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     Historically Americans have sought three ways out of this impasse: religious conversion: climatic extinction and biologic inferiority. The conscience of England and New England based excuse for slavery on heathenism, from which the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel proposed wholesale conversion. Invested capital in the colonies resisted this effort first by obstructing the instruction of slaves and finally by declaring openly with Virginia in 1667: "Baptism doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom, in order that diverse masters freed from this doubt may more carefully endeavor the propagation of Christianity."  
    There is no doubt of the large public opinion which historically turned to one solution of this problem and that was the question of how to be rid of these people by natural death; how by physical removal or social pressure so to reduce the number of proportion of persons of Negro descent that the residue could be absorbed without noticeable difficulty. It is interesting to reflect how sincerely we have hoped in the past for some such solution. When for instance, the fathers of the American Revolution suppressed the slave trade they believed that they were not only curbing an unholy traffic, but also, by cutting off the artificial increase of the Negro population, they were going to leave the Negroes already in America to a fate of inevitable extinction. Relying on the evidence of the slave trade in the West Indies and in some parts of the United States, they believed that from climatic reasons and biologic differences, the Negro could not survive, unassisted by foreign immigration. Jamaica, for instance, had in 1690, 40,000 Negroes. Between 1620 and 1820, 800,000 more were imported. Yet in 1820 there were only 340,000 Negroes on the island. The supporters of the colonization movement were of many minds; some wished simply to transport free Negroes. But numbers hoped to assist nature by starting Negro emigration, which would gradually so grow in volume as to reduce the Negro population and leave the residue to self-extinction, through the very hopelessness of their situation. 
    After the American Civil War this hope was reborn. Governor Sharkey of Mississippi sat before a congressional committee in 1866 and assured them with tears in his eyes that the emancipated Negroes were bound to die out. "My expectation concerning them is that they are destined to extinction, beyond all doubt. We must judge of the future by the past. I could tell you a great many circumstances to that effect; I am sorry I did not come prepared with means to state the percentage of deaths among them. It is alarming, appalling. I think they will gradually die out. Some of them will become thrifty' and prosperous; but as a general thing, I think they are destined to extinction. I may be mistaken; I hope I am; but that is my impression." The census of 1870 seemed to confirm this; showing an increase of less than 10 per cent for Negroes in the decade; but when in 1880 there came a census more accurately and more scientifically taken, the whole nation was aghast at an apparent Negro increase of 35 per cent. The nation, we might say, was bitterly disappointed because the Negro race in America was surviving; and was only partially appeased when these official figures were officially "revised" to increases of 21 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.  
     In somewhat similar ways, in the West Indies after emancipation there was a more or less tacit thought that England and France and Denmark might profitably wait and let matters go as they would, until the Negroes of those most beautiful parts of America were so decimated by laziness and disease that they could be replaced by white immigration. The Negro refused to die.
     In South America the same problem was faced in a different way: there was no question of letting the chief labor force die out; let it live and work; but let it become a real part of the state only as it was physically absorbed into the white race. Brazil, with eighteen million Negroes and mulattoes out of fifty million inhabitants in 1940, was never particularly worried as to whether the Negro died out or not, so long as he remained a fairly submissive laborer and was gradually absorbed into the nation leaving white culture dominant.
    Realizing at last more or less clearly and after the lapse of long years, that the Negro physically is a fixture in America, without the slightest hope that he is going to decrease in numbers, we are faced by the question as to how far force, either the social force of caste or actual physical force in other guise, can be used to settle this problem of black folk in America. Of course the greatest hindrance here is the ethical problem. After all, America represents the part of the world where the Christian religion has shown in some respects its highest development and most efficient organization. It was possible so to twist the tenets of that religion as at first to excuse the slave trade and afterward to condone slavery; but it was more difficult for Christians to face the problem of caste restriction and social suppression.
    Deliberate and planned suppression of a group of human beings could only be defended if it were based on religious dogma or on accepted scientific proof of an inborn and unchangeable inferiority' that no wish nor act could change and which put the sacred duty of self defense on white civilization.    The attempt of the Christian church, Catholic and Protestant, to build a foundation of religious dogma and biblical sanction beneath Negro slavery is one of the most curious and disreputable incidents of organized religion. As Bishop Hopkins of Vermont solemnly voiced it: "The Almighty, foreseeing this total degradation of the race, ordained them to servitude or slavery under the descendants of Shem and Japheth, doubtless because he judged it to be their fittest condition. And all history proves how accurately the prediction has been accomplished, even to the present day."
     Gradually appeal was made to science in place of theology. It is astonishing with what bitter, almost missionary zeal, the attempt to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro was carried on for over a hundred years and still persists in wide circles. It began with the Cotton Kingdom and the attempt to defend its income by proving Negroes were natural and eternal slaves. Religion, and philanthropy were forced into subserviency to this dogma. And even today when science has rebelled and regained its independence and self-respect, the belief in Negro inferiority widely persists.

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