There was also a significant school of thought (that, full disclosure, I wrote my master's thesis on) that black Americans would simply go extinct, outcompeted in a Darwinian struggle
https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1409923700334415876
The 1870 census, which included a very significant undercount of the black population (for fairly obvious reasons), gave some steam to this theory
It was also repurposed by some southerners, who may or may not have been sincere adherents to the race extinction idea, to argue that addressing civil rights issues was ultimately pointless, since the black race was doomed in any event
Finally, when the 1880 census count was more accurate, the decade-over-decade comparison created the appearance of meteoric black population growth, which led to a panic in some quarters over the prospect of a geometrically expanding black population taking over the south
Strangely the prescription for THIS problem was identical to the prescription for the exact opposite problem of race extinction: the extension and continuation of white supremacy
(I should say, I'm obviously talking about America after the Civil War, not the America of the founding like Jamelle, although the roots of race extinction theory predate the end of slavery)
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