Febeuabt 18, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



155 



areas of natural Negro segregation. As those 

 areas to maintain men and culture of a fair 

 level with the remainder of the nation, or will 

 they ibe lowered so that a sort of cultural and 

 physical quarantine would need to be main- 

 tained ? WiU those areas spread their inferior- 

 ity out over their borders? Haiti and Liberia 

 are contemporary examples of slackening 

 Negro culture. We should study the tenden- 

 cies of this movement in America — this un- 

 sought for, uninvited, unintended environ- 

 mental segregation of the two peoples. 



A second Negro movement is the present 

 unprecedented acceleration of Negro migra- 

 tion from south to north. Ever since the Civil 

 War the Negro has been a restless migrant, 

 but during the past three years the migration 

 has turned particularly away from the south, 

 and one million or more Negroes have come 

 directly from their old southern homes into 

 our northern cities. 



The south and the Negro mutually under- 

 stand each other. The white south will tell 

 you that it has no Negro " problem," because 

 there is a perfectly understood procedure in 

 all interrelations between individuals, or 

 groups, of the two races. The north and the 

 Negro are almost total strangers. If the 

 Negroes become proportionately as numerous 

 in the north as they are in the south, will the 

 interrelations between the two peoples be simi- 

 lar to those now in the south where the public 

 opinion and the practise of the white south is, 

 as expressed to me by men in several different 

 southern areas, just this — " The white naan 

 wiU run the south. Whether just or not, it is 

 necessary." The recent northern race riots in 

 JSast St. Louis, Omaha, Chicago and Duluth 

 are, in this connection, suggestive. 



The most accurate data should be at hand 

 in regard to this northward migration, and 

 daily research should be carried on in its many 

 varying aspects. We need scien'tific facts to 

 understand the tendencies of so unprecedented 

 a movement 



In one aspect of this northward migration 

 of Negroes decisive opinion should be uttered 

 without further research, and that is the 

 movement of alien Negroes into the United 



States — largely from the West Indies. Only 

 those who are so uninformed as not to know 

 we have a tragically serious Negro problem in 

 America can, on any except selfish grounds, 

 favor the admission of alien Negroes to Amer- 

 ica. Have we not wisdom and character 

 enough to prevent the further aggravation of 

 the problem by the admission of some 6,000 

 more such aliens yearly? 



. A third of these Negro movements is the 

 amalgamation of the Negro and the white, and 

 the consequent effacement of Negroes by their 

 physical incorporation with the remainder of 

 the nation's population. 



, The growth in the per cent, of mixed-bloods 

 shows that an increasing per cent, of "Ne- 

 groes " possess mates with white ancestry. 

 Unless the tide turns the descendants of a 

 very large per cent, of our present Negroes in 

 time wiU be incorporated in the then Ameri- 

 can breed of men. 



The migration of the Negro to our northern 

 cities and the large per cent, of foreign-born 

 whites in these cities greatly complicates this 

 phase of the Negro question. The foreigner 

 coming fresh to our shores almost entirely 

 lacks the racial prejudice which is native to 

 America. I was told in Cleveland last summer 

 by a student of the problem there that in that 

 city intermarriage between the Negroes and 

 Italians is taking place at a rapid rate in the 

 two chief Italian centers of residence. 



A most careful and conclusive study of our 

 people of Negro-white ancestry should be made 

 that we may know how the wholesale absorp- 

 tion of our Negroes by our whites will affect 

 the qualities of the nation as a whole. At no 

 given era in history has one nation probably 

 been inherently greatly superior or inferior to 

 another in the same general stage of culture, 

 yet some competing nations have gone down 

 while others have advanced. Apparently very 

 slight physical, inteUectual or moral superior- 

 ity is enough to give successful advantage, 

 and very slight inferiority enough to result in 

 disastrous disadvantage between two nations 

 quite equally favored by environment. His- 

 tory has no truths to tell of the relative 

 Strength or weakness of a nation so largely 



