Eugenics & the African American Experience

The African American Experience

• Harlem, an uptown New York City neighborhood, drew black migrants from the South. Black commerce and culture thrived.
• Many sought cultural identity in their African origins, but had no desire to return to Africa. They found creative energy in the struggle to be blacks and Americans.

This gathering of black artists and philosophers was called the Harlem Renaissance.
Language of the ghetto and the rhythms of jazz to describe the African-American experience. Jazz continued as unique aspect of Harlem; music lured whites uptown to Harlem to share the excitement of the Jazz Age. Some black writers combined writing abilities to transform oral histories & rural black folk tales into exciting stories.

Movement starting in the 1920s that was based around engineering the 'perfect race'. (i.e.- white supremacy).

Members of the "great race," i.e., people of northern and western European backgrounds (with exception of Irish Catholics), were supposed threatened by those "whom evolution has left behind." (Irish, Blacks, ect.)

Note: ‘Survival of the fittest’ does not apply because immigrants coming from ‘less advanced societies’ continued to have large families (people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America) hence the "rising tide" against white superiority.

Eugenics Society of America selects ‘most perfect people’ in regions (like babies). Families get awards for being ‘perfect breed’.
Crime, insanity, mental defects, alcoholism, indigence were all products of "bad heredity/genetics." Therefore, steps should be taken to sterilize those whose contribution to the gene pool would not be 'beneficial' to the human race. (ex. black women)
Eugenicists do not condemn these human interferences, be they decried consequences. As a result, “No longer should we allow nature to select human traits; having already intruded upon the process, we should continue to do so but in a scientific manner.”

First IQ tests put into effect during WWI, now used on general population
Tests showed, according to eugenicists, that Italians and other immigrants possessed low intelligence on average. 70% of the foreign-born draft sample scored 90 or lower on these I.Q. tests, compared to 46% among the native-born white draft sample. African-American scores were even lower- 49% scored below 70.
Because of these tests, public school systems across the country began "tracking" students, based upon I.Q. tests developed in accord with eugenics principles. Some of these tests and practices are still in place today

Eugenics (Cont.)

• States adopted variants of Virginia's Racial Purity law (outlawed interracial marriage and/or a model sterilization law)
• Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 passed, established U.S. immigration quotas. If quota was met for the year, no more immigrants. Western European immigrants favored over others.

KKK-upport eugenics
Shared a ‘commitment to pseudo-scientific breeding’ and "elimination of the unfit" people and races from sexual activity and "development of the fit to the highest degree through the process of scientific study."
The KKK swelled to new heights during this time period, reaching it maximum membership of several million during the mid-late twenties

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Panama Region's 'Most Perfect Baby'