by Adam Cohen
The “primary reason”: Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 97.
“the arrest of a negro in New York”: Edward J. Larson, Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 103; “The Passing of Tom Heflin,” Life, May 7, 1951, 40.
“infected with the germ”: Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 224.
Adolph Sabath: Representative Sabath speaking against H.R. 7995, 68th Cong., 1st sess., April 5, 1924, Congressional Record 65, 5662, quoted in Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 223.
A new edition: Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society, 103.
In 1921 Good Housekeeping published: Calvin Coolidge, “Whose Country Is This?,” Good Housekeeping, Feb. 1921, 13–14, 106–9.
“Biological laws tell us”: John J. Miller, The Unmaking of Americans: How Multiculturalism Has Undermined America’s Assimilation Ethic (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 79.
Saturday Evening Post: “Saturday Evening Post,” in The Great Depression in America: A Cultural Encyclopedia, ed. William H. Young and Nancy K. Young (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 2:452.
“If America doesn’t keep out”: Otis L. Graham, Unguarded Gates: A History of America’s Immigration Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 51.
The new formula: Gulie Ne’eman Arad, America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 64.
“America’s Second Declaration of Independence”: Donna Gabaccia, Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 142.
Madison Grant hailed: Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 233.
“simply excluding certain races”: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (1925; repr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 440; Paul Lombardo, “‘The American Breed’: Nazi Eugenics and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund,” Albany Law Review 65 (2002): 756.
Southern and eastern Europeans: Koven and Gotzke, American Immigration Policy, 133.
Jewish immigration fell: Howard M. Sachar, A History of Jews in the Modern World (New York: Random House, 2007), 384.
The “biological” immigration policies: Ibid.; Gould, “A Nation of Morons,” 352.
Among the many victims: Patricia Cohen, “In Old Files, Fading Hopes of Anne Frank’s Family,” New York Times, Feb. 15, 2007.
CHAPTER FIVE: HARRY LAUGHLIN
In 1914, in his address: H. H. Laughlin, “Calculations on the Working Out of a Proposed Program of Sterilization,” Official Proceedings of the National Conference on Race Betterment (Battle Creek, MI: Race Betterment Foundation, 1914), 1:478, 489; Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 48.
That same year, with the report: Harry H. Laughlin, Report of the Committee to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the American Population (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Eugenics Record Office, 1914).
The exhibits at the congress: Harry Laughlin, The Second International Exhibition of Eugenics (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1923), 1, 17, 110–11.
502-page treatise: Harry H. Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (Chicago: Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, 1922), ix–xxii.
The committee initially supported sterilization: Frances Janet Hassencahl, “Harry H. Laughlin: ‘Expert Eugenics Agent’ for the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 1921 to 1931” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1970), 152–54.
The Carnegie Institution: Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization, ix–xxii.
The bureau conceded: Philip R. Reilly, The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 63.
Laughlin eventually turned: Ibid.; Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization, i, v–vi.
As the prospective funders anticipated: Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization., v, vi.
In the book itself: Laughlin, Report of the Committee to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the American Population.
He did not believe: Harry H. Laughlin, “The Legal, Legislative and Administrative Aspects of Sterilization,” in Report of the Committee to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the American Population, 125.
Writing now on his own: Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization, 446.
“socially inadequate classes”: Ibid., 446–47; Laughlin, “Legal, Legislative and Administrative Aspects of Sterilization,” 125.
He had his first reported seizure: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 66; Nathaniel Comfort, The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 97; Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2009), 351.
When Laughlin’s first seizure struck: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 65–66; Comfort, Science of Human Perfection, 97; Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 351.
The year before: William Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 6.
Laughlin argued: Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization, 438.
To bolster this argument: Ibid., 322, 324–36.
To insulate against: Ibid., 447, 449–50.
Laughlin strongly advised the states: Ibid., 446.
Eugenical Sterilization in the United States: Leon F. Whitney, The Case for Sterilization (New York: Frederick Stokes, 1934), 126–28.
Its charter members included: Reilly, Surgical Solution, 66.
to observe his favorite racial groups: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 191; Harry Laughlin to Hon. Harry Olson, Chief Justice of the Municipal Court of Chicago, Oct. 12, 1923, box D-2-3:6, Harry H. Laughlin Papers, Pickler Memorial Library, Truman State University, Kirksville, MO (hereafter cited as Laughlin Papers).
“The strenuous struggle for existence”: Laughlin to Olson, Oct. 12, 1923.
In January 1924: Reilly, Surgical Solution, 66; Harry Laughlin, “Eugenics in America,” an address delivered at Burlington House, London, Jan. 29, 1924, reprinted in Eugenics Review 17 (April 1925), 28–35; Nathaniel Deutsch, Inventing America’s “Worst” Family: Eugenics, Islam, and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 218.
In his remarks: Laughlin, “Eugenics in America,” 28–31.
The United States and the “white British colonies”: Ibid., 35.
“a zealot for passing laws”: Kenneth Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 92.
“the procreation of feeble-minded”: Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization, 99.
He would soon boast: “Annual Report of H. H. Laughlin for the Year Ending June 30, 1925,” in Laughlin folder 15, Charles Benedict Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia (hereafter cited as Davenport Papers); Laughlin, Eugenical Sterilization, 99.
As well as things were going: Stephen A. Siegel, “Justice Holmes, Buck v. Bell, and the History of Equal Protection,” Minnesota Law Review 90 (2005): 120–21; Lombardo, Three Generations, 316.
There had been a deluge: Leuchtenburg, Supreme Court Reborn, 6; Siegel, “Justice Holmes,” 106, 121–22.
On September 30, 1924: Aubrey Strode to Harry Laughlin, Sept. 30, 1924, box 3, folder 8, Arthur Estabrook Papers, M. E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives, University at Albany, State University of New York (hereafter cited as Estabrook Papers).
His client was “unwilling to proceed”: Ibid.
The law’s defenders: Ibid.
Strode gave Laughlin a brief synopsis: Ibid.
Laughlin wrote back to Strode: Harry Laughlin to Aubrey Strode, Oct. 3, 1924, box 11, Central Virginia Training Center Papers, Library of Virginia.
The nation’s highest court: Ibid.
He agreed with Dr. Priddy: Ibid.
It would be enough: Strode to Laughlin, Sept. 30, 1924.
Laughlin agreed to do that: Aubrey Strode to Albert Priddy, Oct. 29, 1924, box 11, Central Virginia Training Center Papers.
To begin the scientific study: Laughlin to Strode, Oct. 3, 1924; “Memorandum Outlining the Data Needed for a Family History or Pedigree Analysis of the Subject of the Test Case Under the Virginia Eugenic Sterilization Statute,” Carrie Buck and Doris Buck Figgins Sterilization, ca. 1920s–1980s file, Central Virginia Training Center Papers; Lombardo, Three Generations, 108–9, 319n26.
Laughlin sent a memorandum: Laughlin to Strode, Oct. 3, 1924; “Memorandum Outlining the Data Needed”; Lombardo, Three Generations, 108–9, 319n26.
He asked Strode for information: “Memorandum Outlining the Data Needed.”
Laughlin sent two tools: Laughlin to Strode, Oct. 3, 1924; “Memorandum Outlining the Data Needed.”
Strode wrote to Dr. Priddy: Strode to Albert Priddy, Oct. 7, 1924, box 11, Central Virginia Training Center Papers; “Memorandum Outlining the Data Needed.”
Dr. Priddy reminded Laughlin: Albert Priddy to Harry Laughlin, Oct. 14, 1924, box 11, Central Virginia Training Center Papers.
At a meeting: Ibid.
It was a conception: Ibid.
He asked Wilhelm: Albert Priddy to Caroline Wilhelm, Sept. 18, 1924, box 11, Central Virginia Training Center Papers.
the supervisor informed Dr. Priddy: Mary Duke to Albert Priddy, Sept. 22, 1924, unnamed folder, Carrie Buck and Doris Buck Figgins Sterilization, ca. 1920s–1980s file, Central Virginia Training Center Papers.
“I have had the Red Cross”: Albert Priddy to Aubrey Strode, Oct. 14, 1924, box 11, Central Virginia Training Center Papers.
Dr. Priddy wrote to Laughlin: Priddy to Laughlin, Oct. 14, 1924,.
“all of the Bucks and Harlows”: Ibid.
That “line of baneful heredity”: Ibid.
The picture of Carrie’s immediate family: Ibid.
Dr. Priddy offered more specific information: Ibid.
In a formal legal document: “Interrogatories of Harry H. Laughlin,” in “Carrie Buck Trial Transcript, 1–50” (2009), Buck v. Bell Documents, Paper 31, 31–41, http://readingroom.law.gsu .edu/buckvbell/31.
“short analysis”: Ibid., 29, 32.
Laughlin’s description of Carrie: Ibid., 32, 33.
Laughlin described Emma: Ibid., 32.
“These people belong to the shiftless”: Ibid. 32–33.
Laughlin’s most dubious assertions: Ibid.
Laughlin’s statement was similar: “Carrie Buck Trial Transcript, 1–50,” 25.
It was a useful inaccuracy: Laughlin to Strode, Oct. 3, 1924.
In the “Analysis of Facts” section: “Interrogatories of Harry H. Laughlin,” 34.
Laughlin also purported: Ibid.
There was, in fact, nothing: Ibid.
Laughlin then addressed a critical question: Ibid., 34–35.
“give in brief outline”: Ibid., 30.
salpingectomy and vasectomy: Ibid., 39, 40.
“give any other information”: Ibid., 30, 41.
It was agreed from the beginning: Strode to Laughlin, Sept. 30, 1924; Strode to Priddy, Oct. 29, 1924.
Strode was enthusiastic: Strode to Priddy, Oct. 29, 1924.
Estabrook joined the Eugenics Record Office: Deutsch, Inventing America’s “Worst” Family, 102; Lombardo, Three Generations, 36.
“highly inbred rural community”: Arthur H. Estabrook and Charles B. Davenport, The Nam Family: A Study in Cacogenics (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Eugenics Record Office, 1912), 1, 66–75.
The “Nam” of the title: Deutsch, Inventing America’s “Worst” Family, 104.
In keeping with their positions: Nancy Gallagher, Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1999), 37.
They insisted that the role of heredity: Estabrook and Davenport, Nam Family, 66.
The book’s subtitle: Stuart Hayashi, Hunting Down Social Darwinism: Will This Canard Go Extinct? (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 98.
a rural New York community: Estabrook and Davenport, Nam Family, 1–2; Deutsch, Inventing America’s “Worst Family, 104.
“No State can afford”: Estabrook and Davenport, Nam Family, 84.
Estabrook and Davenport considered the possibility: Ibid.
There was one solution: Ibid.
“Asexualization,” as they called it: Ibid.
“It has been persistently carried on”: Arthur H. Estabrook, The Jukes in 1915 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1916), 1; Francis T. Cullen and Pamela Wilcox, eds., Encyclopedia of Criminological Theory, (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2010), 1:276; “Carrie Buck Trial Transcript, 51–100” (2009), 77, Buck v. Bell Documents, Paper 32, http://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/buckvbell/32; Lombardo, Three Generations, 4.
In a typical entry, Estabrook described: Estabrook, The Jukes in 1915, 4.
In one eugenic analysis: Ibid., 59–60.
the Jukes were still defective: Ibid., 85.
“No matter”: Ibid.
But if the six hundred living feebleminded and epileptic Jukes: Ibid.
McCulloch had focused: Oscar McCulloch, The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation (Indianapolis: Charity Organization Society, 1891).
In his follow-up: Deutsch, Inventing America’s “Worst” Family, 109.
As he had with the Nams: Arthur Estabrook, “The Tribe of Ishmael,” Eugenics, Genetics and the Family 1, no. 6 (1922): 404, http://www.dnalc.org/view/11453—The-Tribe-of-Ishmael-by-Arthur-H-Estabrook-in-Eugenics-Genetics-and-the-Family-vol-1-6-.html.
“considered the work to be highly problematic”: Deutsch, Inventing America’s “Worst” Family, 126–27.
Estabrook studied a mixed-race: Arthur Estabrook and Ivan McDougle , Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkens, 1926); review of Mongrel Virginians: A Study in Triple Race Mixture, by Arthur H. Estabrook and Ivan McDougle, Journal of Negro History 11, no. 2 (Apr. 1926): 416.
Mongrel Virginians: Nikki L. M. Brown and Barry Stentiford, eds., The Jim Crow Encyclopedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2008), 1:275; Abraham Myerson, review of Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe, by Arthur H. Estabrook and Ivan McDougle, The Annals of the American Academy, n.d., 165.
The community’s ancestors: Myerson, review of Mongrel Virginians, Annals of the American Academy, 165; Wayne Winkler, Walking Toward the Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 125.
“among the American eugenicists”: Brown and Stentiford, Jim Crow Encyclopedia, 275.
“Ichabod Ross”: Abraham Myerson, review of Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe, by Arthur H. Estabrook and Ivan McDougle, Mental Hygiene, n.d., 640, box 3, folder 4, Estabrook Papers.
Another was said: Ibid., 640–41.
The authors invoked: Estabrook and McDougle, Mongrel Virginians, 201; Winkler, Walking Toward the Sunset, 126.
Abraham Myerson: Myerson, review of Mongrel Virginians, Annals of the American Academy, 165–66.
The authors began the fieldwork: Winkler, Walking Toward the Sunset, 125.
While they were researching the book: Walter Wadlington, “The Loving Case: Virginia’s Anti-Miscegenation Statute in Historical Perspective,” in Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader, ed. Kevin R. Johnson (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 53–54, 97.
“What Happens When White”: Williams and Wilkins Company, “What Happens When White, Indian, and Negro Blood Intermingles?” box 3, folder 4, Estabrook Papers.
“the result of this race admixture”: Review of Mongrel Virginians, Journal of Negro History, 417.
“While many of the better white families”: Ibid., 418.
Strode appealed to Laughlin: Strode to Laughlin, Nov. 5, 1924; Lombardo, Three Generations, 111.
“Superintendent Priddy Lynchburg”: Telegram of Jessie Estabrook to Arthur Estabrook, Oct. 23, 1924, box 3, folder 8, Estabrook Papers.
Strode asked his new expert: Aubrey Strode to Arthur Estabrook, Nov. 6, 1924, box 3, folder 8, Estabrook Papers.
“I am a days”: Arthur Estabrook to Aubrey Strode, Nov. 8, 1924, box 3, folder 8, Estabrook Papers.
“We wish to present”: Strode to Estabrook, Nov. 6, 1924.
CHAPTER SIX: AUBREY STRODE
“scarcely any political question”: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003), 254.
he drafted such a weak statute: Gregory Michael Dorr, Segregation’s Science: Eugenics and Society in Virginia (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 122.
He was the scion: “Biography,” handwritten notes in a folder titled “Ca. 20,000 items, papers of Judge Aubrey Ellis Strode,” Aubrey Strode Papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia (hereafter cited as Strode Papers); Harry Bruinius, Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America’s Quest for Racial Purity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 31.
The Strodes traced their lineage: “The Strode Record—Historical Facts, Etc.,” box 107, Strode Papers; “Memorandum of the Ellis Family,” box 107, Strode Papers.
Kenmore: Sherese Gore, “Amherst County’s Kenmore Farm Added to List of Virginia Landmarks,” Lynchburg News & Advance, Dec. 27, 1914; 1957 Historic Home Tour, Amherst County Historical Society, http://www.amherstcountymuseum.org/tour1957.html#kenmore.
It was “one of the most charming”: William Shands Meacham to Mrs. Aubrey Strode, May 17, 1944, box 57, Strode Papers.
