“In Pursuit of a Goodly Heritage”: Eugenics in Early Twentieth-Century America
Travis Blanchard
“Society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind...Three
generations of imbeciles are enough.”1 With these words, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr. upheld a 1924 Virginia statute allowing for the involuntary sterilization of Carrie
Buck, a young woman considered by both the state of Virginia and medical authorities to be
“feeble-minded.” In keeping with the eugenics vogue then sweeping much of the nation, dozens
of states had already passed compulsory sterilization laws in order to help stem the
overwhelming tide of those considered unworthy to pass on their genes. Over the next ten years,
seven more states added their own sterilization statutes to the growing list, making most of the
country morally willing and legally able to strip tens of thousands of its own citizens of what
today would be considered the basic human right to reproduce. Often justified under a pretense
of civility and humanity, scientists, doctors, teachers, political leaders, and members of the
general populous espoused the public benefits and long-term gains of a widespread eugenics
movement. A wide variety of outlets from films to schools to social events were used to
popularize eugenics and make it more palatable to a somewhat wary public. Once primed,
however, American society integrated eugenics into its worldview remarkably quickly and even
eagerly. This brief paper will seek to explain the individuals and social mechanisms behind the
rise of the American eugenics movement, from its inception in the mid-nineteenth century to its
subsequent radicalization and widespread public acceptance in the early twentieth.
1
Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
1
Origins of the American Eugenics Movement
The history of eugenic theory can be traced back to the mid to late 1860s, when the
mysteries of genetics were being unraveled by the collective work of Herbert Spencer, Charles
Darwin, and Gregor Mendel. People had known for years that offspring were a combination of
the traits of the parents, but now that fact was being dissected and analyzed to the point where
science understood how the individual features came together and produced a predictable result
which could be manipulated to suit the needs of the breeder. Darwin's theory of natural selection
was soon translated to the simpler term “survival of the fittest” by Herbert Spencer, a politically
conservative English philosopher who was firmly against government-funded social welfare
programs, believing them to be a roadblock to real social progress.2 Spencer was somewhat
prophetic in his claim that the “adaptation [for survival] may be either so maintained or so
produced.”3 It is here that we have the first glimpses of the possibility of self-guided human
evolution.
This application of Darwinian evolutionary theory to human society, far from being an
individualistic, every-man-for-himself ideal, was actually a suggestion for how state funds could
be reallocated to best serve the needs of the state and species as a whole. In Spencer's mind,
governments should not be responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of misfits and inferior
members of society when the same resources and attention could be used to support more worthy
2
Ann Gibson Winfield, Eugenics and Education: Institutionalized Racism and the Implications of History, Ideology,
and Memory (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 53-54.
3
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology (London: Williams and Norgate, 1864), 445,
http://books.google.com/books?id=3yYCAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed
April 29, 2012).
2
individuals. This theory, which came to be known as Social Darwinism, only increased in
popularity during the latter half of the 19th century, forming the ideological framework within
which the eugenics movement would eventually develop.
The development of a method by which Social Darwinism could be applied on a
scientific level was the responsibility of Francis Galton, an English polymath who also happened
to be a cousin of Charles Darwin. After a series of social experiments and observations led him
to conclude that “human civilized stock is far more [weakened] through congenital imperfection
than that of any other species of animals, whether wild or domestic,” he developed a genetic
science that would help to solve the problem of human racial decline.4 He called this new science
eugenics, which according to Galton was “the science of improving stock...to give to the more
suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than
they otherwise would have had.”5 One of the biggest problems Galton saw in the history of
human evolution was that nature in its “pitiless course”6 had not done an efficient enough job,
and where it had, man's efforts to compensate had “not been intelligently directed, and has in
many instances done great harm.”7
The primary goal of Galtonian eugenics then was to remove the random fluctuations of
nature – the ‘natural’ in natural selection – from evolution and put a better informed and
4
Francis Galton, Inquiries Into Human Faculty and its Development, (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907), 16.
5
Ibid., 17, footnote 1.
6
Francis Galton, Essays In Eugenics, (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985), 68.
7
Galton, Human Faculty, 200.
3
prepared humanity at the helm of its own evolutionary future. However, not all could share
equally in this vision of a future carefully regulated by science. Some elements of man were
harmful to the species as a whole, and they would have to be weeded out to facilitate the
blossoming of the rest. Drawing on Spencer's survival of the fittest ideology, Galton determined
that “whenever two individuals struggle...one must yield, and that there will be no more
unhappiness...if the inferior yield to the superior...whereas the world will be permanently
enriched by the success of the superior.”8
Galton was a promoter of what would later be called positive eugenics. He advocated a
strengthening of the human race not by actively eliminating inferior groups, but by a sharp focus
on reinforcing superior ones.9 While he claimed that the scientific community could not “mate
men and women as we please, like cocks and hens,” and that “human nature would never brook
interference with the freedom of marriage,” his ideas about ensuring the superiority of future
generations said otherwise.10 He believed that those who best represented the central type should
be encouraged to marry early with others who exhibited that same advantage and have more
children than those couples of the non-central type. This push towards marriage and an increase
in childbirth would be concurrent with and dependent upon a widespread and permanent national
shift in moral values and social goals akin to a “sense of religious obligation.”11 If eugenics had
8
Galton, Human Faculty, 201.
9
Galton, Essays, 24.
10
Francis Galton, “Restrictions In Marriage” (paper presented at a meeting of the Sociological Society in the School
of Economics and Political Science at the University of London, Clare Market, W.C., February 14, 1906),
http://galton.org/essays/1900-1911/galton-1906-eugenics.pdf (accessed April 29, 2012).
4
any hope of long-term success, such elite marriages would have to become inviolable tradition
ingrained in societal mores. Other than impressing upon young people the necessity of good
breeding, Galton proposed that financial support be provided as an incentive for newlyweds first
starting out and for those “worthy” individuals “to assist them and their families at critical
times.”12 Superior couples who married sooner and gave birth more often would, by simple
mathematics, outbreed inferior couples and push them out of existence within a few
generations.13
Galton fully understood that this new science would not necessarily be blindly adopted
by an unquestioning public. Hence, he believed that it was “above all things needful for the
successful progress of Eugenics that its advocates should move discreetly…otherwise a re-action
will be invited.”14 According to Galton, there were three main goals which would have to be
achieved to assure widespread recognition of the importance of eugenics. First and foremost, this
new science would have to secure “general intellectual acceptance…as a hopeful and most
important study.” Once this occurred, eugenic ideals could start to be disseminated to the public
through schools and universities. Secondly, it had to be acknowledged “as a subject whose
practical development deserves serious consideration.” Presumably, this step would consist of
enacting a series of social programs aimed at spreading information and propaganda espousing
11
Galton, Essays, 25.
12
Ibid., 108.
13
Galton, Human Faculty, 208-210.
14
Ibid., Preface.
5
the benefits of eugenics and the drawbacks of supporting non-productive or weak segments of
society. Because he treated this step primarily as a bridge between his first and third points, it
would ultimately be up to Galton’s successors to decide how this stage would be implemented.15
The final, and judging by the amount he wrote on it, most important phase of Galton’s
tripartite plan was the transformation of eugenics from an important social policy to an
“orthodox religious tenet of the future.”16 This aspect of his plan is particularly interesting
because it speaks to the lengths to which Galton thought eugenics needed to go to become
permanently integrated into social tradition. Couching eugenic ideas within the sanctity of a
“quasi-religion” would ensure that future generations did not forget or ignore the importance of
producing the strong central type envisioned by Galton.17 The transition need not be painful,
either. Since eugenics promoted “a far-sighted philanthropy, the acceptance of parentage as a
serious responsibility, and a higher conception of patriotism…[it] ought to find a welcome home
in every tolerant religion.”18 The establishment of eugenics on a religious level would serve the
dual purpose of both giving eugenic ideology a solid foothold in society and simultaneously
allowing more drastic changes to be made to the methodology without the constant need to
monitor the pulse of public opinion.
From this trickle-down ideological progression, it must have been clear to Galton that a
grassroots movement would be largely ineffective. The public would have to see that eugenics
15
Galton, Essays, 42-43.
16
Ibid., 42.
17
Ibid., 108.
18
Ibid., 68.
6
was fully accepted by the social elite before they would adopt such ideas themselves. Convinced
that by utilizing these slow-but-sure methods, the ship of public opinion “may be made to
describe a half circle, and to end by following a course exactly opposite to the first, without
attracting the notice of the passengers,”19 Galton had sketched the faint outlines of a plan to
successfully popularize eugenics on a national scale and produce a society which “as a whole
would be less foolish, less frivolous, less excitable, and politically more provident.”20 However,
his successors, rather than following these relatively conservative methods, chose to embark on a
much more aggressive campaign, simultaneously reinforcing those elements of society
considered superior while energetically pursuing the complete annihilation of weaker strains.
Eugenics in its most enduring – and radical – form was born at the intersection of
Progressive Era ideology and Social Darwinist philosophy, both of which were at their height in
early twentieth century America. Politicians, academics, social activists, and religious officials
all were concerned with how to improve both the country and the quality of life of its people.
Eugenics embodied what must have seemed to many a miracle cure. Tracing the problems in
society to their perceived roots – the quality of the average member of the population – this
exciting new science improved people’s lives by improving people themselves. While there was
no clear social or political center for the Progressive movement, the issues it dealt with were
legion. Fervent nationalism, race, class consciousness, a religious revival, the rise of socialism,
19
Galton, Human Faculty, 207.
20
Galton, Essays, 37-38.
7
immigration, prohibition, labor unions, and wealth distribution were just a few of the many
topics which America was dealing with during this turbulent era. All of these combined in a
volatile mixture which led many to desire stability and a more secure future. It was in this fertile
social soil that a newer and much more dangerous breed of eugenics flourished.21
In 1900, as eugenics was about to enter its golden age, Charles Davenport, a Harvard
graduate and great admirer of Francis Galton’s work, was rising to the forefront of American
eugenic science. More than anyone else, Davenport was primarily responsible for the
proliferation of eugenics in the United States on both a scientific and social level. He is probably
best known for the establishment and leadership of the Station for Experimental Evolution at
Cold Spring Harbor.22 Wherever eugenics spread on a national level, Davenport’s hand could
usually be found in the mix. Both a racist and a firm believer in the heritability of non-physical
traits such as lifestyle, temperament and mood, Davenport used Cold Spring Harbor as a base of
operations from which to propagate eugenics on a scientific level.23 In 1903, Davenport began a
flurry of promotional activity that would not stop until his death forty years later. At a meeting
with the American Breeder’s Association that year, he raised the possibility of establishing a
Eugenics Committee, a small body within the ABA which would be responsible for determining
the best methods to collect hereditary data - the “values of the blood of individuals, families,
21
Winfield, 59-60.
22
While the Station for Experimental Evolution was closed by the Carnegie Institute in 1939 due to lack of funding
and the widespread discrediting of eugenics as a valid science, the facility merged with Brooklyn Institute’s
Biological Laboratory to form Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which still stands today. Much of the research there
is now focused on cancer. It is interesting to note, however, that the history section of their website sidesteps any
mention of eugenics, instead calling it a “genetics research program.”
23
Charles B. Davenport, The Feebly Inhibited. (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1915).
8
people and races.” The committee was approved and later expanded to a permanent branch of the
ABA.24 The brainchild of Davenport, the Station for Experimental Evolution opened in 1904
with “the analytic and experimental study of race change” as its stated purpose.25 Fearing that, if
a proper study of eugenics was not pursued and subsequently acted upon, Americans would be
forced to “abandon the country to the blacks, browns, and yellows,” Davenport wasted little time
in recruiting brilliant young minds to find a scientific solution to the problem of race
mongrelization.
One of these brilliant minds was Harry Laughlin, whom Davenport selected as the leader
of a new organization that would be tasked with working with the Eugenics Committee in their
search for inferior peoples. The Eugenics Record Office (ERO), as it was named, would receive,
store, and interpret this data so that it could be used to determine who had good breeding and
who did not. This organization also had the special benefit of serving as the tip of the spear in the
campaign to spread the word about eugenics. In order to take full advantage of their new and
uniquely influential position, the office began publishing a monthly periodical called Eugenical
News in 1916 to keep the movement’s supporters nationwide abreast of the latest issues in the
field. It served as the flagship journal for the eugenics movement until 1953.26 Officials from the
24
Edwin Black, War Against The Weak: America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, (New York: Four Walls
Eight Windows, 2003), 39-44.
25
Black, 36. The Station for Experimental Evolution received generous financial backing from the Carnegie
Institute, who proudly displayed their seal on everything that came out of the laboratory. Davenport himself received
a hefty (for the time) annual salary of $3,500. They were far from the only philanthropic group who supported
eugenic study, but they were, through the amount of money they gave and their association with Davenport, one of
the most prominent.
9
ERO traveled all over the country, talking to state and local agencies, social welfare groups, and
politicians on all levels to convince them of the efficacy of writing and adopting laws promoting
eugenic ideals and getting them familiar with eugenic policy. In just seven short years,
eugenicists had successfully begun to “mobilize America’s strong against America’s weak.”27
Bureaucratically then, eugenics was beginning to spread its wings; but popularizing the
theory among the general public, what Galton called the “enlightenment of individuals,” needed
to be the primary focus to ensure the movement’s long-term success.28 To help achieve this goal,
eugenics advocates – primarily members of the ERO and their converts in upper-crust society –
produced a flurry of propaganda directed at middle-class Americans. Films, books, posters,
papers, pamphlets, public events, exhibits, and the active support of dozens of social, political,
and academic organizations helped to propel eugenics to the forefront of the public mind. The
fact of the matter was that eugenics was being actively promoted by a relatively small group of
men. The key to their extraordinary success was their access to financial resources, which
allowed them to spread their message with great efficiency.29
Just as Galton had predicted, academia in major universities accepted eugenics
wholeheartedly, a necessary step if a shift in public opinion was to be achieved. By 1914, forty26
Curators of the University of Missouri, “Controlling Heredity, The American Eugenics Crusade: 1870-1940,”
University of Missouri Special Collections, http://mulibraries.missouri.edu/specialcollections/exhibits/eugenics/
eugenical_news.htm (accessed April 29, 2012).
27
Black, 61.
28
Galton, Essays, 95.
29
Frank Dikotter, “Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the History of Eugenics,” The American Historical Review
103, no. 2 (April 1998): 475-476.
10
four American colleges offered classes in eugenics, including Harvard, Cornell, MIT, and
Dartmouth.30 By 1925, that number had increased to over one hundred.31 Most Ivy League
schools and the University of California Board of Regents provided massive support and funding
for eugenic studies. Secondary schools were not excluded; high school science textbooks from
1914 to 1948 present a favorable view of eugenics, instructing students that legal restrictions on
marriage, childbirth and immigration for biological inferiors were all necessary policies to
protect American culture.32
Meanwhile, eugenicists manipulated data to fit into their theories and drew quick,
inaccurate conclusions about test results in order to make the claim that they had biological
evidence to support an already widely held belief about the inferiority of mental and physical
defectives and non-white ethnicities. This scientific racism was “proven” with bad information,
leading to a semi-deliberate blurring of the lines between biological heredity, race, and class.
Rich, affluent whites, however, were never considered to be racially or socially unfit since the
small group of eugenic proponents fit this description. They assumed the role of the yardstick
against which all others were measured.33
30
“Eugenics in the Colleges,” The Journal of Heredity 5, no. 4 (1914): 186,
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/5/4/186 (accessed April 27, 2012).
31
Albert Edward Wiggam, The Fruit of the Family Tree, (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1924), 311.
32
Steve Selden, “Eugenics Popularization,” Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay_6_fs.html (accessed April 29, 2012).
33
Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans
from Colonial Times to the Present, (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 191.
11
The relatively new medium of film played a key role in advocating a eugenic lifestyle.
Realizing that many would flock to theatres to embrace this new form of entertainment,
eugenicists in Hollywood did not shy away from peppering films with their ideas. The Black
Stork, a 1917 film, told the true story of Dr. Harry Haiselden (portrayed by himself), chief
surgeon at a Chicago hospital who refused to treat certain terminally ill infants because he
believed they would grow up to be mental defectives. After the couple in the film has a child
determined by Haiselden to be defective, the mother chooses to let the child die, where it then
floats melodramatically into the arms of Jesus, signifying that the parents made the right choice.
The movie made modern blockbusters look like flashes in the pan, playing in many theatres for
over ten years. It was sensationally dubbed a “eugenic love story,” while some advertisements
beseeched viewers to “Kill Defectives, Save the Nation, and See The Black Stork.”34
Literature and magazines were even louder eugenic mouthpieces than films. Madison
Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race (1916) presented a virulent defense of the Nordic race
as the finest on the planet. In his opinion, any mixing of two races was guaranteed to yield
offspring with characteristics of the inferior race. His thesis was pure eugenics. “The most
practical and hopeful method of race improvement is through the elimination of the least
desirable elements in the nation by depriving them of the power to contribute to future
generations.” Any attempt to impede this process would do “more injury to the [Nordic] race
than black death or smallpox.” Grant deplored the carnage of World War I, referring to it as
“essentially a civil war...a large proportion of the men on both sides are members of this [Nordic]
34
Black, 257.
12
race.”35 Sometimes, the message was even more blatant. Dr. Clarence Gamble’s poem The Lucky
Morons follows the journey of two young dimwitted people as they unknowingly burden the
state budget with their stupidity and unchecked reproduction. A simple sterilization procedure,
however, prevents their “unwanted children” and saves taxpayers thousands of dollars. Thus,
“the North Carolina morons lived happily ever after.”36
By this time, eugenics had reached some of the highest echelons of American culture
and government. Vice President-elect Calvin Coolidge brought the symbolic muscle of the
country’s founding to bear in the eugenic struggle, claiming in Good Housekeeping Magazine
that it was a “self-evident truth” that there was no room in America for “the vicious, the weak of
body, the shiftless, or the improvident.”37 Hence, the most challenging obstacle for eugenics to
overcome, according to Grant, was man’s “perverse predisposition to mismate.”38
At this time, the West was going through what has been called an “exhibitionary culture.”
Museums, world fairs, and international expos were all the rage, and millions of people often
travelled hundreds, even thousands, of miles to socialize, be entertained, and see the most
cutting-edge advances in science and technology. Over 18 million attended the 1915 San
35
Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936),
http://archive.org/stream/passingofgreatra00granuoft/passingofgreatra00granuoft_djvu.txt (accessed April 29, 2012).
36
Daren Bakst, North Carolina’s Forced-Sterilization Program: A Case for Compensating the Living Victims, (n.p.:
The John Locke Foundation, 2011), 22, http://www.johnlocke.org/acrobat/policyReports/NCeugenics.pdf (accessed
April 29, 2012).
37
Calvin Coolidge, “Whose Country Is This?” Good Housekeeping, February 1921, 13,
http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pagevieweridx?c=hearth;rgn=full%20text;idno=6417403_1366_002;view=image;seq=15 (accessed April 29, 2012).
38
Grant, The Passing of the Great Race.
13
Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition, at the time nearly a fifth of the American
population. One main focus of the Expo was eugenics, and many exhibits could be found
devoted to this new science. Detailed displays enlightened viewers on subjects ranging from
immigrant intelligence to the heredity of the eye. Presentations of the pedigrees of historical and
noteworthy figures such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were very in fashion,
encouraging Americans to breed well and wisely.39 On the other side of the nation, the American
Museum of Natural History hosted its own eugenic exhibitions in 1921 and 1932, which
attracted thousands more, providing popular field trip opportunities for local schools.40
On a more local scale, Better Babies Contests became extraordinarily popular attractions
at state and county fairs. First held at the Louisiana State Fair in 1908, they soon became regular
events nationwide well attended by parents hopeful of having their child “adjudged the most
perfect baby.”41 Billed as a safe and reliable method to help rear physically healthy and mentally
39
Museum of American Heritage, “A Sense of Wonder: The San Francisco World’s Fair,”
http://www.moah.org/exhibits/archives/1915/ (accessed April 29, 2012);
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “The Intelligence Test Ability of Immigrants,” Dolan DNA
Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=1078
(accessed April 29, 2012);
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Heredity of the Eye,” Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold
Spring Harbor Laboratory, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=1075 (accessed April 29,
2012);
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Abraham Lincoln: Family-Stock Study,” Dolan DNA
Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=1063 (accessed April 29, 2012);
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Family Stock of G. Washington,” Dolan DNA Learning
Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=1062 (accessed April 29, 2012).
40
Susan Currell and Christina Cogdell, eds., Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in
the 1930s, (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006), 363.
14
fit children, they consisted of “a simple but scientific examination of babies by reputable
physicians.”42 Small trophies were awarded to the winners, and the proud parents received a
certificate with a score indicating how perfect their child was on a percentage scale.43
Out of Better Babies Contests grew a somewhat more prestigious competition. In 1920,
Mary T. Watts and Florence Brown Sherbon, two women who had been very involved with the
Better Babies movement, created Fitter Families for Future Firesides, or Fitter Families Contests.
These were conducted in much the same manner as Better Babies Contests, but in these events
the fitness of an entire family was considered, and because multiple bloodlines and pedigrees
were compared rather than the offspring to just two individuals, they were much more difficult to
win. Just as popular, if not more so, than Better Babies Contests, Fitter Families Contests were
surrounded by a distinct air of showmanship akin to the judging of livestock. Indeed, the central
concept behind Fitter Families was derived from the rural farming lifestyles of many of the
participants; the idea being that if horses, pigs, and sheep could be bred to exhibit ideal traits,
then an application of “practical human husbandry” could do the same for the human race.44
41
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Adjudged the Most Perfect Baby in the Panama Canal
Zone,” Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=972 (accessed April 29, 2012).
42
Anna Steese Richardson, “The Better Babies Bureau,” Women’s Home Companion, January 1913, 22,
http://books.google.com/books/about/Woman_s_Home_Companion.html?id=scIiAQAAMAAJ (accessed April 29,
2012).
43
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Better Babies Contest Award Certificate,” Dolan DNA
Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=2260
(accessed April 29, 2012).
44
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Fitter Families for Future Firesides: A Report of the
Eugenics Department of the Kansas Free Fair, 1920-1924,” Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor
15
Hence, those families who were deemed the winners were granted a medal proclaiming their
“goodly heritage” as well as considerable bragging rights, their names and pictures often
appearing in local newspapers.45
Through these various socio-cultural mechanisms, the science of eugenics rose “from a
mire of ridicule to the solid foundation of a recognized and important social factor.”46 Whether
or not eugenics was morally correct or even scientifically possible, it had caught on in the
American mind. A golden age seemed to dawn for eugenics; it was seemingly unstoppable.
Eugenicists such as Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin had done their work with such a
tireless energy and ruthless efficiency that the ideological war for public opinion which Francis
Galton had anticipated and planned for ended before it had a chance to begin. All that was left to
do was implement the policies which had been broadcast to the nation. Even this proved easier
than expected.
Eugenicists did not have to wait long to see the fruits of their labors, nor did they wait
until the public had fully embraced eugenics to begin demanding action. Anti-miscegenation
laws had been a part of American history since the 17th century, but they achieved a new
Laboratory, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/image_header.pl?id=196&printable=1&detailed=0 (accessed
April 29, 2012).
45
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Yea I Have A Goodly Heritage,” Dolan DNA Learning
Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=1564
(accessed April 29, 2012);
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “School Principal and Family Take Top Fair Honors,” Dolan
DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=199 (accessed April 29, 2012).
46
“Eugenicists Hail Their Progress as Indicating Era of Supermen,” New York Herald Tribune, 1932,
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=1811 (accessed April 29, 2012).
16
virulence following the Civil War. In 1883, the Supreme Court upheld anti-miscegenation laws
when it was claimed they violated the 14th Amendment. The court found that since whites and
blacks were punished equally for violating such laws, there was no constitutional conflict.47 By
1913, a report by Charles Davenport showed that 29 states had anti-miscegenation laws.48
In his opinion, however, many of these laws were not strong enough to adequately deter
mixed marriages. After letting eugenics coagulate in the public sphere for the next decade,
Walter Plecker, the registrar of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics and an ardent eugenicist,
initiated a campaign to introduce a new anti-miscegenation bill into the state legislature, which
would become the most strict such law in the nation. Plecker’s bill was passed, requiring
Virginia to keep detailed records of the racial ancestry of every one of its citizens. If two people
wished to be married, state authorities verified their races before issuing a marriage license.
Falsified race records resulted in a year-long prison sentence. Most strikingly, however, the act
stipulated that “persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and
have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons.”49 Known as the
“Pocahontas Exception,” it was designed as a concession to the politically powerful members of
the First Families of Virginia, many of whom claimed Pocahontas as a distant ancestor and
47
Pace vs. State, 106 U.S. 583 (1883).
48
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Race Mixing and Marriage Laws,” Dolan DNA Learning
Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/topics_fs.pl?theme=16&search=&matches= (accessed April 29, 2012).
49
Virginia General Assembly, Racial Integrity Act of 1924,
http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/encounter/projects/monacans/Contemporary_Monacans/racial.html (accessed April
28, 2012).
17
would therefore be considered colored under the new law. Understandably, the bill’s policies
wreaked havoc with Virginia’s demographic records, which from 1924 to 1975 (when the state
assembly voted to repeal) only recorded the race of its citizens as “white” or “colored.”50
Some believed that what the state was attempting could not be done, either for moral or logistical
reasons. Nonetheless, any criticism of or resistance to Virginia’s new law was coolly rebuffed by
a confident and composed Plecker. “These knocks,” he said, “have no more effect on me than
water on a duck’s back. I expect to keep on it. I consider this to be the biggest work of my life really the climax of my life’s work.”51
Rampant and unrestricted immigration opened another front for American eugenicists
trying desperately to protect racial and social purity. Millions of immigrants entered the country
during the early 20th century, and the vast majority, if viewed through the lens of eugenics, were
worthless vagabonds that served a singular purpose of diluting good American stock.
The Immigration Restriction League, founded in 1894, emerged as the most outspoken group in
the push for some sort of national legislation to limit, not halt entirely, the flow of immigrants
pouring through Angel and Ellis Islands. Backed by the academic prestige of its founders – all
Harvard graduates – the IRL advocated literacy tests for all prospective citizens to weed out
those who would add nothing of value to the national fabric. Their campaigning was crucial to
the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, the most comprehensive immigration law to that
50
Warren Fiske, “The Black and White World of Walter Ashby Plecker,” Virginian-Pilot, August 18, 2004.
51
“State Registrar Plecker Comments on Criticism of Virginia’s Effort to Enforce Racial Integrity Law,” Richmond
News Leader, [1924?], http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=1324 (accessed April 29, 2012).
18
date, which provided visas to “two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in
the United States as of the 1890 census.” Asian races, already overabundant in the eyes of many,
were completely restricted from entry.52 While certainly a major victory for American
eugenicists, the majority of their work took place not in the federal arena, but on the local or state
level. It was on this regionalized scale, however, that eugenicists were most successful in
establishing and propagating their most enduring and horrific legacy.
Compulsory sterilization was the fulcrum around which the entire eugenics movement
came to revolve. If all the scientific jargon, propaganda, and research was brushed aside,
sterilization remained as the primary goal and most effective method of impatient eugenicists
wishing to create a flawless human society. By the time eugenicists figured out what they meant
by “flawless,” eugenics had transformed into little more than a thinly veiled white supremacist
movement. Even before eugenics became popularized on a nationwide scale, several states had
already enacted compulsory sterilization laws to rid themselves of genetic undesirables and
moral degenerates. Indiana led the charge with the world’s first law officially recognizing
eugenic sterilization. Passed in 1907, predating even the establishment of the ERO, it provided
for the enforced sterilization of “confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists.”53 Despite
the fact that the law was overturned by the state supreme court in 1921, it succeeded in setting a
legal precedent for dozens more, each with increasingly widening stances on those eligible for
52
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, “The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act)”,
http://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/ImmigrationAct (accessed April 29, 2012).
53
Indiana General Assembly, General Laws, ch. 215 (1907).
19
sterilization. By 1935, 28 states had enacted their own sterilization laws, and seven
more had bills pending.54
In its most virulent form, eugenics was designed to eliminate all degenerates from
society, regardless of “personality, sex, age, marital condition, race, or possessions,”55 but the
numbers show that compulsory sterilization primarily targeted racial minorities. AfricanAmericans were sterilized nearly three times as often as whites. Native Americans are still
suffering today from the devastating effects of Virginia’s Racial Integrity Law, as many tribes
have found it extremely difficult to appeal to the federal government for native status because of
their being recorded as “colored” in state ancestry records for the past three generations. 56
Whites were not safe simply due to their race, however. Because of the socio-economic
chasm that separated them from middle to upper-class eugenic advocates, the poor, insane, and
physically and mentally handicapped were perceived as part of the problem. Despite never
having met Carrie Buck or any other member of her family, Harry Laughlin acted as an expert
witness at her trial, describing her in his testimony as a part of “the shiftless, ignorant, and
worthless class of anti-social whites of the South.”57 South Carolina resident Carol Brown,
another white victim of eugenics, was on welfare with a jailed husband and pregnant with her
54
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement, “Legislative Status of Eugenical Sterilization in the United
States,” Dolan DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory,
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/view_image.pl?id=951(accessed May 2, 2012).
55
Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization, 446.
56
Warren Fiske, “The Black and White World of Walter Ashby Plecker,” Virginian-Pilot, August 18, 2004.
57
Quoted in Crenshaw, Kimberlé et al., Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement (New
York: The New Press, 1995), note 274.
20
fifth child. Her situation set off warning bells for her doctors, who refused to deliver her child
unless she consented to sterilization immediately after birthing. These individuals, especially
those who required institutionalization because of their condition, were seen not as proud,
upstanding representatives of the Nordic race, but rather as unnecessary expenses which could
easily be trimmed from the state budget with a simple and inexpensive operation.
Support for eugenics faded considerably in the late 1930s as more scientists began to see
that neither social restrictions nor sterilization would ever have an appreciable effect on human
evolution or long-term genetics. Some, such as George Schull, Godfrey Hardy, and Wilhelm
Weinburg, had known this practically since the turn of the century, but eugenics had garnered
too much appeal up to that point, and their voices largely went unheard. Prior to the outbreak of
World War II, Americans found Hitler’s eugenic policies very much in line with their own goals,
even while the rest of the world was recoiling. After the war, as evidence of the Nazi’s gruesome
experiments and violent reactionary policies were gradually uncovered, eugenics fell out of favor
with most Americans. When the obvious comparisons were made between American and Nazi
eugenics, most could not reconcile their desire for a strong Nordic race with the brutality of the
Nazi policy, and eugenics lost steam. While many American eugenicists, Charles Davenport and
Harry Laughlin included, tried to rebrand and revitalize the movement throughout the remainder
of the century, it never again attained the popularity and acceptance it possessed before the
war.58 It is a grisly irony that the horrors of the Holocaust had a major hand in dismantling a
58
Laughlin had long crusaded against individuals with genetic disorders and heritable diseases, especially epileptics.
Feeling that epilepsy was a key trait among feebleminded individuals, he campaigned, ultimately unsuccessfully, to
have epileptics confined to segregated camps. Ironically, epilepsy ran in his family, and Laughlin himself
succumbed to the disease in 1943.
21
movement which would have prevented the birth of millions.
Eugenics persists as a much smaller, yet still significant, aspect of American society even
to the present. Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke’s nearly successful 1991 campaign for
Louisiana governor and his subsequent 1992 run for the presidency proves that there is still a
dangerously large foundation of support for the establishment of a superior Nordic race. In
November 2011, victims of compulsory sterilization in North Carolina began to speak out
against their state’s treatment of them years before. North Carolina’s sterilization law was not
repealed until 2003, and the state assembly is currently looking into several options for
compensating the surviving victims, 40% of whom are African-American.59
With the advent of cloning, the sequencing of the human genome, and recent advances in
stem-cell research, there has been an increasingly active debate concerning the ethics of
reproductive science, but the question of whether or not these developments will lead to a
modern-day revival of eugenics is being sidestepped by society as a whole. The silence on the
subject, which can be attributed primarily to a widespread lack of public knowledge concerning
America’s eugenics movement, is both historically unfortunate and ethically unwise. Today,
most decisions regarding genetics that effect everyday life are made by the individuals involved,
not government departments, scientific institutions, or regulatory bodies. Indeed, the closest we
have come to facing a genetic/eugenic debate in the present day has been the passage of various
state laws regarding abortion and the virulent social, religious, and political activism for or
59
Michelle Kessel and Jessica Hopper, “Victims Speak Out About North Carolina Sterilization Program,” Rock
Center November 7, 2011, http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/07/8640744-victims-speak-out-aboutnorth-carolina-sterilization-program-which-targeted-women-young-girls-and-blacks?lite (accessed May 2, 2012).
22
against it.
Despite this spirited social debate, the extraordinarily personal nature of the subject lends
itself to personal resolutions. The decision of whether or not to have a child is still made on an
individual level. Many heritable diseases can now be detected in the pre-natal stage, and some
parents choose, for good or ill, to have a child that would have such genetic disorders aborted.
Whether we realize it or not, on a personal level we have already come toe-to-toe with the
uncomfortable realities of eugenic science. What we need is a solid conceptual framework within
which to discuss the future implications of genetic science; a safe place to reacquaint ourselves
with who we as a nation were, thoroughly examine the precedents already set, and deal with the
social fallout still extant today. When Carrie Buck went to the Supreme Court in 1927, she was
forced to fight to secure her own reproductive rights from her own countrymen. It is unfortunate
that the institution entrusted with guarding the right of the pursuit of happiness of its citizens
voted nearly unanimously to preserve and reinforce the right of others to strip them away. As we
continue to move into the future, it is vital that we keep one eye on the past, or else face the
constant danger of passing history’s mistakes down to our own progeny.
23