VIRGINIA'S ATTEMPT TO ADJUST THE COLOR PROBLEM
VIRGINIA'S ATTEMPT TO ADJUST THE COLOR PROBLEM: "VIRGINIA'S ATTEMPT TO ADJUST THE COLOR PROBLEM *
W. A. PLECKER, M.D., FELLOW A.P.HA
State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Richmond, Virginia
* Read at the joint session of the Public Health Administration and Vital Statistics Sections of the American Public Health Association at the Fifth-third Annual Meeting at Detroit, Michigan, October 23, 1924.
THE SETTLERS of North America came not as did the Spanish and Portuguese adventurers of the southern continent, without their women, bent only on conquest and the gaining of wealth and power; but bringing their families, the Bible, and high ideals of religious and civic freedom.
They came to make homes, to create a nation, and to found a civilization of the highest type; not to mix their blood with the savages of the land; not to originate a mongrel population combining the worst traits of both conquerors and conquered.
All was well until that fateful day in 1619 when a Dutch trader landed twenty negroes and sold them to the settlers, who hoped by means of slave labor to clear the land and develop the colony more quickly.
Few paused to consider the enormity of the mistake until it was too late. From this small beginning developed the great slave traffic which continued until 1808, when the importation of slaves into America was stopped. But there were already enough negroes in the land to constitute them the great American problem. Two races as materially divergent as the white and the negro, in morals, mental powers, and cultural fitness, cannot live in close contact without injury to the higher, amounting in many case; to absolute ruin. The lower never has been and never can be raised to the level of the higher."
W. A. PLECKER, M.D., FELLOW A.P.HA
State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Richmond, Virginia
* Read at the joint session of the Public Health Administration and Vital Statistics Sections of the American Public Health Association at the Fifth-third Annual Meeting at Detroit, Michigan, October 23, 1924.
THE SETTLERS of North America came not as did the Spanish and Portuguese adventurers of the southern continent, without their women, bent only on conquest and the gaining of wealth and power; but bringing their families, the Bible, and high ideals of religious and civic freedom.
They came to make homes, to create a nation, and to found a civilization of the highest type; not to mix their blood with the savages of the land; not to originate a mongrel population combining the worst traits of both conquerors and conquered.
All was well until that fateful day in 1619 when a Dutch trader landed twenty negroes and sold them to the settlers, who hoped by means of slave labor to clear the land and develop the colony more quickly.
Few paused to consider the enormity of the mistake until it was too late. From this small beginning developed the great slave traffic which continued until 1808, when the importation of slaves into America was stopped. But there were already enough negroes in the land to constitute them the great American problem. Two races as materially divergent as the white and the negro, in morals, mental powers, and cultural fitness, cannot live in close contact without injury to the higher, amounting in many case; to absolute ruin. The lower never has been and never can be raised to the level of the higher."
posted by Helen Campbell @ 2:45 PM
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