Introduction
Against the backdrop of ever-increasing racism, African American leaders of the early twentieth century developed the ideology of racial uplift to develop a positive black identity and achieve racial equality. Underlying all of these projects was a belief on the part of the black elite that the masses' ability to demonstrate proper Victorian ideals of morality, sexuality, and general sociability would signal African-American integration into American citizenship. For Adams and other activists who adopted eugenic discourse, marriage was the eugenic solution to warding off immoral sexuality, good health, and better members of the race.
Beginning with Daniel Kevles' seminal work, In the Name of Eugenics (1985), which traced the origins of the British and American eugenics movements, a wave of scholarship on the subject has emerged. This study places African Americans at the center of the eugenics movement, a movement so popular and ubiquitous that it set the early decades of the twentieth century apart from the rest. For Gaines, this hierarchy marks an assent to the racist conceptualization of the Negro problem by projecting onto “other blacks racial ideas of black pathology.”
This study builds on the work of Mitchell and English by looking at how racial uplift involved eugenics, yet departs from this scholarship by paying more attention to theories of eugenics to determine why some members of the black elite considered them so important. to be followed.
Scientific Discourses on the Biological Condition of the Negro
Washington used his influence as president of Tuskegee University to push studies on the health and well-being of the Negro; he would also edit many of these studies himself. Kealing, noted African-American intellectual and leader within the African Methodist Episcopal Church, discussed the biology of the Negro. Kealing is emblematic of uplifting activists who used the discussion of social problems to address the victimization of the American Negro.
Although Kealing was primarily concerned with slavery as the cause of the Negro's problems, other activists used poverty, a lack of educational opportunity, or disenfranchisement to explain the social position of the Negro. Taking a more social scientific stance than Kealing, Du Bois commissioned a study at Atlanta University in 1906 entitled The Health and Physique of the Negro American in which he examined the major problems facing blacks at the time, namely high mortality rates and high susceptibility to cancer. towards illness. Kealing, “The Characteristics of the Negro People,” in The Negro Problem: A Series of Essays by Representative American Negroes, ed.
Although some race leaders explained the position of blacks by pointing to systemic discrimination, others were unwilling to completely reject the idea that some blacks were inherently inferior. Miller in his study, "Some Psychological Considerations on the Race Problem," published in the same Atlanta study in which Du Bois argued against using the Negro's position to imply his inferiority, argued that "the cause of the backwardness of the so-called lower races are variously attributed to environmental influence of all kinds and to natural incapacity.”25 While Miller recognized the importance of environment, he believed that inherent traits had more influence on individual behavior than environmental factors. Miller, "Some Psychological Considerations on the Race Problem" in The Health and Physique of the American Negro, ed.
Morality and social adjustment are the result of interpreting the value of a situation rather than necessity. Finally, Miller called for more empirical studies of the black man's ability to demonstrate inherent inferiority. On one level, recognizing that the lower segments of the race were biologically inferior was for some black elites a way to establish boundaries between themselves and the lower classes and assert their place in the class hierarchy.
Advice Manuals and the Negro
While it is understandable that uplift activists were eager to challenge notions of racial inferiority, the fact that some intellectual leaders entertained the idea that some members of the race were in fact biologically inferior points to a fundamental tension in the uplift project. Both combined all the elements of the traditional etiquette guide: household duties, social behavior, beauty, fashion, biology, sexuality, and. Gibson was white or light-skinned.32 Regardless of his racial background, Gibson, like Hackley, is an example of the educated elite at the forefront of the upward movement.
32 It should be noted that Gibson wrote almost exclusively about African Americans and appears in the book Progress of the Race (Naperville: J.L. Nichols, 1912), on a page titled "Three Prominent Educators and Authors". 33 "Race work" is a general abolitionist term that denotes not only work on behalf of the race, but more specifically work on the race that would be necessary to obtain full citizenship for African Americans. Understanding these theories not only gave leaders the ability to advocate for more equal treatment on behalf of African Americans, but, most importantly for the abolitionist cause, they were able to exploit these theories to create better-bred children who had positive representations of the race would be.
This section is exemplary of the authors' awareness of the eugenics movement and belief that eugenic theories could be used in the service of African Americans. After weighing the usefulness and plausibility of the theories, the authors concluded that Weismann's theory was the most reasonable explanation for how the characteristics were transmitted. Washington, the head of school, encouraged Hackley to make her advice available to a wider audience.
The themes of The Colored Girl Beautiful mirror those of many mainstream (white) counseling manuals, both of which espoused highly class-based ideas about the virtues of motherhood, modest public decorum, and appropriate behavior with members of the opposite sex. Early in The Colored Girl Beautiful Hackley declares her ultimate goal in raising the race to be the "better upbringing" of colored children. Hackley envisioned a well-bred child as healthy, proud in appearance, speaking in a controlled manner, educated and proud of their breed.51 With this emphasis on the best breeding it is no wonder that Hackley devoted many of the guides to her speaking etiquette. about the importance of black motherhood, which she called "the glory of the race."52 Hackley's last and longest chapter, "The Colored Mother Beautiful."
Quite the contrary, she differs from many of the other writers examined in that she supported women working outside the home and recognized that doing so could be as fulfilling as motherhood.56. Their writings suggest a belief that African Americans had equal standing with the rest of the race, that individuals were born good, that environmental conditions caused social degeneration, that this degeneration was not heritable to succeeding generations, and that finally being well-born could to be preserved if the parents were invested. in the moral and intellectual development of their children.
Eugenic Discussions within the Chicago Defender
The article reported that Darwin's first theories had been appreciated by those in the scientific community and “[were] recognized as something practical in the social life of the human race.”58 The author believed that the first annual International Eugenics Conference was indicative of the inauguration and adoption of eugenics in American ideology. The article concluded with the author expressing his belief that, "the improvement of the race, the promotion of its happiness, and the prevention of many moral errors depend in a great measure upon the knowledge of such laws as that of inheritance."59. With the addition of the health column, the Advocate established black news publications that would continue to engage their papers to cover social, health, political, and economic issues affecting African Americans.
Not only was illegal sexual activity bad because of its negative consequences for one's own health, but writers such as Williams and Rebecca Stiles Taylor argued that illegal sexual activity threatened the soundness of the institution of marriage. Taylor believed that the upliftment of the Negro, hereditary or otherwise, would be more quickly accomplished through good marital unions, as opposed to education alone.67 In an edition of “As A Woman Thinks” published on July 17, 1937, Taylor speaks. This subsection of the mentally retarded was especially frightening to eugenicists because, unlike those classified as imbeciles, they could pass as normal and therefore reproduce with normal people.
Taken together, sexual reform and the upholding of the institution of marriage were seen as necessary to rehabilitate the image of the American Negro and gain racial equality. Discussions of sterilization and eugenics turned the tide more broadly in the late 1930s. Second, the B.R.P.'s observation of so many sterilizations, while perhaps exaggerated, is most likely attributable to a real increase in sterilization programs in the States. United States, most of which gained greater support after the Supreme Court's 1927 legalization of the mentally disabled in Buck v.
Bell is considered a watershed moment in the history of American sterilization because it made the mandatory sterilization of the mentally ill constitutional. By maintaining a similar leadership among the middle class, specifically the clergy and other educated members of the black elite, civil rights also allowed grassroots activists, many of whom were working-class citizens, to become more engaged in the racial struggle. African Americans' acceptance of eugenic ideas did not necessitate that they turn a blind eye to the ways in which mainstream eugenics contributed to racist perceptions of society.
Defender, you get a picture of African American participation in the eugenics movement, driven by their ability to draw on biological theories in the field of eugenics to develop a doctrine of racial uplift that encouraged blacks to become more conscious and to breed more consciously, so that better members of the breed could emerge. Separated from mainstream eugenicists due to their inability to fit into the racial conception of the bourgeoisie and rejected by the larger black segment of the population due to their class prejudices, racial upliftment as realized through eugenics would prove problematic as racial oppression would prove a more formidable opponent . than social degeneration.
