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Human Betterment”: the Fight for and Against 50 Years of Sterilization in North Carolina

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Human Betterment”: the Fight for and Against 50 Years of Sterilization in North Carolina Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2014 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2014 “Human Betterment”: The Fight For and Against 50 Years of Sterilization in North Carolina Kay Bielak Schaffer Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2014 Part of the American Politics Commons, Community Health Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Maternal and Child Health Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social History Commons, Social Welfare Commons, and the Women's Health Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Recommended Citation Schaffer, Kay Bielak, "“Human Betterment”: The Fight For and Against 50 Years of Sterilization in North Carolina" (2014). Senior Projects Spring 2014. 22. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2014/22 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Human Betterment”: The Fight For and Against 50 Years of Sterilization in North Carolina Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College by Kay Schaffer Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2014 ix Acknowledgements Tom Keenan : Thank you for advising me, looking over every single revision, teaching me the power of the ***, and shaping this amorphous blob of ideas into a senior project. Nicole Caso : For taking me in first semester and always making me feel better about everything. Thank you for your guidance, I’ll never forget the JFK airport. Felicia Keesing : Thank you for being on my board and making biology less scary. The Lifetime Learning Institute : For giving me the opportunity to travel to North Carolina and do hands-on research. John Railey and Phoebe Zerwick : Thank you both for taking the time to speak with me. Your insights made my project infinitely better. Cindy, Richard, and Max Schaffer : Thank you for all the annoyingly supportive text messages. Tara Canney : For putting up with my planning and loud chewing for eight years. In- deedle-do-we-did-it. Abby Kaplan : For being the most astute and supportive friend throughout this process. Thanks for reading this entire thing and I’m sorry I thought you were Italian that one time. Patrick : Thanks for listening. Morry Mather Potter ’66 : Without your carol I would have been homeless. Don’t worry, I slept there too. Table of Contents Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………………… ix Introduction Hidden In History: The Legacy Of Eugenics In America ………………. 1 Chapter 1 Rebranding Eugenics: Public Complacency And The Human Betterment League …………………………………………. 7 Chapter 2 For Your Own Good: Maternalism And The End Of The Sterilization Movement …………………………………………… 30 Chapter 3 Compensation Without Commemoration: The Unusual Fight For Reparations And Lack Of Public Awareness ………………... 55 Conclusion Far From Over: Sterilization In The Year 2014 And The Advent Of Neoeugenics In America …………………………………… 74 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………… 80 Appendices …………………………………………………………………………….. 84 1 Introduction Hidden In History: The Legacy Of Eugenics In America “Getting married was a good idea/ but now we’ve got five kids to rear/ way things are going there’s a youngin’ each year. / What are we gonna do, my darling?” - Windsong, Human Betterment League of NC television spot, 1971. When we think of eugenics, we think of the Nazis. The word evokes images of Jewish people being corralled and sent to gas chambers in the largest genocide the world has ever seen. However, eugenics is not a German invention. It originated in the United States. From 1907-1974, over 65,000 Americans were sterilized through government programs in more than thirty states. 1 These initiatives targeted members of society who possessed ostensibly hereditary traits that made them “unfit” to reproduce in the eyes of eugenicists. This policy received legal grounding in Buck v. Bell (1927) when the United States Supreme Court ruled that states had the right to sterilize genetically “defective” Americans. 2 In the majority opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” 3 With its etymological roots in the Greek word for “good birth,” the term “eugenics” was first coined in the early 1900s by English scientist Sir Francis Galton as, “the study of all agencies under control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations.” 4 Galton originally made a distinction between “positive” and “negative” eugenics, the former referring to voluntary family planning and the use of gene selection to make biologically ideal marriages. 1 Harry Bruinius, Better for All the World: The Secret history of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity, (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 9. 2 Idib. 3 Idib.,7. 4 Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Four Windows Eight Walls, 2003), 18. 2 However, these once positive aspirations soon gained negative connotations when the language of eugenics moved into the realm of coercion. In his book, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, Edwin Black discusses this shift in perspective: Everything Galtonian eugenics hoped to accomplish with good matrimonial choices, American eugenicists preferred to achieve through draconian preventative measures designed to delete millions f potential citizens deemed unfit. American eugenicists were convinced they could forcible reshape humanity in their own image. 5 Breeding was now framed as a process of elimination rather than selection; eugenicists began focusing on who should not reproduce rather than who ought to. In order to ensure genetically perfect unions, those who were “unfit” needed to be removed from the candidate pool entirely. The only way make this permanent was through sterilization. This shift in perspective can be attributed to Charles Davenport, a highly religious American civil engineer and the father of modern eugenics. In 1903, Davenport partnered with the American Breeder’s Association (ABA), which agreed to support his efforts in formulating a Eugenics Record Office, “to quietly register the genetic backgrounds of all Americans.” 6 In order to do so, Davenport and his team had to actively search for those who qualified as “unfit” by standards they themselves had created. The “standards” for judging the quality of a trait were by no means objective or scientific. As Black writes: Ten groups were eventually identified as “socially unfit” and targeted for “elimination.” First, the feebleminded; second, the pauper class, third, the inebriate class or alcoholics; fourth, criminals of all descriptions including petty criminals and those jailed for nonpayment of fines; fifth, epileptics; sixth, the insane; seventh, the constitutionally weak class; eighth, those predisposed to specific diseases; ninth, the deformed; tenth, those with defective sense organs, that is, the deaf, blind, and mute. 7 5 Black, War Against the Weak, 21. 6 Ibid., 45. 7 Ibid. , 58. 3 These categories were formulated during an ABA committee meeting in 1911. In the midst of the Progressive Era, eugenics was contextualized by an overall commitment to the betterment of society through education and social reform. 8 At this gathering, the group discussed how it could begin, “purging the blood of the American people of the handicapping and deteriorating influences of these anti-social classes.” 9 Based on these regulations, it was estimated that ten percent of the population of the United State was “socially unfit.” 10 By term “elimination,” they meant that any person who fell under one or more these ten categories needed to be “purged” through sterilization. The term “feebleminded” stands out as the first and most vague requirement for sterilization because what constitutes “feeblemindedness” was never clearly defined. 11 Is it in reference to one’s literacy or ability to take care of oneself? At what age can a person first be classified as “feebleminded?” If it is describing a mental disability, where is the line drawn in terms of severity? This seemingly deliberate ambiguity allowed the ABA to justify the sterilization of most individuals it deemed “unfit.” The ABA believed “feeblemindedness,” poverty, alcoholism, and other social traits could be found in “defective germ-plasma that might pop up in future generations.” 12 These pseudoscientific beliefs were the foundation of the eugenics movement and promoted the idea that if one grew up poor, then one’s children will be poor and so will their children for generations to come. *** 8 “Overview of the Progressive Era,” University of Houston Digital History, accessed April 27, 2014. 9 Black, War Against the Weak, 58. 10 Ibid., 59. 11 Ibid., 48. 12 Ibid., 58. 4 I first learned about these sterilization programs by chance. Browsing The New York Times one morning in December of 2011, I came across a headline that shocked
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