http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/14/science/haunted-files-the-eugenics-record-office-recreates-a-dark-time-in-a-laboratorys-past.html?_r=0
New York University has a new exhibit recreating the Eugenics Record Office that was the center of the movement by the 1920's. Eugenics was a disturbing pseudoscience based on social Darwinism, that some 'races' were superior to others. The concept behind eugenics was the same reasoning used by the Nazis in WWII against the Jewish population in Europe. In America, the rise of eugenics was part of the rationalization of the Immigration Act of 1924, which established the quota system and barred many immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, deemed lesser, but the prevailing 'science' at the time. The other half of eugenics politically was sterilization of the unwanted and feeble-minded, so they could not continue to populate the country with lesser humans.
Just reading the article and the description of what the exhibit will look and sound like is chilling. They talk about having typewriters click, and letting people look through copies of the original documents in a closely reproduced room.
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