According to historian George W. Stocking, Jr., “In turn-of-the [twentieth] century evolutionary thinking, savagery, dark skin, and a small brain and incoherent mind were, for many, all parts of a single evolutionary picture of ‘primitive’ man, who even yet walks the earth.” Darwinists believed there was a racial hierarchy–that evolutionary adaptations to different climates and environments caused human nature to differ somewhat from one continent to another. They thought blacks had proclivities toward crime, promiscuity, and sloth; and that these tendencies had to be held in check by white supervision.
