THE POSSIBILITY OF PROGRESS
The possibility of progress with regard to the Colored Americans is emphasized by Professor Charles S. Myers of England, who gives the results of his personal observations in other nations.
Even viewing our Colored Americans as a primitive people with only two generations of removals from the primitive state, Professor Myers says:
“The possibility of the progressive development of all primitive peoples must be conceded, if only the environment can be appropriately changed.”
It is in evidence every day, that the “changed environments” of the Colored race in the United States, has forwarded their progressive development to an enormous degree.
BLACK MEN ORIGINATE EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION
In line with the opinion of Herodotus and the German ethnologists, that the Black Men of Africa were the first race, and the originators of the Egyptian and Cretan civilization, Professor Lionel W. Lyde, of England, announces:
“We are in a position to say that primitive man was dark skinned, and that he, as he made his way northward, began to bleach, thus creating a semi-primitive yellow type. This yellow man exposed to conditions of cold and moisture, might become entirely white. The human skin develops pigments to protect itself against a strong sun, and the quantity of pigment in the skin varies with the intensity of the sun.
“It is therefore the men who live in the hottest and least shaded parts of the world—that is to say, in the African, that we find the blackest skin. The white peoples, on the contrary, are confined to a region where the humidity of the atmosphere forms a screen against the rays of the sun. Finally, between the Negro and the White, is the Yellow man, who is a product of desiccating grasslands with seasonal extremes of temperature.”