Ashley Montagu, the "Most Dangerous Myth," and the "Negro Question" during World War II

This article complicates the established historical narrative of Ashley Montagu's intellectual and implicitly political project by focusing on his concern for the civil and human rights of African Americans. Montagu's assault on the concept of race in the 1940s involved an equally trenchant critique of constructions of the Negro that has received very little attention. This essay explores Montagu's most famous publication, Man's Most Dangerous Myth (1942), with a focus on the Negro question and demonstrates that Montagu's theory of race along with his attempts to deconstruct the concept were not rooted solely in scientific arguments but also in his understanding of U.S. history and the history of racism. Montagu viewed the Negro question in the United States as central to the broader anthropological construction of race and contemporary justifications for myriad forms of racism and segregation.