CAROLYN FLUEHR-LOBBAN

Department of Anthropology
Rhode Island College
Providence, RI 02908

Antenor Firmin: Haitian Pioneer of Anthropology

Antenor Firmin published De rtgalite des Races Humaines in 1885 in Paris as a response both to Arthur de Gobineau's
racist tome Vlne'galite des Races (1853-55) and to the racialist anthropology of the nineteenth century. This pioneering
work of anthropology has been translated for the first time into English by Assclin Charles as The Equality of the Human
Races (Firmin [1885)2000). In 662 pages of the original text, Firmin systematically critiqued the anthropometry and cra-
niometry that dominated the anthropology of his day, while he envisioned a broad, synthetic discipline that would follow
once this narrow approach to the study of man was abandoned. He challenged virtually every extant racial myth and laid a
basis for the understanding of human variation as adaptation to climate and environment. Contrary to the polygenist doc-
trines of the infertility of interracial matings, Firmin extolled the value of racial mixture, especially in the vigorous New
World hybrid populations. He developed a critical view of racial classifications and of race that foreshadowed much later
social constructions of race. In the book he also articulated early Pan-Africanist ideas as well as an analytical framework
for what would become postcolonial studies.
The Equality of the Human Races is a text that lies historically at the foundations of the birth of the discipline of anthro-
pology, yet it is unknown to the field. It is a pioneering work in critical anthropology that awaits recognition 115 years after
it was first published. [Antenor Firmin, history of racism, antiracism, historical texts, Haitian anthropologist, critical an-
thropology, nineteenth-century pioneer]

A
ntenor Firmin's De VEgalite des Races Humaines
(Anthropologie Positive) first published in 1885
(Paris), and now available in English, was a re-
sponse to European racialist and racist thought in the nine-
teenth century. The Equality of the Human Races ([1885]
2000) is a remarkable yet obscure work of anthropology.
Written in the nineteenth century, unknown to all but a few
specialists in the twentieth century, it is nonetheless still an
evocative work that can inspire readers in the new millen-
nium. An international conference, "Rediscovering An-
tenor Firmin, Pioneer of Anthropology and Pan-African-
ism," to be held at Rhode Island College June 1-3, 2001,
commemorates both the recovery of his work and the 151 st
anniversary of his birth and should open a new era of
scholarly appreciation. Antenor Firmin (1850-1911)(Fig-
ure 1) is probably the first scholar of African descent to
write a systematic work of anthropology, one that antici-
pated the eventual scope and breadth of the new science
well beyond the narrow, racialist physical anthropology
that it critiqued. My awareness of this pioneer of anthro-
pology fortuitously occurred while teaching about the "fa-
ther of racism," Arthur de Gobineau, in an undergraduate
class. Anthropology of Race and Racism, in 1988 in which
I had the good fortune to have a patriotic Haitian student
who asked me if I had ever heard of the response of Haitian
scholar Antenor Firmin to de Gobineau.1
Firmin's title and scientific rebuttal were especially di-
rected at the work of Count Arthur de Gobineau, whose
four-volume work Essai sur I'/negalite des Races Hu-
maines (1853—55) had found its mark in the "century of
progress." De Gobineau's work was the first to assert the
racial superiority of Aryan peoples and among the many to
reinforce ideas of black inferiority. Firmin's work affirmed
the opposite, that "All men are endowed with the same
qualities and the same faults, without distinction of color or
anatomical form. The races are equal" ([1885]20OO:450).7
As Ashley Montagu has noted. "It is a fact worth remark-
ing that throughout the nineteenth century hardly more
than a handful of scientific voices were raised against the
notion of a hierarchy of races" ([ 1942] 1997:80). Firmin's
voice was such a voice and his book was a response,
grounded in a positivist scientific approach, to the domi-
nant views of early French and European physical anthro-
pology, especially the ranking of human physical differ-
ence exemplified by Paul Broca's craniology and
anthropometry. Firmin subtitled the book Anthropologie
Positive and was a committed positivist. following August
Comte. who believed that the empirical study of humanity
would disprove speculative philosophical theories about

02(3):449-466. Copyright © 2000. American Anthropological Association

450 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST VOL. 102. No. 3 StPTEMBtR 2000

the inequality of races. For the purposes of this paper, a dis-

tinction is made between racialist and racist scholarship.
Racialist writing uses race as a primary focus of study and
analysis in scholarly or scientific writing, while racist
works use race in order to classify humans according to
differentiated hierarchies and analyze human races as su-
perior or inferior.
De Gobineau s Essai received a warm and immediate
reception from racist and pro-slavery elements in Europe
and America. An English-language version, translated by
Henry Hotz with an appendix by Josiah Nott, was publish-
ed in Philadelphia in 1856 as The Moral and Intellectual
Diversity of Races with Particular Reference to their Re-
spective Influence in the Civil and Political History of
Mankind. Other versions of de Gobineau1 s tome were
translated from the original French into English-language
works in 1913 and 1924, and into five German editions be-
tween 1910 and 1939, where de Gobineau was read and
admired by Richard Wagner, his son-in-law Houston
Chamberlain, and perhaps Adolph Hitler, who incorpo-
rated similar ideas into Nazi ideology. The last German
edition was printed in 1939^0 during the Third Reich. De
Gobineau's writings have been studied throughout the
twentieth century, with notable attention paid to his col-
lected works, for example, the French series Etudes Go-
biniennes inaugurated in 1966. His works were included in
the Oxford Library of French Classics (1966). In contrast,
the work of Antenor Firmin, together with the works of
other New World scholar-activists of the same era and
similar viewpoint, were ignored in mainstream Western
scholarship and, therefore, remain obscure or altogether
unknown.
Antenor Firmin was born to a working-class family on Figure 1. Anterior Firmin. From Haiti and the Great Powers.
October 18, 1850, in northern Haiti in Cap-Haitien. He was 1902-1915. Brenda Gayle Plummer. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
recognized as a gifted youth who excelled at Haiti's pre- University Press. 1988.
mier schools, the Lycee National du Cap-Haitien and the
Lycee Petion in Port-au-Prince. His formal education was
entirely in Haiti and included study of the classical lan- finally proceeded. He arrived in Pans in 1883 as a diplomat
guages and civilizations of Europe, as well as exposure to and was admitted to the Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris
anthropological writings of Eurojxjan scholars. Firmin in 1884, whereupon he undertook the writing of De
studied law in Haiti and became a successful advocate in l'Egalite des Races Humaines. He remained in Paris until
Cap-Haitien as well as a budding politician with early ap- 1888, the last year in which he is still listed as a Member of
pointments as Inspector of Schools in Cap-Haitien and the Society, and then returned to Haiti, where in 1889 he
Commissaire of the Republic of Haiti in Caracas. Firmin accepted the post of Minister of Finance, Commerce, and
was a product of the third generation of post-independence Foreign Relations in the government of Florvil Hyppolite.
Haitians who took justified pride in the heroic achievement
In 1891. while Minister of Foreign Affairs. Firmin nego-
of the world's first Black Republic of Haiti in 1804, only
28 years after the first anti-colonial movement with the tiated with Frederick Douglass, United States Ambassador
declaration of American independence. to Haiti, concerning the concession to the U.S. of the Mole
of St. Nicolas, the deepwater harbor on Haiti's northwest
In 1881 Firmin married his neighbor Rosa Salnave. who
was from a light-skinned family and the daughter of former coast where Columbus landed in the New World. Firmin
president Sylvain Salnave, his initial proposal having been successfully staved off the U.S. claim, in effect assisted by
rebuffed, allegedly, as a "mismatch" due to their color :md Douglass who was suspicious of the United States impe-
class differences (Trouillot 1994:156). Ros;i was widowed rial ambitions that might have delivered Haiti to American
and Antenor had become more successful, so the marriage control at ihis early date/

Firmin's work, exceptional as it is, may be considered
together with other Haitian and diasporic scholars of his
generation whose works, although appreciated in Haiti and
elsewhere, have been obscured in established Western
scholarship. These would include fellow Haitian writer
Louis-Joseph Janvier, who published an essay, L'Egalite
des Races, in 1884, and other contemporaries who are gen-
erously recognized in The Equality of the Human Races,
including Jean Demesvar Delorme, Jacques-Nicolas Leger,
and Joseph Manigat. Also, Hannibal Price wrote the land-
mark De la Rehabilitation de la Race Noire par la Repub-
lique d''Haiti in 1900. A contemporary of Firmin writing in
English, Martin R. Delany, wrote the essay Principia of
Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color in 1879.4
Firmin acknowledged his debt to the preceding generations
of Haitian revolutionaries who were inspired by no simpler
truth than those expounded in the French Revolution-—
egalite, fraternite, and liberte for all humans-—that underlie
his basic premise. Aside from its contribution to early an-
thropology, De I'Egalite des Races Humaines presaged
many early Pan-African tendencies and contributed to the
birth of the study of New World and African linkages that
bore fruit at the turn of the century with the growth of the
Pan-African Movement. Firmin has been recognized in
Pan-African studies as one of its pioneers; however, he
awaits his reclamation as an early anthropologist.
Reclamation of a Pioneering Work
of Anthropology
The Equality of the Human Races is a work almost en-
tirely unknown and unrecognized in the history of the early
development of anthropology. This is hardly surprising
since most of the early African American pioneers of an-
thropology have only recently been brought to light (Harri-
son and Harrison 1999). Although its title reveals that it
was written as a response to de Gobineau's polemical Es-
say on the Inequality of Races, Firmin's book is much
more a rebuttal of the ideas of the racialist physical anthro-
pology of his day, especially directed at its leading French
practitioner Paul Broca, whose writings appeared in nu-
merous volumes of the Me'moires d'Anthropologie, pub-
lished by the Paris Anthropological Society. But beyond
the strength of its arguments against narrow physical an-
thropology, it provides a vision and a paradigm for a differ-
ent kind of anthropology, a more complex and comprehen-
sive science of humanity "with such promise that the other
sciences become as tributaries to it" ([ 1885]20O0:3^).
In this respect, it is at least as compelling a work of an-
thropology as E. B. Tylor's Anthropology (1881) publish-
ed only four years earlier; however, it is more accurate sci-
entifically since it fundamentally challenged and critiqued
the concept of higher and lower races that Tylor accepted.
Comparing their respective chapters on race reveals that
Firmin's view pointed the way ahead toward a critical view
Fl.UEHR-LOBBAN / ANTfiNOR FlRMlN 451
of race and race classification, whereas Tylor, like other
European scholars of his time, subtly and not so subtly dis-
criminated between the lighter, civilized, higher races and
the darker, lower races.
Firmin envisioned the revolutionary potential of anthro-
pology to change scientific paradigms employing a posi-
tivist methodology of the study of humans in their geo-
graphical and historical contexts. His introductory chapter,
"Anthropology as a Discipline," may be one of the earliest
statements outlining the new comprehensive science. This
discipline is defined as "the study of Man in his physical,
intellectual, and moral dimensions as he is found in any of
the different races which constitute the human species"
([1885]2OOO:1O). A broad, integrated science was envi-
sioned, not the limited physical, differentiated, and ranked
study of man that was the anthropology of Firmin's day.
Firmin's approach, with his inclusive view of ethnology,
contrasted sharply in other ways with the physical anthro-
pology of his day-—"most ethnographers make of their dis-
cipline a general science of humanity" (p. 11)—whereas
anthropology can be rightly accused of what Clemence
Royer has termed "skeletomania" (p. 12). Royer, among
the first women to address anthropological issues (perhaps
the first to do so), had translated Darwin's Origin of Spe-
cies into French ([1859] 1866) and was cited positively by
Firmin for her critique of much of physical anthropology,
which "neglects too much Man's moral and intellectual di-
mensions, while at the same time it pays too much atten-
tion to Man's physical dimension" (Royer 1878:441,
quoted in Firmin [ 1885]2OOO).5
In this book, which he described as a work of "Positivist
Anthropology," Firmin drew upon the ideas of August
Comte as an alternative to biological reductionist views of
race while also using positivism to develop an early idea of
the social construction of race. The case for racial equality
was to be built upon scientific facts, not simply philosophi-
cal rebuttal. He believed that his book would make an in-
tellectual and political contribution because it applied the
positivist methodology to anthropology ([1885]2000: pref-
ace). With his emphasis on the value of positivism, Firmin
was not engaged with the sochil evolutionary theories of
the nineteenth century, although he was aware of and cited
the works of Tylor and Spencer.
Comtean positivism influenced French sociology
more than anthropology, especially with Emile Durk-
heim and his intellectual descendants, such as Talcott
Parsons in America. A positivist anthropology did not
develop in Europe or America; salvage ethnography
came to characterize American anthropologists' study of
its native peoples, and, later in the century, just what
constitutes "factual evidence" has been contested.
Firmin's understanding of Comte's distinctive science
of sociology went beyond natural science ;ind was
distinguished by its dynamic view of the progressive
452 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 102. No. 3 • SHPThMBER 2000
modification of human life. Firmin preferred to call that
distinctive science of society anthropologie. Nonethe-
less, following Comte, Firmin reiterated a categorization
of the four fields of knowledge—cosmological, biologi-
cal, sociological, and philosophical—that all who practice
anthropology must study. In other words, anthropology
cannot be narrow; it stresses the integration and synthesis
of knowledge, and this is its greatest strength. Firmin's
book may be among the first published works to use the
term anthropology to describe what essentially became its
twentieth-century scope and mission.
Firmin reviewed the various definitions of anthropology
extant in his day—those of Paul Broca, Bertillon, Paul
Topinard, and A. de Quatrefages—whose focus was on the
natural history of man. Topinard (1885) defined anthropol-
ogy as "a branch of natural history which studies Man and
the different human races" (p. 10). Firmin respectfully ac-
knowledged this tradition, which struggled to see humans
as a part of the animal/natural world, but he expanded his
definition of anthropology beyond the limitations of the
purely physical, to the intellectual and moral dimensions of
the human species. He admired anthropology's potential
and exhorted its practitioners to aspire to the highest stand-
ards of scientific rigor.
Anthropology, the discipline which studies this complex be-
ing, takes on a real importance among the different sciences.
Born only yesterday, this science was promoted with such
vigor from the very beginning that it already seems old, so
burdened it is with formulas, doctrines, independent method-
ologies, the whole adding up to an imposing but cumbersome
apparatus. All the other sciences gradually become its tribu-
taries. The aspiring anthropologist must therefore undertake
all kinds of studies if he is to become undeniably competent in
the field. Here one must reason with self-assurance on every
subject, whether it has to do with spirit or matter. One must
consider both the world and thought, both phenomenon and
noumenon, to use Kant's terminology.
.. . The main subject of this science deserves such a noble
effort, however, even if it involves redoing one's scientific
education, broadening the foundation of one's scientific
knowledge, thus renouncing perhaps one's superior position
in some specialty. Particularly in the field of anthropology,
one must be wary of exclusive specialization, for it narrows
the mind's horizons and renders the intellect incapable of con-
sidering every facet of a given reality. [(1885)2(XK):3—!•]
Firmin's view of anthropology may stand as one of the first
"holistic" statements of the breadth of anthropological in-
quiry with its potential to synthesize knowledge. It may
also be seen as a foreshadowing of the anthropology that
developed in twentieth century America, most notably un-
der the tutelage of Franz Boas. Clearly, Firmin's disagree-
ment with early anthropology arose from its overemphasis
on the physical measurement of human racial differences,
but he saw a different sort of anthropology that envisioned
an integrated study of humanity.
Firmin observed the major distinction between ethnog-
raphy and ethnology and their respective differences from
anthropology. Whereas until the twentieth century the
French used ethnographie interchangeably with anthro-
pologie (Honigmann 1976:114), Firmin's clear and early
distinction demonstrates his effort to make more system-
atic the study of the new science of anthropology.
Ethnography is the simple description of peoples; its practi-
tioners include the great travelers. Ethnology goes beyond
mere description of peoples to the study of distinct races, their
physical variation, and what factors might explain aptitudes
that seem particular to each human group. Whereas ethnogra-
phy is the description of peoples, ethnology is the systematic
study of these same peoples from the perspective of race. The
anthropologist comes in when the ethnographer and ethnolo-
gist have completed their work. The anthropologist compares
Man to the other animals in order to separate the subject of his
study from all of the surrounding subjects. More particularly,
the anthropologist seeks answers to the following questions:
What is the true nature of Man? To what extent and under
what conditions does he develop his potential? Are all the hu-
man races capable of rising to the same intellectual and moral
level? . . .
This is an area of research worthy of the efforts of the best
minds. It goes without saying that, if they are to come up with
valid results, anthropologists must do more than establishing
some arbitrary ranking of the human races and their respec-
tive aptitudes. [(1885)2000:12-13]
Like the European scholars of his age, Firmin read widely,
not only in French ethnologic but also in English, German,
and in classical Greek and Latin, and he held membership
in many international scholarly associations. Firmin's Hai-
tian education prepared him well to review the intellectual
history of anthropology and the competing claims made by
philosophy and science upon the new discipline. He was
intrigued by a number of German writers, especially the
scientist-philosopher Immanuel Kant, who authored a trea-
tise entitled "Pragmatic Anthropology." He was also at-
tracted to the philosophy of Hegel, who defined
anthropology as the study of the human spirit, joined to na-
ture and linked to the material world through the physical
body, the union of which determines the original human
being. Hegel wrote that this fundamental state of man is the
subject of anthropology. In this respect anthropology is far
more than what it had been determined to be by Blumen-
bach and others whose focus was on the physical study of
humans—what Firmin called "the natural history of Man-
kind." The study of skulk and their shape are more the
concern of physical geography than practical anthropol-
ogy. "Man is programmed for social life, which he ulti-
mately always achieves by making his own history"
([1885]2OOO:6). Firmin viewed positively the fact that
"practical" anthropologists turned away from the philo-
sophical controversies over matter (materialism) and spirit
(idealism) and turned their minds toward the positivism

of August Comte or the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer,
respectively the early French and English traditions of
sociology-anthropology.
Perhaps because Firmin wrote in French rather than in
English, or perhaps because he was Haitian and not
French, or more likely because he so fundamentally chal-
lenged the racist science of his day, his work was ignored
and became obscure. The book was out of print even in
Haiti until 1968 (Panorama abridged edition) and 1985
(Fardin edition), when De I'Egalite des Races Humiiines
was reprinted in the original and reintroduced to a modern
generation of Haitians (Leon-Francois Hoffman, personal
communication). De I'Egalite des Races Humaines in the
original contained 662 pages of text with 20 chapter head-
ings that any contemporary anthropologist or Pan-African-
ist would recognize, such as the aforementioned "Anthro-
pology as a Discipline"; one also finds, for example,
"Monogenism and Polygenism," "Criteria for Classifying
the Human Races," "Artificial Ranking of the Human
Races," "Comparison of the Human Races Based on their
Physical Constitution," "Metissage and Equality of the
Races," "Egypt and Civilization," "The Hindus and the
Arya," "European Solidarity," "The Role of the Black
Race in the History of Civilization," "Religious Myths and
Words of the Ancients," and "Theories and their Logical
Consequences."
Anthropology, of course, was not recognized as a sepa-
rate discipline until the last two decades of the nineteenth
century. Although ethnological societies had been founded
in Paris in 1839, in London in 1841, and in New York in
1842, these scholarly and debating societies had not yet
formulated integrative approaches of the sort that anthro-
pology came to encompass by the 1920s. The French tradi-
tion with which Firmin was most familiar was dominated
by racialist physical anthropology, led by Paul Broca, the
dean of French anthropology until his death in 1880, and
by Broca's successor, Paul Topinard, who was very influ-
ential in the Paris Anthropological Society while Firmin
was an active member. After 1890 a separate trend in the
study of man was dominated by Emile Durkheim and Mar-
cel Mauss who described themselves as "sociologists"
rather than anthropologists. Although the Anthropology
Society in Paris was among the first in Europe, the disci-
pline of anthropologie did not gain wide acceptance in the
French academy until the twentieth century (Honigmann
1976:112). As mentioned above, Firmin's use of the term
anthropologie in 1885 in the subtitle of De I'Egalite des
Races Humaines predates much later developments in
French sociology and anthropology.
The Anthropology Society of Paris during Firmin's
membership in 1884-88 was dedicated primarily to an-
thropometry, craniometry, and racialist interpretations
of human physical data. Firmin lists as one of his cre-
dentials his being a member of the Society on the title
Fl.Ul.llK-l.OllllAN / A M I NOK | ; 1KM1N 45.'
page of De I'Egalite des Races Hunuiiiws. When he ar-
rived in Paris at the end of 1883 ;is ;i diplomat, he met the
French physician Dr. Ernest Aubertin, his colleague Or.
Gabriel de Mortillet, ;ind fellow Haitian scholar Louis-
Joseph Janvier, all members of the Anthropology Society.
Noting Firmin's keen interest in anthropology and race.
Dr. Aubertin directed him to the Anthropological Society
as a forum where the issue was discussed. Three members
were required to nominate a new member; the above three
members did so, and with majority vote by secret ballot of
the society, Ante'nor Firmin was admitted to membership
in the category "MembresTitulaires" (number 1146) of the
Societe d'Anthropologie de Paris on July 17, 1884.6
Firmin tells us in his preface that after joining the An-
thropology Society he considered requesting a debate
within the society on the issue of the division of the human
species into superior and inferior races. "But I risked being
perceived as an intruder and, being ill-disposed against me,
my colleagues might have rejected my request without fur-
ther thought. Common sense told me I was right to hesitate
so it was then that I conceived the idea of writing this
book" ([1885]2OOO:liv). De I'Egalite des Races Humaines
was written during the next eighteen months while Firmin
attended the Anthropology Society's meetings and com-
mented critically and forcefully upon their deliberations in
his text. It must have been quite dramatic, or a "cruel para-
dox," as Haitian ethnologist and historian Jean Price-Mars
put it in his biography of Firmin (1964:148), when the two
Haitian members of the society participated in the confer-
ences and lectures in which the inferiority of the black race
was viewed as incontestable fact. How did the two Negro
gentlemen from Haiti accept this reality? asked Price-
Mars. Neither was prone to accept that condescending
judgment, and Firmin's accounts of the intellectual debates
in the society regarding race reveal his sense of irony. Ac-
cording to Price-Mars, the two Haitians were probably
considered the "honorable exceptions that nonetheless do
not contradict the general rule" of black inferiority (1964: 148).
In his chapter on monogenism and polygenism, Firmin
describes the July 17, 1884, meeting of the Anthropology
Society of Paris where he witnessed a "passionate and ve-
hement" argument between an eminent monogenist, de
Quatrefages, and polygenist. Sanson, noting how "curious"
it is that passions become so strong when the issue [of race]
is raised ([1885]2000:84 n. 1). Nonetheless, membership
was a valuable credential that Firmin used to express his
own ideas that were so contrary to Broca and polygenist
anthropology. And there was a clear, albeit minority,
monogenist voice of a religious bent within the society to
which Firmin's voice was added, although his own argu-
ments were based in science not religion. His clear differ-
ences with Broca are found throughout the text of The
Equality of the Human Races. Confident of the scientific
validity of his unitary view of races, Firmin criticized the
454 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • Vol.. 102, No. 3 •
prevailing polygenist use of craniology and anthropometry
by Paul Broca. Firmin wrote, "Scientific progress and
our steadily increasing understanding of phenomena will
no doubt deal a death blow to all of the conclusions he
[Broca] reached" ([1885]2000:40).
Firmin and the Race Concept
Although the concept of race had already shaped much
of early anthropology in the nineteenth century, Firmin
adopted a critical stance questioning the biological prem-
ises of race. He questioned much of the racial mythology
of his day as one of only a few Black scholars addressing
the subject, and he utterly rejected the notion of any hierar-
chy of races. He was likewise critical of the extant racial
classifications. Unlike his contemporaries, Firmin saw no
fixity of race and viewed racial typing as based on non-sci-
entific, arbitrary, and idiosyncratic principles. "Observing
that human beings have always interbred whenever they
have come in contact with one another,"' he maintained,
"the very notion of pure races becomes questionable"
([1885]2000:64). Firmin was quick to point out the lack of
agreement among the self-proclaimed scientific classifiers,
for example, the question of whether Ethiopians or
Hamites are to be included as part of the White race or as
part of the Black race. The unfortunate tendency, Firmin
noted, was that classification by race led to theories of dif-
ference that ultimately led science away from the unitary
view of the human species and spawned ideas of separate
evolution and development of the races. Firmin was among
the first to insist that racial typologies are not only flawed
as individual isolates-—Ethiopian/Black or Caucasian/
White—but that these "inclusive" types fail to acknow-
ledge or account for the vigor and achievements of New
World hybrid populations. The failure of the racial classifi-
ers to include in their typologies the mixed races (metis)
not only in the New World, but in other parts of the globe
as well, made him even more skeptical about the question-
able use of racial types.
Ultimately, Firmin questioned on scientific grounds the
very concept of race, evidencing a critical view that did not
begin to be addressed in physical or general anthropology
until the much later Boasian era in American anthropol-
ogy. However, according to new studies of Boas and his
contemporaries by Vernon Williams (1996), even the pro-
gressive Boas equivocated about the mental abilities of
Blacks as a result of the studies of smaller cranial capaci-
ties measured by the physical anthropologists. As has been
noted not only by Williams but also by Lee Baker
(1998:119), so common was this view that Boas, like his
friend and colleague W. E. B. Du Bois, offered as an expla-
nation of the relative progress of some Blacks in America
the "talented tenth" or "men of high genius" hypothesis,
suggesting that exceptional intelligence exists but is rare in
Blacks.
SEPTEMBER 2000
With his attack on the scientific misuse of racial cra-
niometry, Firmin was challenging what had become the
hallmark of anthropology in Europe and North America in
the nineteenth century—that is. anthropometry (Haller
1971:71). The French, especially Broca, were among the
major innovators of the techniques for measuring human
difference and applying to these measurements the classifi-
cation of "race," and then using the measurements to jus-
tify social inequality (Smedley 1993:258-259). Most of
physical anthropology retained this reactionary view of
race well into the twentieth century, and several of its sci-
ons, among them Ales Hrdlicka, whose teaching and
scholarship affected generations of anthropologists, held
views that contemporary readers would find little difficulty
in classifying as racist. "The real problem of the American
Negro lies in his brain," wrote Hrdlicka (1927:208-209),
as he espoused views about the "retarded" and "advanced"
races (Rankin-Hill and Blakey 1994:74-96). It is helpful to
recall that during this period American anthropology had
within its ranks only one professionally active African
American physical anthropologist, W. Montague Cobb
(1904-1990), from its earliest days to the Korean War (pp.
74-96).
The persistence of racial typologies and of race as a
category of thought, still relevant to the classification of
human groups, makes Firmin\s critique of race classifica-
tion as important today as it was in 1885. The unscientific
racial classifications in effect in the United States today un-
derscore a continuing relevance of Firmin's basic message
as well as the continuing role of anthropology to inform
and contribute to the public debates.
Firmin on the Major Debate of the Nineteenth
Century: Monogenism versus Polygenism
Firmin's most extensive treatment of a particular subject
is his tour de force on the raging debate of the day: whether
the human races descend from common roots (or a com-
mon pair, Adam and Eve), the monogenist view, or
whether they developed from separate and unequal lines,
the polygenist view. Firmin declared himself as having no
"natural predilection" for the Unitarian doctrine or the
polygenist one, for each has arguments that have merit and
weaknesses, but he was firm in his assertion of Black
equality with the "others," whether they belong to different
species or different varieties of a unified mankind
([1885]20O0:35). By today's standards Firmin would be
classified as a scientific monogenist. making his case from
the abundance of facts regarding the fecundity of New
World racially mixed populations, an impossibility for the
separatist polygenists. However, not all monogenists were
racial equalitarians and Firmin was careful to distinguish
himself both from the Biblical religious monogenists.
whose view stemmed solely from the single pair in the
story of creation, as well as other monogenists who accepted

racial hierarchies. It is also clear in Firmin's chapter on the
debate that de Gobineau and a host of other contemporary
writers are placed in the polygenist camp along with most
of physical anthropology, while only a handful of scientific
monogenists can be found in the monogenist camp so
dominated by religious ideology. There are lessons to be
learned from this debate that Firmin so skillfully surveyed.
Today it is clear that scientific monogenism has prevailed
(although the Biblical references have hardly disappeared,
witness "mitochondrial Eve"); however, one of its clear
voices from the heated center of the debate, a Black
scholar, publishing a comprehensive text on the subject in
Paris, was ignored and relegated to obscurity.
De Gobineau insisted that whatever the origin of the hu-
man race, "it is certain that the different families are today
absolutely separate" (Biddis 1970:103). De Gobineau was
not the founder of the doctrine of polygenism; it had nu-
merous precursors in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries (Stocking 1968:39). However, it gained sway
over most of early Euro-American anthropology because
of its apparently scholarly explanation of racial difference,
preferring science to the Biblical story of creation. Ironi-
cally, polygenism was viewed as progressive science con-
fronting religious monogenism. The Anthropology Society
of Paris consisted of members almost entirely devoted to
the belief that blacks and whites belong to different spe-
cies, amounting to a basic inequality of races (Nicholls
1979:127). By 1859 polygenism was the dominant current
among the early American School of Anthropology as
well, with the craniometric studies of Samuel Morton, and
the popular polygenist writers Josiah Nott and George
Glidden, whose works influenced European racialist an-
thropology (Stocking 1968:39^0).
Firmin countered the polygenist view with evidence of
the physical unity of the human species through the pres-
ence of hybrid races in the New World, not "sterile mulat-
tos," but a vigorous new human population. Broca, on the
other hand, attempted to correlate skin pigmentation with
latitude, with White men in Europe, Brown men in Amer-
ica, and Black men in Africa, taking no account of demo-
graphic changes since 1492. Firmin's chastisement of this
simplistic rendering of race dripped with sarcasm when he
noted, "Consider the skill with which he [Broca] seeks to
convince us that leaving out nine tenths of the Americas is
proof of his generosity. Yet it is in these neglected parts of
the continent that he would find the greatest obstacles to
his argumentation" ([ 1885]2OOO:5O). Firmin, alternatively,
discussed the multiple factors of climate and geography
that affect skin color as well as physical form. He was
among the first anthropologists to state the scientific ba-
sis for skin pigmentation, the substance melanin vested
in the epithelial cells of the dermis ([1885]2000:54). His
explanation of the natural science of skin color directly
contradicted the racist mythology, for example, the idea
Fl.lll.HR-LoBBAN / ANTENOR FlRMlN 455
expounded by J. J. Virey in Histoire Naturelle du Genre
Humuin (1800) that Africans exude a black oily substance
that makes them physiologically different from Caucasians.
Firmin addressed scientifically the hybrid vigor of New
World populations in the Americas. He countered the poly-
genist view with evidence of the physical unity of the hu-
man species through the presence of fecund mixed races in
the New World. This interbreeding of peoples has a posi-
tive "eugenic"7 effect, Firmin argued, a position Broca
could not accept, as interbreeding for the polygenists nec-
essarily reduces the purity of races and is ultimately dys-
genic. Recall that this discussion occurred before the
Eugenics Societies of Europe and America were organized
at the turn of the century with their stated aims of eliminat-
ing class and race mixture and weeding out economically
and racially inferior "dysgenic elements." Firmin used the
term eugenics positively in order to refute the idea that
matings between Europeans and Blacks (metissage) would
over time produce progressive infertility and lack of stam-
ina. Firmin marveled that some of his scientific contempo-
raries would believe the absurd notion "that the union of a
Negro and a White woman is very often sterile, whereas
the union between a White man and a Negress is always fe-
cund." Here Firmin dismisses racist myths about Black
sexuality, that although the penis of the Black man is larger
in its flaccid state, the penis of the White man is larger in a
state of erection, and the vaginal canal of the Ethiopian
woman is longer than that of the White woman-—thus, the
curious logic of sterile and fecund matings between Blacks
and Whites ([1885]2OOO:67-68). The positivist evidence
disproving sterility among mixed races was the New
World peoples themselves, hybrids reproducing in great
numbers in Haiti and Hispaniola. For the polygenists the
point of sterility was critical, for if the "mulatto" was truly
like the infertile offspring (the mule from which the term
was derived) of the stallion and the she-ass, then the con-
clusion that the two races were indeed two separate species
could be confirmed.
Whatever the polygenisis may say in order to convince us that
the offspring of Blacks and Whites are infertile, there will al-
ways be one proof to refute their theory, a proof that is more
eloquent than any rhetorical flourish, a proof based on facts.
Indeed, the immense number of metis found wherever the two
races have been in permanent contact is a fact that is so obvi-
ous and so universal that it is not even necessary to resort to
further dialectical reasoning in order to demonstrate its sig-
nificance. The fecundity of mulattos is a fact so well known
by everyone who has ever lived in countries with a metis
population that one can only be surprised that a scientist of
Broca's caliber can question it. The Dominican Republic of
Hispaniola offers an initial proof. Many Whites still remain in
that country, and they continue lo interbreed with people ol"
various skin complexions. As a result, next lo the first genera-
tion mulattos we find many mixed bloods. . . . These indi-
viduals are numerous, and there is an abundance of cases
which show their unions to be as fecund as those between
456 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 102. No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 2000
pure-race individuals. Of Haiti. I can speak with even greater
confidence, since it is my motherland, my native country.
There I have made the same observation, and the evidence
is irrefutable. After independence there remained very few
Whiles in the country, and only a restricted number came in
subsequently. Despite this fact, the number of mulattos in
Haiti has more than doubled. . . . despite the absence of un-
ions of Blacks and Whites, the numbers provide sufficient
evidence that the unions of mulattos are definitely fecund.
[(1885)2000:67-69]
"Metis are often inferior to their two parent races in vital-
ity, intelligence, or morality," so wrote Boudin, who was
quoted by Broca (1860, and cited by Firmin [1885]2000:
70). Such a need for refutation of the polygenist thesis of
the infertility of the offspring of mixed matings seems ar-
cane today, and it seemed so to Firmin in 1885. "Are there
not other, more pressing scientific questions," he asked,
"whose solution is of greater import to the future of hu-
manity and the progress of civilization?" ([1885]2OOO:7O).
Nonetheless, Firmin described in some detail and empa-
thized with the historical plight of mulattos in Haiti's caste-
ridden slave society, "mistreated and scorned by their
White fathers who saw in them the sad fruits of an unfortu-
nate union of pure Caucasian blood and degenerate Afri-
can blood," their fate was truly "horrible." "This painful
position of the mulatto is not a product of the imagination,"
Firmin wrote (p. 72). He thus expended considerable effort
in extolling the accomplishments of many of Haiti's great
men described as "mulatto." Firmin himself was labeled a
"mulatto" in his bid for the presidency at the end of the
nineteenth century, no doubt employed as a political epi-
thet by his opponents so that the "Blacks" of the north
would not vote for him. Like all Haitians, Firmin experi-
enced firsthand the complex legacy of racism from which
Haiti has suffered and continues to suffer.
Firmin stressed the scientific basis of the constitutional
unity of the human species. For him, interplay of heredity
and adaptation, as Darwin so elegantly showed, revealed a
unified species in which symbols of racial difference such
as skin color and hair form are insignificant ([1885]2OOO:
80). Firmin noted variability within races, for example, re-
garding hair form, a measurable difference in thickness be-
tween blond and black hair among Whites. He attributed
this to dryness or humidity in climates where humans de-
veloped in prehistoric times. Firmin also demythologized
certain differences that had been alleged to prove an or-
ganic difference between Blacks and Whites, such as the
"blinking membrane" of the eye, which Broca said was
characteristic of the Black race. This "imaginary fact was
taken seriously only to make it possible to draw the erudite
anthropologist's favorite conclusion—that the physical
configuration of the Negro is intermediate between that of
the European and the ape" (p. 57). Responding to the claim
by de Quatrefages that Black people sweat less than White
people, but that "this lack of transpiration is compensated
for by an abundant perspiration," Firmin finds little organic
difference between "transpiration" and "perspiration," and
he speaks with a voice of authority of a Black man little
heard at the time, "I am Black and nothing distinguishes
me anatomically from the purest Sudanese. However, I
transpire abundantly enough to be able to have some idea
of the facts. My congeners are not beyond the laws of na-
ture" (p. 60). Firmin dismissed the racist myth about Black
odor, "I shall not bother to discuss the issue of a putative
sui generis odor that is supposedly a particular charac-
teristic of the Negro race. The idea is more comical than
scientific" (pp. 62-63). Finally. Firmin addressed the myth
of the "insensitivity of the Negro's nervous system" com-
pared with the more sensitive system of Whites by adopt-
ing a political as well as scientific perspective. "This [in-
sensitivity] has never been ascertained. Such a conclusion
was based on the observation of Blacks who had been stu-
pefied by their infernal treatment and desensitized by nu-
merous whippings. In some cases this apparent insensitiv-
ity was a manifestation of courage on the part of
individuals who would proudly and stoically suffer in si-
lence rather than pass for a coward" (p. 63). Firmin univer-
salized such "insensitivity" in the face of suffering by ask-
ing, "have we not found similar cases with every human
race and in every period of history?" Did not the Christian
martyrs suffer in silence at the hands of the Romans? (p. 63).
Firmin skewered polygenism politically as well as sci-
entifically. He confronted the fundamental contradiction
inherent in American democracy, which was an intellec-
tual and political ally of the French Revolution. "The
American people," he wrote,
finally understood that they were living a flagrant contradic-
tion. It was true that liberty, though coupled with slavery, did
flourish under the pagan sky of Attica [classical Greece]. .. .
But could it be the same in this Yankee civilization. . . ? The
southern slaveholders rallied around their flag against the
abolitionists [monogenists], while they invoked polygenist
doctrines to affirm that Negroes belong to a different species
from Whites and could not be considered their peers, [pp.
36-37]
Interestingly, Firmin noted, the debate in Europe was not
about slavery or its abolition, or about finding a rationale
for colonization, but it was a debate about the conflict be-
tween science and religion. Broca and his fellow poly-
genists believed that they were pursuing scientific truth as
against the natural monogenism of the Bible that all of hu-
manity is descended from a single pair. Adam and Eve.
Polygenists were found among the greatest and most
powerful anthropologists of the nineteenth century, includ-
ing Robert Knox, president of the Anthropology Society of
London. ;ind Paul Broca, already mentioned as the founder
of the Paris equivalent. Among those in the United States
were men of impeccable scientific credentials, the physi-
cians and craniologists Drs. Samuel G. Morton and Josiah

Nott, and Louis Agassiz, an eminent Harvard scientist for
whom numerous prizes and honors were named (Smedley
1993:236). For Morton, the largest-brained humans were
Caucasoid, with brain size decreasing with the Mongoloid,
and the smallest brains occurring in the Negro. Firmin cri-
tiqued these figures for their elevation of the concept of
"species" to analyze difference between humans." He
noted favorably the opposite conclusion reached by
Broca's contemporary, the German scientist Tiedemann,
whose comparative study of crania by race, sex, and age
suggested that the current preeminence of the White man
over the Negro is due to education, not innately superior
intelligence ([1885J2OOO.148). Firmin regarded his hy-
pothesis about the unity of the species as bold for its time,
even though similar views were held by early Enlighten-
ment scholars such as Buffon and Blumenbach, but these
ideas had been eclipsed in the nineteenth century by poly-
genism. However, his "bold" hypothesis has stood the test
of time, unlike those proposed by the polygenists he was
confronting, and the text he wrote in 1885 could profitably
be used today in anthropology courses.
The human species with its unique original constitution and
organic uniformity, which results from the fact that it is based
upon a single blueprint, appeared in various parts of the
world, under strictly identical conditions, at a certain point in
the evolution of life on this planet. However the species later
diversified into distinct peoples and races as soon as the cli-
mate began to affect markedly the various environments in
the different ways it usually does. Primitive man, the first pro-
totype of the species, was but the rough product of animal
evolution, upward from the protozoan, but still a far distance
from his subsequent achievements. Whatever transformations
the different groups have undergone under various influences,
they all retain the primordial constitutional imprint of the spe-
cies, bearing the same intellectual and moral traits inscribed in
the original common human blueprint, [pp. 82-83]
Firmin's Work and the "Race Question"
in Anthropology
Many anthropologists have recognized that the birth of
anthropology is so intimately linked with the question of
race that the two cannot be disentangled. A critical review
of this history has become more common within the disci-
pline (Gregory and Sanjek 1994; Harris 1968; Harrison
1995; Stocking 1968), while others from outside anthro-
pology also have noted critically the role of anthropology:
Racialist thinkers, amateurs, and propagandists in the service
of imperialism took refuge in pseudo-science in elaborate at-
tempts to "prove" the Negro's alleged inferiority. The voices
of the humanitarians, abolitionists, and the lew white friends
of the Negro were virtually drowned by the pretentious out-
pourings of anthropologists. [Langley 1973:17]
At a much earlier date, Firmin recognized the unpleasant
truth that the race concept, with its inferior and superior
FLUKHR-LOBBAN / ANT£NOK FIKMIN 457
types, took root as an intellectual idea with the birth of
ethnographic science in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, and that anthropologists have, in his words,
"unanimously embraced the doctrine of the moral and in-
tellectual inequality" of races ([ 1885]2OOO: 145). They pro-
ceed with their arguments as if such inequality were a
proven fact requiring no scientific demonstration. If an-
thropology sides with the proponents of racial inequality,
like Morton, Broca, de Quatrefages, and de Gobineau,
"those who proclaim that the Black man is destined to
serve as a stepping stone for the White man in his quest for
power," then. Firmin concludes, "I will have the right to
say of this lying anthropology that it is not a science" (p.
156).
Firmin, while critical of race classifications and racial
hierarchies, did not reject the concept of race. Too much
theorizing about human difference was vested in the con-
cept by the late nineteenth century for him to dismiss race,
and Firmin made liberal use of the proclamation of Black
racial pride. Pan-Africanism and linking Haiti and Black
people in the Diaspora to the greatness of African antiquity
depended upon the race concept. This is still largely true
today.
Anthropology, like other disciplines, has had both nicist
and anti-racist practitioners, and any effort either to uncriti-
cally praise or condemn the field is a misrepresentation of
fact. Some of the most important figures in anthropology
have been associated with anti-racism in their scholarship
and personal lives and have been activists. Examples in-
clude Franz Boas, Ashley Montagu, and Margaret Mead.
However, some powerful men of science associated with
racist scholarship have also been anthropologists, such as
Paul Broca, Ernest Hooton, and Carleton Coon.
Comparisons on Race between Firmin's
The Equality of the Human Races (1885) and
Anthropology by E. B. Tylor (1881)
It is instructive to compare and review selective sections
of Anthropology by H. B. Tylor and Antenor Firmin's The
Equality of the Human Races on the question of race. Tylor
was introducing to the English-speaking world "a new sci-
ence" called anthropology in 1881 ([1881 ]1902:v), while
Firmin was critiquing an already established racialist sci-
ence of anthropology, primarily in France but in England
and the United States as well. Generally acknowledged as
anthropology's first textbook, Tylor opens a discussion of
race in Anthropology in the second paragraph of his first
chapter "Man, Ancient and Modern.'"
Let us suppose ourselves standing at the docks in Liverpool or
London looking at men of races different from our own.
There is the familiar figure of the African negro with skin so
dark-brown as to be popularly called black, and black hair so
friz/y as to be called wooly. . . . A hatter would at once notice
the negro's head is narrower in proportion than the usual oval
458 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • Voi 102. No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 2000
hats made for the Englishman. It would be possible to tell a
negro from a white man even in the dark by the peculiar satiny
feel of his skin, and the yet more peeuliar smell which no one
who has ever noticed it is ever likely to mistake. [Tylor
[1881)1902:1-2] [Recall Firmins dismissal above of the rac-
ist myth of the 'peculiar odor" of blacks. ]
Tylor continues in this vein describing the "jaundice-yel-
low skin" of the Chinese, the dark-brown "Coolie" of
South India with black wavy hair, the two types of whites,
"fair-whites" and "dark-whites," and others, whose dis-
tinction according to race has only been worked out by sci-
entific methods in modern times (pp. 2-3). In the third
chapter, 'Races of Mankind," Tylor acknowledges that the
first questions that arise on the subject of race are whether
races differ intellectually and if this can be measured by
comparing brain sizes (p. 60). He answers in the affirm-
ative, noting that, "in fact, a considerable difference" can
be shown. He offers as proof of racial difference the cra-
niometric studies of Professor Flower (who filled brain
cases with buckshot or seed), whose mean estimates of the
contents of skulls in cubic inches revealed the following:
Australian, 79; African, 85; European, 91. Tylor contin-
ued, "Eminent anatomists also think that the brain of the
European is somewhat more complex in its convolutions
than the brain of the Negro or Hottentot." For him, these
"observations" revealed a connection between a more "in-
tricate system of brain cells and a higher intellectual power
in the races which have risen in the scale of civilization" (p.
60). Thus, Tylor concluded that the African and Australian
together were considered to contrast most sharply with the
European from a physical standpoint measurable as race.
Tylor pointed to the importance of the "facial angle" that
differentiates the "two lower races" from "our own" (Tylor
presumed his audience to be European). The Australian
and African were more "prognathic or foreword-jawed"
(p. 62).
At the same time the Australian and African have more re-
treating foreheads than the European, to the disadvantage of
the frontal lobes of their brain as compared with our's [sic].
Thus the upper and lower parts of the profile combine to give
the faces of these less-civilized peoples a somewhat ape-like
slope, as distinguished from the more nearly upright Euro-
pean face. [p. 62]
Yet Tylor acknowledged the growth of "mulatto" and mes-
tizo populations in the New World and did not mention any
hybrid inferiority. He observed the "hopeless task of class-
ifying every little uncertain group of men into a special
race" (p. 83), although he slill recognized the great
races—black, brown, yellow, and white—and their forma-
tion in prehistoric times. However. Tylor accepted the civi-
lizational superiority of the Europeans, whereas Firmin
affirmed the races as having equal capacity for the devel-
opment of civilizations.
We come at last to the white men whose nations all through
history have been growing more and more dominant intellec-
tually, morally, and politically on the earth It may per-
haps be reasonable to imagine as latest-formed the white
race of the temperate region, least able to bear extreme
heat or live without the appliances of culture, but gifted with
the powers of knowing and ruling which give them sway over
the world. [(1881)1902:105-106, 113]
Despite such obvious European chauvinist conclusions,
Firmin cited ([1885]2000:44-45) and praised Tylor's
study of primitive religion, for example, for its claim that
ancestor worship, among groups such as the "Black" Cey-
lonese (the Veddahs), is as valid as any other religion. In-
deed, early Euro-American anthropology contained such
contradictions between a nascent egalitarian cultural rela-
tivism and a profound tendency to establish hierarchies of
culture and being.
Compare Tylor's quote above, a seemingly reluctant but
nonetheless firm conclusion of European superiority, to the
anti-racist thinking of Firmin.
Yes human beings can and do differ by their physical traits, or
the color of their skin. Yet. they are all brothers, that is to say.
they are equal in intelligence and thought. Only a long process
of the perversion of the spirit and very powerful influences on
the minds of White people could have made them overlook a
truth that is so obvious and natural that it requires no scientific
proof. . . . We will have a chance of eradicating this prejudice
from the minds of those who still harbor it only if we can
show by what contrived means, through what false beliefs, it
has impregnated the intelligence of so many people.
((1885)2000:404]
At the end of Anthropology, Tylor recommended to the
reader a number of works of anthropology in French in-
cluding books by Broca, Topinard. and de Quatrefages;
however, Firmin's De VEgalite des Races Humaines was
not among them.
What surprises the generations I have taught since the
civil rights movement is how mainstream was avowedly
racist thought, and how much it permeated certain corners
of establishment American academic life and anthropol-
ogy at America's best institutions, such as Harvard Univer-
sity and the University of Pennsylvania. The American
racist "classic," The Passing of the Great Race (1916). by
Madison Grant, decried America's decline as the result of
large numbers of Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Eastern Euro-
pean immigrants. Although this book was well received by
the American scientific establishment, a few scholars were
direct in their criticism, among them Franz Boas, who
wrote that the book 'is hardly a subject for review in a sci-
entific journal" (1918:363). A rival group of anthropolo-
gists to the newly formed American Anthropological As-
sociation organized themselves into The Galton Society in
1908 as a response to the growing legitimacy of science
and scholarship demolishing racial myths. Among them
were Madison Grant and E. A. Hooton of Harvard's Peabody

Museum. This legacy of mainstream racist science lin-
gered into the civil rights era, when those furious with the
Brown v. Board of Education decision of the Supreme
Court complained through one of their spokesmen that the
integrationists had won the day "because they have ac-
cepted uncritically the anthropological doctrines of Boas."
This they labeled unexamined "equalitarian anthropology"
(Chase 1980:459). Lee Baker convincingly argues that, in-
deed, the Boasian discourse on race was critical to framing
the reconstruction of race in the United States during the
years of American legal desegregation (1998:207).
Antenor Firmin in 1885 critiqued the classification and
hierarchical ranking of races by crania as arbitrary, non-
scientific, and utterly subjective. Yet it was on the basis of
cranial measurements that Samuel G. Morton argued that
ancient Egyptian crania were not and could not be "Ne-
gro," but were "Caucasoid," two separate races amounting
to virtual species differentiation for Morton (Harris
1968:90—91). Firmin, on the other hand, hailed the great
civilization that was ancient Egypt. He declared in uncom-
promising terms that "it is now well known that the ancient
inhabitants of the shores of the Nile were members of the
Black race," and that humanity itself owes a great deal to
this race ([1885]2000:394). For Firmin it is a sad and il-
logical exercise that Europeans have endeavored to prove
that ancient Egyptians were White. Not all were subject to
such racial fantasies, he argued; the genius Champollion
wrote that "the ancient Egyptians belonged to a race who
resembled in every way the current inhabitants of Nubia"
([1885]2000:228). As anthropology developed in the
twentieth century, the biological significance of race faded
into the scientific background as it became clearer that the
primary use of the race concept has been as a social cate-
gory. Firmin's view of race was social, not biological. In
rejecting the biological inferiority of the Black race he
cited the social-cultural contributions of civilizations such
as Egypt, Ethiopia (i.e.. Nubia), and most recently Haiti.
Tylor accepted the biological validity of race and the his-
torical development of races from lower to higher forms.
He accepted craniometry and anthropometry as scientific
proof of fixed racial difference. Firmin's conception of
race was socially constructed. And his systematic criticism
of racialized anthropometry and "skeletomania," permit-
ting no higher or lower races, contrasted so dramatically
with Tylor as to constitute two fundamentally different
conceptions of anthropology at the time of the very birth of
the discipline.
Firmin's Response as a Scientific and Moral
Triumph over de Gobineau
The Equality of the Human Races was both a scientific
rebuttal of de Gobineau's ideas and a positive statement of
the potential of anthropology to study human difference
objectively without the bias of biological or social ranking.
FLUEHR-LOBBAN / ANT£NOR FIRMIN 459
The work responds not only to de Gobineau's De
llnegalite des Races Humaines (1853-55), but also to
the entrenched racist thought that was characteristic of
European and American scholarship, including early
physical anthropology. Its anti-racist themes and the use of
anthropology to make the case for human equality were ig-
nored in its time and marginalized in subsequent decades,
undoubtedly because of its then revolutionary premise
clearly stated in the title.
De Gobineau and others who authored theories about ra-
cial inferiority often cited Haiti as evidence in support of
their position. De Gobineau stated that the manners of the
Haitian people were as "depraved, brutal and savage as in
Dahomey or among the Fellatahs" (de Gobineau
[ 1853-55] 1967:48), and he pointed to Haiti as an awful ex-
ample of what happened when European forms of govern-
ment were imposed upon people of different and lower
races (Nicholls 1979:127). The Black race is at "the foot of
the ladder" and is "incapable of civilization," de Gobineau
wrote ([1853-55] 1967:205. 212). Indeed, a critical review
of Haitian history might suggest that the Republic had
slipped back into monarchy and despotic rule at the time of
de Gobineau's writing (Dayan 1995:13). He would have
argued that this was due to the natural depravity of blacks,
rather than taking a more objective view suggesting the
failure of human political institutions and Haiti's isolation
by Western powers. That this image of a "savage" Haiti
continued into the twentieth century is evidenced in
Melville Herskovits' opening words to his study of Haitian
peasant life: "Haiti has fared badly at the hands of its liter-
ary interpreters" (1936:vii). Herskovits, much aided by the
Haitian ethnologist Jean Price-Mars, became recognized as
the founder of the field of African-American anthropology,
thus helping to legitimize the study of the African Dias-
pora, including Haiti.
Despite Firmin's negation of de Gobineau's assessment
of Haiti's achievement in The Equality of the Human
Races, the work is more positive than de Gobineau's emo-
tional, pessimistic Essai, which Firmin thought repre-
sented erudition but untutored science. Apart from the
burning critique of de Gobineau and like-minded writers of
the nineteenth century. The Equality of the Human Races is
a buoyant work, assured that legitimate science and taith
will prevail. Were Firmin alive today he might be disap-
pointed to see how persistent are many of the racial myths
he sought to demolish and how relevant his work still
remains after more than a century.
De Gobineau was a royalist who, it is said, never recov-
ered from the French Revolution; he was also a journalist,
and later in life a diplomat as well as a dabbler in science
and philosophy (Chase 1980:90). He fabricated, without
much use of the tools of science, a "scientific" theory of the
inborn inequality of all human races. His four-volume
tome Essai sur rinegalite des Races Humaines (1853-55)
460 AMtRiCAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 102. No. 3 •
was translated into English and German, and it became the
stock-in-trade of racist politicians. "Americans quoted de
Gobineau to defend Black slavery in the South; Europeans
to rationalize the human costs of imperialism in their Asian
and African colonies" (Chase 1980:90). Despite the inter-
national political success of his Inequality of Races, de Go-
bineau was never admitted to any scientific academy in
France. De Gobineau viewed the decline of France after
the Revolution as part of a more general decline of Europe
and the White race. Although he discussed the history of
civilizations, color was his primary concern. As a general
rule, the whiter the race, the more it possessed superior
civilization and honor. Great civilizations decline, he be-
lieved, because of race mixing and the dilution of superior
Teutonic blood.
Perhaps in response to de Gobineau's theories of the
damage of race mixing, Firmin expended great effort in de-
scribing the physical beauty and the strength of race mix-
ing and hybridization in Haiti, and in the New World gen-
erally. The theme of the dangers of race mixing was
adopted by many European and American policy makers,
politicians, and educators in both the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries. Immigration restrictions were defended as a
means to avoid the dangers of race mixing and the result-
ing "mongrelization" of America (Chase 1980:173), and
the desegregation of public schools was opposed as dan-
gerous and unwarranted race mixing. The German com-
poser Richard Wagner was so enamored of de Gobineau's
ideas that he founded the Gobineau Society in 1881 in
Bayreuth to spread the idea of Teutonic or Nordic suprem-
acy. The published works of de Gobineau greatly influ-
enced Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who became Wag-
ner's son-in-law and published in 1899 Foundations of the
Nineteenth Centurv. which added overt anti-Semitism to
de Gobineau's less rabid hatred for Jews. The disciples of
de Gobineau did more in the way of practical politics than
de Gobineau ever imagined in his more passive, pessimis-
tic worldview.
De Gobineau's despair for the future of the European
race since the French Revolution can be sharply contrasted
with Firmin's sincere praise of what he viewed as human-
ity's greatest moment. He provides a Black man's appre-
ciation of the event.
The Freneh Revolution, whose dazzling light radiated over
the whole world, marched with the thunder of canons and the
rhythm of the Marseillaise, overthrowing all of the barriers
separating nations. In 1790, at the celebration of the Federa-
tion the fanatical Anaeharsis Clout/ proclaimed the Universal
Republic and the fraternity of all the races. Later a Negro was
earned in triumph before the Convention, to the applause of a
crowd electrified by the resounding echo of Robespierre's
voice as the fierce but jusiice-loving tribune resolved. "Perish
the colonies rather than a principle!" That was a fine moment
in Ihe history of France, a history that was already so beauti-
ful. It must be said: Never before had humanity shown proof
SEPTLMBLK 2000
of such greatness, such nobility, as in that manifestation of en-
thusiasm of an entire people in love with the truth and ap-
plauding what is nght. [(1885)2000:20-21 ]
Firmin argued that the French Revolution had an opposite
effect to that of de Gobineau on the people of Haiti and its
intellectual heritage. Haiti's own revolution represented
the very symbol of black freedom and regeneration with
the second independent republic in the New World and the
first Black Republic. Prior to the Haitian Revolution there
had been slave rebellions and insurrections, but the success
of Haiti struck fear in the hearts of slave owners outside of
Haiti even as it inspired and intensified all acts of resis-
tance elsewhere (Smedley 1993:215). Racist theories had
to be revised or refined in response to the blow for freedom
that Haiti struck, while the door was flung wide open for
scholars like Firmin to challenge racist thinking from a
sound base of historical fact.
Rooted in the powerful political and intellectual tradi-
tion that sprung from the Haitian revolution, Firmin's book
is appropriately dedicated to Haiti and its love of liberty,
with the image of Toussaint Louverture opposite the title
page (Figure 2). In Pan-African circles generations later,
Antenor Firmin was recognized as one of Haiti's great
thinkers who inspired later generations of better-known
scholars, such as Jean Price-Mars.
The Equality of the Human Races as an
Early Work of Pan-Africanism
Beyond its value as a response to European ideas of
"Black inferiority," The Equality of the Human Races is an
affirmation of African civilization and Black pride. Al-
though unknown as a work of anthropology, it has been
recognized by a number of writers as a significant, early
work of Pan-Africanism (Geiss 1974. Nicholls 1979). In
addition to his Pan-Africanist writing, Firmin was an activ-
ist in the early Pan-African movement and was one of two
delegates from Haiti at the first Pan-African Congress in
1900 in London (Geiss 1974:193).
As a student of African antiquity, Firmin read and cited
the leading Egyptologists of the day. He read and admired
Champollion and had more than a passing knowledge o(
hieroglyphics from which he took the Egyptian word
Retous meaning "real humans," the true Egyptians as dis-
tinguished from foreigners ([1885]2000:232-233). He
adopted Retous as a general term for the original African
people. He also appreciated the historical ties in the Nile
Valley between Nubia and Hgypt as distinctive African
civilizations. When he salutes the indivisible African his-
tory in the Nile Valley from "Memphis to Meroe," he in-
cludes the Sudanese civilizations of Kush-Meroe, referred
to as "Ethiopia" in Greek texts, along with the more cele-
brated civilization of Pharaonic Egypt. This stands in sharp
contrast to Samuel Morton's "Caucasoid Egyptians" and the
"Hamitic Myth" that denied the ability of black Africans to

Figure 2. Original title page of De I'Egalite des Races Humaines.
create civilizations. His analysis of the non-racist images of
Blacks in the classical European civilizations of Greece and
Rome in his chapter on 'Religious Myth and the Opinions
of the Ancients" ([1885]2OOO: ch. 18) presages the more
systematic work Blacks in Antiquity carried out by Frank
M. Snowden eight decades later (1970). His analyses of
skin color and myth, including the Biblical myth of the
"Curse of Ham," the plethora of associations of blackness
with evil and the devil in Europe, and his treatment of
Shakespeare's choice of a dark Moor for Othello, all have a
thoroughly modern resonance with post-colonial literary
criticism. It is well to remember that Haiti was, indeed, the
first post-colonial Black Republic, and Antenor Firmin
was a product of its third generation of scholars.
A contemporary categorization for Firmin's work might
be the label "Afrocentrism." However. The Equality of the
Human Races extols the achievements of African peoples
(including Egyptians as well as Nubians, often referred to
as Ethiopians, and Haitians in the New World as his pri-
mary examples) as historical facts without traces of racial
apology or chauvinism. Instead, he is confident that historical
FLUEHR-LOBBAN / ANTfiNOH FlKMIN 461
DE L'EGALITE
i r:;
RACES IIUMAINES
POSITIVF
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Anclen «oua fnnpeotaur dee Acoles de )a c)rconaor)pt)on du C«p-HaVt)en
Aacten conuniaaatrfl de U R^publlque d'Haltf A Caracas,etc.
Avooat.
PARIS
LlDRAiniE COTILLON
F. T1C11UN, SUGCESSEUll, liMl'lUMEUnfiDlTEUH,
Llbralro Ju Cornell d'KUl e| do la Soclc-U clc Uglilitlon comporie,
51, nUE SOUFFLOT, «1
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truth will prevail above all else, including European racism.
As he praised the accomplishment of African peoples, re-
ferring with ease to the civilizations of Meroe or the
"Acropole" of Zimbabwe, he also lauded the heroic French
people for their moment of greatness in history, the French
Revolution. He lamented the duping of the White race in
the construction of their fantasies of superiority, and he
was certain that eventually an accurate and balanced record
will replace the present racializing of history. Firmin opens
his chapter 'Egypt and Civilization"' ([1885]2OOO: ch. 9)
with these words:
Truth is eternal. It must remain whole through time and space,
otherwise it cannot be validated by logic. When one asserts
that the Black race is inferior to all the others, one must prove
that the fact is true now and was true in the past. . that noth-
ing happened in the past which could be in flagrant contradic-
tion with the dogmatic views of the anthropologists or with the
pretentiously sell-assured conclusions of the scholars, [p. 22^]
Firmin was among those early writers to state that Egyp-
tian civilization was the fountainhead from which sprang
the Greek and Roman cultures, and that the development
462 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • Vol. 102, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 2000
of the arts and sciences among Europeans rested upon an
African foundation. Caucasian presumption could not
abide the idea that their original development lay with a
race they considered to be radically inferior to them-
selves ([1885]2OOO:227; Nicholls 1979:130). This opin-
ion provoked a scandal in Europe for its radical reversal
of the thesis of black inferiority at a time when Europe
had just completed its plans for the Partition of Africa at
the KSS4 Berlin Congress. How could the antiquity and
greatness of ancient Africa be acknowledged under condi-
tions of fierce European expansion and colonialism?
(Price-Mars 1964:155). This suggests yet another possible
reason for the obscurity of Firmin's work in Europe (de-
spite it having been published in Paris) during the heyday
of colonial expansion and why he can now be acknow-
ledged and appreciated in the post-colonial milieu of Euro-
American scholarship.
Ever the rationalist and scientist, Firmin exposed the
illogic of the majority of anthropologists and scholars who
have used every ruse to make the ancient Egyptians white.
Where is truth? Where is error? On the one hand, anthropolo-
gists, who have no other means to elucidate the issue but the
craniometric methods whose irrelevance for the classification
of the human races we have seen, have constantly relied on
historical and archaeological conjectures to justify the results
of their investigations. On the other hand scholars, disciples
of Morton, could only rely on comparative anatomy, that
is on the same anthropometric results obtained by the anthro-
pologists, to assert that the ancient Egyptians belong to the
Caucasian race.
. . . Science cannot tolerate such a vicious circle, for it ab-
hors ambiguity. We must therefore return to the facts and ex-
amine them more conscientiously. If the ancient Egyptians
were White, how come the most handsome types among their
monuments have a distinctive character, a general physical
appearance that is so different from the Caucasian types?
[(1885)2000:230-231]
Noting that Egyptians portrayed a variety of physical
types, Firmin observes, "in the case of the portrayal of
Ethiopians in Egyptian paintings, the artist caricatures his
models when they are the enemy, and makes them per-
fectly handsome types when they are not. Without doubt
one can confirm that the ancient Egyptians, the true Re-
tous, were black Africans. . . . I consider this, for my part,
as a major point against the doctrine of the inequality of the
races" (p. 237). The great twentieth-century Haitian
scholar, Jean Price-Mars, who himself paved the way for
viewing Haiti as an African society in the New World
(1928), saw in Firmin the pioneering intellectual roots of
modern Afrocentrism, especially the work of the post-in-
dependence Senegalese scholar, Cheik Anta Diop
(1954:157). In his biography of Firmin, Price-Mars also
cites the work of European historian Basil Davidson
(1962) whose radical rethinking of African prehistory and
history helped to demolish the Eurocentric belief that Africa
had no history before European penetration of the conti-
nent. In this respect the work of the African American an-
thropologist St. Clair Drake must also be mentioned. His
Black Folk Here and There (1987) offers a thorough sur-
vey of vindicationist writers whose constructions of Egypt
and Nubia as African constitute a distinctive and continu-
ous strain of thought among diasporic authors.
The linkage between race and civilizational achieve-
ment is still controversial today, as the Aryan (i.e., Euro-
pean) origins of civilization have been again questioned by
Martin Bernal in Black Athena (1987, 1991). in which he
argues for the African and Asian origins of classical Euro-
pean civilization. This most recent renewal of the debate
about African origins proved controversial, once again
eliciting prominent rebuttals of Bernal, such as Mary
Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africa (1996). Debates regarding
America's commitment to multicultural education have
ensued with proposals to include Afrocentric perspectives
in standard school curricula. Firmin's The Equality of the
Human Races could be read and studied today as if it were
propounding some new idea. Of course, Firmin was not
alone in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in making
the assertion of the African origins of Western civilization.
Martin Delany's Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of
Races and Color is also built around this central thesis, and
the Pan-African movement adopted it as a central point of
Black solidarity from ancient times to the present, as did
the Negritude movement in the twentieth century, as ex-
pressed by one of its founders, Jean Price-Mars, who ac-
knowledged Firmin as early sage of the idea.
A certain defensiveness can be evoked among Euro-
American scholars in reaction to Afrocentrism as an anti-
dote to Eurocentrism. This may come in the guise of the
claim that racism is a universal tendency that has existed in
all societies, that the ancient Egyptians were as racist as the
modern Europeans. Deflating this argument that inequality
of races is one of the oldest and most widespread ideas in
the world, Firmin makes the critical distinction between
ethnocentrism and racism. "Throughout history peoples
have thought of themselves as superior to their neighbors,
but there has never been the least connection between this
narrow and rather highly patriotic sense of superiority and
the notion of a systematic hierarchy of human races"
([1885]20OO:139). The chapters in Firmin's The Equality
of the Human Races that deal with Egypt and Ethiopia, as
well as with Haiti, are as relevant to debates today as they
were in the nineteenth century. Firmin argues:
It has been possible to support the strange thesis of the origi-
nal inferiority of the Black peoples as long as a willfully
biased and guiltily complieit science persisted in the opinion
that the Retous (original peoples [of Africa]) were a White
race. Today, however, historical criticism has evolved to such
a high degree that discerning and sincere minds are able to
reestablish the truth about this extremely important point.
It may no longer be possible, therefore, to close one's eyes

to the light and to continue to propagate the same doctrine. In
fact, the supporters of the theory of the inequality of the human
races would find it very awkward to persist in their belief.
It is now well-known that the ancient inhabitants of the shores of
the Nile were members of the Black race, and I have pre-
sented overabundant evidence in support of this fact. . . .
The Greeks, who were through the influence of Rome Europe's
educators, must have taken from Egypt the most practical
principles of their philosophy, just as they have taken from
her all the sciences which they later cultivated and expanded
with a marvelous intelligence, [pp. 393-395]
Not only was the ancient past an affirmation of the equality
(not the superiority) of the Black race, but the more con-
temporary example of Haiti proved the essential thesis
once again. A marvelous achievement of the human quest
for freedom from enslavement and foreign domination,
Haiti at once inspired a new Pan-Americanism even as it
struck fear in the hearts of American slave owners and
European colonialists. On the matter of the original race of
the Haitians, although Firmin is well aware of Haiti's
mixed races, the metis, and the multiple categories of race
in the country, he is unequivocal that Haiti is comprised of
descendants of Africa.
Firmin's Pan-Americanism was likewise well in ad-
vance of its time in the Caribbean. Some authors cite his
friendships with Puerto Rican nationalist Ramon Betances
and with the Cuban revolutionary Jose Martf.
Without succumbing to chauvinism we must once again re-
turn to the Black race of Haiti. It is interesting to note the ex-
tent to which this small nation made up of descendants of Af-
ricans has influenced world history since its independence. . . .
With the help of Haitian men and material Simon Boli'var suc-
ceeded in winning the independence of Venezuela, then Co-
lumbia and Peru, thus ending Spanish colonial power forever.
Throughout the Americas it was the concept of the Republic
that prevailed. It was as if the new world had sensed the future
in the ideas of liberty and equality, [pp. 395-396]
Firmin lauds the achievement of the Haitian Republic as a
beacon to all of the suffering and oppressed peoples of Af-
rican descent. It is noteworthy that The Equality- of the Hu-
man Races is dedicated to Haiti, and its first liberator,
Toussaint Louverture, is pictured opposite the title page of
the 1885 volume published in Paris. His view of the Hai-
tian case as an example of African achievement is a theme
that was carried forward in the writing of Hannibal Price,
whose De la Rehabilitation de la Race Noire par la Repub-
lique a"Haiti (1900) has remained the benchmark publica-
tion for this thesis in the twentieth century. The Black
Republic deserves the whole world's esteem and admira-
tion, and Firmin believed that Haitian independence posi-
tively influenced the fate of the entire Black race living
outside of Africa. At the same time, Haiti's independence
changed the economic and moral authority of all of the
European powers that owned colonies. In addition, it had
FLUEHR-LOBBAN / A N 1 1 N O R FlKMIN 4 6 3
considerable bearing on the internal economy of all of the
American nations where slavery existed (p. 400).
Believing that their country was the symbol of black re-
generation, it was natural that Haitians would have played
a role in the Pan-African movement that began in earnest
in the closing years of the nineteenth century (Nicholls
1979:134). Firmin attended the First Pan-African Conference
in London in 1900 along with fellow Haitian delegate ex-
President Francois-Denis Legitime and as "the most im-
portant intellectual and statesman of Haiti" (Geiss 1974:
193; also cited in Clarke 1974:42). Other well-known rep-
resentatives at the historic conference included W. E. B.
Du Bois of the United States, Henry Sylvester Williams of
Trinidad, as well as delegates from Abssyinia, Liberia,
South Africa, Sierre Leone, Gold Coast, and Canada. The
conference appealed to the "civilized countries" to provide
for the education and development of the backward people
of the black race and warned that "the problem of the
twentieth century is the color question" (Nicholls 1979:
134). Firmin, taking inspiration from the great ancient Af-
rican civilizations, saw a fortunate future for the "Black
race," a revisitation of the role it once played in enlighten-
ing humankind from the banks of the Nile. Firmin made it
clear that this was not a prophecy, nor a matter of predes-
tiny, but a future that will be molded by practical and politi-
cal action in the cause of racial equality by humankind.
Firmin, like other Haitian writers of his day, regarded
the Africa of his day as comparatively uncivilized. At the
close of his chapter "The Role of the Black Race in the
History of Civilization," he apologizes for his lack of refer-
ence to the contemporary peoples of central Africa, the
"heart of Africa," admitting a lack of evidence to challenge
notions long held about "savagery in darkest Africa,"
though he foresaw that future research would reveal to us
barely suspected facts. These facts, Firmin argued, would
only come to light when "the deep rooted prejudice that
keeps ethnographers and anthropologists from proclaiming
the truth as their eyes can in fact behold it overwhelms
the undeniable conspiracy that has led them to falsely
claim the inferiority of one people over another" ([1885]
2000: 402).
W. E. B. Du Bois' famous statement that the color bar is
the problem of the twentieth century retains its relevance to
twenty-first-century life as well. Writers like de Gobineau
have written that the racial question overshadows all other
problems in history (Biddiss 1970:33). The continuing im-
portance of the question of race at the end of this century
and into the twenty-first century makes this reclamation of
Antenor Firmin's The Equality of the Human Races, in the
English language for the first time, a valued addition to
contemporary as well as historical literature illuminating
anthropology, the study of race and racism, African-
American studies, post-colonial studies, and the humani-
ties in general.
464 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 102. No. 3 • SKPTEMBER 2000
Many anthropologists would like to see the demise of
the race concept. However, the continuing relevance of the
central thesis of Firmin's The Equality of the Human Races
115 years after its publication suggests that persistent racism
is the main reason why the race concept has endured.
Firmin believed that positivist science linked to unbiased
anthropological knowledge would lead to acceptance of
the doctrine of the equality of the human races. This doc-
trine then becomes a regenerative force for the future de-
velopment of humankind. The last words of his 1885 tome
invoke every human to simply "Love one another" ([ 1885]
2000:451).
Notes
Acknowledgments. I gratefully acknowledge the role played
by my former student Jacques Raphael Georges in bringing
Firmin to my attention, as well as that of my collaborator
Asselin Charles, the translator of the text. I am grateful to Ed-
widge Lefebvre-Leclercq for conducting research on Firmin in
Paris. I also acknowledge the many helpful suggestions of-
fered by manuscript reviewer Drexel D. Woodson, as well as
the encouragement and support of Lee D. Baker and Faye V.
Harrison.
1. For the past twenty-five years I have taught an under-
graduate course that I innovated at Rhode Island College enti-
tled "Anthropology of Race and Racism." This has developed
into a successful and popular course that attracts a diverse
group of students each semester it is taught. As a part of the
course, we study the biological and social constructions of
race and demythologize much of Western thinking regarding
race. Part of this review includes consideration of European
writers whose work has had a major impact on racist thought,
including the work of Count Arthur de Gobineau. On one oc-
casion in teaching this segment of the class I was asked by a
Haitian student in the class, Jacques Raphael Georges, if I was
aware of the work of Ante'nor Firmin, a nineteenth-century
Haitian scholar who wrote in response to de Gobineau. I said
that I was not but that I would be keen to have a look at his
work. I began to search American libraries for titles having the
words egalite, races, and anthropologie, under the name of
Firmin. Jacques agreed to search for the work on his next trip
to Haiti, but he was unable to locate the volume, although he
had studied about Firmin as a child in the West Indies. All ef-
fort to locate Firmin's work was to no avail for some years.
In 1994 I met a Haitian scholar and specialist in compara-
tive literature, Asselin Charles, who was speaking at the
Rhode Island Black Heritage Society on the crisis at that time
in Haiti. I menlioned Firmin and the search for his work, and
Dr. Charles was immediately familiar with him as one of
Haiti's great scholars and politicians, but he, also, had never
seen a copy of his book. His search was more successful than
mine, and he located at the Smithsonian Institution one of only
a handful of copies to be found in North America of Ante'nor
Firmin's De VEgalite des Races Humaines. Finally having the
opportunity to review the book, I immediately recognized it as
a remarkable work of anthropology, and Dr. Charles appreci-
ated the reason for Firmin's reputation as a scholar in Haiti.
Together we agreed that Firmin's obscurity was unjustified
and that a reintroduction of his work to an English-language
audience was in order. As an experienced translator himself.
Dr. Charles and I embarked upon a joint project, including a
complete translation of the original 662-page manuscript of
The Equality- of the Human Races, along with an introduction
to Firmin as a pioneer in anthropology and Pan-Africanism.
2. Pagination of Firmin quotes refer to the English language
text ([1885)2000).
3. Douglass's report was not what Washington wanted to
hear and served to confirm Douglass's reputation as a Black
leader soft on the Black Republic. He was blamed by the
American press for failing to take possession of the Mole, and
he left Haiti in that same year never to return. Douglass re-
tained the admiration of the Haitian people (Foner 1955:
138-139); however, Firmin was compelled to resign his post
for having entertained the proposal at all. Douglass delivered a
powerful and emotional vindicationist speech on Haiti at the
Chicago World's Fair on January 2. 1893, which does not
mention the negotiations over the Mole (Foner 1955:
478-490).
After this episode and the end of the Hyppolite government,
Firmin returned to Cap-Haitien to resume his law practice.
Perceived as a threat to the new Simon Sam government, he
was appointed Minister to Pans in 1900. He returned in 1902
at the head of what became known as the Firminist insurgency
to reform basic government institutions, advocate the engage-
ment of foreign capital interest in the Republic, and reduce the
role of the army in Haiti. With its greater strength in the north
Cap-Haitien region, the movement was eventually over-
whelmed by political forces in Port-au-Prince.
Escaping to exile in St. Thomas, Firmin lived out his years
writing books and political tracts. The most forceful of these
was entitled M. Roosevelt, President des Etats-Unis et la
Re'publique d'Haiti (1905). This work addressed the regional
political interests of the Caribbean and Latin America, arguing
for a U.S. interest in a stable Haiti to stave off European mo-
tives in the region while the broader hemispheric security
would be maintained. His Lettres de Saint Thomas (1910) ad-
dressed Pan-Caribbeanism, discussing the unification of the
Antilles and advocating a West Indian Federation. Firmin's
Pan-Americanism, like so much else in his thought, was well
in advance of its time. He worked for many years on a com-
prehensive history of Haiti, but this manuscript was destroyed,
together with many of his personal effects and belongings,
with the failure of the last insurgency.
A second Firminist insurrection, as the government of Si-
mon was falling, took place in 1910 and 191 1 and afforded an
aging Firmin one more opportunity to lead Haiti. He left St.
Thomas shortly after Simon's fall and attempted to gain
American support for his presidency. Though the Firminists
fought hard again, the movement was overwhelmed again in
Port-au-Prince just as Firmin's boat was arriving at the capital.
Unable to disembark, he returned to St. Thomas a broken man
and died five weeks later in September 1911. having never re-
turned to Haiti after his initial departure in 1902.
During the first decade of the twentieth century, a reform
movement organized around Firmin's thought and charismatic
personality attracted numerous educated and progressive per-
sons who described themselves as "Firminists." They engaged
in the ongoing critique of Haitian society and institutions tied

to the political and military aspects of Firmin's movement.
Firmin remains a personality well known to Haitians for his
erudite scholarship as well as his commitment to reform of
Haitian society and politics.
4. Martin Delaney's Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of
Races and Color was reprinted for the first time since its original
publication date of 1879 in 1991 in 95 pages of text. Although
it contains some similar early Pan-Africanist ideas about black
civilizations in Egypt and Ethiopia, Delaney accepts the Bibli-
cal monogenist (descending from a single pair) version of the
origin of races from the sons of Noah, Shem, Japheth, and
Ham. Also, the book neither critiques racialist physical an-
thropology nor sets forth a philosophical or scientific vision of
anthropology.
5. Firmin quotes Royer from the 1878 Proceedings of the
International Conference of Ethnographic Sciences (Paris).
Although Royer was a monogenist and a critic of the overuse
of skeletal data, she nevertheless accepted a hierarchical rank-
ing of races, and Firmin's later arguments against her could be
dubbed argumentum ad feminatn, for he finally dismisses her
as a woman incapable of solving "problems of such complex-
ity [that] can only be studied by men" ([1885)2000: 271).
6. 1 would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Edwige Le-
febvre-Leclercq, who conducted research on Firmin in the ar-
chives of the Socie'te d'Anthropolgie de Paris at the Muse'e
d'Homme. She assisted this research by discovering the con-
ditions for membership in the society as well as the years that
Firmin was an active member. She has also critically read por-
tions of the manuscript for my interpretation of French intel-
lectual and colonialist history, and her suggestions for clarifi-
cation and improvement of the text have been most helpful.
7. Firmin used the French word Veugenesie, which is trans-
lated as eugenics in English, a word that became equated with
racism in theory and practice. However, by Veugenesie Firmin
meant the improvement of the species through race mixing.
He frequently used the term to assert the fecundity of the hy-
brid offspring of Black and White.
8. The American Carleton Coon's The Origin of Races
(1962) may be considered the last work of polygenism in that
it propounded a theory of the separate origins of five different
human races. Steven J. Gould has written a definitive critique
of Morton's craniometry in his Mismeasure of Man (1981).
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