“Most early evolutionists were racist,Darwin included,” claims your correspondent (Letters, and 30 March). Mid-Victorian intellectuals can conveniently be identified as racist or anti-racist by their reactions to the 1865 Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica and the brutal reprisals of Governor John Eyre.
Darwin was a main light of the Jamaica Committee,which tried to have Eyre prosecuted, and recruited most of the main scientists of the day. The racists organised an Eyre defence committee, and led by Thomas Carlyle,Charles Dickens and John Ruskin.
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Source: theguardian.com