ANTHROPOLOGY APPLIED… (2)
By:
July 21, 2025
An excerpt from Robert Gilbert Wells’ Anthropology Applied to the American White Man and Negro (1905). Set in post-Reconstruction America, with numerous sf and fantastic elements, including invisibility, time travel and a drug that allows one to change skin color. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize an excerpt for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5.
SAM HAS CHANGED MR. JONES COLOR FOR PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE ON MR. JONES’S PART FOR THE SAKE OF SOLVING THE RACE PROBLEM.
Sam — Allright, Mr. Jones, come in the room, take that seat.
The doors and windows were immediately closed and in a few moments, Mr. Jones felt Sam’s hands passing over his head and face, then over his body. A peculiar sensation passed over him. Sam took a towel and wiped the liquid from Mr. Jones’s head and face, then he asked, “How do you feel?”
“Allright,” answered Mr. Jones.
The doors and windows were opened, Sam and Mr. Jones walked out of the room, then to the depot purchased tickets and started for Chicago, but when the two men arrived at the depot, to Mr. Jones surprise, the ticket agent told him to get out of that waiting room or he would take a club to his head, and that pretty quick. Of course, Mr. Jones was an old citizen in the place and did not care to have any troubles at his age, and more than this his wife did not know where he was or where he was going, so he simply walked out and waited on the outside as he knew that he would not be allowed in the waiting room for Negroes. All of this time Sam was laughing up his sleeves at Mr. Jones’s predicament. After this free-born southern gentleman had passed fifteen minutes in the cold, the train pulled in. Now, as usual, Mr. Jones walked into the white man’s coach. The long-haired brakeman met him about middle ways and asked what he was doing in that coach. Mr. Jones told him that he did not know that it was any of his business and more that if he did not desist in his conduct towards the passengers of that coach, why he would be reported to the railroad authorities. About this time the conductor and another porter was on hand. The next thing Mr. Jones knew he had been knocked down by a fellow passenger. By the time he struck the floor, he received a kick in the side and a blow in the head from some unknown party. By the time he had caught his breath he was out of the door of the white man’s coach and thrown headlong into the Negro’s jim-crow car, mangled and bleeding. Sam had heard the racket and was watching what is commonly known as the white man’s fun and method of teaching the Negro his place. Sam washed Mr. Jones’s ten wounds and consoled him as best he could.
Mr. Jones addressed Sam, as follows: “Sam, do you see that these fellows have beat me until I am as black as a Negro from head to foot? I can see in the glass that they have even beat me so severely, all for nothing that my hair has turned as kinkey as a Negro’s. I shall punish those culprits to the full extent of the law. They will not allow me to ride in this coach, I know, because it is a Negro coach.”
The conductor answers Mr. Jones by saying, You dirty, kinkey-haired Nigger; the next time you try such a caper as that we will simply kill you and pitch you off the train. I reckon you think that you are white don’t you?”
By this time the old anglo-saxon blood in Mr. Jones’s body was boiling at a temperature of one hundred and forty degrees. He with the cunning of his right hand, drew back and let the conductor fall over about five seats from him. In the meantime Sam had stopped the onward march of the two brakemen with his old hickory stick which he had brought from home for that purpose; since he expected some fun of that sort. When the dust cleared away there were few people in the center of the Jim Crow. All of the colored ladies were either in one end of the coach or the other and the colored brothers were standing at a safe distance. Mr. Jones and Sam held the entire center with not a brakeman or conductor in sight. About this time Mr. Jones was looking at the serious side of the affair; he could not understand the whites all calling him a big black nigger, nor the rough treatment turning his hair so very curly that his former brothers were calling him a black kinkey-haired Nigger. Well, Sam told Mr. Jones that he had seen yellow men, or mulattoes beaten black on the train, in depots, restaurants, hotels, boarding houses, at the soda water fountains, and upon the side-walks for not getting off of them for the white Tillmans to pass.
By this time Mr. Jones and Sam had become hungry. Mr. Jones, not thinking of what had just happened to him on account of the color of his skin and the curls upon his head. Therefore when the porters entered the passenger coaches describing the wholesome and palatable food upon the table awaiting the passengers, Mr. Jones bounced up and darted through the white man’s coach into the dining room. He went and seated himself right by the side and just in front of two upper-ten white ladies who became struck with consternation and of course they both fainted there and then. This most serious affair in a time of great excitement likely saved Mr. Jones’s life because immediate attention had to be given the two ladies or they would have died.
About this time the train had reached a place called Tillman Lynchville, S. C. At this place Mr. Jones was thrown off of the cars, bloody, thirsty and hungry. The conductor had wired ahead for officers to be at the depot to take charge of an unruly Nigger. These men, the sheriff and a couple of policemen were on hand and took Mr. Jones and Sam in charge. These two old men were placed in jail to await trial three days from date of incarceration. Mr. Jones and Sam were placed in an iron cage as two desperate Negroes, as dangerous characters to the public welfare.
On the third day the wives and children of these two supposed Negroes were sent for to come to Tillman Lynchville to attend the trial of their husbands. At nine o’clock the two men were brought out handcuffed together. As the two old friends entered the little log house, Sally, Sam’s wife, said, “Here is Sam alright.”
Mrs. Jones asked Sam where Mr. Jones was. Sam replied, “Why, this is him handcuffed with me, don’t you know your husband, Mrs. Jones?”
Mrs. Jones — “Why, no, if that’s him I do not know him. When did I ever marry a Negro for a husband?”
The trial justice interfered by asking who was the father of these children. She said her husband, Mr. Jones, was the father of them. About this time Mr. Jones had become concerned in the affair himself and said in a nervous and trembling voice: “Why, Mary, my wife, will you deny your husband, the father of all of these children standing around here?”
The sheriff spoke up saying to Mr. Jones, “Do you mean to tell these white ladies and gentlemen present that you, a smutty black Nigger, are the father of these clear-blooded white children with straight hair?” Mrs. Jones said the scoundrel should be punished. At this moment, there came a heavy course voice, saying “Lynch him, lynch the Nigger.” Another squall came from the same corner, “O, no burn the scoundrel.”
A rush was made for Mr. Jones by a howling mob. They took him out and dragged him down an alley. In the meantime Sam had succeeded in getting his handcuff off of his wrist. He gathered a large fire poker and ran into that excited, howling mob of murderers and with that piece of iron about three feet long he strewed men right and left, as though a gatling gun had been turned loose upon them. When the dust from the old alley had cleared away, amongst the dying and wounded were the sheriff and his son, with the end of a rope wrapped around their hands with the other end looped around Mr. Jones’s neck. They were making for a telephone pole to lynch the white man covered with black.
About this time Mrs. Jones had begun to come to herself. In fact, she and the children were moved more by pity and a high sense of dignity than was expected from the rough bystanders. This was a character of the Jones family. The wife and children of Mr. Jones were examined very closely by the judge. They all denied this Negro Jones being connected with the family in any way whatever, but acknowledged that he had the features of the husband and father; the clothes, the voice, the walk and carriage of Mr. Jones, yet he did not have the right color; the skin was too dark and hair too curly. Therefore the judge called for Mr. Jones to come forward and testify for himself.
Judge — What is your name?
Jones — James Jones.
Judge — Is this woman your wife?
Mr. Jones — Yes, sir.
Judge — In what year were you two married?
Mr. Jones — In 1868.
Judge — What was the name of this woman before your marriage?
Mr. Jones — Miss Mary Justice.
Judge — Did she receive any land from her parents after the marriage?
Mr. Jones — Yes, sir; she received 250 acres from her grandfather, old Mr. Billie Justice.
Judge — How many children have been born to you two?
Mr. Jones — Five, three girls and two boys.
Judge — That will do, Jones. Come down off the stand.
Now the trouble opened again on a new scale. Mrs. Jones starts for home and objected to her husband’s company, which brought about grief upon the part of both. Just at this juncture Sam comes to Mr. Jones’s rescue and consoles him by saying that his color will not affect the quality and quantity of his manhood. Then Sam took Sally, his wife, to one side and informed her that all of this trouble will bring about great good and lasting results.
Sally replied that he must be careful, indeed, that bad results do not come from this excitement, that he may never be able to eradicate. “I am uneasy for Mr. and Mrs. Jones already, because of the strain that it has brought upon their minds.”
Sam — But he will have the pleasure of knowing that he was the first blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon who was ever changed into a Negro. Furthermore, he will find out, as I have often told him, that the Negro is the only human being living who is entailed with the man and womanhood to find a few days of happiness under so great disadvantages as surround his abnormal strides upon the charging planes of prosperity. With all of Mr. Jones’s exciting experiences of the last few days, yes, with the same experience in every day life, we have caused the fountain of prosperity to flow in our midst and enterprises of every description to bloom and blossom like the golden roses of the cold, frozen hills and valleys of Alaska.
Sally — Sam, you talk too much. I think you should be looking after Mr. Jones, your old, true and tried friend. You should remember that he is not accustomed to our treatment and is not at all responsible for the conduct of those bad whites who mistreat us and our children. He has ever been the friend of the black man; I believe that you are doing wrong to have him suffer four or five days as we have suffered all our lives. Now if he could do us any good by so doing, why I would be willing that he and Mrs. Jones should undergo the ordeal.
Sam — Sally, I wish you would stop that mouth of yours right now; just let old Sam, your husband, tell you a little something you do not know. Mr. Jones, as you know, is the friend of the black folks, as you have said, and I intend with my old hammertice skill to develop every bit of Mr. Jones’s friendship for us into reality before he dies.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
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