Orig. Pub. 1941 Download

7r (< OU_1 60997 >m Osmania University Library C Accession No./tf . Call No.. T7 2 ) t 14 S "7 Author |T H- S\ , Title ^^|L 1 \\*.C en d> before ^helaNe last This book should be returned marked below. THE MYTH OF THE NEGRO PAST THE MYTH OF THE NEGRO PAST MELVILLE J. HERSKOVITS Professor of Anthropology Northwestern University HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS New York London THE MYTH OF THE NEGRO PAST Melville Herskovits Copyright^ 1941', by J. Printed in the United States of America All rights in this book are reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Brothers To the men and women who, in Africa and the New World, have helped me understand their ways of life CONTENTS FOREWORD ix PREFACE xiii I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AFRICANISMS i II. THE SEARCH FOR TRIBAL ORIGINS 33 III. THE AFRICAN CULTURAL HERITAGE 54 IV. ENSLAVEMENT AND THE REACTION TO SLAVE STATUS 86 V. THE ACCULTURATIVE PROCESS no VI. THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE: AFRICANISMS IN SECU- LAR LIFE 143 VII. THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE: AFRICANISMS IN RE- LIGIOUS LIFE 207 VIII. THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE: LANGUAGE AND THE ARTS 261 IX. CONCLUSIONS 292 REFERENCES 300 APPENDIX. DIRECTIVES FOR FURTHER STUDY 326 BIBLIOGRAPHY 341 FOREWORD This volume is the first published result of a Study which was an- nounced in the Annual Report of the President of Carnegie Cor- poration of New York for 1938 in the following terms: The Corporation has for some time felt the need of a general study of the Negro in the United States, not only as a guide to its own activ- ities, but for broader reasons. It appeared to be essential that such a study be made under the direction of a person who would be free from the presuppositions and emotional charges which we all share to a greater or less degree on this subject, and the Corporation, therefore, looked outside the United States for a distinguished student of the social sciences who would be available to organize and direct the project. It is a pleasure to announce that Dr. Karl Gunnar Myrdal has been granted a leave of absence from the University of Stockholm to enable him to accept the invitation of the Trustees to undertake this work. Dr. Myrdal arrived in New York in September, 1938, and re- mained here until the European situation made necessary his return to Sweden in May, 1940. During this period he requested some twenty American students of the Negro to prepare memoranda on all the more important aspects of Negro life in America, and on numerous minor ones. Most of these memoranda were unfinished at the time of his departure, but the majority were completed by the following September. Uncertainty concerning the date of Dr. Myr- dal's return demanded reconsideration of the original arrangement which provided that the right to use all materials collected in the course of the Study should be vested in the contributors after the main report was published. Because of the unavoidable delay in the completion of Dr. Myrdal's own work, it was decided to facilitate the publication of some of the memoranda in advance of the main report, and the undersigned Committee was appointed to advise in the selection of those contributions most nearly ready for publication. Dr. Samuel A. Stouffer of the University of Chicago, who acted as executive officer of the Study during Dr. Myrdal's absence, was invited by the Committee to serve as its secretary. In general the memoranda were not designed for publication in the form written. Contributors' instructions were to prepare work- iz x FOREWORD ing memoranda rapidly and in a full and easy style which would make them most useful for Dr. Myrdal's purposes. Thus, by defini- tion, they were not to be formal, balanced manuscripts ready for the printer and the public. The Committee found that every manu- script submitted offered significant contributions. In serving the purposes of the Study so well, the contributors necessarily subordi- nated their individual publication interests to the interests of the central project. This is evidence of unselfish team-play which deserves respect and commendation. The Committee, however, was pleasantly surprised to find an appreciable number of manuscripts so near the publication stage that it could proceed with plans for the prompt publication of a group of monographs in advance of the main report. It is possible that other contributors will later publish additional monographs and articles as a result of their association with the Study. Dr. Myrdal returned to the United States in March, 1941, and it is hoped that his own report may be released some time during 1942. It is on the whole logical that the first monograph to be published as a result of this Study should be concerned with the African background of the American Negro. There is an understandable tendency in our civilization to order our thoughts with reference to sequence in time and to think in terms of origins. Obviously Negroes were not brought to the United States as culturally naked people, and the problem is to determine what of their African heritage has been retained to influence life in America today. We may concede that Jhe greatest significance of the African heritage lies in the fact that most^qf it: quickly and inevitably was lost before the ways of life ^ the dominant white-man could -Be -learned. Yet cultural differen- tials are so important in the social adjustment of different peoples to each other that the retention even of cultural fragments from Africa may introduce serious problems into Negro-white relations. On the positive side, the origin of the distinctive cultural contributions of the Negro to American life must not be overlooked. Fur- thermore, and entirely apart from immediate practical considera- tions, the social scientist can learn about the general nature of cultural development from the cultural history of the Negro in America. Every major activity in the career of Dr. Melville J. Herskovits of Northwestern University as an anthropologist has contributed to his qualifications for the preparation of this monograph on The Myth of the Negro Past. He has studied the physical as well as the FOREWORD xi cultural traits of the Negro, and has made outstanding contributions to knowledge in both fields. His investigations have included work not only in the United States but also in Africa, South America and the West Indies. Before this book is in print he will be at work in Brazil. His lifelong conviction that the study of the Negro in the United States requires also comparable study of the Negro in Africa and in all parts of the Western Hemisphere has made possible this monograph, the first comprehensive analysis of the current beliefs concerning the extent and significance of traits of African origin persisting in the United States. SHELBY M. HARRISON WILLIAM F. OGBURN DONALD YOUNG, Chairman July 25, 1941 PREFACE This work represents the documentation of an hypothesis, developed in the course of two decades of research. That the scientific study of the Negro and attempts to meliorate the interracial situation in the United States have been handicapped by a failure to consider ade- quately certain functioning aspects of Negro life has become increas- ingly apparent as this investigation has gone on. Problems in Negro research attacked without an assessment of historic depth, and a willingness to regard the historical past of an entire people as the equivalent of its written history, can clearly be seen to have made for confusion and error in interpretation, and misdirected judgment in evaluating practical ends. The approach in the ensuing pages, though oriented toward the study of the Negro in the United States, takes into full account the West African, South American, and West Indian data, lacking which, I am convinced, true perspective on the values of Negro life in this country cannot be had, either by the student treating of the larger problems of cultural change or by the practical man seeking to lessen racial tensions. While it has been necessary to throw into relief the neglect by others of such background materials in favor of nonhistorical statistical analyses and ad hoc remedies, this is riot because a full knowledge of existing conditions is held unimportant or that the urgent problems to be faced by Negroes and whites alike are unrecognized. On the contrary, this study has attempted to show that present-day situations are more complex in their underlying causes than has been grasped and that, whether in analyzing intel- lectual or practical problems, every consideration calls for insight into the influence of pre-American patterns. A word may be said regarding the documentation itself. Only those works that have had the widest influence in the past and those that are the most cited today have been given extended treatment, for these are the sources upon which academic opinion, at least, is based. The citations that have been made are those which have the sharpest bearing on the problem as envisaged. Where antiquarian, quixotic, or speculative comments have been included, it is only because they have produced a literary lineage. It would have been xiii xiv PREFACE possible, were polemics the aim of this discussion, to trace a con- sistent genealogy for many of the ideas that, with slight qualifica- tion, have come to us in recent "authoritative" presentations. It would have been equally possible, with the use of the materials from the field study conducted in Trinidad by Frances S.

Load more