In Search of Purity: Eugenics and Racial Uplift among New Negroes, 1915-1935

In Search of Purity examines the reinterpretation of eugenic theories by Black scholars, who helped integrate the science into a social movement for racial uplift. Areas of analysis include The Talented Tenth, links between ideas about social degeneracy and physical hygiene, eugenics courses and professors at Howard University, hereditarian, and colorism. Guiding principles of African American-led eugenic theory are examined alongside the fading imagery of the Old Negro that consisted of stereotypes scattered throughout plantation fiction, Blackface minstrelsy, vaudeville, and Darwinism.