Sublime

Laughlin’s credo was simple: “To purify the breeding stock of the race at all costs.” As journalist Edwin Black notes in his 2003 book, War Against the Weak, Laughlin’s plan of attack was threefold: “sterilization, mass incarceration and sweeping immigration restrictions.” In furtherance of these goals, Laughlin created the imposingly named,

The American consensus for equal opportunity rather than equal results is very old—Eugene Debs, the greatest American socialist, revered Lincoln, champion of the self-made man.

Smith and Wagner exemplified the spirit of urban reform that characterized Tammany in 1911, though FDR had yet to recognize it.

The civil rights struggle in Appalachia, as elsewhere in the South, was an effort at remaking what it meant to be Americans. The Highlander Folk School is one of the most important institutions in that generations-long endeavor. In 1932, in the Tennessee hills, Highlander was established.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), our fourth tour guide, initially adopted Garrison’s racist idea. But he also stood at the forefront of antiracist ideas, challenging Jim Crow’s rise in the late nineteenth century.

Du Bois argued that cooperatives would provide the economic opportunities denied to African Americans, and would allow Blacks to serve the common good rather

Moynihan Report,

policies.