ABSTRACT
A century ago, America was in crisis. Dark-skinned immigrants were swarming into the United States, filling its cities with raucous music, spicy foods and suspect morality. It was abundantly clear to observers that by the 1950s, whites would be a minority and their culture would be dead. Writing in 1911, the prominent biologist Charles B. Davenport warned that
it appears certain that, unless conditions change of themselves or are radically changed, the population of the United States will . . . rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, [and] more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality.1
