THE WORLD’S CONGRESS of RACES
Great Importance of Colored Race in the Tremendous World Upward Movement
One Thousand Delegates from Fifty Different Races Proclaim Uplift of People
In considering the opportunities offered the Colored people of the United States, two things must be constantly borne in mind:
1. That the advance of the world and of the nations toward harmonious action and unity of motives, is purely of the mind and soul and not of the material things of life.
2. As to the world’s progress the Colored Americans of the United States occupy a prominent position in the vanguard with the other divisions of the human race, all of whom are moving in the same direction toward carrying out the Divine plan of bringing all nations into one fold.
On July 26, 1912, there opened in the City of London, England, a great congress of the races of the world including all the dark races or their representatives. In fact, fifty different races were represented by their leading men, consisting of over thirty presidents of parliaments, the members of the permanent court of arbitration and of the delegates to the Second Hague Conference, twelve British governors and eight British premiers, over forty colonial Bishops, a hundred and thirty professors of international law, the leading students of mankind, and other scientific men of the world.
When Lord Weardale, at the head of the World’s Peace movement, opened the first session of this congress, he looked into the faces of a thousand people representing fifty different races of men.
Lord Weardale said among other things: “To those who regard the furtherance of international good will and peace as the highest of all human interests, this First Universal Races Congress opens a vista of almost boundless promise.
“Nearer and nearer we see approaching the day when the caste population of the East will assert their claim to meet on terms of equality the nations of the West; when the free institutions and the organized forces of the one hemisphere will have their counterbalance in the other; when their mental outlook and their social aims will be in principle identical; when in short the color prejudice will have vanished and the so-called “white races” and the so-called “colored races” shall no longer meet in missionary exposition, but, in very fact, regard one another as in truth men and brothers.”
Dr. Felix von Luschan, of Germany, declared, “There is an increasing mutual sympathy between the races as they come to know each other.”
Mr. Gustave Spiller, the organizer of the congress, said:
“The common standard provided by university diplomas shows almost all races, even the majority of those which are regarded as inferior, represented successfully in the universities of Europe and America, and that they are equal in intellectual capacity with the others. Hence the difference between them are mere physical characteristics.”
Professor Robertson, of England, among other things established this comforting assurance:
“It is only after a long and painful apprenticeship that European nations have attained autonomy. Why not admit that it may be the same with the so-called backward peoples?”
THE POSSIBILITY OF PROGRESS
The possibility of progress with regard to the Colored Americans is emphasized by Professor Charles S. Myers of England, who gives the results of his personal observations in other nations.
Even viewing our Colored Americans as a primitive people with only two generations of removals from the primitive state, Professor Myers says:
“The possibility of the progressive development of all primitive peoples must be conceded, if only the environment can be appropriately changed.”
It is in evidence every day, that the “changed environments” of the Colored race in the United States, has forwarded their progressive development to an enormous degree.
BLACK MEN ORIGINATE EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION
In line with the opinion of Herodotus and the German ethnologists, that the Black Men of Africa were the first race, and the originators of the Egyptian and Cretan civilization, Professor Lionel W. Lyde, of England, announces:
“We are in a position to say that primitive man was dark skinned, and that he, as he made his way northward, began to bleach, thus creating a semi-primitive yellow type. This yellow man exposed to conditions of cold and moisture, might become entirely white. The human skin develops pigments to protect itself against a strong sun, and the quantity of pigment in the skin varies with the intensity of the sun.
“It is therefore the men who live in the hottest and least shaded parts of the world—that is to say, in the African, that we find the blackest skin. The white peoples, on the contrary, are confined to a region where the humidity of the atmosphere forms a screen against the rays of the sun. Finally, between the Negro and the White, is the Yellow man, who is a product of desiccating grasslands with seasonal extremes of temperature.”
PIGMENT OF COLOR TO GUARD THE SKIN
The racial color, it will be understood, is merely a matter of skin coloring. Nature provides pigments of color to guard the skin against the inclemencies of sun and weather. Every modern man knows and has experienced the result of strong sun and wind in his own skin. “Tan” it is called, and sometimes, within a few weeks the color of a white man’s skin is transformed into a yellow or a dark brown. If the exposure continues, the color remains.
In the opinion of noted scientists, it is certain that the difference between the races as to color is merely skin deep. Their psychological conditions are equal, as we shall see when we reach that point.
Professor Felix Adler, the eminent scientist, speaking with authority, upholds the idea that the relations between the races can be only psychological and not physical. He said at the great Congress of Races:
“It is urgently necessary for us to have a clearer conception of the ideal to be realized in international relations. What principle shall we put in the place of war, brute force, etc?
“The appeal to sentiment and the progress of democracy, are not in themselves a safeguard against war. It is not peace itself that we must keep in view, but the object to be secured by peace. The ideal principle of international relations consists in the progressive organization of these relations between peoples and races. This organization involves two postulates:
“First. To attain the most extreme differentiation of types of culture, the maximum of variety and richness in the expression of human faculties. The peace and progress of the world will depend on the formation of a cultivated class of all civilized peoples.
“Second. This exchange between different types of culture will serve to bring to light the weak points in each, and lead to their improvement and healing.”
Sir Charles Bruce, the noted administrator of government attempts, in various localities where the different races confront one another, to give as his deliberate opinion, based upon experience and close study, this succinct truism:
“The blacks have long been the instruments of the cupidity, cruelty and luxury of the whites; but their intelligence, deliberately neglected for ages, needs only to be awakened.”
Sir Harry Johnston, of England, said:
“The Negro race has produced men of great ability in all departments.”
Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, learned editor of the Crisis, appeared before the Congress as a Colored American scientist, versed in ethnology, and the needs and qualifications of the Colored race. After giving the number of Colored Americans as about ten millions, and mentioning the fact that “They live at the present time under a system of theoretical liberty, which is restricted in practice by certain legal dispositions, and by custom,” he adds: “Intellectual emancipation should proceed hand in hand with economic independence.”
ALL NATIONS AND TRIBES ONE GREAT FAMILY
This is indeed the keynote to the elevation of the Colored Americans to the high plane sought to be reached by all the nations of the earth, and toward which they are surely drifting, in an unconscious fulfillment of the designs of God to gather all nations and tribes together into one great family.
Professor N. R. d’Alfonso, of Italy, laid before the Congress the most profound thought that forms the basis of all progress and gives the key to beneficial government:
“Speculative psychology teaches that the man, to whatever race he may belong, has always the same psychological possibilities.
“Subject from childhood to certain conditions of climate, environment and education, he can reach the highest and most complex grades of civilization.
“It is the action and reaction of the external world on the internal world of the mind that issues in the creation of man.
“If there are psychological differences between races they are the outcome of the particular history of various peoples—a history that has entailed a different education.
“The psychological basis is the same in all men from whatever part of the world they may come, and they may evolve in the same way and attain the same psychic results.
“In the same way racial hostilities and prejudices are not due to organic heredity, but to tradition and education.”
So far as science has gone, it must be apparent that the learned men of the age have returned to the Biblical account: Genesis, 1:26.
“26. And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’
“27. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.”
Again in Genesis 2:7, it is said:
“7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; And man became a living soul.”
Everywhere in Holy Writ, human beings are always referred to as “Man” whenever he is considered as a being vested with a soul, a particular psychological condition that makes him different from all other creations.
In every movement toward human betterment, education, civilization, development, and especially in the onward movement toward unification, the human species is referred to as “Man” without any racial distinctions whatever.
WARS BETWEEN JEWS AND ETHIOPIANS
It is only when men are opposed to one another; when they depart from the Divine intention to unify all men, that man is designated according to his racial or national designation. For instance: The wars between the Jews and the Ethiopians three thousand years before Christ; the wars of the Romans, Persians, Assyrians, English, French, and all other divergent upheavals which depart from the Divine Design. In such cases the psychological man, the man with a soul, the man into whom God breathed the breath of life, is considered a different being and he is unified as “Man.”
Not only is this distinctive unity of soul, of mind, of intelligence, the predominating feature of the creation, known as “man,” but his physical characteristics outside the mere skin deep differences, are exactly the same.
Modern scientists, known as “biologists,” that is, men who investigate the origin of physical life in men, have advanced so far that they know and can easily demonstrate that there are no physical differences.
The infinitely small cells called “protoplasms,” which make up the tissues of the human body, and which are present everywhere, plainly visible to the eye under a microscope, are exactly the same in every human being whatever his race or color, condition, education, environment, etc.
All the machinery upon which these small cells of life operate and give action, energy, and duration—the heart, the nerves, the blood, and all the organs essential or co-operative, are identically the same.
Men have tried to find a difference in the physical make-up of the various races but they have signally failed. They have even endeavored to compare the blood and cells of inferior animals such as apes, going so low as the common monkey, to show that some of the races originated in what is known as the “Anthropoid Ape,” so as to bolster up the doctrine of evolution and maintain the existence of an exclusively, special God created race of men, of which they are the sole and exclusive exponents, but they, also, have signally failed, and all men today, proven by science demonstrating the truths of Holy Writ, stand upon the same psychological, or soul plane, whether his skin be black, yellow, brown, red, white or any other color or shade of color. They are all part and parcel of the Divine movement which is impelling man toward a universal psychological unity. Any man or nation that attempts to bar the way, is submerged or cast aside like a straw before an avalanche. This is written upon the pages of history so clearly, that it is beyond controversy.