ANTHROPOLOGY APPLIED… (5)
By:
August 22, 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.
I, the writer, passed out of this home of trouble and sadness in an invisible form and entered, Sam’s home to find Mr. Jones, sam and his friend a Doctor from Chicago. After listening awhile I soon learned that this gentleman was the lost brother. When I entered the room the two men were weeping like children. The silent watch of the night was broken by Sam saying: Gentlemen let the past floating periods carry from you all of her miserable troubles of history and put an everlasting seal upon them, that your quiet, peaceful mind, with their real treasures of pleasures may never again be disturbed by any treasured prejudice eminating from any custom of ignorance or from the wild-fired brain sending forth its death dealing shells of caste; by a tongue swung in the head of a foolish man, but let love, faith, hope and good will be your watch-word from now onward. Call upon right, equity and justice. Yes, let them sit supreme upon all cases between man and man, regardless of color of skin or hair upon their head, whether it be curly or straight. The two brothers appeared to be spell-bound from Sam’s speech; the next minute Sam was speaking directly to his Chicago friend, addressing him thus:
Sir, you and I have always traveled the same pathways of life, sometimes hand in hand, then again one east the other west, though our fate was always the same. Our customs never changed; our future has ever been clouded with the shades of evening’s obscurity. After the flood we left the ark of our father Noah. Then the Anthropological laws fixed and shaped our destiny upon life’s treacherous breakers of the rolling ocean of time, yes, in the frail bark of time we glided along together until we came to the far eastern shores near the land of Shiner. Through its plains we traveled; it was you and I who built that famous old gigantie city which is known by the name of Babylon; Those walls so great around her stood, was built by our own hands. Thus it was known throughout the land, that all of the children, both brown and black, were the true-born sons of Ham.
Now, Mr. Jones, said that he knew your fame in better days; he declared that you are his brother which he denied from shame, but I myself have learned from his histories left by Mr. Jones progenitors that you are indeed his cousin. It is true that our hair and color makes things or shapes things in a kind of sentimental way which brings about an unpleasantness with all people who are not governed by reason and judgement, but feeling instead. Now, do not forget to tell your children that there was a time when our color was looked upon as the standard and normal color of the world; the most popular amidst the races and nations inform them that in this world there is a wonderful ex- centrical wheel composed of the races of earth, that revolves as does our planet. Each race has his station or place upon it and will play its part when its time comes. This time will come in accordance to the evolutionary and anthropological changes brought about by a reaction of some scientific law unknown to the anthropological world or obsolete to the fallen race or degenerate nation. Teach your son and my daughters whenever you may be associated with them that according to the laws which governs matter and mind, that the black man’s time is near at hand. To repeat the far oft and almost forgotten works of our ancestors or progenitors.
Mr. Jones — O, listen. Now all is as silent as the empire of the dead, but from the skies came a noise as the thunder of many waters which all believed was truly the voice of God, saying to the three men: Inform your people that by my evolutionary laws I made all mankind as brothers; divided into races which races must remain as separate and distinct as the morning stars are from your planet, to remain as such until the earth freezes up or the sun burns down or time winds up her silver cord. Now re- member that, Sam’s eye and mind is in the skies. Sam I hear a weeping, wailing and sighing from a sad and broken heart. I followed the shadows of night only tracing the sobs of sorrow, and came to earth once more. Just think here upon this wheeling and dashing planet of ours, I found myself standing at my old home gate, astonished too that I was myself again. Upon this old earth once more where I began my duty as a man of might and right. Upon entering my house I have found Mr. Jones in great distress and could not be consoled because his family were not. I called him into the room and laid him down to sleep. Just after Mr. Jones floated off in to the great gulf of slumber, peace, rest from a burden, mind, labor and toil, I with my mechanical skill with fluid and liquids, began to apply some of my solutions to the sleeper, which brought him back to his original color with his own straight hair without curls or kinks. With an electric current of love from my soul, I brought him back to life again. When he realized that he was himself again, he immediately set out for home, making about five feet every jump, until he reached his home. In the meantime Sam had dispatched a part of his invisible forces or intellectual powers over to Mr. Jones’ home that he might enjoy the meeting of husband and wife, father and children. You will remember that Sam had not sent all of his intellectual power to his old friend, but had retained part of them with himself, thus with this remain- ing energy and force he proceeded to flood his wife Sally with questions regarding the conversation that had taken place between Mr. Jones and his long lost brother who had come to life once more. So Sally began by saying:
Well, Sam, Mr. Jones brother remained silent for some time after you had taken your leave, but he did make a start and broke the icy silence of time, by opening up a conversation, saying that he had visited every land and clime, race and people. He continued thus: I have served all the nations of earth as a slave, my children for many generations have been hewers of wood and drawers of water they may be located in every country amidst all nations. I reckon that you remember well just seven hundred years before Christ broke down the foundation of sin and shame, by his redemption, that all of the governments and empires are flourishing, black nations and races had fallen into obscurity. Sir, may I tell you that we, your dark brothers, are cousins, continued our descent or downward march in every conceivable way, until the clanging bell of the sixteenth century hailed us. Yes, hailed the wondering children of Ham. At this period an avalanche of raiders from all of the so-called civilized races, tribes and nations came down upon us and broke down the walls of polygamy, demoralized the foundation stones of human traffic and stormed the castle of superstition. These nations carried millions of my people from the bitter gall of the slave traffic, superstition and polygamy, thereby, releasing them from the pleasure of serving those worthless earthly Gods, who unrobe virgins and rob men and nations of their man and statehood, thus changing them into worthless hoards. But instead of enslaving our minds to those old customs of our African home, they changed both mind and body by physical force to manual labor. In the evening of those far off days of the sixteenth century is when all of the Negro race scattered throughout the world started upon their long and tedious march for higher grounds and better planes of manhood. Yes, began from an educational, moral and manual training standpoint. Upon that memorial summer morning we stepped into the brilliant light of the X-ray of the Anglo-Saxon civilization. Yes, sir, that is the period in which we bade farewell to the rough chain which had bound the Negro race down in the dungeon of joint caste of lethargy for more than two thousand years. Mr. Jones’ answer to his brother’s conversation continued in second volume.
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.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: James Parker’s Cocky the Fox | Annalee Newitz’s “The Great Oxygen Race” | Matthew Battles’s “Imago” | & many more original and reissued novels and stories.