Eugenics study guide

Rudyard Kipling

British writer whose poem, "The White Man's Burden," was widely quoted by eugenicists.

Pedigree charts or "family trees"

Charts created by field workers at the ERO to track inherited traits from one generation to the next

Roger B. Taney

Chief Justice of US Supreme Court. Wrote Dred Scott decision. Said blacks had no rights that whites needed to respect. American's "political family" restricted to whites.

Eugenics

Comes from a Greek word meaning "good in birth" or "noble in heredity." The stem "Eu" means good, and "Gen" means origins.

Benito Mussolini

Established the world's first fascist government in Italy in 1922. Hitler used it as a model. Both governments were led by a leader whose word was law. The leader was thought to be a superior man of pure race. Mussolini was widely admired by American eugenicists for helping those unfit in his nation by ruling them.

Frederick Douglass

Former slave who was a leader in the fight against slavery. He argued that blacks are just as much men as whites, and said that scientists sometimes sacrifice the truth in order to prove their point.

Henry Ford

Founder of the Ford Motor Company. Sponsored a weekly newspaper than published articles with strongly anti-Semitic views. The articles were reprinted in Germany as a book, which was widely circulated and helped to promote Nazi propaganda.

Alfred Binet

French psychologist who invented the first usable intelligence test to help predict how children would do in elementary school. Warned against attaching greater meaning to its results. But eugenicists used it as a basis to measure IQ, or intelligence quotient.

Friedrich Tiedemann

German professor. Challenged Samuel Morton's ideas. Filled skulls with millet and then weighed it. Whites' skulls were not biggest. The largest was actually that of a Native American.

Fitter Family Contests

Held at state fairs in places like Kansas in the 1920s. Families submitted their eugenic history and were judged for their family's health and soundness of mind, as well and reflexes and other physical qualities.

Dred Scott decision

In 1857, slave Dred Scott sued for freedom and lost in the Supreme Court.

Franz Boas

Jew immigrated from Germany. Anthropologist who argued strongly against prejudice. Insisted that those who looked to biology or race to explain human differences prove their claims. Vigorously challenged the racial theories of the Nazis. was called biased by many because he was Jewish.

Cold Spring Harbor

Location of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO), in Cold Spring Harbor, New York

Natural selection

Organisms that adapt to their environment most effectively will survive and reproduce.

Crania Americana

Samuel George Morton's book. Said physical differences among races can predict intelligence, personality traits, and morality.

Charles Sumner

Senator from Massachusetts who, after the Civil War, suggested that the word "white" be removed from all U.S. laws relating to citizenship and naturalization - so people of any color could become U.S. citizens. It didn't happen.

Thomas Higginson and William Lloyd Garrison

Two former white abolitionists who expressed concern about American involvement in the Philippines. Worried that white American soldiers stationed in the Philippines were beginning to see white men as the rightful rulers of people of color. Thought that would have terrible consequences for blacks in the US.

Calvin Coolidge

U.S. President in the 1920s who supported the idea of restricting immigration. He believed in eugenics and the racial superiority of whites.

Henry Wallace

U.S. Vice President in the early 1940s. One of the few American politicians who challenged both Nazi racism and American eugenics.

Theodore Roosevelt

US President from 1901-1909. He had an interventionist and imperialist approach to nations he considered "uncivilized." And he supported the idea of "the best breeding with the best" and the sterilization of inferior types of people.

An anti-miscegenation law

A law that banned marriages between whites and individuals of other race to "preserve the best." they were very popular in Germany.

Mark Twain

A leading American writer, and a strong anti-imperialist. He argued that the hearts of men are the same, even if their skin color might be different.

The scientific method

A process by which information is gathered and evaluated. To be scientific, the method must be based on empirical and measurable evidence, and not biased.

Thomas Hunt Morgan

American biologist who modified Gregor Mendel's ideas on genetics. Conducted experiments on the common fruit fly. Found that heredity was much more complicated than Mendel's work showed, and that most traits were a result of different genes.

Henry H. Goddard

American eugenicist who published one of the most popular books on eugenics: "The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness." Compared two branches of the same family, one respectable, and one "a race of defective degenerates," all because one mother was feeble-minded, and one was not.

Samuel George Morton

American from the mid 1800s. Ranked the races according to skull size. Whites have larger skulls, therefore, they are superior to all other races.

Andrew Carnegie

American industrialist who made a fortune in the steel industry and donated huge sums of money to charity and the ERO.

Charles W. Stiles

American scientist who studied the effects of hookworm disease on southerners in the late 1800s. Found that environment can have a great impact on people's health and behavior.

W.E.B. DuBois

American sociologist who was the first African American to earn a PhD. He was outraged by claims that intelligence tests proved that black were inferior. He questioned the "science" of the tests, calling them "utter rot."

Jacob Landsman

An American critic of eugenics in the 1930s, when Hitler was coming to power. He said there was no scientific test proving that there was a Nordic race or that this so-called race was superior to any other race. He said the Nordic race was just a combination of Europeans.

Gregor Mendel

Austrian scientist. Founder of the science of genetics. He demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns. His work became popular after his death in the early 1900s when people used his findings to support the "science" of eugenics.

George William Hunter

Author of The New Civic Biology, a textbook that alerted high school students to the "menace of feeblemindedness" and the value of "breeding the best with the best." 1914

Francis Galton

Darwin's cousin. English mathematician and the father of eugenics. Believed that Darwin's theory of natural selection doesn't work in human societies like it does in nature because people interfere with the process. Proposed eugenics -- or breeding "the best with the best" -- in order to improve the human race.

Social Darwinism

Doctrine that used Darwin's theory of evolution to explain some people's beliefs about society, including the phrase "survival of the fittest."

Charles Davenport

English man who, in 1910, established the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) at Cold Spring Harbor in New York. Studied human heredity and tried to demonstrate how certain social traits are inherited.

Charles Darwin

English naturalist. Developed theory of evolution and the process of natural selection. Book: On the Origin of Species, 1859.

Thomas Malthus

English scholar who influenced Darwin. Wrote that human populations multiply faster than the supply of food. Got Darwin thinking about animals competing to survive.

Adolf Hitler

Nazi leader in Germany who wanted to build a "racial state," based on the idea of eugenics. It started with forced sterilizations and ultimately led to World War II and the extermination of one third of all the Jews in Europe, and displacement of almost all.

Jim Crow laws

Racial barriers in almost every aspect of life. American South. Segregated bathrooms, schools, drinking fountains, swimming pools, etc. Facilities for African americans are always inferior

Harry Laughlin

Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office who promoted involuntary sterilization laws. Also argued in favor of restricting immigration.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Supreme Court decision. Said blacks could be segregated from whites as long as accommodations were "seperate but equal." Opened the door for all kinds of Jim Crow laws, though the facilities for blacks were never equal.

Carrie Buck

Virginia woman who was deemed "feebleminded" and involuntarily sterilized at the institution where she had been committed. Eugenicists used her to test the courts to see whether they would say that the state's new involuntary sterilization law violated her rights. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the decision. This opened the door for other states to enact involuntary sterilization laws.