Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1911-08-11

.
on solid and substantial food. not
lmXuriuuS
The negro race added from two To
three inches To its height and an aver
age Of twenty pounds to the weight oi
the iull grown man or woman during
slavery. Whatever the wrongs of the
negro may have been. in the opinion
Of PERSONS who have studied the mat
ter. il is safe to say that perhaps no
race WAS in better physical condition
" hen emancipation came. and none
had made greater progress physically
from the day negroes were imported
from Africa.
The white and Indian blood. per-
hupS the mode of living, mimimiZed
the features of the negr". and he i'm
proved in looks. and by 1870 this
blood mixture had affected the entire
negro population Of the country. J.
stall Patterson, one of the few per-
SONS who have made Il study of negro
cthnology. insists that the white blood
among the negroes has been 50 well
distributed that there is scarcely ne
gro of pure African blood in the coun-
try. AS he puts ii:
Even now they (the ncgroes) are
no longer negroes. one third have u
large infusion of white blood; one
third have less but still some, and Of
the other third ii would be difficult To
find an assured specimen Of pure Afri-
can blood.
Any one who knows the negro type
VIII recognize the truth of this state
mcnt ana will recognize the folly ot
classifying by color. An average negro
family with any cUnSi,It rable prOpOr-
ton Of white blood in il will show
children from light yellow to almost
black and the ataViStic principle Is
strong III such mixtures and Is one Of
the croWninS arguments against racial
inlcrmarriaSc. From the marriage Ol
Il white man with woman Of
only one-SiXtccnth negro and showing
herself none of the characteristics OF
the negro race is often born child
white in color but decidedly African
i'll feature.
Since slavery and especially since
the adoption i'm Louisiana of the policy
Of segregatimg the races, thus putting
Il stop 10 any further intermingling OF
blood. another marked change has
taken place in the negro in Louisiana,
both rapid and surprising. lntermiX-
turr between the races has been al
most entirely cut OFF. The negro race
is receiving no more Indian or white
blood, and aS no distinction is drawn
among the negroes between white
negro" and black negro" Git was
drawn i'm slavery days, when the
cream cOlOred Octoroon Spurned the
leather cOlOred quadrOUn and the lat
ter took il out on the yellow mulatto
or dark mOlaSses tinted grilfe) inter-
marriage is rapidly reducing the race
To Il homogeneous one, probably five
SiXthS negro and one-SiXth white. with
4. 4, Ia. ...f.
almost gone 4 few escape disguised
into the ranks of the whites, OCCASION
ally to be exposed and driven back;
the others sink down into the mass of
the negro race.
But the striking feature of this
change is that the new negro, the
or homogeneous negrOid, Is
very dark. probably darker than the
antcbellum negro or even the original
imported African. No one who can
remember conditions Of fifty years ago
but is struck by the fact that the
average negro of Louisiana of today
and especially of New Orleans is much
darker than of old.
Ii is q dark, velvety black rather
Than the blackish yellow of the origi-
nal Congo African. 1t is much too
black for the proportion of white and
cal negro of today. On the other
hand although blacker, the features
are less pronouncedly African, the hair
less woolly;
How much of this improvement is
due to better conditions. to better liv-
ing and how much to racial inter-
mixture is of course impossible to say.
The wavy hair is frequent instead Of
wool, which the negroes abhOr as
racial badge. Thus there is a blacker
race. more distinctly African in color
hut infinitely less SO in feature. black
American as ii were.
The explanation probably lies in the
fact that the black type of negro is
more Virilc and increases more rapidly
than the yellow or mixed types and is
therefore swallowing them up. Qua
drOunS and mulattOS. as a whole, are
weaker. are more prone To disease and
have smaller families. Formerly these
people. who were mainly free, looked
with contempt un the blacks. but this
: sentiment has been destroyed by the
experiences of the last forty years.
The negro race is not Self-SuppOrt-
ing i'm New Orleans: there the negro
deaths exceed the births. and the de
irirnry is made good by the drift of
the hlacker negroes from the country
districts. Thus. with continuous
supply Of black blood flowing in. the
HmalgamatiOn becomes more complete.
This does not. however. fully explain
the tendency of the negro To grow
weaker. which is due rather To the
fact that the black tribes of Africa
were Of a stronger and more virile type
and there is that natural tendency to
revert to that original type.
The same tendency is shown I'm sew
rral of the West Indian islands, where
the original Indian inhabitants have
been swallowed up by the negroes, as
we'll as n considerable white pOpula-
tiun. with apparently no effect on the
color of the negroes. In st. Kits, to
which thousands of Irishmen were
sent as prisoners during William Of
Oranges campaign in Ireland there is
little apparent trace of Irish blood to
he found among the inhabitants. but
the negroes of the island speak with
marked Irish brngue. all that survives
Of the prisoners.