Mixed Race Studies

The Physical Form of Mississippi Negroes

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 16, Issue 2 (October/December 1931)
pages 193–201
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330160213

Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963), Professor of Anthropology and African Studies
Northwestern University

Vivian K. Cameron

Harriet Smith

During the years 1923 to 1927, research was carried on in an attempt to investigate the physical form of the American Negro, with particular reference to the question of a possible physical type being formed in the United States, and to the amount and consequences of the racial mixture that had gone into the formation of the Negro population of this country.  The results of this research may be briefly summarized as follows: first, that the American Negro, as indicated by the genealogies collected in the course of the study, represented much more racial crossing than had been generally recognized, and secondly, that in spite of this crossing, a physical type which combined the characteristics of the African and European ancestral populations hand which was relatively homogeneous in character had been formed.

Awaiting publication of the complete results of this study, a volume outlining the results was brought out. The point most generally made when this work was criticized was that since the majority of the sample utilized in the study had been measured in the north, the group studied could not be…

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Variability and Racial Mixture

The American Naturalist
Volume 61, Number 672 (Jan. – Feb., 1927)
paages 68-81

Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963), Professor of Anthropology and African Studies
Northwestern University

[Read a biographical memoir by Joseph C. Greenberg here.]

[From Northwestern University: In 1948, Herskovits founded the Program of African Studies (PAS) at Northwestern, the first and foremost center of its kind at a major research university in the United States with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.]

The biometric method has come to lay great stress on the variability of populations of their development and in the discovery of the applicability of the findings of the geneticist to human populations.  One of the hypotheses which has gone hand in hand with the use of the concept of variability is what where there is a greater variation in one of two populations, that which has the larger represent the greater amount of mixture.  And when “mixture” is spoken of, the connotation is that of “racial mixture.”  The logical conclusion is that the “pure race” is that which show the lowest variability, and that when large variation is found in a population, this means it is the result of a great amount of race-crossing.

We see that this assumption is a real one in the minds of biologists and biometricians when we consider some of the  statements which have been recently made regarding this matter. Thus, in a paper published a short time ago, Castle remarks that “… as heterosis disappears, the population of later generations will be intermediate in character, and probably more variable that either uncrossed  race.”  Wissler, in a consideration of the subject of variability, remarks that “what he have… in a population unit is a number of types or pure lines, thrown together, each with its own range of variability, and these variabilities have a way of combining so as to increase the variability of the whole… As often said, the range of stature will be grater among mixed races.  This is, in fact, a recognized law of biology.”…

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