D. C., has a library of such books. There are
other private collections, some of them running into several thousand
volumes. Most of them are written in a controversial spirit. Many of
them are theological, seeking to show, on the basis of scriptural
quotations, that the social status of the black man is pre-ordained
and eternally fixed. Others are pseudo-scientific attempts to solve
the race problem by showing that the black man is not quite human.
Some of them seek to prove, on the basis of anthropological data, that
the Negro has no soul, hence efforts to Christianize him are
hopeless.--Many more are written by Negroes to preserve some record of
their meager history, or to defend the race against the monstrous
attacks upon its humanity.

Such books are interesting and valuable as records of the sentiments
and attitudes which the racial struggle has called forth in the black
man and in the white. The strange distortions of fact and opinion
which they record are significant, not so much for what they tell us
of the Negro, as for what they reveal of the intensity of the racial
conflict, and of the nature of the passions involved. Most books on
the Negro in America published prior to 1900, and some books written
since that time, are mainly valuable as source books for the social
psychologist and the students of human nature. As literature they
represent a melancholy anthology. As records of human nature, under
the strains and stresses of a tragic although peaceful conflict, they
have a new and fascinating interest. It is in this sense that we can
say, spite of all that has been written, that there are no scientific
studies of the American Negro, there are only materials awaiting
scientific interpretation.

It must be regarded as an event of the first importance, therefore,
that an institution of the authority of Harvard University and the
Peabody Museum proposes to publish a series of studies intended to
cover the whole wide range of native African life and to extend these
studies eventually to the descendants of the African peoples in
America. No study of the Negro in America will be complete which does
not take account of the African background of the race. On the other
hand, no attempt to assess the qualities and capacities of the native
African, living in his isolated and primitive environment, will be
adequate which does not take account of the Negro's progress under the
conditions of a civilized environment. As a