African Accomplishments and Race Pride

Abstract

There are … the great Mandingo and Foulah tribes, who are Mohammedans, and the principal rulers of central Africa, extending their influence nearly across the Continent. They have schools and mosques in all their towns, and administer their government according to written law. There is a steady and improvable element in their barbarism, which is leading them to develop the idea of a national and social order. They read constantly the same books and from this derive that community of ideas, and that understanding of each other … which gives them the power of ready organization and effective action. There is a simplicity and sincerity about them — there are features of purity and sobriety in their society which will fit them to receive and welcome certain aspects of higher civilization.…Without the aid or hindrance of foreigners… they are growing up gradually and normally to take their place in the great family of nations — a distinct but integral part of the great human body, who will neither be spurious Europeans, bastard Americans, nor savage Africans, but men developed upon the base of their own idiosyncrasies, and according to the exigencies of their climate and culture. …uring all the years which have elapsed since the commencement of modern progress, the African race has filled a very humble and subordinate part in the work of human civilization.

From The Prospects of the African (1874[?]) pp. 5–7