Sublime

In 1946, President Truman appointed, by executive order, a blue-ribbon committee to study the civil rights problem in all its aspects, and the committee’s report, “To Secure These Rights,” called not only for a permanent FEPC, abolition of the poll tax, and federal laws against lynchings but also for the establishment of a permanent Commission on C

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, feroci

Three white men approached Lamar Smith, who during World War II had enlisted in the Army at the age of forty-nine, and who now, having returned from the war to build up a profitable farm, had enlisted in another battle: “He was determined,” an admirer would say, “that his people would have a say in local government.” The three men warned Smith to s

white supremacy,

class privilege,

It took considerable doing, but on April 9, 1901, nearly two years after he had proposed to Mary Lily, a bill was introduced into the Florida legislature “to be entitled an act making incurable insanity a ground for divorce.” Before the month was out, the bill had sailed through both houses and had been signed into law by the governor. Florida news