The call for the congress included these remarks:To discuss, in the light of science and modern conscience, the general relations subsisting between the peoples of the West and those of the East, between the so-called "white" and the so-called "colored" peoples, with a view to encouraging between them a fuller understanding, the most friendly feelings, and the heartier co-operation.… The interchange of material and other wealth between the races of mankind has of late years assumed such dimensions that the old attitude of distrust and aloofness is giving way to a genuine desire for a closer acquaintanceship.

[2][5] Anthropologist Franz Boas, an outspoken opponent of racism, spoke on ‘'The Instability of Human Types'’, which questioned the very notion of race and racial purity.

[6] Bengali humanist philosopher Brajendra Nath Seal, a proponent of Brahmo Samaj who worked in comparative religion, delivered an address entitled "Race Origin" introducing the concept of group divergence as it relates to human evolutionary genetics and the effects of reproductive isolation.

Among them were Hull House founder Jane Addams, psychologist John Dewey, author H. G. Wells, and a man listed as a "barrister-at-law" in Johannesburg, South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi.

Its first issue proclaimed that "the recent Universal Races Congress, convened in the Metropolis of the Anglo-Saxon world, clearly demonstrated that there was ample need for a Pan-Oriental, Pan-African journal in the seat of the British Empire".