Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 54

23. “The Problem of Our African Population,” Methodist Quarterly Review (January 1884): 107-26.

Demographic projections in regard to African Americans in the United States. One “startling fact” noted by the author is that “in about eighty-one years [1965], it [“the Negro population”] will be larger than our whole population at the last census [1880].” (The total population of the United States in 1880 was 49,371,340. The 1960 census listed a total of 18,458,776 African Americans, 37.4% of the total figure for 1880.) Mr. Stone has marked many passages in this article, including this one with special emphasis. “His [Bishop Gilbert Haven] episcopal dignity could not prevent his fervent fraternization with the humblest black men, nor even a certain frank, not to say gallant, acknowledgment of the beauty and graceful capabilities of many of their women. After studying them, all over the South, he could never criticise [sic] Moses’s [sic] choice of an Ethiopian wife; and he believed it quite possible that, some day or other, an American leader of the people might not hesitate to introduce one into the presidential mansion” (emphasis added). Mr. Stone has also noted this sentence, “Clearly enough these [racial] antipathies are but whimsical prejudices and should, especially in our new circumstances, be thrown to the wind,” and wrote “compare Prof Royce-International Journal Ethics Apl. ‘06” in the margin. (The collection has a copy of Professor Royce’s article in volume 65 [no. 16].)