The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917

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What, then, are some of those discoveries which have so completely
destroyed the ethnic fetish of the Caucasian race? The greatest and
most conclusive of them all was the discovery of the palace of Minos
by Sir Arthur Evans. In 1894 this scientist undertook a series of
exploration campaigns in central and eastern Crete; it has so happened
that some years previous he had been hunting out ancient engraved
stones at Athens and came upon some three or four-sided seals showing
on each of their faces groups of hieroglyphics and linear signs
distinct from the Egyptian and Hittite, but evidently representing
some form of script. Upon inquiry Sir Arthur learned that these seals
had been found in Crete, and to Crete he went. The legends of the
famous labyrinth and palace of Minos came back to him and were
refreshed by the gossipy peasants, who repeated the tales that had
come down as ancestral memories. In wandering around the site of his
proposed labors Sir Arthur noticed some ruined walls, the great gypsum
blocks of which were engraved with curious symbolic characters,
crowning the southern slope of a hill known as Kephala, overlooking
the ancient site of Knossos, the city of Minos. It was the prelude to
the discovery of the ruins of a palace, the most wonderful
archeological find of modern times.

Who was Minos? In the myths that have come down to us he was a sort of
an Abraham, a friend of God, and often appears as almost identical
with his native Zeus. He was the founder and ruler of the royal city
of Knossos, the Cretan Moses, who every nine years repaired to the
famous cave of Zeus whether on the Cretan Ida or on Dicta, and
received from the god of the mountain the laws for his people. He was
powerful and great and extended his dominions far and wide over the
AEgean Isles and coast lands, and even Athens paid to him its tribute
of men and maidens. To him is attributed the founding of the great
Minoan civilization.

I will not have time today to review the mass of archeological data
which the discoveries of this civilization have produced. They
consist of cyclopean ruins of cities and strongholds, tombs, vases,
statues, votive bronzes, and exquisitely engraved gems and intaglios.
That which is most valuable in establishing the claim of the African
origin of the Grecian civilization is the discovery of the frescoes on
the palace walls. These opened up a new epoch in painting and are of
the utmost interest to the world. The colors are almost as brilliant
as when laid down more than three thousand years ago. Among these
frescoes are numerous representations of the race whose civilization
they represent. It was a race neither Aryan nor Semitic, but African.
The portraitures follow the Egyptian precedent and for the first time
the mysterious Minoan and Mycenean people rise before us. The tint of
the flesh is of a deep reddish brown and the limbs finely moulded. The
profile of the face is pure and almost classically Greek. The hair is
black and curling and the lips somewhat full, giving the entire
physiognomy a distinct African cast. In the women's quarters the
frescoes show them to be much fairer, the difference in complexion
being due, probably, to the seclusion of harem life. But in their
countenances, too, remain those distinguishable features which link
with the African race.

You will pardon me, I trust, if occasion is taken here to impress upon
you the value of genuine archeological evidence. Historians may write
anything to reflect their vanity or their prejudices, but when the
remains of ancient civilizations rise out of the dust and sands and
give the lie to their assertions there is nothing more to be said.
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenecia, Greece, and Rome, have all been claimed
for the Aryan, but the spade has unearthed stone that bears sentient
witness to the fact that Africa has been the pioneer in the field of
civilization. We wonder, then, why the historians continue to ignore
these remains and persist in continuing falsehood. There can be but
one answer and that is racial vanity prefers falsehood to truth and
prejudice demands suppression rather than expression.

Yet these frescoes of Crete need not be such a surprise to scholars
and public after all. The very classics themselves have more than
hinted of the great part played by Africa in the development of
Grecian civilization. Let us revert to the myths and trace the descent
of Minos and his progeny. You will recollect that the ancient heroes
of Greece were divided into the older and younger branches, the former
belonging to the house of Inachus, distinctly Hamitic, while the
latter belonged to the race of Japotus, distinctly a mixture.

The Pelasgic races of the south traced their descent from Inachus, the
river god and son of Oceanus. The son of Inachus, Phoroneus, lived in
the Peloponnesus and founded the town of Argos. He was succeeded by
his son, Pelasgus, from whom the aforementioned races of the south
derived their name. Io, the divine sister of Phoroneus, had the good
fortune, or perhaps misfortune, to attract the attention of the
all-loving Zeus and as a consequence incurred the enmity of Hera. She
is transformed into a beautiful heifer by Zeus, but a gadfly sent by
Hera torments her until she is driven mad and starts upon those famous
wanderings which became the subject of many of the most celebrated
stories of antiquity. AEschylus reviews her roamings in his great
tragedy, "Prometheus Bound," and makes Io to arrive at Mount Caucasus
to which the fire-bringer is chained. It is here that Prometheus
delivers to her the oracle given him by his mother, Themis,
Titan-born. He directs her to Canobos, a city on the Nile, and tells
her that there Zeus will restore her mind.

"and thou shalt bear a child
Of Zeus begotten, Epaphos, 'Touchborn,'
Swarthy of hue."

Aryan parents do not usually bear black children and to show that
AEschylus was thoroughly cognizant of the ethnical relationship here
implied, permit me to quote from "The Suppliants," another of his
tragedies. The Suppliants were the fifty daughters of Danaus, the
Shepherds of Egypt, and they described themselves as, "We, of swart
sunburnt race," "our race that sprang from Epaphos," and when they
appear before the Argive king, claiming his country as their ancestral
home, their color causes him to question their claims in the following
words:

"Nay, stranger, what ye tell is past belief
For me to hear, that ye from Argos spring;
For ye to Libyan women are most like,
And nowise to our native maidens here.
Such race might Neilos breed, and Kyprian mould,
Like yours, is stamped by skilled artificers
On women's features; and I hear that those
Of India travel upon camels borne,
Swift as the horse, yet trained as sumpter-mules,
E'en those who as the AEthiops' neighbors dwell.
And had ye borne the bow, I should have guessed,
Undoubting, ye were of the Amazon tribe."

No, AEschylus made no mistake. He meant just what he wrote and the
discoveries of the wonderful Minoan civilization have proven that the
swarthy touch-born son of Zeus and Io was the incarnation of the
African element that raised Greece to the very pinnacle of
civilization. Minos is in direct descent from Epaphos and from the
latter's prolific progeny we note such names as Agenor, Cadmus,
Europa, AEgyptus, Danaus, Perseus, Menelaus, husband of the famous
Helen, Hercules, and Agamemnon, chosen by the Greeks to lead them
against Troy.

If I should conclude at this point my thesis would be complete and
conclusive, but there are other subjects which demand some attention.
I cannot pass in silence the supposed testimony to the presence of the
fair type in Greece, and to its superiority over the darker
population, furnished by the Homeric poems. This supposed testimony
has precipitated wordy wars as terrible, though perhaps less
sanguinary, as those which were engaged in by the gods and heroes
themselves. The fault, however, lies with the translators rather than
with the epics. From the work of these industrious authors we get the
idea that golden hair and blue eyes were so common that there was
little chance of any other sort of people lingering around. The truth
of the matter is that these translators, like historians, have
permitted their prejudices to warp their accuracy. There is not in the
entire writings of Homer an adjective or description applying to any
of the principals that even suggests a single one of them having blue
eyes and golden hair. Indeed, it is quite the reverse. Athena is
[Greek: glaukopis]; [Greek: glaukos] means blue like the sea and the
unclouded sky; the olive is [Greek: glaukos] also, and Athena is
guardian of the olive. [Greek: Glaukopis] means that her eyes are
brilliant and terrible. Apollo in Homer is [Greek: chrusaoros], that
is to say, bearing a golden sword; while [Greek: xanthos], which has
been mistranslated to mean fair, means reddish brown and brown,
Artemis is [Greek: chrusee], golden, that is to say, brilliant, but
never fair. Neptune is [Greek: kuanochaites], that is to say, bluish,
blackish, like the dark and deep waves of the ocean. Eos, the dawn, is
[Greek: chrusothronos, rododaktulos, krokopeplos], because the color
of the dawn is golden, rosy and red. Neither Hera nor Kalypsos is fair
from the descriptive adjectives. Achilles is [Greek: xanthos] which,
as was said before, means reddish brown and brown. Agamemnon is also
[Greek: xanthos] and remember, if you please, that he is in direct
descent from Epaphos, the swarthy ancestor of the Pelasgic houses.

So you see that even our translators are not to be trusted. Professor
Sergi made an extensive investigation of the supposed testimony to the
presence of the fair type in Greece and his conclusions are as
follows: "In Homer none of the individuals are fair in the
ethnographic sense of the word. I could bring forth a wealth of facts
to show that what I have just stated regarding the anthropological
characters of the Homeric gods and heroes may also be said, and with
more reason, of the types of Greek and Roman statuary which, though in
the case of the divinities they may be conventionalized, do not in the
slightest degree recall the features of a northern race." Hence the
blue-eyed and golden-haired gods and goddesses who grace the canvases
of our art galleries and theater curtains are but pigmentary creations
from the minds of artists who visualize the peculiarities of their own
race just as the Jewish Madonna is depicted as a Spanish, Dutch,
German, English, Italian, Russian, Scandinavian, and even as an
African mother by the different nationalities in turn.

Another idea which seems to be rapidly taking hold upon the scholastic
mind is that the Iliad and Odyssey are in reality Minoan epics made
over, if you please, to fit the later Grecian epochs. While the Homer
we know professedly commemorates the deeds of Achaean heroes,
everything about them is non-Hellenic. The whole picture of the
civilization, including home life, dress, religious worship, and
architecture, is Minoan and Mycenean. Warriors' weapons are of bronze
when the age to which we attribute Homer was an iron age. The
combatants use huge body shields when, as a matter of fact, such
shields had been obsolete long previous to 1200 B.C. The form of
worship, hymns and invocations to deities, and the use of certain
sacrificial forms were all adaptations from the Mycenean ritual. The
arrangements of the palaces and courts as narrated in the epics were
counterparts of the Minoan and Mycenean palaces and had long since
passed out of existence. Among the discoveries in Crete have been
found pictorial scenes exactly as described in Homer, and the artistic
representations upon the shield of Achilles and upon the shield of
Hercules, as described by Hesiod, have been duplicated among the ruins
of Crete. Upon intaglios recovered we find combatants striking at each
other's throats and you will recollect that Achilles does just this
thing in his fight with Hector. I might continue these coincidences
indefinitely, but I believe that the point I desire to make is
sufficiently clear to merit your attention. The great Grecian epics
are epics of an African people and Helen, the cause of the Trojan
war, must henceforth be conceived as a beautiful brown skin girl.

In the press and periodicals of our country we read that the classics
are doomed and about to pass out of our lives, but the classics can
never die. I sometimes dream of a magical time when the sun and moon
will be larger than now and the sky more blue and nearer to the world.
The days will be longer than these days and when labor is over and
there falls the great flood of light before moonrise, minds now dulled
with harsh labor and commercialism will listen to those who love them
as they tell stories of ages past, stories that will make them tingle
with pleasure and joy. Nor will these story tellers forget the
classics. They will hear the surge of the ocean in Homer and march
with his heroes to the plains of Troy; they will wander with Ulysses
and help him slay the suitors who betrayed the hospitality of the
faithful Penelope; they will escape from Priam's burning city with
AEneas, weep over Dido's love, and help him to found a nation beside
the Tiber. And the translators who shall again bring into life the
dead tongues will not let prejudice cloud their brains or truth make
bitter their tongues. The heroes of Homer shall, like the Prince of
Morocco, wear the livery of the burnished sun and be knit by binding
ties to the blood of Afric's clime from whence civilization took its
primal rise.

Permit me now, ladies and gentlemen, to show definitely the debt which
Greece owes to the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations. Crete, as I have
said before, appears to be the center from which the Mediterranean
culture radiated. It is the "Mid-Sea Land," a kind of half-way house
between three continents, and its geographical position makes it the
logical cradle of European civilization. It is near the mainland of
Greece, opposite the mouths of the Nile and in easy communication with
Asia Minor, with which it was actually connected in late geological
times. As I mentioned before, the civilization expanded in every
direction and at the time of the conquest it had firm hold upon
Greece, appearing at Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, Orochomenos, and other
places. That some vanguard of Aryan immigrants came into contact with
this culture at its climax is plain from the evidence furnished by
Homer. That they mingled with the inhabitants is certain. The later
onrush about 1200 B.C. destroyed in part the civilization found there,
but fortunately there was not utter destruction. These rude people
realized the difference between their savagery and their enemies'
culture. They, too, merged with the inhabitants and formed the Grecian
people of historic times. This amalgamation is clearly apparent in the
Greeks to-day and because of it Count de Gobineau has called their
ancestors half-breeds and mulattoes. Note, also, if you will, that
Greek genius burned brightest in those parts of Greece where the
Minoan elements were most thoroughly planted.

If you should inquire the source of the Minoan civilization I would
first call your attention to the fact that Herodotus attributed much
of the Grecian civilization to Egypt, and secondly to the opinion
expressed by Sir Arthur Evans in his presidential address before the
British Association last fall. "My own recent investigations," said
he, "have more and more brought home to me the all pervading community
between Minoan Crete and the land of Pharaohs. When we realize the
great indebtedness of the succeeding classical culture of Greece to
its Minoan predecessor the full significance of this conclusion will
be understood. Ancient Egypt itself can no longer be regarded as
something apart from general human history. Its influences are seen to
lie about the very cradle of our civilization. The first quickening
impulse came to Crete from the Egyptian and not from the Oriental
side." Herodotus has been called the father of lies, but at this late
date we again see him vindicated in a conclusion reached by the
greatest living authority upon classical archeology.

Before closing I wish again to enforce the fact that the ferment
creating the wonderful Grecian civilization was preeminently the
ferment of African blood. Take all the archeological facts of the last
fifty years and read them up or down, across or diagonally, inside and
out, and this fact rises into your mind like a Banquo that will not
down. Historians may distort truth and rob the African race of its
historical position, but facts are everywhere throwing open the secret
closets of nations and exposing ethnic skeletons that laugh and jest
at our racial vanities. The Aryan savages of Europe came down upon
Greece, found there a great civilization, merged with the inhabitants
and builded a greater. The all but savage European of the Dark Ages
knew nothing of culture save what had been taught him by the Roman
legions, the heirs of the Mediterranean civilization. This little was
almost forgotten until religious fanaticism started the Crusades and
brought them into contact with the civilized refinement of the
Arabians, Moors and Saracens, likewise peoples in whose veins flowed
the fiery ferment of African blood. If, as Sir Arthur Evans declares,
classical students must consider origins and admit the ancient
Grecians of African descent, so must they go a bit further and admit
the Renaissance to have sprung because of contact between feudal
Europe and African Mohammedanism. Again we must admit, no matter how
bitter the taste, that the mixed race has always been the great
race--the pure race always the stagnant race. One potent reason for
the possible downfall of European civilization to-day is the fact that
the Aryan element has proven incapable of the mighty trust. It has
forgotten the everlasting lesson of history that mergence of distinct
types means the perpetuation of nationalism. The sole tenet of Europe
has been the domination of the world by the Caucasian and suddenly it
discovers that the term Caucasian is too narrow to include both Saxon
and Teuton. Hence a war for the extermination of both.

The end of the world is not near and the dream of a millennium is
equidistant. The sum of all that is past is but a prelude of that
which is to come. It has taken the brute a myriad of years for his
gaze to reach beyond them. Civilization is a mixture of dictions and
contradictions and none of us to-day is sure that we know just what it
means. Through all there yet remain:

"Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,--
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing,--
Upholds us, cherish and have powers to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of Eternal Silence."

I close with the hope of a time when earthly values will be measured
with a justice now deemed divine. It is then that Africa and her
sun-browned children will be saluted. In that day men will gladly
listen with open minds when she tells how in the deep and dark
pre-historic night she made a stairway of the stars so that she might
climb and light her torch from the altar fires of heaven, and how she
has held its blaze aloft in the hall of ages to brighten the wavering
footsteps of earthly nations.

FOOTNOTES:

[401] This address was delivered before the Omaha Philosophical
Society, April 1, 1917.

THE JOURNAL

OF

NEGRO HISTORY

VOL. II--OCTOBER, 1917--NO. 4

SOME HISTORICAL ERRORS OF JAMES FORD RHODES

While on a visit to Cleveland, Ohio, some time ago, the guest of my
good friend George A. Myers, my attention was called to Rhodes'
History of the United States. This was due, no doubt, to the fact that
Mr. Myers had been in correspondence with Mr. Rhodes relative to
certain points in the career of the late M. A. Hanna, brought out by
Mr. Rhodes, which, in the opinion of Mr. Myers, were not accurate. In
glancing over one of the volumes, I came across the chapters giving
information about what took place in the State of Mississippi during
the period of Reconstruction. I detected so many statements and
representations which to my own knowledge were absolutely groundless
that I decided to read carefully the entire work. I regret to say
that, so far as the Reconstruction period is concerned, it is not only
inaccurate and unreliable but it is the most biased, partisan and
prejudiced historical work I have ever read. In his preface to volume
six, the author was frank enough to use the following language:
"Nineteen years' almost exclusive devotion to the study of one period
of American history has had the tendency to narrow my field of
vision." Without doing the slightest violence to the truth, he could
have appropriately added these words: "And since the sources of my
information touching the Reconstruction period were partial, partisan
and prejudiced, my field of vision has not only been narrowed, but my
mind has been poisoned, my judgment has been warped, my decisions and
deductions have been biased and my opinions have been so influenced
that my alleged facts have not only been exaggerated, but my comments,
arguments, inferences and deductions based upon them, can have very
little if any value for historical purposes."

Many of his alleged facts were so magnified and others so minimized as
to make them harmonize with what the author thought the facts should
be rather than what they actually were. In the first place, the very
name of his work is a misnomer: "History of the United States from the
Compromise of 1850 _to the Final Restoration of Home Rule at the South
in 1877_." I have emphasized the words "to the final restoration of
home rule at the South in 1877" because those are the words that
constitute the misnomer. If home rule were finally restored to the
South in 1877, the natural and necessary inference to be drawn is that
prior to that time those States were subjected to some other kind of
rule, presumably that of foreigners and strangers, an inference which
is wholly at variance with the truth. Another inference to be drawn is
that those States had enjoyed home rule until the same was
revolutionized or set aside by the Reconstruction Acts of Congress and
that it was finally restored in 1877. If this is the inference which
the writer meant to have the reader make, it is conclusive evidence of
the fact that he was unpardonably and inexcusably ignorant of the
subject matter about which he wrote. As that term is usually and
generally understood, there never was a time when those States did not
have home rule, unless we except the brief period when they were under
military control, and even then the military commanders utilized home
material in making appointments to office. Since the officers,
however, were not elected by the people, it may be plausibly claimed
that they did not have home rule. But the State governments that were
organized and brought into existence under the Reconstruction Acts of
Congress were the first and only governments that were genuinely
republican in form. The form of government which existed in
ante-bellum days was that of an aristocracy. That which has existed
since what Mr. Rhodes is pleased to term the restoration of home rule
is simply that of a local despotic oligarchy. The former _was_ not,
and the present _is_ not, based upon the will and choice of the
masses; but the former was by far the better of the two, for whatever
may be truthfully said in condemnation and in derogation of the
southern aristocracy of ante-bellum days, it can not be denied that
they represented the wealth, the intelligence, the decency and the
respectability of their respective States. While the State governments
that were dominated by the aristocrats were not based upon the will of
the people, as a whole, yet from an administrative point of view they
were not necessarily bad. Such can not be said of those who are now
the representatives of what Mr. Rhodes is pleased to term home rule.

On page 171 of his seventh volume, Mr. Rhodes says: "Some Southern men
at first acted with the Republican party, but they gradually slipped
away from it as the color line was drawn and reckless and corrupt
financial legislation inaugurated." That thousands of white men in the
South, who identified themselves with the Republican party between
1868 and 1876, subsequently left it, will not be denied, but the
reasons for their action are not those given by Mr. Rhodes. In fact,
there is no truth in the allegation about the drawing of the color
line and very little in the one about corrupt or questionable
financial legislation. The true reason why so many white men at the
South left the Republican party may be stated under three heads:
first, the Democratic victories of 1874 which were accepted by
southern Democrats as a national repudiation of the congressional plan
of Reconstruction; second, the closeness of the Presidential election
of 1876 together with the supposed bargain entered into between the
Hayes managers and southern Democratic members of Congress, by which
the South was to be turned over to the Democrats of that section in
consideration of which the said southern Democrats gave their consent
to the peaceable inauguration of Hayes; third, the decisions of the
Supreme Court of the United States by which the doctrine of States'
Rights was given new life and strength.

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