Today -100: June 27, 1913: Of sexual hygiene and Asiatics

The Chicago Board of Education steps in to prevent talks on sexual hygiene being given in its high schools.

Headline of the Day -100: “Drive Asiatics Out of Town.” A mob in Hemet, CA expel some apricot-pickers who they thought were Japanese but were actually Korean. But they were definitely “Asiatics,” which is a scarier-sounding word than “Asians.”

(Update: the LAT reported on July 2nd that the State Dept had started an investigation of this incident, as it might affect pending negotiations with Japan over California’s racist alien land law, but it turned out that the Koreans had left Korea before it was annexed by Japan and are therefore not subjects of Japan or, presumably, anywhere else.)

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