To begin thinking about this subject, it seemed appropriate to retrieve the 17 February 1941 issue of Life that carried Henry Luce's original essay, “The American Century.” My faith in college students' probity and tender concern for their peers was requited when I found the speech ripped out of the University of Chicago library's lone copy. So I contented myself with perusing what remained of the magazine. This single issue displayed, by quick count, 447 white people, 46 blacks, 1 Hispanic, and no Asians (not counting the evanescent pages 61 to 66, where Henry Luce once held forth). Nineteen of the blacks come from a scene in Cabin in the Sky, a Broadway musical with an all-black cast; the majority of these are very light skinned and some appear to be white. A single black face also inhabits a photo of the Art Students League of New York. The remaining blacks are residents of Whale Cay in the Bahamas, a private island owned by Betty Carstair, an heiress of the Standard Oil Bostwick family.

Photos show Ms. Carstair guiding the Duke and Duchess of Windsor around the island, directing a construction gang of blacks engaged in building roads, and leading the rank-and-file members of the 87th Bahamas Regiment, her private army made up mostly of current and former Boy Scouts. Life said that Ms. Carstair runs the island with “a firm and feudal hand” and has done wonders for the natives, all of whom work for her: “She makes them eat more vegetables, forbids them anything stronger than beer, prohibits voodoo practices, and takes holidays away from the whole island if there is any mass bad behavior.”