Eugenics Record Office Collection

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Rooted in racial and disability bias and discredited as a legitimate science, the Eugenics Record Office (1910-1939) collected information on physical, mental, and temperamental traits for the purpose of improving the genetic quality of the human population through the exclusion of people and groups assumed to be 'inferior' by no other metric than extreme prejudice. Eugenicists channeled ideals of rational thought, social progress, statistics, and state management towards the pursuit of 'race betterment' and the defense of Anglo-American racial purity.

The study of eugenics attempted to quantify physical and mental characteristics based not on true scientific principles, but by using correlation studies in conjunction with prejudiced societal definitions of desirable and undesirable traits. In addition to promoting harmful beliefs and legislation, this pseudoscience attempted to attribute societal and cultural conditions, such as poverty or the vaguely defined 'criminality,' to inheritable genetic traits. Anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University declared that eugenics was racism disguised as science. Thomas Hunt Morgan, also at Columbia, pointed out that where traits were clearly influenced by social conditions, it was impossible to make any claims for a specific genetic influence.

Under Harry H. Laughlin's direction, the Eugenics Record Office advocated for laws that led to restrictive immigration laws and the forced sterilization of Americans it deemed 'socially inadequate.' Over 35 states passed and used eugenic sterilization laws, and by the 1960s, when these laws were beginning to be repealed, more than 60,000 people who had been judged 'genetically defective' had been forcibly sterilized without consent.

American eugenicists' work had worldwide ramifications: in Germany, the National Socialists used Laughlin's model as one of the bases of their sweeping sterilization law of 1933, which ultimately led to the sterilization of over 400,000 people.

The legacy of eugenicists such as Harry H. Laughlin, Charles B. Davenport, and Francis Galton, in tandem with the political and social influence of the Eugenics Record Office, raise the importance of studying the history of eugenics in the twentieth century. To study the history of eugenics is to confront how scientific racism set the groundwork for modern politics and conversations about race, immigration, intelligence, societal norms, and belonging in America. In 2014, the Center for Genetics and Society reflected:

“Many educational institutions still avoid discussing the history of eugenics, and many are reluctant to confront their own complicity in the abuses it facilitated. But studying eugenics in the twentieth century is important not just as a matter of learning history, but as part of what we need to know in order to thoughtfully consider the responsible uses of genetic technologies today.”

Born March 11, 1880 in Oskaloosa, Iowa, Harry Hamilton Laughlin graduated from the First District Normal School--now Truman State University--in Kirksville, Missouri and earned a Doctor of Science from Princeton University in cytology. He married Pansy Laughlin in 1902.

Prior to his work as a eugenicist, Laughlin worked as a high school superintendent in Kirksville, Iowa. An expert in animal husbandry and breeding experiments, particularly of thoroughbred horses, Laughlin's growing interest in eugenics led to his correspondence with Charles B. Davenport. Their correspondence shows a mutual support for ideas about the implementation of eugenic breeding in humans. In 1910, Davenport asked Laughlin to serve as the superintendent of the newly established Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Laughlin accepted and served as superintendent from 1910 to 1939.

During his tenure at the ERO, Laughlin also served as the eugenics expert to the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, testifying in support of immigration restriction laws based on data from the ERO, data which would later be condemned as unscientific and faulty. Laughlin also used this data to support his model forced sterilization laws, which were subsequently adopted by more than 30 states and were used as the model for Germany’s 1933 sterilization laws. Laughlin's endorsement resulted in over 60,000 forced sterilizations in the United States alone.

In 1927, Laughlin gave a deposition in the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, endorsing the suitability of Virginian Carrie Buck for sterilization, calling the family members "the shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South." He had never meet Buck, and she was forcibly sterilized five months after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the laws that Laughlin had helped to write.

In Germany, after the passing of the Law for the Preservation of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring in 1933, over 350,000 people were forcibly sterilized without consent. Reports of the extensive use of forced sterilization appeared in US newspapers, and by the end of the decade, eugenics had become fully associated with Nazism and poor science. Carnegie Institute forced the Eugenics Record Office to close in 1939.

Laughlin was a founding member of the Pioneer Fund, a non-profit organization established in 1937. The Pioneer Fund, classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is described as racist and white supremacist in nature. One of its first projects was to fund the distribution of Erbkrank, a Nazi propaganda film depicting the 'success' of eugenics programs in Germany. Laughlin served as the Pioneer Fund's first president from 1937 to 1941.

Forced into retirement after both the closure of the Eugenics Record Office and a series of severe seizures, the Laughlins returned to Kirksville, Missouri. Harry H. Laughlin died January 26, 1943.