HW 2/20

Annotation of PvF “The Race Question in the United States”

• John Tyler Morgan – a royal racist ass in charge of two major bills:
• The Blair Bill was apposed by him because he thought that it would lead to “over-education of blacks” which would lead them to “unwarranted federal intrusion into state affairs”
• The Force bill federal supervision of voting, to prevent blacks to vote.
• “defranchising blacks” wrote a book called: “Shall Negro Majorities Rule?” saying that African descent is “naturally inferior to whites”. differences between the races were in God’s hands, “have been arranged by the hand of the Creator..” He stated it was wrong for someone black to be intertwined with a white family. Morgan was not the worst out of some other people at the time, like Thomas Dixon, who wanted brutality against blacks and even stated something about black rapist.
• 14th and 15th amendments, ” the purpose of these amendments was to protect the negro race from the active hostility of the white race….the race question appeared in the admitted inferiority of the negroes, as a race; and, in the other case, it admitted aversion between the races”.
• worried about black people getting involved in politics and what not.
• Indian inferiority, “.. the Indians, while they eagerly acquired the ownership of negro slaves, refused the bondage of slavery for their race, and have perished, rather than submit to such humiliation”
• prejudice: “it equally affects and controls both races in all their relations, and it is immutable, – grounded in convictions and sentiments that either race can yield”

Annotation of The Mismeasure of Man 82-92

• Morton: “….human races must have been separate from the start…”
• Author: “But separate, as the Supreme Court once said, need not meant unequal..” (85)
• Morton surveyed drawings from Egypt and said that blacks were menials, “they were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in the ancient times was the same that it is now, that of servants and slaves…” (85)
• Author in response: “had been captured in warfare ; sub-Saharan societies depicted blacks as rulers.”
• Measurements of the skulls were not correct (89)
• “so much for Indian inferiority” was stated by the author in response to wrong measurements made by Morton to try to show Indians as inferior.