Dr. Cobb vs. The Bone Collectors Who Invented Pseudoscientific Racism
Illustration: Humanizing History Visuals
Welcome to Humanizing History™! Every month, we feature a central theme. Each week, we dive into different areas of focus.
This month’s theme: Race Isn’t Biologically Real, But It Is Socially Powerful
This week’s focus: Hidden History, a facts-based narrative to highlight someone who changed history
Today’s edition of Humanizing History™ is around 1300 words, an estimated 5-minute read.
The Why for This Week’s Topic
So far this month, we’ve learned about the biological fallacy of race and reviewed a brief historical overview of the names of pseudoscientists who pushed the false, dehumanizing idea of race-based hierarchies.
Today, we’re going to say the name of someone who fought to change this, someone who brilliantly leveraged the tools of anatomy and physical anthropology to flip the script.
Unfortunately, his work has been pushed to the margins, but in this week’s edition of Humanizing History™, we’re going to celebrate him: Dr. William Montague Cobb.
Dr. Cobb and His Focus on “Equal Dignity”
When Dr. William Montague Cobb was a young boy — sitting in a modest, Washington, D.C. home in the early 1900s, flipping through his grandfather’s book of natural history — he came across something that influenced the rest of his life. He saw drawings of people who represented different races, who, in his own words, were represented with “equal dignity.”
The illustration featured humans, side by side, with different skin colors and hair textures, wearing different styles of clothing, illustrated to appear as connected members of a global community.
It was an image, unfortunately rare for its time, that would stay with him as Dr. Cobb embarked on an awe-inspiring career in physical anthropology.
Born sixty years before the passing of the Civil Rights Act, Dr. Cobb lived through the ills of legalized segregation. He would have to overcome unjust, persistent, hostile levels of systemic racism to get his foot in the door — from segregated elementary schools, to segregated universities.
With tenacious effort, not only did Dr. Cobb earn his medical degree in 1929, in 1932, he also became the first Black American to earn a PhD in anthropology.
Throughout his career, Dr. Cobb would go on to produce more than 1,100 publications, teach anatomy to over 6,000 students at numerous universities, hold the position of editor of the Journal of the National Medical Association, and serve as president of numerous organizations, including the NAACP.
Perhaps Dr. Cobb’s most noteworthy accomplishment was the way he utilized the tools of physical anthropology and anatomy to expose the false, dehumanizing constructs that preceded him, paving an antiracist path forward, for both science and society at large.
And yet, much of his work, including his name, has been hidden and vastly under-referenced in the field of anthropology and public education. Today, we’ll aim to undo that.
The Anthropological Field that Dr. Cobbed Stepped Into
In 1932, when Dr. Cobb became the first Black American to earn a PhD in anthropology, he entered a newly “distinct" field of physical anthropology that had inherited a centuries-long campaign of pseudoscientific racism, with few allies.
One person that may be considered an ally was T. Wingate Todd, a White anatomist who worked at Western Reserve University, one of the few institutions that accepted Black Americans students at the time. With the help of Numa Adams, the newly appointed president of Howard University, Dr. Cobb would be able to study under Todd, and earn his doctorate.
Once graduating, Dr. Cobb would have to persevere alongside colleagues who worked tirelessly to uphold myths of racial hierarchies, eugenics, and white supremacy. One of these contemporaries was Aleš Hrdlička, an anthropologist — as we reviewed in a previous newsletter — who scavenged thousands of human brains to falsely assert that “Old American Stock,” or the “Anglo-Saxon” immigrants who formed the early U.S. colonies, were racially superior.
Dr. Cobb had entered an academic world that, at the time, erroneously suggested that as a Black American, he “had not been exposed to European civilization sufficiently enough to gain competence and management of the complexities of modern life.”
Likely remembering the calling to illustrate humanity with equal dignity, Dr. Cobb would devote his life’s work to debunking these damaging stereotypes — using the same tools of physical anthropology to expose racist, sub-human myths.
Dr. Cobb & Jesse Owens Change the Narrative on Race
In perhaps his most famous study, where he aimed to discredit the idea of distinct racial differences, Dr. Cobb examined the body of one of the world’s most famous athletes at the time: Jesse Owens.
Jesse Owens competed on the world’s stage, earning four gold medals — the most of any athlete — during the 1936 Olympics, which took place in Berlin at the time of Hitler’s Nazi regime.
False stereotypes quickly circulated, such as dehumanizing fabrications that suggested Black people had an innate, or genetic, special athletic ability, compared to others, while — so the damaging lie goes — also suffering from so-called intellectual deficiencies.
Dr. Cobb was determined to expose this dehumanizing stereotype as a lie, and he knew that would require exposing how race was not connected to inherent traits — a concept we covered in a recent newsletter. As described by anthropologist Rachel Watkins, Dr. Cobb’s work exposed how race was “not an index of physical, mental, or cultural capacity.”
Proving this would require undoing centuries of pseudoscientific racism.
Dr. Cobb collaborated with Owens, examining his skeletal and muscular frame — from his heel bone, to his calf muscles, to the proportions of his limbs — and comparing it to a collection of data gathered from numerous athletes.
In his 1936 paper, “Race and Runners,” Dr. Cobb declared, “there is not a single physical characteristic” that belonged to a racial group that would consistently identify them as that particular racial group. This study illustrates how race is not a biological, or genetic truth.
Dr. Cobb argued that Jesse Owens dominated track and field not because of the biology of “race,” but because of “training and incentive,” implying that Jesse won because he trained harder.
Dr. Cobb’s Impact Reaches Millions
Dr. William Montague Cobb made an impact on the field of anthropology and larger society.
Dr. Cobb’s vast scholarship would provide the “biocultural anthropological” foundation for other scientists to expand upon — from debunking the myth that Black people have special “fast twitch” muscles that help them sprint (which is a false construct some still espouse today), to showcasing how social factors like food and nutrition impact physical well-being.
Through his work, he advocated for racial equality, and exposed the negative impact of “urbanization” on low-income people, including White Americans. His work highlighted the impact that toxins and malnutrition and unequal access can have on our bodies and livelihood. An underlying question echoes throughout his scholarship: if we see patterns of inequities presenting in our overall health, from what social forces do they stem?
Additionally, Dr. Cobb influenced how U.S. Americans access care and basic rights. By providing key testimony to Congress, Dr. Cobb is often credited with helping to pass Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, programs that reach well over 150 million people today. For his contributions to desegregation and equality, President Lyndon B. Johnson invited Dr. Cobb to attend the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Dr. Cobb’s research laid the foundation for a more equitable society. But Dr. Cobb was only one person — through keeping his story and contributions alive, we can be a part of his continued legacy of utilizing science and education to advance social equity.
How Can We Teach About and Discuss Dr. Cobb With Young People?
Additional resources to enhance our awareness
To learn more about Dr. Cobb and his scholarship, consider reading the following article by Rachel Watkins: “Knowledge from the Margins: W. Montague Cobb’s Pioneering Research in Biocultural Anthropology.”
Other resources may be helpful, such as this research paper, or resources from the Cobb Lab at Howard University.
Framing the conversation
One of the most important lessons of Dr. Cobb’s work may include how he used science to advocate for equal dignity. When speaking with older kids (especially students who are learning biology, usually starting around Grade 7), consider sharing some of Dr. Cobb’s story with them. Ask: How Dr. Cobb used the tools of physical anthropology and anatomy to advocate for a non-hierarchical understanding of human form and variation? How can science be used to advance racial and social equity?
While younger kids may not be able to comprehend much of Dr. Cobb’s work, they can begin to examine how human variation — whether we're speaking about differences and/or similarities in skin color, hair texture, facial features, etc. — has nothing to do with ability, but can still be something we celebrate, as it’s important to love the skin we’re living in. For example Grades K-6 lessons that celebrate our phenotypic human spectrum, consider this curriculum developed by Monique Vogelsang, in collaboration with Aperture and Angélica Dass, for the book, The Colors We Share, an outgrowth of the global project, Humanae.
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