The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 | Page 2

and to that psychological origin which antedates the records of history, in the strict sense, to that part of racial history indeed where men commonly act rather than write. The idea of prehistoric law is that obligation exists only between people of the same blood. Originally, charitable and decent conduct was expected only of people of the same family. Even though the family was by fact or fiction extended to include some hundreds or even thousands of people, the fact was still true. The law which bound a man limited his good conduct to a relatively few people. Outside the blood kin he was not bound. He must not steal from his relatives, but if he stole from another clan, his relatives deemed it virtue. If he committed murder, he should be punished within his clan, but protected, if possible, by his clan, if he murdered someone outside it. The blood kin became the definite limitation of the ideas of right and responsibility. This was true between whites. All whites were not members of any one man's blood kin.
Palpably more true was this distinction between the Negro and the white man. The Negro could not by any fiction be represented as one of the blood kin. The Romans extended the legal citizenship to cover all white men in their dominions. It was the fictitious tie of the blood kin, but its plausibility was due to the fact that they were all white. I do not remember to have seen any proof that the Negro inhabitants of the Roman African colonies were considered Roman citizens. This is one of the oldest psychological lines in human history; the rights which a man must concede to another are limited by the relationship of blood. Prima facie there could be no blood relationship between the Negro and the white man. There could therefore be no obligation on the white man's part to the Negro in prehistoric law. This notion has, I think, endured in many ways down to the present day as a subconscious, unconscious factor behind many very vital notions and ideas. Is it not true that international law has been, more often than not, a law between white men?
The next point I hesitate somewhat to make because it is difficult to state without over-emphasis and without saying more than one means. I think it probable that in one way or another the idea of Christianity became connected with the notion of the blood kin and in that sense limited to the blood kin of those to whom Jesus came. Everyone is familiar with the Jewish notion that Jesus was their own particular Messiah, and that the Gentiles were foreclosed claims upon him. As Christianity grew, it grew still among the white nations, and the notion of it was not, I think, extended for a good many centuries to any except white people. The premises of Christianity unquestionably included the Negro, but the notion of the blood kin excluded him, and Christianity, like other religious ideas, was limited to the people who first created it and to those who were actually or by some plausible fiction their kin in blood. The idea of the expansion of the blood kin by adoption either of an individual or of a community of individuals was very old and thoroughly well established, but I think the idea never was applied to Negroes, Indians, or Chinamen except in unfrequent cases of individuals. A volume would be required to bring forward all the available evidence regarding this idea, and another perhaps to examine and develop it, to consider and weigh the pros and meet the cons. But it will perhaps suffice for present purposes to throw out the idea for consideration without an attempt at more considerable defense.
Another fact which has been most difficult to explain has been the continued lynchings of Negroes not merely for crimes against women, but for all sorts of other crimes, large and small. Here the traces of primitive law are very much clearer. Lynching is after all nothing more nor less than the old self-help. The original notion was that the individual should execute the law himself when he could, and that he was entitled in case of crime to assistance from the community in the execution of the law upon the offender. Murder, arson, rape and the theft of cattle were the particular crimes for which self-help by the individual and by the community in his assistance were authorized by primitive law. The preliminaries and formularies were very definite, but they do not look to us of the present day like procedure. It is true, however, that there are very few lynchings in which these formulas have not been unconsciously followed. There must be a hue and cry and pursuit along the