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"Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics" by Mark A. Torres.
Most of us know that eugenics, the pseudoscience designed to “improve” the human race, might today be called junk science. What many do not know however, is that the epicenter for this horrific movement’s American offshoot was on Long Island.
“It was almost based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts,” says Mark A. Torres, author of “Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics” (240 pps, History Press, $24.99), “but Cold Spring Harbor was found to be a better location. Long Island already had something of a scientific community and Cold Spring Harbor is about 30 miles from New York City. It was near the media and the money.”
Indeed, some of the most storied names in American history were behind the eugenics movement including the philanthropic units of the Carnegie, Harriman and Rockefeller families. Other prominent supporters were inventor Alexander Graham Bell, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and numerous U.S. presidents.
“Presidents from Roosevelt to Hoover espoused eugenics,” says Torres, “as did numerous colleges and school systems. It was an indoctrination program.”
Among other repulsive things, in order to build trust and credibility with the general public, governments and educational institutions, eugenics needed scientific facts to support its perverted theories. To acquire such “facts” its earlier believers reversed the scientific method where a desired outcome was identified and so-called facts were then juggled in an attempt to prove the theory.
Eugenics posed a simple argument, remove humankind’s less-desirable members and the rest of us will enjoy a better world — a utopian society. Isn’t this a parallel to what we’ve been doing with plants and animals? Make each of us bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, wealthier?
“The eugenics theory was not new,” says Torres. The word “eugenics” is derived from the Greek eugenēs, which combines eu (“good” or “well”) and genos (“born” or “race”) and has classical and aristocratic implications. The name came from British scientist Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, biologist, author of “The Origin of Species” who is considered the Father of Evolution.
“The idea of improving society through better breeding and by weeding out those considered to be undesirable can be traced to the ancient Greeks, but it was perfected in America. What it really is however, is a class system with the rich and powerful trying to eliminate the poor, the disabled, the weak,” continues Torres. “The real questions are, who gets to decide who stays and who goes? What goes into making such a decision? How does someone get such authority?”
Torres’s book is compelling reading as it traces the societal and legal ramifications of the movement.
“Eugenics proponents often overlooked the fact that these co-called lower members were running the factories and farms,” says Torres. “It was a social philosophy that fueled prejudice, intolerance and classism.”
Brooklyn-raised and Harvard-educated Charles Davenport was born in 1866 and at age 13 attended the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute earning a degree in civil engineering. He later enrolled in Harvard, concentrating in zoology, eventually earning a Ph.D. in it. In 1898 he was appointed director at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences Biological Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor.
In 1902 he personally received a letter of support from Galton, which he used as collateral to secure funding in America, initially from the Carnegie Institute of Washington. He later received more substantial funding from Mary Harriman, the widow of Edward Henry Harriman, a wealthy railroad investor and builder, who in 1909 left his wife an estate worth about $3.7 billion in today’s dollars.
This relationship led to the establishment of the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor. It thrived for over 30 years, focusing on the study of heredity. Later on, John D. Rockefeller also became a significant donor to the center. Guests and visitors, including media members, were often entertained at the nearby Piping Rock Club and the facility offered many educational resources to the public, including schoolchildren, validating and spreading the movement.
In addition to being taught in colleges, several films helped to spread the eugenics gospel. In 1917, “The Black Stork” concerned a fictional couple advised not to have a child because it would likely be “defective.” At about the same time, eugenics was becoming all the rage in Germany where similar films were made. Such films were also widely distributed to American high schools.
“It was very much an American movement, but the Germans caught up,” says Torres.
Closer to home, in 1913 female members of the Shinnecock Nation were misled into being sterilized.
“They liked to experiment with captive populations of people in confined areas,” says Torres. “On reservations, in prisons and mental institutions. With the Native Americans they would bring treats and try to befriend them. But everything they did would be used against the subjects who were always found to be inferior. Twenty-five to 50 percent of some female Native American populations were sterilized.”
Similar trials were held in Puerto Rico where thousands were subjected to involuntary sterilization to control what was deemed an inferior population.
One of the book’s more striking moments is its review of the controversial 1927 Supreme Court Buck vs. Bell decision, when the justices, in an 8-1 decision, backed the State of Virginia to forcefully sterilize 19-year-old Carrie Buck based on a eugenics diagnosis, thus legalizing the movement’s methods and subsequently, the sterilization of thousands across the country. Holmes described it as the one decision that “gave me pleasure.”
Not only has the decision never been reversed but it served as a key facet in the defense used in the 1946 trial United States of America vs. Karl Brandt et al., in Nuremberg, Germany, where former Nazi leaders were accused, of among other things, crimes against humanity in what became known as the Doctors’ Trial. Five months later, Brandt and six others were convicted and executed.
What’s equally troubling and bewildering in this dark chapter of human history is the zeal behind Davenport.
“He was a legitimate scientist but somehow became a zealot,” says Torres who hopes to write what would be the first biography of America’s Founding Father of eugenics. “He became obsessed in a quest for the perfect race through so-called proper breeding. It masked racism, exploitation and economic crimes behind flawed science. It was the force of the day and it’s reappearing lately with hatred towards foreigners, immigrants and the homeless.”
