Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 69

15. Robert Bennett Bean, “Some Radical Peculiarities of the Negro Brain,” American Journal of Anatomy 5 (September 1906): 353-432; reprint.

Study of the brains of African Americans and European Americans. The monograph is replete with data, including 16 figures, 12 charts, and 7 tables. The author concludes that the black brain is anatomically different and that the differences are proportional “to the amount of admixture of white blood.” Based on measurements of the anterior and posterior association centers of the brain, the author concludes that “the Negro has the lower mental faculties (smell, sight, handicraftsmanship [sic], body-sense, melody) well developed, the Caucasian the higher (self-control, will power, ethical and aesthetic senses and reason).” (According to Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man, Professor Bean’s mentor, Franklin P. Mall, discovered that his student had fudged the data.)