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In 1739 Bordeaux's Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest seeking answers to a pressing question: What was the cause of Africans' black skin? Published here for the first time and translated into English, these early documents of scientific racism lay bare the Enlightenment origins of the phantom of racial hierarchy.
About the author
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the author of numerous books and has written extensively on the history of race and anti-Black racism in the Enlightenment. His most recent works include Stony the Road and The Black Church. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.Andrew S. Curran is a leading specialist of the Enlightenment era and the author of The Anatomy of Blackness and Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely. He is the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University.
Summary
In 1739 Bordeaux’s Royal Academy of Sciences held an essay contest seeking answers to a pressing question: What was the cause of Africans’ black skin? Published here for the first time and translated into English, these early documents of scientific racism lay bare the Enlightenment origins of the phantom of racial hierarchy.
