Galton’s Child - Charles B. Davenport
Francis Galton - the father of eugenics, left behind a legacy that would influence his followers - who would become what we recognize today as the first generation of eugenicists, contributing to slavery, apartheid, colonization, and genocide (Nature, 2022).
Charles B. Davenport - a zoologist-turned-anthropologist who met Galton in 1902, and who founded the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor in 1910.
Davenport was a prominent biologist who established the Eugenics Records Office in 1910. Believing intensely in the principles of eugenics, Davenport pushed for an analysis of inherited traits and released his findings to the public regularly, influencing state laws on sterilization, immigration, and miscegenation.
Eugenics was proposed as a solution to the ills of the time - all crimes were believed to have genes which make certain people more likely to commit them, genes which caused ‘feeble-mindedness’, that genes for skin color were tightly connected to such ‘inferior’ genes, genes which caused heightened intelligence - strength, and personality traits.
By preventing people with those ‘inferior’ genes to have children - by sterilizing them when the chance is presented - then people with ‘superior’ genes would be able to have as many children as they desired, repopulating the country with a superior race and turning natural selection on its head.
Sources:
Charles B. Davenport. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. (2021, September 6). Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.cshl.edu/personal-collections/charles-b-davenport/
Charles B. Davenport. Omeka RSS. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/exhibits/show/galtonschildren/galton-s-children/charles-b--davenport
Concept 14 mendelian genetics cannot fully explain human health and behavior. Charles Benedict Davenport :: DNA from the Beginning. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2023, from http://www.dnaftb.org/14/bio.html
Images, Internet Archive Book. “Image from Page 281 of ‘American Breeders Magazine’ (1910).” Flickr, Yahoo!, 26 May 2015, https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/17495691734.
Nobles, M., Womack, C., Wonkam, A., & Wathuti, E. (2022, June 8). Science must overcome its racist legacy: Nature's guest editors speak. Nature News. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01527-z
Public Broadcasting Service. (n.d.). Charles Davenport. PBS. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eugenics-charles-davenport/#:~:text=A%20proponent%20of%20Eugenics%20crusade,of%20native%20born%20and%20immigrants
Public Broadcasting Service. (n.d.). The eugenics crusade. PBS. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eugenics-crusade/#transcript
Sir Francis Galton. Omeka RSS. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/exhibits/show/galtonschildren/sir-francis-galton