1. What was the eugenics movement of the 1920s? Where did it come from? What did it call for? Who supported it? Why was it supported? What was the finding of the Supreme Court in relation to it? • Introduction – The darker side of progressivism. Note what Progressivism was (1905- 1920ish). The 1920s = modernism and new scientific approaches as well as cultural conflicts • Eugenics was and called for………. • Eugenics laws were passed • Eugenic laws were tested………..Buck vs Bell………..to the supreme court and found constitutional and valid • Conclusion – What does this teach us/you? What is your reaction to this movement and this moment in history. Be thoughtful

The eugenics movement can be traced back to 1877, when Richard Dugdale published his findings regarding the Juke family. The Juke family had a long-standing familial history of criminal activity, as well as mental illness. After studying the Jukes, Dugdale created a hypothesis regarding inherited traits. Dugdale argued that if emotional and mental traits could be inherited in the same way that physical traits could be, then why could not “superior” traits be inherited in the same way? In essence, the eugenics movement urged the breeding of humans in much the same way racehorses or show dogs were bred; superior traits were desired, so humans with those traits should breed in order to ensure those traits passed to their offspring.
Many influential Americans supported the eugenics movement, such as Charles Lindbergh and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The U.S. Supreme Court Case Buck v. Bell (1927), written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., upheld a Virginia statute that allowed the state to forcibly sterilize “mentally unfit” patients at the state hospital. Bell, the superintendent of the Virginia hospital, argued that Carrie Buck needed to be sterilized to prevent her mental illness from passing to any offspring that she might have in the future. The Supreme Court upheld the Virginia statute, arguing that forced sterilization helped to protect the citizens and overall health of the state. Buck v. Bell has never been overturned. However, the Supreme Court case Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942) made sterilizations much harder to legally justify.
The eugenics movement lasted until the 1930s when it became associated with Nazism and Nazi Germany. Critics of the eugenics movement argued that the similarities between the eugenics movement and the speeches and actions of Hitler and the Nazis were too frightening, especially as news of the forced sterilizations in Germany began to spread. As a result of this association, the eugenics movement is now associated with “scientific racism.”