Prominent figures

A large part of the explanation for the integration of eugenics in society is the fact that prominent figures and politicians were heavily involved in eugenics. Those involved ranged from presidents to biologists to the inventor of the telephone.

Professors at universities like Harvard, Columbia and Cornell taught more than 375 separate eugenics courses. Biology textbooks included chapters on eugenics, complete with diagrams showing how "defects" passed from one generation to the next. Fairs hosted "Fitter Family" exhibits, giving awards to those who had "strong family trees."

"liberals, left-wing ideologues, social reformers, people of good intentions, scholars, and totally innocent scientists all contributed to the eugenics movement"

Theodore Roosevelt

• Accused the upper/middle classes of committing "race suicide"
  • Felt that female selfishness was contributing to the depletion of the race

• Held conversation and worked with Charles Davenport and other prominent eugenicists
  • The following is from a conversation with Davenport: “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 inescapeable duty, of the 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.”

Alexander Graham Bell

• Inventor of the telephone

• Worked actively with the deaf

• Acted as president of the Eugenics Records Office

• Believed that sign language to be a foreign language, and he felt that only English should be spoken in America
  • Wanted special schools with hearing teachers to be created that would outlaw sign language
  • Believed that it was a “great calamity” for deaf people to form clubs and organize socially because it would create a “deaf race”
  • His tactic was to determine the causes of marriages between the deaf and remove them
  • Advocated marriages between the deaf and the non-deaf in the hopes that the trait would eventually be entirely weeded out