Scientific & Social Origins
The American eugenics movement can be traced back to the Progressive Era, from 1890 to the 1920s. Rooted in racist ideology, eugenics movement advocates borrowed from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and distorted his ideas regarding "survival of the fittest" and applied them to society, thus adopting the principles of Social Darwinism. These ideas were extended by Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, who coined the term eugenics. Galton wanted a word "equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants." Eugenics comes from the Greek eugenes: "good in stock, hereditarily endowed with noble qualities."
"Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage."
- Francis Galton, The American Journal of Sociology
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Scientific Racism: The Eugenics of Social Darwinism documentary clip.
Legal Origins
The first sterilization law in the United States was passed in Indiana at the suggestion of physician, Harry Clay Sharp. Over the years, other physicians lobbied their state legislators to get them to develop laws that would sterilize sex offenders, criminals, epileptics, the "feeble-minded," and other minorities. However, many of these early laws had several flaws and to address this problem, Harry Laughlin of the Eugenics Record Office created a model eugenic law.
SPREAD OF STERILIZATION LAWS
At this point, 18 more states passed laws based off of Laughlin’s model, notoriously Virginia. In 1924, the Anglo-Saxon Club successfully convinced Virginia’s legislature to pass the Racial Integrity Act, and the Virginia’s Sterilization Act was enacted simultaneously, based off of Laughlin’s eugenic model. The elite claimed that these minorities downgraded society and should be sterilized to prevent further tainting of the original American race.