William Sanders Scarborough & the First Universal Races Congress

I have blogged on both these subjects. For reference, first my bibliography:

First Universal Races Congress, London, July 26-29, 1911: Selected Bibliography

The conference proceedings can be accessed online. I see no contribution by Scarborough in it, though he did participate:

Papers on Inter-Racial Problems, Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress, Held at the University of London, July 26-29, 1911; edited by Gustav Spiller. London: P. S. King & Son; Boston: The World’s Peace Foundation, 1911. xlvi, 485 pp.

In his autobiography Scarborough gives an account of his participation in the First (and last) Universal Races Congress in London in July, 1911:

Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough: An American Journey from Slavery to Scholarship, edited and with an introduction by Michele Valerie Ronnick, foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005. (Contents.) See chapter 19: Second Trip to Europe -- Delegate to the First Universal Races Congress -- [A] Rhine Trip; pp. 214-224. There is a prefatory remark on p. 213. The relevant information can be found on pp. 214-219, and in the final paragraph of p. 224. See also footnotes, pp. 378-380.

Following the commencement, I made preparations for my second trip to England as a delegate to the First Universal Races Congress to be held at the University of London in July where I was to present a paper. [p. 213]

Scarborough mentions his correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois, who organized a Negro American delegation. Scarborough describes his sea journey with his wife to England, and his encounters on board, e.g. with Albert Bigelow Paine, designated biographer of Mark Twain, a friend of the Negro cause. Scarborough sketches the proceedings of the Congress, participants, and papers, and a press report.

But the keynote of this wonderful assembly was the unity of the human race and the brotherhood of man. Whatever the subject discussed the brotherhood of man was never lost sight of. It was advocated and emphasized by the followers of every sect and creed and all from the same platform. With this as a basis of equality of rights and opportunity, fair play in the race of life was urged by both Jew and Gentile. [217]

Scarborough continues to outline the other functions and encounters connected with the Congress. After visiting Cambridge University, he and the wife are off to Paris.  He returns to the theme of the Congress at the end of the chapter.

In the end we were at home again to receive a glad welcome and to report the Congress to school and friends, back from the great Races Congress, hoping that the men and women who claim to be such firm believers in the brotherhood of man will practice what they preach, and will help hasten the day when there will be no race problem. The future will show whether there has been any real substantial gain by such a concerted movement. [224]

Ouch!

William Sanders Scarborough & Volapük in the Black Press

William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926) was one of the most outstanding of outstanding Black American intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries, individual scholars who, because of the dire predicament of Black Americans, assumed all the roles a Black professional person could fill: writer, educator, professor, administrator, civil rights advocate and leader . . .Scarborough was born into slavery and rose to become a leading scholar of the Greek and Latin classics and president of Wilberforce University.

Scarborough was resurrected from the forgetfulness of history with the publication of two books, edited by Michele Valerie Ronnick: The Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough: An American Journey From Slavery to Scholarship (2005) and The Works of William Sanders Scarborough: Black Classicist and Race Leader (2006).

In 2010, in the course of preparing a lecture on the 100th anniversary of the Universal Esperanto Congress in Washington, DC, in addition to researching the mainstream American press for relevant articles, I decided to search the databases of the Black press for reports on Esperanto and the quest for an international language. Here are the articles on Volapük, now on my web site:

• Volapük in the Black Press, 1888 
• Volapuk (Chicago Defender, 1911)

Note that the two signed articles, from August 1888, were authored by Scarborough. Given that Esperanto saw the light of day only in 1887, 1888 was apparently too soon for the American philological community to compare it to Volapük. (I don't recall when Esperanto first captured attention of someone in the anglophone world. It did not take long.)

I found another reference to Volapük in Scarborough's Works. Here is the quote with the bibliographical information on the original publication. Note also that this article was written in the heat of the imperialist scramble to carve up Africa:

The influence of civilization is a mighty lever in shaping the destiny of language. Dialects crumble before it, and the diversity of tongues drifts toward unity. The language of the intelligent must supersede, wholly or in part, that of the unintelligent wherever they come in contact, either by displacing it or fashioning it after its own mold. As the weaker languages and dialects of Europe have disappeared before the light of intelligence, so will the languages and dialects of Africa drop out of existence, one by one, it may be, as the same influence shall quicken and permeate the people. One by one will the stronger swallow up the weak, until the speech of the dominant people shall prevail, jargon first, perhaps, extinction later. Doubtless many more dialects than now exist have passed away, some of them leaving not a relic behind to tell the story of their existence, while of others bare skeletons of speech may be found here and there, but hardly enough to indicate their linguistic relations. The forces that produced these changes are still at work, but in a greater degree; and, though we can make no definite statement as to the results growing out of the invasion of Africa by foreign languages, yet again we believe that the inflectional will survive the uninflectional languages of the world. No artificial language can stand the test of time. In fact, it will hardly gain a foothold, but like Volapük, will die in its infancy. 5 [footnote clarifying Volapük] 

SOURCE: Works, p. 242. Original source: "Function and future of foreign languages in Africa," Methodist Review 76, November-December 1894, pp. 890-899.