Madison Grant, known for helping to conserve the California Redwoods and create the Bronx Zoo, is better known for penning “The Passing of the Great Race,” a pseudo-scientific work on eugenics and white supremacy, which influenced the passing of the Immigration Act of 1924.

John Muir, a co-founder of the Sierra Club and disciple of Thoreau, wrote about the indolence of Black “Sambos.” He described the Miwok, the Indigenous people of Yosemite, as “dirty” and “altogether hideous.” “They seem to have no right place in the landscape.”

Thoreau proposed that American greatness arose as “the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects more natural.” For both Muir and Thoreau, working, consuming, occupying, and admiring American nature was a way for a certain kind of white person to become symbolically native to the continent.

Recommendation 10: “eugenics, or hygiene for future generations,” with forced sterilization or marriage prohibition for people with epilepsy or mental disabilities, and for criminals, the poor, and “degenerates generally.” … “The problem of the conservation of our natural resources is therefore not a series of independent problems, but a coherent, all-embracing whole,” it concluded. “If our nation cares to make any provision for its grandchildren and its grandchildren’s grandchildren, this provision must include conservation in all its branches — but above all, the conservation of the racial stock itself.”

“Roosevelt’s understanding of greatness, however, meant setting certain sections of the United States apart from the growing population of black people and immigrants who were filling American cities. The U.S. government had promised land to newly emancipated black citizens after the Civil War, but those properties were yanked away from them—and from many Native American tribes—to make room for new national parks and monuments,” writes Brentin Mock.

President of New York Zoological Society

“Conservation of that race which has given us the true spirit of Americanism is not a matter either of racial pride or of racial prejudice; it is a matter of love of country.”