THE VITAL EQUATION OF THE COLORED RACE 

 AND ITS FUTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 



By EUGENE ROLLIN CORSON, B.S., M.D. 



In June, 1887, I delivered a lecture before the Georgia His- 

 torical Society, entitled "The Future of the Colored Race in 

 the United States from an Ethnic and Medical Standpoint." 

 My object at the time was to refute certain writers who looked 

 upon the colored race as a menace to our country, and whose 

 sensational writings, prompted largely by political motives, 

 were calculated to cause wrong impressions and unnecessary 

 alarm. I attempted to show that a solution of the problem 

 could be found outside the figures from the census, namely, 

 in a study of the physical status of the race, their morbid ten- 

 dencies, and their mortality compared with that of the whites. 



As a practicing physician in a typical southern city, in a 

 community where the colored almost equalled the whites, I 

 felt I was in a position to study the subject. Only they who 

 are brought into immediate contact with a race can form any 

 adequate ideas of that race in all its bearings. They must see 

 how they live and they must see how they die before they are 

 qualified to judge of the race in its entirety, or atttempt to 

 answer such a vital question as its future. 



It is a significant fact that they who live in the South and 

 who are brought into immediate relationship with the colored 

 people are the last ones to look with fear on the future. They 

 see but too plainly the many factors working against the race, 

 inimical factors which come from within the race and not 

 from outside. As the rise of a nation depends upon its own 

 inherent powers, so its fall can be traced to causes within its 

 ranks. Its enemies at home are more to be feared than its 

 enemies abroad. 



Since 1887, when I wrote my paper above mentioned, we 

 have had another census. This last census, I am glad to say, 



