The guarded gate : bigotry, eugenics, and the law that kept two generations of Jews, Italians, and other European immigrants out of America
Daniel Okrent (Author)
Eugenicist arguments ranking the presumed genetic virtue of various ethnic groups helped keep hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians, and other unwanted groups out of the United States for more than forty years. By 1921 Vice President Calvin Coolidge declared that 'biological laws' had proven the inferiority of southern and eastern Europeans; the restrictive law that remained U.S. policy until 1965 was enacted three years later. Okrent connects the work of the American eugenicists to Nazi racial policies and shows how their beliefs found fertile soil in the minds of citizens and leaders both here and abroad. -- adapted from jacket
Print Book, English, 2020
First Scribner trade paperback edition View all formats and editions
Scribner, New York, 2020
History
xvi, 478 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 22 cm
9781476798059, 1476798052
1163615918