Wanted—Leaders!

A Study of Negro Development
By
The Rt. Rev. Theodore DuBose Bratton, D. D.
Bishop of Mississippi
PRESIDING BISHOP AND COUNCIL Department of Missions and Church Extension 281 Fourth Avenue New York
1922
WANTED-LEADERS!
A Study of Negro Development
The Africa of five hundred years ago, when the modern nations first dipped into its wild and troubled life, presented at least as great a variety of racial characteristics as any other continent. Natural barriers; climatic influences; the recurring desert, swamp, and prairie areas;—all tended to segregate the tribes, and to fix widely different physical characteristics. The ancient Empires of the Mediterranean had left the posterity of their mixed families, and the tradition of their mingled religions, on the borders of that great sea. Inevitably these exercised more or less of influence on the backward people to the South of them, tingeing their blood, their characteristics, and their religion, though in a way difficult to define and to a degree which baffles measurement. Where effects have been in the making for many centuries and are remote from the causes, the links between them are not easily traceable. It is only in modern times that Mohammedanism, for example, has pushed its conquests much below the great desert region. In the time of the slave traffic, the Mediterranean influence must have penetrated to only a comparatively short distance up the Nile and down the western coast, while very gradually diffusing itself through the north Sudan area. In general, we may approach the study of the Negro in Africa with little thought of this outside influence, noting it only where marked traces are discovered either from ancient or modern sources.
Various students of the negro peoples have divided them into families; but the divisions vary, and no fixed terminology has become so dominant as to command common consent. For our purpose, the four Families hereafter described comprise the African Negroes. A minute study of these families will reveal many tribal subdivisions, each with distinguishing traits—physical, mental and moral—developed by environment, and yet plainly traceable to common family origins. Such a minute study is not our purpose, and we shall limit our view to the four Families in whose development we are especially interested.