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A project of the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU

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Trait Files documents

01 family tree folder 2 thumb
01 family tree folder 01 2 thumb
01 j  family file 15 thumb
07 trait forms 1 thumb
03 davenport to mullen 5.18 thumb
11 buster child criminal photoset 8 thumb
10 w  family 3 thumb
03 b  history 1 thumb
12 family of bourbon county thumb
01 baltic maps 6 thumb
08 k  family history 4 thumb
03 single trait sheets 4 thumb
06 amaurotic family idiocy 3 thumb
00 twinning thumb
07 davenport to walden 1927 2 thumb
01 baltic maps 1 thumb
06 record of the b family 12 thumb
01 j  family file 12 thumb
01 individual analysis card 1 3 thumb
01 leon nicolaeff 4.9 1 thumb

The Eugenics Record Office was first and foremost a “repository and clearing house” for eugenics data. Through the “systematic” study of human heredity, the Office amassed an incredible quantity of files, forms, and assorted clipping related to a wide range of human traits. The bulk of this material comprised the “Trait Files,” a massive and rigidly organized index of human traits that sought to sort and rank human beings according to thousands of different attributes, from profession (“Teachers,” “Missionaries”) to mental ability (“Idiocy,” “Feeblemindedness”) to race (“Negro-Chinaman,” “Mulattoes”) and personality (“Sense of Humor, “Leadership”). But this data didn’t just sit around in the ERO’s archives. It was actively used to provide “scientific” justifications for a wide range of policies, from immigration restriction to sterilization and anti-miscegenation, that were shaped by leaders of the Eugenics Record Office.

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