Are You Positively Sure That You Are Not Part Negro? Read This.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-08-04 04:52Z by Steven

Are You Positively Sure That You Are Not Part Negro? Read This.

The discovery recently, that a presumably white soldier was part Negro, brought forth the following comment, as to the facts portrayed in this little volume, from Mr. John D. Barry, in a recent article of the San Francisco News:—

“The case of the army officer whose death has been the means of apparently revealing him as legally a Negro wasn’t wholly astonishing. It astonished only those unfamiliar with the extent of the blood mixture in this country. The book published a few years ago by Louis Fremont Baldwin. “From Negro to Caucassian.” showed that the mixture had been going on for a long time and that a good many people who passed as white were Negroes. According to our law anyone who has any Negro blood is a Negro.

Most Negroes understand the situation. Among them the word “passing” is commonly used. It refers to those who have succeeded in crossing the color line without detection. Though they don’t admire the resorters to “passing,” though they consider “passing” a repudiation of sacred ties, a denial of loyalty, they know only too well the motive behind it, the natural longing to escape from discriminations and penalties. Louis Fremont Baldwin says there are thousands in this country who are accepted as white and know they are Negroes. He also says there are still more thousands who are Negroes and believe themselves to be white.

As black blood is absorbed into the white stream he claims that it tends to disappear.”

Louis Fremont Baldwin, From Negro to Caucasian: or, How the Ethiopian is Changing His Skin, (San Francisco: Pilot Publishing Company, 1929): i.

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From Negro to Caucasian: or, How the Ethiopian is Changing His Skin

Posted in Anthropology, Books, Media Archive, Monographs, Passing, United States on 2012-07-31 01:46Z by Steven

From Negro to Caucasian: or, How the Ethiopian is Changing His Skin

Pilot Publishing Company, San Francisco, California
1929
65 pages
Source: University of Michigan via The Hathi Trust Digital Library

Louis Fremont Baldwin

A concise presentation of the manner in which many Negroes in America … have abandoned their… afiliation with Negroes

A concise presentation of the manner in which many Negroes in America who, being very fair in complexion, with hair naturally or artificially free from kink, have abandoned their one-time affiiliations with Negroes, including their own relatives,  and by mingling at first commercially or industrially, then socially with Caucasians, have ultimately been absorbed by the latter.

Prepared and published at the request of the Society for the Amalgamation of the Races
New York, Paris and London
Pilot Publishing Company
617 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, Calif.

PREFACE

The reader is earnestly asked to accept as authentic and reliable the information that is given in this book. The writer is indebted to many friends throughout the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande.

These friends rendered valuable assistance enabling him to locate the individuals with whom he has held interviews related in the text, and from whom he was able to gather information that impressed him with the fact, of the enormous num ber of Colored Americans, who have sufficient ad mixture of bloods in their veins, to alienate them in appearance from the American Negro.

More startling still is the discovery of the great numbers of this contingent of the so-called Negro race, who have deserted-and forsaken kith and kin, and become merged with, or rather absorbed by the American Citizenry as the latter pursues the ordinary paths of trade, commerce, industry and professions, and . . and matrimony.

The reader will also recognize how complicated the situation—but this does not mean that the situation is necessarily calamitous,—but how difficult for any person, particularly those whose ancestors resided “In The South” to be perfectly sure that there is not “a drop of Negro blood in their veins!”  That it can be there, goes without saying, as the  incidents mentioned in the text that follows plainly show, but just as millions of Negroes—Negroes with fair complexions and perfectly straight hair,— those who have not “Crossed Over” as well as those who have, have white blood in their veins, why the author asks, can there not be millions of  persons who believe themselves to be white, yet  have Negro blood in their veins, obtained by the methods that it has been thought appropriate to  bring to the attention of the public through the publication of this book.

—THE AUTHOR.

Let the undersigned assure the readers of this book that after he had read the proof-sheets, he felt it his duty to give the author permission to add his personal testimony as to the prevalence of the practice alleged to be in vogue. He can confirm what is stated as occurring in so many instances, because a branch of his own family “Crossed Over” some few years ago, and has become completely absorbed in the white race.

—A. E. SHADD, Bishop of the United Holy Church of America; Western & Pacific Coast District

Read the entire book here.

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