Frederick Hoffman created a potent WMD. It’s very likely that Hoffman, a German who worked for the Prudential Life Insurance Company, meant no harm. Later in his life, his research contributed mightily to public health. He did valuable work on malaria and was among the first to associate cancer with tobacco. Yet on a spring day in 1896, Hoffman published a 330-page report that set back the cause of racial equality in the United States and reinforced the status of millions as second-class citizens. His report used exhaustive statistics to make the case that the lives of black Americans were so
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