Black America: A Study of the Ex-Slave and His Late Master.

xiii, [1], 240 pp., publisher's ads follow text. 8vo. Includes frontispiece map captioned 'The Black Belt,' appendices showing the population of the South in 1890, 'colour caste,' slavery in the North, and 'the growth of the coloured race' from 1790 through 1890 (with columns for total white population, and two columns showing populations of free blacks and slaves). Clowes (1856-1905),a journalist distinguished for his expertise in naval affairs, made this report of race relations based upon a tour of the American South in 1890-1891 for The London Times. "In view of the growing birth-rate and exclusion from political power of the black, Clowes foretold a race war incomparably terrible between black and white America." - Dictionary of National Biography. Clowes' 'Ideal Solution' is the removal of black Americans from the South to central Africa. Of course a slightly different course was pursued, that of internal exile: segregation. The work is both a snapshot of the racial stereotypes and prejudices common to an 'enlightened' white observer of the time, and a mine of data on race relations in the South on the eve of Jim Crow.