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Race, women and health · Claim record

The article containing that sentence was written to refute a book then circulating in the southern United States which claimed that black people were animals rather than humans; it argued from Paul’s words that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men”, cited as Acts 17:24-28, said that marriage across the races was not a crime in Scripture, and cited Moses’s marriage to “a negress” as evidence of divine approval.

Claim ID claim-attitudes-race-1902-negro-not-beast-refutationConcerns 15 July 1902Context
Context · 15 July 1902 Verified

The article containing that sentence was written to refute a book then circulating in the southern United States which claimed that black people were animals rather than humans; it argued from Paul’s words that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men”, cited as Acts 17:24-28, said that marriage across the races was not a crime in Scripture, and cited Moses’s marriage to “a negress” as evidence of divine approval. Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 July 1902Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 July 1902

Show the evidence (2 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, “The Negro Not a Beast”

15 July 1902 · pp.214-217 (Reprints pp. 3042-3044) · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“if whites and negroes were of different species they could not, by commingling, produce offspring capable of propagation … Take, for instance, the fact that Moses married a negress, and had children by her … Hence the argument of those who claim that the negro is devoid of organizing intelligence or ability, except as he may have an admixture of white blood, is shown to be fallacious.”

The article is a point-by-point answer to a book then selling in the southern United States which argued that black people were not human but animals. Answering the first question the magazine quotes "God that made the world and all things therein, … hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth" with the citation "Acts 17:24-28". The sub-heading "Miscegenation Not Scripturally a Crime" opens the next answer, in which the magazine rejects the claim that Cain’s sin was marriage to a black woman and lists Moses’s wife Zipporah, Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian eunuch and the Queen of Sheba as evidence.

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read in the 1902 Reprints volume on the Internet Archive on 19 September 2026 and re-checked leaf by leaf from the item’s djvu.xml. The article opens on the leaf that closes with the marker [3042]; the following leaf’s running head reads “July 15, 1902 ZION’S WATCH TOWER (215-216)” and closes with [3043], and the leaf after that reads “(216-217) ZION’S WATCH TOWER Allegheny, Pa.”, which fixes the date and the magazine pages. Heavy OCR damage in this volume (French-locale substitutions such as “hâve” for “have” and “ail” for “all”) has been corrected against the surrounding text; the page images were not separately inspected.

Scan provenance. Internet Archive item “Magazines: Zion’s watch tower and herald of Christ’s presence, 1902”, the Watch Tower Reprints volume for 1902.

Corroborated by. src-race-zwt-1902-0715-white-race-superiority, src-race-zwt-1902-0715-ham-canaan

Notes. This part of the article is rarely quoted by critical sites; the article as a whole was written to refute the claim that black people are not human.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-race-zwt-1902-0715-negro-not-beast-refutation

Primary JW publication Verified

Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, “The Negro Not a Beast”

15 July 1902 · pp.215-216 (Reprints p. 3043) · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“While it is true that the white race exhibits some qualities of superiority over any other, we are to remember that there are wide differences in the same Caucasian (Semitic and Aryan) family; and also we should remember that some of the qualities which have given this branch of the human family its preeminence in the world are not such as can be pointed to as in all respects admirable. … The secret of the greater intelligence and aptitude of the Caucasian undoubtedly in great measure is to be attributed to the commingling of blood amongst its various branches; and this was evidently forced in large measure by circumstances under divine control.”

The passage stands in a section headed "How Shall We Account for Racial Differences?" which explains skin colour by climate, soil and "the strong pre-natal influence of the mother’s mind". The sentence immediately before it says that "Africa is inhabited by various tribes or nations of negroes—some more and some less degraded than the average". The same paragraph says the qualities that gave Europeans their pre-eminence are not admirable, suggests the gospel might have found better soil in India, and describes the elect church as taken "from amongst the most quarrelsome, aggressive, selfish and dominating of humanity". The section closes: "It remains to be proven that the similar commingling of the various tribes of Chinese for several centuries would not equally brighten their intellects; and the same with the peoples of India and Africa."

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read in the 1902 Reprints volume on the Internet Archive on 19 September 2026 and read again, leaf by leaf from the item’s djvu.xml, on the same date. The running head on this Reprints page reads "July 15, 1902 ZION’S WATCH TOWER (215-216)" and the page closes with the marker [3043], which confirms the page range commonly cited for this passage. An earlier version of this record ended the quotation at "… amongst its various branches." with a full stop; in the scan that sentence runs on past a semicolon, and the rest of it is now quoted. OCR damage repaired against the surrounding text; the page images were not separately inspected.

Scan provenance. Internet Archive item “Magazines: Zion’s watch tower and herald of Christ’s presence, 1902”, the Watch Tower Reprints volume for 1902.

Corroborated by. src-race-zwt-1902-0715-negro-not-beast-refutation

Notes. Critical sites usually quote this passage as far as "in all respects admirable". The qualifications that follow stand in the same paragraph of the scan.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-race-zwt-1902-0715-white-race-superiority

Claim page Correct or update

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-attitudes-race-1902-negro-not-beast-refutation/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.