Eugenics in the United States

Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States prior to its involvement in World War II.

Eugenics was practiced in the United States many years before eugenics programs in Nazi Germany, which were largely inspired by the previous American work. Stefan Kühl has documented the consensus between Nazi race policies and those of eugenicists in other countries, including the United States, and points out that eugenicists understood Nazi policies and measures as the realization of their goals and demands.

During the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th century, eugenics was considered a method of preserving and improving the dominant groups in the population; it is now generally associated with racist and nativist elements as the movement was to some extent a reaction to a change in emigration from Europe rather than scientific genetics.

The American eugenics movement was rooted in the biological determinist ideas of Sir Francis Galton, which originated in the 1880s. Galton studied the upper classes of Britain, and arrived at the conclusion that their social positions were due to a superior genetic makeup. Early proponents of eugenics believed that, through selective breeding, the human species should direct its own evolution. They tended to believe in the genetic superiority of Nordic, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples; supported strict immigration and anti-miscegenation laws; and supported the forcible sterilization of the poor, disabled and "immoral". Eugenics was also supported by African Americans intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Thomas Wyatt Turner, and many academics at Tuskegee University, Howard University, and Hampton University; however, they believed the best blacks were as good as the best whites and "The Talented Tenth" of all races should mix. W. E. B. Du Bois believed "only fit blacks should procreate to eradicate the race's heritage of moral iniquity."

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