The Negro a Beast; or, In the Image of God by Charles Carroll (1900)

Rare 1900 First Edition — A Primary Source Document of American White Supremacist Ideology

The Negro a Beast; or, In the Image of God by Charles Carroll (1900) is one of the most notorious and historically significant documents of American scientific racism. Published at the height of the Jim Crow era, this book represents the pseudoscientific and theological arguments used to justify the dehumanization, segregation, and oppression of Black Americans — arguments that shaped law, policy, and culture for generations.

This rare first edition is an essential primary source for scholars, researchers, and anyone seeking to understand the ideological foundations of white supremacy in America and the lengths to which its proponents went to dress racism in the language of science and scripture.

What This Book Contains

• Carroll's central thesis: that Black people are not descended from Adam and Eve and are therefore not fully human in the biblical sense
• Pseudoscientific arguments drawing on 19th-century racial anthropology and comparative anatomy
• Theological arguments attempting to use the Bible to justify racial hierarchy and segregation
• The "pre-Adamite" theory and its use in pro-slavery and post-Reconstruction ideology
• A window into the intellectual climate of 1900 America — the era of lynching, convict leasing, and the nadir of American race relations

Why This Document Matters

Understanding white supremacy requires confronting its primary sources — not sanitized summaries, but the actual arguments made by its architects. Carroll's book was widely read and influential in its time, cited by segregationists and used to justify racial violence. Studying it is not an endorsement; it is an act of historical reckoning.

For researchers in African American history, critical race theory, the history of religion, and the sociology of racism, this first edition is an irreplaceable document of how hatred was systematized and legitimized in the American context.

Who This Is For

• Historians of race, slavery, and the post-Reconstruction South
• Scholars of critical race theory and the history of white supremacist ideology
• Researchers studying the intersection of religion and racism in American history
• African American studies students and educators
• Anyone building a primary source library on the history of anti-Black racism in America

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