Good evening everyone my name is Nicole Milano and I want to thank you all for joining us both in person and online for tonight’s lecture with Dr a Dr I nine we welcome participation from all attendees in our question and answer session following the talk for attendees online you’ll
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That we have two additional lectures this Academic Year our next lecture will be with Jeremy Brown who will be sharing insights from his most recent book on the Jewish pandemic experience on March 19th at 5:00 pm. finally on April 17th 2024 at 1M note the change in time
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The history of the New York Presbyterian wow Cornell Medical Center I would like to invite you to conduct research in our very own Medical Center archives the archives includes materials stting to 1771 and includes this photograph of the hospital’s Nutrition department preparing some turkeys for Thanksgiving in
1961 the chefs roasted 72 22 pound turkeys in order to serve 1300 patients and hospital staff on duty that day the hospital Bakers also made 60 six dozen dinner rolls and 110 pumpkin pies to go along with the turkey so none of us can complain about our own Thanksgiving
Meals and how difficult they are now you can find digitized documents and more than 14,000 photographs like this one online through the link scene here many more are available through on-site research appointments which we’re very happy to coordinate for those who are interested I would now like to introduce
Our leene Shaner who will say a few words about the New York Academy of Medicine the co-sponsor of tonight’s lecture welcome Mar thank you Nicole the New York Academy of medicine’s library has been co-sponsoring one Hein lecture each season for many years now and I am especially pleased that we are the
Co-sponsors for this particular lecture because I have known a since she was a graduate student and was using our library for those of you who might not be familiar with NM we are 176 six-year-old organization committed to tackling the barriers that prevent everyone from living a healthy life by generating knowledge changing systems
And engaging the public next slide please the library is open to everyone by appointment and is one of the most significant history of medicine and public health collections in the country so if you have research interests that are connected to to us please make an appointment and come and visit I would
Love to have you and now I am going to introduce hean Society medical student Elizabeth CED who will introduce our speaker hello everyone for those of you who I’ve not met before my name is Elizabeth cusd I’m the student representative for heon and it’s my pleasure to introduce Dr a nurin today
Uh today she will be presenting her lecture seed and soil Black eugenic thought in the 19th and 20th centuries Dr neran received her ba in international relations and history from American University and then her ma in international relations and history from American University and then her ma in
History and an MLs from the University of Maryland as well as her PhD in the history of medicine from John’s Hopkins University currently she is a lecturer in the Council of humanities and African-American studies at Princeton University where she’s been working on her book book also based on this lecture
Seed and soil Black eugenic Thought in the 19th and 20th centuries her research aims to explore how African-Americans navigated questions of racial science Eugenics and hereditarianism in relation to struggles for racial justice during the 19th and 20th centuries her research has been published in historical studies of Natural Science the Journal of
History of medicine and Allied sciences and the Lan it she has also appeared on the disability history Association podcast and American history TV on C-Span with all that said again it’s my pleasure to introduce this amazing lecture coming up thanks so much for that wonderful introduction I’m really excited to be
Here today um and excited to to share my work with you all this is from my forthcoming but embryonic manuscript entitled seed and soil so I look forward to your comments and questions I want to begin my talk today with a figure that I encountered uh when I first started researching
African-Americans and Eugenics back when I was an undergrad uh her name is Selma burlak Boozer she was born in Oka Florida in 1906 and moved to New York as a child she graduated as valid dictorian of her class of Theodore Roosevelt High School in 1924 she later graduated Kum
Ly from NYU with a bachelor’s in commercial science and a MERS in journalism in 1931 W Boozer was also an active member of the AL Alpac Kappa Alpha or AKA sorority which is one of the divine nine of G African-American Greek life she wrote for um African-American newspapers like the New
York Amsterdam news and the Pittsburgh Courier as well as for the New York age and the labor Vanguard she also did public relations work for Harlem Hospital and the alumni division of the United Negro College Fund so you might be wondering what she’s doing in a in a presentation about eugenic
She um under the pen name teb she had a regular column in the New York Amsterdam news called the feminist Viewpoint in one of these columns in 1934 she published a piece called birth control gain sanction which discussed Eugenics and racial Improvement teb wrote that quote we need compulsory sterilization
Of the mentally and physically unfit two we should welcome birth control as a national measure she also argued in the piece quote more well born babies fewer ill born babies and sterilization of those uh too unfit to become parents will Aid Society in solving some of its major problems end
Quote Boozer is part of a substantial group of African-American Physicians scientists Scholars and activists in the early 20th century that embraced the possibilities of eugenics for improving African-American life my manuscript seed in soil argues that African-Americans have a separate but sort of adjacent form of eugenic thinking that I broadly
Describe as black Eugenics and I argue that black Eugenics is essential for sort of having a full and complete history of American Eugenics black Eugenics was a hereditarian approach to racial uplift that emphasized social reform reproductive control and public health as strategies of biological racial Improvement it was part of a longer
History of black engagement with racial science that stretches back to the 19th century and continues to shape the ways that black people talk about race after the second world war African-American Physicians scientists and intellectuals embrace Notions of fit and unfit and even advocated for eugenic measures like compulsory sterilization the fundamental
Difference between their work and the work of white eugenesis was that African-Americans didn’t um sort of cast these divisions along racial lines whereas white eugenesis often argued that black people were an unfit race among other inferior and unfit races African-American uh eug Genesis sort of argued that um they were unfit members
Of each race and that eugenic measures would eliminate the unfit within racial groups and therefore improve their biological um composition so African-Americans were actually participants in the larger American Eugenics movement even though many of the movement’s sort of white Architects would have considered them inferior and unfit they read and
Reviewed its most important works and corresponded with its leaders and when segregation was not an obstacle they even attended its conference es Booker T Washington of the tus gige Institute who’s arguably one of the most important African-American Educators and reformers of the 20th century corresponded with Charles Davenport of the eugenic record
Office and even invited him to visit this invitation is renewed by uh Washington successor Robert Russon who invited him to come and measure um take anthropometric measurements of Tuskegee students as part of Davenport study on Race Crossing with physical Anthropologist Morris stera so as you can see in the image
On your right that the there’s a specific emphasis here on studying negro white crosses because they’re interested in sort of taking these measurements to figure out where exactly racial mixing sort of appears in in physical form Monro work also of The tusi Institute was a sociologist who worked with Washington to establish National
Negro Health Week exhibited his major work the Negro yearbook at the second International Eugenics Congress in 1921 Howard University uh botanist Thomas Wyatt Turner assigned Paul poeno and Roswell Johnson’s famous text applied Eugenics and um Davenport’s essay euthenics and Eugenics as part of his courses on sex hygiene and biology
And education and I could of course keep going with all of these different examples but I want to sort of emphasize the ways that not only are black people sort of within the movement but they’re creating their own terms sort of beyond the parameters of of the movement at the
Same time so not only are they participating in this larger um movement but they’re using they’re they use eugenic thought and racial science to challenge the scientific racism that’s built into Eugenics and racial science and while that sounds paradoxical the actors I write about imagine that they can distinguish biological race as a
Category from the existence of racism they sought to undermine the scientific premise for structural racism by reinterpreting Eugenics and racial science and to be clear African-American engagements and reinterpretations of eugenics were certainly problem itic and were often scientistic ableist classist and colorist even as they imagined liberatory possibilities they still
Became involved in the sort of problematics of of eugenic thinking underlying this rethinking of the history of eugenics is an argument that resistance to white supremacy necessitated scientific and medical considerations as part of a multifaceted approach to racial Justice the urgency of addressing unrelenting racism LED African-Americans to embrace eugenic
Thinking and consider if insurgent and progresses Progressive uses of eugenics were possible and to what extent and so for my talk today I want to focus on uh I want to sort of Center on the ways that African-Americans reinterpreted um engaged and critiqued Eugenics U to demonstrate the sort of range of black
Eugenic thought I will focus on two sites of discourse for today uh first I’m going to begin with the work of of black Physicians and then I’m going to move to the ways that Eugenics is discussed in in the black press together these two areas of Black eugenic Thought demonstrate the broad
And VAR ways in which African-Americans uh understood the utility of eugenics uh for advocating for racial equality so starting with Physicians African-American Physicians faced significant challenges in the early 20th century the the development of black medical schools uh created significant opportunities for medical training but the ex this expansion was quickly eroded
By the impact of the flexner report and 1910 with only two black medical schools remaining Howard and mahary African-Americans had very limited access to medical training in the US and often went abroad as a result African-American Physicians also faced segregation in other um in other area in
At medical schools but also in residency programs and in employment in medical institutions they were also excluded from membership from the American Medical Association which led to the creation of the national Medical Association the nma in in 1895 and its journal in 1907 the Journal of the national Medical
Association the jnma became the premier site of black medical discourse for the first half of the 20th century the journal helped to promote visions of a unified black medical profession that advocated for both higher medical standards and for racial equality and it also celebrated the accomplishments of African American
Physicians uh Dr John a Kenny who I’m going to return to later in the presentation was the first Secretary of the nma and Associate editor of the journal uh he argued that the very existence of a black medical journal had showed how far the race had progressed quote we are publishing a medical
Journal think of it a race just 40 years removed from slavery publishing a medical journal the jnma became an important site for African-American Physicians to discuss Eugenics and racial science and to to sort of think about what eugenic interventions might look like for the race like other American physicians in the
Early 20th century African-American Physicians saw that there was an important relationship between Eugenics and medicine for example Dr Preston a Edwards argued in his nma presidential address in 1923 that the goals of me of medicine were quote the preservation of life and the prevention of disease end quote he asserted that Physicians and
Scientists needed to transform medicine from a quote Progressive art to a fixed science and emphasized that quote preventing medicine is in the ascendancy marching boldly on to Eugenics and the Superman via birth control his comments echoed arguments that um made by Charles Davenport but also from Physicians like Dr hervey
Arnest Harvey Ernest Jordan of UVA and Dr Lis spker of Johns Hopkins medicine who also saw Eugenics and medicine as working hand inand towards the goals of human Improvement in the jnma African-American Physicians discussed the importance of eugenics for racial Improvement as well as how um to mobilize birth control and sterilization
As eugenic interventions Eugenics also framed the ways that African-American Physicians interpreted questions of racial susceptibility and how they discussed whether High rates of disease morbidity and mortality were uh innate qualities of the race or if they were the result of environmental conditions it is important to note here that many
Of the Physicians writing in the jnma in this period would have argued for the existence of biological racial categories however for them the existence of those categories does not necessitate the existence of racism and it did not mean nor did it mean that characteristics deemed problematic or dysgenic could not be addressed with
Different eugenic interventions though this is different from our own sort of conceptions uh current conceptions of racial categories the African American Physicians here and and other African-American um Physicians scientists social scientists elsewhere in the project sort of disentangle the idea of of race from the ex from the
Problem of racism and in this way they sort of question um in this way questions of racial susceptibility to disease and other forms of eugenic unfitness can be improved by improving by addressing sort of the the biological composition and quality of the race one physician and prominent figure
In the nma who has been an important part of my work is William monteu cab uh he was physician anatomist and physical Anthropologist at Howard University he completed his MD at Howard University and then a PHD in physical anthropology at Case Western Reserve um under T
Windgate Todd in 1920 in 1932 over over the course of a distinguished career he held leadership positions in numerous organizations such as being president of the national Medical Association in 1964 uh he also uh from 1957 to 1968 served on the board of the American eugenic society Cobb spent much of his career
Being invested in biological visions of race while also refuting scientific racism in its various forms as a physical Anthropologist and anatomist Cobb was deeply invested in what he described as racial Anatomy after completing his PhD and returning to Howard Cobb modeled his laboratory and an anatomical collection after the Hyman
Todd collection at uh Case Western Reserve he saw it as a valuable model uh for Howard because he quote uh because of quote the size and extent of its collection of American Negro material and the unbiased attitude which Publications based on that material has revealed end quote cobs collection would
Ultimately include anatomical records of 987 uh individuals and approximately 700 skeletons that represented populations in Washington DC and other Eastern urban areas he published his first book the lab laboratory of anatomy and physical anthropology at Howard University in 1932 about the development of his laboratory and his and his vision for
The importance of anatomical practice so this is an image of students working in the laboratory with anatomical material and on each other in a section of the book entitled racial Anatomy Cobb critiqued what he called the quote eugenical propaganda end quote of Charles Davenport but not it didn’t really sort of completely relinquish
The its its hereditarian thinking he argued that quote the building of Better Bodies by thorough conservation and cultivation of each individual’s constitutional Heritage is universally acknowledged as an ethically sound and practical po procedure end quote he instead argued that improving environmental conditions and quote child nurture was the most quote the most
Practicable biological approach to the task of human betterment end quote to highlight this point he uh referenced an unspecified Address given by Davenport that argued for the importance of reproductive control particularly among the lower classes as an essential as essential to human betterment he believed that Davenport’s approach was
Insufficient because quote people still seem to marry whom they will and eugenical propaganda is so dangerously liable to react unfavorably to minority groups that this approach is best left alone end quote in a 1939 article for the American Journal of negro education entitled The Negro as a biological element in the
American population Cobb argued that the composition and characteristics of the race could be located in both the history both its history and its biology he began with what he described as essential facts about the Negro that he considered to be common knowledge he argued that the American Negro was fcked
Physically strong and mentally able he added that the American Negro quote possessed Special aptitudes exemplified by an acute perception of pitch and and Rhythm which in association with other factors has resulted in the spirituals and Jazz while he asserted that these essential facts were basic were basically biological characteristics of
African-Americans he did not think that they were the only variables in determining the capacity of of the American Negro instead he asserted that the future of the American Negro would quote appear to rest upon other factors than his biological quality and rely on the promotion of Health hygiene and education
In a section of the article um entitled physical Constitution Cobb uh argued that all of the viscera of the American Negro were the same as other races with the exception of the spleen which was smaller he didn’t explain why the spleen was smaller he just left it there uh he
Added that beliefs around uh limited lung capacity and flat feet were quote difficultly reconcilable end quote with um African-Americans known fleetness and endurance cob also argued that the American negro’s ability to S survive oppression was evidence of a strong physical Constitution quote not only the conditions surrounding his AR his
Arrival but those under which the Negro has lived in America must have had a selective effect on approving his stock pre-emancipation exploitation must be credited with a mass elimination not alone of the weak and unfit but also of those who were lacking in that individual shrewdness which is a which
Is a vital essential in self-preservation he essentially argued that the Middle Passage and slavery and systematic oppression had had a eugenic on effect on the race by actually improving its biological composition and makeup cob asserted that slavery and its aftermath created the Negro into quote the most highly selected stock in America end
Quote because quote no other group of Americans in such large numbers has had to pass such rigorous tests of survival Fitness as has the American Negro end quote and while this might be a bit maybe jarring to our sensibilities Cobb’s assertions demonstrated how he understood the sort of impact of her of
Heredity and Eugenics on the development of biological racial categories Switching gears here I want to return to John a Kenny uh who was a founding member of the nma and Associate editor of its Journal Kenny was the son of formerly enslaved people and he joined the staff of the Tusk gige
Institute in 1902 and served as the personal physician to bookery Washington and to George Washington Carver he also served as the Director of the John a Andrew hospital that was affiliated with Tuskegee one of uh Kenny’s very um one of the things that he’s was deeply concerned about was the prevalence of
Syphilis among uh Southern African-American populations according to um African-American sociologist Charles Johnson’s 1934 study shadow of the Plantation uh 30% of African-Americans an in mon County Alabama tested positive for syphilis that year and I mention this not only because it’s the location of the John Andrew hospital and the
Tuskegee Institute where Kenny works but it’s also the primary site of the Tuskegee syphilis study right which is also ongoing with his with his career Kenny was concerned that these that these significant rates of syphilis morbidity would be damaging to the composition of the race but also that
These and other data would be used to make Arguments for African-American inferiority in an address to the uh teachers at the Tuskegee summer inst summer Institute summer school that was published in the jnma he argued that quote social diseases like syphilis were the primary cause of what he described as racial
Decay and asserted that these diseases quote that these dis these are the diseases which are so frequently responsible for our feeble-minded blind weaklings and degenerates end quote for him eugenic marriage laws reproductive control and strong moral values could address address the spread of social diseases because quote Eugenics would
Prevent any condition which means racial deterioration end quote he saw High rates of syphilis as evidence of a lack of morals rather than as a rather than as a a sort of evidence of biological racial susceptibility he implored young women in the audience to avoid having children quote by accident rather than
By Design end quote and to stay away from vices that contributed to high rates of of syphilis such as the most recent dance craze uh he didn’t say what the craze was he just called it the dance craze uh which he said was not in accord with the eugenic
Idea in 1910 Kenny published a scathing editorial in the jnma um that was a response to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a white physician named Thomas Merl Merl’s article had argued that high syphilis morbidity among African-Americans was due to racial susceptibility sexual
Depravity and an inability to comply with treat treatment Ken Kenny strongly disagreed with Merl’s conclusions and at the end of the editorial he asked his readers quote has there ever been a more an article more filled with the wholesale condemnation of the morals of all
Classes of the race and is what is most unfair is his attempt to condemn even our refined classes along with the slum product among whom he has undoubtedly had large experience end quote though Kenny refused Merl’s assumptions about the morality and quality of the race he differentiated which of its members deserved critique
For Kenny all classes of African-Americans were not the problem only the unfit members the slum product were worthy of such criticism middle and upper class African-Americans like himself were both biologically and morally uplifted and they believed that they had a responsibility to uplift the slum product um uh meaning the unfit
Members of the race which reflected the sort of broader um class politics of racial uplift ideology even though his analysis here resembled uh some of the views and claims that white eugenesis one some of his white eugenesis contemporaries would make in the same moment his argument sh his argument
Shows that some um some of the sort of different Veen of black Eugenics rather than making claims about the sort of susceptibility of the entire R of entire r groups or thinking in terms of innate racial characteristics Kenny here is reinforcing the idea that syphilis prevalence is a problem of morality
Rather than a problem of biology however as he um discussed in the address that I just mentioned this problem of morality could be addressed with eugenic interventions like eugenic marriage um and targeted reproduction African-American Physicians Embrace reproductive uh control in different forms uh and birth control especially as ways to improve the
Biological composition of the race by emphasizing the importance of good health of the emphasis of the importance of good health for Quality reproduction which was um deeply shaped by eugenic conceptions of better breeding this led some African-American Physicians to uh embrace the American birth control movement because they saw Margaret
Sanger’s vision of birth control as part of how they imagined the possibilities of racial Improvement Sanger was also interested in collaborating with African-American leaders to develop birth control clinics and African-American communities in June 1932 the birth control review which was the periodical of the American birth control League sanger’s organization published a
Special issue about African-Americans and birth control entitled a negro number a negro number was a who who of African-American leadership for example uh you see web Duo’s article at the top black folks and birth control that duo concluded with the statement that quote they must learn that among human races
And groups as among vegetables quality and Not Mere quantity really counts end quote a negro number also included pieces from two African-American Physicians that were both active in the nma um one of them Midian o bowfield who I’m not going to get to in this talk but
Happy to answer questions about but the other is WG Alexander uh who was General Secretary of the nma and he contributed a piece entitled a medical viewpoint where he argued that birth control was essential for improving different areas of African-American life Alexander believed that having too many children especially
Just for the sake of having them would negatively impact the H the health of women in their offspring he stated quote the economic betterment of the Negro the health betterment of the Negro and the betterment of community standards which is an inevitable corollary demand a policy and a program that will at least
Modify his present unfavorable situation birth control offers the only reasonable solution in the same year uh that of a negro number Alexander published a different article in the jnma called birth control for the Negro a fad or necessity where he uh made a medical demographic and moral argument about for African-American participation and
Advocacy around birth control Alexander asserted that African-Americans were the stewards of African-American health and that it was imperative for them to Embrace birth control in this role uh quote I have endeavored in this paper to indicate that birth control is a reasonable a sane and a safe program
And procedure and that because of the peculiar situation and circumstances of negro living and negro life is particularly applicable to Negroes and so he saw this he had this vision of birth control that was essential not only for improving Health but this broader vision of improving the race African-American engagement with
Eugenics and birth control was not limited to Physicians and scientists or to specialized Publications rather African-Americans of varying social strata uh engage and debate the possibilities of eugenics in the black press so black Eugenics discourse is actually much wider than what we see in in in the jnma or the birth control
Review or in other sort of medical and scientific Publications africanamerican Physicians scientists and social scientists often engaged in reinterpreted Eugenics at the conceptual level and their discourses reflected a rid a middleclass racial uplift politics in which Elite African-Americans saw them saw their responsibility to uplift their poor and eugenically unfit
Counterparts the black press however uh contained more vigorous debate over Eugenics that Illustrated a broader set of racial uplift politics and often contained much more significant critique of eugenics than the jnma an examine of black uh an examination of black newspapers here in this for in my
Project so far I’ve been using the Chicago Defender the New York Amsterdam news and the Pittsburgh Courier because they had National circulation but um the the sample of articles that I’ve pulled from there shows the ways show the ways that African-Americans not only sort of understood the possibilities of eugenics
But also the ways that they understood Eugenics to be weaponized against them Eugenics had become so um so deeply embedded in African-American life that it actually appears in newspaper filler in ads and in notices there there were notices for um eugenic lectures and sermons like this fundraising notice for the Chicago defender in
1913 it where Grace Presbyterian Church reported that quote Dr dofi uh addressed the young people in their meeting from 6:00 to 7 last Sunday his subjects was Eugenics and its effects on the rising generation so that will be the image on your on your left um a similar notice from The Hope
Presbyterian Church in 1915 reported that quote the alpha club and the Boy Scouts will turn out in a body to hear an address on Eugenics by Dr WN Thomas next Sunday the public and especially all men are cordially invited to these popular lectures by our noted speakers end
Quote there were also moments of eugenic humor in Black newspapers a short piece entitled upto-date Eugenics joked about a marriage proposal m did you ask char did Charlie ask your father last night marjerie no he forgot to bring his income tax receipts another piece called cuckoo Eugenics from a column called
This that and the other uh and the unnamed author argued that of course it may all be right but we remember when them clanners and something about and something about the same D thing if we wish their purpose to be made easy wouldn’t the cloy have a grand time
Sterilizing the dependent the delinquent and the defective of the race you’d all be dodging end quote and though subtle cuckoo Eugenics shows the tensions and within show some of the tensions within black Eugenics if properly mobilized um properly and objectively mobilized Eugenics was essential to racial Improvement but tainted with racism
Eugenics could lead to the destruction of the race these kinds of bits and pieces in newspapers shows the ways that you show the ways that Eugenics and birth control made their ways into different areas of popular culture and that many people saw their utility in thinking about the problem that face the
Race and also challenging whether or not they had um utility Beyond these uh sort of Snippets that appear in the black press um there are also much more sustained um an subst sustained and sub substantive analysis of the role of eugenics and better breeding in improving African-American life similar to tb’s article educator
And uh clubwoman Rebecca Styles Taylor wrote a column for the for the Chicago Defender uh called as a woman thinks where she argued that understanding heredity was crucial for racial Improvement she argued that African-Americans did not emphasize the role of heredity enough in addressing what she described as the problem of
Racial Decay quote in our mad race for education book learning and our pathetic but insistent struggle for economic stability we have somewhat overlooked the importance of improving our group in its natural moral mental and physical qualities its inborn endownment of body and mind for this for to do this we must
Plan first for the increasing of our well-born and second for the decreasing of our illb porn the Caps are hers for Taylor it was vital to use the knowledge of heredity to cultivate the best qualities in the race and limit the propagation of defective heredity she then described what she um
Who she described or who she counted as well-born and Ill born and argued that the Wellborn could only be cultivated through eugenic marriage marriage when African-Americans had fully embraced eugenic Family Planning she argued sterilization would become unnecessary quote with such an education and elevation of African-Americans taste she
Wrote there will be little need for sterilization for they will seek their mental moral social and physical equal or Superior uh and their children will of a consequence all things being equal not swell the ranks of the defectives end quote Taylor asserted that if African-Americans fully embraced the possibilities of eugenics they would
Not need external measures like uh sterilization to improve the race her article largely encouraged African-Americans to embrace and internalize Eugenics to ensure that racial progress uh to ensure racial progress rather than to contribute to racial Decay by the 1930s there’s actually a pretty discernable shift in how Eugenics and especially compulsory sterilization
Laws were discussed in the black press even though there had been skepticism and criticism of sterilization in years prior as the number of sterilization laws increased so too did African-Americans become more concerned that they would be used against the race for example a 1935 article in the Chicago Defender calls for the
Sterilization of uh about calls for the sterilization of the mentally ill in Georgia linked the expansion of sterilization to other racial problems quote what Georgia needs is not more medicine but more truth the growth of feeble-minded children not alone in Georgia but in any state is usually the
Creature of Ty of the tyranny of social customs of their for parents sterilization of body without sterilization of mind will do little good what Georgia needs is a new state of thinking end quote the following year a piece on the South Carolina sterilization law stated
Quote as it can be imagined the law Only Hits the quote lower class of people and the oppressed race uh PE the oppressed race of people in particular end quote though some African-Americans in in the same moment understood reproductive control is something that’s useful for racial Improvement others become
Increasingly concerned that these laws would be weaponized against African-Americans these anxieties were exacerbated by exacerbated by events in the US and abroad so for example in 1936 the Pittsburgh Courier published an article about the I have do I have this on the wrong oops oh I’m accidentally missing a slide
It’s okay um published an article about the sterilization of um AIS and Cooper huitt hitt’s mother had declared her feeble-minded and then sterilized her in order to take her inheritance huitt sued uh her mother and the surgeons who performed the procedure But ultimately lost the case the article asserted that
If it could help happen to a wealthy white woman it would most certainly happen to African-Americans and other marginalized groups the ALS article also argued that even if eugenic sterilization was scientifically valid and effective people were still too um prejudiced to objectively mobilize the practice quote how can we be sure that
They are not motivated by Bas impulses end quote there are also two international events that further exacerbated concerns about the weaponization of sterilization laws against African-Americans the first was a proposed sterilization law in Bermuda in a in 1935 a response to in a response to high unemployment rates uh mudas
Colonial Governor proposed a proposed birth control legislation and a compulsory sterilization law for the feeble-minded and for people with il legitimate children black bermudan argued that these laws would Target them would unfairly Target them and that proposals were met with such intense protest that they were withdrawn within
A few weeks however the threat of sterilization laws in Bermuda uh caused significant outcry in the black press and even after the proposed laws were withdrawn the Pittsburgh Courier um reported reported in 1935 that the proos laws in Bermuda would Target the its majority black population arguing that it would ultimately quote ultimately
Eliminate the impoverished negro workers who are kept in such a degraded social condition of course white people would decide who was mentally defective end quote two letters to the editor in the New York Amsterdam news describ the proposed laws in Bermuda as a plan for the extermination of the race years
After the proposed aist ation laws were withdrawn they contined to receive coverage in the black press a 1937 article entitled protest sterilization threat in Bermuda in the Pittsburgh Courier on um protest from clergy acknowledged that continued discussion of these proposed laws was based on rumors as late as 1938 the black press
Published stories on the threat of sterilization in Bermuda and one piece even compared the plan to sterilization laws in Nazi Germany though the sterilization plan was never actually enacted the threat of sterilization in left was a enough was enough to Galvanize this significant um critique and opposition the second International
Event that received significant um sort of outcry in the black press was the passage of Nazi uh sterilization laws and the um sterilization of black afro afrer children in the RAR Valley Nazi atrocities were uh frequently invoked in the back pre in the black press as a bad
Omen of what could happen to African-Americans in the US African-American journalists made comparisons between eugenic Steris laws um in the US and in Nazi Germany and it’s also important to note here that the Nazi sterilization law is actually based on the California sterilization law like if you held them up together
They would look uncomfortably similar um Hitler implemented the Nazi compulsory sterilization program after coming to power in 1933 and targeted those deemed a threat to the racial purity of the Reich he as part of the program he ordered the sterilization of hundreds of afrer children in the RO
Valley which was met with significant outrage in the black press the children were The Offspring of French Colonial troops um of African descent who were um stationed in the Rin line after World War I and the Nazis saw them as a threat to German racial Purity a 1934 article
In the um Pittsburgh carrier strongly opposed the initial call to sterilize these children and warned that it was a sign of what could happen in the US quote this is Extreme racialism and nationalism gone mad if there are any Negroes in America disposed to flirt with f fascism they might seriously
Consider the manner in which German fascists are planning to deal with Negroes we have already heard some of that talk over here from the klex plan the Anglo-Saxon clubs the White America society and from the intellectual authors of the slogans that these morons live by end quote African-Americans were not only
Interested in condemning the oppression of other other members of the race but they also saw the connections between the plight of afrer and racism in the United States if Eugenics went unchecked in the US African-Americans would share the fate of these afro Germans Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr Min a Baptist
Minister and later uh the first African-American to represent New York in Congress wrote a scathing piece um railing against Nazi politics in 19 Nazi policies in 1936 he called Nazi policies quote a reversion to barbarism end quote and argued that quote Nazism is definitely committed to persecuting the
Black of this world world end quote referring to the sterilization of afro-german children he argued that quote the mass sterilization in Cologne of negro children is one of the blackest sins committed in the name of Western culture end quote Powell saw this moment as part of a larger of larger patterns
Of racial oppression both in the US and abroad and so there’s a notable shift in the ways that African-Americans use eugenic terms and framing to think about racial Improvement because of the disproportional disproportionate impact of eugenic interventions on on African-Americans though as is with the case uh in the larger American Eugenics
Movement Eugenics doesn’t really decline or disappear after the second world war but ra rather sort of migrates into other fields and and discourses that continue to shape conversations about race health and heredity African-Americans do do continue to engage ethenic thought eugenic thought in sort of different permutations but it
Does differ significantly from the discourses that we see prior to the the second world War the anxieties about uh sterilization in Eugenics um more broadly that we saw in the black press um Turned out actually to be quite preent African-Americans bore the disproportionate impact of compulsory sterilization laws approximately 60,000
People in the United States were subjected to eugenic sterilization California had the highest of any state at 20,000 my home State Virginia came in second place at at 8,000 uh North Carolina’s uh Eugenics commission sterilized roughly 7,000 people and around 40% of those people were African-American even after eugenic
Sterilization laws begin to be repealed in the the 40s and 50s because of the the outcry around Nazi atrocities African-Americans indigenous people and latinx people actually continue to be sterilized against their will and actually in even larger numbers um through the and even larger numbers in the ways that sterilization becomes
Taken up by sort of the welfare state in public hospitals Etc um one example that I often turn to that I think is just very um indicative of what this kind of sterilization abuse looks like is the involuntary sterilization of uh civil rights activist Fanny L Hamer while undergoing
A surgery for a benign uterine tumor Hammer was subjected to what was called a Mississippi appendectomy or an involuntary hysterctomy in 1961 she only became aware of the procedure because the operating physician told his wife who told community members and eventually the news made its way back to
Her stories like hamers helped to shape black feminist efforts to address sterilization abuse which become the backbone of reproductive Justice movement starting in the 1970s The increased visibility of sterilization abuse LED African-Americans to reject the Enterprise entirely rather than reinterpret or reevaluate how could be how it could abused in service of the
Race and so to conclude uh I argue that black Eugenics as a concept demonstrates the ways that African-Americans sought to use science to address social problems that stemmed from structural racism black Eugenics and its after lives make visible the long history of African-Americans of the long history of African-Americans understanding that
Eugenics had political utility and cultural significance and that mobilizing these ideas were would ultimately become an important part of their advocacy thank you thank you so much a we’re going to open it up for Q&A now um for those of you who are here in person just feel free to
Raise your hand I can call on you but make sure that you push your microphone so the green light shows up um this is for our guests that are online so that they can hear your question um for those of you who are online please continue to
Enter your questions into the Q&A box and we’ll get to as many as possible tonight hi we do have one question already online from George Amo he says have you delved into the contents of the medical education for Dr Cobb at Howard or his earlier education and biology at Case
Western Dr Kenny senior at Shaw University or other National Medical Association contemporaries who favored Eugenics to what extent were medical schools promoting Darwin’s theory of natural selection to what extent were do genesis influencing the selection of medical textbooks in Black medical schools from the mid 19th through early 20th
Centuries just writing this down yeah I can repeat if you need me too oh so there’s a lot there so this is um a really interesting point and this is something that I’m still sort of getting my arms around but in a lot of American Medical Education Eugenics is firmly
Baked in right that not only through Eugenics textbooks that are produced by like the Eugenics record office and Charles Davenport but also through the literature that’s proliferating medical journals and you have really prominent Physicians like Lou Barker at Hopkins or Harvey or n Jordan at UVA who are sort
Of very vocally arguing that you that Eugenics needed to be actually a central part of of of medical education and so um black Physicians are are certainly a part of this world where Eugenics is sort of accepted as an important sort of scientific and medical uh discipline
That can be mobilized to deal with lots of different issues and um in some cases with some of the Physicians that I look at you can sort of see the paper trail of who they’re reading who they’re in correspondence with um Cobb is for example corresponding with Hopkins
Eugenesis Raymond Pearl quite a bit they send each other articles and they’re they um they have this very robust correspondence he also corresponds with physical Anthropologist Alice her Alice herd litka who’s at the Smithsonian really important physical Anthropologist and really invested in anthropometry cob actually goes to take a class from him
In anthropometry at the Smithsonian so it’s so when I sort of mentioned that African-Americans are deeply embedded in the movement it’s not only sort of in this in s sites like in the classroom but it’s also because all of this the a lot of the literature that’s coming out
In this moment that people are reading is is deeply embedded with Eugenics and then also you have physicians at black univers it’s these black Medical College and and and other institutions who are receiving literature from um Eugenics organizations to promote Eugenics you also have um black faculty assigning
Eugenics text at Howard University uh there’s a colleague Bridget Robinson who’s been looking specifically at Eugenics education in HBCU and I think her book is forthcoming because I want to cite it so I hope so um but there’s there’s a lot of this because it’s sort of baked into
American Medical Education and so there’s not a sort of separate track that black Physicians are taking but they are sort of instead taking that information and trying to mobilize it in a different direction thank you I had this such I learned so much here I really appreciate
Your talk um can you say something a little bit more about the relationship between uh black eugenesis and Margaret Sanger especially after that 1939 comment that she made and what they thought I mean you mentioned that there was a shift in the 30s so I’m just wondering if had anything to do with
That or sure so um even despite that comment I still see after the second world war like birth control kind of becomes a consist was one of the things that actually stays pretty consistent um so there are black folks who were advocating for birth control and Family
Planning um Dr Dorothy farby who’s also at Howard um pushes it actually is sort of instrumental in having the National Council of negro women pass a resolution on birth control so that there’s this idea that birth control and family planning as a sort of voluntary Act is
Still useful and that what becomes the problem is the sort of compulsory ways that things are disproportionately applied to black people so there’s still a lot of um there’s also a lot of birth control advocacy as part of national negro Health Week Planned Parenthood provides lots of material as part of
National negro Health Week to be sent out to Black communities hosting their own observances so there’s still a lot of energy for birth control and that actually shifts a little bit in the 60s and70s where you have black power movements arguing that birth control is a form of genocide against black
Communities and that’s where a lot of the conversation begins to shift because it becomes conflated in a lot of ways with the sterilization abuse that’s occurring in public hospitals um in the same moment and is wrapped up in sort of implication in sort of the ways that the
The welfare state operates so having sterilization and birth control be conditions of receiving welfare for example and that becomes conflated with for example organizations like Planned Parenthood when actually bit of a different trajectory but that’s where we start to see this the sea changes with a sort of black radical politics in the
60s and 70s but even still there’s there’s still support for the idea that like Family Planning is a useful thing in its different iterations even with even though there is this this messy history of the ways that this that that these things are disproportionately targeted at black communities because of things like
Population control and things like that but there’s still with alongside that an interest that that there’s there’s types of Family Planning and birth control that are useful and there are types that are problematic hi yes I agree that this was a great talk from a we uh went to PhD
School together so it’s nice to see her spread her wings um I noticed when you put up the images of the newspapers that you said oh it made its way into like filler content that both of them were both talks or books about Eugenics were targeted toward young people and Boy
Scouts and it was just wondering if um discussions of eugenics targeted toward young people were like tailored in any way to that demographic or seem different that’s a good question um there is um some of some of this that’s targeting like targeting black youth in like National negro Health Week
Materials some of which are deliberately targeted at children especially in schools but um a lot of the things that I’ve seen that are specifically about children kind of come in this form like this lecture at church this kind of side this like sort of extracurricular programming even though there is some uh
Literature that would indicate that like Eugenics is being taught in for example in public education but I haven’t done enough research to know what that looks like you know under the atmosphere of segregation would a sort of black child in a segregated Elementary School get the same kind of um access to eugenics
In a way that like other that white children might I haven’t done the digging necessary to make that claim but I imagine that if it’s if it’s if we’re seeing this for pre like K through 12 education in white schools I imagine there’s something comparable that’s happening with black children but I
Don’t have enough evidence for that yet um hi thank you so much for your talk it was amazing um I do have a question so with the Rise of Black eugenic Thought um did white eugenesis see this as a threat um and also uh or
Were they able to yield it um in a way uh to carry out their own agendas of surveilling communities of color especially like the African-American community population oh this is a great question so far I haven’t seen anything where they feel threatened and in some instances I see this like active
Engagement where you have so for example like I was um did research in the archives at Caltech last year and the human veteran Foundation which is a Eugenics organization sort of based on the west coast H is is I I went through basically you know before list serves Or List
Serve their mailing list and there’s loads of black schools and black professors that they’re trying to send this material to because they want to get the message out and so if black people are willing to listen they’re willing to share it just like you have these really interesting and sometimes
Surprising correspondences between these literally like almost like I super villain level racist people and like these black eugenists just sort of swapping ideas and sharing articles where sometimes you come across and I’m like why would you be cor this person is an arch racist yeah why are you
Corresponding with them but it’s because that there’s this there’s this sort of way that you that they think by sharing like by swapping notes that there’s some you know broader good that comes out of it and so I haven’t I’d be Cur I’m not actually I’d have to I’m GNA have to do
Some more digging because I haven’t seen anything where they’re threatened but there is moments where they’re trying to get black people to embrace Eugenics because they want to Target black people with Eugenics but also because some of them see black people as sort of comrades in arms to sort of put forward
These eugenic ideas out into the world and sort of imagine that oh wa well we’re doing it over here if you can get these folks to embrace Eugenics then we can get rid of all the unfit people and how great would that be right and so um
It’s a bit of a mixed bag but there is this sort of really interesting correspondence engagement you have black people going to Eugenics conferences Booker T Washington used to hang out with like John Harvey Kellogg at Battle Creek um there’s all of this and it’s it’s it’s almost strange like when I
First came across it I’m like why would you sign up for this but there’s this way that they imagin there’s something useful out of it and that white eugenist is hope that black eugenesis sort of take on these ideas but I they have different Visions for what taking on the ideas might
Mean we have a question from online from Dale Miller who asks how did other contemporary black leaders in the early 20th century respond to Eugenics and eugenic policies for example did you find opposition to eugenic policies Andor situating the race betterment quote issues with social determinant so I don’t um so far outside
Of some of these critiques and newspapers I don’t have a lot of black leaders who openly just completely reject the entirety of eugenics as an Enterprise I do have a lot of black authors who will try to Nuance the claims of eugenics or Express the limitations of eugenics or sort of reinterpret who
Should be the targets of eugenics but I I haven’t come across any black leaders so far who say Eugenics is useless we don’t need it right like when that slide I had of the birth control review like these are some of the the most important black intellectuals of the period and
They’re like n this is great like let’s do more and it’s it’s strikingly interesting that a lot of that critique is happening in the black press and it’s not happening a lot in these Elite discourses there is you know complications and tensions and nuances with Eugenics but I haven’t seen any
Overt rejection yet um which is honestly on on course because that’s sort of the case with the broader American Eugenics movement that a lot of people sort of think conceptually Eugenics is a good idea and differ in what the implication or what the the application of eugenics might look like
So you have people who argue like yes we should use heredity to you know resolve social problems and wouldn’t it be great instead of having poverty and crime if we could just prevent these things from existing with Eugenics and a lot of people get on board with this where you
Have a lot of differences is how people would like to implement Eugenics you have people who think Eugenics is a great idea but have a problem with compulsory sterilization laws but think that voluntary birth control is a great idea for example so Dr nine thank you so much for
This incredible tonight it’s pleasure having you here um for everyone else please join us on March 19th for our next lecture with Dr Jeremy Brown and have a wonderful evening thank you for coming
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