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Transcription
In 1927, Carrie Buck was forced to undergo sterilization in Virginia under a law targeting mentally unfit individuals. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes supported the law, stating that preventing the reproduction of the manifestly unfit was necessary. This law was part of a larger eugenics movement in America, which was influenced by psychologist Henry Herbert Goddard. Goddard's influential book, "The Kalakak Family," traced the ancestry of a feeble-minded girl named Emma Wolverton, using pseudoscience to justify eugenic ideologies. The book emphasized the need for segregation and was widely cited in biology and psychology texts. However, Goddard's research was later discredited, but its impact had already reached Nazi Germany. The Kalakak family became a symbol of hereditary feeble-mindedness and influenced American eugenic policies, including sterilization laws. It is important to understand the damaging impact of Goddard's work and its connection to Nazi eugenics. The year is 1927, and Carrie Buck has been deemed a feeble-minded woman. Virginia seeks to forcibly sterilize her with a law that mandates the forced sterilization of those considered mentally unfit. Appealing this law up to the highest court in the land, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes utters words so impactful for the country's stance on eugenics. It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. Five months later, Carrie Buck was forcibly sterilized. She was the first Virginian of what would be 8,300 Virginians sterilized. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. Virginia's sterilization law was just one of many American policies rooted in eugenic theory, a theory that would eventually even reach across the Atlantic to Nazi Germany. But first, let's meet the man who contributed so greatly to the eugenic pseudoscientific ideological discourse and his research, which fueled so many societal fears and political policies. Quick caveat. In this episode, we will be using terms such as feeble-minded, mentally unfit, degenerate, moron, intellectually disabled, to refer to people deemed by the government at that time to be as such. Just note, these terms only reflect their use in that time, though they may be hurtful and derogatory today. Henry Herbert Goddard was a licensed psychologist who became roped in the eugenics discourse. In 1901, he became connected to the New Jersey Training School for Feeble-Minded Boys and Girls at Vineland. Exchanging ideas with Principal Edward Ransom Johnstone, the two men, along with Granville Stanley Hall, formed a club they called the Feeble-Minded Club, where they studied mental deficiencies. Five years later, in 1906, Goddard became the director of the research laboratory at the training school. As part of his job, he studied the causes and special needs of feeble-mindedness, taking great strides in furthering the eugenics movement in America. In 1908, Goddard translated the intelligence test from French to English, and he wrote an article called The Grading of Backward Children, the DeSantis Test and the Binet and Simon Tests of Intellectual Capacity, in which he advocated the use of the intelligence test in schools. He administered it to several teachers to use on their students. He compiled his work and research into arguably one of the most influential books of the eugenics movement about the heredity of feeble-mindedness. The book is called The Kalakak Family, a study in the heredity of feeble-mindedness, hereafter referred to as The Kalakak Family or merely Kalakak. Goddard discussed his research and ideas on intelligence in The Kalakak Family, but what was Kalakak about? Published in 1912, the book follows the ancestry of a young girl who arrived at the Vinland Training School in 1897. Her name was Emma Wolverton. Goddard coined the pseudonym Kalakak for her family, derived from the Greek roots kalos, meaning beauty, and kakos, meaning good, to symbolically capture the essence of a story of two clashing branches of one family, one branch good and one branch bad. In many ways, the dehumanization of Emma Wolverton's family by stamping a pseudonym on their name allowed for the Kalakak family to become a political tool and symbol. The dramatic name for her family illustrates the tremendous effect and the successful propaganda this pseudoscientific research had on the American eugenics community. The reader must remember that the type of feeble-mindedness of which we are speaking is the one to which Deborah belongs, that is, to the high grade, or moron. All the facts go to show that this type of people makes up a large percentage of our criminals. So Goddard traced the lineage of Emma, whom he called Deborah Kalakak, back to one of her ancestors from the Revolutionary War, whom Goddard named Martin Kalakak. While Martin's story began as one of, in Goddard's words, a, quote, respectable family, he eventually traces down generations of illiterate, poor, and seemingly immoral Kalakak family members who are unemployed, feeble-minded, criminals, and labeled as threats to societal order. Here, we have a group who, when children in school, cannot learn the things that are given them to learn, because through their mental defect, they are incapable of mastering abstractions. Under our compulsory school system and our present courses of study, we compel these children to go to school and attempt to teach them. Thus, they worry along through a few grades until they are 14 years old, and then leave school not having learned anything of value or that can help them to make a meager living in the world. They are then, turned out, inevitably dependent upon others. They become a direct burden on society. Here, you have Goddard, this trusted psychologist, explaining that this group of people, these high-grade, feeble-minded persons, are burdens to society. His writing has this tone of immediacy, and this message that this is a serious problem should matter to all those who care about societal order in that time. Though Goddard may have believed that sterilization laws would ultimately solve the issue of hereditary feeble-mindedness, he publicly promoted segregation as a more acceptable alternative. Many people at the time felt they were being overtaxed for the house institutions for feeble-minded people, but the book emphasizes the need for segregation of feeble-minded people. The Kalakak family was one of the most visible eugenic family narratives published in the early 20th century, at a time when eugenic family studies influenced the public's understanding of what constituted degeneracy. They were feeble-minded, and no amount of education or good environment can change a feeble-minded individual into a normal one, any more than it can change a red-haired stock into a black-haired stock. Your average citizen reading this research paper begins to think that coexistence with people that have been defined as feeble-minded is impossible. No environment and no education can change that reality. And the eugenics movement wholeheartedly leans into this, what they thought was science. Kalakak was reissued through 12 printings as late as 1939. It was cited by biology and psychology texts in the years following its publication. It became more than just a book. It was a justification for eugenic ideologies. The ideas in the book were even employed in school textbooks to teach children about evolution. For example, at Rhea County Central High School in Dayton, Tennessee, the students read a biology textbook called A Civic Biology Presented in Problems. This textbook provided an overview of the Kalakak family as evidence of the heredity of feeble-mindedness. Kalakak was even cited by books that used eugenics for arguments about racial inferiority of all people other than Europeans. And while Goddard offered paths forward for practical applications of the eugenic movement, as mentioned earlier, his advocacy for segregation, it is critical to note that the character of Deborah Kalakak became a symbol in the eugenics movement. Deborah was a poster child for societal fears, representing the fear of hereditary feeble-mindedness and its potential threats to racial hygiene. These fears and the science of Kalakak are what justified many future American eugenic policies. Later in this season, you will hear deeper examinations of American eugenics policies. You will hear about anti-immigration laws rooted in eugenics and the turning away of thousands of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island due to the very feeble-minded tests that Goddard worked on. You will hear about the Fernald School, an institution designed to segregate feeble-minded people from society, just as Goddard advocated for in Kalakak. And you will hear more about Buck v. Bell, and how Goddard's research reached the highest court in America and fueled sterilization laws that Goddard may have believed in, but even he claimed were too far. It is evident that the Kalakak family seeped into the minds of Americans and greatly impacted American eugenics and political policies. But Goddard's research was eventually proven false. In America, around the 1940s, people began criticizing methods and findings written about in the Kalakak family. In 1942, an article in a journal called the Scientific Monthly said that the Kalakak family, quote, had no merit in the field of psychology. In 1995, a book published by science historian Stephen J. Gold revealed that many of the pictures in Kalakak were manipulated to make the bad family lineage seem intellectually disabled and threatening. Even Goddard himself eventually admitted to his own shortcomings, but it was too late. Across the Atlantic, Kalakak had been translated into German, in the same year when Adolf Hitler gained full political power. That fateful 1933, Germany passed their sterilization laws that would lead to government euthanasia programs and the murder of tens of thousands of subjectively defined, feeble-minded peoples. More on Nazi eugenics in future episodes. But bear in mind, as you listen to many eugenic policies, ideas, thoughts, feelings, and laws, their roots in Goddard's foundational pseudoscientific work, bear in mind the vast and damaging impact of Goddard, the Kalakak family. Thank you all for listening, and be sure to listen on future episodes diving deeper into eugenics. Thank you.
