The Negro in History

The Planet summarizes a recent academic paper chronicles black people throughout history.

The place that the Negro has filled in the world's civilization is a subject that is very entertainingly discussed in the Arena by Prof. Willis Boughton, of Ohio State University. And an important part he filled according to Professor Boughton. All history, he says, is full of traces of the black race. It is now usually recognized as the oldest race of which we have any knowledge. The wanderings of these people since prehistoric history began have not been confined to the African continent. In paleolithic times the black man roamed al will over all the fairer portion of the old world. Europe as well as Asia and Africa acknowledged his sway. No white man had yet appeared to dispute his authority in the vine-clad valleys of France or Germany or upon the classic hills of Greece or Rome. The black man preceded all others and carried Paleolithic culture to its very height. But the history of all lands has been only a record of succeeding races. Old races have often been supplanted by those of inferior culture but of superior energy. More often, however, by fusion of different racial types and by the mingling of various tribes and people, have been evolved new races superior to any of the original types.
The blacks were a fundamental element in the origin not only of the primitive races of southern Europe, but of the civilized races of antiquity as well. History may be said to begin in ancient Egypt, and recede into the past just as far as records and inscriptions lend us light; still in the Nile valley we find a civilization that has drawn from all succeeding ages expressions of wonder and admiration This first example of a civilization was an isolated one; it had evolved right there in that wondrously happy region.
Surely the ancient Egyptians wore a remarkable people; but who were they? The ruling tribes are called Hamites - the "sunburnt" family according to Dr. Winchell; of Negritic origin, says Canon Rawlinson. But back of these ruling Hamites were a "lighted-hearted" people - "gay," "good-natured," "pleasant," "sportive," "witty," “droll," "amorous” - such are the descriptive terms used in telling the story of those primitive tribes who Dr. Taylor says, lived peaceably in those regions for 2000 years before the advent of Asiatic invaders. Suggestive as they may seem, such terms are truly descriptive of the inhabitants whom we would expect to find in the Nile valley in ancient times. They were probably as purely Negritic as are the great mass of our own Afro Americans.
If the colored Egyptian, beginning at the zero point of culture, could independent evolve a civilization, having had no model, what can we now hope for the American Negro, who has for a model the highest civilization that the world has ever seen and who has already proved himself such an apt scholar? Let no one, then, visit Egypt and view her pyramids, obelisks, her temples, her tombs, her sphinx, and still claim that the blacks have no place in history. They furnish almost the isolated examples of civilization developed without a model, even though other racial factor may have entered into that civilization.
When the Hamites and their kindred were at the height of their power, their influence extended to far greater limits than is ordinarily supposed. They pressed toward the continent of Europe; they entered and took possession of the land.
The Hellenes were the Aryans first to be brought into contact with these sunburnt Hamites, who, let it be remembered, though classed as white, were probably as strongly Negritic as are the Afro-Americans. These Hellenes were savages or barbarian. But Aryan strength and energy was thus brought into contact with Hamitic Culture. Then occurred the great struggle of centuries for social equality between the blond Aryan and the Pelasgian, the dark child of the soil. Greece thus had her race social question to settle, and it was settled by fusion. Had it not been for that mixture of dark blood in the Greek composition, that race of poets, artists and philosophers would never have existed.
"The Iberians," says Dr. Winchell "entered by the Pillars of Hercules. They came from northern Africa at time when the Hamitic Berbers were gaining possession. They overran the Spanish peninsula, founded cities, built a navy, carried on commerce, extended their empire over Italy, as Sicanes, when Rome was founded, long before the sack of Troy, and from Italy passed into Sicily.
The Pelasgic empire was at its meridian in early as 2500 B. C. This people came from the islands of the Aegean, and more remotely from Asia Minor. They were originally a branch of the sunburnt Hamitic stock, that laid the basis of civilization in Canaan and Mesopotamia, destined later to be Semitized. Rome itself was Pelasgian from the 14th century to 428 B. C. But in Italy and Greece the Hamitic stock was displaced and absorbed by Aryan, as in Asia it had been by Semitic.
Rome, even, had her race social problem. There was also a struggle between the white and dark races. The oppressed Plebeians finally seceded to the Sacred Mount until their wrongs were in a measure redressed. Intermarriage, or fusion, at last settled the question. Such, too, is the story that Spanish ethnology tells. "Clearly there does not exist in Europe a nation of tolerably pure ethnic character, nor do national boundaries mark the limits of such ethnic strain, as remain discoverable. The figment of a German nationality or a French, in any ethnic sense, is as baseless as that of an Austrian, a British, or an American."
Those drops of black blood were just as necessary to produce the ethnic character of the Spaniard or Roman as were the white and generations probably passed away before it was noticeable as to which element predominated. Still it would be considered the height of discourtesy sneeringly to inquire, "what makes the Greek, the Italian or the Spaniard dark in color?''
It is fitting that we recognize, however, how great a factor the Negro has been in the history making of the world.

“The Negro in History,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed May 12, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1658.