Hpl wrote a poem called ''on the creation of ni--ers''.
He owned a black cat named ''ni--er man''.
In ''the rats in the walls'' the character had a cat named that.
He used the term ''negroid' to describe some people in call of cthulhu.
Indeed as I said, only a few uses of words that were not themselves derogatory or even particularly controversial at the time:
The Rats in the Walls is written in 1924, at the very nascence of the N-word being seen as derogatory. It wasn't until the late 1920's that the term's new designation was even known to most people.
The poem you cite was written in 1912.
The cat died in 1904, when Lovecraft was 14 years old.
The word "negroid" does not appear in the story Call of Cthulhu. Fake News. (Nor was it exclusively a racist term.)
In CoC he used negro in various bad terms.
Duty came first; and although there must have been nearly a hundred mongrel celebrants in the throng, the police relied on their firearms and plunged determinedly into the nauseous rout.
...
Examined at headquarters after a trip of intense strain and weariness, the prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a coloring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult. But before many questions were asked, it became manifest that something far deeper and older than negro fetishism was involved. Degraded and ignorant as they were, the creatures held with surprizing consistency to the central idea of their loathsome faith.
He did use negroid in 'the horror at red hook'. I got them confused as it's been forever since I read either. mea culpa.
Now here's a quote from 'herbert west reanimator'
The negro had been knocked out, and a moment’s examination shewed us that he would permanently remain so. He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life—but the world holds many ugly things.
I can say hpl was a racist, by today's standards he would be intolerable to all but the kkk/white nationalist crowd. I can also say he was a product of his times. In his day racism was the default setting. Things like 'miscegnation' were considered horrors beyond belief. Why do you think the central element to 'the shadow over innsmouth' was non human creatures wanting to mate with white people and produce inhuman offspring?
HPL also had obvious mental issues. Lots of creative types do. I can let his racism pass due to those factors.
Plus I love some of his work. 'At the mountains of madness' is a masterpiece. It also lacks any racist content.
I can accept that 100 years ago things were different. I can also say maybe people should be shown the truth. Let them choose how to react to it.