Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
If your family research feels scattered ....three ancestors at once, browser tabs everywhere, hours in and somehow less clarity than when you started — this one's for you. I break down why "I want to learn about my family" isn't the right goal.
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The Ancestor Story Portrait — $325 Everything in the Session, plus a custom PDF portrait of your ancestor — situated in the historical and legal context that shaped their life. Built from my research.
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NYTN runs on Patreon. Patrons get every episode first — and they're the reason this show keeps existing. → patreon.com/NYTN (patreon.com/NYTN)
If your family research feels scattered ....three ancestors at once, browser tabs everywhere, hours in and somehow less clarity than when you started — this one's for you. I break down why "I want to learn about my family" isn't the right goal.
The Ancestor Story Intake Form — $5 The guided worksheet I use with every private client. Now available on its own for the folks who want to do this work on their own time. →ko-fi.com/c/ffd859ce4f
WORK WITH ME
If filling out the form leaves you wanting another set of eyes on it:
The Ancestor Story Session — $125 The intake form + a 60-minute one-on-one with me to walk through what you found and map your next moves.
→ko-fi.com/c/ca97c76fdb
The Ancestor Story Portrait — $325 Everything in the Session, plus a custom PDF portrait of your ancestor — situated in the historical and legal context that shaped their life. Built from my research.
→ko-fi.com/c/b16b46f749
SUPPORT THE WORK
NYTN runs on Patreon. Patrons get every episode first — and they're the reason this show keeps existing. → patreon.com/NYTN (patreon.com/NYTN)







![How Italians Became White in America
How did the U.S. government decide Italians were a different race? For years, scientists measured skulls, politicians wrote reports, and authors put Italians in their own category. All of it led to one thing: a 1924 law that slammed the door on Italian immigration for the next 40 years. This video shows you exactly how they built the case, using the real books and records they left behind.
inside this video:
00:00 – Intro: Questioning the assumption that Italians were always considered white and assimilated.
01:41 – The story of the Rollins v. State (1922) case in Alabama and the legal ambiguity of a Sicilian womans whiteness.
03:15 – Benjamin Franklin’s 1751 tract Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and his exclusion of Italians from the white category.
04:36 – The Naturalization Act of 1790 and the code of Anglo-Saxon Protestant heritage.
06:22 – William Z. Ripley’s The Races of Europe (1899) and the classification of Mediterraneans as a separate race.
07:16 – Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race (1916) and the moral hierarchy placing Nordics on top and Mediterraneans on the bottom.
09:31 – The Dillingham Commission (1907–1911) and the Dictionary of Races or Peoples splitting Italy into North and South.
10:17 – Contrasting descriptions of Northern Italians (practical/capable) vs. Southern Italians (impulsive/impractical).
11:51 – The One Drop Rule context and the Commissions claim of African blood in Sicily and Sardinia.
13:02 – The Commission’s report on criminal classes inherent in the Italian race.
14:00 – Anthropologist Franz Boas’ findings on shifting cranial measurements contradicting biological inferiority.
15:20 – The Immigration Restriction League and the push for race-based policy.
17:24 – Representative Albert Johnson and the eugenicist Harry Laughlin’s testimonies before Congress.
20:19 – The Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) and the use of the 1890 census to target specific groups.
22:26 – The 90% drop in the Italian immigration quota.
25:03 – Legal comparisons with Ozawa (1922) and Thind (1923) Supreme Court cases.
26:02 – The 1891 mass lynching of Sicilians in New Orleans and the 1907 school segregation fight in Mississippi.
28:50 – World War II, the GI Bill, and the post-war consolidation of Italian-Americans into full whiteness.
30:33 – The end of the National Origins system in 1965
Sources:
Dillingham Commission, Dictionary of Races or Peoples, Senate Document 662, Vol. 5 (1911).
https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofrace00unitrich/page/n173/mode/2up
Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, 43 Stat. 153 (1924).
Rollins v. State, 92 So. 35 (Ala. Ct. App. 1922).
Harry H. Laughlin, testimony before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, April 16-17, 1920. Published as Analysis of Americas Modern Melting Pot (1922) and Europe as an Emigrant-Exporting Continent (1924).
Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind (1751).
William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (1899). Available on Archive.org.
Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1916). Available on Archive.org.
Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race: A Study of the Origin of European Peoples (1901). https://archive.org/details/mediterraneanrac00serguoft/page/70/mode/2up
Prescott F. Hall, Immigration and the Educational Test, North American Review (1897).
Ray Stannard Baker reporting on Sumrall, Mississippi, American Magazine (1907).
Joel Perlmann, Race or People: Federal Race Classifications for Europeans in America, 1898-1913, Levy Economics Institute Working Paper No. 648 (2011). https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_648.pdf
Jon Røyne Kyllingstad, Measuring the Master Race: Physical Anthropology in Norway, 1890-1945 (2014). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273572410_Measuring_the_Master_Race_Physical_Anthropology_in_Norway_1890-1945
Horrabin, J. F. (1920). Caucasian types: Nordic (Englishman) and Mediterranean (Berber) [Illustration]. In H. G. Wells, The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (p. 67). George Newnes Ltd.
Jessica Barbata Jackson, Dixies Italians: Sicilians, Race, and Citizenship in the Jim Crow Gulf South (LSU Press).
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