[
NOTE: This blog has had a boost in readership today... mainly because of people Googling phrases like “black people monkeys” and “comparison to monkeys blacks.”[
The Googlers were inspired, no doubt, by the controversial New York Post cartoon above, which seems to compare President Obama to a crazed chimpanzee.[
So... why would Googling “black people monkeys” lead folks to here? The reason is below: an edited version of a piece I posted in October 2007... about the history of comparing black people to monkeys.]
I recently discovered an old text online – “The Negro: What Is His Ethnological Status?” It was published in 1867 under the pseudonym “Ariel.” In fact, the author was a Southern clergyman, the Rev. Buckner H. Payne of Nashville, Tennessee.
Rev. Payne argued that Negroes weren’t descended from Adam and Eve.
“... Adam and Eve being white, ... they could never be the father or mother of the kinky-headed, low forehead, flat nose, thick lip and black-skinned negro...”
The minister continued: “[I]t follows, beyond all the reasonings of men on earth to controvert, that [the negro] was created
before Adam, that, like all beasts and cattle, they have no souls.”
Rev. Payne then broke it down scientifically: “[W]e take up the monkey, and trace him ... through his upward and advancing orders – baboon, ourang-outang and gorilla, up to the negro, another noble animal, the noblest of the beast creation.
“The difference between these higher orders of the monkey and the negro is very slight, and consists mainly in this one thing: the negro can utter sounds that can be imitated; hence he could talk with Adam and Eve, for they could imitate his sounds.”
(You can download the full 48-page text of Buckner Payne’s “The Negro” as a PDF file, courtesy of Google, by
following this link.)
To me, it’s no coincidence that this description of blacks as non-human was published in 1867 – after the South lost the Civil War. Southern whites didn’t have to
bother defining Negroes as animals while they were enslaved. But once the Negro was free – and politically empowered during Reconstruction – that’s when the defeated white Southerner felt the need (psychologically, not just politically) to put forth this ugly idea.
And guess what? When white Southerners reclaimed their political dominance and disenfranchised black people, the monkey thing stuck.
In 1900, Charles Carroll published a book advancing Buckner Payne’s notion. “The Negro a Beast” cites the Apostle Paul’s declaration that “there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts.”
Carroll wrote: “[I]t becomes plain that the dog, the swine and the negro all belong to one kind of flesh – the flesh of beasts.”
He argued further that the “red, yellow and brown” races resulted from the “amalgamation” of whites and blacks. Therefore, all those non-whites aren’t human either. To argue otherwise, according to Carroll, was a blasphemy equal to Darwin’s theory of evolution:
“This modern church theory that the negro and the mixed-bloods are included in the Plan of Salvation is another result of putting man and the ape in the same family.”
(Charles Carroll wasn’t a clergyman, but there are many references to him as “Professor.” I haven’t been able to find out
where he was a professor, or what his field of scholarship was.)
Carroll’s book was sold door-to-door across the South and was “enormously influential,” according to Jane Dailey, a Johns Hopkins University historian. In a 2004
essay, Prof. Dailey quotes an earlier historian:
“During the opening years of the twentieth century [‘The Negro a Beast’] has become the Scripture of tens of thousands of poor whites, and its doctrine is maintained with an appalling stubbornness and persistence.”
To give you a sense of the impact of “The Negro a Beast,” I dug up a reference to it by
Bill Arp, a newspaper columnist who was hugely popular in the South. The following appeared in Arp’s column in the Atlanta Constitution on May 18, 1902:
“I have just received a pleasant letter from a North Carolina friend asking me what I think of Carroll’s book, ‘The Negro a Beast,’ and he asks, ‘Do you believe the nigger is a beast?’ I answered at the bottom of his letter, ‘Which nigger?’ ”
UPDATE (02/19/09): It turns out that CNN’s Kyra Phillips quoted from my blog post, even though she didn’t credit me. (Note the phrase “breaks it down scientifically.”)
Jazzanova, a German “nu jazz” collective, decided to collaborate with some black American soul singers for the 2008 CD “Of All the Things.” Among those singers were Leon Ware, Paul Randolph and Dwele.
As I mentioned last week, New Orleans R&B singer and guitar virtuoso Snooks Eaglin has passed away. Today, Mr. Eaglin was honored with a procession through the streets of the city’s Warehouse/Arts District... in the manner of a traditional “jazz funeral.”
A brass band started at noon with “What a Friend We Have In Jesus,” played as a dirge.
Here’s a FREE MP3 with a Black History Month twist to it.
“Freedom Train” (MP3) 
Album available at iTunes Music Store
Good to see that Jody Watley is still doing her thing. The Aris Kokou mix of her latest single, “Candlelight,” is available as a FREE MP3.
Being a Mardi Gras virgin, I figured this was the day to attach myself to my boy David Simon and his wife, Laura Lippman.
We then walked to Claiborne Avenue, saw a few Mardi Gras Indians in all their finery. Made time for a couple of drinks at Kermit Ruffins’ bar.
This is, without a doubt, the hippest piece of film ever posted on YouTube!! Of course, as a P-Funk fanatic I might be biased.
So... I’m in New Orleans. Last weekend I saw my first Mardi Gras parade. Last night I saw my first nighttime parade. It was all cool. But I didn’t quite get the thrill of it. Particularly since I wasn’t buzzed, and I don’t have a kid.
I am late in noting the death last Saturday of an all-time great jazz drummer – Luigi Balassoni, or Louie Bellson.
New Orleans R&B legend Snooks Eaglin passed away yesterday. He had prostate cancer.
Best wishes on this day to one of America’s most prolific jazz artists, tenor saxophonist David Murray, who turns 54.
[NOTE: This blog has had a boost in readership today... mainly because of people Googling phrases like “black people monkeys” and “comparison to monkeys blacks.”
In 1900, Charles Carroll published a book advancing Buckner Payne’s notion. “The Negro a Beast” cites the Apostle Paul’s declaration that “there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts.”
UPDATE (02/19/09): It turns out that CNN’s Kyra Phillips quoted from my blog post, even though she didn’t credit me. (Note the phrase “breaks it down scientifically.”)
My father owned a lot of books. One of them was the complete text of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Bob Davis of Soul-Patrol.com passes along the news that Gilberto Miguel Calderón – a.k.a. Joe Cuba, the “Father of Latin Boogaloo” – died yesterday.
So I had a little drama this morning in New Orleans. I went to a laundromat on the edge of the French Quarter to wash some clothes. Place called the Clothes Spin.
So I started playing some Ms. Pac-Man. And during the second song, the manager came over and turned the jukebox down. Like, way down... so that I could hardly hear it over the rumble of the machines.
Philadelphia native William Theodore Carney III – known professionally as T.C. III (“T.C. the Third”) – is a bebop vocalist in the old tradition.
It just wouldn’t be Black History Month without George Washington Carver. Am I right, y’all?
Nina Simone’s daugher, who performs under the name Simone, put out an album last year called “Simone on Simone,” wherein she sang tunes previously recorded by her mother (even though Simone sounds nothing like Nina Simone).
Marian Anderson – the renowned concert singer and credit to her race – is familiar to any student of Black History Month.
Philly session man Bobby Eli, who played guitar on the O’Jays album, produced the Jackie Moore remake.
A tip of my hat to blogger Harry Allen for shining a light on Shemekia Copeland, a funky Chicago blues singer.
More on this album
Want to learn a little something about the Tremé neighborhood... ground zero of the black music culture of New Orleans?
Hootie & the Blowfish.
Brooklyn rapper and convicted drug felon John Forté – whose prison sentence was commuted by President Bush 10 weeks ago – has a FREE MP3 out already.
On “Sesame Street,” Roscoe Orman has played the part of “Gordon” for more than 30 years. And a better black role model would be hard to imagine.
Amazingly, Dr. Du Bois was 92 years old at the time.
The choice was obvious.
The “Free Single of the Week” at iTunes is by a Native American folksinger named Alela Diane.
If you’re a standup comedy fan – or a student of pop culture more largely – something happened last Friday night you should know about.
Ready for another contest? Click here and listen to a mystery track on my Vox blog.
Tantalizing info posted last week by Rob Fields on his Bold As Love blog...
Let me start off Black History Month with a personal reflection.
But Monk? Mingus? Trane? I was absolutely ignorant. (Never mind cats like Booker Little, Joe Henderson and Sonny Criss.)
The private-eye project went nowhere. But now – 4,000 MP3s and 300 CDs later – I have a basic familiarity with the hard-bop repertoire and all the major players. I can call myself a jazz head.
