"It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), US Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
In 1934 he implored the General Assembly to broaden the scope of Virginia’s sterilization law; “the Germans,” he complained, “are beating us at our own game and are more progressive than we are.” Joseph DeJarnette, Virginia Encyclopedia
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW: [. . .] But there are an extraordinary number of people whom I want to kill. Not in any unkind or personal spirit, but it must be evident to all of you — you must all know half a dozen people, at least—who are no use in this world. Who are more trouble than they are worth. And I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board, just as he might come before the income tax commissioner, and, say, every five years, or every seven years, just put him there, and say: “Sir, or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence?”
"National Socialism is nothing but applied biology" Rudolph Hess, Washington Post, NYT, NY Post (Could not find primary source)
"A new movement was starting …. It did not belong to Socialism nor was it in the labor field, and it had much more to it than just the prevention of conception. As a few companions were sitting with me one evening, we debated in turn voluntary parenthood, voluntary motherhood, the new motherhood, constructive generation, and new generation. The terms already in use-Neo-Malthusianism, Family Limitation, and Conscious Generation seemed stuffy and lacked popular appeal. … We tried population control, race control, and birth rate control. Then someone suggested ‘Drop the [word] rate.’ Birth control was the answer“ Margaret Sanger An Autobiography Page 107-108
"The negro is seldom content with sexual intercourse with the white woman, but culminates his sexual furor by killing the woman sometimes taking out her womb and eating it. If the United States of America people would cease to prostitute their high mental qualities and recognize this negro as a sexual pervert, it would reflect greater credit upon them; and if they would sterilize this mentally afflicted creature instead of torturing him, they would have a better right to pose as sound thinkers and social reformers.” Robert Reid Rentoul, Race Culture; Or Race Suicide? (London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., 1906) Page 31-32
“The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and, if systematically executed, represents the most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising improvement of health as a whole.” Mein Kampf By Adolf Hitler Page 349
"Mr. Winston Churchill recalled the fact that there were at least 120,000 feeble-minded persons at large in our midst who deserved " all that could be done for them by a Christian and scientific “at large in our midst” who deserved “all that could be done for them by a Christian and scientific civilization now that they are in the world,” but who should, if possible, be “segregated under proper conditions so that their curse died with them and was not transmitted to future generations.” Editorial Notes”, Eugenics Review vol. 2 (October 1910), Page 163-164, Winston Churchill
"It is easy to let the imagination run wild on the supposition of a whole-hearted acceptance of eugenics as a national religion.” Francis Galton, Restrictions In Marriage Page 57
"I agree with the paper, and go so far as to say that there is now no reasonable excuse for refusing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenic religion can save our civilization from the fate that has overtaken all previous civilizations." George Bernard Shaw, The American Journal Of Sociology Volume X; July, 1904; Number
"Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it" Woman and the New Race by Margaret Sanger Page 62-63
"The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately.
Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to
bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives. The male defectives are no less dangerous. Segregation carried out for one or two generations would give us only partial control of the problem. Moreover, when we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded." The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger Page 101-102
"Where the parent stocks are very diverse, as [in] matings between whites, Negroes and Amerindians, the offspring is a mongrel-a walking chaos, so consumed by his jarring heredities that he is quite worthless" Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Page 166
"Speaking English, wearing good clothes and going to school and to church do not transform a Negro into a white man. Nor was a Syrian or Egyptian freedman transformed into a Roman by wearing a toga and applauding his favorite gladiator in the amphitheater" Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), Page 16
"The leader of the German nation, Adolf Hitler, ably supported by Frick and guided by this nation’s anthropologists, eugenists and social philosophers, has been able to construct a comprehensive racial policy of population development and improvement that promises to be epochal in racial history. It sets a pattern which other nations and other racial groups must follow if they do not wish to fall behind in their racial quality, in their racial accomplishments and in their prospects for survival.” U.S. Eugenist Hails Nazi Racial Policy,” New York Times, 29 August 1935, Clarence Cambell
"It is unfortunate that the anti-Nazi propaganda with which all countries have been flooded has gone far to obscure the correct understanding and the great importance of the German racial policy." The German Racial Policy,” Eugenical News Vol. XXI (1936) Page 25
"Nothing is so distinctive in Nazi Germany as its ideas about race. Its concept of racial matters underlies the whole National Socialist philosophy of life and profoundly influences both its policies and practices. We cannot intelligently evaluate the Third Reich unless we understand this basic attitude of mind. Unfortunately such understanding is not easy, because the whole subject has been so obscured by passion and propaganda." Lothrop Stoddard, Into the Darkness (Newport Beach, CA: Noontide Press, 2000), Page 187
"As is well known, the Nazi viewpoint on race and the resultant policies are set forth by Adolf Hitler himself in the pages of Mein Kampf, the Bible of National Socialism. The future Fuehrer therein wrote: “It will be the duty of the People’s State to consider the race as the basis of the community’s existence. It must make sure that the purity of the racial strain will be preserved In order to achieve this end the State will have to avail itself of modern advances in medical science. It must proclaim that all those people are unfit for procreation who are afflicted with some visible hereditary disease, or are the carriers of it … having such people rendered sterile." Lothrop Stoddard, Into the Darkness (Newport Beach, CA: Noontide Press, 2000), Page 187-188
"The relative emphasis which Hitler gave racialism and eugenics many years ago foreshadows the respective interest toward the two subjects in Germany today. Outside Germany, the reverse is true, due chiefly to Nazi treatment of its Jewish minority. Inside Germany, the Jewish problem is regarded as a passing phenomenon, already settled in principle and soon to be settled in fact by the physical elimination of the Jews themselves from the Third Reich.” Lothrop Stoddard, Into the Darkness (Newport Beach, CA: Noontide Press, 2000), Page 189
"The whole build-up thus far had been so magnificent and the attendant psychic atmosphere so impressive that by this time I really did not know what to expect. I had the feeling that I was being ushered into the presence of a Roman Emperor or even an Oriental Potentate. The absurd thought crossed my mind that I might find Der Fuehrer seated on a throne surrounded by flaming swastikas.
At that moment I was bidden to the Presence. Turning left, I passed through double doors and entered another large room. To my right hand, near the doorway, was an upholstered sofa and several chairs. At the far end of the room was a flat-topped desk from behind which a figure rose as I entered and came towards me. I saw a man of medium height, clad in a plain officer’s tunic with no decorations save the Iron Cross, black trousers, and regulation military boots. Walking up to where I had halted near the doorway, he gave me a firm handshake and a pleasant smile. It was the Fuehrer." Lothrop Stoddard, Into the Darkness (Newport Beach, CA: Noontide Press, 2000), Page 205
"I came away convinced that the law was being administered with strict regard for its provisions and that, if anything, judgments were almost too conservative. On the evidence of that one visit, at least, the Sterilization Law is weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way." Lothrop Stoddard, Into the Darkness (Newport Beach, CA: Noontide Press, 2000), Page 196
"Whether wholly of defective inheritance, or mostly of good inheritance, but suffering from an insurmountable hereditary handicap, members of the following classes must..be considered as socially unfit, and their supply should, if possible, be eliminated from the human stock: (1) the feeble-minded ; (2) the pauper class; (3) the criminal class; (4) the epileptics; (5) the insane ; (6) the constitutionally weak, or the asthenic class; (7) those predisposed to specific diseases, or the diathetic class; (8) the deformed ; (9) those having defective sense organs, as the blind and the deaf, or the kakaisthetic class." Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeders' Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population, Bleeker Van Wagenen (quote not in book, source cited) Problems In Eugenics Papers communicated to the First International Eugenics Congress University Of London, July 24th to 30th, 1912. Page 462 or 4
"Even if we accept organized charity at its own valuation, and grant that it does the
best it can, it is exposed to a more profound criticism. It reveals a fundamental and ir-
remediable defect. Its very success, its very efficiency, its very necessity to the social order,
are themselves the most unanswerable indictment. Organized charity itself is the symptom
of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents. My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the "failure" of philanthropy, but rather at its success." The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger Page 108
"Birth control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks— those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization." APOSTLE OF BIRTH CONTROL SEES CAUSE GAINING HERE; Hearing in Albany on Bill to Legalize Practice a Milestone in Long Fight of Margaret Sanger -- Even China Awakening to Need of Selective Methods, She Says BY Margaret Sanger. President American Birth Control League, April 8, 1923, NYT
"With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." Charles Darwin The descent of man Page 138
“[a]t some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.” Charles Darwin The descent of man Page 156
"Above all, there is no more absurd fallacy than the shibboleth of ‘the melting pot.’ As a matter of fact, the melting pot may mix but does not melt. Each race-type, formed ages ago, and ‘set’ by millenniums of isolation and inbreeding, is a stubbornly persistent entity. Each type possesses a special set of characters: not merely the physical characters visible to the naked eye, but moral, intellectual and spiritual characters as well. All these characters are transmitted substantially unchanged from generation to generation" Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Page 165
"no amount of education or good environment can change a feebleminded individual into a normal one, any more than it can change a red-haired stock into a black-haired stock.” Henry H. Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness Page 53
"The opinions which I summarize here are not so much my own, originally, as those of medical authorities who have made deep and careful investigations." Woman and the New Race by Margaret Sanger Page 86
"Segregation through colonization seems in the present state of our knowledge to be the ideal and perfectly satisfactory method" Henry H. Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness Page 117
"Indeed Less Than 1,000 sterilizing operations have been performed under the immediate provisions or even under the shadow of the twelve statutes. With this in view, the rate of sterilization required seems high, but, unless the people of the several states are willing to attack the problem entirely... A halfway measure will never strike deeply at the roots of the evil" Proceedings, First National Conference on Race Betterment, Page 490, Harry H Laughlin
"I agree with you … that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind …. Some day, we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type, is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type." Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Charles B. Davenport January 3rd 1913 APS B:D27
"In short, plaintiffs allege that many of those who were involuntarily sterilized are still unaware of the reason for their infertility as well as the medical ramifications of the procedure" Poe v. Lynchburg Training School and Hospital, 518 F. Supp. 789 (W.D. Va. 1981)
"It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no" Charles Darwin, Origin Of Species Page 64-65
"Could not the undesirables be got rid of and the desirables multiplied?” Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters, and Labours of Francis Galton, Page 348
"What nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly" Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, And Aims. Francis Galton The American Journal Of Sociology Volume X; July, 1904; Number 1
"It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox religious, tenet of the future" Francis Galton The American Journal Of Sociology Volume X; July, 1904; Number 1
"The "swart cockney” {in Britain} is a resurgence of the primitive Mediterranean stock, and probably a faithful replica of his ancestors of Neolithic times." Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Page 167
"There are many parents who, in many cases, may themselves be normal, but who produce defective offspring. This great mass of humanity is not only a social menace to the present generation, but it harbors the potential parenthood of the social misfits of our future generations.” Harry H. Laughlin, secretary, Bulletin No. 10A: The 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: Cold Spring Harbor, 1914) Page 16
"If they mate with a higher level, they contaminate it; if they mate with the still lower levels, they bolster them up a little only to aid them to continue their unworthy kind.” Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10A: 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. I. THE SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE'S WORK, by HARRY H. LAUGHLIN, Secretary of the Committee, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, February, 1914, Page 15
"For the purposes of eugenical study and in working out a policy of elimination, it seems fair to estimate the anti-social varieties of the American people at 10 per cent. of the total population; but even this is arbitrary No matter in what stage of racial progress a people may
be, it will always be desirable in the interests of still further advancement to cut off the lowest levels, and to encourage high fecundity among the more gifted." Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10A: 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. I. THE SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE'S WORK, by HARRY H. LAUGHLIN, Secretary of the Committee, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, February, 1914, Page 15
"Is sterilization in any of the laws held a punitive remedy? If so, can it be considered as a second punishment for one offense, or as cruel or unusual punishment? Is the State taking any retaliatory measures toward a certain class of offenders in authorizing the operation? Can the sterilization of degenerates, or especially of criminals, be legitimately effected through the exercise of police functions?" Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10A: 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. I. THE SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE'S WORK, by HARRY H. LAUGHLIN, Secretary of the Committee, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, February, 1914, Page 8
I understand that the operation of vasectomy is painless…other than to render it impossible for him to have progeny…. The danger, however, is that it might be inflicted upon one who is not a habitual criminal, who might have been the victim of circumstances and who could be reformed. To deprive such an individual of all hope of progeny would approach closely to the line of cruel and unusual punishment. There are many cases where juvenile offenders have been rendered habitual criminals who subsequently became exemplary citizens … the very fact that they exist would require the exercise of extreme caution in determining whether such a punishment is constitutional.” Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10B: 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. II. THE LEGAL, LEGISLATIVE AND ADMINISTRATIVE ASPECTS OF STERILIZATION, by HARRY H. LAUGHLIN, Secretary of the Committee, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, February, 1914 Page 74
"Suggested Remedies...
1. Life segregation (or segregation during the reproductive
2. Sterilization.
3. Restrictive marriage laws and customs.
4. Eugenical education of the public and of prospective marriage period) mates.
5. Systems of matings purporting to remove defective traits.
6. General environmental betterment.
7. Polygamy.
8. Euthanasia.
9. Neo-Malthusianism.
"International Co-operation: A review of the studies looking toward the possible application of the sterilization of defectives in foreign countries, together with records of any such operations from eugenical motives; foreign laws, customs and attitudes in reference to eugenical sterilization. The extent and nature of the problem of the socially inadequate in foreign countries" Eugenics Record Office. BULLETIN No. 10A: 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. I. THE SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE'S WORK, by HARRY H. LAUGHLIN, Secretary of the Committee, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York, February, 1914 Page 9
"If we would preserve our state for a class of people worthy to possess it, we must prevent, as far as possible, the propagation of mental degenerates.” News and Notes,” Eugenical News, Vol. II (1917), Lewis Turman
"The decline in intelligence is due to two factors: the change in the races migrating to this country, and to the additional factor of the sending of lower and lower representatives of each race…. The conclusion [is] that our test results indicate a genuine intellectual superiority of the Nordic group over the Alpine and Mediterranean groups" Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence Page 180
"But the danger of the intelligence tests is that in a wholesale system of education, the less sophisticated or the more prejudiced will stop when they have classified and forget that their duty is to educate. They will grade the retarded child instead of fighting the causes of his backwardness. For the whole drift of the propaganda based on intelligence testing is to treat people with low intelligence quotients as congenitally and hopelessly inferior." Walter Lippmann, “The Mental Age of Americans,” New Republic 32, no. 415 (November 15, 1922) (Not Primary source, Wiki referenced it though)
"And in the meantime the psychologists will save themselves from the reproach of having opened up a new chance for quackery in a field where quacks breed like rabbits, and they will save themselves from the humiliation of having furnished doped evidence to the exponents of the New Snobbery" Walter Lippmann, “The Mental Age of Americans,” New Republic 32 no. 417 (November 29, 1922). (Not Primary source, Wiki referenced it though)
Race Betterment Foundation - The Race Betterment Foundation was a eugenics and racial hygiene organization founded in 1906 at Battle Creek, Michigan by John Harvey Kellogg
To purify the breeding stock of the race at all costs is the slogan of eugenics The compulsory sterilization of certain degenerates, is therefore designed as a eugenical agency complementary to the segregation of the socially unfit classes, and to the control of the immigration of those who carry defective germ-plasm." Proceedings, First National Conference on Race Betterment, Page 478, Harry H Laughlin
"The unprotected females of the socially unfit classes bear, in human society a place comparable to that of the females of mongrel strains of domestic animals,” Proceedings, First National Conference on Race Betterment, Page 484, Harry H Laughlin
"A social worker stated that Buck was “obviously feebleminded” and that her baby “had a look about it that is not quite normal.” Buck Vs Bell
"The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie Buck “is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her sterilization,” and thereupon makes the order …. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), US Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr
"Eugenics seems to me to be valuable in its critical and diagnostic aspects, in emphasizing the danger of irresponsible and uncontrolled fertility of the "unfit" and the feeble-minded establishing a progressive unbalance in human society and lowering the birth-rate among the "fit." The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger Page 104
"Her family had been Irish as far back as she could trace; the strain of the Norman conquerors had run true throughout the generations, and may have accounted for her unfaltering courage.” Margaret Sanger An Autobiography Page 11
"Mother’s eleven children were all ten-pounders or more, and both she and father had a eugenic pride of race" Margaret Sanger An Autobiography Page 29
"I think of Birth Control as an item … supremely important as an item in the eugenic program…. Birth control, I repeat, is the fundamental, primary element or item in the eugenic program" The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic
"Birth control, which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science. As a matter of fact, Birth Control has been concrete and realistic power to that science. As a matter of fact, Birth Control has been accepted by the most clear thinking and far seeing of the Eugenists themselves as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health.” The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger Page 189
"Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing up of miseries for future generations. There is no greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing theman increasing population of imbeciles."
Herbert Spencer, The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger Page 105
"Such philanthropy … unwittingly promotes precisely the results most deprecated. It encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant. "The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger Page 116-117
"We want fewer and better children … and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon US.” The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger Page XVI, HG Wells
"sterilization of the insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases" The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger Page 282, Appendix Aims of the American Birth Control League
"Gentlemen and Ladies, you have not any idea unless you have studied this subject mathematically, how rapidly we could exterminate this contamination if we really got at it, or how rapidly the contamination goes on if we do not get at it.” Irving Fisher, “A Reply,” Official Proceedings of the Second National Conference on Race Betterment (Battle Creek, MI: The Race Betterment Foundation, 1915). Page 68
"Let us not forget that these billions, millions, thousands of people are increasing, expanding, exploding at a terrific rate every year. Africa, Asia, South America are made up of more than a billion human beings, miserable, poor, illiterate labor slaves, whether they are called that or not; a billion hungry men and women always in the famine zone yet reproducing themselves in the blind struggle for survival and perpetuation." Margaret Sanger, " [Lasker Award Address] ," 25 Oct 1950, Planned Parenthood Federation of America meeting at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York. Margaret Sanger Project, public papers
"The second suggestion I would offer as one worthy of national consideration is that of decreasing the progeny of those human beings affiliated with transmissable diseases and dysgnic qualities of body and mind. While our present Federal Governmental Santa Clauses have their hands in the taxpayer's pockets, why not in their generous giving mood be constructive and provide for sterilizing as well as giving a pension, dole -- call it what you may -- to the feeble-minded and the victims of transmissible, congenital diseases? Such a programme would be a sound future investment as well as a kindness to the couples themselves by preventing the birth of dozens of their progeny to become burdens, even criminals of another generation" Margaret Sanger, " [Lasker Award Address] ," 25 Oct 1950, Planned Parenthood Federation of America meeting at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York. Margaret Sanger Project, public papers
"As color is the most important feature of this form of registration, the local registrar must be sure that there is no trace of colored blood in anyone offering to register as a white person. The penalty for willfully making a false claim as to color is one year in the penitentiary" The New Virginia Law to Preserve Racial Integrity March 1924
"April 30, 1924 Mrs. Robert H. Cheatham Lynchburg, Virginia
We have a report of the birth of your child,July 30th, 1923, signed by Mary Gildon, midwife. She says that you are white and that the father of the child is white. We have a correction to this certificate sent to us from the City Health Department at Lynchburg, in which they say that the father of this child is a negro. This is to give you warning that this is a mulatto child and you cannot pass it off as white. A new law passed by the last legislature says that if a child has one drop of negro blood in it, it cannot be counted as white. You will have to do something about this matter and see that this child is not allowed to mix with white children. It cannot go to white schools and can never marry a white person in Virginia.
It is an awful thing.
Yours very truly, WA. Plecker STATE REGISTRAR" Letter, Walter A. Plecker to Mrs. Robert H. Cheatham and Mrs. Mary Gildon, 30 April 1924: UVA Library 7284A Powell Papers, Box 56, Folder 1924 #1, Virginia Encyclopedia
The variation in races is not simply a matter of color of skin, eyes, and hair and facial and bodily contour, but goes through every cell of the body. The mental and moral characteristics of a black man cannot even under the best environments and educational advantages become the same as those of a white man. But even if the negro’s attainments should be considerable, these could not be transmitted to his offspring since personally acquired qualities are not inheritable. Neither can the descendents of the union of the two races if left to their own resources, be expected to develop or maintain the highest type of civilization.” Bureau of Vital Statistics, Eugenics in Relation to the New Family and the Law on Racial Integrity, (Richmond: Supt. Public Printing, 1924) Page 6-7
"It is evident from this study that the intellectual levels of the negro and the Indian race as now found is below the average for the white race. In the Wins, the early white stock was probably at least of normal ability, i.e. for the white …. [Today, however,] the whole Win tribe is below the average, mentally and socially. They are lacking in academic ability, industrious to a very limited degree and capable of taking little training. Some of them do rather well the few things they know, such as raising tobacco or corn-a few as carpenters or bricklayers, but this has been the result of years of persistent supervision by the white landlords. Less than a dozen men work even reasonably well without a foreman…. Very few could tell the value of either twenty-five or seventy-five cents" Arthur Estabrook and Ivan E. McDougle, Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe (Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1926) Page 199-200, Study From the Carnegie Institute of Washington
"There is practically no music among them, and they have no sense of rhythm even in the lighter mulatto mixtures. As is well known, the negro is ‘full’ of music. Some of them [the mulattoes] have been given special training in music, but no Win has ever shown any semblance of ability in this line.” Arthur Estabrook and Ivan E. McDougle, Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe (Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1926) Page 201, Study From the Carnegie Institute of Washington
"testing the worth of immigrants … in their home towns, because that is the only place where one can get eugenical facts …. For example, whether he comes from an industrious or shiftless family.” Biological Aspects of Immigration. Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, Sixty-sixth Congress, Second Session, April 16-17, 1920. Statement of Harry H. Laughlin Page 4
At a meeting of the Medico-Legal Society, London, where I gave an address (December 1904) upon my proposal to sterilize certain mental and physical degenerates, Sir John McDougall, Chairman of the Asylum Committee, London County Council, said—"One day we shall come to the conclusion that some physical means should be employed to prevent the unfit from producing children." Robert Reid Rentoul, Race Culture; Or Race Suicide? (London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., 1906) Page 164
"It is in the sterilization of failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies." Robert Reid Rentoul, Race Culture; Or Race Suicide? (London: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., 1906) Page 164, HG Wells
"It was believed that the object of the Society being primarily education was so universally established as to make the word education in the title redundant' lady georgina chambers, "notes on the early days of the 'eugenics education society,' Page 33
"The first step to be taken, “ought to be to establish some system by which all children at school reported by their instructors to be specially stupid, all juvenile offenders awaiting trial, all ins-and-outs at workhouses, and all convicted prisoners should be examined by trained experts in mental defects in order to place on a register the names of all those thus ascertained to be definitely abnormal.” Major Leonard Darwin, “First Steps Towards Eugenic Reform.” Page 34
"It is quite certain that no existing democratic government would go as far as we Eugenists think right in the direction of limiting the liberty of the subject for the sake of the racial qualities of future generations. It is here we find the practical limitation to the possibility of immediate reform: for it is unwise to endeavor to push legislation beyond the bounds set by public opinion because of the dangerous reaction which would probably result from neglecting to pay attention to the prejudices of the electorate.” Major Leonard Darwin, “First Steps Towards Eugenic Reform.” Page 35
"From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution. This has been used since the beginning of the race, very probably, although rarely with a distinct understanding of its eugenic effect; and its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated" Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson, Applied Eugenics (New York: Macmillan, 1918), Page 184
"Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race." Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), Page 49
"One may even view with satisfaction the high death rate in an institution for low grade feeble-minded, while one regards as a national disaster the loss of … the infant child of exceptional parents.” Charles B. Davenport , “Presidential Address,” A Decade of Progress in Eugenics: Scientific Papers of the Third International Congress of Eugenics (Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1934) Page 21
Nevada 1921 Gas Chamber for criminals
Grant's work was embraced by proponents of the National Socialist movement in Germany and was the first non-German book ordered to be reprinted by the Nazis when they took power. Adolf Hitler wrote to Grant, "The book is my Bible." Wiki, Atlantic, NYT, AP, Autobiography of Leon R. Whitney, unpublished manuscript circa 1973, p. 205: APS Manuscript Collection (Could not find primary source)
"The high percentage of blue eyes is remarkable" Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz, Human Heredity, 3n1 Ed., trans. Eden & Cedar Paul (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1931) Page 198 (using Davenport's US military data)
"In the children of Jews who have emigrated from eastern or central Europe to the United States, the skulls are narrower than those of their broad-skulled parents, and this comparative narrowness is more marked in proportion to the number of years that have elapsed since the migration…. Sicilians acquire somewhat broader heads in the United States.” Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz, Human Heredity, 3n1 Ed., trans. Eden & Cedar Paul (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1931) Page 120
"The Peoples’ State must set race in the center of all life. It must take care to keep it pure…. It must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one’s own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world…. It must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on, and put this into actual practice.” Mein Kampf By Adolf Hitler Page 608
"Like much Foundation research, funding was not limited to the United States. The Foundation supported research in Denmark conducted by Oluf Thomsen and Tage Kemp in the early 1930s on the genetics of psychopathology. This led to the development of a Danish twin registry composed of nearly two thousand pairs." Health and Wellbeing, Science, Medical Education and Public Health, The Rockefeller Foundation
"Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the off-spring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one …. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life.” Mein By Adolf Hitler Page 259
"What the Melting Pot actually does in practice can be seen in Mexico, where the absorption of the blood of the original Spanish conquerors by the native Indian population has produced the racial mixture which we call Mexican and which is now engaged in" Madison Grant The Passing of the Great Race (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), Page 17
"North America, whose population consists in by far the largest part of Germanic elements who mixed but little with the lower colored peoples, shows a different humanity and culture from Central and South America, where the predominantly Latin immigrants often mixed with the aborigines on a large scale" Mein Kampf By Adolf Hitler Page 260
"There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the [United States], in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigrants on principle to elements" Mein Kampf By Adolf Hitler Page 651
"it is possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and severely handicapped beings from coming into the world. I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock…. But the possibility of excess and error is still no proof of the incorrectness of these laws. It only exhorts us to the greatest possible conscientiousness …. It seems to me the ultimate in hypocrisy and inner untruth if these same people [social critics]-and it is them, in the main-call the sterilization of those who are severely handicapped physically and morally and of those who are genuinely criminal a sin against God. I despise this sanctimoniousness…. “ Otto Wagener, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, trans. Henry Ashby Turner (Yale University Press, 1987), Pages 145-146
“You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought, and particularly by the work of the Human Betterment Foundation. I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.” Human Betterment Foundation, “Report to the Board of Directors of the Human Betterment Foundation for the Year Ending February 12, 1936.”: Baileyl Howe Library: Perkins Papers. (WIKI, WIKI can't find primary source)
Rockefeller Foundation funding for Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes and Nazi eugenics
Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring - Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (Ger. Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) or "Sterilisation Law" was a statute in Nazi Germany enacted on July 14, 1933, (and made active in January 1934) which allowed the compulsory sterilisation of any citizen who in the opinion of a "Genetic Health Court" (Gr. Erbgesundheitsgericht) suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders – many of which were not, in fact, genetic. The elaborate interpretive commentary on the law was written by three dominant figures in the racial hygiene movement: Ernst Rüdin, Arthur Gütt and the lawyer Falk Ruttke. The law itself was based on the American Model Eugenical Sterilization Law developed by Harry H. Laughlin.
"On July 14, 1933, the Nazi dictatorship enacted the Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases. Individuals who were subject to the law were those men and women who “suffered” from any of nine conditions listed in the law: hereditary feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, hereditary epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea (a rare and fatal degenerative disease), hereditary blindness, hereditary deafness, severe physical deformity, and chronic alcoholism. Gerda D., a shopworker, was one of an estimated 400,000 Germans who were forcibly sterilized" THE BIOLOGICAL STATE: NAZI RACIAL HYGIENE, 1933–1939, Holocaust Encyclopedia
"Germany is the first of the world’s major nations to enact a modern eugenical sterilization law for the nation as a unit…. The law recently promulgated by the Nazi Government marks several substantial advances. Doubtless the legislative and court history of the experimental sterilization laws in 27 states of the American union provided the experience, which Germany used in writing her new national sterilization statute. To one versed in the history of eugenical sterilization in America, the text of the German statute reads almost like the ‘American model sterilization law.” Eugenical Sterilization in Germany," Eugenical News Vol. XVIII, No. 5 September-October, 1933
"In the meantime it is announced that the Reich will secure data on prospective sterilization cases, that it will, in fact, in accordance with ‘the American model sterilization law,’ work out a census of its socially inadequate human stocks." Eugenical Sterilization in Germany," Eugenical News Vol. XVIII, No. 5 September-October, 1933, Page 90
"To one acquainted with English and American law, it is difficult to see how the new German sterilization law could, as some have suggested, be deflected from its purely eugenical purpose, and be made ‘an instrument of tyranny', for the sterilization of non-Nordic races. Of the more than 16,000 cases of legal sterilizations, under the recent American state Sterilization statues, no one has ever suggested that in any single case had the state made a eugenical mistake …. One may condemn the Nazi policy generally, but specifically it remained for Germany in 1933 to lead the great nations of the world in the recognition of the biological" Eugenical Sterilization in Germany," Eugenical News Vol. XVIII, No. 5 September-October, 1933, Page 90
Nazis Insist Reich Be ‘Race-Minded No One Knows Exactly What That Means There, Except That Jews Are Target. FRICK EXPOUNDS DOGMA Admits Germans Are Not a Pure Strain, but Rejoices at 'Nordic Accentuation,’” New York Times, 7 January 1934
The University of Heidelberg in Heidelberg, Germany, granted Laughlin an honorary master's degree in 1936 for his work. Carl Schneider honouring Harry H Laughlin
Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen - American Eugenicist for Carnegie Institute who, ended up in the Buchenwald concentration camp, as a doctor killing people brutally
Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer - mentioned in Eugenical news 1928, march, Feb, 1929-30, 30-31, 32-33, 34-36 (can't access the actual text as Universities have it locked)
"Eugenical News extends best wishes to Dr. O. Freiherr von Verschuer for the success of his work in his new and favorable environment.” "Verschuer’s Institute,” Eugenical News Vol. XX (1935), Pages 59-60
The History of Twins, As a Criterion of the Relative Powers of Nature and Nurture” (1875), by Francis Galton
"Sex of Twins,” Eugenical News Vol. II (1917) Page 5
"Similar Tumors in Twins,” Eugenical News Vol. VII (1922), Pages 71, From Germany, Leipzig
"The subject of the genesis of human twins … has a special importance for eugenicists.”
R.A. Fisher, “New Data on the Genesis of Twins,” in Eugenics, Genetics and the Family: Volume I: Scientific Papers of the Second International Congress of Eugenics (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co., 1923), Page 195
"I want clean copy, because these reports will be forwarded to the Institute of Biological, Racial and Evolutionary Research at Berlin-Dahlem.”Thus I learned that the experiments performed here were checked by the highest medical authorities at one of the most famous scientific institutes in the world." Miklos Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1993 Page 97
"Work in human genetics should receive special consideration as rapidly as sound possibilities present themselves. The attack planned, however, is a basic and long-range one and such a subject as eugenics, for example, would not be given support.” Natural Sciences-Program and Policy: Past Program and Proposed Future Program,” Pages 79-80
"was partly responsible for the whole extermination,” Hirschhorn related emphatically during a February 2003 interview. “He was the one that gave the Nazis the pseudo-genetic rationale to destroy the Jews and Gypsies. He was part of the organization [American Society of Human Genetics] in 1949 because in those days … it was all covered up. No one really knew. But I’ll never forget. I was sitting in his university office in Münster as a young man, and he asked a lot of personal questions about my background, and so forth, until he found out I was Jewish. I knew who he was by that time. I took a great deal of pleasure in telling him that I came to the United States from Austria, and when I turned eighteen, I enlisted in the army and went over there and fought the Nazis-and went right through Münster. He was taken aback." Author’s interview with Dr. Kurt Hirschhorn, 12 February 2003
Hubertus Strughold - was a German-born physiologist and prominent medical researcher. Beginning in 1935 he served as chief of aeromedical research for the Luftwaffe, holding this position throughout World War II. In 1947 he was brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip and held a series of high-ranking medical positions with both the US Air Force and NASA.
"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause…. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these [Virginia] statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law…. These convictions must be reversed. It is so ordered." Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. I (1967)., Wiki
"The United States, however , also provides an example for the racial legislation of the world in another respect . Although it is clearly established in the Declaration of Independence that every one born in the United States is a citizen of the United States and so acquires all the rights which an American citizen can acquire , impassable lines are drawn between the individual races , especially in the Southern States . Thus in certain States Japanese are excluded from the ownership of land or real estate and they are prevented from cultivating arable land . Marriages between colored persons and whites are forbidden in no less than 30 of the Federal States. Marriages contracted in spite of this ban are declared invalid . A few might be mentioned here :
Alabama : Prohibition of marriage between a Negro or a per son of Negro origin and a white person . A marriage contracted in spite of this is regarded as a crime .
Arizona : Marriage between a white person on one side and a Negro , Mongolian , or Indian on the other side is considered null and void .
Arkansas : Marriage between a white person on one side and a Negro or Mulatto on the other side is considered illegal and void.
California : Marriage between a white person on one side and Negroes , Mongolians , or Mulattoes on the other side is considered illegal and void.
Florida : Marriage between a white person and a person who has one - eighth or more of Negro blood is considered null and void
Louisiana : Marriage between a colored person and a white , as well as marriage between Indians and blacks , is forbidden . Maryland : Marriage between a white person and a Negro or a descendant of Negroes back to and including the third genera tion is void and considered a crime . This far from complete enumeration should meet the wishes of our collaborators for some examples." Nuremberg Military Tribunal, Green Book, Volume IV, Page 1159, Translation Of Hofmann Document 54 Hofmann Defense Exhibit 61 Extract From "Information Service Of The Racial - Political Office Of The Nsdap Reich Administration " , 30 July 1937 , Concerning Race Protection Laws Of Other Countries
"In a judgment of the Supreme Court of October 1926 it says , among other things : " It is better for everybody if society , instead of waiting until it has to execute degenerate offspring or leave them to starve because of feeble - mindedness can prevent obviously inferior in dividuals from propagating their kind . The principle justifying compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover the severing of the Fallopian tubes ” Nuremberg Military Tribunal, Green Book, Volume IV, Page 1159, Translation Of Hofmann Document 54 Hofmann Defense Exhibit 61 Extract From "Information Service Of The Racial - Political Office Of The Nsdap Reich Administration " , 30 July 1937 , Concerning Race Protection Laws Of Other Countries
"I don't want it. I don't approve of it, sir. I don't want
a sterilize operation.... Let me go home, see if I get along all right.
Have mercy on me and let me do that.
— A woman pleading with the eugenics board, 1945" Lifting the Curtain on a Shameful Era,” Winston-Salem Journal.
"Major eugenics research at Wake Forest University was paid for by a patron whose long history of ties to science had a racial agenda that included a visit to a 1935 Nazi eugenics conference and extensive efforts to overturn key civil-rights legislation." Lifting the Curtain on a Shameful Era,” Winston-Salem Journal
"the other organizations set up in this country under eminent sponsorship have long since disappeared…. Was it because … some of the early eugenicists placed a false and distasteful emphasis on race and social class? … Was it because of the emotional reaction to Hitler’s excesses and his misuse of the word ‘eugenics’? Or did it go deeper.” History of the American Eugenics Society,” Page 4, American Philosophical Society, Frederick Henry Osborn Papers
"All those present agree that the time was not right for aggressive eugenic propaganda." Frederick Osborn, “History of the American Eugenics Society,” Page 17, American Philosophical Society, Frederick Henry Osborn Papers
"Grants were received from the Dodge fund, the Population Council, the Draper fund" Frederick Osborn, “History of the American Eugenics Society,” Page 17, American Philosophical Society, Frederick Henry Osborn Papers
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