Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/108

Mulattoes have no higher sense of our civilization than the black stock from which they are derived. They are, however, in speech, manners, dress and actions better mimics of the whites than most of the true negroes. Personally, I have found them equally superstitious, treacherous, mendacious, and unreliable. It is the better class of hybrids, however, that command such place and position in this country that demand more than usual ability to fill. Many regard them as the colored doctors, the colored lawyers, colored clergymen, colored poets and authors, and so on, whereas, as a matter of fact, they are nothing of the kind. They are hybrids, nothing more nor less, and often with a very minute tincture of the African negro in them. Some of them are so like Caucasians in face and figure, that were they to go abroad, to Europe, for example, the average European would never for an instant suspect the negro blood in them, and it would only be that person well versed in the negro character and with a knowledge gained by long contact with the race, that could make the correct ethnical diagnosis. I refer distinctly to such specimens as Henry Ossawa Tanner (artist), Daniel H. Williams (surgeon), Charles Waddell Chesnutt (novelist), Francis James Grimke (clergyman), and likewise (W. E. Burghardt) Du Bois (sociologist). When the type is more pronounced, there is no mistaking them, as the negro then crops out with greater certainty. This is the case with such examples as Paul Lawrence Dunbar (poet), Kelly Miller (mathematician), Granville T. Woods (electrician), Edward H. Morris (lawyer), Booker T. Washington (teacher), and several others. Negroes claim one and all of these as representatives of their