stitute only 16 per cent of the total Negro population,
they furnished 30 percent of the penitentiary convicts. But these
figures cannot be relied upon since the census bureau acknowledges that
it has no definite method of determining the different shades of color
and grades of mixture among Negroes.

It is also alleged in proof of this proposition that illicit intercourse
between the races is carried on mainly with the Mulatto women. Can this
not be explained on grounds other than native depravity? The light-colored
Negro woman is made the victim of the lustful onslaught of the male
element of both races. She is placed between the upper and nether stress
of the vicious propensities of white and black men. And if her sins are
greater, is it not because her temptations are greater also? The
following quotation from a distinguished Southerner is significant;
"There was little improper intercourse between white men and Negresses
of the original type in the period before emancipation (after the
creation of the Mulatto class)."[41] Every time a Negro woman is
indicted on this score some white man is inculpated. The reproach hurled
against colored women from such sources reminds us very much of the
lines in Butler's Hudibras:

The selfsame thing they will abhor,
One way, and long another for.

3. THE MULATTO IS INTELLECTUALLY SUPERIOR TO THE BLACKS BUT INFERIOR TO
THE WHITES.

In substantiation of this proposition it is claimed that the greater
number of Negroes who have attained distinction have been those of mixed
blood. The truth of this statement must be conceded, and yet the cause
should not be overlooked. Leaving aside the doctrine of inheritance as a
debatable question, the initial advantage of the mixed over the pure
Negroes was considerable. Feelings of blood ties prompted many a slave
holder to deal kindly by his slave descendants, and often to liberate
them and give them a start in the race of life. That an infusion of
white blood quickens the energy and enlivens the disposition of the
progeny is probably true; but that it adds to the intellectual capacity
is far from a self-evident proposition. The Negroes who have shown any
unusual intellectual activity, in America at least, have usually been of
the purer type. Phyllis Wheatly, Benjamin Banneker, Ira Aldridge, Blind
Tom, Edward W. Blyden, and Paul Dunbar are illustrations of this
argument.

The investigation of Dr. Gould as to circumference of head an