must face is the lack of ade-

quate ethnological studies of the different tribes on the West Coast. We are fortunate in having such an excellent work as Dr. Herskovits’ two-volume study of tribal lifein Dahomey. W. D. Hambly’s analysis of tribal life among the Ovimbundu in Agola, and H. Labouret’s study of the Mandingoes have also been helpful to me; and I shall be happy to have available the findings of the

field-work done by Dr. Bascom and Dr. Greenberg of Northwestern on certain tribes in Nigeria, the Yoruba and Hausa. Similar studies are needed of the Wolof, Bambara, Mende, Vai,

Twi, Ga, Fanti, Temne, Susu, Kongo, Mandinka, the Ibo and Efik tribes, the Fula, and others. I cannot emphasize enough the values of such studies to the linguist when properly done. Accurate descriptive data of this kind are important for any comparative work; they are especially important for one comparing African and New World linguistic phenomena, since the African’s speech is so perfectly an expression of his life in all of its

phases. And [ think that the most objective studies of this kind are to be expected from scholars on this side of the Atlantic and from the Africans themselves, rather than from European scholars. Another very serious handicap which the linguist has to contend with is the lack of adequate grammars and dictionaries of the West African languages. Most of these that deal with languages spoken in British West Africa have been prepared by missionaries who have had little or no training in linguistics. Of course, there are exceptions, such as the work of Westermann, Ward, Melzian, Rapp, and of two or three Africans; but on the whole the available

material is woefully inadequate. Much better work has been done on the languages of French West Africa, especially the work

of Delafosse and Labouret, but there is much that needs to be [408 ]

Linguistic Research and African Survivals 73 done here also. Such treatment should include an analysis of the sounds, intonation (this has been sadly neglected in the past), morphology, and syntax, a good dictionary (with the lexical tones

of the words indicated), and an extensive collection of texts. Studies of languages on the West Coast that are not so well known might prove to be fruitful sources of much of the speech of New

World Negroes, because of the way in which the slaves were seized before being imported to the New World, since even when we

know the point of departure, we are not sure that the slaves spoke

the language of that place. Indeed, it is probable that in most cases they did not. The study of vocabulary is especially important. I am convinced, for instance, that a great many Mende and Vai were sold on Harris Neck, Georgia, and on other plantations nearby, because most of the African words I have collected

there are from these languages. Practically all of the African songs the Gullahs sing in this area are in one or the other of these two languages, as are the African words and phrases interspersed

throughout the folk-tales. Likewise, there must have been a great many Kongos sold on St. Simons Island, Georgia. In many families on this island, the names of all the children are Kongo words. This is true also of many of the names of birds, animals, and plants. — Beginning with Angola and passing up the coast, I may briefly mention the languages which, appearing to have exerted the greatest influence on New World speech, need most to be given scholarly

treatment. In Angola itself, Umbundu and Kimbundu, for our purpose, are greatly in need of such scholarly treatment. The Kimbundu Grammar of Chatelain (1889) needs to be brought up to date, and should include an analysis of the tones of the language. A good dictionary of this language is also needed. The same needs

are indicated for Umbundu. The Rev. Wesley M. Stover’s grammar of this language, published in 1885, is out of print. It needs to be revised and made to include an analysis of the tones.of the language. Helen Stover’s The Umbundu Language (Bailundu,

1918) I have not, as yet, had access to. Sanders and Fay’s dictionary of this language (1885) is also out of print, and neither this

nor Stover’s dictionary includes the lexical tones of the words. [ 409 ]

74 American Council of Learned Societies Amandus Johnson’s Mbundu English-Portuguese Dictionary (Phil-

adelphia, 1930) I have not seen. I am told that Dr. Merlin W. Ennis, who is now in the United States, has considerable linguistic data on Umbundu, which when published should be of great help

to linguists working on New World language survivals. In a conversation I had recently with the Reverend H. C. McDowell, who spent eighteen years as a missionary in Umbundu country, I was told that the Umbundu influence on Brazilian culture is

greater than has been supposed. He informs me that Angola

calls itself the “Brazil of West Africa.” I believe that Brazilian scholars are inclined to the view that the Nigerian and Dahomean influence has probably been greater in Brazil than that of Angola. I was interested to find in Dr. Arthur Ramos’ list of topics suggested for investigation the following: “Comparative Study of the Influence of Yoruba and Kimbundu on Portuguese,” and “African Languages Introduced into Brazil.” For the Kongo language, the best linguistic work I know of is the Rev. W. Holman Bentley’s Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Languages, published in London in 1887. It is an excellent book, but needs considerable revision. From the point of view of orthography it is easy to use, but it contains no information concerning the tones of the language. Texts in this language are also.

greatly needed. , |

In the Cross River region the important languages for our purpose are Ibo, Efik, and Ibibio, though there are others which, if studied, might throw light on the language situation in the New World, such as Ogoni, Andoni, Abua, and Bali. Dr. Ida C. Ward, Head of the Department of African Languages at the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, has made an excellent analysis of the tones of Ibo and Efik—in my judgment the best study of this kind that has been done for any of the West African languages, though Melzian’s studies of tone in Bini and in Duala

are also important. But good grammars of Ibo and Efik are needed. The grammar of Ibo by the Reverend J. Spencer, a native of Sierra Leone, is rather elementary, and R. F. G. Adams A Modern Ibo Grammar is also too sketchy to be of much value for

our purpose. I know of no good dictionary of Ibo. The Dic[ 410 ]

Linguistic Research and African Survivals 75 tionary of the Efik Language, by the Reverend Hugh Goldie, published in Edinburgh in 1900, is the best dictionary of Efik, but it is out of print; its orthography needs to be modernized, and it gives no information concerning the lexical tones of the words. It contains a brief grammar which needs to be expanded and treated on more scientific principles. For material relating to the languages of Western Nigeria, Mel-

zian’s Bini Dictionary and his Bint Grammar should be useful. So far as I know, there is no adequate Yoruba grammar or dictionary; that by the Reverend Samuel Crowther, a native, published in 1843 (later edition, 1852) is still, I believe, the best study that exists. The section on grammar is very brief and inadequate,

and the tones of the words are not explained, while the orthography needs also to be modernized. Gaye and Beecroft’s Yoruba Grammar, which was published in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1914 (second

édition, 1923), is brief, but does make an effort to indicate the tones—how accurately I am at present unable to say. Another dictionary of Yoruba was edited by the Reverend E. J. Sowande

in 1911, but is out of print. A later work, Dictionary of the Yoruba Language (1913, 1931), published at Lagos by the C. M. S. Bookshop, makes an attempt to give the lexical tones of the words,

and though brief, is useful. Apparently the best available linguistic works on Hausa are the Reverend G. P. Bargery’s HausaEnglish Dictionary, and the English-Hausa Vocabulary, with Some Notes on the Hausa People and their Language, by D. Westermann; C. H. Robinson’s Dictionary of the Hausa Language, and the same author’s Hausa Grammar. There are also A Fulani-Hausa Phrase

Book and A Fulani-Hausa Vocabulary by F. W. Taylor. Bargery’s work is quite voluminous and contains an explanation of the tones, though Mr. Greenberg of Northwestern University, I believe, is not greatly impressed with this part of the work.. The languages of Togo and Dahomey have been best treated in the works of Westermann and Delafosse. This included Westermann’s Ewe Dictionary and his Ewe Grammar, both of which are scientific in their treatment of the sounds and tones of the language. Delafosse’s Manuel Dahoméan contains no analysis of the tones of

F5, but is otherwise useful, though the dictionary is too brief to [ 411 ]

76 American Council of Learned Societies be of any great value for our purpose. For the Gold Coast languages, we are well supplied with linguistic material in works such

as Christaller’s Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tur, Rapp’s Introduction to Twi, and Balmer and Grant’s A Grammar of the Fante-Akan Language which, however, does not

indicate the tones; a dictionary of G& is greatly needed. Grammars and dictionaries of the languages of Sierra Leone and Liberia that give information concerning tones are greatly needed in Vai,

Mende, Temne, Gizi, and in some of the Kru dialects. Mrs. Aginsky’s study of Mende, however, includes an analysis of the tones, and Dr. M. H. Watkins has begun a study of Vai which will include an analysis of the tones. Delafosse has written an excellent grammar and dictionary of Mandingo and its dialects, while Labouret’s Les Manding et leur Langue is also useful. Bazin’s Dictionary of Bambara is out of print, but is a very useful study and should be enlarged and revised. It should be noted that most of these linguistic studies of West African languages which I have mentioned are not to be found in the libraries of the United States; fewer than ten per cent of them

are in this country. Another point to be considered in this connection is the importance of encouraging West Africans to study in American colleges. Those from British West Africa prefer studying here to studying in London; and if means were available,

many from French West Africa would study here rather than in Paris.

In investigating the speech of Negroes in the New World with respect to African survivals, it would seem to me that one might well begin with a number of descriptive regional studies, if the distribution of the Negroes calls for regional studies. There might also be descriptive studies based on social classes wherever conditions in a given locality warrant them. ‘There will be less occasion for these in the United States than in the West Indies, Brazil, and some other areas of the New World. In the United States, the most fruitful sources of African linguistic survivals are naturally in the South, among ex-slaves and their descendants in re-

gions where there has been a minimum of contact with white people, Coastal South Carolina and Georgia being especially fer[ 412]

Linguistic Research and African Survivals 77 tile. Other areas for work of this sort are Louisiana, southern Alabama and Mississippi, eastern Florida, eastern North Carolina,

eastern Virginia, etc. Whatever historical data can be secured bearing on the earliest settlement of Negroes in these regions will

be useful. It is well to select informants who are natives of the region, whose parents and grandparents were natives of the region,

and who have had a minimum of contact elsewhere. In each region the greater number of the informants should be above sixty and with little or no education. Worksheets for interviews should be prepared that call for such information as will serve a study of the sounds, syntax, intonation, morphology, and vocabulary of

the speech of the region. The worksheets should also call for life histories of each informant, and all responses to questions should be recorded in phonetic notation. Copious textual material should be collected on phonograph records. This might consist of folktales, proverbs, narratives of religious experience, sermons, secular and religious songs, invocations and prayers of the fetish cults wherever they exist, accounts of social and economic conditions among the informants, reminiscences of slavery, and any other data it is possible to collect. All of this will facilitate the study of the syntax, intonation, and morphology, and to a certain extent the sounds and vocabulary; but to secure an ex-

tensive vocabulary will require a special procedure. Such collections of descriptive linguistic material, secured from Negroes in different sections of the New World and properly organized, should serve as the basis for all comparative studies. Wherever ethnological studies of the Negroes have been made in a region—

such, for instance, as Dr. Herskovits’ studies in Dutch Guiana and some of the work of Dr. Arthur Ramos in Brazil—the linguist’s problem in that region will be greatly facilitated. It is possible that a study of the speech of certain white persons in regions where contact between the races has been close will also reveal some African linguistic. survivals. On the whole, very little work on the speech of Negroes in the New World has so far been undertaken—that is, undertaken in a really scientific way. About three years ago, a phonetic analysis of the speech of Negroes in Guilford County, North Carolina, was [ 413 ]

78 American Council of Learned Societies made by Dr. W. E. Farrison as a doctoral dissertation at Ohio State University. This was a descriptive study made without reference to African survivals. Reference should be made also to the morphological and syntactical study of Haitian Créole, with special attention to African survivals, by Mile. Suzanne Sylvain, a native of Haiti; she was at a disadvantage, however, in that she relied almost wholly on African grammars and dictionaries for her African material and made little or no use of African informants. From my reading of Mendonga’s study of the Portuguese of Brazil and some of Dr. Arthur Ramos’ works, it appears that considerable emphasis is being placed at present on African linguistic survivals in Brazil. This is most encouraging, because there is apparently no more fertile source for the study of African survivals in the New World than that region.

In closing, may I call attention to an important fact which I hope has become obvious during the reading of this paper; namely,

that for making any worthwhile study of linguistic survivals the linguist needs the most generous coéperation of the historian and the ethnologist, while they, in turn, can use with profit the findings

of the linguist. — ,

Discussion Mr. Bascom: I may comment on your reference to the dictionary of Yoruba that you state is preferable to Crowther’s—the one

published by the C.M.S. Bookshop. It is Crowther’s work, brought up to date. It seems to be smaller, but it is actually in two volumes, one English-Yoruba and the other Yoruba-English. Dr. Coss: Can you explain the type of speech often described

as the Charleston accent? |

Mr. Turner: It is a kind of combination of Gullah Negro speech, and that of the Scotch and Irish and other white groups

that settled in that area. The speech of the white people in Charleston is much like that of the Charleston Negroes, and while both speak differently from the Negroes on the islands, they have all been influenced by the speech of the Negroes on the islands.

Mr. STERLING Brown: Why is the term Geechee used more than Gullah to denote this peculiar type of Negro speech? [ 414]

_Languistic Research and African Survivals 79 Mr. TuRNER: Many think that the designation comes from the name of the Ogeechee river. I think this name is an Indian word, but there is an African tribe called the Ogeechee in Liberia, and I have found a great many words from that area in this region of

the United States. I suspect that it is the name of this African tribe that has been carried over. Mr. Sreruinc Brown: Linguistically, the Charleston area is one where a consistent speech form is found. Would not Gullah

serve to designate the entire area? Mr. Turner: As far as I can see, there is no difference between

Geechee and Gullah. In Georgia, the old people speak just as the old people in South Carolina do. - Mr. Bouncue: I was curious about your statement that it could be taken for granted that in Brazil African survivals are present in the language, and I wondered why you made that assumption.

Mr. Turner: It appears that African survivals are much more numerous there than in the United States. Mr. BuncHe: Do you assume, then, that because of this there would be more consciousness of such survivals? Mr. Turner: If the point were made in those terms, I would not be inclined to contradict it. _

Mr. Herskovits: Yet does that always follow? In Haiti, for example, a tremendous number of African survivals are to be found—I should say that next to Guiana more African survivals exist in the culture of the Haitian peasant than anywhere else in

the New World, including Brazil and Cuba. Yet you find that the Haitian work Mr. Pattee referred to, La Philologie créole, by Jules Faine, is a study whose underlying assumptions are exactly analogous to those in the work of Guy Johnson and Reed

Smith and all the others mentioned by Dr. Turner. That is, Jules Faine purports to show that Haitian Créole is a derivative of Norman French, just as these students assume Gullah is derived from earlier English dialects. So it does not necessarily follow that just because survivals are present, they will be taken

for granted. I should be interested to learn what Mr. Berrien has to say as to the extent this matter of African survivals is taken for granted in Brazil, especially as concerns the language. [ 415 ]

80 American Council of Learned Societies Mr. Berrien: I believe that Mendonca and other students feel that there are very definite African survivals in vocabulary, in phonetics and in intonation; and I think it would be possible to

find all these in non-linguistic aspects of Brazilian life. Such people as Freyre and Dr. Ramos speak of survivals in cooking, in modes of walking, and in any number of other elements in every-

day behavior. Freyre points out that though the African survivals are present, they are so well integrated into Brazilian life that they are not to be looked upon as African, but are a part of the total culture which he calls “Brazilidad.” Mr. Turner: An interesting situation in Georgia may be mentioned. All the children have nicknames, and I find that 95 per

cent of these are African words. Such nicknames are used in their homes and among their associates, but when they go to school

they are not allowed to use them, since the teacher, a lady from Charleston, refuses to record those names. When they write to friends off the island they use their English names, but as soon as

they return home they use African names. If a field-worker doesn’t come into contact with these people in their homes, he will assume, just as some of the writers I mentioned have assumed, that no African names are used, but only English ones.

Mr. Puckett: Do these African words seem to be used more commonly in certain types of group activities than others? Do you find African words especially connected with religion and

agriculture, or the family? , Mr. TurNeER: The largest number would be the proper names,

and only a few of these words are used in any other connection. Names of birds and animals would yield the next largest group of African terms. There are a good many religious words, but not as many as for birds and animals and plants. One also finds a group of words that are never used in daily conversation, but only in songs and stories. In their folk tales, the Gullah Negroes sometimes use whole African phrases, though sometimes these phrases will be employed in English translation. But such words, again,

are not used in daily conversation. There is, however, a considerable number of African words that figure in everyday usage. For instance, the Kongo word for salt; the word ‘‘ninnie,’’ mean{ 416 ]

Linguistic Research and African Survivals «BI ing female breast, and the Umbundu word for elephant, ‘“‘jumba”’

items. 7 , | |

for the female, and “jumbo” for the male. My list of African words used by the Gullahs comes to approximately five thousand

Mr. Puckett: Is there much use of secret names? I was wondering if the use of the nicknames indicated a desire to hide the

identity of the real names. oo | |

_ Mr. Turner: They do not consider them secret. |

Mr. Jounson: To what extent would you say, Dr. Turner, that any of these words have trickled into the common speech of

other Negroes or of whites? , |

_ Mr. Turner: I have not made a study of speech in other areas of the South, but I should think that a great many such words would be found elsewhere; certainly a great many more than we

know about now. _ _ |

Mr. Buncue: I was wondering if in attempting to measure the tenacity of Africanisms it is possible to get any comparative data. You find, for example, the retention of certain linguistic forms among the Gullah. How quickly are they lost when people from the sea islands move inland?

Mr. Turner: The areas further inland haven’t been studied; I have only been able to work in the coastal region, especially in

the Sea Islands. | 7 Mr. Berrien: Did I understand you to say that a great number of the terms which are African survivals are used by persons

who themselves don’t understand their meaning? , Mr. Turner: These are mainly songs and folk tales.

Mr. Berrien: The same thing is true in Antillean folk tales and songs. Such a specialist in Afro-Antillean customs as Mme. Eusebia Cosme, the Cuban diseuse, does not know the meaning

of certain terms in her songs. © | | |

Mr. Turner: I have recorded songs of three or four stanzas which these Gullah Negroes sing in good Mende or Vai. But

they don’t know the meaning of the words they use. | ‘Mr. Herskovits: I should like at this point to introduce a few general comments on method which may be germane to this and

various other questions raised in our discussions. a

oe Oo | [417]

82 American Council of Learned Societies I have been concerned for some years with the study of African survivals in the New World, and I have been increasingly struck with the importance of a matter Mr. Turner brought up at the very outset of his remarks. From the point of view of scientific method there is a great deal to be desired in the approach of those who, especially in the United States, have written on the problem of

African elements in Negro behavior. As Mr. Turner showed, linguists write about African survivals in language without the faintest knowledge of the linguistic background of the Negroes whose speech they are discussing, nor is there any evidence that they attempt to fill in such background materials. Mr. Turner was speaking principally of vocabulary and phonetics, but the same thing is true in the field of grammar. Mrs.

Herskovits and I have demonstrated, in our book, Suriname Folklore, not only that the identical grammatical patterns run through all the pidgin English dialects of West Africa that we have been able to record or find anything about and the takitaki of Dutch Guiana, but that the same constructions mark as well the Negro-English of Trinidad, Jamaica, and the Englishspeaking Antilles in general. The speech of the Gullahs, which those who deny its African elements may study in recorded texts, likewise contains many of these grammatical and idiomatic forms, which are comparable to literal translations of phrases from certain West African languages which we collected while in that area. These same constructions are found also in Negro-French, as

recorded in Martinique and Guadeloupe, in Haiti, and in Louisiana; while insofar as it has been possible to get material bearing on the papamiento dialect of Curacao, a form of NegroSpanish, the same is true. These are not chance correspondences, nor may we assume that they represent the unsuccessful efforts of

the slaves to imitate properly the speech of their masters. Yet the students of linguistics Mr. Turner has named, or such a one as Cleanth Brooks, whose name should be added to the list, quite ignore the possible existence of African backgrounds. A similar situation obtains in the field of music. The question of the African provenience of American Negro music is far more debated than studied. So far as I know, none of the people who [418]

Linguistic Research and Africqn Survivals 83 has written about it knows the idiom of historically relevant African musical styles. Those who edited the early collections of slave songs from the Sea Islands, or similar series, had a senti-

mental interest in the abolitionist tradition which led them to attribute the source of this music to the anguish of the slave. Later, in an equally uncritical manner, the idea that Negro songs were predominantly African was developed by Krehbiel in his Afro-American Folk-Songs. Krehbiel had heard some Africans sing at the Field Columbian Exposition and knew something of New Orleans Negro songs, but he had engaged in no systematic research. — _ Then E. M. von Hornbostel, an outstanding German musicologist,

heard Negroes singing at Hampton; and on the basis of that experience he drew conclusions that, I think; have had more influence

than anything else in determining present-day views on origins. In reviewing a number of books of Negro songs he singled out those

African traits which he believed had carried over into the spirituals as we know them. Rhythm is fundamental in African music, and the Negroes therefore found the European ‘Scotch snap”

congenial. Hence one finds syncopation in American Negro songs. The tendency to sing in thirds was believed by Hornbostel

to be entirely European. Yet among the Ashanti of the Gold Coast I found the use of thirds in almost every song I recorded. I have records where, for example, one singer strikes a wrong note

and the others break off with a laugh; but they start again with | the correct harmony. These points are sufficient to show Horn-

bostel’s position. |

Hornbostel knew comparative musical styles—his difficulty was essentially that his knowledge of African music did not include the

crucial types of songs from the relevant tribes. But Guy Johnson, Newman White, George Pullen Jackson, and others who have purported to study the derivations of American Negro songs,

have no acquaintance at all with African musical styles, to say nothing of Negro music outside the United States.

The matter is even more serious when we consider studies in some other fields of culture. In many of the books which discuss the backgrounds of Negro culture in the United States, it is taken [419]

84 = —- American Council of Learned Societies _ ; for granted, where it is not positively stated, that the Negro has lost all traces of his aboriginal past. Books such as those of Dowd, or Tillinghast, or Weatherford, are still widely used; yet none of

these writers had any first-hand contact with the cultures of Africa, nor, what is worse, did they approach critically those outmoded and unreliable sources they used. This being the state of

try! , ee i

affairs, Mr. Turner’s discussion is no less than revolutionary. For, with adequate phonetic training, he has actually gone to

African languages in the study of linguistic survivals in this counAgain, there is the view, exemplified in Reuter’s revised edition of his book, The American Race Problem, that African backgrounds

cannot be profitably studied because valid source materials are not at hand. Yet this is far from true, for the data available from West Africa are much better than is ordinarily supposed. One can point to Rattray’s volumes on Ashanti; or to the works of Meek on Ibo law and custom, and on the cultures of the tribes of Northern Nigeria, which are rarely mentioned. The work of the French group is also of high standard. Labouret’s many studies are most important, while the groups from the Musée de l’Homme,

working on the Dogon, have published some excellent papers. The method of presenting dance materials used in Masques Dogon, a memoir of the Institute of Ethnology in Paris, opens an entirely

new approach. The files of the journal Africa, in which the reports of such men as Nadel and Fortes and others who have done field-work in West Africa have appeared, must not be forgotten. On the other hand, we lack information from the Congo, where little acceptable work has been done in terms of modern ethnologi-

cal knowledge. I hope some day it will be possible to take advantage of the fact that one of our most competent anthropologists, Professor Olbrechts of Brussels, is in .a strategic position to

carry on and direct research there. | |

In studying African survivals in the New World we must, of course, exercise great caution at every step. In recognizing the fact that Negroes in this country are descended from Africans whose culture could not immediately be entirely forgotten, we must not overlook the strong influences brought to bear on those people and their descendants by the ways and institutions of the.

New World. Yet, in taking account of past and present New

[ 420 ]

| Linguistic Research and African Survivals 85 World influences we should not assume that their historic African past has completely ceased to function in their lives.

Mr. Frazier: I have not found anyone who could show any evidence of survival of African social organization in this country. I may cite a concrete case. You will recall that in reviewing my book, The Negro Family in the United States, in The Nation, you said the description I gave of the reunion of a Negro family group could, with the change of a few words, be regarded as a description

of a West African institution. But it also happens to be equally adequate as a description of a Pennsylvania Dutch family reunion. What are we to do in a case like that? Are we to say it is African?

Mr. Herskovits: Methodologically, it seems to me that if in studying a family whose ancestry in part, at least, came from Africa I found that something they do resembles a very deepseated African custom, I should not look to Pennsylvania Dutch folk, with whom this family had not been in contact, for an explanation of the origin of such a custom. I may be wrong, but

this seems to be elementary. OO

Mr. Frazier: But where did the Pennsylvania Dutch get their custom that resembles the one I described? Did they get it from

Africa, too? , , Mr. Herskovits: May I ask if the methodological point at

issue is this: is it maintained that if we find anything done by Negroes in this country that resembles anything done in Europe, we must therefore conclude that the Negroes’ behavior is derived

from the European customs, the inference then being that the traditions of their African ancestors were not strong enough to

stand against the impact of European ways? ,

Mr. Frazier: No, I wouldn’t say that, but I believe it should be the aim of the scholar to establish an unmistakable historical connection between the African background and the present behavior of Negroes, rather than to rely on a priora arguments. Mr. Herskovits: We will be in agreement, if you will’ add to your statement of principle that neither should the scholar deny any such connection on a prior: grounds.

Mr. Frazier: Of course not.

-..Mr. Buncne: Did I interpret correctly the statement of

[421] |

methodology that was made—I hope I didn’t—that if, in a study of social institutions among Negroes in this country a resemblance

86 American Council of Learned Societies to African institutions is shown, then the presumption favors

African survival? © |

Mr. Herskovits: I would say if you found traits of American Negro behavior which resembled deep-seated African patterns and

certain European customs as well, a European influence is not

necessarily indicated.

Mr. Buncue: But would not the task of the social investigator be to attempt to trace the thread with the fullest possible documentation, rather than to jump from an existing trait or institution back to Africa? In general the characteristics of our Negro culture are much more likely to be indigenous to America than to Africa. And unless the thread of contact and correspondence could be carried all the way back, would we not have to regard any

assumption of causal relationship to Africa as invalid?

Mr. Herskovits: I agree with you in principle. Naturally, Negroes have experienced different degrees of acculturation over

all the New World. Africanisms in the United States are many fewer in number and intensity than in Haiti or Guiana, or even in Brazil or Cuba. But even in Brazil, Cuba or Haiti, some persons are acculturated to European patterns to a far greater degree than

others. The matter depends upon the locale, on the group, on the particular historical situation involved. From the point of view of method, it would be as unfortunate if, in discussing the problem of African linguistic survivals, Mr. Turner were to say that Gullah is an African language—as he would not do—as it is for others to claim that Gullah speech is only of English derivation.

Mr. Jonnson: Returning to the question of African sources and American music, I don’t recall that Herzog, who has studied African and American Negro music and is both a musician and an ethnologist, was mentioned. Mr. Herskovits: Herzog worked among the Jabo of Liberia, who are somewhat removed from the area from which most of the slaves were brought to the New World. His special interest. was the relationship of the tones in the language to the horn calls and the drum calls. Mr. JoHNSsON: He has given some attention to their songs and comes to about the same conclusion as Von Hornbostel.

[422]

Linguistic Research and African Survivals 87 Mr. Herskovits: I might mention the conclusions reached by Dr. M. Kolinski, who after intensive analysis of a large collection of recordings made in West Africa was able to demonstrate specific

correspondences between specific spirituals and specific West African songs. If I could play for you records of songs from various West African folk, and then songs from Brazil, Trinidad, Jamaica, Haiti, and the United States, I don’t think there would be

much question in your minds as to the single musical pattern

represented. |

Mr. JoHnson: In connection with your statement that the Jabo inhabit a region of West Africa from which not many of the slaves came, I wonder, as I remember Mr. Turner’s long list of African words in Gullah speech, if we will not have to revise to some extent our notions of the areas of Africa from which the slaves were brought.

Mr. Herskovits: Undoubtedly. | ,

Mr. ApPTHEKER: Slaves were brought to America from the east-

ern coast of Africa, too, weren’t they? ,

Mr. Herskovits: According to the records abstracted by Miss Donnan, only about two shiploads, numbering some thousand individuals, which, of course, is a negligible proportion. Mr. APTHEKER: Frederick Bancroft, I think, offers an estimate citing the fact that there were some slaves who came from East Africa. In any event, this would seem to be a subject that would stand investigation.

Mr. Herskovits: Research into the problem of provenience of the Negroes is badly needed, because the hypothesis that the Negroes come from all over the continent is widely accepted. Work that some of us have done in recent years, however, does seem to indicate a much more restricted area from which the slaves came, and the economics of the situation would seem to point the

same conclusion, there being no reason why slaves should be shipped all the way from East Africa to the New World when a very good market existed near at hand in Arabia.

Mr. Harris: Wouldn’t that depend largely upon the political factors within the continent? A considerable number of slaves may have found their way to the West from the East through [ 423 ]

88 American Council of Learned Societies conquest, and I think I can show you sources in which references are made to that sort of interchange. Mr. Herskovits: I should deem it unlikely in view of the dis-

tances to be traversed. ,

Mr. Harris: Another point I should like to raise concerns the degree to which the establishment in West Africa of trading posts in the sixteenth century brought about an association of European and African culture. As an economist, I should wonder about the effect of the change in commercial relations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Because it would be difficult to have dealings in slaves without some sort of intercourse resulting between the people who sold them and the people who bought them. Mr. Wisu: Those trading posts were quite restricted as to their

location. | |

Mr. Harris: But whether or not the market was far-flung,

the exchange in slaves must necessarily have involved some exchange of ideas.

Mr. Herskovits: You mean that a relatively small number of Europeans could have really influenced the culture of some mil-

lions of Africans? oO , -.Mr. Harris: I merely raised the question of the degree to

which European influence penetrated Africa by reason of trade

over a period of 250 years. | . }

‘Mr. Herskovits: Isn’t the fundamental point the need in our research to take all possibilities into account? We recognize the complexity of the problem, but if, in trying to explain what we find at the present time in American Negro behavior, we close our eyes to the possibility of some African survivals, no matter how tenuous

the form, are we not committing a methodological fault? It seems to me that when we find something in Negro behavior that deviates from the general pattern of American life, we should look elsewhere for a possible explanation, which may be historically substantiated. When among German-Americans we find deviants in behavior that resemble customs existing in Germany, we have no hesitation in asking whether this behavior may not be a survival of German custom. The only difference in the case of Africanisms

| | [424 } ,

is that the methodological difficulties in our way are so much greater. That is one reason the West Indies and South America

Linguistic Research and African Survivals — 89 are so important in our research, for here we can utilize the series of diminishing intensities of Africanisms to be found, which, | when carefully used, lead to the recognition of relationships in a manner otherwise impossible to achieve when one goes directly

from the United States to Africa. te ,

Mr. Frazer: I think there is a mistaken notion that Negro

scholars do not wish to recognize Africanisms in American Negro. behavior. I do not think that is true; an equally good case could

be made out for the opposite point of view. That is, race-conscious Negroes have shown, I think on the whole a greater disposition to attribute things to African culture than have whites. Mr. STERLING Brown: I was much struck by the comment on

the Negro music, and I recognize the justice of it. For instance, race-conscious Negroes claim for the spirituals an African background; they took “noble” spirituals and found “noble’’ African savages who were singing them. On the other hand, we find men like Jackson trying to understand Negro music from the written score alone, overlooking the fact that music, as certain authorities

are now pointing out, cannot be written down in all its setting. For instance, boogy-woogy piano playing taken down on Thursday will be an entirely different thing from the music taken down on

Friday, because the man is feeling different. I have an instance of the boogy-woogy who taught a white musician his music; but this white man was astonished to hear, two days later, the boogywoogy player playing the same piece in an entirely different man-

ner. The man said, “You didn’t teach me that.” | The pianist said, ‘‘When did I teach you?” | He said, ‘‘Thursday night.”

The first man said, “This is Saturday.” , The problem is also complicated by the introduction of the phonograph into Africa, isn’t it? I understand Dr. Bunche took “Flat Foot Floogie’” and left it with one of his Kikuyu friends. Mr. Herskovits: Certainly the problem is not an easy. one. It must be studied from all points of view. What Mr. Frazier says is perfectly true; we must look for correspondences all along

the line, and I suspect the answer to our problem is going to be cast in terms of the varying degrees of dilution in which African elements will be found in various parts of the New World. = |

| 425) :

90 American Council of Learned Societies VII. PROBLEMS IN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

W. Montacur Coss, Howard University _ An extensive knowledge of the physical constitution and ecology

of so large a segment of the American population as the thirteen million or more citizens of multiple racial origin who constitute the largest minority in the world, is of self-evident importance to the

United States. Basis for appraisal of activity in the field may be gained from the size, character, and accessibility of its literature, from the number of workers and laboratories engaged in it, and

from the organizations concerned with its promotion. | The literature of the physical anthropology of the Negro is not particularly large and is, for the most part, readily accessible. It must be recognized, however, that most studies done prior to 1910

are more of historical than scientific value. Every .important piece of work done since 1917 has either been published or reviewed in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. A comprehensive index of the first twenty-two volumes of this journal is now in press and should further facilitate reference to material on the Negro in the journal. The index volume of Martin’s standard text is of value, and anything missed in these sources

should be caught in the bibliographies regularly published in Human Biology and in the Quarterly Review of Biology. The 1934 Year Book of the Journal of Negro Education, which was titled,

The Physical and Mental Abilities of the American Negro, should

also be mentioned in this connection. This volume not only contains critical appraisals of what had been done up to that time, but has also a very useful bibliography. In addition, as a part of the work of the Laboratory of Anatomy

and Physical Anthropology at Howard University, we have begun to issue periodic reviews of somatological studies, two of which have appeared. There is a very definite need, however, for a text on the Negro in physical anthropology, and it is not expected that very much progress in having courses instituted in colleges, particularly Negro colleges, can be made until such a

text is available. Finally, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology has published a history of collections of human

[ 426 ] |

Problems in Physical Anthropology 91 materials of all types—skeletons, bones, brains, soft parts—which

takes account of their location. The investigator going about from collection to collection thus has available a guide to where materials, including Negro materials, may be found.

Despite the fact that physical anthropology is a very young science and that most of the scientifically acceptable studies of the Negro are of recent origin, it might be expected that there would have been more workers in this field, and especially more Negro

workers. But notwithstanding the intrinsic interest of the subject, the length and cost of the requisite preparation in the related biological sciences to say nothing of the need for some acquaintance with those other aspects of anthropological science that lie outside

the study of physical type, and the doubtful prospects for employment, seriously limit the number of students who seek careers in this discipline. Particularly is this true of Negro students, whose financial resources and prospects are generally less than average. In the light of the fact that those who have studied the physical anthropology of the Negro in the past are now largely inactive, either because of preoccupation with other studies, retirement, or

death—Bean, Boas, Davenport, Hrdlicka, Herskovits, and the late T. Wingate Todd—it would seem that the bulk of future stud-

ies of the Negro must be conducted by younger men. Of the activity of Negroes in this field, to the present it must be remarked

that only three Negroes have published original work. These are C. B. Day, who has considered the genealogies and inheritance

of physical traits in Negro-White families; K. B. M. Crooks, who has published discussions of color-blindness; and myself, with papers on cadaver demography, suprasternal bones, the anthropology of Negro athletes, and other matters. Since it is imperative that future studies be carried on with a thorough command of the requisite techniques, it may be well to survey briefly the opportunities for training in physical anthropology that are open to Negroes. For the Negro student who would acquire this training, one of two courses is open. He may obtain basic training in the techniques of the subject at those laboratories which will enroll him, and then go to the field or to the major collections for his studies,

[ 427 | |

92 _ American Council of Learned Societies or his needs may be met by a laboratory in a Negro institution

which can satisfy all the requirements. Training by the first alternative has been available to all, without discrimination, at the laboratories of Boas at Columbia, Hooton at Harvard, and Todd at Western Reserve. All qualified Negroes who have presented themselves at these institutions have received some training in physical anthropology. Of the five students thus trained, however, two by Boas, one by Hooton, and two by Todd, only one is now active in the field. At Howard University, we have been engaged in making training available in terms of the second alternative, through the organization of a well-equipped laboratory of anatomy and physical anthropology in our medical center.

Study of the physical anthropology of the American Negro centers about four principal objectives; first, the inventory of the physical, mental and ecological characters of this group; secondly, registration of the genetic and environmental phenomena asso-

ciated with the racial crossing that has produced the American Negro; third, assessment of the biological quality of the hybrid; -and fourth, the definition of the future possibilities of the Negro population in the light of all known facts and trends. It is obvious that to follow through such objectives needs more than the resources of any single discipline, and that it is essential that work of such magnitude necessitates the close, sustained and cordial co-

obtained. | a :

operation of many specialists if the desired results are to be At the present time, social and not scientific dictum defines an

American Negro. He is any person who has any known trace, however remote, of African Negro ancestry. The group of people so embraced does not constitute a race, because they exhibit too

much diversity in physical traits. When a racial term such as ‘American Negro” is made to include, on the one hand, persons who appear to have none but European ancestry, and on the other, those who show evidence of only African forebears, the resultant

group is notarace. It might be a race in formation, and its progeny might become a race, but the term cannot be applied by any

standard to the present group. The classification “American ‘Negro’’ has racial significance from a biological standpoint only

- [ 428 ]

Problems in Physical Anthropology _ «98 because the extant social system compels the people so designated to be essentially an intrabreeding group. If this condition obtains long enough, sufficient homogeneity may become established to

warrant the appelation “race’’ in a manner that cannot be countenanced today. This does not deny the obvious tendency toward the formation of a physical type intermediate between the African and European in those traits in which the two differ most markedly, for this trend is strikingly apparent at any large gather-

ing of Negroes. | Sn

The American Negro is becoming a blend of three racial stocks,

African Negro, European white, and American Indian. In the population as a whole, the Negro component is largest, the white lesser and the Indian least. Individuals of pure African ancestry are rare and difficult of positive identification. All degrees of Negro white admixture are common. © Individuals representing various degrees of Negro-white-Indian admixture are also common.

Individuals of varying degrees of Indian-Negro ancestry may be

found, but are not as frequent as the other types of admixture mentioned. In respect to origins, most attention has properly

attention. , |

been paid to the African, little to the white and hardly any to the

Indian. The environmental aspect has received practically no

Present information on African origins is largely due to the researches in the fields of history, and cultural and physical anthropology carried on by Herskovits. On the basis of his findings of affirmed parallelisms in cultural characteristics and practices in West Africa and the Western Hemisphere and his evidence that West Africans are predominantly short and stocky peoples, he has evolved the thesis that the African ancestors of the American Negro

were principally derived from the Upper and Lower Guinea Coasts, and not from such widely distributed areas as had been formerly supposed. It must be noted that despite the value of these contributions, additional study of the problems of provenience is desirable in analyzing this complex situation, since cultural parallelisms need not presume common origins, and there is evidence of other than short and stocky Africans in the ancestry of the American Negro. Although the white component is the most

[ 429 } - |

94 American Council of Learned Societies obvious and widely acknowledged, it is the least documented element in the American Negro’s ancestry. In view of the size and extensive distribution of the European contribution, it would seem that this component would have been thoroughly explored

for such light as it might shed on the hybrid. Yet it can hardly be affirmed that available sources such as those of Bean’s Old Virginians, Gould’s Old Americans of the South, or Hrdlicka’s Old Americans have béen utilized as fully as possible in this connection. Similarly, the Indian component in the American Negro’s geneal-

ogy has received too little attention from the physical anthropologist. Itis known that the bulk of the admixture was with the coastal tribes from Massachusetts to Florida, principally those of

the Five Nations. Although significant new ‘Negro-Indian admixture is not occurring, Herskovits found that nearly one third of

the Negroes he measured acknowledged Indian ancestry, while recently Krogman and Setzler have conducted surveys of surviving tribes of the Five Nations which should provide useful data. The major data of physical anthropology have in the past been derived from measurement or metrical observations of one kind or another. In order for these to be useful, however, a tremendous amount of drudgery is required to assure their scientific validity, and even so, in many cases it is impossible to set up anything approximating ideal experimental conditions. For example, we study certain features of living populations, but they represent a definitely socially selected group of people. The only material available for study of the inner parts of the body is the laboratory cadaver populations of the various cities, and these individuals are conscripted from the paupers of those communities. It has ‘been shown that these pauper populations present, in their mortality records. and in their mean ages and deaths, quite different pictures from those’ presented by general population samples which

are the subject of other ordinary investigations. For example, the average duration of life today is almost seventy

years for people in secure economic positions. For the poorly circumstanced white, it is in the neighborhood of forty-five, and nearly ten years less for the poorly circumstanced Negro, who

[ 430 } |

Problems in Physical Anthropology 95 furnishes the data for much of our study of soft parts. On all of our cadaver samples, moreover, there is always some possibility of further weighting which would influence results obtained in their study. Thus, in an industrial city such as New York the majority of the cadavers are individuals but recently in the prime of life, and they were either foreign immigrants or male Negroes who were out of work and died of tuberculosis or pneumonia. Ina city, such as Washington, which is not an industrial city and where funds for burial can usually be obtained, we are much overweighted

by the aged dead who come from the Home for the Aged and Infirm. We get very few white deceased here, and practically no females.

With all the careful documentation that the laboratory cadaver requires, a number of kinds of problem are being studied. Some of these are of phyletic significance, such as the variation in the branching of vessels, or the variation in the formation of nerve plexuses, and have no bearing on the study of survivals. On the other hand, there are investigations directed, say, at the area of cross-section of nerve fiber, which do have definite physiological significance.

Let us see why it is necessary to have a highly coérdinated labo-

ratory with studies of such varied trends going on. Owing in part to the fact that for a number of years the success of Negro athletes in track and football has been so conspicuous considerable

attention has recently been given to the question of possible physical peculiarities in Negroes. Dimensional studies have been made, and we have a good bit of unpublished data on this aspect

of the matter. But we find that considerations as to form of physique and body segments do not explain the performances of these athletes. This must be sought in such things as the study of the cross-section of nerve fibers in cadavers, so we can devise a way to appraise the nerve impulse carrying capacity of the living. Entirely new lines of approach are being made through the work of people like Dill, at Harvard, who has tested a great many runners

and, with the aid of very expensive and carefully prepared apparatus, has found that while chest expansion, physique, and the like, are in no small measure the source of the prowess of these men, [431]

96 American Council of Learned Societies

tant factor, a

the oxygen combining power of the blood is a much more imporIt is in such directions that investigations in physical anthropology are tending. We are deserting the taxonomic concerns which occupied our attention over the last several decades and devoting ourselves to the study of more minute physiological problems which

require more and more precise techniques and more and more

complex apparatus. | | |

_ An important field of study still relatively untouched concerns the size of the Negro brain. Pearl’s last review of literature on that subject showed that in every analysis that had been made the Negro brain weight was found to be about eight percent to ten percent less than white series to which it was compared. Curiously enough, Pearl did not mention Todd’s cranial capacity study, which analyzes the largest series of the crania available, and which

shows no appreciable racial difference in this trait. It must be recognized that the mixed American Negro population offers highly important materials for the study of human genetics. Yet these data nave not been utilized to anything like the extent their importance merits. Mrs. Day, in her Harvard Study, and Hooton in his analysis of her data are careful to emphasize that they consider that the greatest value of her work lies in the materials which were assembled, especially in the accuracy of

the genealogies. This is the only published collection of photographs of Negroes where we have the original crosses reproduced showing us what each white or Negro progenitor looked like, and two or more generations down. Unfortunately, the series was too

small to be satisfactory for statistical purposes, and hence the authors advanced only the tentative conclusion that in respect to the facial features the white type tends to have a dominance over that of the Negro. Mrs. Day said that she had not encountered any Negro who had no more than a quarter of Negro blood who could not easily pass for white. On the other hand, she found that children of a first (F1) cross between a white and a Negro would not present the uniformity to be expected under the Mendelian hypothesis, but that some would be distinctly Negroid, of a type

which she called the recessive mulatto, and others, which she called the dominant, might be very definitely white.

, , [ 482 ]

- Problems in Physical Anthropology 97 I may also mention the analysis of Dr. Herskovits’s data on pigmentation made by Miss Irene Barnes (Dr. Tauber). She showed that the mass inheritance of pigmentation cannot be explained on a Mendelian basis, because this would necessitate the assumption of multiple regression factors. Davenport held that there are two genes for pigmentation; therefore, in the analysis

of data from a hybrid population a bimodal curve results. Todd later showed that Davenport failed to allow for the red in his black on the card that he used in taking the pigmentation reading, and

that if proper allowance for that error were made, a unimodal curve resulted, so. the hypothesis of dual determiners for skin-color went by the board. . Nevertheless, in the White House Conference

reports, Davenport’s old data were incorporated in the factual summary just as though Herskovits’s and Todd’s results were not

available. The most interesting feature of Herskovits’s and Barnes’ studies of pigmentation was that no indication is given of any throw-back to a dark-skinned offspring through dilute descent. There are many other somatological features that merit study, if only because they occasionally crop into the public prints and thus, because of community pressure, cause a laboratory to give

attention to them. I may cite the recent statement by Heiser in ‘his book, An American Doctor's Odyssey, that the Negro has a single cartilage in his nose while whites have a split cartilage; that even with the race-mixture represented in octaroons, this single

cartilage is retained. Yet it needs only a sample demonstration of the comparative anatomy of the nasal cartilages to show quite clearly that not only all human beings, but all of the lower primates, have double cartilages, and that what is called the single cartilage is an illusion due perhaps to thick skin or heavy fibrous

tissue such as can be induced in the most blond complexioned

person by the excessive use of alcohol! ,

~ One problem in which, in the latter years before his death, Todd

had taken great interest, and to which all his later publications were devoted, was the growth and development of children. This

whole work was predicated on the premise that the taxonomic study of racial features had been employed as far as was profitable;

that we know that the characteristics which differentiate races do not have a survival value; and that no consistent aggregation

| _ : [433]

98 American Council of Learned Societies of physical characters can be discerned which permit a hierarchical

arrangement of the varieties of man. He concluded, therefore, that the most fruitful approach to the study of human physical types is to seek to understand how best we can nurture the growing

human, and to this end to obtain the most precise information possible about the mammalian growth pattern so that the human growth pattern can be better interpreted and understood. Only one study of that sort has been made with respect to the Negro; that by Royster and Hulvey. A small study is now being worked out in association with the Department of Agriculture, concerning the nutrition problems of two hundred Negro boys. A small report on ossification centers of Negroes has also been made; yet standards for the growth and development of the Negro are very badly needed, especially because there are so many

erroneous illusions abroad. For example, in a discussion in Cleveland the principal of a high school there defended a proposal to institute a type of training for Negroes that would fit them for janitorial service and work of that sort on the grounds that Negro

children of: southern migrants weren’t able to carry the regular curriculum. He made the statement that a Negro boy of twelve was equivalent in his physical development to a white man of

twenty, but was retarded in mental growth. Fortunately, the data readily available in Todd’s laboratory showed that there is nothing to support such an idea; yet we need much more material on which to base definite knowledge of what can cause an individual to realize his full potentialities of growth. Population problems as they concern the Negro are likewise of great moment. There are those who say that the ultimate solution of the American race problem must be decided either by amalgama-

tion or extermination; certainly the rates at which the two competing elements are multiplying in a limited territory is a very

important consideration. We know that in spite of a tremendously high mortality, the Negro’s birth rate has been large enough

to keep his numbers increasing. We know that there is an unusually high incidence among Negroes of venereal diseases which cause stillbirths, maternal mortality, and tuberculosis, and which kill Negroes in the reproductive years of life. Much more information is needed if a sound public policy is to be formulated. [ 434 ]

Problems in Physical Anthropology 99 If, in conclusion, we may make a somewhat more philosophical

point, it is that we need not make a fetish of Negro physical anthropology as such. We are dealing with a form of the living matter. We know that man, more than any other form of life, has come to dominate this planet, spreading more over the surface

of the earth, being able to adapt himself to higher altitudes and

greater depths. We have incontrovertible evidence that the resources of the earth can support any population that may be anticipated for several hundred years in the future. It would seem that our obligation is to bring out data to bear upon the annoying problems of the way in which people get along with each other on this earth, since tensions must inevitably increase as the population of the world grows larger.

, DISCUSSION Mr. Buncae: I wish Dr. Cobb would state a little more concisely just what would be needed in order to make possible a

definitive anthropometric analysis of the American Negro population.

I want also to comment on Dr. Cobb’s plea for a sort of “academic miscegenation”’ ; namely, that Dr. Herskovits and others working in this field should cultivate some sort of special proteges

in the Négro race who would carry on this work. I think that is much less important. I wouldn’t want to encourage these gentlemen to feel obligated to assume such responsibilities; what is more important is that someone who thinks straight and is well-trained in these subjects carry on this work, whether he is black or white. Wouldn’t it be true that it would be much more important to have a, well-trained white scholar do the job, for instance, than a poorly

trained Negro scholar? There should be both, and collaboration between them should be brought about. Mr. Coss: The statement I made concerning the racial identity of investigators of the physical anthropology of the Negro in the past was merely a notation, in passing, that they were all white. This situation may be changed in the future, but any work that is done should obviously be done by the people best prepared to do it.

What I had to say concerning the anthropometry of the [ 435 ]

100 American Council of Learned Societies American Negro referred to the need for various things; first of all,

to the extension of the amount of data gathered. Thus, in connection with the public health programs that are being set up now in Negro schools and colleges, it would be a very easy thing to institute a system of taking a few of the simpler measurements,

such as of stature. Another point to be emphasized is that we have an historical

objective in studying the sources of the American Negro. In West Africa, there are people today of many tribes who ought to be measured and the results made available according to modern methods of presentation in some form of atlas. The West Indian Negro should be anthropometrically surveyed, with photographs and hair samples taken, and other types of data gathered.

I believe that the laboratory for the study of the physical anthropology of the Negro should be manned by a staff with particular experience in the study of the Negro. There should be abundant data in that laboratory, concerning the living population, as well as skeleton materials and soft parts, such as brains,

hair samples and the like. None of the existing laboratories,

white or Negro, has such resources now. .

Mr. Herskovits: Since the research I conducted some fifteen years ago has been spoken of several times, may I emphasize my feeling that it is only to be regarded asa preliminary study. I think it needs very extensive working over by persons who are doing their research quite independently of anyone who was concerned with that study. The findings, as in any scientific analysis, should be checked and the changes that have gone on in the past decade

and a half should be recorded. It is regrettable that nothing has been done since the publication of my study so far as I know, except Mrs. Day’s research and the few measurements that I was later able to take in West Africa. The chief value of that work is

to highlight the poor state of our knowledge of West African physical anthropology, since the 279 men I was able to measure

is the largest series that exists for that area. When it is considered that the series contains measurements of men from three different tribes, no one of which is represented by more than one hundred individuals, we can see how little we know of the physical

inheritance of the New World Negro. i [ 436 |

Some Objectives of Negro Studies 101 VII. SOME OBJECTIVES OF NEGRO STUDIES A GENERAL Discussion CONDUCTED AT THE FinAL SEssION OF THE CONFERENCE |

Mr, Herskovits: It may be well at this point to consider as a whole the contributions that have been presented at our previous meetings, in the light of such action as you may deem desirable for this group and its continuation committee to make in furthering our common objectives. The floor is open for your suggestions

and comments. -

Mr. Wisu: I should like to raise certain points as to the approach we should take in our recommendations, especially as regards the form in which we feel research should be cast. Are we going to try to cover the West Indies by monographic studies

dealing with minute areas? Are we going to try to do over the work of Burns and Mathieson? For I don’t quite agree with what

has been said regarding the sources used by these and other scholars. If you look through Burns and Mathieson you will find such sources as British colonial papers and newspapers frequently used, sources which contain the most intimate materials. It seems to me that unless we are going to recommend an undertaking thought of in terms of a very extensive series of monographs

on the West Indies, it would be much better to limit ourselves to a few of the sections which can be worked most thoroughly. In this respect, especially as regards the question of emphasis, Dr. Williams could perhaps help us more than by merely pointing out

the gaps in West Indian research. I would like to have Dr. Williams explain where he would recommend emphasis be placed, so far as needed research is concerned.

Mr. WituiaMs: That is a difficult question. Speaking for my own interest, I would say slavery, but I could not at the same time say that the question of immigration is less important, or that the economic situation in the West Indies is more significant to under-

stand than social conditions. ,

Mr. Harris: It seems to me that a relevant proposal has al-

ready been made; that is that research in the West Indies might proceed along three lines; first, the study of African capitalism;

, [ 437 ] ,

102 American Council of Learned Societies

Brazil and Cuba. | |

second, research in the British West Indies; and third, study in

Mr. WILu1aMs: Or we might restate those problems as first, Africa and the rise of capitalism; secondly, the abolition of the slave system; and third, the Negro in Latin America. Mr. Herskovits: In considering what we would like to see in the report of the Committee on Recommendations, we might very

well give attention to those research tools that are lacking and which we would like to have made available, before considering those areas, either geographical or intellectual, in which research ought to be carried on. We all are going to continue our interests and our investigations in whatever field we are working, if only because we are fascinated by our problems for all those reasons that drive a research man to go on doing his research. But our greatest collective need is to have available the instruments that our discussions have shown are so sadly lacking in the field of Negro studies—bibliographies, microfilms, surveys of one kind or another, and the like. Mr. BuncHe: Yet we cannot ignore the importance of making clear to ourselves the scope of our interests in terms of the very broad social implications of our deliberations and researches. We have, perhaps, devoted too little time to considering a very im-

portant point Mr. Wish made in his paper: the importance of integrating studies of Negro populations with the main currents of the modern world, relating them to international affairs, and so on. As a political scientist, particularly as a Negro political

scientist, this strikes me as being highly important. | : It is not inconceivable that as things are going in the world the next few years may offer the white social scientist an opportunity to study the reactions of the Negro ex-scholar in the ghettoes of a fascist nation. We would be joined, perhaps, by ex-scholars of other groups, Jewish ex-savants, and a few liberal Nordics. What we must do now is take into consideration the status of the Negro populations in the Western World with respect to the directions which the economic and political structures and prevailing philosophies of various countries are taking or may take. ‘These inert black populations are potential forces which can be

[ 438 ] |

Some Objectives of Negro Studies : 103 manipulated very effectively. In astudy that we are now making we run across countless examples of this sort of thing—the use of the Negro population to maintain the Crump machine in Memphis; the use of the Negro population by the established machine in San

Antonio to oppose the liberal candidate, Maverick; or, on the other side of the ledger, the use of the Negro population to put across local bond elections for schools and auditoriums, and so on.

Yet this is a population which is given no general political status but is nevertheless handy for whatever group may care to use it for its own ends. This is a process that has many larger implications, especially when considered in terms of some things that are happening in Africa, such as certain appeals made by fascist elements to the large native populations in South Africa. For the same reason consideration of the colonial policy of England in the Caribbean is of first importance as is American colonial policy, which is so often ignored (when it is not forgotten that we have one). .

There are still other subjects we have not mentioned: the organizations of Negro peoples, not merely the churches and secret societies, but the very significant protest, betterment, and reform

materials. | organizations. Similarly, the question of leadership has been very largely ignored, except for some scattered biographical

From the more practical standpoint, I fail to see why we should not devote some attention to the question as to how the informa-

tion that is being piled up by scholars in the Negro field can be made a little more available to the laymen. Scholars too often form a kind of closed circle. We each read what others write and know what is going on, but it does not permeate beyond our groups. There is a great need, I think, for some medium to make our findings more generally available.

I might at this point call attention to the fact that here, at Howard, the Division of Social Sciences some time ago drew up a program, which we called a five-year social science research program, that touched upon many of the points that have been raised

in this discussion. I may mention a few of the topics listed:

[439] |

Africa and the rise of capitalism: Negro participation in the move-

104 © $American Council of Learned Societies ment for abolition in the United States, 1830 to 1860; Negro labor

in the cotton economy; the black worker since the New Deal; the adjustment of the Negro to modern urban civilization; a comparative study of the cultural and social programs typical of minority counter-assertion and compensatory adjustment, with particular reference to Jewish-Negro parallels; a psychoanalytic study of the motivations and mechanisms of the foregoing; colonial policy in the West Indies; racial policy in the Union

of South Africa; the biography of Magloire Pilage, leader in the independence movement of Guadeloupe; Negro social movements, from equal citizenship to communism, and their leaders. —

_ Mr. Hersxovirs: It is apparent that any report of this conference should indicate both the richness of the field, the breadth of its scope, the problems of certain single disciplines and those of an inter-disciplinary character; and also, suggest many essential

aids to study. . | oe | | ‘Mr. Coss: I should like to add the suggestion that some organ

should be provided which could give representation to the different

disciplines involved. , , | Mr: Locks: I wonder, however, if one of the very things that

we are striving to do, that is, to integrate the study of the Negro with the general study of cognate problems, would not be defeated by establishing of such a special organ, which would be some kind of a journal of Negro studies. I was just about to say, when the Chairman spoke, that while I agree heartily with his forecast of what the framework of the findings of the Conference should be, it ought to be definitely stressed that one of the major aims of the newer point of view is not only to integrate the various aspects of the study of the Negro, but also to point out that these studies have something to contribute to the general theory and interpretation of the respective fields concerned. In other words, the object of our research is not merely to find information for and about the Negro, but to exploit what is in many respects a significant labora-

tory situation that will enable us to throw important light on crucial theoretical questions in the respective disciplines. |

| { 440 } |

Mr. Cops: What I had in mind was something of a less

specialized and technical nature than the kind of publication Dr.

Some Objectives of Negro Siudies 105 Locke has suggested. I believe that everyone publishes, and must publish, his straight scientific reports in the established journals of the field. But, as Dr. Bunche suggested, such information as we have on the Negro is circulated within a closed group. This is apparent when we consider the types of Negro journals we have: either the more or less civic-political magazines like The Crisis and

Opportunity; or the Journal of Negro History, and the Journal of Negro Education, which are definitely specialized. Mr. Graves: Might I say a word on this question, as more or less a specialist in the development of underworked fields of study? I am under the handicap of not having heard all your discussions, but what I have heard touched upon by Mr. Bunche and Mr. Locke

seems to me a major question. That is, how far you are thinking in terms of developing Negro studies only as a field of research; and on the other hand, how far do you think of developing Negro studies as a tool in undersfanding the world we have to live in? These are two different phases of the problem, and your development of Negro studies as a program of research has significance only so far as you make the case for the development of Negro studies as a tool for understanding the world that we have to live

in in the second half of the twentieth century. a As Mr. Locke suggested, in all these development fields, one of the first things scholars ask for is a journal; and he pointed out a danger which I have seen develop in Indic studies, in Chinese, and

every other underdeveloped field, of aggravating the sense of separation which already exists between groups of specialists by locking their studies into isolated organizations. There is a great tendency for scholars in a restricted field to get off in a corner and work by themselves, and consequently to be considered as queer

by practically everybody else. Certainly such a development discourages their having the effect on scholarship in general that their particular competences and their particular interests ought

to have. And this tendency is frequently aggravated by the existence of a scientific journal which encourages that type of

, (441) |

departmentalization. Dr. Cobb diverted the matter in a direction which might have

better results,—a journal of information or a publication which

106 American Council of Learned Societies would let people know what is going on in the fields of Negro studies, particularly people having a peripheral interest in them. You cannot expect the economists or sociologists, who should be

using Negro data in studying these questions you have mentioned—village organization, for instance—to become specialists in

Negro studies. You have to supply the tools on the basis of which they can integrate—I think that is the favorite term nowadays—these specific studies into their specific disciplines. So I think there is a good deal to be said against any activity

that sets you up purely as a group interested in a program of research, interesting and fascinating as that program obviously is.

I think you must give serious consideration to the problem that Mr. Bunche raised, namely, how these Negro studies are to be

made a tool for understanding the world that we are in. It is only when you get your studies on that kind of basis that you are going to lay a real foundation for Negro studies that are of significance in terms of coping with the problems we all must face.

Mr. Herskovits: Despite the importance of the point made by Mr. Graves, we must not overlook a difference of some moment between a gathering such as this and, let us say, a meeting of those

interested in Sinological studies, or concerned with work in the Indo-Iranian field. This difference, I think, is that those persons who are concerned with Negro studies represent many disciplines and, as has been pointed out, have been working in isolation from

others concerned with related problems to such an extent that our need is for some integrating device. There really is no such thing as a “field” of Negro studies. There merely happen to be sociologists and linguists and political scientists and physical anthropologists and psychologists and ethnologists who are con-

cerned with problems that touch on the Negro. One thing on which all of us will heartily agree is that the problems with which

we are concerned have attracted us because they do in a sense consist of materials from the laboratory set up in the New World by history and which are available for the study of problems of far-reaching importance. Mr. Buncue: We are all opposed to Jim Crow.

Mr. Herskovits: Certainly to scientific Jim Crowism. Yet there has been a serious lack of any source to which one might [ 442 ]

Some Objectives of Negro Studies 107 turn for studies of the Negro ina given field which have special reference to similar studies in other disciplines. It is here that

looms so large. |

the importance of bibliographic research, which we have stressed,

Mr. Locke: The most useful single project we have mentioned would be a critical annotated bibliography of Negro studies. Mr. AprHEeKeER: I would like to suggest that in line with our discussion of tools, a point Dr. Reddick made is of some importance—that one of the fundamental instruments of research is the man who does the research, and many of the Negro scholars con-

cerned with Negro research have great difficulty in getting at source material. I wonder if, at least in the record of this Conference, some statement concerning that should not be present, that would at least indicate our feeling of the necessity of doing away with discrimination of this kind. Mr. Herskovits: I should like to hear Mr. Berrien discuss the possible usefulness of some form of central clearing-house for published materials as it might affect work in South America and Latin America. Suppose, for example, there were some kind of a publication which took a wide bibliographic range, and which would perhaps even accept papers in the languages of the Americas. Could this be expected to have any effect in integrating the whole

field, and would it be of use to scholars concerned with Negro studies in Latin America? Mr. BERRIEN: Certainly in Brazil and Cuba, and to a lesser extent in Columbia, Venezuela, and Peru, it would be of definite interest, and contributions might be expected, to say nothing of subscriptions. If you could publish the studies as they came, in Spanish or in Portuguese, that would be an additional advantage from the Latin American point of view.

Mr. Herskovits: Would it be worth while to envisage a possible monograph series, which would make available to scholars in all fields extended studies which happen to deal with Negro data?

Mr. Reppicx: I should suggest that a guide to available

materials is the first essential. | Mr. Bascom: A monograph series could serve the purpose of covering past bibliographies. -

[ 443 ] , ,

108 American Council of Learned Societies Mr. WisH: I think there is every argument for putting the materials in one place. For that matter, the American Historical Association, with a Congressional appropriation, publishes regular

bibliographies in which they try to include everything of a his-

torical character. The same thing can be said for the Journal of N egro History, which covers a specialized field of its own. But when one actually wants to do anything of an inter-disciplinary nature, then the real difficulties arise.

_ Mr. Buncue: Concerning the statement made by Dr. Locke, I think we ought to devote some attention to actual possibilities for the publication of articles on the Negro utilizing present available media. In some fields this is relatively easy. Anthropologists deal with the Negro as a respectable topic, and the journals of anthropology take such articles without hesitation. In respect to my own field, which concerns the political status of the Negro, except in so far as papers having to do with colonial

problems and the like are involved, there isn’t a very cordial reception for papers dealing with the Negro. I wonder what

journals?

Dr. Harris would say about the actual possibilities for publication

of articles on Negro labor problems, and so on, in economic Mr. Harris: I am inclined to think that while an occasional

article would be welcomed, anyone who would expect to have the Journal of Economics or the Political Science Quarterly, which we will consider as borderline, publish four or five articles a year, on

topics touching the Negro, would be quite disappointed. One of my friends, an editor, told me when I published The Negro As a Capitalist, “The technique is all right, but all this stuff about

Negroes is outside my interest.” ,

Mr. Herskovits: May I ask your feeling about a possible recommendation of this Conference as to the desirability of indicating the importance of some form of publication?

Mr. Locks: Is not “some form” a little too vague? The question very obviously divides itself into an expression of opinion

on the relative value of monographic presentation as against a

journal of Negro studies. | oe

[ 444 } |

Mr. Buncue: Are these mutually exclusive? ©

Some Objectives of Negro Studies” 109

forgotten, = a pe ,

_ Mr. Jounson; The possible value of ‘abstracts should not be

Mr. Puckett: Should not any publication envisaged also be thought of as including lists of research projects under way as

well as those that have been brought to publication? __ Mr. Hersxovirs: Is it the feeling of the group, then, that it is desirable to have some kind of centralized means of making known what is going on and what has gone on in Negro studies, in terms of bibliographies, monographs, reports on current researches, reviews and abstracts of literature, and the like? _ _- Mr. Pucxert: It seems to me quite probable that this sort of codrdination might even lead to further codrdination in connection

with individual university faculties. The subject of Negro studies would be a good point of integration, at least of various social studies, and possibly there might be more in the way of coéperative publication by people in one given locality, or even among members of a wider group than that.

- Mr. Jonson: Might not such a group as this, if permanently

organized, attempt also to stimulate original work? _ Mr. Herskovits: You mean a possible program of fellowships,

orsomething of that kind? ss | - Mr. Jounson: That, or grants-in-aid. ee

Mr. LeLanp: Of course the resources of the Council available for grants-in-aid would be, as they have been, available in any

case to those working in this field of Negro studies. Mr. Herskovits: And the same thing would be true, I take it, of the practical points that have arisen out of our discussion of the need for microfilming, though I suppose that a committee on Negro studies would tend to focus the interest of the Council

lying within the field. an ,

_ Mr. LELAND: Certainly the advice of such a committee would be

exceedingly valuable to the Council in. regard to all proposals concerning Negro studies. I should suppose that all proposals in this field would pass through the committee before being considered by the Council; proposals, that is, coming to us from outside the committee, would be referred to the committee for its

advice before the Council acted on them. That is our practice

[446]

110 American Council of Learned Societies a with regard to the other fields in which we maintain special committees.

Mr. JoHnson: Might we not discuss the advisability of concentrating studies somewhat further?

Mr. Bascom: Do you mean, for example, to select a certain West Indian island, and work it thoroughly with respect to all the disciplines represented here?

Mr. Levanp: An approach of that sort would come within the category of large-scale projects, to be carried on by a considerable number of scholars working together on the basis of a general understanding among them. What we should do with a project of this sort that came before us recommended by this Committee, if we thought we could do anything with it at all, would be to try to set it up in some practicable form. Projects of concentration,

however, seem to me more suitable for institutions to set up, maintain, and assume the responsibility for them. A committee on Negro studies, however, might be very useful in advising concerning projects of that sort.

Mr. Reppick: I was wondering whether further discussion about microfilming of documents would not be in order.

Mr. Bascom: What of the centralization of some of this material?

Mr. LELAND: It seems to me to be much more important to know where materials are than to have them concentrated in one place. It is desirable, of course, in some cases to have certain places that do make a specialty of collecting specific categories of

material designated as custodians of other collections. But the important thing is to have a good policy of codrdination among institutions that are concerned with related fields so they will coéperate instead of compete with each other. They should have ample information as to their respective resources, and ample facilities for exchanging materials with each other, as well as with outside people, and for microfilming. Mr. JoHNnson: Should not reference be made for the record to

the projected but long dormant plans for an encyclopedia of the Negro?

Mr. Herskovits: Reference has not been made to many such [ 446 ]

Some Objectives of Negro Studies lil things. Thus, the Journal of Negro History, and the special job it is doing in the very field we are concerned with, has only received passing mention. But I imagine we all know about these projects.

Mr. BuncHeE: The Carnegie Survey has likewise not received mention. Mr. LELAND: The lack of such a body as the proposed committee

was very much felt in setting up the encyclopedia project. Many of us called in on that felt rather helpless in not knowing what scholars to bring together for advice. A committee of this sort would have been exceedingly helpful in trying to get that project set up.

Mr. Herskovits: If it is apparent that this group feels that a committee on Negro studies would be useful in the many ways indicated in our discussions, your Committee on Recommendations will submit a proposal to this effect to the Council, embody-

ing in its report those points you have stressed as particularly desirable to achieve.

[ 447]

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