Mixed Race Studies

A Statistical Octoroon

Los Angeles Herald
Volume XXIX, Number 2 (1901-10-03)
page 4, columns 6-7
Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

The Average American Seven Parts White and One Part Colored

The average adult American is a statistical octoroon, says Dr. Henry Gannett In Everybody’s Magazine. If the blood in the veins of all our of people, white and black, were pooled and redistributed, each person would have about seven parts white and one part negro blood. The white strain in him, moreover, is by no means purely American White strains of foreign origin, derived from Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, Canada, Great Britain and the countries of southern Europe, are collectively more powerful in his composition than is the negro strain. Thus going back only one generation, we find him to be a composite, the creation of widely differing bloods and nationalities. The peoples of the earth, from the Congo under the equator to the North Cape of Europe, have contributed, either immediately or remotely, to his composition. But with it all we find the Anglo-Saxon strain the dominant one. His political Institutions, his laws, his social conditions and his mental characteristics, his power of Initiative, and his independence of thought and action are Anglo-Saxon, sharpened and intensified by fresh contact with nature under new and untried conditions. It is a strange and a gratifying thing to witness, in connection with this mixture, of blood, the complete dominance of the Anglo-Saxon strain, and it argues well for its strength and vitality, an well as for the welfare of the country which he occupies and governs.

Tries to Marry Quadroon

Los Angeles Herald
Volume 35, Number 31 (1907-11-02)
page 2, column 6
Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

By Associated Press

YUMA, Ariz,, Nov. 1-M. G. Graff, aged 21 years, white, of Riverside, Cal., and Addle Burkhart, aged 20, were refused the office of marriage by Probate Judge Godfrey here today and the license issued them was destroyed on the girl’s confession that she is a quadroon.

Forecast of Miscegenation

Los Angeles Herald
1906-07-24
page 6, column 3
Source: Library of Congress: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

In the course of a sermon delivered last Sunday before n local negro audience. Bishop Hamilton of the Methodist church said: “It might create a sensation if I should say a union of the races of this world Is possible. The papers would take it up In the morning if I should tell you the blacks and whites will eventually merge into one people. This I know: all discriminations must come to an end and it is not a question which nation shall reign in this world.”

Bishop Hamilton has an unquestionable right to his views on the subject of miscegenation and likewise to the personal demonstration of them if he sees fit. It is not the purpose of The Herald to reopen an issue that was supposed to have been buried with the abolition party nearly half a century ago. Every one to his or her liking in regard to the old question whether a negro Is “a man and a brother,” and, inferentially, whether a negress is a woman and a sister.

It is the effort of such preachment to a negro congregation as Bishop Hamilton is credited with that The Herald especially criticizes. The bishop practically tells hundreds of negroes to their faces, and through them he tells the whole negro race In the United States, that miscegenation is foreordained by the almighty. Note what the bishop says following the above quotation: “It won’t matter whether a man Is white or black, if he is a son of God, he shall become an individual part of that people which shall eventually own this earth.”

The effect of such preaching to negroes cannot be otherwise than pernicious. Its tendency is to fill the negro mind with notions of social equality, going the full length to amalgamation of the white and black races. And with these notions well rooted, is it not logical to suppose that such present negro crimes as are reported almost daily, would be multiplied indefinitely?

Not one white American in a thousand will indorse the miscegenation doctrine, substantially, which Bishop Hamilton is preaching to the negroes.