I found this little gem online!
The American Negro: What He Was, What He Is, and What He May Become:
A Critical and Practical Discussion By William Hannibal Thomas, b. 1843
http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/thomas/thomas.htmlAnd this paragraph says it all. pg 106
found it when looking in the index, "Negro defined, ix, x, 105-107."
There is, of course, broadly speaking, a common agreement in the public mind that the negro represents an accentuated type of human degradation. Beyond this there is a wide divergence of opinion as to whether he is a normally constituted but unawakened member of the human family, a survival of an earlier type of man, or a specific type of indurated degeneracy. Much may be said both for and against each of these views, but the one pregnant fact of which intelligent mankind is conscious is, that the negro is in every essential respect wholly unlike other races of men.