I'm going to be reading from this brand new
book, it's about three weeks old [applause].
Ah... so I'm not sure where everything is
yet.
Uh, it begins with the 1904 St. Louis World's
Fair, otherwise known as the Louisiana Purchase
exposition.
A fair I heard about when I was a child, because
the story went that my mother went to this
fair because her mother was pregnant with
her when she went.
So my mother was inside.
But then I found out more about the fair,
I found out that in addition to the fake ivory
palaces that were extolling the virtues of
civilization and progress, there were three
thousand human exhibits.
That is to say people who were brought to
the fair to show the contrast in scientific
terms between civilized peoples and primitive
peoples.
At the center of that exhibit, uh, those exhibits
was the eugenics movement, which the book
explores up till 1924, going up to a little
post script of 2014.
Uh, the eugenics movement that sponsored,
uh, involuntary sterilization, anti-immigration
laws, and anti-miscegenation laws.
One of the founders of the eugenics movement,
or one of the central figures in it, was one
Madison Grant who also founded the Bronx Zoo.
"On the Other Side."
My mother went inside her mother, mother and
father went in, what did they see?
Across from the Ivory Palaces underlined with
the strip of the Pike, you could see the Living
Exhibits of the Department of Anthropology
procured by the same or Government in model
villages and native dress, regardless of the
weather.
Smallest to tallest, lowest to highest, hairiest,
darkest to dominant whites.
From Patagonia, tallest, five males, one female,
one child.
From Japan, Ainu, hairiest, four males, three
females, two children.
From Africa, darkest, smallest, nine males,
including five Pygmies.
jazz music
