The Negro | Page 6

Negro types early made their appearance: the lighter and
smaller primitive stock; the larger forest Negro in the center and on the
west coast, and the tall, black Nilotic Negro in the eastern Sudan. In the
earliest times we find the Negroes in the valley of the Nile, pressing

downward from the interior. Here they mingled with Semitic types, and
after a lapse of millenniums there arose from this mingling the culture
of Ethiopia and Egypt, probably the first of higher human cultures.
To the west of the Nile the Negroes expanded straight across the
continent to the Atlantic. Centers of higher culture appeared very early
along the Gulf of Guinea and curling backward met Egyptian,
Ethiopian, and even European and Asiatic influences about Lake Chad.
To the southeast, nearer the primitive seats of the earliest African
immigrants and open to Egyptian and East Indian influences, the Negro
culture which culminated at Zymbabwe arose, and one may trace
throughout South Africa its wide ramifications.
All these movements gradually aroused the central tribes to unrest.
They beat against the barriers north, northeast, and west, but gradually
settled into a great southeastward migration. Calling themselves
proudly La Bantu (The People), they grew by agglomeration into a
warlike nation, speaking one language. They eventually conquered all
Africa south of the Gulf of Guinea and spread their influence to the
northward.
While these great movements were slowly transforming Africa, she
was also receiving influences from beyond her shores and sending
influences out. With mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest
touch, so much so that to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem
Egyptian in origin. The truth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always
palpably Negroid, and from her vantage ground as almost the only
African gateway received and transmitted Negro ideals.
Phoenician, Greek, and Roman came into touch more or less with black
Africa. Carthage, that North African city of a million men, had a large
caravan trade with Negroland in ivory, metals, cloth, precious stones,
and slaves. Black men served in the Carthaginian armies and marched
with Hannibal on Rome. In some of the North African kingdoms the
infiltration of Negro blood was very large and kings like Massinissa
and Jugurtha were Negroid. By way of the Atlantic the Carthaginians
reached the African west coast. Greek and Roman influences came
through the desert, and the Byzantine Empire and Persia came into
communication with Negroland by way of the valley of the Nile. The
influence of these trade routes, added to those of Egypt, Ethiopia,
Benin, and Yoruba, stimulated centers of culture in the central and

western Sudan, and European and African trade early reached large
volume.
Negro soldiers were used largely in the armies that enabled the
Mohammedans to conquer North Africa and Spain. Beginning in the
tenth century and slowly creeping across the desert into Negroland, the
new religion found an already existent culture and came, not a
conqueror, but as an adapter and inspirer. Civilization received new
impetus and a wave of Mohammedanism swept eastward, erecting the
great kingdoms of Melle, the Songhay, Bornu, and the Hausa states.
The older Negro culture was not overthrown, but, like a great wedge,
pushed upward and inward from Yoruba, and gave stubborn battle to
the newer culture for seven or eight centuries.
Then it was, in the fifteenth century, that the heart disease of Africa
developed in its most virulent form. There is a modern theory that
black men are and always have been naturally slaves. Nothing is further
from the truth. In the ancient world Africa was no more a slave hunting
ground than Europe or Asia, and both Greece and Rome had much
larger numbers of white slaves than of black. It was natural that a
stream of black slaves should have poured into Egypt, because the chief
line of Egyptian conquest and defense lay toward the heart of Africa.
Moreover, the Egyptians, themselves of Negro descent, had not only
Negro slaves but Negroes among their highest nobility and even among
their Pharaohs. Mohammedan conquerors enslaved peoples of all colors
in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but eventually their empire centered in
Asia and Africa and their slaves came principally from these countries.
Asia submitted to Islam except in the Far East, which was
self-protecting. Negro Africa submitted only partially, and the
remaining heathen were in small states which could not effectively
protect themselves against the Mohammedan slave trade. In this wise
the slave trade gradually began to center in Africa, for religious and
political rather than for racial reasons.
The typical African culture was the culture of family, town, and small
tribe. Hence domestic slavery easily developed a slave trade through
war and commerce. Only the integrating force of state building could
have stopped this slave trade. Was this failure to