= Image Prehive op the American Eugenies (ovement |Poian DNA Learning Center 4 ld Spring arbor ETaOTY eam eageie oy Eugenics Popularization Steve Selden, University of Maryland ‘The eugenics movement arose in the 20th century as two wings of a common philosophy of human worth. Francis Galton, who coined the term eugenics in 1883, percelved it as a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children, The Galtonian ideal of eugenics is usually termed positive eugenics. Negative eugenics, ‘on the other hand, advocated culling the least able from the breeding population to preserve humanity's fitness. The eugenics movements in the United States, Germany, and Scandinavia favored the negative approach. Eugenic ideology was deeply embedded in American popular culture during the 1920s and 1930s. For example, on Saturday night, high school students might go to the cinema to see "The Black Stork" ~ a film that supported eugenic sterilization. In church on Sunday, they might listen to a sermon selected for an award by the American Eugenics Society ~ learning that human improvement required marriages of society's "best" with the "best." ‘The AES also organized Fitter Families Contests and eugenics exhibits at state fairs at locations as varied as Topeka, Kansas and Springfield, Massachusetts throughout 1920s. Typical of the tone of these exhibits, the 1926 display In Philadelphia warned that "some Americans ate born to be @ burden on the rest." The display used flashing lights to emphasize the supposed dire consequences for America's prosperity if the reproduction of inferior persons was not controlled, After 1914, courses on eugenics were being offered at some of America’s leading universities. Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and Brown were among those listing courses that included eugenics. In the 1920s, the National Education Association's Committee on Racial Well-Being sponsored programs to help college teachers Integrate eugenic content in their courses. By 1928, eugenics was a topic in 376 separate college courses, which enrolled approximately 20,000 students. A content analysis of high school science texts published between 1914 and 1948 indicates that a majority presented eugenics was as legitimate science, These texts embraced Galton's concept of differential birthrates between the biological *fit" and "unfit," training high school students that immigration restriction, segregation, and sterilization were worthy policies to maintain in American culture. Eugenic Sterilization Laws Paul Lombardo, University of Virginia ‘Advocacy in favor of sterilization was one of Harry Laughiin’s first major projects at the Eugenics Record Office. In 1914, he published a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law that proposed to authorize sterilization of the "socially inadequate" - people supported in institutions or "maintained wholly or in part by public expense. The law encompassed the "feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, eplieptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf; deformed; and dependent” - Including "orphans, ne'er-do-wells, tramps, the homeless and paupers.” By the time the Model Law was published in i914, twelve states had enacted sterilization laws. By 1924, approximately 3,000 people had been involuntarily sterilized in America; the vast majority (2,500) in California. That year Virginia passed @ Eugenical Sterilization Act based onLaughlin’s Model Law. It was adopted as part of a cost-saving strategy to relieve the tax burden in a state where public facilities for the "insane" and "feebleminded" had experienced rapid growth. The law was also written to protect physicians who performed sterilizing operations from malpractice lawsuits. Virginia's law asserted that "heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime..." It focused on "defective persons" whose reproduction represented "a menace to society.” Carrie Buck, a seventeen-year-old girl from Charlottesville, Virginia, was picked as the first person fo be sterilized, Carrie had a child, but was not married, Her mother Emma was already a resident at an asylum, the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and the Feebleminded, Officials at the Virginia Colony said that Carrie and her mother shared the hereditary traits of "feeblemindedness" and sexually promiscuity, To those who believed that such traits were geneticelly transmitted, Carrie fit the law's description as 2 "probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring.” A legal challenge was arranged on Carrie's behalf to test the constitutional validity of the law. At her trial, several witnesses offered evidence of Carrie’s inherited "defects" and those of her mother Emma, Colony Superintendent Dr, Albert Priddy testified that Emma Buck had “a record of immorality, prostitution, untruthfulness and syphilis.” His opinion of the Buck family more generally was: "These people belong to the shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of antl-social whites of the South." Although Harry Laughlin never met Carrie, he sent a written deposition echoing Priddy’s conclusions about Carrie's "feeblemind-edness" and "moral delinquency.” Sociologist Arthur Estabrook, of the Eugenics Record Office, traveled to Virginia to tastify against Carrie, He and a Red Cross nurse examined Carrie's baby Vivian and concluded that she was “pelow average" and “not quite normal," Relying on these comments, the judge concluded that Carrie should be sterilized to prevent the birth of other "defective" children, ‘The decision was appealed to United States Supreme Court. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., himself a student of eugenics, wrote the formal opinion for the Court in the case of Buck v. Bell (1927), His opinion repeated the "facts" in Carrle’s case, concluding that a “deficient” mother, daughter, and granddaughter justified the need for sterilization. The decision inciudes the now Infamous words: It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind...Three generations of imbeciles are enough, Recent scholarship has shown that Carrie Buck's sterilization was based on a false “diagnosis” and her defense lawyer conspired with the lawyer for the Virginia Colony to guarantee that the sterilization law would be upheld in court. Carrie’s Illegitimate child was not the result of promiscuity; she had been raped by a relative of her foster parents, School records also prove that Vivian was not "feebleminded.” Her ist grade report card showed that Vivian was a solid "B” student, received an "A" in deport ment, and had been on the honor roll Nevertheless, Buck v. Beil supplied a precedent for the eventual sterilization of approximately 8,300 Virginians, Borrowing from Laughiin’s Model Law, the German Nazi government adopted & law in 1933 that provided the legal basis for sterilizing more than 350,000 people. Laughlin proudly published a trensiation of the German Law for the Prevention of Defective Progeny in The Eugenical Rews, In 1936, Laughlin was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg as @ tribute for his work in "the science of racial cleansing.” Sterilization of people In institutions for the mentelly ill and mentally retarded continued through the mid-1970's. At one time or another, 33 states had statutes under which more than 60,000 jmericans endured involuntary sterilization. The Buck v. Bell precedent allowing sterilization of the so-called "feebleminded” has never been overruled.A. "The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men, The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth: it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away {rom the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races. Now the training of men is a difficult and intricate task. ts technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we sball have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools — intelligence, broad sympathy, Knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it — this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.” B. A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel, From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal,"Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time the signal, “Water, water; send us water!” ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water fom the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”— cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded, Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection itis well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it isin the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we lear to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we Jeam to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it leams that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top, Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.For each quotation, identify the speaker and his main message in a short response of four sentences (or less). Then, in a third paragraph, explain how each individual’s background led to these beliefs and how the two came into conflict with one another. You have fifteen minutes to complete the ENTIRE QUIZ. Use your time wisely.