CHAPTER III

THE FACTS

 

It would be wise at the beginning to set down the elementary statistics regarding the current performance of the Negro as a race in America. Although there could be no debate about these figures, and although the sole controversy raged over why they were what they were, nevertheless they remained in themselves an important introductory part of the evidential picture.

The American Negro on the average produced per capita eight times as many illegitimate children,{1} six times as many feeble-minded adults, nine times as many robberies, seven times as many rapes and ten times as many murders as the White man.{2} Conversely the Negro race produced one-sixth as many individuals with an Intelligence Quotient over 130, that is, in the gifted person category.{3} These were the undisputed facts concerning the performance and behavior of the Negro in the United States.

Overseas, in the only completely Negro republic in the Western Hemisphere, the Republic of Haiti, where the Negro had been on his own, so to speak, since 1844 one found the following situation from a self-government standpoint. After the Negroes massacred the last of the White population in 1804, Haiti remained a part of Santo Domingo until 1844 when it became a separate "republic." Between 1844 and 1915 only one Haitian President completed his term of office. Fourteen were ousted by armed uprisings, one was blown up, one was poisoned and another was hacked to pieces by a mob.

Between 1908 and 1915 the revolutions and assassinations

 

1. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, 1965, Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor.

2. Uniform Crime Reports, 1963, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

3. Audrey Shuey, The Testing of Negro Intelligence, 2nd Ed., 1966, New York. Hereafter cited as Shuey.


increased so rapidly that a United States military occupation was needed to restore order. This lasted from 1915 to 1934. Thereafter followed twelve years of rule by a mulatto elite which ended in the resumption of control by the black military in 1946. Since then wholesale corruption and political murder have been the rule.{4}

Such was the more recent record of the Negro in the Western Hemisphere, and it could be duplicated on a descending scale throughout Africa.{5} The only question concerned the cause—was it faulty education and social deprivation, that is to say, environment, or was it something else? Environment was the exorcistic word, the abracadabra of the Negro movement. It was the catch-all excuse, heard from Zanzibar to Seattle, covering a period in time from the dawn of history to the present—although one might suppose, in the words of one writer, that in 6000 years the Negro's luck would have changed at least once.

Indeed it seemed to me it could reasonably be argued that with all due allowance for the environmental excuse, the Negro's current performance could stand, for the moment at least, as Exhibit A in my roster of evidence against the equalitarian. I emphasized the word, because the difference between evidence and proof was vital. The distinction was constantly neglected by equalitarians to confuse discussion. As one of their additional techniques of deceit it consisted in challenging isolated items of evidence as falling short of absolute proof, regardless of how

 

4. Liberals sometimes argue that other, non-Negro South American countries have similar records. The facts are that only Bolivia approaches Haiti in such indices as low life-expectancy, high illiteracy, low per capita consumption of newsprint, low per capita gross national product and low political stability, and all the Bolivian situation indicates is that neither the Negro nor some Andean Indian substocks of the Mongolian race are capable of maintaining stable, free societies. It does not qualify the Negro.

5. See infra, p. 61. It may also be noted that between 1945 and 1960, non-White immigrants to England numbered 1,000,000. This influx, mostly Jamaican Negroes, subsequently was curtailed by law. Although these 1,000,000 people constitute less than three per cent of England's population today, they are producing 75 per cent of the waifs now being received in British orphanages. Most are illegitimate and are Negroid in varying degree.

 

strong a circumstantial case the item made, and then deliberately avoiding an assembly of such items with its cumulative significance.

We would soon see that the weight of the evidence, the balance of probability, in every area of comparison between the White man and the Negro, favored the existence of innate differences in both intelligence and temperament. This was true whether one studied anatomy, histology, physical anthropology, kinesthetic maturation rates, electrophysiology, psychology or historical experience. In some of these areas the balance was less conclusive than in others, but in all it was on the side of innate differences, and the total taken together could not be called other than convincing.

Thus while world-wide performance admittedly did not provide absolute proof of the Negro's genetic limitations, it was certainly no evidence whatever in his favor. It was suggestive evidence against the equalitarian dogma. In this sense I could offer it as my introductory exhibit.

One came next to a more obviously probative item. In 1950 C. J. Connolly, Professor of Physical Anthropology at Catholic University, published certain findings in a book which Dr. James Papez of Cornell called "a reliable study of considerable scope the like of which has not appeared in recent times." The book was entitled The External Morphology of the Primate Brain and in part involved the study of 60 brains of Whites and Negroes.

The nature of Dr. Connolly's findings might be summarized in his own words:

"Comparing the two large groups of Whites and Negroes, while the variability is large and there is much overlapping, the mean values reveal significant differences. The dimensions correlate well with what we might expect from a knowledge of the cranium in the two races. The Negro brain is on the average relatively longer, narrower, and flatter than the brain of the Whites. The frontal region, as measured by the projectional distance to midpoint of central sulcus, is, relative to the total length of the brain, larger in male Whites than in Negroes, while the parietal is larger in Negroes than in Whites . . . . It can be said that the pattern of the frontal lobes in the White brains of our series is more regular, more uniform than in the Negro brain . . . . The White series is perhaps slightly more fissurated and there is more anastomosing of the sulci . . . . It is a matter of frequencies."{6}

The same conclusion had been reached many years earlier by Poynter and Keegan, who found that "the sulci and gyri of the Negro brain are undoubtedly less complex and easier of interpretation than those of the Caucasian."{7}

No evidence was brought forward, by the hierarchy or anyone else, to contradict these findings, although an abortive effort was made to evade their implications. Some critics argued that not enough was known about the function of the frontal lobes to evaluate the significance of the differences.

The reply here could be quick and decisive. The functional aspect of these lobes had been studied by Ward C. Halstead, bio-psychologist and Professor of Experimental Psychology, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, who wrote: "The frontal lobes are the portion of the brain most essential to biological intelligence. They are the organs of civilization-the basis of man's hope for the future."{8}

Wilder Penfield, brain specialist and Professor of Neurology and Neuro-surgery at McGill University, considered at the very top of his profession, confirmed Dr. Halstead's position in these words: "The whole anterior frontal area on one or both sides may be removed without loss of consciousness. During the amputation the individual may continue to talk, unaware of the fact that he is being deprived of that area which most distinguishes his brain from that of the chimpanzee. After its removal, there

 

6. C. J. Connolly, External Morphology of the Primate Brain, 1950, Springfield, Ill., pp. 146, 203-4. Father Connolly, mindful of the equalitarian climate of his time and his position as a Catholic, is always guarded in his statements, which are full of qualifications. Thus he may easily be quoted out of context to an opposite effect from the general tenor of his book. He reminds us constantly of the existence of overlap. He raises the possibility that later discoveries or other samplings may provide different evidence. None has. For a further discussion of Connolly's problem, see my speech at Jackson, Miss., Oct. 26, 1961, Congressional Record, Jan. 25, 1962, Vol. 108, No. 10, pp. 830-831.

7. C. W. M. Poynter and J. J. Keegan, "A Study of the American Negro Brain," 1915, Journal of Comparative Neurology, Vol. 25, pp. 183-212.

8. Ward C. Halstead, Brains and Intelligence, 1947, Chicago, p. 149.

 

will be a defect, but he may well not appreciate it himself. The defect will be in his ability to plan and take initiative . . . although he may still be able to answer the questions of others as accurately as ever."

Freeman and Watts reached somewhat the same conclusions: "It is not a question of intelligence in all this [consideration of the function of the frontal lobes], it is a question of the employment of intelligence . . . . Intelligence is not a function of the pre-frontal regions, nor is it altered by cleancut removal, except indirectly . . . . Something else in the personality is more important and presumably that something else is motivation."{10}

Not only did the size and the degree of sulcification (fissuration) of the frontal lobes imply certain specific capacities. They were in general a measure of evolutionary development. The frontal lobes of the rabbit were smooth. Connolly himself had noted "there is a degree of correlation between the sulcal pattern and the development status of the animal in the series of primate forms."{11}

The only other attempt at evasion I had heard in regard to Connolly's studies was a complaint that his sampling had been too small. The reply could again be pointed. If the hierarchy questioned the sampling, why had they never presented a better one? The hierarchy had the funds and the help of the great

 

9. Wilder Penfield and Theodore Rasmussen, The Cerebral Cortex of Man, 1957, New York, p. 226. Neither Halstead nor Penfield has made any studies of the relative characteristics of White and Negro brains and they are quoted here solely on the significance of the frontal lobes regardless of race. Both men have attacked George and me as "racists" while specifically conceding the accuracy of our quotations on the point in question. They had no evidence of their own to offer on the race issue, showed no curiosity about developing any, and confined themselves to criticizing the evidence of others as "inadequate." I examined this position in detail in The Mankind Quarterly, 1963, Vol. IV, No. 1, pp. 43-44.

10. W. Freeman and J. W. Watts, Psychosurgery, 1950, Springfield, Ill., p. 16.

11. Connolly, op. cit., p. 360. It is of interest to note Brodmann's estimate that no less than 64 per cent of the total surface of the human cerebral hemisphere is hidden in the fissures as against 7 per cent in the lowest monkey. See Penfield and Rasmussen, op. cit., p. 206.



foundations, the opposition did not. Was it possible that the hierarchy feared to conduct further studies? I left the question open, but I had no hesitation in classifying Connolly's material as Exhibit B, my second item of evidence.

Now for the third. In 1934 F. W. Vint of the Medical Research Laboratory, Kenya, Africa, published the results of a comparative study of Negro and European brains in which he found that the supragranular layer of the Negro cortex was about 15 per cent thinner than the Whites.{12} On the significance of this finding one could quote Dr. George: "Since structure is a guide to general functions in all those activities that have been adequately analyzed, it would seem rash to disregard structure in any consideration of the higher mental functions. In this connection it seems very significant to me that the cells of the infragranular layer have extensive primary connections with the lower brain centers while the connections of the cells of the supragranular layer are largely intracortical. This is powerful evidence of their primary participation in the special functions of the cortex—the organ of civilization."{13}

Thus the thickness of the supragranular layers, which increases as one moves up the scale from animals to man, could be said to be another measure of evolutionary development. The supragranular layers in the dog are one-half the thickness of those in the ape, and the thickness of the ape's only three-fourths the thickness in man."{14} In the case of the Negro their relative thinness again suggested his position on the evolutionary scale.

Vint went further. He both confirmed a significant simplicity in the convolutional pattern of the Negro and in addition discovered racial differences in the cyto-architecture of the frontal cortex—a paucity of large pyramidal neurons and an excess of small primitive cells in this area.{15}

 

12. F. W. Vint, "The Brain of the Kenya Native," 1934, Journal of Anatomy, Vol. 68, pp. 216-223.

13. Personal letter to the author. See The Mankind Quarterly, op. cit., pp. 44-46.

 

To my knowledge, the only attempt yet made to discredit Vint's findings consisted in the suggestion that differences in health or preservative techniques between the European brains which were measured in Europe and the Negro brains which were measured in East Africa might have caused differences in shrinkage which would invalidate his findings. Dr. George replied that there was no reason to assume that such shrinkage would affect the Negro's supragranular layer without at the same time affecting his lamina zonalis, or the visuosensory area of his infragranular layer, which Vint had found to be thicker in the Negro than in the White.

Again any new studies by those who might wish to contradict Vint were notable by their absence. And so here we had Exhibit C.

Next one came to the subject of brain weight which Simmons had attempted to confuse. There could be no argument about the fact that, other things being equal (such as sex, body size, proportion of parts and sulcification), the weight of the brain correlated with intelligence. This was true throughout the series of vertebrate animals. A 300-400 pound alligator had a brain of about 15 grams—and little sense. A 300-400 pound porpoise had a brain weight around 1700 grams and was noted for its intelligence.{16}

Among human races numerous studies had been made of the comparative weights of White and Negro brains with results that all fell within the range of about an 8-12 per cent lower weight for the Negro brain. Such studies were published by Bean, Pearl, Vint, Tilney, Gordon, Todd and others.{17}

 


14. J. S. Bolton, The Brain in Health and Disease, 1914, London.

15. F. W. Vint, op. cit.; also R. Ruggles Gates, Human Genetics, 1946, New York, Vol. II, p. 1138.

16. George Crile, Intelligence, Power and Personality, 1941, New York.

17. Bennet Bean, 1906, American Journal of Anatomy 5:353-432; H. L. Gordon, "Amentia in the East African," 1934, Eugenics Review, 25:223-235. In addition to the difference in brain weight, Gordon notes that the East African native brain grows less after puberty than the European. Bright 14-year-old native boys fail to fulfill their promise. Starting at 10 years, the brain capacity starts less than the White and shows a flatter growth curve; Piersol's Human Anatomy, 9th Ed., 1936, Philadelphia, p. 1196. Piersol says: "Considered in relation to great groups, as to people or races, brain weight has been found to correspond to the general plane of intelligence and culture." Quantity is not the sole factor. Differences in the quality of nerve cells and of their organization may exist; Raymond Pearl, Science, 1934, 80:431-434; Frederick Tilney, The Brain from Ape to Man. 1928, New York; T. Wingate Todd, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 6:97-194; F. W. Vint, op. cit., pp. 216-223; Olaf Larsell, Morris's Human Anatomy, 10th Ed., 1942, Philadelphia, p. 901.

 


I had never seen any findings which disputed these, although constant efforts like Simmons' occurred to confuse the issue by injecting variables which properly were eliminated in the initial hypothesis. The evidence was simply that, as a racial average, the Negro brain was lighter than the White and that this, in turn, indicated a lower average level of intelligence and evolutionary grade.{18} In the words of Dr. Coon, "among living populations—absolute brain size is generally, although not necessarily individually, related to achievement."{19}

In point of fact, in brain-weight comparisons one passed beyond a matter of simple evidence and approached the field of positive proof. But for the moment I was satisfied simply to classify the material as Exhibit D.

The preceding Exhibits from the sciences of anatomy and histology had recently gained support from physical anthropology. By the evidence of fossil remains in Europe and Africa, Dr. Coon's Origin of Races{20} had documented the hypothesis that the White race crossed the evolutionary threshold from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ahead of the Negro.

In this book Coon referred to the "great variability of twentieth-century human beings in evolutionary grades [emphasis mine] as well as in racial lines." He also said: "It is a fair inference that fossil men now extinct were less gifted than their descendants who have larger brains, that the subspecies which crossed the evolutionary threshold into the category of Homo sapiens the earliest have evolved the most and that the obvious

 

18. See generally, G. von Bonin, The Evolution of the Human Brain, 1963, Chicago.

19. "Race and Ecology in Man," 1959, Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, Vol. 24, p. 156.

20. Supra, p. 33n.

 

correlation between the length of time a subspecies has been in the sapiens state and the levels of civilization attained by some of its populations may be related phenomena."

Coon pointed out that certain regions of the earth south of the equator, among them Central and South Africa, were areas of refuge during the Pleistocene and formed what might be called stagnation points where evolution was notably retarded, both in the development of man and other forms of life. "The survival of Homo erectus in these antipodal Edens," Coon continued, "was not disturbed until no earlier than about 30,000 years ago, almost a quarter of a million years after the first appearance of Homo sapiens in regions nearer the center of evolutionary activity."{21}

No serious attempt was made to refute the hypothesis of The Origin of Races, although a smoke screen of undocumented general denials and prolix evasions of the issue appeared in the journals. Theodosius Dobzhansky challenged the likelihood of parallel evolution, only to be met in Coon's rebuttal by specific examples of such evolution, by the probability of peripheral gene flow and by other documentation.

Montagu, of course, had his well publicized innings and was similarly answered.{22} We needed only to note that on October 25, 1963, the Literary Supplement of the London Times in a special number devoted to the leading scientific books of 1963 referred to The Origin of Races as "a landmark in the development of the science [of physical anthropology]." Here, then, was Exhibit E.

 

21. Carleton S. Coon, The Story of Man, 2nd Ed., 1962, New York, p. 35. The Story of Man provides for the layman a quicker survey of these materials than The Origin of Races. See the former book, pp. 28-38, 60-62.

22. Scientific criticism of the Origin of Races (there was the usual irrelevant deluge of political criticism) fell into five general categories: (1) Objections that a polytypic species could not evolve into a new polytypic species while keeping the same subspecies. But even Dobzhansky, Coon's best known critic in the field of genetics, admitted that on this point Coon was correct. Dobzhansky, in fact, conceded the point in his Mankind Evolving (1962, New Haven), published before The Origin of Races. Ernst Mayr, the Harvard zoologist and author of Animal Species and Evolution, 1963, Cambridge, was in agreement with Coon; (2) Coon was widely quoted, among others by Dobzhansky, as claiming that mankind evolved five times from Home erectus into Homo sapiens through five separate mutations. Coon, however, made no such claim. He advanced the possibility of threshold crossing in the five subspecies through peripheral gene flow; (3) This raised the question, if peripheral gene flow was in part responsible for the eventual spread of the sapiens mutation to other sub. species, why did it take so long? To which Coon answered, because man alone has culture and culture imposes barriers to gene flow absent in other species; (4) There were a few claims that a parental species cannot breed with its filial species and produce fertile offspring. That this was untrue was clearly demonstrated by J. W. Crenshaw, Jr., in Human Biology, 1963, Vol. 35, No. 3; (5) Why exactly five subspecies? Because man is a large carniverous animal and needs a large living space for each subspecies. Five is the number of faunal regions inhabited by man at that time, and his range was the same as comparable animals. For a cross section of the debate see Current Anthropology, October 1963; also Science, Feb. 15, 1963, p. 638, and April 12, 1963, p. 208.



Again comparatively recently, methods had been developed for measuring the speed of kinesthetic learning from birth to the first years of life—learning, that is, which involved the transition from uterine to infant patterns of muscular reflex and control. This speed seemed to be inversely correlated with the ultimate complexity to be attained by the cerebral cortex, which supported the established observation that in all mammalian life full mental stature develops early in direct relation to cerebral simplicity. Thus, neonatal kinesthetic development is more rapid among gorillas than among chimpanzees, and much faster among chimpanzees than among human infants.

It was consequently logical to assume that differences in the rate of kinesthetic maturation between human races would have a bearing upon the complexity or evolutionary status of the structure of their brains. In 1956 Marcelle Geber made studies of normal infants in Kampala, Uganda, for the World Health Organization. She discovered that developmental milestones were reached several times more rapidly by Negro than by White infants.{23} To my knowledge there had been no attempt to disprove her findings.{24} And so Exhibit F.

A second new science which suggested a difference in evolutionary grade was the study of the electrophysiology of the brain. It investigated the living brain by analyzing its wave emissions, their cerebral location and the brain's electrical responses to various stimuli.

In 1953 a leading electro-encephalographist, A. C. Mundy-Castle, published a study of 66 Bantu-speaking African natives and 72 European Whites. He found five different categories of difference between the two groups, the most interesting, perhaps, being the lower response to flicker on the part of the Negroes. Flickers were created by high-speed electronic stroboscopes. These synchronized light stimuli were insistent and urgent enough so that a directing mechanism alerted the entire brain, and the response given was a measure both of cerebral complexity and stability.

Nathaniel Weyl pointed out that a null or impoverished response to flicker implied "a failure of the brain to develop, in the areas of imagination, visualization and power of conceptual thought, toward anything approaching maturity."{25} Mundy-Castle summed up his own conclusions as follows: "Our main impression was that they [the Africans] reacted in a far more simple way than did the European group."{26}

To move this evidence into the area of proof would require further testing and the isolation of possible environmental factors, but no one could question the suggestiveness of the results or fail to wonder why a well-financed hierarchy so carefully avoided the subject. I could regard it as Exhibit G.

One came now to the fields of genetics and psychology. Racial genetics dealt with the transmission of physical structure from

 

23. Marcelle Geber, The Lancet, June 15, 1957, Vol. 272, No. 6981, pp. 1216-19 and Courrier, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 17-29, UNESCO, Paris, Jan. 1956.

24. For an effort by a confused layman, indoctrinated by the hierarchy, see infra, p. 98. In answering a question from this layman I have gone into the subject more in detail than seemed appropriate here.

25. Nathaniel Weyl, The Negro in American Civilization, 1960, Washington, D.C., p. 152.

26. A. C. Mundy-Castle, B. L. McKiever and T. Prinsloo, Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 1953, Vol. V, p. 541. See also P. Gallais, J. Corriol, and J. Bert, Medecine Tropicale, 1949, Vol. 9, p. 693. Also P. Gallais, G. Mileto, J. Corriol, and J. Bert, Medecine Tropicale, 1951, Vol. II, pp. 128-146.

 


generation to generation among races. It explored also the extent to which the effect of physical structure might be modified by environment. Genetics alone was valueless in a study of the Negro problem unless one first had established the existence of anatomical and physiological differences. Thereafter it became of decisive importance.

Psychology, on the other hand, resembled the material in Exhibit A. The study of the performance of the mind was not directly probative of innate differences; it was open in varying degrees to the challenge of environmental influence, and of course lent itself readily to the equalitarian technique of chicanery. But as in Exihibt A, there was a broad suggestiveness about its findings, and certain data that seemed more than suggestive.

Turning first to genetics, no need existed now-a-days to prove the inheritance of racial structure. Races by definition were simply gene pools of distinguishable and distinctive physical characteristics whose anatomy, insofar as it involved the brain, produced corresponding mental differences. The same could be said of the whole nervous system and of the endocrine glands.{27} I had already considered the views of a number of geneticists on this point.{28}

What remained to make clear was the relative importance of inherited racial differences as against differences produced by differing environments. The equalitarian, and his prototype the social or cultural anthropologist of which Mead and Montagu were such good examples, argued that while inherited traits might have some bearing on behavior they were lost in the sea of cultural influences. This was the core of social anthropology—man had something no animals possessed, namely, culture, and through culture he offset inheritance almost completely. But social anthropologists never asked the question: To what extent had the culture first been created, and then sustained, by genetic traits?

 

27. Coon, The Origin of Races, op. cit., pp. 115-116, and works there cited.

28. Supra, pp. 27-29.

 

Fortunately the answer was available in studies conducted with identical twins raised apart in radically different environments. Here the inheritance was the same—only the environment differed. The results had been published{29} and as usual remained uncontradicted by any scientific counter-facts. Although the effect varied somewhat with different traits, the over-all influence of heredity was found to exceed that of environment in a ratio of about 3 to 1. Certainly this had an important bearing on the Negro problem and deserved its place as Exhibit H.

The field of psychology had been fought over more than any other. Yet once one got past the barricade of the exceptional Negro, which had no relevance to the essential point,{30} all the evidence was again on one side. Audrey Shuey compiled the results of forty years of research in her book, The Testing of Negro Intelligence,{31} and Dr. Garrett summarized them as follows:

 

"1. The I.Q.'s of American Negroes are from 15 to 20 points, on the average, below those of American whites.

"2. Negro overlap of white median I.Q.'s ranges from 10 to 25 per cent—equality would require 50 per cent.

"3. About six times as many whites as Negroes fall in the 'gifted child' category.

"4. About six times as many Negroes as whites fall below 70 I.Q.—that is, in the feeble-minded group.

"5. Negro-white differences in mean test score occur in all types of mental tests, but the Negro lag is greatest in tests of an abstract nature—for example, problems involving reasoning,

 

29. H. H. Newman, F. N. Freeman and K. J. Holzinger, Twins: A Study of Heredity and Environment, 1937, Chicago. Also- Sir Cyril Burt and Margaret Howard, "The Relative Influence of Heredity and Environment on Assessments of Intelligence," 1957, The British Journal of Statistical Psychology, Vol. 10, Part 2, pp. 99-104. Also Sir Cyril Burt, "The Inheritance of Mental Ability," 1958, The American Psychologist, Vol. XIII, No. 1, pp. 1-15. Also D. C. Rife, Heredity and Human Nature, 1959, New York. Also L. Erlenmeyer-Kimling and L. Jarvick, "Genetics and Intelligence: A Review," 1963, Science, Vol. 142, No. 3598, pp. 1477-8. For a short summary, see The Mankind Quarterly, 1964, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 197204.

30. See infra, pp. 92-93.

31. Supra, p. 46n.


deduction, comprehension. These are the functions called for in education above the lowest levels.

"6. Differences between Negro and white children increase with chronological age, the gap in performance being largest at the high school and college levels.

"7. Large and significant differences in favor of whites appear even when socioeconomic factors have been equated."

 

To take a specific example, a research project{32} in 1963 among Florida Negroes, a project supported by the federal government and therefore scarcely chargeable to bias against the Negro, was compared by Dr. Garrett{33} with a test of White children run by Drs. Terman{34} and Merrill on a normative sample of the White child population across the country.

There were 1800 Negroes involved and 3000 Whites. Garrett did not hesitate to use the country-wide White figures against the Florida Negro figures in this case because tests taken in the Southeast among White children disclosed I.Q.'s as high or higher than the Terman figures.{35} Perhaps the improvement of education in all sections of the United States in the last quarter-century accounted for the difference (the Terman tests were made 1937), but in any case the comparison could not be held to be unfair to the Negro:


                                                                                                                                                  Ratio
IQ Intervals    White               Negro                                           Rating                           White to Negro
130+                4.45                 .1                                             Very Superior                          44 to 1
120-129           8.2                   .3                                             Superior                                  27 to 1
110-119           18.1                 .7                                             High Average                          26 to 1
100-109           23.5                 5.0                                           Average                                   4.7 to 1
90-99               23.0                 14.0                                         Average                                   1.64 to 1
80-89               14.5                 28.0                                         Low Average                          .5 to 1
70-79               5.6                   30.6                                         Borderline                               .2 to 1
Below 70        2.6                   21.1                                         Defective                                 .125 to 1
Average IQ      101.8               80.7

 

32. W. A. Kennedy, V. van de Riet, and J. J. White, "A normative sample of intelligence and achievement of Negro elementary school children in the Southeastern United States," 1963, Society for Research in Child Development, Monograph No. 90, Vol. 28, No. 6. Research supported through the Cooperative Research Program of the Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (C.R.P. 954).

33. How Classroom Desegregation Will Work, 1966, Richmond, p. 9.

34. L. M. Terman, deviser of the Stanford-Binet test used in both studies.


Regarding this table Dr. Garrett commented:

"1. The average IQ of the Negro children is 80.7. The average IQ of the White children is 101.8.

"2. Five per cent of the Negroes achieved IQ's above the average White child. Conversely, 89 per cent of the White children achieved IQ's above the average Negro child.

"3. In the High-Average and Superior groups are found 31 per cent of the White children, and 1.1 per cent of the Negro children.

"4. In the Average or Normal group are 46.5 per cent of the White children, and 19 per cent of the Negro children.

"5. The Borderline and Defective groups contain 8.2 per cent of the Whites, and 50.2 per cent of the Negroes.

"6. The average Negro pupil (whose IQ is 80.7) cannot go beyond a national-standard Seventh grade curriculum; for half the Negro group, the Fifth grade is the maximum.

"7. Only one per cent of the Negroes are intellectually equipped (110 IQ and above) to do acceptable college work."

 

No attempts any longer arose to dispute the facts disclosed by such studies. The equalitarian response consisted solely of the old environmentalist argument that the tests reflected a condition caused by White injustice.

Garrett the year before had had something to say on this aspect of the matter. At the September 1961 meeting of the American Psychological Association, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues had passed the monotonously typical, undocumented resolution declaring that the evidence developed over a quarter-century pointed overwhelmingly to the fact that differences between Whites and Negroes were not innate. It even went so far as to say that "no evidence exists that leads to the conclusion that such differences are innate." Garrett answered this resolution in the American Psychologist for May of 1962, by a statement relegated as usual to the

 

35. See, for example, the studies of Dr. R. T. Osborne of White Children in a Southeastern County, offered as "Intervenors' Exhibit I" in Stell vs. the Savannah Board of Education, 220 F. Supp. 667 (S. D. Ga. 1963), and there subject to cross-examination. Cited hereafter as Stell Transcript. The findings and opinion of the judge will be cited as Stell Opinion. Osborne found a mean White child I.Q. of 103. The Negro mean was 81.

 


Letters section. In it he pointed out that there had been exactly five cases in which efforts were made to equate as far as possible{36} Whites and Negroes for environment—that is, for socio-economic background—and in every one of these cases the results contradicted the resolution.

After covering the data{37} in some detail Garrett summarized it as follows: "Negro overlap of white norms when groups are matched for various educational and socio-economic factors does not increase markedly as compared with overlap in random samples. This is true for elementary, high school, and college groups. Instead of the evidence for diminished differences between Negroes and whites of comparable status being 'overwhelming' as the SPSSI statement asserts, it is, in fact, nonexistent."

To any student interested in the balance of the evidence in this admittedly complicated area, one could recommend a reading of Garrett's analysis. It was certainly Exhibit I.

Thus we arrived at the last of the categories of evidence—the area of historical experience. In a sense it was an extension backward of Exhibit A, a vista of perpetually deficient performance, but here the hierarchy had developed two contradictory themes of response.

On the one hand they argued that the Negro had been isolated by geographical barriers from contact with civilizing influences and that White groups so isolated did no better than the Negro. On the other they advanced claims that the Negro had created magnificent civilizations in Africa, hitherto lost to history but now being discovered as their ruins were unearthed. One had

 

36. It is, of course, impossible to equate completely White-Negro environment without turning the Negro into a White man, which begs the question. One comes as close as possible by taking Negroes from higher strata of their population than the strata from which the Whites are taken relative to their population.

37. Among the more interesting items special reference may be made to F. C. J. McGurk, Comparison of the Performance of Negro and White High School Seniors on Cultural and Non-Cultural Psychological Test Questions, 1951, Washington, D. C.

 

no difficulty in demonstrating that both these themes were specious.

As far as isolation was concerned, I could answer the hierarchy out of the mouth of one of their own star authorities in anthropology, A. L. Kroeber, who, in an unguarded moment, wrote: "All in all, Negro Africa lies open enough to the main Eurasian centers to have presumably experienced a slow cultural 'bombardment' that constantly mingled new traits with old, foreign with acclimated, and acclimated elements with those indigenously evolved. Through the centuries and millenia, everything got worked over until it took on the native local color."{38} Arab traders on the sea and Arab caravans overland were in touch with Africa south of the Sahara since ancient times, and more recently the period of European colonization occurred.{39} None of this lifted the Negro out of his primitive condition.

As for the collateral argument about isolated and equally backward White groups, no one denied that White men at various periods had lived in caves; no one claimed that civilization blossomed spontaneously from all races at any particular stage of their development. Little doubt remained that it first arose in the so-called "fertile crescent" of the Middle East and spread from there gradually to the rest of the now civilized world. The point was that the Caucasian and Mongolian races, whether or not they were living in caves, more often than not proved responsive tinder to the flame of civilization when brought in contact with it, whereas the Negro as a race literally never responded. This did not imply that Caucasians and Mongolians had always responded. Relict groups existed among both races. But in the case of the Negro the whole race except for the occasional individual had always been, and still was, relict.

Regarding the opposite and conflicting argument that the Negro had developed "magnificent" civilizations now lost, I had pointed out in Race and Reason that there had been no "mag-



38. A. L. Kroeber, Anthropology, new Ed. 1948, New York, p. 765.

39. See further Race and Reason, pp. 24-25, 42-45. Also and in more detail, Robert Gayre, "Ethnological Elements of Africa," 1965-6, The Mankind Quarterly, Vol. V, No. 4; Vol. VI, Nos. 1, 2 and 3.



nificent" Negro kingdoms in Africa in any civilized sense, that such barbaric cultures as existed were almost certainly intrusive, that the Moors and Ethiopians were not Negroes, and that the Nubian dynasty in Egypt was a period of retrogression.{40} However, in recent years efforts had been made by the hierarchy to glorify the ruins of Zimbabwe in Southern Rhodesia and to make these now appear to support the "magnificent" kingdoms claim. A word about them might therefore be justified.

One could see at a glance that the Zimbabwe ruins were large and brutal in their impact. They were essentially primitive. While the labor which originally built them was concededly Bantu, the hierarchy argued that the culture and leadership behind them were Negro as well. Such, for example, was the view of the author of the chapter on Zimbabwe in the publication Vanished Civilizations of the Ancient World,{41} priced at $28.50 and published in 1963. It was the sort of superficially impressive presentation which the hierarchy could afford to make, and needed to make, in lieu of facts.

The photographs were excellent—too excellent. All one needed to do was to compare any of the views of Zimbabwe with pictures of the Acropolis at Athens, and he no longer cared whether the complex was indigenous in either labor or inspiration. The contrast was enough. As Timbuktu produced no Thomas Aquinas, so Zimbabwe produced no Parthenon.

Those who still wished to carry on the intrusive vs. indigenous debate could note that in the rubble of Zimbabwe had been found porcelains of the Ming period. Since the Negro was never known to engage in maritime trade these porcelains appeared to students outside the hierarchy to have been brought in by a non-Negro ruling class.{42} The most recent survey of the subject, made by Dr. Robert Gayre, concluded that "there is absolutely no evidence at all that Zimbabwe and the other similar sites were built by the Bantu [Negroes], except as laborers."{43}



40. Race and Reason, pp. 42-45. See also infra, pp. 107-8.

41. Vanished Civilizations o/ the Ancient World, 1963, Edward Bacon, ed., pp. 34-54.

42. Herman and Georg Schreiber, Vanished Cities, 1957, pp. 191-223.

 

Thus it went throughout Negro Africa. Apparently equalitarian writers were so self-deluded they could not realize that their own photographs discredited everything they were trying to prove. Having failed elsewhere to uncover anything to substantiate their claim of equality, they now sought in historical ruins and relics evidence which, when presented, confirmed the opposite of their case. The facts from history were as Arnold Toynbee stated them: "It will be seen that when we classify mankind by colour the only one of the primary races, given by this classification, which has not made a creative contribution to any one of our twenty-one civilizations is the Black Race."{44}

Driven from their conflicting defenses of isolation and lost ruins, some equalitarians finally retreated to the excuse of climate and disease, to the argument that tropical maladies and the heat were enough to account for the Negro's condition. I knew of no scientists who advanced this argument, but it was frequently heard from laymen.

Here again one needed only to reply that, on the one hand, there were many parts of Africa where the climate was good

 

43. Robert Gayre, "Zimbabwe," 1965, The Mankind Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 212-243. Any student disturbed by an apparent contradiction between the primitive nature of the ruins and the intrusive hypothesis should note Dr. Gayre's comment on this point (p. 231) : "It has been argued that the stone building techniques used at Zimbabwe are too poor to have been the work of peoples advanced in technology such as were the Arabs. This cannot be accepted by anyone who has lived in isolation in an overwhelmingly 'native' community anywhere. No matter how you plan, argue, cajole and teach, the final product is a compromise well below your own normal standards, but something the 'native' would not have been able to achieve without all that effort on your part. Missionaries and planters in remote places—even in countries like India which are much more advanced than Africa in basic culture—tolerate standards of building, furnishing and other workmanship well below those of their own native background simply because this is the best a few Europeans in an overwhelmingly 'native' milieu can achieve. That was exactly the situation at Zimbabwe."

44. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, 4th impression, 1948, New York, Vol. I, p. 233. As for Toynbee's attempt, as a member of the British establishment, to evade the consequences of this statement, see Race and Reason, pp. 52-53.



and, on the other hand, other parts of the world which had produced great civilizations where the climate was bad. Moreover, for a hundred years the Negro had been free of both tropical diseases and the incubus of climate in the old ex-slave settlement at Chatham, Ontario. Yet his performance there on intelligence tests followed the standard pattern.{45} In fact tropical diseases no longer could be blamed for the Negro's relative performance in the Southern United States.

The truth of the matter was that whatever influence climate and disease may indeed have had upon the Negro over tens of thousands of years, the result had by now become innate through evolutionary processes. I could paraphrase Nathaniel Weyl and state that "the fundamental barrier is less the action of climate and disease on the living generation than its cumulative action, over an immense time span, in forming the race."{46}

So now in ten exhibits the evidence was in from current Negro performance, from anatomy, histology, physical anthropology, kinesthetics, electrophysiology, genetics, psychology and history. Not one of these areas showed any support for the dogma of innate equality. All of them pointed to inequality, to a difference in evolutionary grade. Some of the data could be attacked as insufficient to constitute absolute proof; other materials were scarcely open to this objection. Taken together, the total must be conclusive to any reasonable mind.

There were, of course, counter-arguments and sur-rebuttals concerning specific items that could be raised throughout the materials and I was prepared to deal with these in due course." On the general situation only two points remained to be emphasized. One was the falsehood implied in the resolutions of the two anthropological associations and in the statements of individual

 

45. H. A. Tanser, Kent County Negroes, 1939, Chatham, Ontario, Canada.

46. Nathaniel Weyl, The Negro in American Civilization, 1960, Washington, D. C., p. 178. See also as to climate, Race and Reason, pp. 45-46. Also George, pp. 68-70.

47. Infra, Chap. VI.

 

members of the hierarchy. The other point was that in addition to falsifying the facts as to the balance of the evidence, the hierarchy was doing everything possible to prevent any knowledge concerning that evidence reaching the people. All the power of the educational establishment, all the massive and saturating influences of a vast Negrophile news and entertainment media, all the cunning of politicians, all the pleas of the churches, and all the international tentacles of the United Nations were being ruthlessly employed to deceive both our youth and the general public. Against such regiments of darkness could the truth prevail?

It was a sinister question to ask in the darkness and chill of a night on Mt. Desert Island. Our cottage was very quiet now. The doors were locked. Should I go on with such a problem at so late an hour?

Figuratively speaking, the hour was late too. And I remembered the last recourse we had had, we who could not believe in the victory of so monstrous a deception. In our Anglo-American society honest men had always had their final vindication in the courts. Surely, in spite of the action of the Supreme Court in 1954, this recourse must still be there. The deceit practiced upon the Court in the desegregation cases was clear enough now—the misrepresentation of the evidence proffered, and the omission of all the decisive scientific material. Once this was placed on the record in a new case, the tide must turn—so we had thought.

And then as I sat there memories of a court-room came surging back—memories of a May morning in a little Georgia town, the walk along the quiet street to the courthouse, the attorneys for the NAACP at the table for counsel, the stifled sobs of Constance Motley as the heart of the issue was reached.

This folder in my brief case I could hardly touch without a rising anger. Yet the story it contained, unbelievable as it was, had to be told.