I am always troubled when our country does not live up to its wonderful ideals. Fortunately, over time we have confronted our errors and terminated errant policies; however, mistaken policies have caused needless hardships for a broad spectrum of our residents. In defending my decision to discuss the practice of eugenics in the United States, I believe that failure to disclose known negative historical facts prevents us from acting appropriately to improve our country’s policies in the present environment.

Eugenics comes from the Greek roots for “good” and origin”. It was a racist pseudoscience practiced in some form in the United States until the mid 1960’s. The eugenics philosophy was enshrined into national policy by forced sterilization, segregation laws and marriage restrictions based on race that were enacted in 27 states.  Over some sixty years, ending in the 1960’s, eugenic proponents coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands more in colonies, and persecuted an untold number of others. In 1924 the Immigration Act set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed to have “inferior” stock including Southern Europe and Asia.  President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice President “American should be kept American.”

 

To be fair, the eugenics movement could take root in the United States given our history of racism. That is, large segments of the population held racial or religious prejudices against non-white Anglo Saxons. Eugenics provided a “scientific basis for their beliefs. 

 

Eugenics would have been little more than bizarre parlor talk had in not been for massive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune. Scientists from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton faked and twisted data to support eugenics policies. There were 29 Eugenic chapters around the country. They held awards for the “finest human stock—not unlike awards for prize bull and biggest pumpkin 

 

The Carnegie Institution spearheaded the movement. They established a laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans. The date on the cards was used to remove the family bloodlines of “inferior’ species. In May 1926, Rockefeller foundation gave some $400,000 (Approximate $4 million in today’s dollars) to German researchers to promote eugenics. In 1927 they gave some $300,000 more for “Brain Research” to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. 

 

The Harriman railroad fortune financed the deportation, confinement, or forced sterilization of Jewish, Italian, and other immigrants in New York. 

 

The background for eugenics began with Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. He theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. His ideas were combined the Gregor Mendel’s principles of heredity. That is, supporters of eugenics argued that the concepts of explaining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.

 

Supporters of eugenics, fearing the large influx of immigrants from Southern Europe, Hispanics, Jews and the local black and native Indian population preferred Nordic types. Even the United States supported eugenics as national policy. In a 1927 decision, Buck v. Bell, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the majority, “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 their continued proliferation…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

 

Until the 1960’s the United States Supreme Court upheld laws against miscegenation. In one case, the Supreme Court allowed the State of Mississippi to classify a Chinesse as Black, and thereby forced the former to attend Black schools. 

 

German national socialists both copied and ultimately expanded upon the precepts of American eugenics. Hitler wrote a fan later to the American eugenic leader Madison Grant, calling his boo, “The Passing of the Great Race,” his bible. Unfortunately, American eugenic leaders envied the Nazi ability to implement policies on a far wider range than legally permissible in the United States.

 

In all fairness to the American eugenic movement, there was almost no communication between the United States and Germany after 1939; therefore, their unprecedented gangster experimentation under scientific guise was not communicated to their American forerunners.

 

Fortunately, following the defeat of Germany, American educators and scientists began to closely examine the foundations of eugenics, finding faults with its basic scientific premises. Through a series of legislative and court findings, eugenic policies were terminated.