Everyone wore white in summer. Tennis racquets were hefty and the racquet faces elliptical. There was a lot of sexual fainting. There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants… [Evelyn Nesbit] happened once to meet Emma Goldman, the revolutionary. Goldman lashed her with her tongue. Apparently there were Negroes. There were immigrants. (Chapter 1)

Riis made color maps of Manhattan’s ethnic populations. Dull gray was for Jews—their favorite color he said. Blue for the thrifty German. Black for the African. Green for the Irishman. And yellow for the cat-clean Chinamen… Add dashes of color for the Finns, Arabs, Greeks and so on, and you have a crazy quilt, Riis cried, a crazy quilt of humanity! (Chapter 2)

One hundred Negroes a year were lynched. One hundred miners were burned alive. One hundred children were mutilated. There seemed to be quotas for these things. (Chapter 6)

I bet it would shock you to know how... (Chapter 8)