Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South (review)

Edward J. Larson’s book, the first study of eugenics in the Deep South, asserts that the band of states from South Carolina to Louisiana responded to the eugenics movement differently from the rest of the nation. Simply put, Larson’s thesis is that in contrast to the strong acceptance of eugenics elsewhere, the Deep South failed (in many cases, refused) to embrace it. Although all six states ultimately established institutions for the feebleminded (to promote eugenic segregation), they did so about a decade later than the Northern states. But it was the issue of compulsory sterilization that revealed distinctions most sharply. Of thirty states adopting sterilization laws before 1930, only one, Mississippi, lay in the Deep South. South Carolina and Georgia would add such laws later, but their actions underscored Larson’s thesis: they occurred at the very time that other states were abandoning sterilization.

More arresting is Larson’s explanation for such standoffishness: eugenics, he says, “directly challenged Southern concepts of the family and parental rights” (p. 8). Moreover, race pride and a fierce belief in the purity of Anglo-Saxon blood “predisposed Southern whites not to fear eugenical taint among their own stock” (p. 9). Yet the region resisted eugenics for the right reasons as well: a commitment to individual rights and the humane values of traditional religion. “Ultimately, a broadening conception of personal liberty, including civil rights for the handicapped and reproductive rights for women provided the surest protection against compulsory eugenical programs” (p. 168).

This is an interesting argument, but it is not fully convincing. After all, three Deep South states eventually adopted compulsory sterilization, and the others almost did. Catholic leaders (especially in Louisiana) may have opposed sterilization out of a concern for individual rights, but they also habitually opposed birth control in any form. Moreover, economic conservatism, mindless reaction, and popular ignorance also prompted resistance, as Larson acknowledges. One Georgia solon opposed care for the feebleminded because “‘it would pave the way for putting criminals in a state institution and keep them from working roads, where they belonged’” (p. 82). And if there was little mass support for eugenics, this was not because of firmly held principles but because deficiencies in Southern higher education and the absence of a reading public kept eugenic ideas from deeply penetrating the region.

But if Larson overplays the idealism of eugenics’ opponents, they were at least a more praiseworthy group than its supporters: a coterie of progressives, middle-class clubwomen, and organized physicians, who not only accepted, uncritically, the movement’s “scientific” claims and schemes, but maintained that support long after elite groups elsewhere had reversed themselves—even after the revelation of Nazi eugenic excesses. Only in their relations with blacks could Southern eugenicists escape modern censure. But this was not a case of concern for minority rights: eugenics was a whites-only movement, and blacks, fully segregated from white society, posed no eugenic threat and could be safely ignored.

Although Sex, Race, and Science is a solid study, it has its shortcomings. It leaves readers uncertain about the degree of sexism within Deep South eugenics; it promises more than it delivers in using history to shed light on “moral and legal questions raised by new discoveries in genetics and medicine” (dust-jacket blurb); and its state-by-state survey of policy and practice is often numbing. Yet overall, the book’s virtues well outweigh its flaws, and both health policymakers and historians, will find it interesting and valuable. To this historian it was especially useful: it forced a rethinking about Southern eugenics and showed that on this issue, too, Southern distinctiveness was a defining regional trait.