The Pan-African movement when it comes will not, however, be merely a narrow racial propaganda. Already the more far-seeing Negroes sense the coming unities: a unity of the working classes everywhere, a unity of the colored races, a new unity of men. The proposed economic solution of the Negro problem in Africa and America has turned the thoughts of Negroes toward a realization of the fact that the modern white laborer of Europe and America has the key to the serfdom of black folk, in his support of militarism and colonial expansion. He is beginning to say to these workingmen that, so long as black laborers are slaves, white laborers cannot be free. Already there are signs in South Africa and the United States of the beginning of understanding between the two classes.
In a conscious sense of unity among colored races there is to-day only a growing interest. There is slowly arising not only a curiously strong brotherhood of Negro blood throughout the world, but the common cause of the darker races against the intolerable assumptions and insults of Europeans has already found expression. Most men in this world are colored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men. The future world will, in all reasonable probability, be what colored men make it. In order for this colored world to come into its heritage, must the earth again be drenched in the blood of fighting, snarling human beasts, or will Reason and Good Will prevail? That such may be true, the character of the Negro race is the best and greatest hope; for in its normal condition it is at once the strongest and gentlest of the races of men: "Semper novi quid ex Africa!"
FOOTNOTES:
[110] Sir Harry Johnston estimates 135,000,000 Negroes, of whom 24,591,000 live in America. See Inter-Racial Problems, p. 335.
[111] The South African natives, in an appeal to the English Parliament, show in an astonishing way the confiscation of their land by the English. They say that in the Union of South Africa 1,250,000 whites own 264,000,000 acres of land, while the 4,500,000 natives have only 21,000,000 acres. On top of this the Union Parliament has passed a law making even the future purchase of land by Negroes illegal save in restricted areas!
[112] The traveler Glave writes in the Century Magazine (LIII, 913): "Formerly [in the Congo Free State] an ordinary white man was merely called 'bwana' or 'Mzunga'; now the merest insect of a pale face earns the title of 'bwana Mkubwa' [big master]."
[113] E.D. Morel, in the Nineteenth Century.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
There is no general history of the Negro race. Perhaps Sir Harry H. Johnston, in his various works on Africa, has come as near covering the subject as any one writer, but his valuable books have puzzling inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Keane's Africa is a helpful compendium, despite the fact that whenever Keane discovers intelligence in an African he immediately discovers that its possessor is no "Negro." The articles in the latest edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica are of some value, except the ridiculous article on the "Negro" by T.A. Joyce. Frobenius' newly published Voice of Africa is broad-minded and informing, and Brown's Story of Africa and its Explorers brings together much material in readable form. The compendiums by Keltie and White, and Johnston's Opening up of Africa are the best among the shorter treatises.