Long Island and the Legacy of Eugenics: Station of Intolerance

Historian Torres (Long Island Migrant Camps) provides an eye-opening look at the central role that a Long Island research facility played in the spread of eugenics in the 20th century. Influenced by the Victorian British eugenicists who invented the theory, American biologist Charles Davenport established the Eugenics Records Office at Long Island’s Cold Spring Laboratory, where from 1910 to 1939 he collected medical records and genealogical data from across the country. The office also generated new data, dispatching female college graduates to interview prisoners, minorities, and the poor in search of “hereditary defects.” The goal was to create a database that would allow America to rid itself of “degenerative traits.” For almost 30 years, Davenport writes, the office, which issued reams of reports, was at the forefront of eugenics as an intellectual movement. He asserts that it “directly inspired” Nazi atrocities, citing, among other evidence, how defendants at the 1946 Nuremberg trials used a Eugenics Records Office report in their defense—defining their handiwork as “a euthanasia program.” Torres disturbingly argues that the influence of the ERO can still be felt in the U.S., especially in the prison system, which “has adopted programs eerily similar to the sterilization programs designed... at the Eugenics Records Office.” It’s an unsettling look at the American incubation of a heinous ideology. (Jan.)