William Hannibal Thomas

William Hannibal Thomas
Born May 4, 1843
Pickaway County, Ohio
Died November 15, 1935
Columbus, Ohio
Education Otterbein University
Western Theological Seminary
Occupation Teacher, journalist, judge, writer, legislator

William Hannibal Thomas (4 May 1843 – 15 November 1935) was an American teacher, journalist, judge, writer and legislator.

Biography

Early life

William Hannibal Thomas was born in Pickaway County, Ohio. In 1859, he was the first black student admitted to Otterbein University. He served with distinction in the 5th United States Colored Infantry Regiment during the Civil War of 1861-1865, suffering a gunshot wound that led to the amputation of his right arm.[1] After the war, he attended Western Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.

Career

He worked briefly at Wilberforce University in Ohio. He then served as a member of the South Carolina Legislature during the Reconstruction period.

In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Thomas U.S. consul to Portuguese Southwest Africa (now Angola).[2] Later he founded his own journal, The Negro.

He is now most remembered for The American Negro (1901),[3] a bombastic work brought out by the Macmillan publishing company. In this book, he maintained that not skin color but the black population's traits of character and behavior were the cause of prejudice. "The negro," he wrote, was "an intrinsically inferior type of humanity."[4] He declared that the black individual in America was slowly and steadily deteriorating, and was "immersed in poverty, steeped in ignorance, stifled with immorality, inherently lazy, and a born pilferer."[5] Several black intellectuals such as Booker T. Washington,[6] W.E.B. Du Bois[7] and Charles W. Chesnutt,[8][9] attacked the author and sought to suppress his book.[10] Washington even used spies to gather damaging information about Thomas.[11]

Death

He died in Columbus, Ohio in 1935.

Bibliography

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Smith, John David (2004). "William Hannibal Thomas, b. 1843," Documenting the American South.
  2. ↑ Smith, John David (2003). "Thomas, William Hannibal." In: Historical Dictionary of the Gilded Age. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, p. 492.
  3. ↑ Smith, John David (2000). Black Judas: William Hannibal Thomas and “The American Negro”. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
  4. ↑ The American Negro. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1901, p. 238.
  5. ↑ The American Negro (1901), p. 384.
  6. ↑ Washington, Booker T. (1901). "The American Negro," The Outlook, Vol. 67, pp. 733–736.
  7. ↑ DuBois, W.E.B. (1901). "The Sorm and Stress in the Black World," The Dial, Vol. 30, pp. 262–264.
  8. ↑ Chesnutt, Charles W. (1901). "A Difamer of his Race," The Critic, Vol. 38, pp. 350–351.
  9. ↑ Thomas, William Hannibal (1901). "Mr. William Hannibal Thomas Defends his Book," The Critic, Vol. 38, pp. 548–550.
  10. ↑ Smith (2000), p. 212.
  11. ↑ Harlan, Louis R. & Raymond Smock, eds. (1977). The Booker T. Washington Papers: 1901–2. University of Illinois Press, p. xxvi.
  12. ↑ "More About the American Negro," The Book Buyer, Vol. 22, 1901, pp. 143–144.

Further reading

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